Ashley's 2nd Birthday

Ashley turned 2 on Sunday. We had a small celebration with just the four of us. Here is Ashley opening presents.

She mostly got new clothes (She is bigger than Alyssa was at her age and doesn't fit the winter clothes that we had leftover from Alyssa).
She loves Dora, so we made her some cupcakes and put Dora figures on top of them. She also picked out some Dora party plates.
Here is the birthday girl enjoying the first bites of her cupcake.

Here is Alyssa with Ashley after Ashley has enjoyed digging in.

All About Ashley
Ashley keeps us busy. She is constantly moving, and falling a lot as she goes. Most of her time goes into destroying order in the house. She loves to watch "Dora the Explorer" and has a hard time starting her day without it. She loves books and won't keep them on the shelf. There is almost always a pile of books next to their bookshelf upstairs and the basket downstairs where we keep their books.

Ashley has a serious foot fetish and is constantly falling to the floor next to our feet and grabbing them while yelling "FEET!" This happens wherever our feet may be (walking around in the kitchen, on the floor next to the couch, under the table, etc.) We don't know why she loves feet so much, but it really makes us laugh whenever she attacks them.

Ashley is a lot of fun to have around and we have all enjoyed having her as part of our family these past two years. We look forward to many more years of fun together.

Grandpa's Birdhouse

Alyssa and Ashley both got a wooden birdhouse from Grandpa Wheeler that you build yourself. We had a stay at home day last week when a storm left 3-4 inches of snow on the ground and I didn't want to go out in it, so we used the time to build Alyssa's birdhouse. The building of it was kind of a pain, but she loved painting it.

She likes to use all of the colors any time she paints or colors.

Here is the finished project.
Thank you Grandpa for a morning of crafting fun!! We will build and paint Ashley's in the future (most likely when Daddy is home to put it together).

Alyssa turns 4

We celebrated Alyssa's birthday in the evening after all of the Christmas festivities were done, like usual. We took away all of the Christmas decorations and decorated with birthday decorations instead. The girls loved the balloons and party hats.

Here is Alyssa with her opened presents.

We let her choose a cake from Sam's Club because she asks us to get her one every time we go there. She chose a Hello Kitty cake/cupcake combo.

Here is the birthday girl.

We have enjoyed having Alyssa as part of our family these past four years. She loves dressing up, dancing, singing, playing with Ashley, playing anything outside, and spending time with Mommy and Daddy. She hates wearing socks and long sleeves (especially sweatshirts), any kind of mint or peppermint flavored food, and not having her choice in clothing and food. We think she is a typical 3 year old turning 4 besides being so much taller. She is a lot of fun to have around and she really makes us laugh with some of the things that she says and does.

Happy Holidays at the Wheeler Home

I know this is a little bit late, but we had visitors for Christmas and the week following, so I didn't have a chance to post anything while they were here. It was fun having Gawbie, Grandpa, and Aunt Shannon in town for Christmas. The girls enjoyed having lots of different people to play with them. Here are some of the highlights of Christmas.

The unopened loot

New Dora Doll Castle

Farm Animals
New Doll

New blanket

Hat and gloves

Books

We enjoyed playing lots of games, eating at Jack in the Box, many after Christmas shopping trips, and a short trip to the crowded bounce house(for the girls). Danny and I spent New Year's Eve at home by putting the girls to bed and barely managing to stay awake past midnight. We look forward to all the the new year brings us.

Yesterday, Alyssa was playing with this game that Grandma Bev left with us where you are supposed to build caterpillars with different shapes. I came down to find this.When she saw me laugh and grab the camera, she was happy to pose for me.

I often wonder what is going through her head when she is playing. One day I played a "Mommy and Daddy Game" with her. It is one of those multi-game packs that has checkers, chess, chinese checkers, etc. I got a little peak into some of the things she thinks. This is how the game went. (We were playing chess)

"This guy is doing the magic trick...
These guys have to sit in their seats. The kids have to sit in front...(For some reason this picture isn't uploading the right way so you'll have to turn your head)
Now they all have to go up with the Magician...except the Mommies and Daddies... Now they need to go back to their seats..."

She went on like this for quite awhile bringing a dress-up slipper into the picture as a car at one point and also the baggie that holds the pieces. My pictures set-ups aren't nearly as elaborate as the way she sets them up, but I hope you get the point.

Kids are so funny!!

Right now Alyssa is playing with the chess board and pieces because she saw me take them out and take some pictures of them. And sure enough, she is moving them one by one from one side of the board to the other. Some of them are even going into the dress-up slippers.

First Snow of the Season

I know that some of you had your first snow months ago, but we finally got our first snow this past week. The girls were so excited to wake up to all of that white outside. Ashley just kept saying "White! Mommy, white! Daddy, white!" Alyssa spent the morning begging us to put on her snow clothes so she could go and play in the snow. Ashley didn't quite understand that all of that white stuff is cold. She wouldn't wear mittens or a hat and she quickly understood why the rest of us wear mittens. The first time she fell down in it, she just stayed there screaming.As you can see from the pictures, it was hardly enough snow to put on all of that snow gear (which is good since we don't have snow gear for Ashley). Alyssa taught Ashley how to make foot tracks around the yard. After Ashley had fallen down a second time in the snow, she was done.

Alyssa wasn't ready to be done, so I let her go and play with Casey on the back deck. She spent a good amount of time throwing snow at him and watching him try to catch it in his mouth.

She spent the rest of her time trying to make snow angels.

Casey loved that because he could get nice and close to her face.

The snow melted two days later (which is why we love the snow storms here). We look forward to a snow storm that leaves a little more snow so we can take the girls sledding. Although we aren't hoping to have that too soon. We are not snow lovers.

"Ring Around the Rosies..."

This statue is at the Childrens Museum that we have passes to. We have wanted to take a picture of the girls with it for awhile and we finally did it the last time we went. Danny is in it because Ashley didn't want to hold the statue's hand.

Christmas Party

We hosted a Christmas Party this week for all of the people that work for Danny in his department at work. Fortunately, we didn't have to do much cooking because it was a potluck. It was a challenge finding space for everyone to sit to eat and also for the white elephant gift exchange afterwards, but we managed to fit everyone. Here are the girls waiting for the guests to arrive. They were so excited to throw a Christmas Party (if you are wondering why we have so many stockings, the extra ones are for our Christmas visitors).
Here is everyone sitting and eating. As you can see, it was a tight fit.

Here is Alyssa coloring with Nick, the kid closest to her age in the group.

This was taken during the gift exchange. Ashley and Alyssa loved opening up presents. Alyssa picked one of the ones she helped wrap, so she was happy with what she ended up with - a coloring book and crayons. Danny was happy with the head scratcher that he got also. Ashley and I however, ended up with a remote key finder and a mouse/keyboard combo. Alyssa has enjoyed dragging the mouse around the house.

It was fun having people over and we are glad to have enough room in our house to do things like this. It didn't even take us that long to clean up afterwards.