Birthday Snack

At Alyssa's Preschool, each of the kids has a day in which they get to celebrate their birthday. On this day they get to bring in a snack to share with their class. I got a call back in October asking me when we wanted to bring in Alyssa's Birthday Snack. At the time, I wasn't sure that we would still be here in January, so we chose the second to last day of Preschool in December before the Christmas break(the last day being their Christmas Party and program). We chose a snack that Alyssa likes a lot and that is egg-free for the girl that is allergic to eggs in her class. We also put a little Christmas spin on it because of the upcoming holiday. Here it is before we added the eyes and buttons.

We showed up to an empty parking lot that day, not realizing that school had been cancelled due to a little bit of ice the previous night. We spent a week and a half working on eating all of the rice crispy treats. So on the first day back to school, I set up another day for Alyssa's Birthday Snack. Her teacher and I decided on Jan. 11th. This worked out great for us because Alyssa wanted cupcakes this time and it happened to be the day after Ashley's birthday. These were the ones that we used for Ashley's party, but we used the same one's for Alyssa's class minus the Dora figures and candles. On the morning of the 11th, we woke up to 3 inches of snow on the ground. This time, I learned from my mistake and checked for school closings first thing in the morning. We ended up eating cupcakes every day for over a week.

So the next time I dropped Alyssa off for preschool, we rescheduled once again for the following Thursday (today). We watched the weather all week to see if we would bring another snow storm to the area. This is what we woke up to this morning.

This time I learned even more from my mistakes and left the snack like this until I knew that school wouldn't be cancelled.I don't know if we dare reschedule again. We feel so bad for Alyssa because she is so excited to have her Birthday Snack with her class. We have just had bad luck with this whole snack thing. Hopefully we will have a chance to do it before we move in March.

Ashley's 3rd Birthday

Last Monday, Ashley celebrated her 3rd Birthday. We were fortunate to have Danny home with us that day. We enjoyed a fun day together. Here is Ashley showing off her newest accomplishment (holding up 3 fingers, if you couldn't tell).

Alyssa wanted to get in the picture when she saw me snapping shots of Ashley. I love when they put their arms around each other.

Originally, I had planned to have a friend party for Ashley sometime during the week of her birthday at McDonald's and to save her actual birthday for family stuff. However, when I started thinking about who we should invite, I could only think of one friend that she would really want to come. As a result, I changed my plan and decided that we would just invite the one friend to join us at Chuck E. Cheese's, one of Ashley's favorite places to go. The three kids had a blast together.

Here are Ashley and Haydn enjoying a roller coaster ride. I love how Ashley has her hands up like it is a real roller coaster and Haydn is holding on tight to his seat.
This was a favorite ride for the kids and the parents. The kid loved it because they got to go on it all together. The parents loved it because it only cost us one token for all three of them.
After the tokens ran out, we let them pick out some prizes with the tickets that they had won.
That afternoon, we let Ashley open up all of her presents. She loved being able to open presents again. We made chicken nuggets for dinner (one of Ashley's favorite things to eat) and then had cupcakes and ice cream after dinner.

Ashley is so much fun to have as part of our family. There is never a dull moment with her. She has so much energy and never stops moving. Since she turned three after the first of the year she gets to stay in the nursery at church for one more year. She is tall for her age and towers over all of the other kids in there. Some of her favorite things are anything Dora, the Cat in the Hat, her stuffed Puppy, her baby, and her blanket (she has quite the collection of animals that she insists on carrying around with her everywhere she goes. She calls them her "friends").

We refer to her as our lunch girl because she eats most lunch foods very well, but doesn't hardly eat breakfast or dinner. We have had so much fun watching Ashley grow and learn new things these past three years and we look forward to many more years of fun with her as part of our family. We love you Ashley!

Girly Girls

Alyssa got a make-up kit from her Aunt Shannon for her birthday and she absolutely loves it. She puts on the make-up at least twice a day and usually dolls Ashley up at the same time.

Very cute, but we had to ban the nail polish when Ashley decided that she was big enough to paint her own nails(and many other things close by). Ashley's favorite thing to do is put on the 12 different kinds of chapstick that they got for Christmas.
Last week when the girls were finally both feeling better (and me too), I gave them a bath to wash all the sick off of them and put them in their new matching dresses that they got for Christmas. They looked so cute that I couldn't resist taking a picture of them. It also helped that they were sitting down at their table being very sweet to each other.

We are so glad to be done with the sickness that went through here and to be done with giving Alyssa medicine(which she HATES). We enjoyed a quiet welcoming in of the New Year and look forward to what this year will bring us.

Five Years Old

As usual, we celebrated Alyssa's Birthday on the evening of Christmas. She wasn't feeling that great and I tried to talk her into postponing it one more day, but she insisted on doing it that night. A couple of months ago Alyssa and I were watching a show called "The Cake Boss" together. It happened to be an episode where Buddy, aka the cake boss, was at Walt Disney World for some food show and brought his family along. His daughter was celebrating her 6th birthday during that trip and requested a princess cake from her dad. Pictured below is an example of what the cake looked like (I couldn't find the exact cake, but this gives the idea).

Alyssa saw that cake and decided that she also wanted a princess castle cake for her birthday, also. So that is what I spent the afternoon of Christmas Day doing. I don't pretend to be a cake artist, but I did the best I could for my little 5 year old princess.

Her favorite princesses are Sleeping Beauty and Snow White. That is why they are on the cake. Here is Alyssa with her loot. She was very happy with all of the birthday gifts that she got. They were things that she had been eying at the store and had asked for. She didn't feel like eating any of her birthday cake, but it made her happy to see the pink and purple princess castle that she had requested.
We are so grateful to have Alyssa as part of our family. She is a very sweet and thoughtful little girl. She can also be very stubborn, which probably comes from me. Some of her favorite things are her family, her blanket, and anything girly (dresses, headbands, purple, pink, nail polish, lipstick, blush, and SHOES). She loves going to preschool and is so excited to go to Kindergarten in the fall. She loves music(playing and singing) and dance. She loves to draw, color, paint, and do anything else artsy. We love our Alyssa girl! Happy Birthday Sweetheart!

Merry Christmas!

We had a nice Christmas. The girls woke up Christmas morning, so excited for all of the presents that Santa brought. Alyssa was thrilled that Santa brought her so many of the toys that she had requested from him (in a letter full of pictures). I was happy with how their matching nightgowns turned out. The only down side to our Christmas was sickness. Alyssa went into the doctor on the morning of Christmas Eve and had a double ear infection. We were grateful for the doctors that work on the holidays to take care of people like us, who always seem to get sick on Christmas (this was Alyssa's second Christmas spent being sick). She absolutely hates to take medicine so we always dread it when she has to go on an antibiotic. I woke up on Christmas morning with a runny nose that gradually got worse, and Danny started to feel it that night after I had gone to bed (at 8pm). Ashley's favorite gift was her very own puppy that was given to her by Alyssa. Now Alyssa can play with her puppy without too much heartbreak from Ashley.

Alyssa got her much requested Princess Kitchen but was disappointed that she couldn't play with it because it was defective (or maybe it was just me that was disappointed since she moved right on to other toys when we told her we had to take it back to the store). She did love all of the new girly clothes that she got. Here was her first choice when getting dressed that day. She loves those black sprarkly shoes! We are fortunately all feeling better today and hope to be rid of this sickness very soon. Even though she was sick, Alyssa still enjoyed the opening of presents and spent a good amount of time playing with all of the new toys before she decided she needed to lie down. We hope you all had a nice Christmas!

This Week at the Wheeler Home

Have you ever had one of those weeks that you just wish you could do over? That was how my week has been. As Danny was at his important meeting in Utah County last week, I was bringing Alyssa home from preschool and did this to her newly decorated gingerbread(actually graham cracker) house. In my defense, I was a little sick that day and not completely with it. Alyssa was devastated that her creation was ruined. I felt terrible and promised to help her make one another day with her. That wasn't good enough for her so I picked all of the candy off of the old house(and the floor), made some frosting and constructed a new house out of graham crackers. I so thought I was getting off the hook for gingerbread house making this year. No such luck. Here is the new house.

She was trying to make the sprinkles look like grass. I didn't realize it would take half of the bottle. After this fiasco, we were all happy to have Danny come home that night.

On Thursday, Alyssa was supposed to be honored at preschool for her birthday and we were to provide a birthday snack. There is a girl in her class who is allergic to eggs and Alyssa wanted to make something without eggs that the little girl could eat, so we made rice crispy treats in the shape of gingerbread men. Well, we got a little bit of ice Wednesday night which resulted in school being cancelled on Thursday. Unfortunately, I didn't realize this until we got to the preschool. Alyssa was heartbroken and we had two batches of rice crispy treats to eat.

We spent all week changing Ashley's very stinky diapers as she was sick with some kind of stomach bug. On the tail end of the stomach bug, she must have caught something else because she spent all day Monday laying on the couch. That is very unusual for Ashley, by the way. I took her into the doctor that afternoon after she complained about her ear hurting. She had a pretty bad ear infection. She was kind enough to pass that illness onto Alyssa who woke up Tuesday morning with a fever that lasted for over 24 hours. It was awful timing since she had a pre-surgery physical (we are still in the process of getting her cavities filled that we discovered back in September) with her doctor that morning and then a preschool Christmas Party and program that afternoon. She failed her physical, if you can call it that, and the cavity-filling surgery has been postponed. We couldn't bear to make her stay home from the preschool festivities since she has been talking about this Christmas program for over a month. Here she is looking pretty miserable, in my opinion, during the Christmas program. They sang 9 songs and used some props and actions with some of the songs. After looking at the picture I realized that none of the kids look very happy.
Fortunately, both kids are feeling better this afternoon and will hopefully be back to normal for Christmas and Alyssa's birthday.

On a happier note, here are some of the highlights from the not-so-fun week. Alyssa having a snack with her preschool class at their Christmas party.

Getting to meet Santa and Mrs. Claus at the party. She even has a smile on her face.
She had a dance recital on Saturday and did really well. She loves dance and performing.

This was her favorite dance and costume. It was a rag doll dance and she loved the part in the middle where she got to dance with a partner.

Here are the two girls after the dance recital. Ashley sat really well for the whole thing. Although my back full of snacks probably helped.

I would have included a video too, but for some reason I can't get them off of my camera. I'll see if Danny can figure that out and we'll post them later.

We hope you all have a Merry Christmas!!

Our Roots

This is half of a scrapbook page of a hike up Y mountain from nearly eight years ago when Danny and I met at BYU in Provo. I moved into his apartment complex 5 days after I returned home from my mission in Brazil and he spotted me that first Sunday at church. He pursued me and I went with the flow (after much prayer and one of the strongest promptings from the Holy Ghost that I have ever recieved. I didn't want to be one of those returned missionaries, after all, but the Lord had a different plan for me.)

Why do I tell you this? Well, because I consider Provo a wonderful place. It is where we met, fell in love, and began our lives together.

Why is this important today? Because in a little over three months, Provo will again be our home. We found out this week that Danny's company has been chosen to run the new Provo Convention Center and they have chosen Danny as the General Manager. Although we will miss the friends we have made here and the normal routines we have fallen into, we are so excited to move west again and be close to our family. We also look forward to the career opportunity this will give Danny to oversee the completion of the Convention Center, hire all of his staff, and run his own building.

Ashley the Photographer

We had a slow week of picture taking last week, so I thought I would do a post with Ashley's attempts at photography like I did for Alyssa. I thought these were pretty good considering Ashley is never still. Her favorite game.

The girls pictures on our wall.
Her feet... or maybe she was actually trying to take a picture of that stuffed bunny. Who knows.

This one makes me laugh every time I see it. It reminds me of Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter in the new "Alice in Wonderland," although not quite as scary looking.

I love this little girl.