First Day of School - a week late

Last Monday, Alyssa started school. She is going to American Heritage, for those who are familiar with the school. For those who aren't, it is an LDS Private school across the street from the Mount Timpanogas Temple in American Fork. Here is little sister wishing her a good first day.

This is the front of the school. Can you tell how excited she is to be going to school.
We feel fortunate to have Grandpa Wheeler working at the school and checking up on her every once in awhile.

Danny and I have worked out a schedule for dropping her off and picking her up since it is a 20 minute drive for us, and there is no bus service. Danny takes her M/W/F and I take her T/Th. I also pick her up everyday. You can arrange carpools with other parents, but we didn't know if anyone would be interested in carpooling with us just having a half day Kindergartner so we didn't sign up for that. Since the first day of school was a Monday, Danny was the one who took her.

At Meet-Your-Teacher she was able to choose which seat she wanted to sit in. I tried to talk her into one that was in the middle and closer, but she wanted the back corner. Here she is doing her first assignment.

Alyssa's class has 18 kids in it and only 5 of them are girls. I don't know if there are just more girls her age or if it was just the way things worked out when they were deciding which kids to put in what class. She comes home from school excited to do her homework and to tell me all of the fun things that she got to do that day. We feel fortunate that she is able to attend American Heritage and we hope that it continues to be a good experience for her.

Harvest time

We can't eat them fast enough. Any creative ideas?
(These were all picked within the past 4 days, the tomatoes within the past 2 days. We already have a full batch of fresh salsa in the fridge, and 4 loaves of zuccini bread/chocolate zuccini bread).

Kids Camp (Princess Party)

A couple of weeks ago, a couple of young women in our Ward put on what they called a Kids Camp. I think a more appropriate word for it would have been a Princess Party. The girls got to dress up in their prettiest princess clothes and go to a house with a bunch of other little girls and do princess related things. They played games like kiss the prince(instead of pin the tail on the donkey) and find the lost slipper. They got their nails painted, decorated tiaras, made necklaces, decorated castle-shaped sugar cookies, and had a tea party. Both Alyssa and Ashely were so excited to go and when I picked them up they sounded like they had a lot of fun.
The girls had a dentist appointment the day before we went to Lagoon. It was Ashley's first and she did so well. She even let them clean her teeth and do x-rays. Alyssa let them do x-rays and got up on the chair to let them clean her teeth, but then jumped right off as soon as the girl turned on the polisher. I don't understand why she is so scared of the dentist. Unfortunately the x-rays showed that she had more cavities. So we had to go back to the dentist and have her put to sleep in order to fill the cavities. Now we have upped the brushing and flossing routine another step(meaning morning and night with no exceptions, with a prescribed fluoride toothpaste, electric toothbrushes, and daily fluoride pills) to see if we can have a more successful dentist visit 6 months from now.
On a happier note, we are enjoying our last week of summer as Alyssa will start school a week from today. She is so excited to go to Kindergarten and make new friends.

Lagoon

Since Danny has had to travel so much this year for work, he hasn't had many chances to take vacation days. He decided that while he still only had one employee in the office that he would take a day off last Thursday so that we could go to Lagoon together as a family(for anyone who doesn't know, Lagoon is the only amusement park in Utah, at least that I know of). The girls were so excited to go and it was so fun to see their excitement throughout the day as they got to go on different rides. I didn't pull out the camera nearly enough since I didn't get a single picture of Danny. Here is the only one with me in it.

Most of my pictures were taken during the 2 hours we spent in Kiddie Land. The girls rode everything in there at least once. Here they are on the swings.

The car ride, which they later did again driving their own cars.

A helicopter ride.

And of course, the roller coaster--Pretty much the only one in the park that Ashley could ride. We did find one big roller coaster that she could go on later in the day. They are in the front and I love their faces in this picture. They just look like they are having so much fun.

This boat ride didn't look very exciting, but the kids loved ringing those bells. There was quite the meltdown from Ashley when the ride was over because Alyssa didn't let her ring it at all the whole time they were on the little boat. During the ride, I was so concentrated on how much Alyssa was ringing the bell, it didn't even occur to me to tell her to give her sister a turn.

Lagoon also has a small water park in it, so during the hottest hours of the afternoon, we went over to that and splashed around in the really cold water. The girls were too small to go on any of the water slides, but they did enjoy the lazy river and the kiddie area with smaller water slides. Unorturnately, the sun went behind a big cloud just as we were finishing up with applying sunscreen and didn't come back out until just after we had put our normal clothes on again. With the sun behind the cloud, the girls were freezing every time we left the water.

We opened the park at 11am and left about 20 minutes before closing (which was at 10 pm). We had a short thundershower come through between 8 and 9 pm that closed down some of the bigger rides. We couldn't ride most of them anyways, so it didn't effect us. The rain didn't bother us either since we were all wet from a couple of water rides that the girls wanted to go on.

It was a fun day and we were glad that we went. We just wish that some of the height limits for the bigger rides were less. We also wish that we didn't spend so much time waiting in line. Lagoon isn't quite like Six Flags and the Disney Parks when it comes to crowd control and moving people on and off of the rides quickly. But the tickets are probably half the price too, so I guess I can't complain.

The Happenings of Late

I've been neglecting our blog lately. It hasn't been intentional, I've just had a lack of pictures and time/motivation to do it. I looked on the camera yesterday and found that I had a few things on there to catch up on. So instead of doing a bunch of differnt posts, I decided to lump them all together into a really long post about what we've been up to in the past month. When we moved to Utah, we all got a new hair stylist - Aunt Shannon (Danny's sister). After Alyssa, Danny, and I all got haircuts, Ashley did not want to be left out of the fun. So we let Shannon cut her hair also (I had been trying to talk her out of it for fear that once we cut it, she would loose her curls). I thought it was Ashley's first haircut, so I had Danny take a bunch of pictures of it. When I went to tape some of her hair into her baby book, I noticed that there was already some hair in there, so we must have done a simple haircut in the past that I didn't remember. Ashley did really well for her haircut and was so excited to have it done. And I'm happy that she still has her beautiful curls.
I made some new hair bows for the girls a few weeks ago that the girls were pretty excited about. One day they were upstairs playing dress-up and then came down to show me how pretty they looked. I had a good laugh and then grabbed our camera.

Danny's parents gave us their old fire pit, so we finally tried it out. This was our third attempt to use it. The first time it started raining about 5 minutes after we got the fire going. The second time it started raining before we even lit the fire. This time, there was no rain to ruin the roasting and smore's fun.

We took a trip down to Phoenix last week. Danny had a conference there so we went with him and visited my brother's family. We also stopped in Henderson on the way down there and stayed with my sister. We had a nice evening visiting with them. Once in Arizona, the girls enjoyed playing with their cousins, going swimming in their swimming pool, and sleeping in the same room as the two girls closest in age to them. They didn't enjoy how hot it was there. None of us were happy about the small head injury Alyssa got less than an hour after getting to my brother's house. She fell off of a very large ball and hit their ping pong table on the way down. She put a gash in her head that had to be stapled up (with two little staples). Danny was fortunately around that night and spent three hours in urgent care with her. It put a damper on the first 24 hours we were there which had to remain swimless by order of the doctor. We made up for it the rest of the week by swimming twice a day.

The one problem with going on vacation is that we came back to these.

They are so big that we don't quite know what to do with them. I used a third of the zucchini to make bread, used another third of it for dinner that night, and I guess the rest of it will be used tonight. We love that our garden is finally producing delicious food.

Some other pictureless happenings:

My parents came through town on their annual "theater tour" as they call it and stayed with us for a night right before our trip to Phoenix. It was fun to see them and play some One High (that is the game of choice on my side of the family).

I signed Ashely up for a two day a week Preschool in American Fork. I was lucky enough to find one that starts 10 minutes after Alyssa starts school in the morning and finishes 30 minutes before Alyssa is done. I'm looking forward to the two days a week that I will have in order to run errands, excercise without kids, or just read if I choose.

Danny and I celebrated our 8th Wedding Anniversary while we were in Arizona. It happened to be on the one day that we didn't get to see each other at all. However, we celebrated before we went by going to an event called "Taste of the Valley." It was an event where different vendors from all over Utah Valley come to one place and let you sample something off of their menu. We paid $10 each and left so full that we thought we would explode. Some of the food was good and some of it not so much. We learned which places never to try on our own. We are also celebrating again in a couple of weeks by going to see "The Sound of Music" up at Sundance. We are looking forward to that also. I am so thankful for meeting Danny 8 1/2 years ago and for being lucky enough to be married to him. I couldn't ask for a better husband and Father to my sweet girls.

You know she's pooped when...

she falls asleep like this. This happened while she was sick last week. I couldn't figure out why she was quiet for so long and I found her like this. I had to move her for fear that she would fall and sadly, it woke her up. Fortunately she got over that nasty virus, without passing it on to any of us, and is now feeling much better.

4th of July Fun

We have had a nice 4th of July weekend. We enjoyed family and friends, lots of fireworks, and a lot of fun activities. These first two pictures were taken last week during the Lehi Round-up Days. They had parades for three days in a row, so I talked my mom into going down to one of the parades with me and the girls. We got there ten minutes before the scheduled start time and the girls still had front row seats. We were even in the shade which was an added bonus.

We went to Stadium of Fire with the Wheeler Clan on Saturday night. At first, the girls weren't too thrilled about the long walk and sitting in the hot sun, but after a bottle of water and the start of the show, they enjoyed themselves a little more. They especially liked the skydivers, the dancers, and the fly over. We thought they would love the fireworks, but after the first few, they decided they were too close and too loud. Danny held a trembling Alyssa while I held and covered Ashley's ears. I enjoyed the show and the energy in the stadium. Here are some of the pictures from that night.

Aunt Shannon was especially excited about the Brad Paisley concert.

Gawbie and Grandpa had brought along glow necklaces for the kids which were a lot of fun until Ashley bit into hers and the liquid leaked all over the two of us. Sadly, it's not the first time she has done that.

The girls got to meet their two youngest cousins for the first time this weekend. They met Lydia who is 2 months old.

They also met Jane who is close to 9 months old. They had a lot of fun crawling around the floor with her.

We spent the 4th at Gawbie and Grandpa's house. We had a carne asada BBQ and filled up some water balloons for the kids to throw around (which turned into the dads throwing them at each other). We played games, visisted and then enjoyed the neighborhood fireworks. Here are the kids watching the fireworks.

It was so fun to have family come to visit and to enjoy the holiday festivities with them. I am so grateful for the country we live in and for all of the many freedoms that we enjoy.

Don't Give up on Us...

I am so sick of looking at that Garden Post but haven't had the time or energy lately to blog. I don't have any pictures for this post, but just wanted to write a few things for journaling purposes. We have had some visitors in the past month and in between those visits, Danny has been traveling. In fact, he is gone right now on his second of six trips between now and October. His first trip was to Denver. While he was gone, my sister, Becky, came to visit with her two kids. The kids had a lot of fun and it was nice to have some quality time with my sister. I'm so glad that she came.
Danny was gone for a week on that trip and that was way too long for all of us. We were so glad to have him back. We spent the weekend together and then welcomed our next guests, my parents, on Monday. They came into town so that Dad could attend a Family History Conference so he was only with us for the first two days. Then Mom stayed with us an additional three days. It was fun to have them visit and for the girls to get to know them even better.
They left on Saturday morning and we enjoyed the day together as a family before sending Danny off to Massachusetts early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, he left behind a very sick Ashley. She came down with a fever on Saturday afternoon and had it until yesterday. The doctors visit on Monday wasn't any help besides confirming that she had a virus that has been going around and there isn't anything to do for them except wait it out and give them lots of Tylenol and Ibuprofen. So I waited it out one more day and then called in her Grandpa and Great Grandpa to give her a blessing. I am so grateful for the power of the priesthood. Ashley has definitely been doing better since the blessing, although she still has a sore throat and complains about it constantly. I haven't had a full nights sleep since Friday night and I can't wait for Danny to get back tonight. As if having him away isn't hard enough, playing the part of a single Mom with a sick little girl has really worn down on us.
We are looking forward to the 4th of July weekend. Danny's brother, Brian, and his family are coming into town, so we have a lot of activities planned with them. We also found out about a week ago that my brother, Jeff, and his family are also coming into town. We are excited to see them and finally meet their little girl, Jane. I also have a childhood friend coming to town that I hope to meet up with sometime next week. I love living in Utah where so many people come to visit.
Well I need to stop ignoring the crying child behind me, so I'll end there. I will try to find some time to post some pictures soon.