December Fun

Now that we are a week into January, I thought I would post the highlights of December. I can't seem to stay caught up on our blog lately. December was a busy month. I had a week or two in there that I didn't have a spare hour of any day. During that week or two, here are some of the things that kept us busy:

• Gingerbread house making(I made the gingerbread from scratch and then we let them use the leftover halloween candy to decorate them. It was kind of a last minute decision, hence the homemade part of it. However, I was very pleased with the outcome and will probably make them from scratch again next year and save us $10 a house)

•  A birthday party and birthday for our little princess. She insisted on having a friend party and wanted to invite every girl from her kindergarten class(fortunately there are only 7 girls in the class). Then she wanted to invite a few friends from Church too. A few friends turned out to be another 8 friends. I figured since the party was a week before Christmas, there would be a lot of kids that wouldn't be able to come, especially when I had only gotten 1 reply as of the Wednesday before the party. I was wrong. There were only 3 of the invites that didn't come. It made for a hectic couple of hours, but the girls had a blast. It was a princess theme, if you couldn't tell.

The pinata was a last minute find and ended up requiring a last minute scramble to find a place to do it and a way to fit it into the schedule of planned games. We ended up having to omit the necklace making in order to do it, but the girls had a lot of fun.

She has been requesting an angel food cake for her birthday since last Feb. when I made one for Danny's birthday. She then wanted me to turn it into a volcano cake. I just filled the middle with strawberries and called it good.

• We also had Christmas. We had 9:00am church so we let them open stocking presents and had breakfast. They wanted to keep opening presents before church and we told them that if we were all ready for church and still had time then we would let them open some presents. We were all ready by 8:30. 

The most wanted items this year were this white puppy for Ashley and...

this easy bake oven for Alyssa.

• On the day after Christmas, we took a short trip down to Henderson, Nevada, to visit my family. I got to see the families of two of my brothers and my sister(who bravely opened up her house to the mob of people - Thanks, Christy!) My parents were also there. It was a lot of fun to see everyone, eat good food, play games, and let our kids be entertained by cousins. We even got to go play tennis both mornings that we were there, which got me itching to play some more. We had a low-key New Years Eve with Danny's sister - we were all in bed before midnight. Now we are getting readjusted to our daily routines of school and work.

Merry Christmas

The holiday season is always busy, but ours seemed to be even busier this year. I don't know why. In all of the holiday rush, we failed to get Christmas Cards out this year. We decided that since we didn't have a nice picture to send out anyways, it wasn't worth the stress and the cost of stamps. So here is our Christmas Card for 2011.

If you have been following our blog regularly, then you already know what has happened in the Life(lives) of the Wheelers this year. But here is a quick summary in case you forgot.

We started off the year in O'Fallon, MO, anticipating our move to Utah. We had found out the previous month that we would be transferring for a job and that the move would most likely happen in March or April. The first months of the year were spent waiting, and waiting, and waiting. We also answered many a question with "I don't know" as people were curious to know when we were leaving and if we had found a home. Needless to say it was a pretty frustrating time. We took a trip out to Utah to find a home in March, and the move finally happened during the last week of April.

We got to Utah just in time for me to enjoy two days of Women's Conference at BYU with my mom and sisters. While I was relaxing and having fun, Danny was overseeing the movers as our stuff arrived at the new home. By the time I got done with Women's Conference, a good part of the unpacking had already been done. He mostly left the kitchen boxes for me to do, which I finished in a couple of days of hard work.

Due to our new location, we had quite a few visitors come and stay with us this year. There were also a couple that didn't stay, but we still got to see them. We absolutely love living somewhere where we can see family and friends so much more often. I even enjoyed being the shuttle service to the airport for my two nieces at BYU.

Danny spent a good amount of time traveling this year. It seemed that he was taking nearly 1 trip every month from the time we moved in until Thanksgiving. We were fortunate to be able to join him on some of these trips. We went to Phoenix in July and Florida in September. We did three days in a row of amusement parks while we were in Florida which pretty much wiped us out. The girls had a blast which made it all worth it.

In the quieter months, we enjoyed time at home and time exploring our surroundings. In August, we took a day trip up to Lagoon, an amusement park north of Salt Lake City. The girls enjoyed doing that too, even if though there were quite a few rides that they were too short to go on. Alyssa started Kindergarten this year and I have been able to go and help out in her classroom once a week, which I love. She loves school and all of the new friends she has made. Ashley does a neighborhood preschool one day a week that rotates from house to house. I teach it about once every two months and she gets to go to preschool with all of her friends from Nursery. We are all looking forward to the new year and finally having her out of nursery(she towers over most of the kids in there). We hosted Thanksgiving dinner here at our house and we are enjoying a quiet Christmas at home. We hope that this post finds you all well.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!

Visitors

 On the evening before Alyssa's Kindergarten Devotional, our friends from Missouri got into a town. They will be moving here shortly after Christmas so the trip was made so that they could find a home to live in when they move. It was so fun to see them again. It was especially fun to see these three together again.

 They didn't waste any time returning to their old habits. Within a day, they were acting like siblings again(loving each other one minute and then fighting the next).

Since we have moved, they have had an addition to their family. Alyssa loved having a baby around. 

We had so much fun with them during their visit and we can't wait to have them living close by again.

Alyssa's Kindergarten Devotional

At Alyssa's school, each of the grades has the opportunity to present a devotional. The Kindergarteners get to do the Devotional in December. They sang songs, recited scriptures, and took turns saying their parts in the microphone-telling the Christmas Story. It was so cute to see those little kids up there, and they did such a great job with all of their parts. The spirit was so strong in that room as they talked about the birth of Jesus Christ and the true meaning of Christmas. I was glad that Alyssa got to be a part of it and that we got to watch it. Here is a picture of Alyssa with her class right before the program started. She is on the front row on the very left side.

As part of the program they sang a song about angels that came down from heaven and played their different instruments instead of singing. The kids were all tested to see which ones had the rhythm and abilities to be able to play. Alyssa was chosen to play the drum. It was a duet with one other boy. I've been trying to post the video of it all week, but it isn't working. She really got into her drum playing.  It's funny because I had heard her drumming around the house to the phrase "strawberries and whipped cream" for the past couple of months, but I didn't realize why she was doing it. I even heard her trying to teach Ashley how to do it. After hearing her play the drum to that song, I finally understood because the beat fit exactly.

Here are a couple more pictures of her durning the program. She has really bad red eye in all of the pictures that I took.

Pumpkins in December?

I feel like I have really neglected my blog lately. I just haven't really pulled out the camera, even though we have done some camera worthy things. I finally decided that since it is December it is probably time to move on past the Halloween posts. So I took all of the pictures I had on my camera and am turning them into the post that you are seeing today.

We had a really nice Thanksgiving. We hosted it here at our new home for some of Danny's family. We had his parents and his grandparents over. We also got to have my niece Brigitte here with us for a few days since she is going to BYU and her family lives in Connecticut. I took pictures before people arrived for dinner, but I didn't pull out the camera much after that. I was pleased with how the table turned out.

 And here is the kids table(just Alyssa and Ashley).

 After dinner, we each got to put three feathers on the turkey for the things that we are most thankful for. Alyssa got to glue and place them on the turkey.

 Great Grandpa's birthday happened to fall on Thanksgiving this year, so we got to celebrate that after dinner with cake, pie, presents, and a game about Great Grandpa.

 On the Friday after Thanksgiving, we pulled out all of our Christmas decorations and decorated our house. We were glad to have Brigitte around to help us. That night, we headed up to Salt Lake to go to the Tree Lighting Ceremony at the Grand America Hotel. They had a little scavenger hunt for the kids which won them each a cookie in the end. They also had pictures with Santa, but we didn't want to pay for them or wait in the line, so we got a picture with this fake Santa instead.

 Alyssa liked those little cupcake/candycane things so she wanted a picture with them. They were right next to a candy shop.

After the Grand America, we rode the tracks over to Temple Square. Unfortunately before we made it there, the cold temperatures made it hard for one of the little ones to delay going potty and she had an accident. We tried to find a store that could sell us a change of clothing close by, but we were unsuccessful. We took the tracks back to our car with the promise of returning to see the lights on another night.

Pumpkins

I let the girls pick their pumpkins out at Cornbelly's this year. Alyssa wanted the biggest one she could find and Ashley wanted the smallest one she could find. I don't know why. Since I knew they were going to want to paint them when we got home, I let Ashley pick out two.

Alyssa named her pumpkin "Facey Pasey" since she drew like 4 different faces on it.  

 I hadn't planned on carving them, but Danny suggested it to the girls when he saw them and then the girls were set on carving them. We carved them on the Saturday before Halloween and cooked the pumpkin seeds for them to try. Alyssa kept saying "this is gross" when I had her scoop out her pumpkin. Once I loosened all of the insides from the sides of the pumpkin, she was pretty good about scooping it out. Ashley didn't want any part of that. Alyssa wanted to carve it herself but after her first attempt with the knife, I decided that was a really bad idea. I took the knife away from her and handed her a smaller carving tool instead. Alyssa didn't like the seeds and Ashley loved them because they were a means of getting large amounts of salt into her(she loves salt). I didn't take a picture while we were carving the pumpkins because I had pumpkin guts covering my arms up to my elbow and Danny wasn't around to take the picture while we were working on them. I did snap this picture of the girls as we were getting ready to leave to go Trick or treating that night. The smaller pumpkin came from the Lehi Rec Center Party. Alyssa designed the faces almost exactly the same.

Trick or treating was a big hit with these girls. We started it off in downtown Provo around 3:30 and then headed home for a quick dinner before going out into our neighborhood. They spent a good amount of time running up and down driveways. We came home pretty worn out and with a large amount of loot. Now to get rid of it without eating it myself and letting them chew too much with their cavity prone teeth.

Costume Activities

During the week leading up to Halloween, the girls had many opportunities to wear their costumes. The first opportunity was to Ashley's preschool on the Wednesday before Halloween. Here is Ashley with her preschool class on that morning.

That same evening, our Ward had a Halloween Party. Both girls got to dress up. The party consisted of dinner, a costume parade, and then a treasure hunt. They had fun, but Ashley and both parents were pretty worn out by the time we got home.

Two nights later, I took them to a Halloween Party at the Lehi Rec Center. They went all out in decorating the place for the night. Three of the pictures below were taken before we even went through the doors.  

 The 4th was taken after we had gotten their faces painted and their balloon creations made. Alyssa chose a purple swan and Ashley chose a yellow and green flower.

They also got to play a few games(the ones that had short lines that I was willing to let them wait in), listen to a story, go trick or treating, pick out a few free pumpkins to take home, and grab a helium balloon to take home as we were leaving. They also offered a spook alley and dinner with a movie playing(one of the Shrek movies). We decided to skip out on those two things as the girls were too scared to go in the spook alley and we had already eaten before we got there. I thought it was a good event for them and super cheap for all of the things they got to do. I was very glad that we got there right at opening though because within an hour of opening, everything had lines that were too long to wait in and I wouldn't have been as willing to let them do all that they got to do.

Witches, Witches, and More Witches

Another thing that we ventured out to do this Halloween season was Witchfest at Gardner Village in West Jordan. It is an outdoor, cutesy shopping area and they put all kinds of witch displays out during the month of October. Shannon talked us into going with her and the girls had more fun than I expected them to have. Alyssa loved trying on the different witch hats.

 They both had fun posing in front of the different witch displays. That hula hooping witch was kind of fun. You can't tell from the picture but she moved to make it look like she was hula hooping.

 There were a couple of non-witch displays too, like this creepy looking one.

 These two witches were playing baseball with a third witch that didn't fit in the picture. The girls loved this one.

 We went during the day, so it wasn't crowded at all. In the evening they have a lot more activities going on so I'm sure it gets a lot more crowded then. It is a fun little shopping area with a lot of unique stores. The girls especially loved the candy store where I let them each pick out a candy. It was a fun afternoon.