Bowling

 In December, we purchased the Seven Peaks Pass of All Passes. There are many things included with the season pass besides the water park. In the past few weeks, they added a bowling alley to the list of venues where we can use our passes. While Danny was at work on Thursday, a friend and I took the kids bowling. The bowling alley wasn't in the best condition as they are still remodeling it, but we all had fun. Alyssa even tried throwing the ball herself a couple of times(without using the metal ramp). Here are some pictures from the adventure.

 (I don't know why, but Ashley seems to be the queen of funny faces when we take pictures. This picture isn't as bad as a lot of them have been.)

I just love those kid sized bowling shoes. I think they are so cute. They were ready to be done around the seventh frame, but we finished out the game. I'm excited that we get to go bowling now, for free, along with the water park, miniature golf, and numerous other activities that are included. We went to a Hockey game a few weeks ago for free with our passes which was also a lot of fun(especially since Danny knew one of the guys that works there who moved us up to one of the suites halfway through the game).

Tea Party

Last week, Alyssa's Kindergarten class had a tea party. They have been reading the beatrix potter stories in her class so the tea party was themed accordingly. She was just excited because she got to go to school in her prettiest church dress instead of her school uniform. I also attempted to do her hair like a princess. Here are some pictures of her before she left for school.

The Chicken Dance

Alyssa's school had a dance festival on Friday. Each of the grades had the opportunity to perform a dance that they have been working on for the past month. The kindergarteners got to do the chicken dance. Their costumes consisted of a bird hat made out of paper, ribbon streamers connected to each hand, and a tail made out of the same ribbons pinned onto their bottoms. Alyssa was so excited to do her dance. She was also excited to be able to go to school in the afternoon(I did not enjoy that part of it. I am so glad that she has morning Kindergarten). Here are a couple of pictures of her with some of the kids in her class.

I tried to post a video of the dance, but it won't upload. You'll have to come and visit us in order to see her do it in person. :)

Swim Lessons

Alyssa has been through maybe 4 sessions of swim lessons, but we have never signed Ashley up for them. Since Ashley is showing more potential for being able to learn how to swim than Alyssa right now, we decided it was time to have Ashley take swim lessons. She just completed the first level and did great. Here she is with her class on the last day.  

 The teacher switched halfway through the two week session because the first teacher came down with strep throat. The hardest thing for Ashley was putting her head back in the water. The teacher managed to get her to do it. 

She will do the next level during the first two weeks of Feb. My goal is to get her swimming before summer gets here since we have season passes to the water park. We'll see if the swim lessons are successful in teaching her how to swim.

Happy Birthday Ashley!!

We celebrated Ashley's birthday a week and a half ago. We decided to celebrate it on Sunday because Danny almost always gets home late on Tuesdays, and Ashley's birthday fell on a Tuesday this year. We invited Gawbie and Grandpa (Danny's parents), Aunt Shannon, and the Roe Family over to celebrate with us. We enjoyed dinner together before presents and cake. Ashley was so excited to open presents again since Christmas was still fresh in her mind. 

She ended up having a lot of little presents rather than a few big ones. That made her happy because it meant more presents to open.

She requested a ladybug cake for her birthday. I agreed because I figured it wouldn't be too difficult(a lot easier than the Princess Castle requested by Alyssa a year ago). Ashley is really into bugs right now, especially grasshoppers and ladybugs. I ended up baking the cake in a Pyrex bowl to give it the dome shape and then used oreos for the spots and the black head. My only regret is that I didn't look at the food coloring before Sunday and therefore didn't realize that the red was empty. I would have liked for the ladybug to look more red than pink. Other than that I was pretty pleased with the result.

 Celebrating the birthday early caused a little bit of confusion in that little 4 yr old head. On Sunday she woke up excited to be four. We had to explain to her that she wouldn't be 4 until Tuesday and that we were just celebrating her birthday on that day. Then on Tuesday she woke up excited to be 4 and then asked for her presents. We had to explain to her that she already opened her presents and that there weren't any more. After having her ask all morning for them, I finally wrapped up something that I had meant to give both girls for Christmas but then forgot. It worked and she stopped asking for presents.

That night we celebrated by going to Red Robin as a family. Ashley got a huge chocolate ice cream cake dessert from them and a balloon. She and Mommy enjoyed the dessert together since Daddy and Alyssa didn't want anything to do with it. Afterwards we went into the mall to let the girls ride the train. Unfortunately, it had just closed so they had to settle for the Merry-go-round.

We love our little Ashley. She has so much energy and can be a little bit defiant sometimes, but she is so much fun to be around and she gets so tickled over the littlest things-which makes us smile. She can also say the funniest things, like most kids. She is not shy at all and will start up conversations with complete strangers everywhere we go. She is a little bit of a tom boy, but that is just fine with us. She is 42 lbs, about 44 inches tall, and she still has really light blond, curly hair. Our family wouldn't be complete without her.

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.