SNOW!!!

 We finally had a significant snowfall this week. At least enough to get the girls all bundled up to let them go and play in it. We found a nice sledding hill and the girls built a snow man.

 The girls had a blast! Alyssa worked so hard on that snowman, rolling the snowballs and getting the face just right. She was so sad when she looked out the window later on that afternoon and saw that Casey had eaten the carrot nose and tried to eat the rock eyes, knocking them off of the face.
The snowman is now melted. The girls are currently outside playing in short sleeves in our almost 60 degree weather. They are making mud pies and eating the last remains of the snow. I love a good snowfall when the snow disappears less than a week later. This has been a marvelous winter.

Birthdays, Birthdays, and more Birthdays

Even though I have been terrible at taking pictures to document it, I want to make it known that we are thick in the middle of the birthday season in our household. I have already posted about Alyssa and Ashley's birthdays. We celebrated Danny's birthday a couple of weeks ago. On the evening of Danny's actual birthday, Gawbie and Grandpa Wheeler kept the girls for us so we could attend an adult only Hawaiian Luau put on by our ward. It was fun to go on a date and meet a few new people from the ward. Since Danny's birthday is only two days before his sister, Shannon's, birthday, we celebrated the two birthdays together. Since we get so sick of cake about this time of year, Danny's mom was nice enough to make Danny some homemade oatmeal cream pies instead. They were delicious.

This past weekend, we flew down to Arizona for Great Grandma Ginos's 80th birthday celebration. We were so glad that we were able to go. Danny got to see a lot of cousins, some of them he hasn't seen in 10 years. I got to meet a lot of cousins that I have heard about, but had never seen before. While we were in Arizona, we stayed at my brother, David's, house. Alyssa and Ashley had so much fun playing with their cousins, Danielle and Kristen. They also loved playing with the new puppies. It was a fun weekend and nice to enjoy family and a little bit of warm sunshine in the middle of winter.

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.