The Grand Opening

Somehow I let a really important time in our lives slip by undocumented. Sadly, I don't even have pictures to show how it went. I was able to find one online and I took one of the girls, but that is it. So the Grand Opening of the Utah Valley Convention Center was on May 11th and 12th. Everything went really well. It was fun being able to attend the VIP Gala on Friday night with Danny. He even got to sit back and enjoy most of the evening. Upon arrival, we got a ride from the parking lot to the front door in a limo. That was a lot of fun. There were appetizers and drinks, a short(which turned long due to an MC that talked a little too much) program, dinner, entertainment, and then dessert up on the outdoor terrace. I had fun dressing up and getting to spend more time with Danny than I had in the previous three weeks.

On Saturday, they had the Grand Opening that was open to the public. We got there close to ten when the doors were supposed to open and I was impressed with the number of people that were there already. I showed my parents(who happened to be in town for the weekend) around the building while Danny was out in front doing the ribbon cutting ceremony(that is the picture below).

After my parents left(they had another commitment that they needed to get to), I walked around with the girls and collected all of the free stuff they were giving away. We also watched some Irish dancers, a chorus group, and a martial arts demo. Alyssa and Ashley loved the bounce house(pictured below). They also loved being able to spend a little bit of time with their daddy.

Fortunately the Convention Center is up and running and we get to have Danny around more often now. He has even been home for dinner this past week which hadn't been the case for most of the previous month. We enjoyed a nice three day weekend together, got some much needed yard work done, and made some plans for the summer. Tomorrow is Alyssa's last day of Kindergarten which I think we are all ready for(the last few weeks have been torture getting her to go to bed early). We are excited for the summer and some more relaxed mornings.

Dance Recital

Back in March, I made the mistake of forgetting to sign Alyssa up for Gymnastics. The only other thing avaliable for her to do was dance. She was really excited about dance and has been doing that for the months of March and April. On Thursday night, they had a dance recital for all of the different dance classes. Her class danced to the song "We Go Together" from Grease. Alyssa knew her routine really well and loved being able to dance in front of all of those people. She also loved the time back stage when she got to play games and color with the other dancers. The recital would have probably lasted for 2 hours if we hadn't left early. She was the 7th performance out of 16. We stayed through 8 and called it good. I asked her to strike a pose and this is the one that she wanted for the picture.

She was pretty excited about being able to keep the costume for her dress up collection.

Toothless

So Alyssa has had the trend of having lose teeth for a really long time and then having them fall out as the grown up teeth are growing in, so that her smile never really appears to have missing teeth(the trend holding up for two teeth and the next two seemed to be following the same pattern). Well she had a little mishap this week which broke the trend. On Monday, as I was eating lunch and the girls were playing on the other side of the couch, something happened that caused Alyssa to start crying. When she came over to me, her mouth was covered in blood and one of her top front teeth was missing. My first reaction was a startled intake of breath, which I quickly replaced with a calm reassurance that she would be fine. I grabbed a paper towel and calmly told her that there was a little bit of blood and that one of her teeth was missing. We went over to where they were playing and found it and I showed it to Alyssa. I then got her excited about the tooth fairy coming to visit. She was happy to have the tooth gone as they had been loose for so long and she was tired of wiggly teeth. After she had calmed down, she admitted to me that the tooth came out because she was trying to pick Ashley up with her teeth. I laughed out loud and told her that was a sure way of pulling the loose teeth out. Here is her dangly tooth smile. (the looser tooth wasn't even the one that came out).

She hated having that dangly tooth. It looked really funny too. She wished that it had just come out with the other one. On Wednesday morning, before she went to school, I pointed out the fact that she would be taking pictures with her dance class that night for their dance recital and that it would be really nice if the tooth were gone before that. She wanted Danny to be the one to pull it out, so he did it after they had gotten to her school that morning. It bled some and then he walked her into school so they could get something to put the tooth in. By the time I got there to pick her up, she had lost her tooth. The little tooth carrier that they gave her somehow came open during PE. Her teacher told her that she could write a letter to the tooth fairy and still get her money. So she did, and the tooth fairy left a little note for her in return. Here is her toothless smile.

We figure it will probably stay this way for quite awhile since she pulled the teeth out before they were really ready to leave her mouth.

We went inside

 Danny and his staff FINALLY got the Convention Center handed over to them from the Construction Company. It was a frustrating few days for them as day after day went by with the inspection failing. They invited the families of employees down to take a tour of the inside of the building on Monday night, so we went. The pictures don't show much as I mostly took them to show that we were inside. It is a beautiful building and we are all looking forward to the Grand Opening on Friday and Saturday (although, they have already had 5 events in the building).

I'm not complaining, but let it be known that we haven't seen much of Danny since the building was handed over. He has been going in earlier and earlier in the morning and staying later and later each night. The worst was the night before their first event when he was there until almost midnight and then left the house around 5am, probably not sleeping much in between due to stress. We were warned and I tried to prepare myself as much as possible for these couple of months, but it's still hard on us girls when he isn't around. On the other hand we are so excited for him and his staff and for their hard work and all that they've done to prepare for the opening of the building.

Thanksgiving Point

 On Saturday morning, I ran in a 5K race at Thanksgiving Point with my friend, Rachel. I was really excited about this race because they advertised that the course went through the gardens at Thanksgiving Point during the peak of the Tulip Festival. I thought it would be a beautiful run. I was wrong. First of all, the temperature at race time was in the high 30's. Really disappointing after the summer like days we had earlier in the week. Second, there was probably only a quarter of a mile of the race that actually went through the gardens. The rest of the race was on the streets surrounding Thanksgiving Point. Third, part of the course was a long stretch of road RIGHT NEXT TO THE INTERSTATE!!! I hate running next to busy roads. Now that I got all of the negatives out, there were a few positives. I finished the race at 31:10. I was pretty pleased with my time. It was better than I thought it would be. In our goody bag, they gave us passes to everything at Thanksgiving Point that day. I had originally planned to take the girls and just pay for the extra person. However, Rachel had blisters on her feet and didn't feel up to walking around Thanksgiving Point that day, so she offered her passes to me. I then offered to take her 4 year old son with us. We had a lot of fun. We started in Farm Country. The kids got to ride on a pony...

 pet some baby and grown up animals...

 take a tractor hayride...

 play in the playhouses(this one was a jail, if you couldn't tell)...

 ride on sheep and bulls...

 and take a ride on the cow train.

After Farm Country we headed up to the Museum of Ancient life. As I was checking in at the front desk, we discovered that Ashley was no longer wearing her wristband and therefore couldn't get into anything else without us having to pay for her. I was pretty bugged that the lady wouldn't let her in when she was obviously with us and there were only 4 of us (the wristbands came in twos). Plus, she could tell from my face and my reaction that Ashley had one, it just wasn't on her wrist anymore. I stormed out of there as best I could and we got in the car and went home. The kids were pretty tired anyways. I didn't realize that Thanksgiving Point had so much to offer. I only wish that I had started in the Dinosaur museum and then went to farm country because the kids were all so excited about seeing the Dinosaurs and therefore, really dissappointed when they didn't get to go inside.

Lehi City Expo

Last Thursday, the City of Lehi had an expo where you could get informatoin about the city and see the different city vehicles. Alyssa already had dance in the same place around the same time, so I took them over a little bit earlier to check it out. We had free hot dogs and popcorn for dinner, took a ride in the bucket truck....(they really are in there, even though you cannot see them)

(proof that they were on it. They had to wear a harness so they didn't try to jump out, or so they couldn't fall out)

 we tried on a Firefighter hat...

 and the SWAT Team outfit, including gun...

 They pet a big 'ol bird...

 and explored the yellow firetruck.

They also came home with a bag full of candy and goodies that they picked up from the different departments from the city. It would have been a little more fun if Alyssa was dressed warmer and if it hadn't started raining on us. I was glad that I took them and we will probably do it again next year.

Play Date and Trafalga Fun Center

 Last week I finally arranged a much requested play date with one of Alyssa's classmates. She has been asking to have a play date with a friend from school since September. I have been waiting until I've had the chance to get to know the parents a little better. The little girl that she played with is named Taylor. I have seen her mom quite a bit at the school and we have had many opportunitites to talk. I finally decided that I was okay sending Alyssa over to their house to play and hoped that Taylor's mom felt the same about Taylor coming to our house. She went over there on Friday, right after school. Since I didn't have to pick Alyssa up until 3 and since Danny is feeling stressed out at work, I arranged for Ashley to go over to her favorite friends house too and I spent the morning helping Danny organize his office. Here is Alyssa with her friend.

After I picked Alyssa up from Taylor's house, I took the girls over to the family fun center that we have passes too. The girls were really excited that they had finally opened the bumper boats for the summer. Even better since Alyssa is tall enough to drive a boat herself and take Ashley on them. The only downside was that it was only about 50 degrees out that day and I forgot all of our coats/sweatshirts. You can get pretty soaked on these boats because they have water guns that shoot out from the front of the boat so you can squirt other people with them.

It was a really busy day, but the girls had a lot of fun and it helped fill the day while Danny was working so late.

California

 Alyssa had spring break last week and since Danny is getting pretty busy at work with it being so close to the Grand Opening of the Convention Center, we decided to head off to California on our own. We stopped in Henderson, Nevada, on the way down to see my sister and her family. The girls had fun playing with their cousins and I enjoyed hanging out with Christy.

On the way into LA on Tuesday, we stopped and visited Maryn, Robbie, and Lydia. Alyssa and Ashley enjoyed playing with their cousins most of the afternoon and I had a chance to catch up a bit with Maryn. We fortunately had good weather so that the kids could burn off some of their energy at the park. We headed for my parents house in the early evening and ended up hitting some pretty heavy traffic due to an accident on the way. We were glad to finally get there around 7:30.

Wednesday fore casted rain, so we thought we would go see "The Lorax." I was a little worried about Ashley sitting through the movie, but she actually did really well. She had a large sprite and some popcorn and she was happy. The movie was cute and I learned that I really didn't know the story at all. I must have missed reading that story as a kid and as an adult(reading to my own kids).

Thursday promised cooler weather, but no rain so we headed off to Kidspace(a children's museum). Unfortunately, there were a lot of school classes that thought that would be a good idea too. It was super busy most of the time we were there. This was the only time that I thought to pull out the camera, so here are some of the pictures from the morning.

The Anthill

 The top of a climbing tower. They made me climb all the way up there with them to take a picture.

 Interactive play

 Climbing web

 Rock wall

 Another climbing structure

 Tricycle track

 Giant grasshopper. I thought Ashley would love this, but she didn't seem all that excited about it. She was nice enough to at least pose for a picture.

When we got tired of the crowds and we had done everything, we headed out and hit McDonald's on the way home. The girls made some friends in the play place and ended up playing for a long time. We bribed them out of there with ice cream and cookies.

Friday had thunderstorms, so we threw out our list of activities including the zoo, beach, aquarium, parks, etc, and headed out to another movie instead. We saw "Mirror, Mirror." I really didn't think Ashley would make it through this one, but Grandma and Grandpa got her a snack pack with popcorn, whoppers, and a drink and she was happy for most of the movie. She pretty much talked all the way through, but I'm used to the nonstop talking so it didn't bother me. We were also fortunate to only have 3 other people in the theater with us. Alyssa really liked the movie. We went out to dinner after the movie.

Our plan was to take off really early on Saturday and drive all the way back. After the warning call about the weather from Danny, I looked at the forecast and decided that I didn't want to drive through the snowstorm promised to Southern Utah that day. After checking with Christy, we decided to make a stop in Henderson on the way home too and ended up leaving Grandma and Grandpa's house after lunchtime instead. It was nice to be able to break up the driving, avoid driving in snow, and to see Christy's family again.

It was a nice vacation and I was glad that we were able to go. The girls have a tainted view of California weather, but it was nice to just spend time with my parents.