Snow and Sun

 What would you do after a week of heavy snowfall and smoggy conditions, when the skies finally clear up and allow the bright sun to shine through?

What else can you do besides enjoy the sunshine(we haven't seen much of it in these parts this winter). Ashley got this snow brick maker for Christmas and we finally tried it out. After the girls failed in two different attempts to make a wall, the pregnant mom had to step in and help out. It wore me out, but it was worth it to see how much they loved their snow fort. Unfortunately, we built the walls too high for the warm sunshine because after adding the 7 layer, the walls started to fall. They got to at least enjoy it for an hour or two though.

Alyssa's First Grade Devotional

Each of the elementary grades at Alyssa's school has a turn presenting a devotional to their families and friends. We had the opportunity to attend Alyssa's 1st Grade Devotional this past week. They presented the things they have been learning in class about the Doctrine and Covenants. All of the kids were dressed up like little pioneers and they told stories and sang songs relating to Joseph Smith, the organization of the church, and the early pioneers. Alyssa had two really long parts and she did such a good job saying them clearly into the microphone. It was especially fun to see her break out of her shell a little and use more enthusiasm than normal when she said her parts. We were glad that we could attend it.

Pictures!!

 Here are the pictures from Ashley's party that I couldn't get uploaded last time I updated.

I put a picture of the ship I used as a guide to decorate my cake. That is Ashley's toy pirate ship from the show. I thought the cake turned out pretty good. My only disappointment was the bell. I bought a box of dots(the worst candy ever made, in my opinion) so that I could use a yellow one for the bell. When I opened the box up, there was not one single yellow one in the box. I was so mad. Anyways, I used an orange one instead. In the picture below, the paper cutout of Jake is right in front of the bell.



 Pinata time and cake time!

 Danny and I had such a relaxing and wonderful week in Cancun. We missed the girls like crazy, but it was so nice to walk on the beach, sit and read, eat, and swim without having to worry about keeping the kids happy. Here is the view from our balcony. Our resort was in a location that was surrounded on three sides by Caribbean Ocean.

 On the side of the resort pictured below with my toes, they had an area roped off that they kept available for snorkeling, kayaking, and swimming. They also had an inflatable climbing wall and trampoline for kids, although we never did see the trampoline out on the water. We did enjoy the kayaks one day and the snorkeling on three different days.

 The food was pretty good. They had five different restaurant choices, one of which was always set up buffet style. The buffet had a different theme every night including Mexican, Italian, Oriental, and Caribbean. There was a seafood restaurant which we could only go to once since I'm not supposed to eat more than 7 oz. of seafood a week. Our favorite restaurant was the Oriental one. We just thought they had the best menu choices out of them all for our tastes.

 

 Here is a picture of Danny pointing to the approximate location of our room. The resort had rooms in this tower, and then other rooms in a pyramid shaped structure located along one of the sides facing the ocean. The other side of the pyramid faced a lagoon which had about 6 dolphins in it. The resort is famous for these dolphins and if you pay $150 you can even swim with them. We watched people do it all week. The best part being when they got to hold onto the dolphin and go for a ride.

 We decided to use our first trip to Cancun as a time to enjoy the resort and the beach instead of taking time to explore other attractions in the area. Although, if I wasn't pregnant, we probably would have gone to "Xplor" which had zip lining, swimming in underground water caves, all terrain vehicles, and paddle boats through the caves. It looked awesome and we hope to be able to go back to Cancun sometime just to be able to go there. We would have also like to visit one of the Mayan Ruins, but couldn't commit ourselves to a 5 hour round trip bus ride and crowds, so we may try to do that on a future visit and choose to stay a little bit closer to one of them.
My Mom survived the week with the kids and only had one bad weather day. They were all very happy to welcome us back on Saturday night and as Mom was lost on the way to the airport she declared "I quit." She can be grateful that we didn't choose to go to Cancun this week as we have gotten at least 8 inches of snow today and snow is forecasted for the next two days also. The following picture is quite the contrast from the beautiful beach pictures above. However, since we did spent the past week is such a beautiful place it does make the current conditions a little more bearable.

Frustrated

How come when I make a goal to update weekly, suddenly blogger changes its format on me and won't give me the option to upload pictures from my computer?

So here is my pictureless post...

We celebrated Ashley's 5th birthday last week. Her birthday was on Thursday and we celebrated by making her favorite breakfast, letting her eat lunchables for lunch, and going to Chik-Fil-A for dinner(her choice). She had the hardest time leaving her stack of presents alone until dinner, so I let her open 1 in the afternoon. She also got to take a treat into her preschool class.

Two days later, we threw her her first friends Birthday Party. She chose a "Jake and the Neverland Pirates" theme and insisted on having her cake be the pirate ship (Bucky) from the show. I was really nervous about how it would turn out, but very pleased with the outcome. The party activity was a big treasure hunt where they collected treasure and played games along the way. It ended at the pinata which everyone got to hit 3 times before we had Alyssa step in to break it open. We then had cake and opened presents. Danny and I loved the way Ashley would go up to each of her friends after opening their present, hug them, and tell them "thank you." It was so sweet. There were 9 kids that showed up and they all seemed to have a lot of fun. I only wish I could figure out how to get some pictures on here, especially of the cake.

Danny and I are headed for Cancun on Monday to celebrate 10 years of marriage. We appreciate the help of my mom who will be flying in to stay with the girls while we are gone. After such miserable temperatures this month, we are looking forward to soaking up some sun.

Happy New Year

 I know that I have seriously been neglecting our blog over the past few months. One of my New Year's resolutions is to get back to my once a week updates. So, here it goes. I pulled all of these pictures off of my phone yesterday of all the things I should have posted about during the months of November and December. This first picture was taken at the new Scheel's in Sandy/Draper. I took Ashley there while Alyssa was still in school and we rode the Ferris wheel and explored the store. She thought it was one of the most fun stores she had ever been to. I thought this picture she took with the skunks was funny.

On December 8th, Front runner(the new high speed passenger train here) let everyone ride for free as a way of letting everyone know what it was like. We got on in American Fork and let Ashley choose our direction of travel. We headed up to Salt Lake and walked around Gateway for a little while before heading back. The girls loved riding on the train. The train opened up two days later to paying passengers.

 We had such a beautiful Fall. However, when the snow started it decided to keep coming and coming. One of our first significant snowfalls, Alyssa helped Danny shovel the driveway.

 Afterwards, he helped the girls build a snow couch. They are posing on it in this picture.

 One of the many nights that Danny was working late during December, I decided to let the girls build gingerbread houses. Last year, I made the gingerbread from scratch and used leftover Halloween candy which seemed to work really well, so I did it again this year. The gingerbread didn't work out so well this year, but thanks to a lot of frosting, I managed to glue the houses together. They had a lot of fun doing it, as always.

 Christmas morning came way too early this year with excited little girls who don't quite know the boundaries of normal waking hours. Alyssa first came into our room around 3:30am and announced that she was too excited to sleep. Danny managed to get her to lay down with him until around 6:00, but then she wanted to see if Ashley was up yet. We were all up and opening presents by 6:30 and finished before 8:00. I told Danny and the girls that next year we were setting the "no waking Mom and Dad up before 7am" rule. I can finally see the wisdom in my parents always setting that rule.

 Alyssa's big present this year was a cotton candy maker which we all enjoyed throughout the day. Ashley's big present was "Jake's Musical Pirate Ship" from a Disney Jr. show that she loves. She has been playing with it nonstop since the moment she opened it.

 We did our normal Christmas morning and then celebrate Alyssa's Birthday in the evening that day. Alyssa requested rice crispy treats instead of a cake, so I decided to form them in a bundt pan. She wanted chocolate icing on them which I agreed to for half of the cake(I wasn't sure how well it would turn out). I think it turned out really cute and it is the first time that we have actually finished off a birthday cake in our house.

 Due to a snow storm scheduled to hit during the night between Christmas and the day after, we decided to take off on our trip to California almost immediately after finishing the birthday celebration. We drove as far as Mesquite and then grabbed a hotel room shortly before midnight. We were very happy we did it and avoided driving all day in the snow. California was beautiful and we had so much fun with both of our families.

 The girls loved playing with their cousins and getting to play outdoors in their short sleeves.

We drove back to Utah on Sunday and have been spending the last few days enjoying our Christmas presents, putting away our decorations, and unpacking/doing laundry from our trip. The temperature is below 10 today and we are really missing the California sun.

October Fun

 I love the Fall. There are so many fun activities for kids during this time of year. Here are the activities that we took advantage of this year. We decided that Cornbelly's was fun enough last year that it was worth a return visit. The girls loved this big slide. They each did it at least 5 times.

 They both loved the Princess play land also. Ashley was so excited because the dress that the worker chose for her had a butterfly on it.

 We walked through the corn maze, they played on a lot of wooden play structures, they played games, and rode a lot of little trains. We had a lot of fun and will probably go back again next year.

 I also took the girls over to a pumpkin patch across the street from the entrance to our neighborhood. It wasn't as big as Cornbelly's, but the pumpkins were a whole lot cheaper there. It was also a windy and cold night, so they didn't have all of the activities open. The girls had fun though and the owners were really nice so we will probably get our pumpkins from them again next year.

 This is on the hay ride out to the pumpkin patch.

 I took the girls to a Halloween party at our community rec center. Ashley was so excited about getting to meet the Chik-fil-A cow. That is her favorite place to eat and she always gets so excited when she sees anything related to Chik-Fil-A.

 And of course there was Trick or Treating on Halloween. We actually went down to Provo to trick or treat in the afternoon and then came home to do some more. Danny was nice enough to take them out in the evening since I was worn out from the afternoon trick or treating. Alyssa was really excited to hand out candy this year, so she didn't go out for very long in our neighborhood. It was nice having her around to answer the door and hand out candy. (in case you can't tell, Ashley was a spider and Alyssa was a bride/princess)

 Ashley got to go on her first field trip of the year with her preschool class. They went to a pumpkin patch(that's right, she did 3 pumpkin patches this year). She got to walk through the farm and look at all of the vegetables, play a little bit, and pick out a pumpkin.

 On Halloween, she also got to wear her costume to preschool. Here she is with her class.

A couple of days after Halloween, Alyssa had her first performance of Winnie the Pooh. Her part in the play was one of the narrators and her costume was a dove. She enjoyed doing the play and is asking for me to sign her up for the next one.

I am having the hardest time keeping motivated to update our blog. I will try to be better about it in order to have more posts that don't end up being so long. We are doing well and enjoying the season.

Catch Up

My camera stopped working properly for me about a month ago, so it has been hard to motivate myself to update our blog. Sorry for the long post, but here is what has been happening with us in the past month or so. We finished up our summer day trips with a trip up to Salt Lake City to go to Temple Square and City Creek. We mostly went to the church history museum, then walked through the temple grounds. Here is Alyssa showing some attitude in front of one of the statues.

 Alyssa started school during the last week of August. Here are a couple of pictures from the first day of school.

 

We went down to the Riverwoods a couple of weeks ago because they were having a Chalk Art festival. I thought the girls would love seeing the artists at work. Here are a couple of shots that Alyssa asked me to take of her. They must have been her favorites. 

 I think she liked the Tigger one because she is in the middle of practicing for a production of Winnie the Pooh at a little theater here in town. She loves theater and is looking forward to the upcoming play which will be the first week of November.
The leaves have been very beautiful up on the mountainside, so I took the girls for a hike up there. We talked Gawbie into coming along with us. These little girls were troopers, especially Alyssa, for what turned out to be a fairly difficult hike for even us adults. Here are some pictures we snapped at the top of the mountain.

 

 Last month was my grandmothers 93rd birthday so the assisted care facility she is in had a little birthday presentation for her. It was actually my aunt that did the presentation, but the facility provided cupcakes and ice cream afterwards. I was grateful to be able to go and am feeling more motivated to visit her more often now.

 The girls are excited for Halloween. Ashley wants to be a ladybug and Alyssa wants to be Sleeping Beauty. Now the hunt begins for the cheapest, nicest versions of those costumes.

Bugs Bugs Bugs!!!

 Anyone that has met Ashley, knows that she loves BUGS. She has loved the summer because she has been able to catch lots of bugs. Some of the most impressive have been the praying mantis she caught at the park...

the grasshopper she caught in our backyard...

 and the catapillar that she caught while we were on a walk on our trails(actually she caught like 25 catapillars over a three day period).

 She has also caught numerous rolly pollys, worms, slugs, snails, beetles, and even flys. It kind of grosses the rest of us out, but I've learned to look the other way.
When Alyssa started school again, we decided that it was time to give the girls their own rooms(they were keeping each other up too late which made for some grumpy girls in the morning). So we said goodbye to our nursery(which has been sitting unused for way too long)...

 and created this(the picture above is actually from the previous owners. We forgot to take a before picture with our stuff in the room. We did, however, have a crib set up and a changing table.)

 Ashley wasn't excited about sleeping in "the baby room" at first, but when we told her that she got to have whatever design/color in her room that she wanted she was a lot more excited about it. She chose some creepy/realistic looking bug wall stickers off of the internet and we found the leaf stalks at IKEA. We were all very pleased with how it turned out.