The Things You Do When You Don't Have a Pool

It was really hot on Saturday and Alyssa was watching the kids across the street have a water fight. She wanted to go play with them. Instead, we set up our sprinkler that attaches to our hose. I've been thinking about doing it all week because it has been so hot and it hasn't rained in awhile. It was an even better idea on Saturday since Danny had pulled some weeds and mowed the lawn in the front on Friday. Alyssa had a blast playing in the sprinkler. Here are some of my favorite pictures.She has asked us four times a day every day since to let her play in the sprinkler. Unfortunately for her, we have had rain since Sunday night.

Our Block Party

Some of our neighbors threw a block party on Saturday. It is the third year in a row that they have done it. When we got the invite, the time said from 2pm-11pm and we thought "what are they going to do for 9 hours?" Around 2pm, we looked up our street and saw a fire truck parked there and some firemen standing around it. Danny took Alyssa up to check it out.
We don't know who had the connections, but it was there for maybe an hour for the kids to come and sit in and talk to the firemen.

Alyssa loved being able to sit inside of it and pretend she was driving it.

They also rented one of those inflatable bounce houses for the kids that was up starting around 2. They had food, music, some lawn games and I think someone put together a mini obstacle course for the kids but we missed that. We went up around 5:30 and stayed till about 8. It was a nice chance to meet some of our neighbors. Danny even got an invite to watch the UFC fights that night at one of the houses. This is just one of the many reasons why we love our neighborhood, especially our street.

Twins

On Sunday, after Church, I noticed that Danny was wearing the same outfit as Alyssa. We took some pictures of them while we were out on our walk that evening.

The funniest part about it is that they aren't even common colors to wear, especially together.
I also liked that they both had navy blue flip flops on.

Random Pictures

We felt bad about the lack of pictures to post last week, so we tried to take some pictures of our uneventful week and here is the result. We use the little basket pictured below to store books on our main level. Ashley's favorite activity is to empty it out as soon as I put the books away. One day, I looked over and saw her emptying the basket and then work very hard to climb into the basket (another favorite thing to do) while is was still on the lower level of our endtable. She sat in there for a good 5 minutes and when I finally decided to take a picture, she climbed out just before I could get a shot. Alyssa, as usual, is happy to do anything that her sister does that we see as funny or picture worthy. So she climbed into the basket so we could get a picture of her. I think she was disappointed to discover that she didn't fit in that position as well as Ashley.
Here is Ashley on a different day sitting in her favorite basket. I'm not sure why Alyssa has that facial expression because I didn't take this picture.
I just liked this picture of Ashley because it shows that she really does have hair. In addition, that hair is also showing signs of being curly. She also just looks very happy.

Here is Alyssa with her breakfast of choice. She wants me to buy these every time we go to the grocery store and I finally got to the point of being sick of eating them. On this particular day, I let her pick out one donut and her choice was this blue sprinkle one.

I didn't take this picture either, but it made me laugh because Alyssa looks like a little tiger in it.

On a side note, in case anyone has noticed the condition of Alyssa's legs, don't be alarmed. She seems to take after me and bruise very easily. And she is still learning how to walk in her summer sandals.

Alyssa Goes to the Dentist

This is actually Alyssa's second trip to the Dentist, but we didn't take the camera the first time. We spent a few days talking up her upcoming trip to the dentist. We recently got a Dora book from the library where she went to the dentist and kept telling her she was going to the dentist like Dora. That got her excited. Here she is in front of the Dentists Office.

Somehow, she remembered the bib from her last Dentist trip and talked about how she would have to lift up her hair so that they could put the bib on her. Here she is with her bib.

Danny is the one that took her and he said that she did very well. She let the hygenist look at and clean all of her teeth, but she wouldn't let her polish them. And she let the Dentist look at them too.

Here she is after they are done looking in her mouth. She is glad that that part is over with.And here is the best part about the whole trip...a new toothbrush and a toy airplane.

What's new with the Wheelers

Sorry that I haven't updated in awhile. I have been traveling and I'm just now recovering from it. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures to post so this may be boring.
Three days after Danny got back from his trip to Utah for Brian's Graduation, I made almost the exact same trip to meet my sisters and my mom for BYU Women's Conference. I was out there Wednesday afternoon through Saturday afternoon and it was such a refreshing getaway. It was so nice to be with my mom and sisters without any of us having to worry about kids. We got to sit around and talk, eat a lot, and go to the different classes for the conference. I'm so happy that Danny was willing to stay with the girls so I could get away.
As I said above, I got back late Saturday afternoon and we left Sunday morning for Des Moines. Danny had a conference that he needed to attend and we went along. We figured Des Moines was an easy trip to tag along on since we still have a lot of friends up there. We had three busy days of running around Des Moines trying to see everyone that we wanted to see, swimming in the Hotel pool, and getting things done in order to finalize our move (closing our bank account, picking stuff up that we left at the house, etc). Danny spent this time at his conference and visiting with people that he used to work with. When we had Danny with us, we all enjoyed eating at restaurants that we have missed since we moved. Most people that read our blog already know this, but we closed on our townhouse in Norwalk two weeks ago, so the trip up there helped us to make our move final. Now we will just have to see if this makes O'Fallon feel more like home to us.
After returning from Des Moines, we got busy doing laundry, cleaning, and making our backyard presentable for the BBQ that we are having here tonight.
I had an awesome Mothers Day thanks to my wonderful husband and kids. I will try to be better at taking pictures this week and make our posts a little more interesting for you next week.

Our Week

Alyssa and Ashley just adore their Daddy. Well this week, Daddy went out to Utah for Uncle Brian's graduation from BYU Law School. He was gone for three days and I was worried about how we would all survive without those precious moments of Daddy playtime each day. Well, we did and this is how we did it:

1. We went to Chuck E. Cheese's to celebrate Alyssa finally filling up her Do Good Chart again.

2. We had a couple of different play dates with kids that I didn't have a chance to get pictures of.

3. We went for nice long walks every day with time to play at the park afterwards.

4. Alyssa flew her first kite. I didn't get a picture of that either because I was concentrating on keeping the kite in Alyssa's hands, away from Ashley, and keeping Ashley somewhat close to us.

5. We had lots of talks with Daddy on the phone.

6. We had summer-like weather and spent a lot of time in the backyard with Casey and in the front yard drawing with chalk.

7. We took a trip to the Saint Louis Zoo. Admission to the Zoo here is free, but you have to pay to do a few of the things inside. However, some of those things are free for the first hour that the Zoo is open each day. So we arrived right at opening, managed to find a parking spot on the street to save us the $11 parking fee to park in their lot, and we did all of the free things first. The two that I was interested in were the Merry-Go-Round and an enclosed area called the Children's Zoo. Here are my favorite pictures from the excursion.

This jeep was inside of the Childrens Zoo. It didn't move, but the kids could climb in it and pretend to drive.

Ashley was excited to be able to get out of the stroller and run around on her own in this area.

I love this picture because Alyssa looks like she is a child model posing for a photo shoot. In reality she is trying not to slide down the back of this giant bug so I can get a picture of her.

Here is the only snake in the zoo that Alyssa wanted to be anywhere near. She was actually afraid of quite a few of the animals. I had to reassure her many times that the animals couldn't get to us because of the different barriers. She was still scared of them.

I had to include this picture because this Chimpanzee made me laugh so hard the way it was just chillin there on the ground. Alyssa was scared of him too, by the way.

It was almost a perfect day to be at the Zoo. It got to be a little too hot by the time we left and way to crowded. The first hour was perfect though. The girls were beat by the time we left. Ashley fell asleep in my arms as we were leaving and Alyssa took her first nap in who knows how long that afternoon after we got home. We all had a lot of fun.

This last picture was too cute not to include. Yesterday, Danny BBQed dinner for us and in order to keep the girls inside, we put on Dora for them. We looked at them a few minutes later and this is how we found them enjoying the show together. It is so nice to see them get a long occasionally.

The girls are both so happy to have Daddy home again and to have all the prizes that he brought from Gawbie and Great Gawbie, as we call them (Danny's mom and Grandma). We congratulate Brian on his graduation once more and are glad that Danny got to be there for it. But we are also very glad to have him home with us again.

We love you Daddy!

Easter Celebration

I love holidays now that we have kids that get excited for them. Alyssa absolutely loved Easter this year. It all started the first time I took her to see the Easter Bunny at the mall. I go walking at the mall every day, so Alyssa, of course, wanted to go see the Easter Bunny every day. Ashley even liked seeing the Easter Bunny. Then Alyssa got excited about the Easter Eggs. Here she is dying Easter Eggs with Danny.

We got an egg dying kit that had sticker faces to put on your colored eggs. Alyssa had a lot of fun with that. Here is the finished product.
Here are the girls discovering their baskets on Easter morning. Alyssa was so excited that the Easter Bunny came to her house.

We did an indoor and outdoor easter egg hunt for the girls. Here is Alyssa finding an egg on our front porch.

And here is the egg that Ashley found outside. She kept trying to eat them when she discovered that the real eggs don't pop open and spill candy.

Here they are with their empty easter baskets getting ready for the hunt.

Although our pictures only show the commercial aspect of Easter, we really tried to help Alyssa understand the real reason we celebrate Easter. We read about the Resurrection with her and explained it to her a couple of different times. We hope that a little bit of it sunk in.