Fun With Friends

For the past few months I have been going walking with a friend in order to finally lose some weight. She has a little boy, Hadyn, who Alyssa and Ashley adore. All of their faces light up when they see each other. The other day I was watching Hadyn and the three of them were being so cute. The pictures came out kind of blurry, but I hope you can get an idea of what I was experiencing. Here are Ashley and Hadyn together. She kept holding onto his shirt and tackling him.
The three of them loaded up this wagon with toys and they were pushing/pulling it around the house. I love how Ashley is helping Hadyn push.Danny went to a work conference this past weekend and instead of hanging out with the girls here, I decided to take a short road trip and visit one of my college room mates (Char, for those who are interested) and her family. They live about 5 hours from here. I was a little bit nervous about the drive, but the girls did great. Char has a boy (4yrs) and a girl (2yrs) and our kids played great together.

We took them to the county fair so they could go on some rides. Here they are enjoying some ice cream after the rides.

Alyssa got some nice exposure to how boys play (action figures and phrases like "get the bad guys"), but I think she really enjoyed having a friend around for three days straight. She even went willingly with him to primary.

I enjoyed having entertainment for my girls and some adult conversation for the weekend. I am so glad I went and it was so much fun to see Char and reminisce about our early college days.

18 Months Old

I know it has been a few weeks since Ashley turned 18 months, but she had her check up this past week, so I thought I would do a post just for her. Here are some pictures that we took of her this past week. She loves water, especially water that she can touch and splash in. We have found her a few times even splashing in the dog's water bowl.
She loves going for walks, or rides in her case.

She loves to climb under things and on top of things. Her newest accoplishment is climbing on top of the table. At least it forces me to keep our table clear of things now.

I love her big blue eyes and almost white hair. I love how crazy her hair looks in this picture. She must have just gotten up.

Most of all, I love when she is sweet. She gives very good kisses and hugs.

I was suprised to see how much she had grown in the past three months. Here are her stats:

Weight: 28 lbs 7 oz (91%)

Length: 34 3/4 in (99%)

She has grown 3 inches and gained 3 pounds in the past three months. I guess I don't have to worry so much about her appetite lately.

We Love You Ashley!!

A Nice Suprise

Danny suprised me with a new camera on Saturday. It was supposed to be an anniversary present, but he decided to give it to me early. I am so excited because I have been wanting a new camera for a long time. It is really small and it has so many more features than our old camera. And it takes great pictures.

Although, I do have to admit, the subjects of the pictures are what make them so great. Thank you Danny for my new toy. I'm so excited to play around with it and discover all that it can do.

Anniversary Date

One of our New Year's Goals this year was to go on a date once a month. On Saturday, we finally made it on our first date of the year (that we actually got to plan ourselves). Since Danny will be in Boston on our Anniversary and I will be visiting an old college roommate, we decided to go out and celebrate our Anniversary. We started out at a little Family Golf Complex. It had a driving range, miniature golf, and a par three "pitch and putt" golf course. We decided to do the driving range and the pitch and putt course.

The name didn't lie either. We could have done the course with a pitching wedge and a putter. The longest hole was 65 yrds and the shortest was around 27 yrds.

We couldn't have asked for more perfect weather. We knew it was going to be a nice day which is why we planned something outside. The temp was mid 70's and there were a few clouds in the sky.

After golf, we went to a late lunch at a Brazilian Churrascaria that we found about 20 minutes away from our house. We like going to Brazilian restaurants because I get my beans and rice fix and Danny gets his meat. Here is Danny with one of the meat servers behind him.

The food and service were good. Our only complaint was that they didn't serve grilled pineapple for lunch. That is my favorite. We sure got our fill of top sirloin and bacon-wrapped chicken though.

We had a lot of fun and we were grateful for our friends that so willingly watched the girls for us so we could go out and celebrate. I had a good laugh when not to long after we got home, I found this...

They must have been pretty worn out. I was on the phone for 20 minutes and they all went to sleep on me.

Fireworks

Spending the 4th in a State where fireworks are legal was a totally different experience for us. It was really fun especially for Alyssa. We decided that we might as well take advantage of it while we live here, so we went and bought a bag full of fireworks on Friday. We didn't know what the best ones to buy were since we had never bought more than sparklers. We shot half of them off on Friday night at our house and half of them off at our friends house on Saturday, where we ate dinner that night. Here are the kids enjoying the champaigne poppers.
Alyssa liked the little poppers that you throw at the ground because she could throw them herself without any chance of getting hurt and they even popped some of the time.We had a rainstorm roll in around 8pm on the 4th and it was still going strong when it was time for our fireworks show. We weren't sure if they would still shoot them off in the rain, so we went to watch anyways. We sat in the back of our van.

Here we are waiting for the show to start.They ended up postponing the show until sunday night, so we headed home. Danny sat in the garage with the girls and they watched all of the neighbors shooting off fireworks.

We went back the following night to watch fireworks again and still watched from the back of our van even though it wasn't raining.

We were suprised by how well Ashley did staying up two nights in a row. It was a fun few days and we are truly thankful for our Independence and the many freedoms that we enjoy living in this country.

River Fest

This year, the 4th of July seemed to be a three day celebration. I wasn't sure if that is normal here, or if it was just because the 4th fell on a Saturday this year, but we celebrated it for 3 days. It helped that Danny got a three day weekend which has been unusual since we have had kids (he was always working on the 4th in Des Moines). On Friday, we went to a Carnival close to Danny's work that was located in a park right along the Missouri River. Alyssa and Ashley absolutely loved the rides (we have two little dare devils). Here we are on the Merry-Go-Round.
We were a little nervous to let Alyssa try the roller coaster by herself, but we didn't want to have to pay for ourselves to take her on it, so here she is riding by herself. She wasn't even worried about going alone and she loved it. The roller coaster really whipped her to the side of her seat and was a little more rough than we liked, but it didn't bother her at all. She is the next to last car in the picture.

Here is Alyssa on the big slide. She just grabbed her mat and climbed the stairs without even looking back at us.

This was the big hit. They went on this one twice. Ashley loved it. It made me a little nervous to not be standing right next to her, but she just sat there and enjoyed the ride. And Alyssa loved being able to take her on it by herself.

After we ran out of ride tickets, we bought an ice cream cone to share and sat down to listen to the band that was playing. Danny tried to convince Alyssa to go out an dance with the few people that were dancing. She didn't want to at first, but then he got her to go out with him and Ashley. After that, Alyssa wasn't shy anymore and she stayed out there dancing the rest of the time the band was up there playing. I think the boy next to her gave her some of her courage. Sorry that there isn't sound.

That couple was all over the walkway. It was hard to get a video without them totally passing in front of Alyssa.

The Magic House

Instead of taking a family vacation this year, we decided that we would use Danny's vacation days to visit all the kid friendly things to do in St. Louis. One of the places that we've heard a lot of people talk about is The Magic House. So Danny took yesterday off of work and we went to the Magic House. We decided to get a membership since it would have cost us half the price of a membership just to go once. Here are the pictures of just some of the exibits at The Magic House. I wanted to point out that in the picture below, Alyssa drew the face on the chalkboard person behind her and she was working on coloring shoes when I took this shot.

Alyssa loved this one. There was some piping on the wall behind them that blew air through it and they could shove the scarves and balls into the pipes and watch them shoot through.

I took this picture of Ashley as she was running around. She mostly just wanted to run the opposite way of where we wanted her to go, the whole time we were there. But that is normal for her anywhere we go these days.

They had replicas of the oval office, a courtroom, and the press conference podium (sorry, I don't know the official name). Alyssa probably didn't understand how cool it would be to sit at a desk just like the Presidents desk, but she did think it was pretty neat to talk in this microphone.

And I did manage to get her to sit in the Judges Chair, but she wouldn't put on the dress-up robes that they had there.
This was probably Ashley's favorite part. It was in a construction zone area. They had little hard hats and goggles that they could wear (we didn't even try to get Ashley to wear them, but Alyssa wore the hat for a little while). This area had rocks that the kids could pick up with shovels and put into the fake cement mixer or wheelbarrows. Ashley mostly just wanted to pick the rocks up and throw them on the ground.

This is how Alyssa chose to go from one floor of the building to the next. It worked great going down, but not so well going up. It's hard to tell in the picture, but it looks kind of like a beanstalk with leaves sticking out and the kids could climb from one leaf to the next to either go up or down. The staircase for adults spiraled around the outside of this.

It was a pretty cool place. We wish that our kids would have been a little better behaved so we could have enjoyed it even more. I am glad that we got the pass so that I can take them back when it isn't quite so busy. Especially since in the two hours that we were there, we only saw half of what is inside there.

Casey's Birthday

Normally we wouldn't celebrate our dog's birthday, but things change when you have an excited three year old. Somehow she found out that Casey's birthday was after Father's Day and it stuck with her. And we really wouldn't have made a cake if Alyssa's half birthday didn't fall two days later. So we had a birthday celebration this week for Casey's birthday and Alyssa's half birthday (in case anyone is wondering why we would care about Alyssa's half birthday, I just want to remind you that she was born on Christmas and eventually, we will probably switch to always celebrating her birthday around the end of June). So here is the cake that Alyssa helped me make.
And here is the birthday dog. He just turned three, by the way.

I don't get in the pictures very often, but here is one with me and the birthday "kids."

And we even let Casey enjoy a piece of his cake, if you can call swallowing it whole, enjoying it.

Alyssa even got to open some presents thanks to Grandma and Grandpa Miner. Unfortunately, we couldn't convince her to wait until our party to open the gifts, so we don't have pictures, but she loved the presents. Thanks again, Grandma and Grandpa.