Don't Give up on Us...

I am so sick of looking at that Garden Post but haven't had the time or energy lately to blog. I don't have any pictures for this post, but just wanted to write a few things for journaling purposes. We have had some visitors in the past month and in between those visits, Danny has been traveling. In fact, he is gone right now on his second of six trips between now and October. His first trip was to Denver. While he was gone, my sister, Becky, came to visit with her two kids. The kids had a lot of fun and it was nice to have some quality time with my sister. I'm so glad that she came.
Danny was gone for a week on that trip and that was way too long for all of us. We were so glad to have him back. We spent the weekend together and then welcomed our next guests, my parents, on Monday. They came into town so that Dad could attend a Family History Conference so he was only with us for the first two days. Then Mom stayed with us an additional three days. It was fun to have them visit and for the girls to get to know them even better.
They left on Saturday morning and we enjoyed the day together as a family before sending Danny off to Massachusetts early Sunday morning. Unfortunately, he left behind a very sick Ashley. She came down with a fever on Saturday afternoon and had it until yesterday. The doctors visit on Monday wasn't any help besides confirming that she had a virus that has been going around and there isn't anything to do for them except wait it out and give them lots of Tylenol and Ibuprofen. So I waited it out one more day and then called in her Grandpa and Great Grandpa to give her a blessing. I am so grateful for the power of the priesthood. Ashley has definitely been doing better since the blessing, although she still has a sore throat and complains about it constantly. I haven't had a full nights sleep since Friday night and I can't wait for Danny to get back tonight. As if having him away isn't hard enough, playing the part of a single Mom with a sick little girl has really worn down on us.
We are looking forward to the 4th of July weekend. Danny's brother, Brian, and his family are coming into town, so we have a lot of activities planned with them. We also found out about a week ago that my brother, Jeff, and his family are also coming into town. We are excited to see them and finally meet their little girl, Jane. I also have a childhood friend coming to town that I hope to meet up with sometime next week. I love living in Utah where so many people come to visit.
Well I need to stop ignoring the crying child behind me, so I'll end there. I will try to find some time to post some pictures soon.

Our Garden

We have been working really hard on getting our garden planted this week. One of the things that we really wanted when we were looking for a new home was a garden. We loved the size of the garden in this home. We've had our eye on it since we moved in trying to figure out where we wanted to plant stuff and what we wanted to plant. We did a lot of research and a lot of planning and put the last seeds in the ground last night. Here is the before picture of our garden plot.
The first thing that needed to be done was to put a fence up to keep Casey and the girls out of the garden area.

Then we spent a couple of days working manure into the soil. Then we put stakes in the ground to mark off the pathways and the planting areas. And last, we started putting the seeds and little plants in the ground. Here is the result.

We decided to plant corn, cantelope, zuccini, summer squash, green beans, onions, cucumbers, carrots, tomatos, cilantro, green peppers, and banana peppers. Now we just hope that it grows and that we get to enjoy all of the delicious vegetables. We also hope that the pear tree and berry bushes already in the ground produce some yummy food too. We shall see.

A Haircut

We were at Gawbie and Grandpas on Saturday morning when Shannon was feeling well enough to cut Grandpa's hair(she has been recovering from back surgery). Alyssa sounded interested in the haircut and Shannon asked if she wanted hers cut after Grandpa. She said yes and so it was done. Here is the result.

There has been a lot less hair chewing since the haircut and her hair is so much easier to handle now. It will also be nice for the summer. Alyssa really likes the shorter hair too which makes it even better. I included this one just because I thought it was cute.
After their bath that night, I painted their fingernails and toenails. Here they are showing off their fingernails.

This video sums up the day.

On a sidenote, we have been potty training Ashley for a week now and she is doing really well with it. We are glad to be done with diapers (except for the one she sleeps in every night). I'm also happy with how much easier it was to train her now than it was during our first attempt (which was in the beginning of October).

Catch Up

I feel like I have fallen way behind on my blog. Although, it isn't totally my fault. Since my last post, we've moved from O'Fallon, Missouri to Lehi, Utah. A lot of picture worthy stuff happened during that week of our move since it was the week before Easter. Here are some of the highlights of the past two weeks.

Alyssa had an Easter Party at her preschool on the last day that she got to go. It was a good way to end the preschool year for her. They gave her a binder full of pictures of all of the bigger events they had during the year and all of the bigger projects that she had. They even gave her her graduation tassel. I nearly cried when I looked through it. I was so sad that she got so close to the end of the year and missed her graduation by only a few weeks. However, I was also grateful that she got to continue going as long as she did, considering we were supposed to move in March rather than April. During the Easter party, the kids got to go on an Easter egg hunt. Here is Alyssa with her loot.

The Easter Bunny came early to our house since we knew we would be on the road for Easter Sunday. The girls got to hunt for easter eggs and enjoy some goodies in their easter baskets. Here is Alyssa while hunting for eggs.
And here is Ashley hunting for her eggs.

We also dyed easter eggs for family home evening on the Monday before our move. This is the first year that I haven't bought the pre-packaged dying kit with the color tablets. We just used food coloring, vinegar, and water and I was happier with the results. I even let the girls put the food coloring in.

The moving company packed up our stuff on Friday and then loaded the truck on Saturday. We got on the road around 4:30 on Saturday afternoon after cleaning the house and making sure it was empty. We were truly grateful for those who helped us with the move, especially to Rachel who watched the girls for most of the day on Friday and then spent her whole Saturday at the house with us keeping me company and helping me clean. We drove all the way to Lincoln, Nebraska on Saturday and spent the night in a dog friendly Hotel (since we had Casey with us). We woke up and attended Sacrament Meeting at a Ward close to our Hotel and then got back on the road shortly after that. Here are the girls all ready to go to church that morning.

We drove to the middle of Whyoming on Sunday which left about a 5 hour drive for Monday. We pulled into Danny's parents driveway around lunchtime and lived with them for a few days while we waited to close on our home and for our stuff to arrive. Oh, and the owners of the home were nice enough to let us get in before closing to replace the cat infested carpet so that the home would be ready for us by the time our stuff arrived. We closed on our home that Wednesday and shortly after that I met up with my mom and my sisters for BYU Women's Conference. I spent two days being spiritually uplifted and spending quality time with some of the most important women in my life while Danny met the moving company at our house and began unpacking. I came back to our new home on Friday night and spent the next 5 days working non stop at unpacking an organizing. I still feel like we have a long way to go, but at least the boxes are unpacked and the house is livable.

We are all adjusting really well to our new surroundings. We love the dryer air and the beautiful surroundings. The girls love our new house and the fun backyard. In fact, they spent most of the past week outside playing on the trampoline, playset, and in the sandbox underneath the playset. Casey is loving the bigger, flatter yard and the extra attention. I love the walking paths surrounding the neighborhood. We especially love being close to family.

Here is Alyssa demonstrating her new skill. She learned to do this about a week after we moved in. This video also shows a little bit of our new backyard.

Sorry this post was so long. I will try to update more frequently now that I have a computer and internet access.

Bake/Garage Sale

In preparation for our move at the end of this week, we decided to have a garage sale in order to down size a little and get rid of some of our older stuff that we would like to replace. We held it on Saturday and let the girls run a little bake sale at the same time. They sold cupcakes, brownies, and rice crispy treats. It was so cute hearing them work their customers. Danny tried to teach them to say "Come and buy some delicious treats" to anyone who came into the garage. That translated to Alyssa saying "Bake Sale! Bake Sale! Bake Sale!" over and over and over again until they would acknowledge her. Ashley would just say "What do you want to buy?" to everyone. They were able to sell everything that we made. Here they are at their table.
If you didn't notice, those are their winter coats that they are wearing in the picture. Not even that was warm enough to keep them outside during the whole garage sale. We happened to pick the coldest day in a month to have our sale and as a result, we had to stay outside in shifts so that we didn't freeze. We were more successful at getting rid of our junk than we thought we would be. We managed to sell almost everything. The rest of it will be donated.

Little Red Riding Hood

Last week our Library had a puppet show come to visit. They did the story of Little Red Riding Hood. I thought Alyssa would love it and hoped that Ashley would like it too, so I signed them both up. Well, Alyssa did love it. Ashley suprisingly loved it too. She did have to sit on my lap, but at least she didn't embarrass me by being super noisy or running all over the room. Her favorite was the big bad wolf. She thought it was so funny that the wolf talked.
I love the Library and all of the fun programs they have for kids. Hopefully the Lehi Library is just as good as the ones here have been.

Pigtails

I've been in kind of a picture taking funk lately. It's probably due to the fact that my mind is on all the things that need to get done in the next few weeks before we move. However, I wanted to post something new on our blog.

When I got Ashley ready for the day yesterday, I decided to put pigtails in her hair. After I finished, I said "Go show Daddy how pretty you look." Alyssa happened to be standing right next to us when I said that, so she wanted me to do her hair just like Ashley's. I was shocked. Alyssa hasn't let me put a ponytail in her hair for at least a year. I didn't argue with her aside from asking if she was sure about this. On the inside I was shouting for joy. You see, we have had such a problem lately with Alyssa chewing on her hair. I think it is disgusting and it creates these nasty knots in her hair. I really want to break the habit, but don't know how to do it. So I saw ponytails as a wonderful way to get the hair out of her face and to keep it away from her mouth. I couldn't get one good shot of both of them, so here are all the pictures I took.

They both looked so cute until the ponytails fell out and then they just went back to their normal hair-in-the-face cuteness.

Another Zoo Day

We had a really warm weekend, starting with Friday, so I took advantage and took the girls one last time to the Zoo. We will miss the free zoo. I took my camera, but only pulled it out once by Alyssa's request to take this picture of her. It was a fun day and we are really enjoying the beautiful spring weather.