This Week

It has been kind of a fun week in the Wheeler household. I don't have pictures to document it, but on Wednesday Alyssa came home from school grinning from ear to ear. They had a spelling bee in her classroom that afternoon and she got first place. Danny came home early from work that day so that we could go out for ice cream to celebrate. As winner of her class spelling bee, she will get to be part of the school Jr. Spelling Bee(2nd and 3rd Graders) that will take place a week from today. If she wins that one, then she gets to compete against the 4-6 graders. She is really a great speller and we are so proud of her. Another thing she is really good at is getting her little brother to laugh.

When Tyler had his 4 month check up, the doctor strongly recommended that everyone in the household get flu shots. So we gave Alyssa(our girl that is terrified of shots) a week to prepare and went in on Thursday night. I was so glad that I had Danny with me because both girls got scared when it came time to actually get the shot. It took as long to do Alyssa's shot as it took to do the rest of us because she was so scared. Her request for being so brave was dinner at a Japanese Steakhouse which we did right after the shots. The girls ate their food so well. If it wasn't so expensive to eat there, we would go a lot more often. Of course, their favorite thing about the place is the huge pot of fortune cookies located in the waiting area. After our meal, they both came back to our table with at least 10(probably even more than that). Ashley even stuffed them into all of her pockets.

On Friday, Danny took the day off since the girls were off of school for Fall Break. We spent the day getting some things done around the house. We did venture out for a trip to IKEA to replace a TV stand in our upstairs loft. We dug out our garden and Danny mowed the very long lawn. We also finished redecorating Tyler's room. I don't have a picture of it yet, but I will post one when I take one. That evening, Danny took Alyssa on a Daddy/Daughter Date to a Halloween Dance Show at the Covey Center. They had a lot of fun.

I took Ashley out on Saturday since she didn't get to go to the show. We went swimming. She loved having the one on one time with me at the pool.

The girls were still off of school on Monday, so after we got some chores and schoolwork done in the morning, I took them to the pumpkin patch across from our neighborhood to pick out our pumpkins. The field was pretty muddy, so they didn't have the hay ride going. Instead, we grabbed a wagon and walked out to the patch. I let them each pick out a pumpkin and I picked one out too. Alyssa talked me into one more on the walk back.

 They both liked these little cutie pumpkins that they kept finding along the way. Alyssa is holding one of them in this picture.

They wanted to stay and play after choosing their pumpkins, but I told them that we would wait and do the fun stuff on Friday when they are off of school again and when stuff isn't so wet and muddy.

Catch Up

 Now that two months have passed, maybe it is time to post again. I'm finding it difficult to fit everything in the day that I want to accomplish. Unfortunately cleaning and updating the blog are at the bottom of my list of priorities. So here is two months of pictures that I've been meaning to post.

Ashley found a toy boat at DI and on the night of the purchase I found her tucked away in bed with all of her boat friends(4 of them).

 I found this picture on the computer and just thought it was funny. Ashley loves to play with Casey.

 Our bountiful harvest has sadly come to an end after our first overnight frost, but shortly before it had, we had an overload of squash and zucchini. I have been researching creative ways to cook it up. Alyssa and I picked all of our pears yesterday and ended up with two paper sacks full. I'll have to can them in a few days.

 

Alyssa just loves this little guy. She is so protective of him and takes such good care of him.  

He especially loves her room.

During the week before school started, I took the girls to a lot of fun places(all of the other kids in the area had already started school). We went swimming, to Lagoon, to the movies, to a trampoline park, and to this dinosaur park. The two little girls in the picture will soon be Alyssa and Ashley's cousins as their Aunt is getting married next month to the Father of these girls.

We can't forget the first day of school. Both girls are doing really well in school this year and they love their teachers. 

This is how I found the boys on the first day of NFL Football.

And Danny and I got to attend the first BYU home game. I was really nervous to leave Tyler for so long, especially since he didn't take a bottle well for us, but my in-laws were happy to keep him. The game got delayed for almost two hours due to a freak storm that passed through which made matters worse. Fortunately, Tyler took a bottle just fine for Grandma and we got to enjoy an amazingly fun game.

Alyssa bought this "Little Chef" book at her school book fair and has been cooking up a storm. Her first creation was these pumpkin donuts. I thought they were delicious, but they didn't like them that much.

Both girls are super excited for Halloween. Alyssa is going to be a Princess, again. It's like her fourth time being a princess in her short life. While shopping for her dress, she found this cool clown wig. Ashley is going to be a pirate princess. No surprise there either.

And finally, here are the best shots of little Tyler from the past two months. I took this one right around 3 months old.

And here he is at 4 months old 

 We had his 4 month check up this week. Here are his stats:

weight: 14 lbs 13.5 oz (40%)

length: 26 in. (80%)

He is just starting to babble and he is getting really good at grabbing things. We are still waiting for that first roll. He is still waking up more than I would like during the night, but overall he is a happy and good baby. We just love having him around and cuddling with him.

 

 

 

2 Months Old

 Tyler is 2 months old today. The time has flown by. We had his two month check up and the doctor says that he is doing great. This was especially good to hear after he had a rough first few weeks of doctors appointments. We have started to capture his sweet little smile on camera. We all take turns trying to get him to smile at us and that little smile just melts our hearts.

 

He is also starting to make little sounds when he smiles and we look forward to that first laugh. He coos, blows bubbles, grabs our hair(me and Alyssa), follows us with his eyes, and looks for us when he hears our voices. He is starting to grow out of some of his clothes.

Here are his stats from his 2 month check up:

weight: 11 lbs 6 oz (50%)

length: 23.9 in(90%)

We all just adore this little guy. He is so sweet and cuddly and so much fun to be around.







10 Wonderful Years

 Danny and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary this past week. We have shared a lot of wonderful memories together, added 3 beautiful children to our family, and have grown to love each other even more now than we did the day we got married. I feel so blessed to have Danny in my life. He is a wonderful father and husband and I look forward to what we will share in the next 10 years.

 2003

 2004

 2005

 2006

 2007

 2008

 2009

2010

2011- I couldn't find a family picture from this year.

2012

2013



Snowbird Aerial Tram

 Danny received some tickets to ride the aerial tram up at Snowbird Ski Resort, so we decided to use them this past weekend. We invited Gawbie and Grandpa to join us. The girls loved the ride up. It was about a 3000 foot climb from bottom to top. We had Tyler suck on his pacifier to relieve ear pressure.

 The view from the top was amazing. It was a beautiful day up on top, aside from the wind. We spent about 30 minutes walking around enjoying the sights of the valley below and the beautiful mountain scenery. It was a little hard to push the stroller around up there, so we didn't explore too far, plus Tyler was hungry and there wasn't anywhere decent to feed him up there.

 We had quite the adventure as we were driving back down the mountain. Our van, which appeared to have plenty of gas as we were driving up the mountain, suddenly didn't have gas as we were driving back down the mountain. We had a few different warning lights go on and we couldn't figure out what was going on. We weren't worried until a minute later when Danny tried to accelerate and learned that the car had no power. Fortunately, we had a pretty steep downgrade that kept the car coasting. We continued to coast down the mountain for a good amount of time and only hit two moments of concern, 1 - when we had to make a turn and 2- when we were approaching a red light. We felt very fortunate that we came upon a 7-11 with a gas station on the right side of the road before the road leveled out. We filled up the car, put some oil in and the car seemed to run fine again. We are grateful for gravity and for our prayers being answered that day.

Love These Three

 Here are some pictures that we have taken in the last week or two of our three favorite kids.

 Tyler is finally gaining weight and getting some chubby cheeks and legs. We are so excited.

 We have been getting out of the house a lot more. We go to the library, grocery store, friends houses, and even the swimming pool(Tyler and I don't go in yet). We have even had some friends over to our house to play.

I took this picture of Ashley last night because it made me laugh. Most kids like to sleep with a soft, stuffed animal. Ashley chooses to sleep with Bucky.  Anyone who spends any amount of time with Ashley knows how much she loves her pirate ship, Bucky. Most kids request a toy for Christmas, play with it for a week or maybe even a month, and then lose interest. Not our Ashley. This toy was worth every penny that we paid for it and she seems to be even more attached to it now than she was right after Christmas. We keep waiting for her to grow out of this phase, but it doesn't seem to be happening any time soon.

Blessing Day

 We had decided on July 7th for Tyler's Blessing while we were still in the hospital. We had intended on doing it in Sacrament meeting, but decided to change that the week of the blessing. We have 1:00 church and Sacrament meeting last. Not only that, but our Ward is huge and it is impossible to get into our Chapel early as there is another Ward in there. So for convenience purposes we got it okayed by our Bishop to do the blessing in our home earlier that day. We invited the member of our bishopric that we would have had stand in the circle anyways. We also invited family and some of our closest friends. Our house was filled. Tyler was passed around all morning.

 

 

Most of our guests were from the Wheeler side of the family, but my brother was able to come with his family to represent the Miners.

 After the blessing, the kids went outside and enjoyed the trampoline and playset.

 The proud parents

 We are so thankful for our sweet boy and the addition that he is to our family. We already can't remember what life was like before he arrived.