Alyssa's Piano Recital

Alyssa had her first piano recital last week.  Here she is sitting at the grand piano.  She did a great job.  We were so proud of her.  Thank you to our great family that came to support her.  Sarah came with her kids, Jon came in the middle of soccer games with all of his kids, and Mom & Dad came all the way down.  It meant really a lot to have you all there.

I was sewing the other day, mending our curtains once again, and Peter came and hung out beside me fiddling with the notions in my sewing box.  He created this.  It's a super simple creation right, just put some pins into a button.  But I loved that he says, "Mom it's like the jelly fish on Nemo"!...   Don't Moms get the biggest kick out of their kids littlest things.  I loved it it made me laugh that he had made that connection.  Oh the things that are in their brains.

Another Great Brain project is in the works at our house.  Alyssa wanted to do her project on fortune cookies.  So we made some.  They turned out pretty good.  We used maple extract instead of Almond, so they didn't taste just like them, but pretty close.  However, they take a long time to make, and I would recommend only doing it for an educational purpose, other than that just go buy a large bag from the grocery store and save yourself some time. Fortune cookies, in my opinion, are not good enough for the effort.

Disneyland

We Loved It.   Here are a few pictures of our adventure.

We stopped for 11am Church in St.George and then drove close to the Temple to eat our little picnic lunch.  This picture Cracks me up look at Joshua's face.  That kid.

Our very first ride was the carousel in fantasy land.  I'm always a little disappointed that there really isn't anything inside the castle besides a little shop.  I think Alyssa was a little disappointed too.  She had great plans to explore.

 I love the girls faces in this picture.  This is the Finding Nemo ride where they take down in a submarine.  They both really loved it. Anna would go through all of the rides with this same expression the whole time.  Then at the end she would say, I loved it!!!  But while in the ride, she just took it all in.

 The girls were super excited that they were really going to get to pixie hollow they have been trying to go for some time now.

Our second day in California we went to Newport Beach.  The kids had a great time, running around and collecting shells.  We actually did not get to the beach till around 4:45 pm, by then it was a little chilly- still fun.  

The delay in beach time was due to Dr. appoint for Alyssa, Grocery shopping, and then a lot of drive around trying to find our way.   

PS:  If you didn't notice the second picture of Alyssa was 4 years ago but I couldn't resist posting it as they look so similar. Also Joshua just sat on that towel the whole time we were there.  I think he was a little nervous.  But was very content to just sit and play with the sand.  many feet away from the waves.

 Our third day in California we visited California Adventure, which is just an extention of Disneyland.  The picture below is the Ariel ride we went on it many times.

We did have a lot of fun!!!  By the way Alyssa's Dr appointment was nothing.  We got overly worried about extra wax in her ear, which we didn't know was extra wax at the time.  Better safe than sorry right?
And, I did just steal all of Ryan's pictures from facebook, so if you already saw those, then you just got double your pleasure.

Conference Weekend!

I always love conference weekend but this one was especially sweet.  I took Alyssa to the conference center to watch the Saturday morning session.  We took Trax, read our books, went to see the new city creek mall, enjoyed a chocolate covered apple, and bought Peter his birthday present.  So much fun, girl time.

Cousin time at the Castletons.  These boys are so cute.  They were playing on Jon's phone during the Sunday afternoon session.  We also a enjoyed a little program put on by the cousins.  A few dances and songs.