Temple Square

We were adventurous and took the trax to Temple Square!

We had a good time! 

Riding the trax TO Temple Square was crazy! 

 It was so jam-packed with people!

Temple Square was fun and festive and just perfect.

And then riding back on the trax was a lot more relaxing and fun

...not so crowded!

Another one of Alexa's funny faces (she has so many, I love it)

You will notice Alexa is posing in all the pictures she is in on the post! :)

mmmm...nothing like hot chocoloate...

Thank you Ty

for making this outing happen

...definitely a future tradition for our family!

Thanksgiving to Christmas

Alexa came home from her "Thanksgiving Feast" Preschool party

wearing this cute little bonnet...

That she didn't take off ALL DAY...

so we ended up QUICKLY making up two more

so that She and Karli could "match"

(Karli didn't want to be left out of all the fun!)

Here are our two little pilgrim cuties!

We then headed down to not so sunny St. George

to spend THANKSGIVING with Ty's family!

We had such a good time 

that we, unfortunately, didn't take any pictures with our camera...

So just imagine a cute home with no furniture taken over by the Shelley clan! :)

We brought air mattresses, camping chairs, folding chairs, and folding tables!

The weather was pretty cold, but that didn't stop us from enjoying a yummy Thanksgiving feast, hiking, walking, biking, playing games, watching movies, and chatting together!

It was pretty great!

We came home and jumped right into Christmas!

We put up our Christmas tree, decorated the home,

and turned on our (FIRST EVER) Christmas lights!

And this week has been turned into "painting the basement" week!

Turning the "creative" greenish-reddish paint job of the previous owner of our home

to something much much lighter!

Oh, I can't wait!

I went to a R.S. Christmas Breakfast this morning,

and came home to our little girls painting away with their dad!

Karli is napping now, but Alexa isn't giving up

...she is having the best time helping Ty :)

making yarn ornaments

I love looking for little craft ideas to do with my kids on The Crafty Crow blog, and we found this fun idea we tried (because we had all the right things laying around--yarn, balloons, glue, etc)!

Instructions are found here at The Magic Onions.

 I would definitely do a few things differently next time around, but the girls had a blast and are so happy with how they turned out.

hint: make sure balloons are small enough that they are round, thicker yarn looks better, and we would probably use glitter glue next time instead of just glitter...but we used the resources we had.

HAVE FUN WITH IT!

We had our ultrasound today...and....

We are really excited! 

It was a bit of a shocker...not going to lie...

but we got SO EXCITED looking at our

HEALTHY little baby girl!

Ultrasounds are so special and make things so real.

Now I can't even wait for April!

THREE GIRLS! 

Crazy!

family pictures fall 2010

My good friend,

who I am SO HAPPY that she and her cute family moved into the neighborhood,

took our family pictures! 

She is amazing,

and we had a lot of fun! 

Thanks Mindy! 

Thankful Tree

While Karli was napping the other day, Alexa and I decided to make a Thankful Tree!

We had a good time.

We rounded up a vase,

colored leaves from outside to stuff vase,

branches from our yard,

ribbon,

and craft paper! 

Our family has had a good time remembering what we are thankful for each day.  I especially like how it reminds our little girls to have a thankful heart.

What a great time of year!

fun weekend

We had a FULL WEEKEND that was a lot of FUN!

I captured a few of the highlights...

Ty and Alexa putting up our Christmas lights!!

This is a momentous occasion...

FIRST TIME having Christmas lights on house!!

Whoopeee!

Our girls have really been into decorating our sidewalks and driveway with their chalk art lately,

Alexa was so proud of her "snow white" drawing (with puffy sleeves and all) that she begged for a picture :)

We had a really fun Krommenhoek party

complete with puffy slide (compliments of Jeff), life size Foosball, pinatas, and a yummy dinner at Mom and Dads!

Our girls love their cousins...

My little sis Amy had her first U of U basketball game! 

Her team is really good! 

 She did awesome!

After the game, they opened up the court for the kids to play!

Our girls had a blast!

We look forward to many more games. 

Ballerina Cats and Pumpkins

Happy Halloween!

We had a great, rainy Halloween!

The girls were cute little BALLERINA CATS!

(up until about 5 minutes before we were going out trick-or-treating Karli was really excited about being a carebear...well, she decided she wanted to be like her big sis, so we rounded up some old things from Alexa's costumes in the past and made her a happy little ballerina cat!)

This picture of trick-or treating is from our friend Mindy

...THANKS!..

she was daring enough to take her nice camera out in the pouring rain!

We carved pumpkins earlier on Saturday! 

They were so proud of our final products!

(They were able to draw what they wanted on their pumpkin and Ty and I helped them carve it out)

And earlier in the week, while Tyler was at work, we PAINTED pumpkins!

The girls REALLY enjoyed this activity!

They even got to spray sparkles on it after the paint dried :)

PUMPKINS and DRESSING UP are the two BEST things about HALLOWEEN!

And because it was so cold and rainy, the girls were most excited to answer the door of the trick-or-treaters and hand out candy...Trick-or treating didn't last too long.