McAlister Matters

The girls are excited for Christmas day. We've had a fun year living in our little house in Bountiful Utah. We've gone on many outings with the kids in the area including the zoo. We also traveled to Moab once and California three times! We feel very blessed to be having a new baby boy join the family in April!  Kahlan was excited to see Santa. Juniper was like 'who's this guy?'. Sarah and I have been taking guitar lessons this year. I wouldn't call us pros yet but we keep working at it. Here is a clip from our family Christmas concert. I've enjoyed watching several short videos on YouTube this year made by the Bible Project . Here's one that tells the story of Christmas. Bonus Video !

Our trip to California this Thanksgiving was splendid! The girls had a great time and were sad to leave. We spent 2 nights in Santa Cruz in a 6-room house. It was fun to hang out and play some games together. We had a walk and picnic at the Wilder Ranch state park. We saw some farm animals and the girls got to make giant bubbles.  We also visited the Natural Bridges beach.  Kahlan braved the waves.  Juniper just wanted to run on the sand and chase seagulls. It was especially neat to see the monarch butterflies on their migration stop. On our last day at Santa Cruz we were able to spot several spouting whales off shore. We enjoyed a lot of turkey in Turlock (and yes we did play a lot of Splendor). The kids had fun playing outside in the warm weather. Juniper spent most of her time tormenting the family cats. The girls got to ride the carousel and see some Christmas lights. Juniper wasn't sure about it the first time around but was ready for a

Here's a pic from today of our new baby at 20 weeks. Yay! The girls are excited for a new baby brother!

We took the girls to the Hogle Zoo last Saturday. The weather was perfect and all the animals were out. It also happened to be the zoo's trick-or-treat day so we were there with one million other kids in costumes. They had candy stations all over the zoo and gave out bags. We didn't have costumes on but the girls had a blast! The polar bears put on the best show ...but Juni loved the meerkats best of all. The girls had fun trick-or-treating again on Halloween with their costumes. I think Kahlan had the most fun holding the flashlight. Juni was so excited to choose candy she just held on to them instead of putting them in her bucket.

We did our 10th family recital last night. Last week was General Conference  and we enjoyed watching it all at home with the kids. We pulled out the last of our garden on Saturday and fertilized our garden boxes so we are almost ready for the winter. Winter is kind of a nice break from all the outside work. We are still working on the grapes, making lots of delicious juice and jelly. Canon in D was a challenge. Sarah rocked it pretty good. Photo with Dad Cute in plaid Juni insists on going to nursery now. She also likes watching signing time and knows a lot of signs including baby, milk, more, banana, pear, and dog. Juni loves her puppy. She has to take it along now in the car.

Sarah and I are still taking our guitar lessons. We are half way through the course. Obviously we have a long ways to master the guitar but it is getting funner and the music is starting to sound better. We did have a recital #8 but it wasn't too memorable. Here is the one from last night with the girls. Saturday was a cloudy and cool day. We pulled out most of our garden in the morning and then went for a short hike with the kids on the Farmington Creek trail and had a picnic at the Farmington pond. The girls enjoyed seeing the ducks and geese.

Summer is over and we've been busy as usual. I'm going to do a quick recap of what's been going on. Kahlan and Juniper had lots of fun with their cousins going to the movies each week together. They also swam often in the backyard. We gardened like mad people and made a splendithora of wonderful things including: peatopia, cherry pie, peach pie, gallons of tomato sauce, fresh salsa, jalapeno salsa, peach salsa, frozen corn, canned pears, and zucchini every way you can imagine. On July 14th, we went to the pioneer village at the 'This is the place' monument park with Grandpa Bob and Grandma Ingrid. Kahlan got to ride a pony and pet a pig. On July 15th Kahlan went to a friend's birthday party, met Moana and learned how to hula. On Kahlan's 4th birthday we waited 3 hours to watch the Bountiful Pioneer Day fireworks with Mike and Alicia. The fireworks were great but we stayed up way too late with the girls. The next day w

Happy 4th of July everyone! We had a fun time watching the Centerville parade this morning (just down the street). Kahlan got lots of candy and Juniper was quite chill through it all. The girls played in the backyard pool later and we harvested some peas from our garden. We're going to make some Peatopia later this week. Last night we had our family recital and we performed Jamaica Farewell. Juniper helped out a little ;)

We had a birthday party for Juniper's first birthday on Saturday. The kids got to play outside with a slip-n-slide and pool. Juniper had a good time. She's so busy now walking all around the house. She's a sweet little toddler and we love her!

We've been practicing barre chords for the last month so here is our latest recital. We've been having fun trying out some primary songs too. In this concert we play Home on the Range, Yellow Rose of Texas and a bonus primary song for Kahlan. Enjoy! Juniper will turn 1 this week!

Juniper will be 1-YEAR-OLD this month! We've known she was close to walking. She decided it was time about a week ago. She's even more stable and on the move now with some cool new sneakers. We had a super time on our road trip to California. Yosemite was rainy for us this time so we didn't get to do as much as we wanted there. It was a fun adventure though and Kahlan and Juniper were good sports on the hike to Mirror Lake.  Seeing all the Californians was great. Congrats to my mom on her retirement from 26 years of teaching! Click for some trip pics

We performed our latest recital last Saturday. This one featured our big hits Scarborough Fair, Green Sleeves, and The Banana Boat Song. We are still having fun learning together. Kahlan is becoming a puzzle master and Juniper is a busy little explorer. Can't wait to see the California clans next week!

We performed our 4th recital last weekend. I think 'Turkey in the Straw' is our biggest hit so far. Today was a gorgeous day so we took the girls for a little stroll at City Creek Canyon. They got to ride in the Burley bike carrier together. It was an easy way to hike with the kids.

We hope everyone had a great Easter this year. We've enjoyed some nice sunny Spring days although a little chilly still sometimes. The girls love being outside. They had a fun time at the Musser Easter egg coloring / hunt last weekend. This weekend we took the girls to a little park for a picnic and attempted to fly Kahlan's new butterfly kite (not enough wind). Juniper is busy and closer to walking. Kahlan is becoming a little artist and loves to draw with colored pencils like Sarah. The girls wore cute matching dresses on Easter Sunday that they received from Grandpa Bob and Mormor. Click for pics Kahlan draws the family Kahlan and her blanket dress

After three weeks of practice we performed our 3rd recital. I think I struggled but Sarah covered nicely. I feel like we've made progress and enjoy a fuller range of the guitar now. We had to do it after Juniper went to bed because she is very mobile now and would have torn apart the the basement while we performed. Here's the video cut in two parts. Kahlan and her blanket hair   

We decided to have a little adventure in Moab with Kahlan and Juniper. Kahlan was the hiking champ and hiked about 5 miles in 2 days! She has infinite energy apparently and wanted to swim in the pool as soon as we got back to the hotel each day. She had fun playing in the sand at the arches and searching for sand as we hiked. Juniper did great once she got used to driving in the car for long stretches and sitting in the backpack carrier. She loves being outside. It was a good time to go with great weather and less crowds. check out the album We also took a lot of VR photos with my phone camera. They look awesome with our VR headset . check out some 360 shots