Vacation!!

We leave for the Grand Canyon and New Mexico on Saturday!! Yay, I am so looking forward to this vacation. Its been way too many since I've been to see my family in New Mexico. I know it was before I even met Jered and that was almost 9 years (holy moly!) ago. It should be a lot of fun. Plus I've been wanting to see the Grand Canyon for a while now too. Years ago when we were driving to New Mexico with my mom, she wanted to stop and neither me or my brother wanted to. We were both bratty teenagers, so at least now I'll appreciate it! I just wish my brother and nieces could be going on this trip too.

I miss the dogs already though. My cousin Melody picked them up this morning (Thanks Mel!) and drove them down to my dad's house. They'll be there 10 days! We'll drive down and pick them up the Sunday after we get back. I warned my dad that they're both a couple of boobs. They are really spoiled, we know they are but we love them. They were our first kids. My dad has two dogs too so they'll have lots of company and my step-mom is home most days so they'll probably be even more spoiled when we get back. :)

I hope everyone has been staying cool. It was 106 degrees yesterday in Portland! I am so happy I let Jered talk me into buying his friend's air conditioner a couple of years ago. Thanks to our big a.c. in the living room, the little my mom got us in our bedroom, and a couple of strategically placed fans, we are staying amazingly cool. Our electric bill is going to be outrageous I'm sure, since we haven't turned them off in a couple of weeks. Ashlyn does not like to be hot and if we turn it off during the day it takes too long to get the house cool at night.

We have cut off her 3-4 am feeding. She was really not happy with us on Monday! Tuesday she only cried about 10 minutes then went back to sleep. Last night she was a little more restless but still slept through. Its still a work in progress but we're getting there.

I'm sure I'll have lots to post when we get back from vacation. In the mean time everyone stay cool!

Look what I can do now!!!

This is my Uncle Keith. He went rafting with Mama and Daddy.

Mama thinks these signs are funny. It says Smog Advisory; Sat-Mon; Limit Driving. She said the Californians wouldn't know what to do with this!

Here's Daddy and Uncle Eli picking on Uncle Will.

Here's Daddy and Uncle Eli again. This time making fun of Josh because he fell asleep in his chair.

Uncle Eli and Christy arm wrestling......guess who won???

Rafting and Ashlyn update....

We went rafting this weekend on the Deschutes in Maupin. My mom came up on Friday to stay with Ashlyn and the dogs and to water my plants. Thank goodness she was here otherwise they'd have all fried in this heat. My brother also came up to go with us. He's been before but this was his first time going with this crew. Its mostly Rainier folks that Jered went to high school with and a few other people thrown in too. Its a strange mix of people buts its always fun. After three or four years its always good to see the ones we only see on this trip. This is the second time I haven't rafted, last year I was pregnant with Ashlyn. The time before that I had a near death experience and now I'm a little afraid. I fell out of the raft and when I came up I was under the raft and lodged against a rock. Not something I'd like to repeat. I told Jered maybe next year I'll try again. Get back on the horse so to speak. All in all it was a very successful weekend. I missed Ashlyn terribly but I knew she was in good hands with my mom. Mom took her to see her new cousin Brandon on Sat. My cousin Staci has a new little boy that I'm hoping to see when we get back from vacation. Plus my cousin Kourtney had a softball tournament at North Marion all weekend so her and her mom stayed at our house too. Ashlyn had a busy weekend without us! By Saturday night I was ready to go home. It was a nice little break but as soon as we woke up on Sunday morning I was packing up and ready to leave. We were home by 11am, just in time for her to wake up from her nap.

We leave Saturady bright and early for New Mexico and the Grand Canyon. I'm excited, we've never been to Grand Canyon. We fly into Phoenix, get our rental car (mini-van) and head out for Grand Canyon. We're staying overnight there and Sunday we're driving to my Aunt and Uncle's in Farmington, New Mexico. We're going to take a quick detour to Four Corners for Jered. I've been there half a dozen times already and its a little overrated if you ask me. But Jered's a nerdy surveyor and I think he's going to love it. I told him has to do something funny when he stands on the monument when he's in all four states at once. :) Jered and I are staying at my cousin Ricky and Steph's house. They have a four month old and a crib that he won't sleep in. Ashlyn sleeps in her big girl crib every night and I was worried about her having to sleep with us while we're gone. That would totally ruin her for sleeping in her own crib. So thanks Tripp for not using your crib! My mom and Eddie will stay with Auntie Andi and Uncle Rick. We don't have a lot of plans while we're there mostly just relax and visit. Ballards love to visit!! :) We may go up to Durango, CO one day for some shopping. My mom loves the pawn shops there so I know we'll be stopping by a few of those....yawn! I plan to eat some gluten-full Navaho fry bread. Best stuff ever. Its like an elephant ear, but way better! Other than that I'm sure we'll just hang out and relax.

I don't have any pictures ready to post but I'll work on it and hopefully get some from our rafting weekend on here soon. Also Jered says he loves everyone :)

Ashlyn had her 6 month appointment today. She weighs 17lbs 8oz and is 26.5 inches long. Jered swears she was 27 inches last time but that was two months ago and I'm pretty sure she's not shrinking. The doctor is very happy with her progress. She's still doing great on her solids although she did not love her peas tonight but ate up the bananas like it was the last thing on earth to eat! She's wiggling and rolling and squirming all over the place like she's supposed too. Talking up a storm too. Dr Oller told us Ashlyn should be sleeping 8-10 hours every night and could probably go 12 with no problems. So tonight we're cutting off her 3 am feeding. Dr Oller says she shouldn't need it and its probably just habit. There will be a little crying involved I'm sure, but not to worry, we won't just leave in her crib to cry by herself. We'll be there to comfort her until she goes back to sleep.Of course she slept from 9pm-530am for my mom this weekend! We also gave her a nebulizer treatment in the office to loosen up the gunk in her lungs. Its been holding on for a couple of months now. So we have to give her asthma treaments with an inhaler twice a day for a week. If she seems better then go for two weeks and stop. Otherwise give Dr Oller a call since its not working. Lets hope it works. Dr Oller thinks the dry air in New Mexico will be a good for her too.

Ahh! I just put her down. I love her to pieces but I also love when she goes to bed at night. I'm blogging with a nice crisp cool glass of white wine beside me. It doesn't get much better than that. Bedtime is 9pm, or at least that's the goal. She's usually a pretty easy baby to get down. We have our little routine. She gets a bath, then a little massage with her lotion, then a bottle and then bed. When we get back from New Mexico we're going to add in reading a book before we lay her down for the night. Right now she just likes to look at the pictures and hear us talk but soon she'll be all about the story. I love to read and hopefully she will too.

She's a party animal!!

We had a lot of fun going to Kari's bridal shower on Sat. We played a few games, ate a little food and she opened lots of presents. They had made me gluten free cupcakes, yummy! Ashlyn refused to nap for more than 15 minutes but didn't get too cranky. She got held a lot, which she loves! She wasn't about to miss a moment of the party. She passed out on the way home and stayed asleep for about an hour and a half, thank goodness. After the shower we went to a friend's anniversary party at his wine shop. Ashlyn loves to party because she refused to go to sleep until after 10pm! But she did sleep until 7am so that was a real treat for me and Jered. We woke up, looked at each other and both of us said "did you get up with her last night?" Neither one of us had. Ahhh, bliss!

Ashlyn is doing great sleeping through the night. We get at least 8 hours most nights. One night last week she woke up at 330am but other than that she usually makes it till 530 or even 6am. Awesome! She's been eating like a champion lately. She loves applesauce, pears, sweet potatoes, carrots. Squash, bananas and peas are just ok. Not her favorite but she'll eat them. We'll be trying green beans and peaches this week. I mix her oatmeal in with whatever she's having and water it down a little. She gobbles it up most days. She's rolling over finally and talking up a storm. She still loves to chew on her fingers and slobbers like theres no tomorrow. She has her two bottom middle teeth and they were a little sore coming in. She was a little more crabby than usual for a week or two and didn't want to eat her solids just her bottle. Once they popped through she went back to being her smiley self. She has also found her toes/feet in the last few days. She loves to chew on them and it so cute to watch her try to get them in her mouth.

We had sorta planned to go to Sauvies Island on Sunday but didn't get home till after midnight Sat night. We went to a friends house after the wine party and before we knew it it was midnight. Time flies when you're having fun with good friends. So instead of Sauvies Island, which we'll just have to do on another weekend, we went to lunch and for a drive. We like to check out people's yards for landscape ideas.

I signed up for an extra shift a while back so I had to work last night. 11pm-7am. It was not fun. I hated leaving even though everyone was going to bed. I got to work and the first patient was ordered at 130am and they kept coming. But not close enough together for me to get any rest. They space them out every hour to two hours. Ugh!! I ended up doing five patients between 130 and 630am. Needless to say, I didn't get any sleep and came home to Ashlyn ready to play. She did let me take a little nap this morning with her. I had told my friend that I would come visit her today so after our morning nap we showered and headed to Vancouver. My friend Crystal broke her foot riding quads about a week ago and she's off for at least three weeks. She is BORED! Ashlyn and I hung out for the afternoon chit chatting and talking shop.

Jered had a softball game tonight and wanted me to tell everyone how he hit six homeruns and what a stud he is! :)

With Grandma and Aunt Kari at the bridal shower.

Having fun with Grammy....

She's crazy and she makes me laugh!

Aunt Kari with both my Great-grandmas

Cousin Leslie, she just graduated from nursing school and passed her boards, YAY!!!

Pictures Pictures and more Pictures!!

We had a great weekend! We stayed home all weekend, it was awesome. I worked a double Friday, so I didn't get home till after 11pm. Jered let me sleep in Sat and he got up with Ashlyn. He took her to his softball Friday night and said she was the perfect giggly, happy baby. He came home when she started getting crabby around her bedtime. Saturday we did stuff around the house and watched movies. It was great to just stay home. I remember when I was a teenager, the last thing I wanted was to stay home. These days I look forward to the weekends when we don't have plans and just GET to stay home. Sunday afternoon we decided to go on a picnic at a park near us. Jered packed us a picnic, including an amazing bottle of wine that we bought when I was pregnant. We had been saving it and the picnic was the perfect time to open it. We picked a spot in the grass near the lake under a tree. Ashlyn loves looking up at the trees, it keeps her entertained for a good 10-15 minutes, which is a real treat for her parents! Its a good thing we were under a tree because it started to sprinkle after we'd been there a while and the tree kept us all dry until we decided to leave and then we all got wet running to the car!

I went to visit Mama at work. She had to work till 11pm on Friday night so I went to a softball game with Daddy.

Mama made me wear this headband and Daddy called me "Cholo"

It is a pretty cute outfit though!

I was tired of the photo shoot! Even this face didn't make Mama stop taking pictures.

Tori and Sinder didn't like their photo shoot either.

We went for a picnic on Sunday. I was napping, can't you tell??

Mama and Daddy and their picnic food. It all looked pretty good but they didn't share with me.

I found my toes!

I was trying to eat Daddy's hat, yuck!

Mama did another photo shoot with my 4th of July outfits.

Why does she always make me wear silly hats?

This was the dress I wore on 4th of July at Honeyman.

Camping and moving out.....

We drove about 5 hours Thursday evening to get down to Florence for the annual 4th of July camping trip. It was so nice to finally get there and just relax. We didn't do much of anything at all except visit with all the family. Ashlyn had a good time but by the second day she was really starting to get stuffed up and it just got worse from there. She didn't sleep well the last two nights we were there so neither did Jered or I. Even though she didn't sleep well we still had a great time! And we'll be going again and again and again :)

Ashlyn has moved out of our bedroom. She has spent the last two nights in her own room in her big crib. She's done pretty well too. Last night she slept through her midnight feeding and woke up at 345am. She slept from 830pm to 345 am. Not too bad! Then back to sleep after a bottle and slept till about 615am. Now if we can just get her to skip the 345 feeding and go until about 6am that would be awesome!!

We went down to Great Grandma and Great Grandpa's house a couple of weeks ago. Here I am with my grandma Patsy.

Four generations of McGrath's. Jered, Great-grandma Glady, Grandpa Steve and Me!!

Me and Grandpa Steve

I love it when Daddy throws me in the air. I'm a little daredevil already!!

My grandpa Steve bought me this onesie. Its pretty funny :)

We went to pick up mama and daddy's wine club at the winery. Mama liked the flowers.

Daddy was best man at Uncle Eli's wedding. That's Uncle Justin, Uncle Eli and Daddy. They look pretty good in their tuxes huh?

Uncle Eli and Auntie Sam the night before at the rehearsal dinner.

The first morning camping. I wore this goofy hat all weekend to keep my head warm.

My cousin's Macy and Bailey in their matching outfits Grammy bought them.

Playing in my chair and yes daddy left his beer can sitting next to me but I didn't drink any of it. mama wouldn't let me :)

Cousin Dylan and Macy having root beer floats.

My grandpa Terry came to visit me at the campground. He hung out for a while then was going to the casino. He didn't call after so I'm going to guess that mama and daddy are still having to save for my college education.

A bunch of my cousins: Morgan, Rebecca, Bailey, Macy, Dylan, Rainey, and Della.

Mama and Daddy drove up the coast from Florence to Lincoln City. We stopped a few times along the way. This was near the sea lion caves and it was really smelly. I didn't notice though because I slept the whole way.

Camping again!

We leave tomorrow afternoon for Florence to go camping again. Ashlyn is pretty excited I'm sure. I know Jered and I are. We're off for 4 days! A short but hopefully sweet vacation.

We've been working and working and that's about it. Grandma and Grandpa McGrath came over to babysit Ashlyn last Friday so we could go to Eli's wedding. Wedding was fun, drank a little too much wine :) Saturday we hung around the house, watched a bunch of movies and just relaxed. It was really really nice to not have to be anywhere. Sunday we took the dogs to the lake and Ashlyn loved watching the dogs jump in the water chasing the ball. She was captivated, it was so funny!! The dogs of course had a blast, it was hard to get them out of the water long enough to dry off.

I'll have lots of pictures after this weekend's camping trip :) Have a great 4th of July!