Party animal....

We had a busy weekend! A friend of Jered's spent Friday night with us. Him and his wife and kids are moving here soon. Brady and Jered were on the track team together at OIT and have remained good friends. It'll be fun having all of them in town soon.

Sat night we went to a pumpkin carving party at Jered's co-workers house. We went to watch the Beavers/USC game and then Jered carved a pumpkin. I was planning to carve but Ashlyn would not go to sleep. I tried everything but she wasn't having any of it. There was just too much going on. Finally I gave up and we ended up watching the very competitive Beer Pong game. Ashlyn thought it was awesome! She finally fell asleep in Jered's lap about 1030pm. Two hours past her bed time!

Sunday Grammy and Grandpa came up to visit us. They haven't seen Ashlyn in a while, so she showed off her new tricks. She showed how she can crawl, clap, wave and climb on stuff. She says Mamamamamama and Dadadadadadada and she knows which of us is which! Ashlyn is loving the dogs these days. She thinks they are so funny, especially when the wrestle with other or we play fetch with them. We went out to lunch at Applebee's and found out they have all day happy hour on Sundays. Bonus!!! Of course we took advantage and had a couple of margaritas! We also stopped at Costco (on a Sunday....quite possibly the worst place to be) and picked out fancy Christmas dresses for Bailey and Macy. They didn't have any Ashlyn's size but we were actually just given a super cute dress from a friend of ours that her daughter wore at Christmas. Luckily it'll match up with the girls' dresses perfectly. Grammy wants to have their pictures done again before Christmas and they all three look very fancy in their new dresses!

A few more pictures....

In my cheerleader outfit Grammy got me. She knows Daddy's a big Beavers fan. Mama's still waiting for my Ducks outfit :) I wore this to the pumpkin party. Everyone thought it was my Halloween costume. Too bad it wasn't better luck for the Beavs with USC.

With my Daddy, he wore his Beavers jersey to go with my outfit.

After the party, I was pooped! I'm not sure how I ended up like this. Mama put me down on my back, but I guess I move around a lot in the crib.

Our pumpkins. Daddy did the one in the middle at the pumpkin party. Mama did the one on the left and Daddy the one on the right on Sunday night.

Vacation, not really...

Well my forced vacation day wasn't really a vacation. I cleaned house and did laundry all day. Fun....yeah right! I did manage to watch a few episodes of Oprah from the DVR. DVR has got to be one of the greatest inventions ever! We'd never watch TV anymore if we didn't have it. We rarely watch a show at its regular time and when we do I'm always trying to fast forward through the commercials. The $35 (yep even with insurance, fantastic!) eye drops we had to get for Ashlyn work like magic! Her eyes looked better that very night. As you can imagine putting the drops in is a piece of cake. I'm sure every 9 month old loves to have their eyes pried open and liquid dropped into them. Yeah she doesn't fuss or push us away or anything. She's a little angel of course! Poor little muffin still has a cough but overall feels pretty good. We do an inhaler twice a day for the chesty cough and it helps but its really hanging on this time. She's received two seasonal flu shots so far. I hate it that they insist on giving the same one twice, but our pediatrician insisted it was necessary. Next week we go for her 9 month appt and she'll get the H1N1 shot. They're already running low on that one so thank goodness she only has to have one of those.

A few pictures.....

I like my friend Sinder! She lets me climb on her, pull her tail, her ears and then pays me back by licking my face.

See Sinder likes me too :)

Daddy went in the pool with me at my class today. We had a lot of fun!

Aren't we cute???? Mama thinks so, she says I'm cutest, don't tell Daddy!

Oh yeah.....

The smartest kid in the world now claps by herself and waves bye bye (usually only at herself)!! :o)

Pumpkins and Pink Eye....

Ashlyn had been feeling better but yesterday I noticed that her left eye was all watery and after her nap it was all goobery. Well this morning the left eye was glued shut was all those goobers and the right one was pretty goobery as well. Wee care of course freaks out about these types of things so I had to take her to the doctor to see if it was pink eye. I love my doctor! They almost always can get us in same day. She does have a very minor case of pink eye and incidentally a minor ear infection. We got drops for the eyes and numbing drops for her ears. The doctor says the ear infection is very mild and should clear up on its on in 4-5 days. We see her in a week for Ashlyn's 9 month appointment and if its not better by then we'll get antibiotics. I'd rather not give her antibiotics if its really not necessary. As for the eyes we got kicked out of Wee Care until Friday. We have to give drops for 24 hours before they'll take her back. So get a little mini vacation. I'm off half day today and all of tomorrow. Luckily I worked an extra shift Monday night so I'll only have to use a few hours of PTO for tomorrow. Un-lucky, I won't get overtime for working the extra shift. Oh well I guess the savings account won't be getting any deposits any time soon.

A couple of pictures from the pumpkin patch:
Self portrait, not too bad, better if Ashlyn were looking at the camera.

Eating peas and carrots :) she's got a cheek full!

Feeling better....

Both Ashlyn and I are feeling a lot better this week. Ashlyn still has a little cough but overall is much better. She's crawling all over the place now. She likes to pull herself up. We caught her standing in the crib last weekend so Jered lowered the mattress. Now if she stands at the side, she can barely see over. She loves chasing after the dogs. They're pretty good with her. They just lay there when she's grabbing at them and climbing on them. The only thing they don't like is when she tries to grab their feet. She's eating like a champ. She's very observant though. She has to check everything out. If I give her green beans or carrots or whatever she likes to look at it first from all angles. She smells it, tastes it, looks at it again and then will start chewing. She's like that in other things though too. She needs to observe her surroundings before she feels comfortable enough to play.


We went to the pumpkin patch yesterday afternoon. Picked pumpkins for all three of us, rode the hay ride, went in the animal barn and ate carmel apples. Lots of fun! We're invited to a pumpkin carving party next Sat so we'll get to carve them up then.

Here's a few pictures. We went down to Glady and Floyd's on Tues for dinner with Steve and Patsy. They're getting ready to take off for Canada again. They'll be gone most of the winter and maybe the spring too. It was good to see them again and I know they had fun playing with Ashlyn.

She's found the dog bowls. She thinks this is the coolest thing.

With Grandpa Steve

Playing pat-a-cake with my Grandma Patsy

I love my Daddy!

An eventful week.....

Jered usually gives Ashlyn her baths at night. Its good one on one time for them. He still uses the tub that Grandma Glady gave us and this night it was a good thing. I was watching a movie on the computer in the living room and Jered was in the bathroom giving Ashlyn her bath. He started yelling for me so I ran in there and Ashlyn was sitting in the tub of water full of poop. She had pooped in the tub. Ugh, it was so gross! I picked her up under her arms and dangeled her over the tub so Jered could rinse her off. We scrubbed her up again before putting her jammies on. Nasty!!!! After that I sprayed the whole tub down and Jered did the little tub. It was more gross than I can even say!

Ashlyn is a crawling genius these days. She gets where she wants to go now. Yesterday when I went in to pick her up for lunch from Wee Care she was standing at the side of this foam climby thing they have for the kids. She was looking around like she didn't quite know how she had gotten there. As soon as she saw me she started crying. She had pulled herself up and didn't know how to get back down. My little baby is growing up.

She's sick again. She started to get all stuffy Sunday night. She was pretty crabby Mon and Tues. Crabbier than normal so I took her to the doctor Wed just to make sure she didn't have an ear infection. No ear infection! Yay!! But now I'm sick too, which totally sucks. We had been planning to go out with our friend tonight to a wine shop and her daughter was going to babysit for us. I'm super bummed cause there's no way I could even taste any wine tonight.

We're in trouble now.......

She's crawling!!!!!

Growing, growing, growing....

Ashlyn is growing like a weed! She graduated to the next class recently. She is no longer a Ladybug, she's a Dragonfly now! :) She is trying really hard to crawl. She's still rolling all over the place. She can go from a sitting position onto all fours. She rocks back and forth and you can tell she really wants to take off but just can't figure it out. She does this hop thing to go forward and sometimes just belly flops until she reaches what she wants. Usually its the computer, computer cords, remote, anything that either Jered or I have. Jered said she did manage a couple of crawls yesterday morning but I missed it.

Yesterday was Kari and John's wedding and it was beautiful. Everything was perfect. The weather held off, it didn't rain and it really wasn't even that cold. Ashlyn looked like a little princess in her dress Grammy got her. I'm going to have her pictures done in the dress. She managed to stay in the wagon Tyler was pulling her in down the aisle. She only fell over a couple of times. Five minutes into the ceremony she was asleep. Thank goodness!! I had wanted her to take a nap before the wedding but she wasn't having any of it! She slept for a couple of hours and then partied until almost 11pm. She takes after her daddy, she's a party animal!

Last night was the last wedding Jered and I were invited to this year (so far). The next wedding is my cousin's in March. We're both looking forward to having our weekends back. We had a great but busy summer. We didn't camp as much as we would've liked but the three times we did we had a blast. We had a great time on our trip this summer with my mom and Eddie. Grand Canyon is amazingly beautiful. Sometime in my life I'd love to do one of those mule trips down to the bottom and maybe even raft the Colorado. We visited with a lot of family this summer too. Our trip to New Mexico was so much fun! Jere and my cousin Ricky get along so well. Ricky is hilarious, its hard not to have fun with him. His wife Stef is a sweatheart too. My cousin and her girls came from Wisconsin, my other cousin came up from Florida, there were plenty of excuses for bbq's and get togethers! There were six (I think) new babies born this year and I think we still have two or three on the way that will be born in 09. Needless to say the Ballards are still working on taking over the world :)


This is me with my Aunt Sam and Uncle Eli at the Melting Pot the other night.

Here I am with Uncle Justin

With Mama and Daddy at Aunt Kari and Uncle John's wedding.

Here I am with my Uncle Keith

All of the bridesmaids and the beautiful bride holding up the groom :)

Yay!!!