All about Ashlyn

Do we ever have any down time??? Not really, we are as busy as ever! After Mom's wedding we had one weekend to ourselves and even that wasn't totally ours. Jered had to go to a meeting in Jantzen Beach that was most of the day on Saturday, then we spent the rest of the afternoon/evening driving out to Corbett. We stopped by the Vista House State Park. It was beautiful but so cold and windy!! We drove out to see a couple of houses in Corbett that we've been looking at. Still in the dreaming stages of course but it was nice to see where the houses located in relation to the schools and our work. One of them is right in town, if you can call it a town. It has a little country store and that's it! The town is smaller than Monroe (yes, its possible :) ) but the school is larger. One of the other places we'd been looking at was WAY TOO far out of town. Up and down a long windy road. Then at the end there was a gravel road. Ummm.....NO! Jered said it reminded him of how far out he lived when he was in high school. :) I lived down a long gravel road when I was growing up, not happening! Anyway, we're still looking and hopefully we'll find something that fits for us. When we do find something, hopefully we'll be able to get rid of our house too. There are so many factors when you're selling and buying!

Some of you are probably saying, "Corbett???" Where in the heck is Corbett? Well, its out in the gorge, near Multnomah Falls. It may sound crazy but the main reason to move out there is that they have amazing schools. The high school has been one of the top in nation for the last few years. The middle school is also well recognized and has been named as a "School to Watch". They opened a charter school a few years ago due to funding issues and have managed to remain as well respected as before. The charter school and the public school is all together in the same building. It sounds weird, but they make it work and they make it work well. For us, with our jobs and wanting to stay in this area because we love Portland, our choices if we want Ashlyn to get a great education is Corbett or private school. I'd prefer not to have to pay for private school! We pay enough for daycare as it is! Well, hopefully it works out the way we want it to. We never planned to stay in our house as long as we've been here, sometimes you just have to adapt!

We're taking Ashlyn to see the Magic School Bus play this weekend. I'm looking forward to it, she loved the last play we took her to, Pinkalicious. She sat still for over an hour, completely enthralled! One of her favorite songs and books has always been the Wheels on the Bus. So I'm hoping she love this too.

The next couple of weekends we'll be busy at wrestling tournaments. This next weekend will be District at my old high school and the weekend after is state here in Portland. We'll have a few of my cousins staying with us for state. It'll be a lot of hours sitting on a bench in a gym but we both enjoy it!

Ashlyn had her birthday and she is so proud of being THREE! She had two parties, one at Grandma G's and one at Grammy and Grandpa's. She had a lot of fun and loves cake and ice cream so she loved being spoiled with two parties!! She loves to tell everyone how old she is now and how she's a big girl. And she is a big girl! She is using the potty so well now. She hasn't had an accident at school in a few weeks. She still needs a diaper at nap and bedtime but its often dry when she wakes up. She has been visiting the next class up at school quite a bit. Probably by this summer she'll be a salmon :)

Here's some pictures from the last couple of weeks: