Videos!!!

Ashlyn singing Twinkle Twinkle Little Star

Counting

Singing a song from school. Everyday they do 'circle time' and the first part of circle time is sing everyone's name. "Ashlyn's here today! Ashlyn's here today! We are happy, Ashlyn's here today!" Pretty cute!

Pictures.....

We've been helping Mom and Eddie for the last couple of months get their new house ready to move in to. Well this last weekend was move-in day! Mom lived in the Farm House for 35 years. Yes, you read that correctly...thirty five years!! Eddie has been there for about 10 years. So the two of them have accumulated a lot of crap! Oh Em Gee!! We made a good dent in the stuff at their house and they are officially now living in the new house. Thank goodness my cousin Melody was around to help us out, I couldn't have done it without her. My cousin Susie watched all the girls for us, my cousins Kourtney and Ashley helped out too. It was definitely a family affair! It was overwhelming for all of us and quite emotional for Mom. I didn't have time to be emotional about it, I wanted to get as much work done as possible while we were there. I came home today and Jered had to come home yesterday so we only had a couple of days to get it all done. I haven't lived there for 14 years, so its not as emotional for me, but we did have some really great times in that house. I grew up there. My best friend, my cousin Traci and I have tons of memories there. My mom let us do whatever we wanted when we were growing up, even make deep fried ice cream! We made donuts, we baked All-Bran muffins (my favorites before the whole gluten free thing ruined it for me!), we cooked whatever we wanted too. We rode 3-wheelers all summer long then would rush home to do all the chores that Mom had written on her daily note to me. Those notes are too funny! They always started out "Good Morning!" and ended with what time she'd be home and "Love, Mom" Traci and I still laugh about those notes! We had the run of the farm growing up. We rode our bikes or our 3-wheelers all over the place! We'd scrounge up 35 cents so we could get a bottle of pop most days. I'm happy for Mom and Eddie though that they will have a nice new house, they deserve it!

So here's some pictures!

Valentine dinner at Applebee's

Wearing Mommy's Ugg boots

I like to crawl into things. This is Grandpa's TV stand, I fit pretty well!

Sleeping in the car

I"m TWO!!!!

A couple of pictures:

 Mommy took my picture today at Fred Meyer!

 On Saturday at Home Depot, waiting on Daddy....

Having sushi with mommy the other day.

Its my party and I'll cry if I want to....

We had a busy week and weekend! Jered and I had a date on Friday night, we all went to the horse races on Sat, then had Ashlyn's party on Sun.

I had a flat tire when I came out of work on Tues. Flat as could be! I called Jered to come help with the spare. Thank goodness he's so handy! That same day I'd had to go get Ashlyn early from school...she had pink eye. Ugh!! One of the kids in the class next to hers had it, we got an email the day before and of course Ashlyn got it too. We started the eye drops that night because they have to have 24 hours of drops before you can go back to school. I was off Wed and planning to go see Jered's cousin's new baby. Unfortunately I couldn't take my kid and her pink eye to see the new baby so we went to Les Schwab for about an hour and a half instead to get our tire fixed. Joy! Ashlyn already had a doctor's appt scheduled for Wed and she confirmed our diagnoses of pink eye. Ashlyn is growing, growing, growing! She weighs 28.6 lbs and she's 35 inches tall. She also has a big head, in the 90th percentile still. She screamed the entire time we were at the doctor. We couldn't believe it! She gave dagger eyes to the doctor too. Only slightly embarrassing. We had to switch doctors because our regular doctor moved to a different clinic. She's so untrusting of people she doesn't know. And it takes her a while to warm up to new people. This was the first time she didn't have to have any shots and the first time she acted like a little banshee.

Friday night our friend Wiley came over to our house to stay with Ashlyn so that Jered and I could go out. She is so cool and we appreciate it so much! This is the second time she's babysat for us. We went to a nice little wine bar in Multnomah Village. We drank a lot of wine and ate only a little, super delicious food. I think its a place we'll definitely go back to. We had a lot of fun and didn't even talk about Ashlyn until the ride home.

Saturday we went to the horse races with Will and Justin and Ashlyn had so much fun! She loved all the horses. We were able to walk back where they get the horses ready so she could see them up close. When they'd line up for the race, she'd say "Where'd the horses go Mommy?" and we'd point them out to her as they ran around the track. She'd watch them all the way to the finish line. We were pretty close to the airport, so she saw a lot of airplanes too. "Look Daddy, there's airplane! Look Mommy, I see airplane!" Then there were tractors to grade the track. She had a super fun day!

Sunday was her birthday party at our house. I had baked the two cakes the night before and Jered got up at 4am to marinate the ribs, then again at 8am to put them on the smoker. I made the frosting and decorated the cakes that morning too. The cake turned out pretty great, if I do say so myself. The actual cake was a little dry but it looked darn cute! Ashlyn was a little crabby for her party. She had not had much nap time and she can be a bear when she doesn't get enough sleep. Plus she fell off her chair and hit her chin a couple of hours before the party started, bit her tongue and was bleeding. Oh boy, what a day! It takes her a while to warm up to people too, so having a bunch of people over was a little overwhelming for her. She liked opening her presents though (even though we requested no gifts, none of her grandparents followed the rules!)

Yesterday we visited Jered's cousin, his wife and new baby. I have lunch with Adrienne every few weeks and had been wanting to go over and meet little baby Louie! He is adorable of course, but Ashlyn wasn't too sure about her Mama holding a baby. When I was holding him, she kept asking, "Up please Mommy! Up Please!" She was just a little jealous :o)

 Grammy and Grandpa took us all out to dinner at Outback for painting their house. It was pretty yummy and I got a free ice cream because it was my birthday!

Mommy and I had to wait at Schwabie's for our tire to get fixed

 Mommy and Daddy took me to see the horse races this weekend. It was so much fun! I got to see lots of horses and they run really fast!

 This is the invite that Mommy for my birthday party. She said No gifts and everyone listened except all of my grandparents!

This is the outside of the invite....Mommy used her one crafty hair to do this! 

 This is the cake that Mommy made me. She said the sheet cake was a little dry but the bug was really good. She made red velvet for the bug. My favorite was the ice cream, I love ice cream!

The delicious ribs daddy made in the smoker/bbq. Everyone thought they were pretty yummy!!

Painting, painting and more painting...

Well my Ducks lost. I was pretty bummed, but we had a good time watching the game. A few of our friends and their kids came over so we had a housefull. We'll be back next year, I'm sure of it!

Grammy and Grandpa signed on their new house and got the keys last Wed!! They're going to be big city dwellers now, living in Monroe! We drove down Friday night so that we could get started painting the inside and Jered cut a hole in the kitchen for the new dishwasher. We spent ALL day Sat there. Thank goodness my cousin Susie was able to watch the girls. We got a little bit of a late start but once we did get started it would have been hard to watch the girls, especially Ashlyn since she's loves to get into everything. It took us hours to tape all the windows, doors, trim, etc. Then Melody and I started primering the two bathrooms. Mom helped, she was our supervisor! Jered had borrowed the paint sprayer from his Grandpa and that thing was amazing! He did the bedrooms and living room in the time it took Mel and I to do the bathrooms. What a pain to clean out though. We finished up primering everything about 1230am and then it took another 20 minutes or so to get all the paint out of the sprayer. We had sent Grammy and Grandpa to get Ashlyn from Uncle Keith's and go home about 10pm. We left Ashlyn in bed with Grammy, showered and went straight to bed. Our backs were killing us and thankfully I had some percocet in the car for my migraines. We split one of those and slept straight through till almost 9am.

After breakfast Mom, me, Ashlyn and Mel headed into Home Depot to buy all the paint. We picked out some great colors. They will not be living with white walls, that's for sure! Mel and I refused to paint another yellow kitchen, or peach living room either. :o) Mom had picked out a plum color for the living room and we're going to an accent wall with a little darker plum color. Macy picked out a lilac color for her and Bailey's room. We did a mauve color for the study/computer room. Both bathrooms are going to be a very light green color and Mom and Eddies room will be a brighter green. The kitchen....is going to be RED! The two walls with cupboards will be red, the two larger walls will be a light cream color to balance out the red. Once we got back to the house, we started painting. We did the study and the small bedroom, the laundry room and saved the kitchen for last. We only did the two red walls and it looks awesome! I can't wait till they get the new floors in and the appliances, its going to look great. The whole house is going to look great!

We had been hoping to have Ashlyn's birthday party at their new house but the floors won't be finished so it looks like we're going to do it at our house next Sunday. Just family because Ashlyn tends to get overwhelmed with a lot of people. I sent out the invitations today, sorry for the late notice but I was hoping the new house would be ready. Next year maybe! Jered's going to make his famous smoked ribs and I'm attempting to make the birthday cake. I don't have a backup plan so hopefully my attempt turns out alright!

We're heading south again this weekend to do more painting. Our little baby girl turns TWO on Sat, I cannot believe it! She is a little talker and loves to sing songs. She sings to me in the car on the way home. She still does her abc's and 123's. We're trying to teach 11-20 but she likes to stop at 10. She still loves to read books and still has her favorites. She'll bring you a whole stack if you let her. She is a total daddy's girl and every morning when she wakes up she want to know where daddy is. Is there anything better than watching your husband and daughter have a tea party? I don't think so! Have a great week and sorry about the crooked picture. I couldn't get it to turn. Its a cell phone pic that I emailed to myself.

Mommy couldn't get this picture to turn around, but this is when we went to sushi the other day.

Me and cousin Macy at Grammy and Grandpa's new house

In the car weating Mommy's shades

Wearing Daddy's ginormous carheart vest

GO DUCKS!!!!!

One more Christmas....

We had one more Christmas with Mom, Eddie, Keith and the girls on Sunday. Mom and Eddie brought the girls up on Sat and Ashlyn was so excited to see Macy and Bailey. I had been telling her they were all coming and she was so excited when they finally got here. Ashlyn loves Macy and Bailey, they are so good with her and they all play so well together. They all had a good time playing.

On Sunday we waited for my brother to get here with his girlfriend and her kids so we could all open presents. The girls were chomping at the bit all morning till he got here so we could start with presents. We opened gifts and our house was taken over by boxes and torn up wrapping paper! As I'm writing this I'm thinking to myself I should've taken one last picture of the tree with all the gifts. Once Grammy and Grandpa got here on Saturday our tree was exploding with presents. Santa was pretty nice to all of us!

But now the season is over and its time for the Christmas decorations to come down, which happened today. Our house has been de-Christmas'd. The tree is still standing but that's Jered's job.

We rang in the New Year apart this year. I was at work and Jered was at home with Ashlyn. I can't believe its already 2011! We've got lots to look forward this year. Jered is taking his California license in April, which means a free trip for us to San Fran. We're going to HAWAII in May!! 2 days in Oahu and 7 days Kauai!!! Yay for us!! I'm really looking forward to both of these trips. San Fran will be fun because it'll be a trip away for just Jered and I (hey Mom....will you babysit?). Hawaii is Hawaii :o) There's Honeyman in July and hopefully lots of camping in the summer and visiting with family all year long.

We have another busy weekend away from home in front of us. We have a memorial service to go to on Sat and since we'll be down in Monroe we plan to go to Kourtney's basketball game. We're hoping to have a weekend at home soon. The flooring for the two bathrooms came in and Jered's still working on the red car. Lots of home work to get done!!

Playing with my new puzzles from cousin Grace

Daddy got a new Beavers coat and hat! and Grandpa got shooting headphones

Playing with my new doll from Grammy and Grandpa

Mommy got a new Ducks shirt....GO DUCKS!!

and I got a new Ducks sweatshirt!!

Looking good!

Notice my hands in the pockets?.....I've got a new fascination with pockets