Ashley's Hangout Spot

Ashley is enjoying spending time in her pack and play these days....which is nice for Mommy and Daddy to put her in a safe spot for a little bit while they get things done or have it just be a rest for her knees from crawling on the tile!  As you can see she loves it!!

 But it looks like we'll have to lower it already!  Stinker is ready to crawl right over the edge!!  Hello out there!!

Swimming Lessons

Trevor finished up his four weeks of swimming boot camp on Thursday night.  He had the instructor all to himself for the lessons that happened Monday through Thursday every night at 7pm.  Sometimes they were in the lap pool and sometimes they were in the resort style pool.  This worked well so that he learned to concentrate and swim in different places :)

By the end of the four weeks Trevor was doing a much, much, much better floating and swimming.  We'll continue to work with him until once a week swimming lessons start again in the Fall at the clubhouse.  He has all the confidence in the world that he can do it and he can!  He can hold his breath like no other and get from point A to point B without a problem.  Our biggest concern is that if he gets tired he is too stubborn to just float on his back for any length of time.  The kid has ants in his swim trunks.  Always on the go.  So, like we said we'll continue to work on it with him.  Plus he said that once he floats and floats he can get a Lego Helicopter.  Okay :)

Here he is floating by himself:

And here's Ashley ready to jump in!  She loves watching anything big brother does!

Mariner

 Nicci and Mike were going to leave their dog Mariner at their home while they traveled to see her parents in South Dakota for a week, and just have someone come in twice a day to let him out.  Well that didn't seem very fun for Mariner so we said we would take watch him at our house for the week.

Mariner had a good first night trying out different sleeping spots and then in the morning he got a special treat!  He got to go with Brian to work!

Mariner was a very good dog.  People wondered if we had gotten a new dog already.  Nope!!  (Why get your own when you can borrow other peoples ;))

Mariner is making himself right at home.  He really is a chill dog.  He might follow you wherever you go but mostly he just lounges...on the couch (where he is supposed to lay on his blanket):

 Or the tile (which is most often)....it's probably the coolest.  Randle used to lay like this.  We call it the frog.

 We're glad we can help our friends out but we have to admit it's a little weird having a dog again.  Kinda feels like we're cheating on Randle :(  Especially when Mariner is laying on Randle's spot.  

Mariner obviously is much bigger than Randle and sheds all over the place.  We're not really used to either of those traits but one thing that has been nice is when we leave the house Mariner doesn't care in the least.  He says goodbye and then greets you at the door when you get back again.  No destroyed blinds or anything else.  However, having him in our house reminds us how much we miss Randle.  We might have called Mariner by Randle a few times on accident.  :)

She is definitely mobile!

Ashley started crawling a few weeks ago now but lately she is getting faster and faster!!  And her distance is quite impressive as well - especially on the hard tile floors!  Trevor loved crawling through our end table at our old MN house.  Ashley loves to crawl under her jumpy office.

What?  Moi?  I'm not doing anything :)

We're having trouble uploading the video of her first crawl but if we figure it out, we'll post it soon!  (Probably due to size constraints....it is rather long :))

Watermelon

Trevor insisted that we buy watermelon at the store - a huge one of course - so the only way we are going to eat it all is for little sister to join in on the fun!  

She wasn't quite sure at first....

....but then got the hang of it.  She hasn't mastered the 'more' sign yet but if she did we're sure she would have requested more! 

Ashley is 8 months!

We can hardly believe that our little princess is 8 months old (yes, we realize we say that every month)!  She is at such a fun age (yes, we realize we say that too every month) - but they are true!!  She is so happy and smiley...even trying to smile while squinting through the sun...

...the sun makes her sneeze.  It's too cute!

She is long and lean.  People call her a little peanut but she is definitely growing!  She continues to wear 3-6 month size clothes or 6 month Carter's but we're slowly transitioning to some 6-9 month.  If we lived in a cold climate she would definitely have outgrown this size because of length but here, we don't wear pants...not yet anyway!

Her two front bottom teeth are in and the top middle right big one is definitely seen.  The top middle left big one has not shown itself yet, but the two next to the middle ones are poking through a little!  She's an okay teether....Ibuprofen is our friend at night and some teething tablets during the day help her nap a bit longer.  Speaking of naps and bedtime, Ashley puts herself to sleep after we sing five songs together.  She sees her sleep sack, rubs her eyes and that is it!  Her favorite song is 'Silent Night' - Christmas in July folks.

Okay, back inside since the sun is so bright.  :)  Ashley has been crawling for about 10 days.  Army crawling, just like her brother did.  She's got great arm strength.  It's so nice that she cleans the tile floors for us!

She loves 'baby crack' and Cheerios.  Has no problem using her 'pinchers' to pick them up and proudly shoves them in her mouth as fast as she can. 

She gets so excited when she sees her bib in sight and when the baby food containers come out, her hands start going and she goes 'ooh ooh ooh' (as in hurry up, I'm starving).  She's tried green beans, peas, squash, sweet potatoes, carrots and recently started fruit with pears and now peaches.  Her favorite?  Anything green!  She also continues to enjoy rice cereal at every meal.  Yes, we're talking about you cutie!

She loves crawling around (anywhere carpeted), exploring and touching every new surface and toy.  She likes having books read to her and she loves jumping in her jumpy office.  Diaper changes take a bit longer because she's on the move and doesn't want to be slowed down but start belting out the 'BINGO' tune and she settles down for the change.

Her brother absolutely adores her and is teaching her all sorts of good things.  He can't wait until she's big enough to build legos with him.  Together they will probably get into a lot of trouble when they are older but Ashley has the cutest set of dimples that will probably get her out of a lot.  Happy 8 month birthday sweet girl!  We love you!

Friday Fun Day!

 Our Friday's the past few weeks have gone pretty much the same. We wake up, Daddy heads to work while Sara and Trevor have breakfast.  We pack up Trevor's bag for daycare/school, then we wake up Ashley (mind you at 8:40am!), get her changed, load up the car, drop Trevor off at school then Mommy and Ashley head to 9:30am music class at the library!  We think Ashley really enjoys the special time with Mommy and kids her own size.  Like our friend Remy!!

After that we come home and she takes a long nap (because she's been up a whopping 2 hours) but that music class really wipes her out.  She wakes up and we play in her room.  She LOVES books....just like Trevor did!

 Mommy read this one next please!

  They don't come much happier than this girl.  Well, besides her older brother!  We are very blessed to have had two happy and healthy kids!  Love her smile!

 Okay Mommy enough pictures!  Back to reading please! No problem Ashley, Mommy will never be too busy to read to you or your brother! 

Happy 4th of July!

Ashley was all set for 4th of July in Lauren/Brooke/Leah's old red festive outfit!  

 She does this thing now where when she sees the camera/iphone she waves in excitement.  It's too cute!

  We had a relaxing morning swimming and then had naps before heading over to Brooke and Paul's house for a BBQ.  Brooke and Nicci are cousins and we all consider each other family, which is nice!  As Paul said 'we are like cousins seven times removed through lots of marriages' :)

Lots of yummy food and drinks were consumed, along with more swimming (which by the way Trevor is doing great at!) and some small fireworks in the street (which scared Adam so much) before we headed back to our home around 8:30 to catch our neighboring community's annual fireworks that we can view from our front balcony!

We hope you all had a wonderful and safe 4th of July too!

Jambo

After Trevor went to the movies with Nicci, Adam and Cole on Tuesday, Ashley and Mommy met them at Jambo - an indoor amusement park for lunch and play time!  We had a Groupon to use up and it was a good day to use it given the heat outside!  Adam and Cole needed to get home for swimming lessons but Trevor got to stay a bit longer and drive the choo choo:

 Ride the swings (over and over and over):

 Go up and down on the flying elephant ride:

And baby Ashley watched in delight.  She seems to say 'when is it my turn???'

 Soon our precious girl, soon....

Brian's Birthday Weekend

It was Brian's 38th birthday and as Jim and Annie's birthday card stated 'if Sara gets a birthday month or week, Brian gets at least a weekend' and that he did!
It kinda started on Wednesday night with a fancy dinner at Chipotle - ha!  And then on Thursday Brian had a day trip to Nebraska (on the corporate jet nonetheless - he is getting rather spoiled taking the jet but anyhoo) so we went out to lunch in his honor.  Actually Jimmy John's had $1 subs for customer appreciation and Trevor loved his ham sandwich!

On Friday morning - his actual birthday morning- Brian had to get to work early so he missed the blueberry muffins Trevor picked out for his birthday breakfast.  They were out of apple fritters so Trevor decided that Dada would like muffins :)  Trevor sure thought they were yummy!

Ashley sent her birthday wishes over to Dada in the morning too.  Such a happy, pretty baby! 

When Daddy went to work he saw that his office had been compromised....in a fun way!  Looks like his office was filled with packing peanuts!

But inside he found balloon overload!!

His team was so disappointed that he went to work early and they missed his reaction.  Quote 'you never get to work that early' Who would have guessed that he would on his birthday!  He sure has a great team that really likes him!

Trevor LOVES birthdays.  Told everyone at school that it was his Daddy's birthday, he was so proud.  So when Daddy brought home two bags of balloons that night, Trevor thought it was a hoot!

Trevor insisted that we wore party hats and took a picture to remember Daddy's birthday so we did!  One of Brian's best friends from MN found it hilarious how little the birthday guy's hat looked on his um, rather big head.  Didn't notice it at first but now we laugh about it!

After lobster tails and steak for dinner it was finally time for cake!  Trevor said 3 candles was not enough but that's what we had so we went with it!

Trevor blew out the candles before Daddy.  Who's birthday is it again?  :)

 

Also appearing for Brian's birthday celebration is our friendly bunny who we think is Randle reincarnated.  He comes every morning and afternoon and escapes the heat in our shaded courtyard.  Look at the way the bunny lays with his feet crossed and his ears at alert!  Just like Randle!!  We left out some carrots for him/her but they are still there.  Guess 'Randle' isn't hungry!

Another friendly visitor was this disgusting bug? Spider?  What is this thing?  It landed on Sara's towel when we were out in the pool cooling off from the 116 degree heat.  Yuck!!  Yes, both on the bug and the heat!  But, we'll take the heat over the snow and cold any day!

Another fun thing we did over Brian's weekend was get rid of our baby monitors that were on the fritz and download an app that is now our baby monitor.  It works because we have extra iphones laying around but it's nice to be able to see the kids napping while we are in the pool :)  Ashley seems to know where the camera is and waves!

On Saturday night we cooled off at the mall and did some shopping before heading back to Desert Ridge and having a fabulous pizza dinner complete with a pizookie!  Sunday the birthday boy got a fabulous massage, we spent lots of time in the pool as a family and with friends!  Ashley, Jeff and Bennett came over for swimming and Mexican dinner and a good time was had by all!  Bennett is 20 months old and he and Trevor have a great time playing.  Sara, Ashley, Bennett and Trevor have gotten together a few times but it was nice to get the big boys involved too and all get along great!  We anticipate more swimming dates in the future!   Yay for birthdays and fun weekends!