Morgan's Invitation

As a little bit of a joke and because December is such a busy month, I have made Morgan's birthday invitations. I have really planned the whole party in the last 24 hours or so. I felt bad that I was working so hard on Joshua's party which isn't until January.
Anyways... I had an impromptu photo shoot in the front yard with Morgan yesterday, printed the pictures at Costco, stayed up late to get my prototype, and have assembled them today.
I think they turned out really cute, if I do say so myself.
So here they are....

The front....

The front and back of the three different designs I have used so far.


I pinked out the details, to keep away all the pesky paparazzi.


My husband loves to tease me that me real interest in Scrapbooking is in collecting the supplies and not actually making the scrapbooks. Well here is a case where it paid off. I paid exactly $2.41 to make these invitations because I had everything I needed here around the house except for the prints.

Things I would love to own

I've found myself having some random wants recently, and so I shall post about some of the awesome things that would make me smile.

1. An extra wide baby gate would help me separate my kids into different side of the house so they wouldn't fight. LOL! While I would love to use it for that, sometimes I just need to keep them in either the family room or the living room, and all of our current gates are not wide enough.



2. I would also like this book. This is Nie Nie sister's blog and over the course of the last 2 months I have checked her blog everyday for updates on the Nielsen family. I just love her style of writing. Plus the royalties will go to her sister, so double score.

3. More stuff inspired by the Nielsens. Apparently their family loves this cd, and from listening to the clips available on the internet, I don't blame them. The songs are awesome. I think this cd is going from a want to a necessity. 4. I've posted about a give away on the Knot Sew Shabby etsy shop before, but check out this rockin busy book. I love it. $45 is a bit out of my price range, but I like to look at the pictures. I also dream about the day that I could beef up my sewing skills to do something so complicated. :)

5. I would love just about anything from Knot Sew Shabby, but I really love these on-the-go activity books. I've made crayon pouches before, but this really kicks it up a notch.

Procrastining much on doing the dishes? I think so!!

May you find some awesome things that make you smile too!

Halloween Festivities Part 1

I strongly believe in getting a lot of use out of a Halloween costume and so we have quite a packed Halloween schedule. Saturday we went to boo at the zoo with my sister and her family.
Saturday night was our ward Halloween party. Here are some pictures from our busy, busy day.

Princess Jasmin and Peter Pan hanging out in front of the zebras.


Joshua and Samantha checking out the Elephants from the new viewing area.


Joshua trick or treating at the ward party. He is really digging the whole candy angle this year. He hasn't really cared in years past. It is really cute.


Joshua was very happy to show off his spoils for the evening.

Discovery Channel Moment

We went to the zoo today with April and Mason and had a total blast. Joshua and Mason were so cute together. Joshua would follow Mason wherever he went and kept saying, "Come on Mason." It was so precious. They were even holding hands part of the time.
I love these pictures because it has their cute little shadows too.



Mason found a photo booth, so Joshua was more than happy to play in the booth too.




Here's one of Morgan. Poor girl got ignored in her stroller a lot. She didn't mind too much though.



Lest I forget that the zoo is supposed to be an educational place, the Galapagos Tortoise's gave us an interesting education indeed. Once you get past the giggle factor, it was pretty crazy because the Mommy turtle was walking all around the exhibit with that big old dude on her back. You may not be able to tell from this picture, but he is way bigger than her.


I would have to say this is one of the more successful trips I have taken to the zoo. Everyone had a good time and there were no meltdowns!
Mason is such a sweetheart and his Mom is pretty awesome too! I definitely want to get together with them again soon.

Washua so funny!

Joshua says some of the funniest things recently. Here are a few of them.

Yesterday I started the project of cleaning out the pantry to organize everything and make space for all the food I bought at Fry's case lot sale. I didn't get everything back in pantry yesterday so the living room had quite a bit of food in rows on the floor. When Joshua got up this morning, he looked down the stairs and said, "Oh NO! What a mess! Food on the floor!"

Last night we were trying to get Joshua to tried a "grilled cheese tortilla," since he loves grilled cheese sandwiches, but won't touch a quesadilla. He put up a big fight but Ryan made him try it anyways. As soon as he took a bite he said, "YUMMY! Need more!"

All this evening he has been saying, "Washua is so funny!"

Part of his bedtime routine is rocking in the glider and having us sing a few songs to him in the dark. Well recently he sings to us and if we try to sing along he says, "Washua sing!" and then he starts the song over again.

All day today he keeps saying, "Morgan Happy! Morgan stopped crying." He says it even if she hadn't been crying recently.

Tonight he was eating Corns. So cute!

Here's my favorite. The other day he had a crayon in the backseat with him. He starts saying "Mommy, what happened?" I was driving and couldn't take too close a look, so I told him it was okay that the paper had just ripped. As we were pulling into the driveway he starts saying something about putting the crayon in his mouth.
Well as it turns out, what happened to his crayon is that he took a little nibble of the end of the crayon. Oh dear!

A day of firsts

Well we had two big "firsts" in our family today.
1. Today was the first time we gave Morgan and Joshua a bath together. They thought it was a really good time especially since Joshua doesn't always like his sister.


2. During this bath, Morgan pooped in the tub for the very first time. Eww yuck! The craziest part was that Ryan was practically giddy because now I knew what it was like to go through the ordeal of cleaning up the mess and being all grossed out. This is how things went down
A: Oh no, she's pooping! What should I do? Drain the water?
R: No, we have to document this. [Grabs the camera, SNAP, SNAP]
R: Now you can pick the poop out of the water and drain the tub.
A: [Handles the dirty work, cleans everything up, and gets the kids back in the tub.]

I was seriously going to hurl. I do have a new appreciation for Ryan's poopy tub experience
However I think I had it way worse because Morgan's poops are pretty loose. Ryan took the pictures and it is at his insistance that I post his "documentation."

Scroll down past it if you think that is totally repulsive and insane. There is a post of some cute pictures of the kids below this one, so don't skip that.




















Okay, you should be safe now..... Oh the things I blog about.

Riding in Style / Primary Program

We took a trip to the mall last week and to our utter surprise, Joshua wanted to play with all the cars they have there. He didn't actually want them to move, so that is nice for our pocketbook.
These pictures are mostly for my Mom, because she would never believe that Joshua climbed in all these cars willingly and had a great time playing. You can tell he had a good time because out of about 20 or so pictures, I could only get him to look at me for one.







Sunday was the primary program and I think it went pretty well. The practices leading up to the program were pretty chaotic, but as usual, the kids pulled it off. We've been in the ward for 5 primary programs and I have been the pianist for the primary program for the last 3 of them. I hope that one day I can sit in the audience and watch instead of participating. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
My parents came and helped entertain the kids so Ryan wouldn't be all stressed out. It was very nice of them and they did a good job at keeping everyone entertained. I only heard Morgan singing along a few times while I was up at the piano.

Here's sweet Morgan at church, doing what she does best. (Looking adorable and keeping us out of Sunday school.)

Princess Stinkeye & Other Tales

It's been awhile since I have posted some of the random pictures from what is going on around here, so here we go.

1. "Go ahead and cross me, I DARE you! I'm princess stink eye and I mean business. "



2. "Oh wait, I mean I'm sweet as can be!"


3. Morgan and Joshua before church. 4. Another shot from before church. They are both leaning forward and somehow it just makes Joshua look like a little person. It's very weird how the proportions turned out.

5. Here's Morgan in her wig. I didn't love how it looked so I didn't want the wig in her official pictures. I was afraid it would take away from her cute little smile and costume. It is hilarious though.

Places I want to take the kids

I love to be out and about and do all sorts of things with the kids. As I've been trying to find what I want to do for Morgan's birthday party, I have found all sorts of fun places I want to take the kids.
It's more fun if you go with someone, so if any of these interest you too, let me know and we'll plan a field trip.

Toy Town Playcenter - Toy Town is a 2,000 square foot, indoor play center located in Ahwatukee (East Valley), where kids can dress up, have a tea party, play with a train set, ride little cars, imagine and get lost in the joys of childhood!
Hall of Flame Musuem - Like 100 fire "trucks" (some were horse drawn)
Cerreta Candy Company(Glendale) - Tour of a candy factory in Glendale
Stuffington Bear Factory - Tour a Real live working teddy bear factory. In your face, Build-a-Bear.
Mesa Farmers Market I can't believe it, but I've never been to a farmer's market.
Children's Museum of Phoenix - I've heard awesome things about it, but haven't been yet. A little on the pricey side at $9 for admission though.

I'd love some ideas of fun places to go too!

Something stinks in Neverland

Ryan wanted to be sure I blogged about this, I think it is because it was me doing a major dumb thing.

Joshua is going to be Peter Pan for Halloween, and Morgan is Tinkerbell. Joshua's super fancy costume from the Disney Store did not come with a hat, (they love to milk you for every penny they can), so I decided to make one. I went to the craft store and bought some felt and all the fixings to make a hat. I took his costume to the store with me so that I could find matching material. The whole costume and my purchases were in a bag in my car. My car was a pit and so I cleaned it out because I was taking it to the car wash.

Cut to the next day.

During nap time I got a bee in my bonnet to start making Joshua's hat. I started looking around for the bag with everything and I can't find it anywhere. I didn't worry about it too much and figured I'd find it later. The whole thing was really nagging at me though and so I decided to look again. Still couldn't find it, but it suddenly hit me that I had thrown a bunch of stuff in our outside trash can and it was trash day. (Cue ominous music)

I ran outside and thank my lucky stars, the trash man had not come yet. I bet you can guess, that I found my bag with about $40+ worth of costume and supplies in the trash can. I bet you can also imagine the smell. I've got two kids in diapers after all. I dumped the contents of the bag on my living room floor and vacated the area. Thankfully it wasn't anything too tough for a lot of Febreze.

I know it's a little thing in the grand scheme of things, but I know that it was the Spirit's promptings that helped me rescue his costume before it was too late.

Let it me known that Joshua HATES the hat, but I did my part. Here are some pictures from the kids Halloween photo shoot. Tink #2 is my cutie niece Samantha. She's actually going to be Jasmin this year, but she was Tinkerbell last Halloween.

A very MOVING birthday

My birthday was a bit of an adventure to say the least.
We discovered that Joshua was as backed up as an LA freeway and the situation needed to be dealt with. He tried for about 2 hours off and on with no success and he was starting to get upset and was crying because it hurt. I tried to coach him through it, but it was a no go. I gave him a warm bath, which didn't solve anything, but he was able to relax a bit and at least take a nap.
Here's where the fun really begins, we decided he needed an enema. The other more pleasant options could take up to 3 days and we didn't want to torture him any longer.
I'll skip out on the really graphic details, but the poor kid was able to "evacuate. "

It was so heart breaking to see him in pain and not really able to help him much. As I was telling him that he needed to push so he could feel better, he would tell me "It's ok, Mommy do it." He had such faith that I'd be able to take care of his problem for him and it was just awful not to be able to fix it.

You could say I had a crappy birthday. {ha, ha, ha} Other than that adventure, it was a nice relaxing day.

Ryan took me out to Texas Roadhouse and to see Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist on Saturday, so I'd say those were the real birthday festivities.

HAPPY 200TH POST TO ME!

27 Random Ashley Facts

In honor of my 27th birthday, here are 27 random facts and stories about yours truly.

1. I sleep with 6 pillows on my side of the bed, although I usually only use 1 under my head
2. While we are talking about sleep, I find the most comfortable way to sleep on the bed is horizontally.
3. I also sleep with my head at the foot of the bed a lot too. I picked up some weird sleep habits towards the end of my last pregnancy just trying to find a comfortable way to fall asleep
   
4. I chose Brussel Sprouts for my 5th grade vegetable report and Lichtenstein for my 6th grade country report because I wanted to be unique
5. I don't like corn, canned, cobbed, popped, you name it-I don't like it.
   
6. I love language and building my vocabulary- even if it is slang
7. I've played the piano for 20 years. Wow, I sound old
8. I prefer watching other people play video games to playing them myself
   
9. The only B I got in college was in Calculus. I don't mind though, because the B was just a sneeze away from being a C.
   
10. I worked at Baker's shoes at AZ Mills mall during high school. During that time I knew all the shoes by style name and could tell you where they were located in the store.
    
11. I was a band nerd in Jr High and HS. I was in the marching band and played percussion
12. One of my biggest pet peeves are forwarded emails that contain chain letters or warnings about some horrible fate that will befall you. 99% of the time they are bogus and with the smallest amount of effort can be fact checked.
    
13. I have wanted to move to Alaska since some time in elementary school
14. When I was 14 my best friend Carolyn and I created our first website, it was dedicated to the Beatles.
    
15. I made the first move on Ryan by using a pick-up line my cousin taught me to get him to hold my hand. {For the curious the pick up line is this: "Hey can you hold something for me?" When they say yes, you give them your hand.}
16. My sister and I are both named after types of trees. Cedar and Ash. I think I got lucky, I could have been Knotty Pine.
    
17. I really love watching almost any show on Discovery Health, including surgeries. The only ones I can't handle are rhinoplasties. Nose jobs give me the willies.
    
18. When Ryan and I were engaged I was dead set against getting a sleep number bed because I thought everything should be "ours" and didn't want there to be my side of the bed vs his side. I was such a goof ball. {We did end up getting a sleep number bed, FYI}
19. I LOVE to shop. I really like things like yard sales and thrift stores. Ross was my favorite store ever because I love going through and looking at everything and waiting to find the awesome deal or hidden treasure.
    
20. I don't really like feet, that includes mine.
21. I've loved to collect things ever since I can remember. {Dolls, pencils, coins, stamps, beanie babies, stickers, pens, kitchen utensils, scrapbooking tools/supplies, etc}
22. I think potty humor is hilarious, unless it is super gross. Ryan jokes that he can just say the word "Poop" to me and I will start giggling
23. Even though potty humor is funny, I hate public restrooms. I will use whatever avoidance techniques I can to avoid using public bathrooms.
24. I really love that Christmas decorations are already up at stores. It fuels my need to plan ahead.
    
25. I lay awake at night, sometimes for hours, because I've had some project pop in my head and I want to work out the details.
26. Once, I told my friends parents that my family vacation was going to be going around touring different OUThouses. {I should have said light houses} I was totally confused about why they were laughing hysterically at me.
27. Ever since I was old enough to know what a Golden Birthday was, I was bummed that mine occurred when I was 5 and too young to appreciate it.
    

Well that is some truly random stuff about me.

Oh and I should through in a very Happy Golden Birthday to Monica(Sept 27.) I really truly did think about the fact that it was golden birthday and I was a little envious.

Random Pictures

Last post for the day! I wanted to post some of the cute random pictures I have from the last few days.

Morgan is a master at crawling now and is even venturing into climbing. At my parents house she crawled over to these train boxes, climbed on one of them and just sat there proud as can be. A few minutes later she fell forward flat on her face.
I'm pretty sure the most important thing is that I have it documented that she was up on the box though.

Here is a cute story about Joshua. He has been going to story time at the library recently and today my Mom took him because a state representative was reading a story and handing out a copy of the book Corduroy. Anyways, she took a different route to the library due to road construction. Joshua was telling her that she was going the wrong way to the library. My Mom was trying to tell him that they were still going to the library, but we was insistent. When they got there, he started saying Yay! Library!

Now for pictures! Oh and that is Joshua's Thomas train whistle in the picture, he was trying to learn how to use it.

This month is such a special one!

Yesterday marked the beginning of my birthday month! Usually I don't declare the whole month as mine, but we went out for my birthday dinner with my parents, so why not?
We went to Rainforest Cafe and it was SO fun. I had never eaten there before but I have wanted to ever since it opened. The ambiance was so cool and the food was pretty good too. We lucked into going on Family Night, which means kids eat for $1.99. The typical kids meal is $6, so that isn't so bad. Next time we go, we are going to order Morgan a meal too and really do the family night right. I highly recommend that you save your pennies and check out the Rainforest cafe, even if is just to say that you tried it.

I have several pictures that we took from the evening.






I also have this handy dandy video of Morgan's latest parlor trick. She can wave! She will wave at Hi, Bye-Bye, or Night night. It is awesome! We will take a better video sometime, but I wanted to get something up.



Stay tuned this month for some special posts....

Ryan's birthday bash

We had some friends over last Friday to celebrate Ryan's birthday and it was a lot of fun.
I borrowed my Mom's Thomas Play tent and added it to our little Thomas play tent for the kids. The men played Wii and the women sat around the table and talked.

We had cake, ice cream, banana bread, and apple dip(yummmy).