We love the sunshine!

We had a beautiful sunny day mid May and invited a few friends over for a BBQ. The kids had a blast playing in the lake and around the yard. Pictured from left to right: Henry, Gracie, Violet, Elsa and Ashley.

All this picture is missing is the noisy pop cans dragging behind and a sign that says Just Married! So cute.

Grandpa Bob, Ashley and Jacob. Jacob and Ashley had a great time chasing each other around Uncle Dennis' house. Auntie Marianne and new cousin Luke had gone back to the hospital to make sure Luke's jaundice was under control.

Girls Weekend 2010! Had a great time with the girls as usual. Weather was a bit cold and cloudy but that's never stopped us before!

Ashley with her two princess Aurora's. Ashley LOVES princess things these days.

Ashley and daddy riding on the four wheeler down on the beach. With the lake so low, we have enough beach to be able to ride the four wheeler down there! We've been waving Ashley's magic princess wand in hopes that several inches of sand would fall from the sky and cover our beach but so far our wish hasn't come true. :)

Here we are celebrating my Grandma's 80th birthday!

Ashley was very excited to eat a radish from Daddy's garden. She could barely wait for me to wash the dirt off of it. I gave it to her and she took a huge bite out of it and then made the same face most people do when eating a radish. Needless to say, she ended up spitting it out in the garbage and then begging for water.

Last week Ashley asked daddy if he could take her to the "wing store". We were just as puzzled as to what a wing store was but soon learned it's where you can buy wings so you can fly just like Tinkerbell and the rest of the fairies. We took a family trip to Walmart to buy some wings and they didn't have any. After a small melt down we were able to drag her out of the store by bribing her with the Ariel princess doll and a voucher to look for wings at Target. Daddy looked online and found a cute pair of wings and told her in two school days they would be here but we never ordered them. Two school days went buy on the way home she said...it's been two days...are my wings at home? Ohhh, break my heart! So I told her in two more days we would get the wings. She was very sad that she had to wait two more days. But then, two more days went buy and I had stopped at Toys R Us and bought her wings and they came with a wand and two ponytail holders for $7. Good deal! So, I pick her up from school and while we are in her class she asked if he wings came and I told her they were in the car and she screamed with excitement and then told all of her friends and her teachers on our way out the door. Once in the car she found the package and just oogled over them. I told her she had to wait till we got home to open them. On the drive home she could barely contain her excitement or complete a sentence she was so excited. She said Mom, I am soooo excited to fly. It occurred to me then that she really believed she was going to be able to fly. Yikes...quick think of something to help explain the what if's if she couldn't' fly. Ahhh, ok, got it... So I told her, I sure hope you can fly honey but remember Tinkerbell and her friends all get magic fairy dust from Terrence and we don't have any magic fairy dust so I don't know if it will work but you can try ok? Ok mom. Then we got home. The next two video's explain what happened next.




Here's a video of Ashley telling me how excited she is about her wings.

This video is "They don't fly". Can you hear the disappointment in her voice. Oh I about cried.

Ashley's first trip to the dentist! I took her to a pediatric dentist because she has a tooth that is bugging her. She was so brave and did so good! The first appt is more or less to get the kids accustomed to the office and the process etc. They counted Ashley's teeth and they were able to get a look at the tooth that is bothering her. Because she will eventually lose all of her baby teeth Dentist Mark suggested that we just go the temporary route of covering it with a protective material rather than taking her to Childrens, using sedation and drilling the tooth etc. So I plan to take her back once I am on maternity leave. (Gotta save all of my PTO time right now). Dentist Mark and Anne sent Ashley home with a bag full of goodies, including a toothbrush, floss, floss picks, a mask, bitwings for x-rays and purple gloves so that we could play dentist at home and increase our success rate at our next visit. After we left the dentist, we then had to go to her 3 year well child check up. Our normal doctor wasn't in the office so we saw Dr Nick. Again, Ashley did fantastic and was so brave. She's pretty used to the gig at the doctors office now but she was so easy going I was amazed. She weighed in at 35 lbs which puts her at the 78% for weight and she was 3' 5" which put her at the 95% for height. Dr Nick also recommended a hearing test and eye test but said not to worry about it if she wouldn't' cooperate. They brought in the cart to do the hearing test but unfortunately the nurse was an intern from some school and was maybe 19 years old. Ashley allowed me to put the ear phones on her ears but then she was to hit the button when she heard it beep. I think just getting the ear phones on should have passed the test. Obviously she can hear but she didn't get the part about clicking the little button. So, test attempted. Next it was out to the hallway for the seeing test with the 19 yr old nurse... ok Ashley stand here and look allllllll the way down this hall and read off what letters I point to. Ummmmm.... she does know a lot of her letters but seriously do you expect her to do this test? Ok upon my pushing we'll try to use the picture shapes instead but can we first see if she even knows what they all are? We practiced and then went all the way down the hall and my little baby held the spoon thingy over her eye and told the nurse what she was pointing at. I couldn't believe what a good listener and how well she was behaving. Another nurse stopped in the hall to watch and kindly coached our 19 yr old nurse along with a comment to simply note the test as attempted. She did a great job and can obviously see but we can try it when she's a little older. (Did she read my mind...a hearing and sight test on a 3 year old? Kinda crazy in my mind unless of course I had concerns with either of those skills, which I don't). Then we had to go back to the room and our young nurse came in and said, ok, last step...two shots! Ummmm duhhhhh, can you not say SHOTS? I got AJ to sit up on the bench and the shots were done within a few minutes but I wished I had asked for someone else to do it. Don't practice your shot giving skills on my baby. Ashley of course screamed bloody murder and said NO MOMMY. I don't want shots. Break my heart. When we left the doctor Ashley got in her car seat and said "Mom, I don't want to go to any more appointments today, ok?" OK honey! Let's go home. Such a sweetie pie.

Here's my little helper wearing her purple gloves from Dentist Mark while cleaning the windows.

What else is new? Ashley's been bringing home projects from school that have them circling the two letters or animals etc out of three in a row that are the same. She's also came home with a few notes from school of stories she's told her teacher Tiffany. The last one said Ashley told me today that she had a "rough weekend" and had to spend time in the baby's crib for hitting mom. Seriously...what a little fibber! Where does she even come up with this stuff? I hope Tiffany can decipher which of AJ's stories are true and which are not!

Yesterday we were playing outside and Ruby (our dog) was getting in Ashley's way when Ashley turned to her and said "Go away Ruby, you're driving me crazy!" I'm telling you, 3 years olds provide endless entertainment.

I'm now 35 weeks along with baby #2, leaving us about a month with the life as we know it now.