Happy St. Patrick's Day 2014!

Well St. Patrick's day usually comes and goes for us, not a HUGE deal. This year I stepped it up a notch and put green food coloring in our gallon of milk! I called the kids downstairs and said "Look in the fridge!" The kids totally thought a tricky leprechaun had snuck into the kitchen over night and colored our milk green! It was like Christmas!! Anyway, we ate the green milk with lucky charms (of course). It was a fun little way to celebrate the day.

PS: please excuse any typos, I wrote this from my phone. :)

Happy 31 to me!

I have a fabulous group of friends in my new ward who wanted to have a dinner to celebrate my birthday! I felt so absolutely showered with love that evening! We went out to dinner at BJ's. I just love their food! We had a lot of laughs and gifts and pizookies and fun!! 

Visit from the Hunts!

We had a fabulous visit from the Jeff and Terra Hunt family recently! They came with their six children to our little house and brought so much love (and yummy food)! We went to the beach one day and Disney the other two days. We had a lot of bonding time which we have needed since we haven't seen eachother in a while.

We also met up with the Tyler and Dixie Hunt family while we were at Disney too. It was an impromptu reunion of sorts. I'm grateful for family! Sometime we are away for so long we forget that there are so many people out there who love us unconditionally. 

PS: please excuse my typos, I'm writing this from my phone. :)

Valentines Day 2014

Happy Valentines Day 2014! 

Ethan was out of school today for some reason. California has different days off than Arizona. I was happy to have him home though! We spent the day at the gym and then the park, then we went on a walk (it was 75 degrees today). 

In the evening, I got the kids set up in their room making valentines for everyone in the family and I went downstairs and decorated our little table. When the kids were done with their valentines, they came downstairs and were overjoyed to see the decorated table! They love the little touches, the little details. We had a wonderful chicken and pasta dinner and after that, we read our Valentines out loud and talked about how much we love eachother. 

After a few minutes we had heart shaped  brownies and icecream. I was so full by then, I only had a few bites, but yum! 

It was such a sweet night that I will cherish forever. I love my husband Joe for all that he is. 

My heart feels warm

Tonight Ethan, Ivy, and I were at the dinner table. Ethan was wondering if spirits are real, and are they ghosts. I told him that there are spirits and they look just like us, but we can't see them because they are in another place. I told him about how we when we were in heaven, we knew a lot of the people who would be good spirits and would come and help us when we needed it here on this earth. We talked about some of our relatives who have died, and how we will get to see them again when we pass from this life. He agreed that the day we get to see our relatives again will be a great day! And then I talked about Jesus. I poured out my heart to him about how much joy we will feel when we get to see Him again, and give Him a big hug. All of a sudden I saw Ethan put his head in his hands and things went silent. I went over to him and hugged him and asked him if he was okay. Through his quiet sob he said, "My heart just feels really warm." We waited in the quiet for another minute and soaked in the moment. This was a proud mommy moment because I see that his testimony is becoming his own. 

Disneyland day

I'm sitting here "watching" the Super Bowl so I figure I'll do something a little better with my time. :) Joe took the day off of work last Tuesday so that we could all go to Disneyland. What a treat! Here are some of the best pics! 

I love my Ethan boy. This is us waiting for the tram in the morning.

The fam on the tram. :)

We love this sweet little rocket ride in California Adventure!

Here's one of Ivy and I on the Chew Chew train.

I absolutely loved this time we spent at the animation station. We learned how to draw Olaf from the movie Frozen. That desk behind us was the desk that a lot of the sketches for The Little Mermaid were drawn on.

Ya, so in this pic from space mountain, Ivy is scared out of her mind so Joe is trying to console her. Ethan is also totally scared, but he is forced to hold on to my seat bar since I am too busy having a blast on my favorite ride!! Lol!

This little moment was cool! Joe kept saying, "I think that is the lead singer of Imagine Dragons" and of course I had to go up and approach his wife and say, "is he in a band?" "Yep" "Imagine Dragons?" "Ya" "Do you mind if I take a picture?" So I gave her my camera and she took a picture of us. He was very kind. He was walking his little daughter on one of those leash backpack things. Anyway, I'm glad I took the pic!

The kids LOVED pirate island. There were caves and gold!

We took the steam boat around pirate island. Joe loved the peaceful feeling on the boat. I think I would have liked it more had the kids not decided to run all over the ship...

Ivy almost pulled the sword from the stone...

Anywho, the lines were so short all day. I wish I could have frozen time and stayed there forever. Family time is the BEST TIME. I'm sure of it.

Ps. Please excuse my typos, I wrote this from my phone.

Pictures of my girl

We blew Ivy's hair dry this Sunday morning before church. She has always been one who likes to touch soft things (her unicorn wishful). Anyway, she was just stroking the smooth strands of her hair and she flitted out of my room into her room. She didn't think I was watching but she started to dance and flit and spin. I finally caught her eye and she smiled sheepishly. I knew I had to take a photo of her in this dream-like state. The light was streaming through the window. She posed for me in many different positions and this one turned out to be better than perfect! 

Here's another shot of her from that morning.

In another occasion, I spotted her laying on our fake grass in the backyard warming in the sun. She looked so peaceful and content. 

She's always good to give me a good photo. My sweet Ethan shys away from the camera for one reason or another but I get good shots here and there...

Play time

Long long ago I used to stretch in the funniest positions when I would relax at home. I had to giggle when I saw Ivy doing this today. She had no idea that she was even in a weird spot. One thing that makes motherhood so much easier is that I've been there before. I have a better understanding of my children's behaviors because I did them myself. I can't imagine trying raise a child without having been a child. 

For instance, I remember playing beauty salon with my mother when I was a child and how much joy it brought me. So the other day when the kids got out the hair accessories, I volunteered to be their guinea pig! Yes, that's a smoothie mixer on my nose! 

What goes around comes around.

Just gotta laugh

Ha! Funny story:

I had fun using my Rhonna Designs phone app making this cute little quote for the New Year. Well after posting it on my social networks people starting liking it and commenting on it so I was happy that it had inspired them! Then all the sudden one of my friends Jill says "you know that progress is spelled wrong." So after taking a second look at it, I noticed that it is missing a letter! Boo! So the irony in this is that I am already being taught the lesson that I was trying portray in the quote which is, IT'S IMPOSSIBLE to be perfect. We need to just keep swimming and we'll accomplish what we need to do. Anyway, I loved the lesson in it!

As always, please excuse any typos in this post...I wrote it from my phone.

Compliments mean something

I sink into the mindset, at times, that what's most important in life is the big things. Big life changing things seem to be what we gauge our happiness upon. Today was a blessing in that I was reminded that it's actually the little things that make life worth living. 

I went to my morning aerobics class and I was especially happy because it's Wednesday, and I get to see my three special friends on Wednesdays. They have Down's syndrome. They always make my day because they light up with a smile when I walk into the room. I talked to each lady and told them how happy I was to see them that day. They were so happy! One of the ladies is really outgoing. She was excited to show me her new Tshirt. The other two ladies are shy but they will talk if you talk to them first. You see, when I first started going to the class, I noticed that nobody was talking to these ladies. No one would even stand near them. I wondered why... Sometimes when someone is different from us, we don't know how to behave around them so we just do nothing. That must be why. 

Well I returned to my little spot and as I did, I noticed that a few people from the class were looking at me. I thought nothing of it and went on with my aerobics. About half way through the class, I went to get a drink from my water bottle. An elderly man said, "Young lady, that was pretty cool what you did in the beginning of the class." I was confused so I said, "What did I do?" He said, "It was nice of you to talk to those ladies over there, it made me feel bad that I hadn't done that yet. I should have been the one to do that." I thanked him and went back to my work out.

My whole mood changed. I felt happy that I had said hello to those ladies and shown people that they are sweet and they appreciate any happy gesture that we make. I was also happy that the man had taken the time to point that out. He didn't have to say anything at all, but he did because he wanted me to know. I'm grateful for that.

Later on this morning I took a quick shower and got out just as my phone was ringing. Now mind you, I don't generally answer my phone unless I know who it is that is calling. This number was anonymous. But I answered. It was my sweet visiting teacher Trish Sant. She wanted to tell me that her young daughter was talking about me on the way to school. She said, "You know that lady who we visit teach?" "Yes" "Well I thought her talk was so great on Sunday, how she compared her family to things found in a junk drawer (yes I did that) and I can't quite remember what Ivy was compared to." So she and Trish talked about it and remembered that it was a rubber band. Anywho, Trish wanted to call and compliment me on my talk and tell me that she thought it was cool that even her young daughter was impacted by it. I appreciated that more than you'll ever know. She was a saint for taking the time out of her day to call me and tell me that.

God has blessed me twice today with good feedback. I know it's Him. I'm mostly just happy that the compliments were not about my clothes or my looks, but about something infinitely more important, my actions. I'm going to need a good dose of humble pie to come down from this. Or am I? These kind words brought me joy and confidence that what I'm doing here on this earth is good and right. I take pride in that. 

Ashley 

Ps: please excuse any typos. I wrote this from my phone.