Ashlynn is Almost ONE?!

Ashlynn is almost a year old! I can't believe her birthday is in just over a week. Crazy! She has been up to a lot of new stuff this month so I thought I would hurry and post about it. First of all she finally started crawling!!! She has been getting around pretty good for a few months now by doing the "worm" (it seriously looked like she was doing the worm!) but she finally decided it was much easier to crawl.

She also started pulling herself up on things. At first she could pull herself up to her knees but after just a couple of days she started pulling herself up so she was standing up. And just within the last few days she has started cruising the furniture a little bit. She'll take a step or two while she's holding onto the couch to get closer to something that she wants.

One of her favorite things to say now is MAMA!! Yay!! She finally says mama!! She also says dada, hi, and uh-oh (although uh-oh just sounds like "oh" when she says it, but we know what she means).

She is super smart. If we ask to her wave, clap, blow kisses, give kisses, give loves (hugs), give high five, or show us her tongue, she'll do it without us showing her how. We're working on showing her where her feet and nose are. Sometimes she'll grab her feet when I ask her to but sometimes she won't so I don't if she knows that for sure or not.

If we ask her where mama, dada, Dawson, Minnie, Cinderella, or Blue is she will look at (or go get) whoever we are asking about.

She loves to play, especially with Dawson. She is always crawling into his room even though she has a TON of toys out in the living room. She also loves to pull all the Wii games off the TV stand. Oh and the Wii remotes. They belong on the floor according to her. She's a big sweetheart and loves to cuddle and give kisses and loves. We don't even have to ask for kisses and loves half of the time and she'll just give them to us on her own. ♥

She has been eating a lot of new food lately. No more baby food for our little princess, she's ready to eat what we're eating! She eats cooked carrots, peas, green beans, corn, spaghetti, mashed potatoes, ground turkey, chicken, refried beans, bananas, diced (soft) apples, jelly sandwiches, crackers, cheerios, raviolis, toast, pizza... I think that is it for now. She basically eats a little bit of whatever we eat. And actually sometimes it's not just a "little bit" she often out eats Dawson at dinner time. *lol*

Here are some pictures...

This was over at Papa and Carrie's house on Christmas day. I was hoping she was going to try to climb up the stairs to get me but she didn't.


Here are some pictures of her eating a jelly sandwich and some spaghetti.


Not too much longer and she won't be getting a bottle anymore! She is really good with sippy cups already so I don't think it will be too big of deal making the switch. We are going to wait until February to stop giving her the bottle and formula, though. Since she was 6 weeks premature we're going to wait until she's 13 months before we give her whole milk, just to be sure that she's ready for it.

Here we are before bedtime reading a story.


When Ashlynn smiles she very rarely shows her top teeth. She has FIVE teeth now, two on the bottom and three on the top. When I took this picture her third top tooth had just broke through so you can't see it in the picture but you can see her other two top teeth!


I love her big toothy grin!


And here is a picture of Dawson doing his Risky Business pose. ♥ He's such a stud muffin.



And last but not least, here is a short video of Ashlynn walking a little bit with her push toy. I need to get some video of her crawling, too, because it's so cute!! Anyway, let's watch her practice walking for now. :)

All Things Christmas

I got behind with pictures that I wanted to share from this month so I am going to share them all in this post. Well, most of them at least, there will be one more post tomorrow and then I think I will be completely caught up. And like I said in yesterday's post, my goal is to post at least once a week from now on. I really like keeping up on this blog because it's fun to go back and look through it and see what we have been up to the past few years.

Anyway, I want to start with the kids' Santa picture! They both did really well when we went to visit Santa. I was nervous about both of them really. Dawson did better than he ever has and actually talked to Santa and told him what he wanted! He asked for Cars 2 and a guitar. He must have been a really good boy this year because Santa brought him both of those things. Ashlynn did really good, too. She didn't smile or anything but at least she let him hold her, that's definitely a win in my book.


Next up is the kids' ornaments for this year. I have posted pictures of Dawson's ornament in the blog every year so I can't stop now! This isn't the best picture but I am glad that I remembered to take one. We got Ashlynn a Baby's 1st Christmas ornament and Dawson a Blue's Clues ornament.


We went to temple square to look at Christmas lights with Brandee and her family. It was a lot of fun! I really like this picture of the temple and the nativity scene in the reflecting pool.



Here's Brandee, Andy, Hailee, and Drea.


And us!


On the Friday before Christmas we went to look at Christmas lights again. We went to "The Night Before Christmas" street. This street has about 8 or 9 houses on each side (you turn around in a cul-de-sac and go up the other side... does that make sense?) that decorate their houses really cool and each house has a billboard out on their lawn that tells the story of The Night Before Christmas.

Here are some of my favorite houses from that street:


And we also drove to a house that has their lights synchronized to music and it looks really neat! There was a ton of traffic and the street isn't that big so we decided to park down the street and walk to the house to watch the show. We all thought it was really cool!



Me and Dawson made rice krispie treat snowmen. (We also made Christmas trees using waffle cones, frosting and m&m's but I didn't take a picture of those.)


And here is a picture of our babies in front of the tree. We almost picked this one for our Christmas card because they are being so sweet and giving each other hugs but we ended up picking a different one. Both pictures are great! :)

Christmas 2011

I hope everybody had a wonderful Christmas! We sure did! I need to hurry and get caught up on things that I want to post in our blog before the year ends. Make sure to check back tomorrow because I'll have another post up then. I'm making it a goal to update our blog at least once a week in 2012 so I won't get behind anymore.

Here is our Christmas tree after Santa came. We all got spoiled this year!



And our stockings were full, too! Ashlynn has a stocking like ours but my dad and Carrie bought her this cute Baby's First Christmas stocking so we definitely wanted to use it this year!


Here's a closeup of Ashynn's stocking just because I think it's adorable.


On Christmas morning Ashlynn woke up around 7. Dave fed her and when he was finished I asked if I could go get Dawson up because I was excited to show him that Santa came! When he walked out to the living room he noticed that stockings first and then he went and stood in front of the tree and said "that's a whole lot of presents!" We all went through our stockings first...


And then it was time to open presents! Dawson loved opening them and he was so excited about everything that he got that he would ask us to get it out of the box right away so he could play with it. We had to keep telling him that he had to open all of his presents first and then he could start playing with his new toys.


Here's a short video of Dawson opening one of his presents.




Ashlynn did pretty good opening presents with Dave's help of course.


Here is most of Dawson's stuff. I say *most* because I took this picture pretty late in the day and he had already been playing with things so when I went to gather everything for the picture I wasn't sure if I had gotten it all. I know for sure that his snow boots, clothes, and cape are missing from the picture... not sure what else is missing, if anything.

He got an Alphie robot, guitar, Mickey blanket with his name on it, Candy Land, a Toy Story puzzle, a couple of books, Cars 2, Woody, Buzz, Bullseye, a Rocket, Minne and Daisy (he already has the rest of the characters), underwear, Memory game, vtech Explore and Learn map, car, LeapFrog Scribble and Write and the things I mentioned above that are missing from the pictures.


This blok table was for Dawson and Ashlynn since they both love blocks so much.


And here is Ashlynn's stuff. Again she is probably missing a few things like the Minnie Mouse doll that was in her stocking and her new clothes are not in the picture. Oh, and she also got a Minnie blanket with her name on it that is not in the picture.

She got some Mega Bloks, Cinderella doll, Eeyore pull along toy with shapes, picnic basket shape sorter, a puzzle, a few books, Winne the Pooh movie, stacking cups, Mozart Magic cube, Vtech Touch and Teach Turtle, counting piggy bank, a bath toy, Vtech Crazy Legs Learning Bug, Fisher Price frog toy.


I wanted to add these pictures of Ashlynn and my dad because I thought they were too sweet. ♥


Dawson seems to have a lot of favorite toys so far. He LOVES his Woody and Buzz action figures, he took them everywhere we went yesterday and played with them all day. He also wouldn't take his cape off at all. He has jammed out on his guitar a lot already and loves building blocks on their new table. Oh, and his Rocket from Little Einsteins is also a huge hit. I know he is going to get a lot of use out of all his new toys because he loves them. We're excited to watch Cars 2 either tonight or tomorrow because he has been asking for that for months now and none of us has seen it yet.

I LOVE this video that I got of Dawson playing his guitar. He's wearing his cape in it too! He's just singing jibberish but I love it.



I'll be back tomorrow with more pictures!

Sharing an apple with Ashlynn

I was eating an apple last night while I was holding Ashlynn and she wanted a bite so I let her have one... It was a Honeycrisp apple (yum!) and they're pretty bitter this week (nooooooo!) but still yummy to me. Here's what Ashlynn thought about it:








hahahahahahah She still wanted another bite after all of that. I almost choked on my apple because I was laughing so hard when Dave showed me the pictures. *sigh* We're so mean sometimes. :P

Ashlynn's first Halloween!

Here are the kids dressed up on Halloween right before we went trick or treating.


Such a cute poodle and Woody! ♥ Ashlynn went to about 10 houses and then I took her home with me to hand out candy to all the trick or treaters that were coming to our house. Dave and Dawson stayed about for another half hour or so until Dawson said he was ready to come home.

This little play area is across the street from our house and as soon as Dawson saw it he ran over to play. He said he wanted to go down the slide just one time and then he wanted to go trick or treating again. haha


These were our neighbors pumpkins. I thought they were too cute! I want to make kitty pumpkins next year. :)


Here is Ashlynn's and Dawson's pumpkins after they were finished trick or treating. Lots of candy!


We picked out a few pieces for each of us (well besides Ashlynn) and Dave took the rest of the candy to work with him. So it's pretty much gone already besides the few pieces that I set aside for Dawson. He isn't really into candy yet thankfully! Of course he wants it if we offer it to him but he doesn't ask for it or anything and he doesn't need it so I didn't feel bad about giving most of it away. I'm sure his dentist will be happy about it too. :P

Halloween was lots of fun! We sat out on the porch and handed out our Halloween candy because there were SO many kids! There was no point in having to keep opening and closing the door. I think the kids had more fun doing it that way because they got to see all the kids in their costumes a little better. Dawson has already decided what he is going to be for Halloween next year. I'm sure he'll change his mind before then, but for now he wants to be Rich from the Imagination Movers. It's kind of funny to me that he picked Rich because he pretends to be Dave and Scott all the time but never Rich. hahah I kind of hope he doesn't change his mind, I want him to be a Mover next Halloween! Here is a picture for those of you who don't know who the Movers are. :)


Dave is in the red hat. Dawson puts on a red hat and pretends like he's Dave all the time (a few of you have seen that on webcam a few times). Rich is next to him (that's who he says he wants to be next year), then there's Smitty in the cowboy hat (he never pretends to be Smitty), and Scott has the wobble googles on his head. Dawson has a pair of goggles that he puts on and he calls them wobble goggles and tells us he's Scott. We love watching him pretend. :D

I hope everybody had a great Halloween!

Dawson's 3rd Birthday Party

Dawson had a great birthday party a few days ago. His friends David, Hailey, Abby, Madie, Landon, and baby Avery all came to celebrate with him. I want to share some pictures really quick! :)

I made him a Blue's Clues cake. This is the first time I have ever made a cake like this and I like the way it turned out! Dawson liked it too!


Ashlynn loved looking a Avery and kept trying to grab her.


Singing happy birthday to the birthday boy.


Ashlynn was eating some Cheerios while everybody else was eating cake and ice cream. Just a couple more months and she'll get some cake too! ;)


I had to get a picture of Landon's messy face. Looks like he enjoyed the cake and ice cream. :D


I wanted to post this picture because you can see Abby, Madie, and Hailey. I need to remember next year to get all of his friends together for a group picture.


And here is some pics of mama and dada with our 3 year old!