Dawson's Caterpillars

Dawson got his caterpillars on Monday. We've been watching them for almost a week now and we're all amazed at how fast they grow!!!

Here is a picture of them on Monday:

And here is a picture of them today (Saturday):

They're HUGE! And one of them is already hanging upside down.

We've read The Perfect Butterfly and The Very Hungry Caterpillar a few times this week and of course talked about what the caterpillars are doing (eating a LOT) and what they're getting ready for. Dawson seems pretty interested and excited.

I asked Dawson to tell me a little bit about his caterpillars so I could get it on video. He loves telling people about them. (And I love hearing him say cocoon and metamorphosis)



I asked Dawson if he wanted to name the caterpillars when we got them and he said he wanted to name all of them Caterpillar the caterpillar. haha You might remember me posting about Sunshine, a butterfly that we had seen on our patio every day for over a week (we haven't seen him in two days now) that Dawson wanted to name Butterfly the butterfly.  Silly boy!

Animal Kisses

I just wanted to write this down while it was on my mind. Ashlynn was just playing with one of her shape sorters. This shape sorter has animals on top of the shapes, she was playing with the cow and the sheep. I was telling her what sounds they make and she was making the sounds. Then out of the blue she put the cow and the sheep against each other and made a kissing sound. Awwww!! She made them kiss!! This is the second time I have seen her do this and I think it's so cute!!! Dawson never did that when he was playing and we didn't teach her to do it, she just started to do it all on her own. It's so sweet. :)

Love, love, LOVE!

Dawson has been a little stinker today. All morning long I kept thinking that he definitely woke up on the wrong side of the bed! It was getting a little frustrating that he wouldn't listen to me at all and he kept crying over everything. He eventually sat down on the couch with his magnadoodle and started watching TV. A few minutes later he said, "Mama, I wrote you something. It spells I love you." And he turned his mangadoodle around and showed me what he wrote...

Awww!! He can be a stinker sometimes but he really is such a big sweetheart. I am so grateful and feel so blessed to have two little sweethearts (and one big sweetheart) in my life.

When I was making lunch I decided to send Dawson a little message back...

I wrote "I ♥ U 2" on his plate with whipped cream. It made him really happy and he told me that he loved it. :) (He also told me my 2 looked like a Z... haha)

Our morning started off a little rough but ended up being lovely. I wouldn't change a single minute of it.

Random Cell Phone Pictures

I take a lot of pictures with my phone and I decided I need to start sharing them in the blog. I'll try to do it every couple of weeks or so.

Here is a pic of Ashlynn climbing into the bookcase. She loves to sit in there, I think we're going to have to keep the bottom two shelves empty for a long time.

Dawson is ready to fix the kitchen table. I didn't know there was anything wrong with it but apparently there was and it's all fixed now. :)

Ashlynn was trying to climb into her baby's stroller so I helped her out a little bit. It was funny and she had a blast being pushed around in it.

Dawson even pushed her around a bit. I love how she is looking back at him in this picture.

Sharing a shake with mommy.

Saturday morning cuddles.

Sometimes the only way I can get Dawson to drink all of his milk in the morning is to bribe him with a straw.

Here is Dawson playing the pan pipe that daddy made him for music class.

Ashlynn loved this swing in Washington Park while we were in Denver.

We saw Dawson street while we were in Denver. We drove past it three times so Dawson could see his name up on the sign, he thought it was pretty cool!

Looking at squirrels.

Sharing a shake with dada. (Dave got a pic of me and Dawson sharing a shake but it's on his phone and he is not here right now. I'll try to remember to add it when he gets home.)

Looking at ducks with Mema and Papaw.

That was pretty much all of the pictures that I got from our trip to Denver. We accidentally left our camera at home. Oops!

And finally a cute picture of Ashlynn asleep in her bed.

Sunshine the Butterfly

This big yellow butterfly loves the flowers that we have out on the patio. It has stopped by everyday for the last three days. All of us get excited to see him everyday, hopefully he will keep coming by. I asked Dawson what we should name and he said "Butterfly the butterfly." I asked him if he liked the name Sunshine and he did. I told him that Sunshine would be a special name for him because he's yellow and he because he makes all of us so happy when he comes by. He really seemed to like that. I hope we see him again tomorrow!

We decided to buy Dawson a live butterfly garden. He'll get 3 or 4 caterpillars that will eventually turn into butterflies! It should be a lot of fun and I'll make sure to post a lot of pictures throughout the process. :)

Mother's Day 2012 and LASIK!

This morning I woke up to a yummy breakfast, some cute decorations, and the best family in the world! Here are the decorations that Dave had put up. Dawson gets really excited about decorating for every holiday and his excitement has definitely rubbed off on me and Dave.

A couple of weeks ago I saw an "all about my mom" questionnaire that I thought would be cute to hear Dawson's answers to, so I emailed the link to Dave as a hint that I wanted it for Mother's Day. He got the hint. ;)

I love his answers, some of them made me laugh. :)

We were able to spend time with a lot of my family today and we skyped with Dave's parents before we put the kids to bed. I love days that are filled with family and lots of love! Thank you all for making my Mother's Day so great!

We went to Arctic Circle for lunch and ice cream and I snapped this picture of Ashlynn because she reminded me of Santa Claus. :) She definitely enjoys ice cream and she looks adorable while she's at it.

Here are some pics of me and the kidlets.

I wanted to try and get a picture of them each giving me a kiss on the cheek, and they did, but Ashlynn also was trying to pull off my sunglasses. That's ok, though, I still love the picture.

A couple of weeks ago Dave entered me in a contest that The Eye Institute of Utah was running. They were giving away LASIK eye surgery to four deserving mothers... and I won!!! I didn't believe it at first. They called me to tell me that I had won and I was totally confused and thought it was some sort of scam. But after I talked to Dave and did a bit of googling I realized that it was real! Yippee!! The lady that called to tell me that I had won sent me an email with what Dave wrote about it. I thought it was too sweet and it totally mad me cry when I read it. Here is what he wrote:

"Jamie, the mother of my 2 wonderful children has two incredible reasons she deserves to get the LASIK she has been wanting for so long. For the last 5 years of my service in the Navy she was the most supportive and positive part of mine & our children's lives. Even though I was gone on deployments for most of those 5 years she never once questioned why and always had a positive outlook for our children to see. I can't even begin to tell you how active she is with our children. She is always doing some sort of project or music classes with them. One of the traditions she started since we were away from our families was to do a calendar for the grandparents with pictures of them doing projects relating to each month so they can see how they are growing. That is just a small example of her creativity and time she spends with them.

The second is for her positive change in not only hers but our entire family. Both of us for the most part have been at least a little over weight for most of our adult lives, we were both heavier than either of us realized. One day she was ready for a road to a healthier life and she brought the rest of us with her. She exercises daily now and even wants to be a fitness instructor to help other people. Although the focus is on a healthy lifestyle not weight loss she has lost almost 80 lbs and I have lost almost 50 lbs due to the changes she encouraged in our life. I love knowing that my kids will grow up much healthier because of her. She is even running a "Biggest Loser" competition for the rest of our family. I think she has received the biggest compliment from some of my former co-workers. When they read her blogs and saw how active she is with our children they told me that it made them feel like they had an inadequate childhood seeing how much she did with our kids. It made me feel incredibly proud of her. Jamie absolutely is the most deserving mother you could find to give the gift of LASIK!"

Awww! Everything happened so fast after that. I got a call on Wednesday saying that I had won and a week and a half later I had the surgery. I first had to go in and make sure I was a candidate to have the surgery. The first appointment only lasted about 20 minutes and they determined that I was a good candidate for LASIK. I had another appointment two days later that lasted about 3 hours. And then two days after that I went in for surgery. I was SO nervous, luckily they gave me some valium and that completely calmed me down. The surgery was over pretty quickly. Everything was a little blurry because my corneas were swollen but everything still looked better then it did before I had the surgery and didn't have my contacts in. I had to wear these eye shields (you'll see lots of funny pictures in just a minute) and had to put eye drops in my eyes every 20 minutes. They told me to expect a little bit of blurry/foggy vision for about a week but all of that went away after a few hours. It is SO weird to be able to see perfectly without my glasses or contacts. I have another appointment on Thursday to check my vision and everything. I think they said I would have appointments at one week, one month, three months, six months, and twelve months. All of those appointments are free, too! And then after that I have to have regular yearly exams which are not free but I can choose where I go for my exams and as long as I keep up with my yearly checkups my LASIK is guaranteed and if I ever need any enhancements those will be free. Sweet!!


Here are the flowers that they gave me when I got there.

And after surgery. I had to wear the eye shields and when I was in the sun I had to have dark sunglasses on. I actually ended up wearing my own sunglasses over the pair they gave me because the sun was too much for me.

That night I was super paranoid that I was going to rub my eyes in my sleep so I made Dave put extra tape over my eye shields. (Worst picture ever, I KNOW, but it's funny so I have to post it.)

And another bad picture.... Dave bought me some safety glasses to wear when I'm holding/playing with the kids so I didn't have to keep taping on the shields (I still tape the shields on at night because I don't trust myself in my sleep...I'll continue to do this for a week) because the kids like to poke me in the face a lot. Seeeeeeeeee....

Good thing I was wearing my safety glasses right then! haha

March for Babies - Team Ashlynn 2012

I talked about us doing the March of Dimes March for Babies walk a couple of weeks ago. The walk was last Saturday and it was amazing! First of all we ended up raising $600!!! Thank you so much to everybody that helped us out. We got a late start and only had about 2 1/2 weeks to collect donations so I think we did really good!!! Next year we plan on starting early and hopefully we'll raise even more.

Anyway, back to last Saturday, me, Dave, Dawson, Ashlynn, my dad, and Carrie all walked. First we met up for breakfast which we will have to remember for next year is not necessary because they had all kinds of food for free there! We got registered for the walk and then we walked around to all the booths they had and got entered into some contests (we didn't win anything). 

We didn't get too many pictures because our camera battery was almost dead and we didn't know how long it was going to last.

Here we go!

We bought a vinyl stroller cover to put over the stroller to help keep the kids warm. We weren't sure if it was going to rain or not (it didn't) and it was a little cool and windy so I think the cover helped a lot. At least block the wind. Dawson wasn't very happy when we put it on but he got used to it after a couple of minutes.

There was a LOT of people there. Here is a shot showing the people in front of us during the walk....

And the people that were behind us...

Those shots don't really show how many people were there but you kind of get the idea.

Here is me, my dad, and the kids at the finish line! Ashlynn had fallen asleep and Dawson was watching Peter Pan.

After the walk me and Ashlynn got our pictures taken in a picture booth.

Ashlynn was in the stroller most of the time at the walk so I don't have many good pictures of her while we were there but here's a cute one that I got after we got home. She loved the necklaces that they were handing out and wanted to wear all the ones we had.

The night of the walk was also the night that we had the Super Moon! Here are a couple of pictures that we got.

Oh, I almost forgot, Dawson likes to play a game where we look up at the clouds and then we tell one another what we think each cloud looks like. We usually play in the car. On this day Dawson was standing in the living room and he looked out the window and said "whoa, those clouds look like waves!" Me and Dave looked at the window and they certainly did look like waves! :)
 

Now that I am looking at the picture again the first "wave" also looks like Captain Hook's hook. I'll have to show it to Dawson, he'll get a kick out of that. :)

300 Piece Puzzle and Dawson's Room

Dawson loves puzzles and he also loves Peter Pan, so when I found this Peter Pan puzzle at Walmart a month or so ago I had to get it for him. It was a 300 piece puzzle, though. I figured we'd save it for him for awhile and when we thought he was ready we'd get it out for him. Well, I got a little anxious and wanted to do it with him. So we did it (on April 24th)! He was really excited when I showed it to him and he did way better than I thought he would!!

We started out by spreading the pieces around and making sure they were all turned over the right way. Then I started gathering pieces for him. I made a little pile of pieces that looked like were part of Peter Pan, I made another pile of pieces that looked like they were Captain Hook, etc. And from there Dawson put them together. He put all of the characters together and the banner up at the top that says Peter Pan. The only part that he couldn't do is the sky and water pieces...that's a lot of blue! And actually I shouldn't say he "couldn't" do it, maybe he could of! He did work on the puzzle with me for over an hour (way longer than I expected him to) before he started getting bored with it. So he didn't really try to do the really difficult parts. Me and Dave finished it up for him.

Here he is working on it... I really wish I would have taken more pictures, this is the only one I got of him doing the puzzle.

We wanted to hang it up in his room so we bought some puzzle glue and a frame for it. Dawson was super excited!

Here he is showing me how old he is. 3 (and a half) years old.

I decided while I was taking pictures of the puzzle in his room, I might as well take pictures of his room and take you on a tour of it. I'll do Ashlynn's room after I get caught up on all the posts that I have already uploaded pictures for.

Here is what you see when you are standing in the doorway.

His room is pretty big! And thanks to his OCD (yep, he's totally my kid!) it's almost always clean! The only time it's not clean is when he's playing in there. He is pretty good about cleaning up after he's done, sometimes he needs some help from us but I think he does a good job most of the time. He will not go to sleep if anything is out of place. All of his toys go in a certain spot and he knows where everything belongs and it *must* be put away before he can relax. haha

This is where most of his toys go. When he was around a year old I did a couple of blog posts called "Dawson's Space" so you've seen this before. The toys that are in it are different, though!

We decided to use that instead of a toy box because it's easier to keep organized, it looks nicer, and he can use it forever! :) We like it so much that we got one for Ashlynn to keep her toys in, too.

Here is the top of his dresser.

His block table and chair.

Here is his bed... which is hardly ever made to be honest. I straightened out the blankets before I took the pictures. :) And next to his bed is his tent.

Another picture of his tent and his table next to that. You can also see his closet and his little book shelf/toy organizer.

Here is a better picture of his book shelf/toy organizer and also where we hung up the puzzle. And that brings us back to his door.

He has a LOT of books so he also has this little bookcase in his closet. It's white because that is all they had when we went to buy it. I know that we are going to do Ashlynn's furniture in white and I also knew we'd be putting it in his closet so right now the color doesn't matter. It will either eventually be Ashlynn's OR we'll paint it to match his stuff.

The top of his closet is kind of cluttered....

I decided to take some pictures of some of his favorite things right now, too. Like this Peter Pan book. :) He has almost the entire book memorized and it's a pretty long book!

Both him and Ashlynn really like these Mickey Mouse Clubhouse toys.

And his Cars 2 cars. (I didn't put them away like this, he did. Seeeeeeeee!!! OCD!)

His crayons, coloring books, and paper. Totally should have straightened this out before I took a picture... just keepin' it real I guess. ;)

His puzzle drawer.

And last but definitely not least, Izzy, Jake, and Cubby from Jake and the Never Land Pirates (we need Skully but the Disney Store never has it when we go in and I don't want to pay shipping for it! We'll get him one day). These guys were out in the living room because he was playing with them. I had to hunt them down to take their picture. :)

Here's a funny little story that this picture reminded me of. When we were eating ice cream at Famous Dave's the other night (they brought out a free sundae because it was Dave's birthday) we were all sharing it. Together we ended up eating the whole thing and when Dawson noticed it was gone he said "Oh crackers! It's all gone!" Me and Dave started laughing and Dawson said, "What? Skully says crackers." It was really funny. :)