Ashlynn's First Bedtime Prayer

After I read the kids their bedtime story me and Dawson said our bedtime prayers (Dave is working tonight). Ashlynn sat completely still, with her arms folded and her head down the entire time! She'll usually only last 10-15 seconds so I was really impressed with her. Then I asked her if she wanted to say a bedtime prayer and she told me yes. She folded her arms again, put her head down, and said "pray, pray, amen." It was the sweetest thing! My eyes are getting all watery again just typing about it! I wanted to put it in the blog so I'll remember it forever. ♥

Ashlynn Gets a Trim

I trimmed Ashlynn's bangs a couple of days ago because they were long enough to get into her eyes and bug her. I wish I had a better before picture, but Dave got her bangs wet before I could take it and she kept pushing them off of her face.

I'm not counting this as her first haircut because it was just a little trim, I didn't even cut off enough hair to save any! I'm happy that I decided to trim them though, they don't bother her at all now and she looks super cute! Her bangs are usually swooped over to the side because of her cowlick, but lately we've noticed they are laying straight more and more.

Here's an after pic. :)

Our Babies

These are just some random pictures that I took of the kids. Dawson was being goofy and wanted me to keep taking pictures of him while he was making different faces. It was fun and I got some cute pictures out of it. Thanks, Daws! :)

Dave bought this little tiara for Ashlynn last week and she LOVES it! She puts it on herself all the time and will wear it for a long time, usually until it falls off because she's playing around.

The Greatest Show on Earth

I had a lucky week last week! I won 5 tickets to the Ringling Bros Circus, then I won 4 more so 9 tickets total. I also won 2 tickets to the Train concert that was on the same night as the circus. Everyone who knows me knows that I would pick a night of fun with the kids over a night of fun without them any day so we chose to go to the circus. None of the tickets were wasted, though. Ashlynn didn't need a ticket since she is under two, so we used 3 tickets and I gave 2 of them to one of my online friends who I hadn't met before. We know each other from our Due in February group when we were both pregnant with our girls. Her daughter, Kinsey, is about a month younger than Ashlynn.

Then I gave the other 4 circus tickets to my sister and her family. And I gave the 2 Train tickets to Arika and Becca. But Bec decided not to go so Arika took Travis instead.

We decided to ride Trax to the circus with Brandee, Andy, Hailee, and Drea. And the Train concert was one or two stops away from ours so Arika and Travis rode Trax, too. It was a lot of fun to ride together and to not have to worry about parking or anything.

Here is Dawson and Hailee on the train.

When we got to the arena we met my friend Ashley and her daughter Kinsey so we could give them their tickets. They are both really sweet, I'm happy that we were finally able to meet in person! Here's Kinsey and Ashlynn.

We got to the circus an hour early so we could go down on the floor and see everything they had going on before the show started.

Here are some pictures from the floor

Me, Dave, and Ashlynn enjoyed it. Dawson through a fit just about the whole time we were down there because he wanted to go buy popcorn. *sigh* We eventually went to buy snacks and found our seats before the show started.

Ashlynn and Kinsey were super cute together.

The circus was fun!! Dawson didn't enjoy it very much which surprised me, I thought he would. But Brandee's seat weren't near ours and he was upset that he couldn't see Hailee and Drea. I think he would have enjoyed it more if we all would have been able to sit together. Ashlynn was REALLY good! She watched most of the show and didn't move around too much.

Our favorite part was the lions and tigers!

 He gave this tiger a kiss. Too cool!!

 We didn't take too many pictures because we were enjoying the show (I of course I had to take a ton of the lions and tigers because I'm obsessed with them!) but we did get a few more.

The elephants were cool as usual.

And another one of our favorites parts when was the motorcycle guys came out to ride in the steel ball. I can't remember for sure, but I think there were 8 motorcycles in there driving around! The ball was big but not that big!

And the theme of the circus was dragons so we had to get a big pic of the dragon at the end.

It was fun! I'm glad we were able to take the kids! Next month I am taking Dawson to Denver to see the Imagination Movers in concert. We're going to do the meet and greet, too. Hopefully he'll like that more than he did the circus. He loves the Movers and has been excited about this concert for a LONG time so I think he will. And then in November we have tickets to see Disney on Ice! I think both kids will enjoy that a lot, too.

The Color Run 2012

I did The Color Run on Saturday with my sister Arika, my friend Amy, and a friend of Amy's, and Amy's sister (their names are escaping me right now!). Our team name was Dyed Running.

Here we are before the race:

And here's me and Arika after the race. We were a couple minutes behind the rest of our team. We had a blast, though!

Close up. My teeth look pretty, don't they?

And with the rest of our team after we had dusted off a bit.

It was a lot of fun. I want to do it again next year. We ran half of it and walked half of it, me and Arika finished in about 47 minutes. Our goal was to finish in an hour so we were happy with that! Next year my goal is to run the entire thing and finish in 35 minutes. I've ran 3 miles in 33 minutes before, but I want to give myself a little extra time because it's fun to slow down as you run through the colors. I think 35 minutes is a good goal for next year. :)

Mama and Dada Day!

I got two free tickets to Lagoon from work so after church yesterday me and Dave decided to go while my parents watched the kids. Before yesterday I hadn't been to Lagoon in over 10 years!! There are SO many new rides, it's crazy. Even though I hadn't been to Lagoon in over a decade, I have been there a LOT of times in my life. When I was growing up my parents got us season passes for a few years in a row and I always loved to ride everything so I was super excited to go back today and have some fun...

Well, apparently I have turned into a wimp. We rode the Screamer and I didn't like it at all. I used to. This time it made me feel sick. Then we rode the Colossus (I realize only Utahns are going to know what rides I am talking about, sorry.) and it wasn't as fun as I remember. I didn't feel as sick as I did after the Screamer but I definitely didn't want to ride it again. So we decided to take it easy for a couple of rides and went on the Terror Ride and Dracula's Castle (both haunted houses). I enjoyed those rides since we were just sitting in a car that wasn't going up and down hills and spinning around! Then I thought it would be fun to go on the Tidal Wave (I used to love that ride!) but the ride was about to start so we walked over to the Turn of the Century (I think that's what it's called... the swing ride) instead. That ride made me feel REALLY sick. I decided I didn't want to go on the Tidal Wave after all. We finished walking to the other end of the park to see if there was anything else I felt like I could ride... the Sky Scraper was all that I wanted to do.

After that me and Dave decided that we should just go see a movie instead because I wasn't having fun at all. :( Feeling sick was not how I imagined Lagoon would make me feel. Dave was totally understanding (he's the best!) and didn't mind leaving. Luckily our tickets were free or else I might have tried to stick it out a little longer.

Here's me and Dave on the Sky Scraper...

And waiting to get on the Screamer. I'm not much taller than the measuring stick. *lol*

On our way back to Salt Lake we stopped at a Super Target to see if they had any Cars for Dawson. He collects cars from the movie Cars. He has over 30 of them already and he plays with them all the time. He's really good about putting them away and not losing any of them. And any time we go to Walmart or Target he always makes us check to see if they have any new cars. Lately they never do. So we figured maybe if we went to one that we normally don't go to we'd find one he doesn't have. Unfortunately we didn't.

After that we went to see ParaNorman. It was an ok movie. After the movie we wanted to go browsing around a few stores. One of my friends had talked about going to World Market about a week ago and we used to like going to the World Market in San Diego every now and then to look around but we hadn't been since we moved back to Salt Lake. I had forgotten about that store until my friend mentioned it. So we went to World Market and looked around for awhile. We ended up getting some Fall Harvest pasta (it's shaped like pumpkins and leaves) and that's it.

We were close to Babies R Us when we were leaving World Market so we decided to stop by there, too. When we were in Denver at the beginning of the year we found a car that Dawson didn't have yet at the Babies R Us there (he's been collecting them for a long time now!) so we thought we might be able to find some here, too, but they didn't have any. They did have some really cute clothes, though!! We bought the kids each a shirt while we were at Target and got Ashlynn a couple of nightgowns, and we couldn't resist getting each of the kids a Broncos outfit from Babies R Us and we also got Dawson a Cars outfit and got Ashlynn two more outfits. Oh and some footsie pjs. It's getting cooler here and the kids need warmer clothes so we HAD to buy them. ;)

Here's what we ended up coming home with:

Ashlynn was too cute when we came home to show the kids what we bought for them. She tried to grab all of her new clothes and wanted to hang onto them. :)

On the way home we stopped by Culver's for dinner. I had never eaten there before but Dave had and he loved it so I wanted to try it. It was really good! I got a pumpkin shake with my meal and it was yummy. Dave had a little taste of it and he liked it!! I was way excited to hear that because Dave doesn't like pumpkin usually. He does like the pumpkin snickerdoodles that I make (even when I sneak in some extra pumpkin spice) and he liked my pumpkin shake... I think I'm going to have to make pumpkin cheesecake soon and see what he thinks. Maybe I can turn him into a pumpkin lover like I am... :) Ashlynn definitely likes pumpkin, too, she ate a lot of my shake.

The kids tried on all of there new clothes (me and Dave were excited to see them in them) and looked adorable in everything. We also tried on Ashlynn's Broncos cheerleading outfit that she got from my sister last year. It was my nieces but she outgrew it so my sister gave it to Ashlynn. And it fits perfectly now! She's looks so cute in it!

It was a great day! It was nice for me and Dave to spend some time together without the kids for a little bit and it was even better to come home and see their happy faces and spend the evening together as a family. ♥

A Day at the Fair

We went to the Utah State Fair yesterday! I won tickets from a blog that I follow and because of Dave's schedule yesterday was the only day that we could go for sure so we went and it was a lot of fun.

One of the first things that we saw was this butter sculpture and it was really cool! It was inspired by The Hunger Games.

I love the "May the odds be ever in your flavor!" And if you look closely you can even see the mockingjay pin.

A jr. high student came up with the idea and here is what was submitted, I love the names. Effie Drinkit, Peeta Moolark, Katniss Heiferdeen, Haymunch Abernathy... So creative!

They had a time lapse video of the butter sculpture being made and Dawson thought it was cool to see.

He also thought these wiggle cars were cool! He was pretty good at driving it too!

Nana took Dawson down a huge slide! I love this picture of the two of them, you can tell they had so much fun and love each other lots!

Dawson wanted to go again and my mom wanted to take Ashlynn. I was a little hesitant at first because the slide was HUGE but they didn't really go down too fast. Here's Dave and Dawson, and my mom and Ashlynn.

I wish this picture would have snapped a little faster (we just took our small, older camera with us so the pics didn't turn out as well as we're used to) but I love this picture because everybody has big smiles on their faces!

Ashlynn had a blast and even wanted to go again!!

The only other ride we went on was the ferris wheel. Dawson and Ashlynn both look like they're sunburned in these pics but they're just hot and have my sensitive skin so they look really red. I promise they're ok! ;)

We all enjoyed the ride. :) (Dawson won that little fish for Ashlynn, he won one for himself, too. Go Daws!)

Our camera stopped working while we were on the ferris wheel, it does that sometimes. It will say "lens error" on the screen and then not turn on. So frustrating! We are talking about replacing it ASAP. We love our nice camera but sometimes it's pain to haul it around, so it will be nice to have a reliable small camera again. 

Anyway, these pics were taken with my phone so they are even worse! *lol* This giant bubble was super cool!

 I love this picture of Ashlynn drinking a frozen strawberry lemonade. It was almost as big as she was! (Please excuse the ugly stroller, we didn't bring ours so we had to rent one.)

We all had a great time!

Sacrament Folders and Dave's Baptism

We've been going to church for a few months now and we usually let Dawson bring two of his cars and Ashlynn always has her binky to help keep them quite during Sacrament meeting. I wanted to find something that had to do with church to help keep them quite and entertained so I went to pinterest and found tons of ideas! I have a few more things that I want to make but here is what I have for now...

I bought some plain white binders and decorated them up a bit.

Inside they each have a small book of Christ, a fabric marble maze (doesn't have to do with church, but quiet and fun!), some dry erase crayons, and coloring pages in sheet protectors.

Here's each of the books of Christ. I printed the pictures that I found online and put them in $1 photo books.

Here's a closer look at one of the fabric marble mazes. I just took some felt, sewed it together, put the marble inside and then finished sewing it together, and then sewed little lines to make the maze for the marble. Dawson is really good at using his fingers to get the marble from one side to the other. Ashlynn doesn't really know what to do with it yet.

You'll have to look closely, the marble is in the top right corner in this picture. I drew over the maze lines with a sharpie so the kids could see them better. I used white thread, when I make more I'll be sure to use a different color of thread so I won't have to draw on them when I'm finished.

And lastly the coloring pages in sheet protectors. This is one of Dawson's pictures.

And this is some of Ashlynn's.

The dry erase crayons came with a cloth that I can use to wipe the sheet protectors off with and the crayon will come off. So they can use these same pages to color over and over without me having to reprint them each time. Both books have the same pictures to color, I think they each have about 15 pages so they have some variety.

I really, really want to make a quiet book for each of them but that is going to take me awhile to do. It will be worth it, though, so I am going to do it!

And lastly, Dave got baptized! He got baptized and became a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints on August 25th. I wish I had more pictures from that day, but we only got one!

Elder Marchand, Elder Rasmussen, and Elder Bedell with us.

I was baptized when I was 8 and am already a member of the church, although I haven't been active as an adult until this year. We think it's neat that Dawson and Ashlynn were able to see Dada get baptized. It definitely has already gotten Dawson excited to be baptized when he's old enough!