Little Miss Ashlynn

**I started writing this post on the 4th so the dates might be a little bit off. *lol*

Ashlynn has been up to all sorts of new things lately! She will be 14 months old on the 8th and is so much fun! About a week ago she started getting really good at walking with her push toy. She had been good for awhile but could only walk in a straight line, if she ran into anything she would be stuck. Not anymore, though!! She can turn it, take some steps backward with it, whatever she needs to do to get where she wants to go.

Here is a video that I got of her when she was up late one night. (She's always up late, who am I kidding??)



Then a couple days after that she wanted to practice walking on her own more. Dave would put her down and then keep scooting backwards so she would have to walk farther to get to him. She also practiced walking back and forth between me and Dave a lot.




And then a couple days after that (on Saturday) she started standing up on her own (she's been able to pull herself up to the standing position with support of things for awhile now but now she can stand up in the middle of the floor without help or support from anything) and just took off walking. She would fall down after a few steps but she'd stand right back up and keep going. This is the best video that I have of her standing up right now. Dawson was being a little stinker so she wasn't able to show off her walking skills but hopefully I'll get a better video soon.




I need to try and get her talking on video. She says mama, dada, and hi (which she has said for awhile) and some of her new words are "boo" and "juice." The other day she surprised me when we were playing together. My hair had fallen over my face a little bit and she grabbed it and said "boo!" It was adorable. Since then she really loves to play peek-a-boo now that she knows how to say boo. As for the juice, she has been sick for a couple of weeks now so I have been giving her a little bit of apple juice everyday (I figured she can use the extra vitamin C) and of course she loves it. We water it down, half juice half water, but anyway! The other day when she was drinking it I asked her if she liked juice and she said "juice" She says it every time that she drinks it now. It's too cute.

She loves to play with Dawson and she loves taking his toys away from him. Thankfully Dawson is usually very patient with her and doesn't get too mad when she takes his things. He does try to get them back most of the time, though, and she knows that so when she takes something she hides it behind her back. It's really funny.

Like I said earlier she has been since for a couple of weeks now. She has started to get better twice and just before she is completely over it it starts up all over again. :( Her cough sounded really bad on Sunday night/Monday morning so we decided we needed to make her an appointment to see her doctor. As the day went on of course her cough got better but she was still sick. Dave asked if we should cancel the appointment since she didn't have the barking cough anymore but I told him we needed to keep it since she had been sick for so long. It's a good thing that we did keep it because it turns out that she has an ear infection in both of her ears. :( She hasn't had a fever and hasn't really been acting differently other than having a cold so we had no idea she had an ear infection. Poor baby! She is on amoxicillin for 10 days so hopefully that will clear it up.

Playing in the Snow!

I am, once again, SO far behind on things that I want to post about!! A couple of weekends ago we finally had a nice snow storm. Hailee was sleeping over at our house and me and the kids were super excited to go play in the snow! We went out on Sunday and Monday morning (Hailee didn't have school) because we had so much fun.

We have a big grassy hill in front of our apartment, perfect for sliding down. That was definitely the kids' favorite thing to do. We went up and down that hill so many times!


Dawson liked kicking and throwing the snow around, too.


We tried to build a snowman but we couldn't get the snow to stay together. It was way too dry. After me and the kids played for a little bit on Monday morning I asked Dave to trade me places for awhile and he was able to build a little snowman but I didn't get any pictures of it.


Here is a little bit of video of the kids going down the hill. Since then we bought Dawson a sled but we haven't had a chance to use it! (Although you'll see in the video that he doesn't really need a sled because his snow suit helps him slide down really fast.) It did snow pretty good a couple of times this week but Dave was working and both kids were sick. Hopefully we'll be able to use it soon.

Ashlynn's First Steps!!

This video isn't very good but I am so excited so I have to share! Ashlynn took her first steps today!! Dave was trying to get her to walk to one of her toys and she took 1 step and then would fall down. She did that a couple of times. I told Dave that we should see if she'd walk to me instead and she took 4 steps to me!! She did twice before we decided to take out the video camera. She is napping right now but I'm sure we'll get more video after she wakes up and I'll share it. We're so proud of our baby girl!! Oh and she's 13 months old today! What a fun way to celebrate. :)

This video isn't the best but like I said before I'm sure we'll have another video to put up later today or tomorrow. She only takes 3 steps in the video (she took 4 steps both times we tried to get her to walk before we started recording).

Ashlynn's Birthday Party!

We had Ashlynn's birthday party the weekend after her birthday because we thought Dave's first weekend with the Reserves was going to be on her birthday weekend. Then we found out he wouldn't be going with them until February. As long as we celebrated her birthday, it didn't really matter when it was.

We didn't have too big of a party, we just invited some of my family and our friend Sandy from San Diego said that she wouldn't mind driving up so we invited them, too! She drove 12+ hours with her 3 little kids just to see us. It was great to see her again!!

Here are some pictures of the decorations and guests at her party.



I had decided on a Minnie Mouse theme a few months ago and about a month or so before her birthday Ashlynn started showing a big interest in Minnie so it worked out perfectly! She LOVES Minnie Mouse!


And the presents!


Here's the birthday girl!


Hanging out with her brother.


After everybody ate we opened presents. Brandee and Becca got her this cute little doll with her name on the dress. (You might have to click on the picture to enlarge it so you can see it better.)

And she loved it! She gave it a big kiss right away. We call it her baby. If we ask her "Ashlynn, where's your baby?" She'll crawl to it and grab it. :)

Kisses!


She did a really good job opening her presents. I remember at Dawson's 1st birthday party he opened a couple and then would crawl away, he didn't stay interested for very long. Ashlynn stuck around to open all of her presents!


She needed at little help sometimes but did a really good job!


Here's her smash cake that I made for her.


Singing happy birthday...


And now it's time to eat!


She kept saying "num num" as she was eating it.


She's so sweet that she wanted to share with me. ♥


Water break.


Yay! Cake!


She destroyed it. It was so fun to watch! She LOVED it!!


This video is kind of long but if you want to see the cake smashing in action, here it is!



I love this picture of Ashlynn and Sandy.



Dawson and Landon hanging out on the couch together. Dawson was so excited to have his friends here and to be having a sleepover with them!!


Closeup of the birthday girl.


Me, Dawson, Ashlynn, Sandy, Abby, Maddie, and Landon.


Her party was great and it was even more special because our friends made the trip out here to celebrate with us. We miss you guys already!!!

Our 5th Anniversary!!

This post is super late but it's not completely my fault...our internet provider is not very good AT ALL so our internet service is very unreliable. One minute we have access to the internet, the next we do not. It's getting to be pretty frustrating but there's not anything we can do about it so we'll just have to live with it. I think we can do that. ;)

Dave and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary on the 12th! My parents came over to watch the kids so we could go out. We decided to try a new restaurant and go see a movie.


We went to Brio for dinner, it was a very nice restaurant and the food was yummy! Neither of us eat seafood, me because I've never really tried and it and it just doesn't seem appetizing to me (well it didn't, I'm getting more open to it now), and Dave because he ate it some growing up and wasn't a big fan so he just convinced himself that he didn't like any of it. Well, we both decided to try something that we normally wouldn't order. I ordered beef medallions with shrimp scampi:



I loved the tournedos (beef) but I wasn't a fan of the shrimp at all. The texture was just gross to me. The orzo and veggies were really good, though! And Dave liked the shrimp!

Dave ordered the shrimp and lobster fettuccine. He loved it. I took a bite of his and I really liked the lobster. I'll definitely be trying more of that in the future.


Last year on our anniversary Ashlynn was only 4 days old and still in the NICU so we didn't celebrate our anniversary at all. I was staying in an extra room at the hospital because I didn't want to leave without Ashlynn and they told me on had to leave on that day so I was super sad. I think they ended up letting me stay until the 13th...but enough of that! We didn't exchange gifts or anything last year because there was so much going on so Dave wanted to make up for that. He follows the list of traditional and modern anniversary gifts that you are supposed to get by year so he didn't want to skip the 4th year. And I decided I have to write in the blog what he gets me every year because we both forgot what he got me for our 2nd anniversary. :( For the 2nd year it's either cotton or china and we know it wasn't china so he must have gotten me a shirt or something. I wish we could remember!!

Anyway, the 4th anniversary gift is supposed to be (according to the list) linen or appliances so he got me this apron.


I LOVE it, it's so cute!!!

And the 5th anniversary gift is supposed to be wood or silverware. So he surprised me with this wooden plaque. ♥


I love, love, LOVE it!! We saw them at the San Diego fair last year and wanted to get one but we were on our way out and didn't want to wait for it right then so we decided we would just look for one online. I think I looked around a little bit online a day or two after we went to the fair but just forgot about it after that. I love the one he picked out because it has palm trees and mountains on it! A little bit of San Diego and a little bit of Salt Lake mixed together. Since that is where we've all lived as a family it really means a lot to me. And it has the year that we were married on it. ♥

He also got me beautiful flowers but I forgot to take a picture of them. :( The only picture that I sort of got of them was at Ashlynn's birthday party (I'll post pics from her party tomorrow). You can see part of them in the lower right hand corner of this picture.


They were beautiful and I loved them!

I got him tickets to the Zac Brown Band concert that was playing later in the month. I'll post pics from the concert in a few days. We had a blast!

I love you, babe!!!