The Ashby's

While we were in Utah we had family pictures taken with my family. It's been a while since we've all been together and there are a few more grandchildren since the last time.

We had a GREAT time in Utah and I'm so grateful for the pictures because without them I'm sure I would forget much of what we did while we were there. We started out with celebrating the 4th of July in Delta with my family. The 4th was on the 3rd and included a parade and water fun for the children. On the 5th we had a Princess Party including Cinderella, pedicures new pjs, and a special breakfast. (Apparently all of these pictures are on a different camera-I'm a little worried). Then we went up to Salt Lake to put James on an airplane.

My sister is awesome! She did such a great job posting a lot of our trip to Utah that I am just cutting and copying from her post. She is so creative and much more patient and knowledgeable than I am when it comes to this blogging. Her blog starts with our annual family campout. This is the first year we've been in town to be a part of this new tradition-I really missed James! Thanks DeAnna for doing such a great job with this....

After we survived some serious HEAT!! We ended the night with our own version of MINUTE-TO-WIN-IT!! Chase & I have watched this before & I thought it would be fun to try ourselves. So I put some games together for our camping trip.

Here is Cortney doing the pasta game. She had to get the penne pasta on the piece of spaghetti by using her mouth & no hands. She actually did really good!

Audrey had to juggle 3 balloons for 1 minute without any touching the ground. I know it sounds easy.... but it really isn't. Especially considering she was on a very VERY dusty HILL!

Greg & the kids did the OREO Game. They had to place an oreo on their forehead & get it in their mouth by ONLY using their facial movements to get it there & no hands. This was so hilarious to watch, especially with the girls.

This is one of my favorites & I saved it for Jayson. He had a box full of 12 ping pong balls strapped to his waist. He had to shake, shimmy, bounce, jump, dance & prance around to get these balls out of the small hole in 1 minute. He did great but all the kids showed the adults up and did it in less than 30 seconds.

My 3 brothers that I love so much!

Thanks for another great camping trip, can't wait for next year!!

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Bowling

My mom is in a bowling league & didn't want us to miss out so we followed along & bowled with the kids.

Elisabeth, me & Chloe

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CRAFT DAY AT MOMS!!

Audrey & I wanted to get lots of crafts done while she was here, so we planned to do it with all the girls. It was kind of hard with all the kids but after some late nights we at least got them started.... now we just need to finish them :)

We made:

-Tons of different types of hair accessories. Lots of flowers, fabric flowers, bows, clips & headbands.

-Childrens Quiet Books

&

-Family Home Evening Boards

We had intensions for more.... but we got caught up with all the fun things you can do with fabric & tulle.

Chloe & Drew playing so good with eachother. They are only 5 months a part.

Seriously Grandma Smith can put any kid to sleep & do crafts at the same time....

props MOM.

The kids got to finish tye-dying their aprons we started when we went camping.

Here is the end result.... thanks Randie!

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Cupcake Day

So my idea of a cupcake is pull out a cake mix. Well, not my sisters idea.... her's are from scratch!!

My sister is quite the go-getter & decided not only should we make one type of cupcake (from scratch) but we should make 5 all in one day. After she mentioned we would just 1/2 all the recipes I thought it was a great idea. Didn't realize it would take us 1 1/2 days. We made some yummy.....

*top-to-bottom crump cupcakes

*chocolate-covered mint meltaway cupcakes

(Elisabeth & I did these ones... they took forever. I have never used a double broiler so much. It was quite the process & very very chocolately)

*lemon coconut snowball cupcakes

*kid-simple cupcakes

& never got to the 5th which was

*hummingbird swirl cupcakes

Unfortunately they all got eaten too fast that I never got a picture of the final product... oh well. They were super yummy & that's all the matters!! Thanks Audrey for having lots of energy :)

Here was our babysitter during the cupcake baking. He came home from work at the wrong time & we put him to some serious work. He got it all from dressing babies for Marinda & getting dressed up by Elisabeth to feeding Drew & putting Nathaniel to sleep. You're the best Jayson thanks for your help, you'll be such a great DAD!!!

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Dinner with Cousins

We were very spoiled growing up & lived next door to my dads 3 brothers & their families & the family business & Grandma & Grandpa Smiths house...... Very Spoiled. We were especially very close to my Uncle Dennis & Aunt Cathy's kids. With Audrey in town we went to dinner & got caught up. I can't believe how we are all married with kids. It seems like it was just yesterday we were planning sleepovers out on the trampoline. It was such a big deal to us. We would go to the store & get treats for this special occasion. Only in the end to find out we would get too scared & run inside to our beds when it got dark. I guess thats what you get for living on the other end of the road of the State Prison.

Jenni, Elisa, Camille, Aunt Cathy, Mom, Me & Chloe & Audrey.

I love & miss all of you, thanks again for coming!!!

I hope you can't tell but we were all crying when we took this picture. Audrey dropped us off at our car so we could head back to Delta (without her this time :( ).

keep finding myself very tired. But after looking at this last month I can realize why. Because my sister has the most energy anyone could every have.

It all started with....

*An awesome 4th of July Celebration

*Family Pictures

*Princess Party

*Went to dinner at Olive Garden & then went to ourBREAD MAKING CLASS. (We learned how to make some wicked awesome bread. It was very useful information & fun. I always get so intimidated with yeast.... but I think I am over it.)

*Toy Story 3!! It's a must.... maybe not Chloe & Nathaniel but everyone else :)

*Visit to Grandpa & Grandma's in Aurora

*Visit to Cedar City to see my house for the first time. Also visited Discovery Park!!

*Played & had a picnic at Delta Park

*Snow Cones

(Those of you that haven't tried Silver Fox really need to. It's like Almost Extract, it's so yummy!!)

*Teaching the girls how to do Boon Doggle(broght back lots of Elementary memories.... oh the days, how I miss them)

*Yummy Mexican food in Richfield

*Our awesome Camping Trip

*Our Craft Day w/ never ending Hair Accessories.

*Going boating at the REZ w/ Chase

*Planning fun meals each night for everyone & getting great ideas to use ourBountiful Baskets.

*Going to Kara's T-Ball Game & cheering her on!!

*Celebrating the 24th of July by going to the well-known Hinckley parade, bbq-ing, empanadas & ended the night w/ sparklers.

*Horse Back Riding with Uncle Greg

*Fooze Ball competitions with Aunt DeAnna.

I'll let you win next time Clarissa, I promise:)

*Playing pool with Jayson & Chase,

I've actually improved since last time... YAY!!

*Rebooted the good old Sega & got Sonic to work...

some tough competition w/ me & Jayson

*Started our Childrens Quiet Books

*Making yummy Navajo Taco (Scones from our bread recipes)

There are so many things that I haven't even listed... those are just a few. I could think of all the things between like kids falling, crying, laughing, more shopping, lots of trips to the grocery store, taking Clarissa & Elisabeth to Chase's families farms & showing them the grain & how they cut it, etc.

I can't even describe how much fun this last month was. I can't believe it's already over! Well I guess it just means that we get to start planning the next get-together.

Monday was a day of joy and sadness. Joyful because both Clarissa and Elisabeth were so excited to go back to school. Sad because my kids just keep growing up, again both good and bad. I love having time with Marinda and Nathaniel but I do miss that I have less time with Clarissa and Elisabeth.

Last week was another fun and busy week. With two dentist appt for Elisabeth and Marinda's birthday we only did three letters.

School is out and it's time for some fun!!! I wasn't sure that I was going to do a complete alphabet summer this year but Elisabeth started asking about it in April so I figured I needed to do it. We kicked it off by going to the zoo the day after school got out. I had hoped that this would be our "A" day (a is for animals and it's too hot to do z is for zoo in August), but Elisabeth wouldn't have it! Soooo I changed the plan again. I'm learning patience and flexibility this summer :) Something else I'm doing this summer is having each of the girls make a book for this summer. Each morning they write sentence or two on handwriting paper and draw a picture about what we did the previous day. My thinking is that they get handwriting practice, art and they're keeping a journal. Marinda practices the letter of the day, her name and draws a picture. So far they're really enjoying it. I haven't taken as many pictures this year because I keep forgetting, nothing's been really picture worthy (except the zoo) and we've been busy!

Nathaniel had his cardiology checkup this last week. Nothing much changed because all of the changes to meds and test were run when we were in the ER on May 21st. That was not how I had planned to spend that Friday night. We had noticed that he has been more blue more of the time so I decided to take him in for oxygen saturation check. I was hoping that I was just imagining things. I wasn't! His sats were 78. Usually he is around 86-88. Our Ped called the Card and he said go to TX Children's ER and get him checked out completely. So I took him downtown as soon as James could get home from work to be with the girls. We got down there about 5:30pm and they ran all of the tests (ie. echo, xrays, & ekg). The Fellow that was on that night couldn't find anything that would cause him to be so blue (he didn't have any other symptoms) so he we wheeled an echo machine into Nathaniels exam room and did the echo himself. Nathaniel hasn't had an echo since May of last year so he did a very thorough echo. Nathaniel was not holding very still so the Fellow had to try twice. (Of course I forgot the pacifier-UGH! This seems to happen everytime we're at the doctor.) The second time Nathaniel was so worn out that he fell asleep during the echo. It was about 11:00pm by the time the second echo was tried. The Fellow compared this echo with the last echo and didn't see anything to be concerned about. Nothing much had changed. In fact, he said that the function looked unchanged and perhaps a little better. I was so relieved. All the doctor's can figure is that because he is growing his heart and lungs isn't keeping up. One of his meds was increased at the ER that night. We were released and home by 2:30am. What a night! His card did change one more med this week and agreed with the Fellow. This won't change the original plan for Nathaniel's care he'll still need his next surgery around the age of 3-4. The card will just keep watching him and we'll watch his coloring and how quickly he tires and go from there. He is amazing! He does everything little boys do. He climbs on top of everything, drives his sisters to cry and laugh, loves to climb up the slide, take things apart, dump things out (especially dirt) and loves water! I'm so grateful that we get to enjoy him and that he his a part of our family.

We have been in Conroe longer now than we were in Midland. 18 months in the same house YEAH us!!! I'm tires of looking at the pictures of my groceries so I thought I would update whoever looks at this blog. In May we took a well-deserved vacation to Disney World. After surviving the last 2 years we decided it was way past due. My mom met us in Florida and we all had an amazing time. One of the best things about our stay was that we stayed in a cabin at Fort Wilderness. Nobody above us or below us so we didn't have to worry about our children running, jumping or bumping into things. We were also able to take a boat to Magic Kingdom and the other parks weren't too far away. I think my favorite park was Animal Kingdom. We also really enjoyed Magic Kingdom-of course! We breakfasted with Winnie the Pooh and friends day 1 just after watching the train coming in and the gates opening. Day 2 we were in Epcot and ate lunch in Japan-YUMMY! Day 3 was Animal Kingdom-LOVED it! We saw all three shows which were TOTALLY awesome. We also got Mickey and Minnie's autographs and road my new favorite ride-The Yeti. Marinda really liked the safari ride. Day 4 we went back to Epcot and ate in China for lunch. By happenstance James got us another character meal for dinner. We ate at the Garden Grill. It was so cool, we were going around in a circle the entire time we were eating but didn't feel a thing. Marinda was super excited because we already had Goofy's, Mickey's, Minnie's, Chip & Dale's and Donald's autographs but we didn't have Pluto or Daisy. At the Garden Grill we ate with Mickey, Chip, Dale and Pluto. Day 5 we went back to Magic Kingdom and the first thing we did was get Daisy's autograph. She was standing right inside the gate. The wait was LONG but we got the Mickey Mouse club's autographs. That night we ate dinner with the Princesses at Cinderella's Castle. It was a great week! Of course there were a couple of meltdowns, we didn't make it to the toilet in time once and before we got home 3 out of 7 had thrown up. We'd do it all again! Thanks again mom for coming with us-we couldn't have done it without you!