Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch

Gigi, Granken, Ashley, Mommy, & Daddy all packed into the car and drove to the Flower Mound Pumpkin Patch to enjoy the wonderful weather we've been having. We all had a great time! I think Ashley's favorite part was eating the pumpkin bread that Gigi bought :) Just kidding, she loved riding the trai with Daddy and running around all the pumpkins and looking at the character cut outs. We ate lunch under some shade trees and Ashley apparently made a new friend. A bee - no, not a kid dressed up as a bee - a real live bee - while we were in line buying some food to eat Ashley and Gigi were saving our table. My mom looked down and Ashley was petting a bee that was on her coke can. AHHHHHHH! I am very thankful that she was not trying to hit the bee or smush it!

Ashley and Daddy crammed into the Yellow Train Car :) CHOOOO CHOOOO!!


Ashley with her FAVORITE characters, Baby Bop, Barney and BJ.

Eating some of that oh so yummy and fresh Pumpkin Bread that Gigi bought. YUM!
Ashley loved playing in this little jailhouse.

Playgroup ~ Owen's Farm

Ashley had a great time with her little friends at Owen's Farm. We all went on a hayride where Ash got to see some horses and ducks. Here is Ash sitting on the hay like a big girl all by herself.


Then we visited the petting zoo - Ashley wasn't too sure about feeding the goats so she let mommy do it. We had a great time seeing friends and eating lunch with everyone outside. It was a beautiful day and the kids all had a blast. Last we picked out a pumpkin to take home with us. I think Ash was asleep in her carseat before we even pulled out of the parking lot. FUN FUN!

The kids all loved this blow-up. It had ghosts that would pop up out of the pumpkin. Here they are staring at it.

Ashley is growing and learning more and more each day. It is amazing to me how much of a sponge she is. At Owen's Farm they had a scarecrow and some pumpkins that we all thought was a great photo op - so on and off the mom's were placing their kidos in front to snap some pics. Well, I guess Ashley had been observing this because suddenly after one of the kids was done getting his picture taken Ashley ran over to the scarcrow and sat down - put her hand on the pumpkin - looked up at me and smiled. Of course I snapped her picture - too cute...guess she wanted to get in on the photo shoot action too ;) Here is her photo....

My little bow head...

Sorry it's been awhile since our last post. We've been busy busy w/ Halloween and getting ready for the Snowflake Bazaar this weekend. If you have some time this weekend you should go (I love going - you can get a big jump start on Christmas shopping). I'll be a vendor again this year, along with hundreds of other great sellers. I'll be selling my necklaces...wooohoooo...here's hoping they're a hit! The snowflake bazaar is at Plano West Sr. High on Parker Road - Sat and Sun from noon-6. I will post all our Halloween, Pumpkin Patch, Baylor Homecoming, etc pics next week sometime...but until then here is a glimpse into Ashley and I's morning ritual.

BEFORE

AFTER - and yes...EVERY morning :) I love my little bow head!

Oh Boy!

Ashley and mommy went to Target the other day and were looking at the items on clearance and found this....Ashley says WOW!

Jewelry on the Brain

So as most of you know, after months of agonizing I decided to take some time off from the career front. My last day was this past Friday. It was a really difficult decision, but one that I am glad to finally have made. It will be nice to get to spend more time with Ashley ~ although I'm sure there will be days when I question if I was sane when I made this decision.

Ashley and I had a great day on Monday. We watched the rain fall from our safe hidout at the front windows, we played upstairs in her playroom, ate lunch together, went for a walk, visited Gigi and GrandKen. It was a good day. Here is a picture from our day - Ash in camo and her favorite new shoes - pink moccasins.

I opened up an online shop to feature the jewlery I've started to design and make. I am a crafty girl at heart and am really excited about this ~ we'll see if I ever sell any of it :) You can check out my shop HERE or click on the pictures of my work in my sidebar.

One final note - I went to Costco today and was pleasantly surprised to see that they already had the Danish Shortbread Cookies out - you know the ones w/ the big sugar crystals on top - that they have around Christmas time? Well, I couldn't resist - so I picked up the unusually large tin and tossed it in the cart. Inside the tin they have the cookies arranged in groupings of three in little paper cupcake things. Anyways, I just realized that in one day I have eaten the contents of 6 cupcake things - so 18 cookies!!! AHHH! To the next person that comes over to my house - PLEASE remove the tin of cookies before I eat them all! Until next time...SMILE!

HELLO BIG TEX!

Ashley went to the State Fair of Texas this past weekend. Her favorite thing to do was look at the animals in the Children's Barnyard. She saw goats, pigs, a giraffe, lamas, emus, zebras, and lot of other animals that mommy didn't know the name of :) She had a great time...and of course got to experience a eating a Corny Dog, which she loved.

The Door Step Mystery

So when I got home yesterday, Ash and I went out to check the mail like usual and when I opened the door there was a gift bag attached to the handle. I opened up the bag to find a oh so cute little dress and a magnadoodle. I searched high and low for a card - but there wasn't one to be found....so.....we have a little mystery on our hands - who is this from? I love the gift (and am hoping that it is actually for us). I am such a HUGE 'thank you' writer and it is bothering me so much that I don't even know who I can thank for this oh so sweet gift. Anyways...I thought I'd write about it here in hopes that someone will claim this generous gift and I will be able to express our gratitude for it to you. Until then ~ Thank you to whoever left the gift!

Happy Birthday Aunt Kristen!

We went to Babe's on Sunday night to celebrate Aunt Kristen's 24th birthday. YUM! Ashley could not get enough of the corn and Daddy's chicken fried steak (even though it made her eyes water b/c he had doused it with Tabasco).


Gotta love a place that makes you wear a chicken on your head and dance for your birthday! We love you Kristen!!!

Family Time

Ashley is 15 months old. She is constantly amzing her parents with what she can do, say, and comprehend. The three of us spent Saturday together playing at the park. We had a lot of fun.

One of Ashley's favorite things to do at the park is play in the rocks....we might have a little tom-boy on our hands.

She also loves to swing and sometimes says, "wheeeee". She likes to go really high - she has such a cute adventuresome personality!

Here she is playing in the rocks again. We let her have at it...until she started putting the big ones she found in her mouth...not good!

We went to a park that has a long bridge over a creek...Ashley loved walking back and forth across the bridge...she even ran part of the way. She is so quick on her feet and rarely ever falls!

We pulled the scarecrow out of the garage and bought some pumpkins and decorated our front yard for the fall. Ashley got two pumpkins - one tiny one and one medium one. She is such a little doll.

Balloon Fest/Double Ear Infection/Jr. League/Bible Study

Whew, what a week we've had!!!

I've been pretty busy with the Jr. League with all of our provisional meetings, regular meetings, and special project meetings. Our provisional group chose to put on a Fall Festival for an organization called Friday Nite Friends. Friday Nite Friends is a really neat organization - they provide care for special needs children and their siblings twice a month so that their parents can enjoy a night together without worrying about their children. Anyways...we are going to put on a Fall Festival for the kids (games, food, prizes, the whole works). We are expecting to have nearly 60 kids - pretty exciting.

We went to the Plano Balloon Festival on Friday evening w/ Gigi, Granken, Uncle Michael and his girlfriend Emily (they were in town from OU). It was a lot of fun...Ash got a corny dog and loved looking at the balloons. Granken bought her a glow necklace that she absolutely LOVED! We started noticing some green guck coming from Ashley's eyes as we were leaving so we decided to go ahead and take her into AcuteKids (if you ever need a dr. at night or on the weekend....we definitely recommend this place). They are always super helpful and very QUICK....which is always a blessing w/ a sick child. The dr. said she had a double ear infection (again!!) and that it was really really really really bad - so bad that her poor little sinuses had filled up so high that it was causing the guck to come out her eyes...poor thing! So we got some antibiotics and eye drops and home we went. It's Wednesday now, and Ash still isn't feeling that well. I just pray that someday she will stop getting so sick all the time. It really is pitiful!

Last night I went to our class Women's Bible Study. We are studying Ephesians. I confessed to my small group last night that I hadn't had much time this week to do my study and that I had actually done it all the day of our meeting. I feel really convicted about this....I need to make time each day for this. Sometimes I let what is the most important thing slide in my life because I am so busy with everything else, Work, Ashley, Ashley being sick, Jr. League, Friends, Housework, Errands, Eric's side business, The Trendy Mommy, etc. So I am making a committment now to wake up earlier each morning and spend some time in the Word of God. Thanks to Sally for encouraging me last night :) She wakes up at 5 to get it all done - I'm going to shoot for 6:15.

Mi Cocina and the Cowboys...what a great weekend!

We had a pretty fun weekend...with none of us being sick..YEA! On Saturday morning we went to Arbor Hills and Ashley played on the playground for a while. She loves to swing and slide down the slides. They have so many there! Then later that afternoon we went swimming with Gigi and Granken...Mommy and Daddy got a little sunburned...but Ash didn't get any because she stayed in her float with a canopy most of the afternon. We went to Mi Cocina on Saturday night...YUM! I think this is our favorite Mexican food restaurant...here is a pic we took from the evening.

Ashley loves to push her stroller around...it is kind of funny...it is so big compared to her. Maybe we need to buy her a toy stroller.

Sunday morning was buy with Mommy packing to get ready for her trip to Atlanta. We hurried off to church and then grabbed some McDonalds on the way home. After weeks of searching for a pink Cowboys shirt that would fit Ashley and having no luck, I decided to make her one...It turned out really cute..and only cost $8...thanks to a pink shirt on clearance at Target and letters and a star from Hobby Lobby. GO COWBOYS!

Here is Ash practicing touchdown...getting ready for the game where she will be able to show Nana and Pops her touchdown and high five skills :)

The Attack of Nasty Mr. Strep Throat

Ashley wasn't feeling very well on and off last weekend - I knew that by Monday night when she would cough and immediately start crying in her sleep that something was wrong. The weird thing was that she never ran a fever the entire time! I snapped a few pictures of her awful week. If you know Ashley very well you can tell by these pictures how bad she was feeling...the child (when feeling well) NEVER sits still...so for her to lay like this on a pallet on the floor for hours at a time with a wet wash rag on her forehead definitely says something!

We took her to her peditrician on Tuesday and sure enough Ashley had strep. YUCK! Daddy got it too...so mommy got to play doctor all week to two sickos :) It must have been a really bad strain of strep because Ashley didn't truly start to feel better until yesterday (Sunday). Poor little thing!!! She is doing better now though and we celebrated by taking her to what we thought would be a fun outing....The Wiggly Play Center in Frisco. Not so much! I'm sorry to anyone who reads this blog if they actually like this place, and maybe it is fun for some kids...but since we paid $9 to get in, I expected that they would have actually had some stuff for Ashley to play with/on. I even asked the lady when we got there if there would be stuff for a 14 month old to do inside...she was like oh yes, tons to do...there is a stage where they can get up on and sing/dance, a climbing area with slides, tubes, tunnels and blocks to climb on, a bounce house that she can go in if there aren't too many big kids in it. So we thought that sounded good enough, paid the $$ and in we went...we stayed MAYBE 30 minutes. Here are some photos that we took of Ashley while she was there...I do think she had a good time...but she has a BLAST at the Willow Bend Mall play area...and it's free....in hindsight we should have just gone there.



Yes, this is me...I climbed inside the bounce house - with all the other mothers and fathers gasping in horror that I crawled in....but the lady at the front desk told me I could...and I was desperatley trying to get $9 worth of fun out of this place for Ashley...so I did it...and she did have fun until a girl almost landed on her and I decided it was time to crawl back out that tiny hole!
One other complaint about this place...see that boy that is at least 5 or 6 - why is he in the "toddler only" area? And to make things worse...this kid was a bully! Did you see above how Ashley carried the blocks to me...and I made a thing for her to walk under out of them...well, before she even got to walk under them...bully boy comes running over almost knocking her down...and then proceeds to knock down what we just built. We tried rebuilding it, but by the third time when bully boy knocked it down just as I put on the top piece - I said forget it...let's go!

I tried Ashley out in the big bathtub a could of months ago and was so terrified by the whole event that I decided to keep on using the small blue tub. But as Ashley continues to grow I must face the reality that I can't keep her in the little tub forever sheltering her from sliding and bumping her head in the big bath tub any longer. Thankfully I was able to find a bath mat that suctions to the tub and provides a no-slip surface for her. So here she is LOVING her new found bathtime freedom.

Here is a cute pic I snapped of Ash in the car on the way home from the Wiggly Play Center...she loves to cross her legs and read books in the car :) What a sweetie!