Ashley YMCA Basketball

Ashley is playing indoor basketball with the Lodi YMCA. She loves it! She is not afraid of getting in the fray and grabbing the rebounds.

I didn't do any photoshop'ing to this photo... this is how the camera made it. I think it looks awesome. It makes Ash look super fast!

Bubble fun

Ash, CJ, and Cousin Auston got to play with bubbles at Grandma Stone's house. Such fun!

The kids thought that these gi-normous bubbles were awesome

I love the shadow of the bubble Ash made on the ground

CJ loved popping the huge bubbles!

Ashley Won! Woo Hoo!

Ashley participated in the Art Contest "Reflections: Beauty is..." and won! She entered in the 3rd-5th grade painting section and won for her school district! Grandma Stone helped her create this masterpiece during weekly art lessons. Ashley did such a great job!

FIRE!

So I was taking a bath last night and the fire alarms went off in the house. CJ came running into my bathroom with his hands over his ears and the smell of smoke following him. I jumped out of the bath and ran totally butt-naked into the family room where the kids had taken the brand new yummy smelling candle and proceeded to place paper and plastic things into the flame. So butt-naked and dripping bubbles i grab everything and throw them into the kitchen sink to get everything wet. Luckily nothing but a kitchen towel was ruined! Note to self: if leaving a candle unattended around children make sure you keep your clothes on... or you might just end up running around the house naked trying to put out fires!

Halloween 2009

This year i let the kids choose their own costumes (this time without any influence from me) so cute!

CJ got an "Indiana Jones Lego" game for the wii and he loved it so much that we rented all of the Indiana Jones movies and had family movie nights and watched them- including the new one Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull (with a few moments of "cover your eyes till we say stop") He LOVED watching them! He would constantly say "remember when Indiana did..." for days and days. So when I asked him what he wanted to be it was an automatic "INDIANA JONES!" So with much searching and many, many stores later we assembled a very cute costume.

CJ was adorable with his "five o'clock shadow"

Ashley chose to be Princess Leia. (I swear i had nothing to do with her choice!) We borrowed a white dress from my moms "costume warehouse", a belt from Aunt Lisa's temple dress, and a lightsaber from Cousin Bryce. She had me redo her hair 3 times till her "buns" were just right. Her candy bucket is a Darth Vader mask.

I think her favorite part of the costume was posing in fighting stances with her lightsaber.

Ashley's Valley Days Experience

Ashley got to go to "Valley Days" for her 3rd grade field trip. Me, Mike, Grandma Stone, Aunt Tami, Uncle Jeff, and Cousin Addy went too. It was so much fun! I haven't been to Valley Days since i was a 3rd grader. It was so fun to see Ashley do all the things that were common in the 1800's.

Ash learned how to iron clothes by placing the iron on coal to make it hot then moving it to the clothes... maybe i can get her to do the ironing at home now...

Uncle Jeff and Mike worked in the "cooking station" where they taught the kids to make butter and bake biscuits.

Ashley loved making the "corn husk doll" and the little outfit on it was adorable!

Grandma Stone helped the children make rope and taught them how to lasso a cute wooden horse.

Ashley's lunch pail is the pail I used when i went to Valley Days *cough*cough* twenty-two years ago... talk about an antique!

Ash got to practice writing with a quill and ink. It was VERY messy! She decided she likes markers better... especially when she learned that some ink used to be made with catfish excrement. Yep that's right catfish poop! Gross.

I got to work the "Printing Press Station" and got to teach the kids how to use quills and how they used to use metal letters and a press to put the words on a newspaper. We made wanted posters for each kid and they got to add their names with the press.

It was a wonderful day!

Pumpkin carving

The kids really, really, really wanted to carve pumpkins this year so i finally gave in and we went hunting for the perfect pumpkins. The kids were gung-ho for carving and laughing and excited till after i cut the tops off the pumpkins and told them how to get the seeds out. Both kids stopped dead in their tracks and looked at me like i was CRAZY! Neither one wanted to do it anymore. Me being the mean and nasty mom i am made them do it anyway (I mean really- getting the slimy stuff between your fingers is supposed to be the best part...) Both kids got tool after tool out of the kitchen drawer to find one that would let them do it without having to actually touch the icky stuff. After that they decided that they wanted to make their own designs and not use the pattern book (that they begged me to buy). The both created vampire pumpkins (i swear i didn't influence them at all!) They are both really happy with their pumpkins and enjoyed lighting them up outside that night.

Happy Halloween!