Ashton Family

Natasha's Graduation

2010-05-22T10:25:00.000-07:00

So Kairington and I went away for the weekend and it was a great trip...very fast though. We left Logan Saturday afternoon around 1:30 and drove down to Salt Lake to catch our flight. It took a little creative thinking to get a baby, a diaper bag, a carry on bag, a stroller and a baby car seat from the parking lot to the shuttle, but we made it, then it was even more tricky to get all of that through security, but we made it without any big issues and had about an hour to kill while we waited for flight. Kairington was the best baby, she didn't cry on the drive down to Salt lake, nor on the shuttle or at all at the air port...she just played with her toys and watched people. Then we got on our first flight to Denver and actually had an empty seat next to us, so I sat her down and turned on Einstein and she watched it half the flight and then the other half decided to take a nap. Then in Denver, we just had time to get off one plane and get onto the next one. This flight was full, but Kairington was once again a perfect child. I fed her some baby food while we waited to take off, then she played for a little bit and then fell asleep the rest of the flight. We got into Omaha about 9:45 or so and Tasha and Chris were waiting for us. We went to dads and chatted for a little bit and then we headed to bed. Kairington slept straight through the night and I had to wake her up to get ready for church. Then she sat quietly on Grandpa Wright's lap or Uncle Garth's lap the whole time at church. Then we were off to Tasha's graduation. It started at 1 and we thought it wouldn't go any longer than an hour and then we figured 1/2 an hour for pictures....WRONG! It didn't get over until almost 3, so we took some quick pictures and fought our way through the crowd and went home. We eat some dinner while Kairington slept for a couple of hours. Then Tasha wanted to show me her apartment, so we headed over there for most of the evening until it was bed time. Then I got Kairington to sleep, packed our bag and went to bed. Once again,Karington slept through the night and probably wasn't too excited to get woken up at 5 in the morning, but we had to catch our flight. She pretty much slept for both of our flights home and on the drive home, but was well rested and happy to see everyone at home. We got home just in time for me to get lunch for the kids while Mike went down and worked. All in all it was a great trip, wish it was a little longer, but could not have asked for a better 6 month old to travel with that is for sure. Thanks to my great husband for watching the other 2 kids and let me go to support my sister. I couldn't ask for a better husband...Love Ya Mike!!

Tasha & Mo Brown (They are besties)

Tasha made it!!

Tasha & I (The favorite sister!)

Tasha & Kairington

I think Tasha likes Kairington...just a little bit!

Tasha & Garth...I dont think she knew who to look at, Dad or I

Tasha & Chris

Tasha & Thayne

Tasha & Dad...he is done, all his kids are graduated!

What? You don't let your kid chew on cords!?!

Kairington is all smiles!

Kairington not sure about siting by herself

The thanks I get for leaving!

2010-05-22T10:14:00.000-07:00

So my youngest sister, Tasha, just graduated from high school this past weekend. The plan has always been that I would just fly to Iowa for the weekend and Mike would stay with all the kids. I would get a great break and get to enjoy some time with my family and Mike would get to bond with the kids for the weekend. Well that all changed 2 days before I was suppose to leave. I decided that I would take Kairington with me for a couple of reasons. One is that I know I would miss her like crazy, two I though I would take the X factor out for Mike so he would be able to do things with the old 2 kids while I was gone ( and he did take them to the park, out for ice cream, and managed to make it through 3 hours of church by himself) and three because I thought I would surprise my family in Iowa and just show up with Kairington (plus heck why not bring her, she is free,right?) Well the day I was leaving, Saturday, Reighlyn woke up with a fever and very whinny. I thought, oh poor Mike on one hand and on the other I was like, good luck, see ya! I think he and I were glad I was taking Kairington since Reighlyn didn't feel to good. Well the report from home while I was gone was that the kids had fun and were pretty good, except Reighlyn complained that her ear hurt the whole weekend, but didn't want to miss out on anything. Well Mike said that Monday morning she woke up with dried liquid from her ear and acted like she felt a lot better. Monday afternoon when I got home, I checked her temp and it had gone down a bit and she was acting fine, but since I needed to take Kairington in to the Dr for a 6 month check up and shots I thought I would bring her along. Well everything went great with Kairington, she is in the 43% for weight and 78% for height and no sickness for her. Reighlyn on the other hand had broken her ear drum and needed to get some medication and ear drops. But at least the sickness stayed with her instead of making its way through the rest of the house. She is doing great now and should be healed completely in another week.

Spring is here...kind of!

2010-05-22T09:48:00.000-07:00

So it seems as though spring is having a hard time coming to Logan for sure. We will have some way nice weather and then wake up the next day to snow. I think the kids are more confused than anything. Reighlyn is having a hard time understanding why she can wear a skirt to preschool one day without tights and then the next day she has to go to school in jeans and a winter coat. Lets hope since it is the end of May now, that all the snow is gone!! We have gone I think a week and half or so without any snow...cross your fingers!! The kids have been able to enjoy some days outside in spite of the snow we keep getting. Here are some pictures of them just enjoying being outside.

Reighlyn playing with the bucket and shovel

Reighlyn digging in the dirt

She is in to sucking on her bottom lip when she smiles

Kairington enjoying being outside

Keegan playing on the slide

They both love the sand box

Reighlyn & Keegan playing at the park in the sandbox

Easter 2010

2010-05-22T09:14:00.000-07:00

So I know it is way past Easter, but I was just downloading pictures from the camera and saw all of the pictures and I thought I would post some of them since I never blogged about Easter. Easter was pretty low key this year. Thanks to GREAT Utah weather, we opted for an inside Easter egg hunt this year. Also since the kids are all still so young, I knew it wouldn't be a deal to them at all. So we just invited a couple of people over, Ariana and her 3 kids (Jonathan was working or sleeping...who knows) and Lauren and her 2 kids (Tim was working). While the Ana and Lauren kept the kids occupied, I went down and quickly hide a bunch of eggs just in the family room and then while they were looking downstairs I hide the rest up in the front room and dinning room. I think it took me maybe 10 minutes to hide them all and it took them 5 minutes to find them all. Oh well, they had fun. They we decided to color eggs, little kid style...NO EGG DYE!! We used crayons...I tell you what, it is the best idea I have ever had...no worries about little kids knocking over dye all over. It is so easy and quick to clean up. Last year we had stickers too,but I never got to the store to buy some this year. Then the adults sat and chatted while the kids ate WAY too much candy. Then that night I refilled the eggs for the next morning when the Easter bunny would come. The Easter Bunny hide the kid's baskets and gifts in the basement where they couldn't get to them until Mom and Dad were ready...hehe...what a sneaky bunny! They had the normal candy and little toys in their baskets. Reighlyn & Keegan both got stick horses that when you press behind the ear it makes horse sounds. They also got a basketball hoop to share for when it warms up outside. Kairington just got some little toys and a new bib. All in all it was a great Easter, especially since we were able to stay home and watch Conference on TV. Can't get any better than watching the prophet on Easter Sunday!

Kairington giving a little smile, she is still waking up

Kairington loving her bunnies!

Kairington excited about Easter

Keegan trying out the basketball hoop

Reighlyn giving her horse a ride

Dad showing Keegan his horse

Reighlyn found the baskets

Kileigh, Keegan, & Ethen coloring eggs

Addison, Reighlyn, Kileigh & Keegan coloring eggs

Ethen with a mouth full of chocolate

Keegan not knowing whats wrong with stuffing your mouth with candy

Addison seeing whats in her eggs

Keegan looking for eggs

Kileigh found 2 eggs!

Aiden not sure about the whole hunt thing

Reighlyn breaking the rules being on the couch with shoes on

The group looking for more eggs

The Big Move

2010-04-06T18:47:00.000-07:00

So the sad sad time has come...Keegan has figured out how to get out of his crib! With Reighlyn we had to move her so quickly since the two are only 14 months apart, also because Reighlyn learned how to get out a little after she was 1. But Keegan was our angel child when it came to sleep. We would put him down at 7 and you wouldn't hear a peep until 7 or so the next morning, and when he did wake up he would just sit in his bed and wait for someone to come and get him. But when we were in Iowa, he slept in a pack n'play and it had lower sides, so he figured out that he could hike his leg over the side and get out. Well sure enough a little while after we got home from Iowa, he tried it on his crib and it worked...but it was a long drop down. Being the good parents we are we dropped the side down for him, so it wouldn't be as far of a drop for him since he was going to get out either way. But he has actually been pretty good still, we would put him in his crib and he would go to bed and stay in bed until morning and then when he was a wake he would just get out of bed and come and knock on the door until someone came and opened the door(Luckily he can't open doors yet). We would have moved him into a big boy bed right away, but we were waiting on Mike's sister to pass on her crib to us for Kairington, because then we were just going to cut the legs off Keegan's bring and take the front off. But lucky Lish, Mike's sister, her little guy still stays in his crib. So we finally sucked it up and went on bought Keegan a toddler bed and moved Kairington to the crib. She looked so big in her bassinet and was getting too big for it, when she rolled over she would get stuck. But then when we moved her to the crib, so looked so small, but she loves it, she rolls all over the place. I will put some pictures of the switch when I remember to take some pictures one of these days.

Kairington Update take 20...I swear!

2010-04-06T18:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the space in between posts....it seems like life has been non-stop here, but yet not a lot to write about. So the word on Kairington is, nothing. They checked her oxygen levels and they all came back great, so they opted to wait and see how she does as she gets older. Well with a lot of prayers, she is actually doing really good. She went 2 weeks without having her monitor go off, so we opted to take her off her monitor, which is good because her chest was just raw where she had to have the wires taped to her all the time. I think she is very happy to have the wires gone too...she was always trying to pull them off because I think they bothered her. So cross your fingers we are out of the woods and she can just grow up to be a healthy little girl with no sleeping issues. I just can't believe my baby is already 5 months old. She is teething which is NEVER fun, but part of life. She is rolling all over the place and loves to kick herself around in a circle . She is also babbling all the time and will put anything within her grasp into her mouth, including her sisters hair if she gets too close. She is starting to think her brother and sister are pretty fun and loves to sit in her bouncer and just watch them and of course they LOVE the attention.

The Hospital Experience

2010-03-13T10:20:00.000-08:00

So yesterday was a stressful day, probably more for me....I was a basket case! So we had a pretty normal morning, got dressed, got kids fed, got the house picked up,etc. Then we loaded everyone up around 10:45 and dropped Reighlyn and Keegan off at my sister's house who is such a doll to offer to watch them pretty much all day. Then Dad, Mom and Kairington headed down to Salt Lake. We needed to be at Primary Children's Hospital at 1:30 to get checked in and everything. But before we could do that, Mike had a meeting with a client in downtown Salt Lake at 12:30. The original plan was for us to drop Mike off at his appointment and then Kairington and I would go get some food;but when we got into town and we saw how busy it was and how much construction there was, I opted to just stay put. So we found a parking spot right across the street from his appointment, Mike went to his appointment and Kairington and I just chilled in the car. While waiting for Mike, Kairington and I decided to get some lunch, well at least for Mike and I; Kairington couldn't eat until after her procedure later that afternoon. Once the appointment was done, we were off to the hospital....I think I got more nervous with every street we drove closer to the hospital. We got all checked in and had all of her vitals and stats taken. Then it was off the the pre-op waiting room to wait for the Dr's to come and talk to us. I thought for sure Kairington would just be screaming since she hadn't eaten since 9am, but she was such a good baby; very calm unless a nurse tried taking her. She is deciding that she doesn't like strangers very much. The hardest part of the whole day was handing our baby girl to the Dr and watching him walk away with her to get her set for the procedure. I started tearing up, so we just had to walk away quickly so I didn't loose it completely. Then it was off to the surgery family waiting room, where we waited while she was with he Dr's. They had to put her under so they could check everything out. After about 1/2 hr the Dr came and gave us the run down of what she found. She said Kairington was doing great and was just sleeping away in post-op. She said that her lungs looked great, nice and pink and healthy. She said her trachea was nice and pink but small, but that there was nothing that can be done about that. Her larynx also looked great she said, no floppy cartilage like they thought it might have been. Then she said she did find why she is having sleep apnea, she said that her adenoids and tonsils are WAY to big for her. I guess there was an ENT surgeon in the OR next to her and she had him come and look and he said that yes they were way to big and that he would do the surgery to remove them for us. She said loves this ENT and would trust her own kids with him. So it looks like the next step as far as Kairington is concerned is surgery....which is SCARY!! They said since she is so small she will have to stay in the hospital for at least a couple of days depending on how she recovers. We will find out on Monday when all of that will happen when I talk to the Dr.
After talking to the Dr, I went down to post-op to see my little baby girl. She was just waking up and wanting to eat...good thing I came prepared with a 6oz bottle for her and promptly gave it to her. She was still sleepy and didn't even open her eyes until Mike came back to be with us and her bottle was mostly gone. She gave Dad a quick smile when she saw him...she loves her dad. Usually with this procedure, you can go home within 30 minutes of the baby waking up, but since Kairington has sleep apnea and we had a 2 hour drive home, they wanted to make sure she was completely awake and having no side affects of the procedure before they would release us. So I think she was done with her procedure and everything around 4 and we didn't leave until 7. She was such a good baby, in good spirits and just chilled with mom and dad. She didn't really like having all of the wires on her, but she is kind of use to it with her sleep monitor she is always on.
So all in all everything went well and I am so relieved. Thank you to everyone for their thoughts and prayers. We will keep you updated on the future for Kairington.

Kairington at the house that morning..all smiles!

Kairington not wanting to get changed!

Kairington thinking that getting her vitals checked and held by a stranger SUCKS!

Life is good again, the nurse left and she has her mom Pre-op

Kairington and Dad Pre-op

Kairington & Dad before the procedure -Pre-op

Kairington waiting for the Dr - Pre-op

Kairington - Post-Op

Kairington Post-Op

Yet another update for Kairington

2010-03-11T22:40:00.001-08:00

So Kairington had her doctor appointment with the Pulmonary Specialist this week down in Salt Lake. Well the doctor was not happy to hear about how much she is still not breathing at night, but said her lungs sound good so that was a good thing. The bad thing is she is pretty sure she has OSA, or Obstructive Sleep Apnea. She is thinking that it might be her adenoids are to big, in which case they would need to be removed via surgery. Or that the cartilage around her larynx is too floppy, is which case some might have to be removed or Kairington would have to be put on oxygen at night to help keep her air ways open until the cartilage hardens as she gets older. Another thought is that her acid reflux is so bad that she is getting acid into her lungs. So with so many reasons why Kairington is having the issues she is having, the doctor made a to -do list. First was to order an oxygen test for two nights. Along with her apnea monitor she already has, she needed to wear a monitor on her foot for two nights to test her oxygen levels, check we finished that last night and now need to wait for the results. Next was to contact the insurance to see if they would pay for a sleep test, check, her office is checking into that. Next would be to have her stop taking all acid reflux medication to see what her body does with no medication, check, she has been off medication for a week and seems to be doing good....no major throw ups yet! Finally would be to have a bronchoscopy performed. This in-tells Kairington being put under and a scope being put up her nose and all the way down to her lungs to see if and what is obstructing her sleeping and causing her to stop breathing. So that is what we are doing tomorrow actually...we are heading down to Salt Lake to Primary Children's Hospital to have a bronchoscopy done at 3pm tomorrow. I am a nervous wreak the closer it gets, but I also know that something is wrong with my baby and this will help get us one step closer to finding out what and hopefully fixing things. So thanks to my wonderful sister, Ana and her husband we at least get to leave our other two children here....I am hoping that 2 less children will equal less stress in the waiting for....we will see! I will update once we are home tomorrow night. Please keep my precious baby girl in your prayers!

Seriously Keegan???

2010-03-11T22:18:00.000-08:00

So I don't know if Keegan thought that he could fly or what,but either way he found out that gravity works very well in our house. I have told Keegan and Reighlyn millions of times not to jump on the couches, but do kids ever listen, really...NO!! So yesterday evening I was up doing dishes and saw the kids jumping on the couches and I told them if I saw them do it again, they would be in big trouble and counted to 3 for them to get off the couch....did it work...NO! So I was on my way down to discipline and was in the process of chasing down Reighlyn when BAM! Keegan's head connected with the floor!! He instantly started screaming at the top of his lungs and I ran to pick him up. His head had a good sized goose egg on it right away. It took a bit to get him calmed down and of course wanted nothing to do with ice on his head. So I turned to get him some Tylenol...and of course we are out.Ugh, so we had to pack up and go to the store to get some, so the kids and I stayed in the car while Mike ran in to Wal-Mart to get some. I thought maybe he would have a bump for a while or maybe even a black eye, but this morning he just had a bruise where he had hit. Luck kid, he hit the floor hard.

Keegan after "flying off the couch Wednesday night"

Side view of Keegans head Wednesday night

Well no worries, he made up for the fact that his bump went away so fast. Today while I was putting laundry away up stairs Keegan was dancing to a old birthday card I found(it is one of the cards that plays a song when you open it). Well for some reason, Keegan feels the need to dance with his eyes closed. The next thing I know, I here BAM followed by screams. I come running down stairs and Mike comes running upstairs from work. Well lo and behold, Keegan hit the exact same spot and has an even bigger goose head!! All I could say was seriously Keegan, seriously?! At least I had Tylenol this time! I guess he is like his mother...I ran into quite a few things when I was little. I have many pictures to prove it!

Keegan after dancing into a wall Thursday

Closer view of his head after meeting the wall head on!

Kairington 4 months old

2010-03-11T22:07:00.000-08:00

So we took Kairington to the doctor for her 4 months check up on Tuesday and everything is looking good for the most part. She is weighing in at 14 lbs (59%) and her length is 25.5"(88%). I think I could go as far as saying it seems she gets her height from her dad since he is 6'5" and I am only 5'5". Kairington is such a happy, calm baby. She can just sit and calmly watch her brother and sister for hours, that is until one of them decides to try and include her in their fun...then she lets out a warning cry. This cry lets mom know its time to pick her up where she knows she will be safe; once in my arms, she usually will go back to watching and laughing at her siblings. She is smiling and laughing all the time (she actually had her first laugh for Mike while we were in Iowa). She is also rolling over from her belly to back and sometimes from her back to belly, but that has only happened a couple of times and usually only when she is mad. She loves watching her Einstein(the way we made it 1000 miles in the car), but mostly she just loves to be talked to. Her new favorite thing to do is buzz her lips and make spit bubbles. When she makes her spit bubbles, she laughs, but Keegan is pretty sure she is "messy" and quickly goes to find a burp rag or towel to "clean up" the baby;such a helper. Kairington has also started on rice cereal...she enjoys anything, not a picky eater at all.

Kairington enjoying her first rice cereal meal

Wright Family Pictures

2010-03-11T21:28:00.000-08:00

We thought we would take advantage of the situation with all of us being together for the first time in two years and knows it wont happen again with Melia leaving on her mission at the end of this month....which means...FAMILY PICTURES! Every one's favorite thing to do, especially with a lot of little kids to try and get to look and smile together....fun times....I think we actually got some good ones though. A huge thanks to Amy Gleisberg for coming and taking our family pictures...your awesome!

Reighlyn, Kairington & Keegan...I am pretty sure this is how Kairington feels most of the time!

Kairington

Kairington smiling at mom

Kairington looking sad...she doesn't know whats going on...I just woke her up for these pictures...what a mean mom, right?

Keegan on a pink horse...I know, but he is smiling SO CUTE!! No worries I am going to get the picture printed in black & white!

Keegan is all smiles in the rocking horse

Reighlyn laughing at Uncle Jonathan

Reighlyn's turn on the horse...this was what got us through the family pictures...the thought of riding the horse!

Audrey's turn on the horse

The MEN of the family....we need to get a couple more kids that are boys to even things out

The Ladies...our numbers are strong!

The Wright Family!

This picture I think shows our personalities the most....I think its funny!

Ok, now we are all smiles! The original six!!

Grandpa Wright and his 7 CUTE grand kids!!

Thayne & Audrey(3 yrs)

The Gleisberg's : Ariana, Jonathan, Adien(11 months), Addison(4 yrs), & Kileigh(3 yrs)

The Ashton's: Mike, Kjersta, Kairington(4 months), Reighlyn(3 yrs), & Keegan(2 yrs)

THE WHOLE CLAN!

Wright Family Game Night

2010-03-11T20:52:00.000-08:00

So we decided to all get together and play some games while we were all home...kind of a practice for when we are in Colorado. The Gleisbergs were awesome and offered to keep Ariana's kids that night and my kids went to bed at 7, so it was nice not to have TONS of kids running around or trying to "play" with us. It was pretty quiet as far as that was concerned...Thayne's little girl, Audrey was there and then Kairington was up for a little while, but for the most part you wouldn't have known that there were any kids around. We had a full house that is for sure...the group consisted of: Dad, Garth, Melia, Mike, Myself, Ana, Jonathan, Thayne, Sarah(his friend), Tasha, Chris(Tasha's bf) and then of course Audrey and Kairington; but no worries we all got around the table to get in on all the fun games. Before the games began, we all enjoyed some Papa Murphy's pizza, then headed for the games. First we started to the night out with Apples to Apples. While the games got started, Tasha and I ran to the grocery store for some beverages and candy and goodies to much on. Melia also made some marshmallow brownies and Sarah brought some brownies and cookies; we had plenty to eat that is for sure. After many, many rounds, we decided to switch games. While switching games, Dad decided to call it a night and Garth, trying to get back into the groove of things called it a night. Dad went to his bed to go to bed, Garth not so much...he made himself quite comfortable on the living room floor, flat on his back. All and all we had TONS of fun....the Wrights know how to have fun!

Garth, Dad & Melia playing some games...Dad looking pretty serious

Tasha, Thayne & Sarah

Mike & Kairington...I think she is wishing she could have some candy or chocolate!

Oh Jonathan...is there anything else to say?

Garth tapping out after Apples to Apples..who sleeps on there back like that?

Tasha, Thayne, Sarah & Audrey....we switched to trivial pursuit....we all sucked at that game

All I can say is Jonathan after a couple of mountain dews!

Jonathan, Chris & Tasha...Chris I think is trying to convince us that he knows the answer... I think he was wrong!

I must be calling someone out....probably Thayne since he was sitting down at that end of the table...who knows

Thayne, Sarah and Audrey

Mike's GQ Photo shoot, take 1

Take 2

Take 3

TASHA!!! Man I love this girl....!!

Chris...Tasha's bf....no worried we was SO worried to meet all of us...like we are scary, right?

A Pic of the group playing some games

I'm all smiles...nothing makes me happier than hanging with the family

Melia enjoying some brownies...but looking like she is a kid that got caught sneaking cookies

Can you say like Father like Son??

Garth and Audrey ready to get their game on!

Elder Garth "G-Funk"Wright Returns HOME!

2010-03-11T20:19:00.001-08:00

So after leaving Africa, Tuesday night at 11:30pm, went from Africa, to London, to Denver, and finally landed in Omaha, NE at 9:50pm Wednesday night. All of the siblings came to the airport to wait for him, along with dad of course and Jonathan. Mike would have gone, but was kind enough to stay back at my dad's with the kids, since it would have been way too late for them. We wanted to get there earlier enough just in case his plane was way early. We didn't want him to get off the plane and have no one there to meet him. During the day, all of the kids help decorate posters for Uncle Garth's return. It was fun for them and helped keep them entertained for about an hour. Then later after Aunt Melia got home from work, Reighlyn helped her "decorate" the poster even more with feathers, glitter,etc. We also made him a flower bouquet with pipe cleaners. They turned out way cute...wish I would have gotten a picture of them. Anyways, after waiting about a half hour, Garth's plane finally landed, but no worries, while we all waiting anxiously to see where he was, he decided he needed to get one more lesson in before getting off the plane. I am pretty sure he was the last one walking up the ramp where we were all waiting. On the way up the ramp he was talking to a young woman about praying about the Book of Mormon and bearing his testimony that it was true and all she needed to do was pray about it. I guess when all you do for 2 years is preach the gospel it just comes as second nature. After a round of hugs from everyone and a group photo it was off to getting his luggage and then drive home. I was very glad my dad only lives about 10 minutes away from the air port, as I am sure Garth was too. After getting home, Garth unpacked his bags, well kind of, more just showing us a lot of the things he brought home from Africa and telling us fun stories from his mission. I think we all finally got to bed around midnight or so. I thought for sure Garth would sleep all morning, but he was wake when my kids decided to wake up at the lovely hour of 5:45am. I think one of his hardest adjustments was the weather...it was in the single digits the whole first week he was home...a little different from 100 degree weather. No worries we went and got him some lovely man slippers that helped keep him warm, along with fleece sheets on his bed. We are so glad Garth made it home and can't wait to spend more time with him!

Telling us all about the golden contact he was talking to on the airplane

The family back together again!

Jonathan & Garth

Thayne & Garth

Audrey & Garth...how cute!!

Melia & Garth

Tasha & Garth...Tasha is VERY happy to see him!

Father & Son reunited...I think they were both tearing up a bit.

Ariana & Garth

Me & Garth....look at that BIG smile on his face....can you tell who his favorite sister is!! j/k girls!

Here comes Garth up the ramp...no worries he is talking to his golden contact...not even looking for us!

The Arrival board, that we all watched for a 1/2 hr!

Dad being silly while waiting for Garth

I'm not sure why I am "mean mugg'n" the camera

I'm the only one looking!

The whole group waiting...except Jonathan...who is taking the pictures!

Making the trip out

2010-03-07T06:54:00.000-08:00

We recently made the long trip out to Iowa. We decided to drive even though it was still in February. In my mind I was thinking that since it was the end of February that all the snow would be gone and it would be the beginning of spring. Not so much the case...we had pretty good weather through Logan Canyon, but then hit some foggy/snowy weather when we were coming into Bear Lake. Then it seemed to clear up and was pretty nice until we got to Little America, were we decided to stop for lunch for a couple of reasons, 1. I was feeling pretty sick; I guess I had forgotten how sick I get through canyons when I am not pregnant, 2. It was lunch time so we thought we would get some food, and 3. Mike needed to stop and have a conference call for work. So while I wrangled the kids at the restaurant in the gas station trying to feed them lunch, Mike was in the car for an hour on his work call. It was good timing that we were able to stop at Little America when Mike had his phone call, but I the kids after sitting all morning were not wanting to sit and eat their lunch. They were jumping on the booth seats, climbing on the tables, climbing under the tables, etc. I was so ready to get back in the car by the time Mike got done so I could lock them into their seats. The rest of the day went pretty good, the weather was pretty good, until of course it got dark and we hit the Laramie, WY pass. We hit a wall of fog and had to slow down to like 30 mph. We finally got to our hotel in Sidney,NE around 9pm. The last 2 hours of the drive were rough because our kids are use to going to bed at 7pm and don't sleep in the car, so that meant they just whinnied, fought, cried for the last 2 hours, of course while we were driving through the wet, slick roads. Once we got to the hotel, the kids hit the bed and slept straight through the night...it was wonderful. We woke up to 6 inches of snow, but the interstate seemed to be cleared for the most part. Then we just had rain/snow mix until Kearney,NE. Needless to say I was wrong...it was not spring for the drive out. With all of the weather it ended up taking us 15 hours to drive out spread over two days. We finally arrived at my dad's house Saturday afternoon around 4:30. I don't know who was more excited to be there, the kids or mom and dad!

Kairington Update

2010-02-11T08:36:00.000-08:00

So I thought I would give a quick update on Kairington and all of her issues. So first as I said in a different post, she has an ear infection and probably RSV. Along with that she still has bad acid reflux, but is being managed very well with 2 types of medication. Also her breathing is getting a lot better, I only give her breathing treatments once in a while, when she gets wheezy. Now for the apnea, that is not getting better. She was on the sleep apnea monitor 24-7 for 2 weeks, at which time they switched out machines, so they could download the information so the Dr could look at the data and decide what to do. Well sure enough, she has been having breathing problems at night; she usually stops breathing a couple of times ever other day or so. The way they have the monitor set up it will set off an alarm after she stops breathing for 15 seconds and then it beeps for every second she doesn't breath after that. As soon as I hear the alarm, I jump up and wake her up because she doesn't wake herself up. Or maybe I am just so scared I wont let her wait that long. I mean when you think about it 15 seconds is a long time not to breath. So the Dr decided she needs to stay on the machine until she can go 2 weeks without any alarms. Well we actually were on our 3rd day when 2 nights ago, so stopped breathing 5 times in the night; and each time I let it beep 5 times, so she went 20 seconds without breathing before I wake her up. It was a long night, but I am so thankful we have the machine. It's scary to think she was doing this before we got the machine....scary! So when I took her in for her ear infection/RSV appointment on Tuesday morning, the Dr said she really should have stopped having apnea episodes at 2-3 months, so she was a little concerned. She said sometimes acid reflux can cause it and that usually stops at 4 months, so she made an appointment for March 8th for Kairington to go down to SLC to see a Pulmonary Specialist. She said that if by then she has stopped having the episodes then it was probably due to the acid reflux and we will just cancel the appointment, but if she is still having issues we will need to go and find out what is causing her to stop breathing. I am really hoping it is just the acid reflux and it will correct itself and we will be out of the woods soon with it all. For now though, she has to keep her patches on her chest everyday; the only time she can take them off is for like 5 minutes for a bath. Her skin is bright red and kind of raw where the patches are, but we don't have any other choice right now. We will keep you all posted on how the next couple of weeks go.

Are we ever going to get healthy??

2010-02-09T06:51:00.000-08:00

So I am sure by the title, you can figure out what this post is about. Seriously, all we keep doing is passing this sickness around and around the house. I am getting pretty tired of waking up to see who as a cough, or runny nose, or a fever and it usually is someone different everyday. Luckily, Mike and I have been able to stay pretty healthy for the most part. Mike keeps feeling like he is getting a sore throat, but it never seems to come to the surface, probably thankful to all the vitamins that he keeps popping...whatever you go to do so I am not the lone parent I am fine with. So it all mostly started with Reighlyn Wednesday night in the middle of the night with the croup cough...so the next morning, no preschool for her; instead a breathing treatment with Kairington's nebulizer and some good old cough medicine. The cough seemed to go away pretty fast with the help of a couple of breathing treatments. But she had a none stop runny nose and a cough that you could tell was just full of all the junk that was congesting her. Well trying to keep a 3 yr old away from everyone else is impossible, so of course Keegan and Kairington both now have runny noses and little coughs. That I could handle, but last night before bed Keegan spiked a 102.8 temp. That is a little high for me, so Mike gave him a blessing and some medicine and we sent him to bed. Reighlyn got a dose of cough medicine and went to bed too. Kairington had a runny nose too, but being only 3 months old no medicine for her, so I just sucked her nose out and Mike got her to sleep. Around 11 when we headed to bed, Mike went to check on Keegan and he was breathing very fast and he was burning up and his little heart was racing. So we took his temp again and it was 103. So with a whinny 2 yr old we brought him to bed thinking he would just sleep with us....NO WAY! That kid hates to sleep with anyone, so after tossing and turning for about an hr, I took him back to his crib and he feel right to sleep; gotta love a kid that loves to sleep! Reighlyn woke up a couple of times because of bad dreams, but stayed in her own bed; mostly thanks to a baby gate that we place in front of her door so she can't make her way to our room in the middle of the night. Then in the early morning, Kairington woke up with a temp. I took it in the bum.. since according to the Dr that is the best way for a baby, well luck me after having her throw up on me twice in the night, during the temp taking, she was mad and pooped all over me. Oh the glamor of being a mother! Well her temp was 101.5, which is pretty high for a little baby. So I called the Dr and got an appointment for that morning right after I dropped Reighlyn off at preschool. Luckily, Mike offered to keep Keegan, so I didn't have to deal with 2 sick kids. Well the Dr decided that Kairington had an ear infection and possibly RSV, but she said she wasn't going to test for it since it required them putting a tube thing in her nose and it was uncomfortable, just to find out it was RSV and give her the same medicine she will be put on for her ear infection. So then we headed to Wal-Mart to get her medicine and of course waited forever and finally got everything just in time to go pick Reighlyn up from preschool. So needless to say I am glad that we have doctors to help my sick kids hopefully get better sooner than later because I don't know how many more sleepless nights I can have.

Isn't the snow suppose to stop in January?

2010-01-31T09:58:00.000-08:00

So it seems like winter is never going to end. We actually had gone a couple of days, maybe even a week without snow and then last weekend, we got hit with a bunch of snow, of course on a Sunday morning, but lucky for us we don't have church until 1 so no biggie. So I dressed the kids and they came out and "helped" shovel the driveway. Really they just climbed on all of the piles of snow, but Keegan's little legs kept getting stuck so I would have to stop and rescue him every couple of minutes. They got pretty cold pretty fast, so they went in while I finished the driveway. After the snow, it seemed we might be done, but nope, this morning we woke up to snow again. Right now it really isn't sticking, so hopefully it will stay that way. We are planning on driving out to Iowa soon and I hope that we don't get stuck in the middle of Wyoming and have a huge storm come through and they close the highway down. That would not be fun with 3 little kids!

January Fun

2010-01-31T06:06:00.000-08:00

Well not a lot as happened since the last blog, hence why it's been a couple of weeks since the last blog. The week of the 18th, we decided to do some sharing around our home, but not the kind of sharing you want to do. Wednesday morning, Mike woke up and had the full blown flu. So he just hung out in bed all day and the kids and I retreated to my friend Lauren's house for a little play date for 2 reasons...1. so Mike would have some peace and quite and 2. so I could keep the kids away from him as much as possible. Well that obviously didn't work too well because Thursday morning Mike was better, but Keegan was running a fever and showing signs of the flu. So Thursday I spent the day taking care of a whinny 2 year old. Then Friday he was feeling better for the most part, but lucky for me Reighlyn woke up running a fever. Well actually she started running a fever in the middle of the night, we figured that out when she came and got in bed with us around 3am and she was burning up. The good thing about Reighlyn being sick, is she just wants to be left alone for the most part. So I just made her a bed on the couch and left her alone and she just watched shows and slept on and off all day. The hardest part was keep Keegan off of her....he doesn't understand why Reighlyn would want to just lay there and not play. So being the typical little brother he is, he decided all day that he would try and get Reighlyn to play with him. He would steal her blankets and pillow, turn off the tv, sing "jingle bells"(his favorite song) very loudly right in her ear, or sit there and hammer her head with his play hammer. Needless to say, Keegan spent a lot of time in his room in time out that day. Saturday everyone was feeling a lot better and I made the comment that of course everyone else got it but me...I guess mom's don't get sicks days, only get to take care of the sick. Well I probably shouldn't have said anything because Sunday morning I woke up with it. The bad thing is I couldn't just lay in bed and sleep all day, the mom isn't that lucky. So I just camped out on the couch were I could still feed Kairington when needed & play referee with Reighlyn and Keegan. All I can say is at least this thing was only a 24hr bug. Also we were counting our blessing that Kairington didn't get it, but I think we were getting a head of ourselves. Little Kairington woke up in the middle of the night on Friday with a temp of 101, which is pretty high for a little 2 month old. And she was just screaming and nothing could calm her down. Then Mike gave her a blessing and I gave her some meds and she finally fell asleep and slept pretty good the rest of the night. In the morning her temp was gone, but you can tell she is still sick, she will be fine and then will just start screaming for no reason. And Yesterday she didn't want anything to do with eating and when she did eat anything it came right back up, or out the end usually all up her back. I think she went through 4 different outfits yesterday. Last night she did sleep from 8 - 5 and then ate and went back to bed and is still sleeping, so we will see how she feels when she wakes up. I am hoping we are all done with this sickness. Needless to say Kairington and I will be hanging out at home today...no church. I just want to make sure she is 100% before facing more germs and sickness. We will see if Mike is brave enough to face church with Reighlyn and Keegan by himself.

Kairington 2 months old

2010-01-12T22:50:00.000-08:00

My little baby girl is now 2 months old. Time seems to be flying by unless it is a night when Kairington decides she doesn’t want to sleep through the night, which means mom and Kairington get to watch some late night TV while everyone else is enjoying some nice, peaceful sleep. She has come to love Baby Einstein, which is great for me; means I get to have 20 minutes or so of her being entertained! Kairington is on a different path then my other 2 kids. She was the smallest of them all weighing in at 8lbs 4oz at birth, but that small size has not stayed around. She is growing a lot faster than the other 2 did. Today she had her 2 month check up at the doctor and weighed in at 12lbs 3 oz. To compare a little bit, Keegan didn’t weigh 12lbs until he was 4 ½ months old! Keegan was rather small though, until he hit 1 and then he shot up like a weed. Her weight gain is a good thing though because she has been had a lot of issues with bad acid reflux. She was put on medication for it at a month old after an ultrasound to make sure it wasn’t anything else causing her to throw up so much. The medication worked wonders until about a week ago and then the throwing up started up again, but not as bad, so the doctor today put her on an additional medication to help with the reflux….hopefully it will help, for her sake and my laundry’s sake. She also got a new medication for an eye infection that just wont go away… her left eye is always goopy and puffy and of course after a nap or in the mornings it is glues shut until I get a warm wash cloth and clean it off. So hopefully that will clear up in a quick hurry with these new eye drops. All of the above I was excepting from her check up today along with some vaccine shots, but we had a little bit more excitement than that today. So during the doctor’s examination of Kairington, she was listening to her lungs and didn’t like how wheezy she sounded. She then asked if she seemed to have problems breathing, ever stopped breathing, etc. I told her she was a very noisy eater, and even sleeper. She seemed to always be struggling for breath but had been that way from day one. Also sometimes she would stop breath while feeding and a couple of times would stop long enough her lips would turn blue. This of course worried the doctor, so she wanted to run some tests to start ruling things out. First they had a nurse come down and give Kairington a breathing treatment with a nebulizer to try and help her breathing. The nurse thought Kairington might fight having a mask on, but since I was holding her she didn’t really care…she actually feel asleep while doing the treatment. After the breathing treatment the fun began…so with Kairington stripped down to her diaper, the doctor sent Kairington and I on a little scavenger hunt all over the hospital it seemed. First stop was the 2nd floor of the connected hospital for an EKG. Since there is no pediatric Cardiologist, they took the images and then had to sent them to Primary Children’s Hospital in SLC,UT; then it was on to the 1st floor x-ray department for some chest x-rays. Well since they need chest x-rays which meant you need to be sitting up for them and Kairington is only 2 months, they had to squeeze her into this plastic tube contraption. It reminded me of the plastic tubes that are used in the drive through at the bank. Her arms were straight above her head and there was a little place for her face to be out. She screamed and all I could do was hold her little hands while they took the x-rays. The technicians said not to worry about her cries; it was way more painful for me to watch than it was for her to be in the tube. After the traumatizing x-rays it was back to the doctor’s office to wait for what I had originally come for, vaccine shots. After 1 oral dose and 3 painful shots, one of which the nurse went too deep cause more pain and a lot of blood, I thought we were done. Once I got her dressed the doctor came back in and listened to her lungs again, which sounded a little better after the breathing treatment and all the crying. Then she had the nurse test Kairington’s oxygen levels, which caused me to have to get her partly undressed again, causing her to cry again. We finally left the doctors office with a handful of prescriptions and orders to go to Praxair, were we would pick a nebulizer unit to rent and a sleep apnea monitor unit that we were also renting. It took an hour for them to teach me how to use both of these machines. I finally got home and tried hooking Kairington up to the apnea monitor, which she needs to wear 24-7 except for baths for 1-2 weeks. But of course I couldn’t get the monitor to work, so I had to call the company and they sent someone out to our house to help us get it hooked up. Come to find out it had a short in one of the wires, so the guy had to go back to the office and get another wire. By the time he got back and we had her all hooked up it was 7:30pm. But at least the monitor was up and running. The machine will monitor her breathing and heart rate and an alarm will sound if she stops breathing or if her heart rate slows down or speeds up too much. Then it was off to Wal-mart for me to get all of her medication the doctor ordered for her, including her nebulizer breathing medication, which she will need to do a breathing treatment every 4 hours. When I got home with all the medication and with all the equipment we have at our house it looks like we have our own little hospital here. Hopefully things will go smoothly for the next couple of days and we can get her wheezing under control.

Kairington doing her nebulizer breathing treatment

Another picture with the nebulizer on...at least she doesn't cry when we do them

Kairington all hooked up to the apnea monitor

Kairington watching Einstein

Random Sunday Pictures

2010-01-12T22:25:00.000-08:00

Reighlyn sporting her straightened hair...thanks to a new hair straighten I actually got her hair straight for the first time

Keegan trying to smile without squinting

No luck....squinting is all we get!

Yet Another Trip to the ER

2010-01-12T22:24:00.000-08:00

So it seems that my sister’s family LOVES to take trips to the ER. Also it seems as though I am always around or close by when it happens. So not even 2 weeks after Ana takes a trip to the ER after passing out, they take another trip on Sunday, this time for Kileigh. Reighlyn and I went to Ana’s Sunday evening to borrow some baking soda so Mike could make some cookies. Well Reighlyn has been wanted to play with the girls for the past couple of days so I let them play for a little bit while I talked to Ana and Jonathan for a couple of minutes. Well the girls, being little girls, started running from room to room screaming at the top of their lungs chasing each other. Well it was all fun and games, until they went running through the kitchen and Kileigh’s head literally bounced off the corner of the counter top. This brought instant tears and high pitched screams which brought Addison and Reighlyn to a quick halt. After a quick look from Jonathan it was decided that it was pretty deep and a trip to the ER was probably the best. Well luckily for them I was already there, no need to call. Since I have left Kairington and Keegan with Mike thinking it was just going to bed a quick trip, I decided it would be best if I took Addison and Aiden with me to my house so I could help Mike with my kids at home. So I loaded the kids up and came home with a little bit more than baking soda. Luckily since Jonathan was on duty, they went into the ER through the police entrance, which helped speed things up. Kileigh came away with one stitch and a princess sticker. But I think she was most excited about having a bracelet with her name on it.

Reighlyn's a Sunbeam

2010-01-12T22:02:00.000-08:00

So this past Sunday was Reighlyn’s first day of Sunbeams! There were some mixed feelings about this with her. She was excited because she knows that Addison was a sunbeam and that means that Reighlyn was going to be a big kid like Addison. But she was not very excited when I told her that meant she would not go to nursery, she wouldn’t be playing with toys, or having snacks. I think the snacks were the hardest thing to give up. So after sacrament, we made our way to the bathroom to make sure she wouldn’t have to go in the middle of sunbeams and we had to wait in line. I think all of the new sunbeams were in the bathroom at the same time doing the same thing we were doing….take care of business. After things were taken care of we headed to class…when we got to the door she just stopped dead in her tracks and wouldn’t go in. But her teacher was so good, came and took her hand and took her in and she went with no tears or anything. When it was time to go pick her up she was as happy as can be talking a mile a minute about how she had so much fun, how her new teachers were so much fun and how she had all the same friends in her new class. I was glad that she transited well into sunbeams. Sunday was also a first for Keegan….nursery without his sidekick Reighlyn. He actually went right in with no tears and has had no problems thus far….cross your fingers it stays that way!

My big Sunbeam

Snow Fun

2010-01-12T21:27:00.000-08:00

So we thought it would be fun to go out and build a snowman as a family one day. So we got all bundled up, got all of the goodies needed to build a snowman and headed out. Well the snow was NOT snowman snow. It was hard enough that the kids could almost walk across the top without making foot prints. Well we decided since we were already dressed we would just play outside for a little while. The kids LOVED it...mom and dad were little cold and were ready to go in a lot sooner than the kids. Keegan thought it was fun though to go down his slide that was outside and to try and ride his bike around. He even found some sidewalk chalk and sat down and started drawing...crazy kid. Reighlyn thought it was pretty fun to have a snow ball fight with Mike. It was a fun, but very cold...luckily Kairington was asleep in the house were it was warm!

Keegan playing on the slide

Keegan trying to figure out how to ride a bike in the snow

Keegan not sure whats so wrong with sidewalk chalk in January!

Reighlyn throwing a snowball at Dad

Keegan riding his bike in January

Reighlyn and Keegan playing in the snow

Reighlyn all smiles

Keegan loving the snow

Keegan's Second Birthday

2010-01-12T21:03:00.000-08:00

It's crazy to think that my little guy is already 2! We decided to have just a simple get together for just cake and presents...nothing big. We also decided that instead of doing it in the evening and deal with grumpy kids, we would do it at 4 in the afternoon. It worked out great. We just invited family and some close friends, well you would think that would keep the group small, but not the case. We had quite a large group of people with a lot of little kids running around, and of course screaming at the top of their lungs. We had Grandma and Grandpa Ashton, Aunt Lish and Uncle Craig and their 4 kids(ages 10, 8, 2, and 9 months), Mike's cousins Joy and Jason and their 4 kids(ages 10, 8, 6, and 3), Ana and Jonathan and their 3 kids (ages 4, 2 1/2, and 9 months), Lauren and her baby girl,3 months, and then my crazy kids ages 3, 2, and 2 months. So needless to say it was very loud and crazy, but fun. When it was time to light the candle and sing happy birthday Keegan was excited and happy until we all started singing to him....then he had a TOTAL melt down! He started screaming and crying and Mike had to go hold him. It was kind of sad but funny at the same time....no worries we have it all on video! Then he was ok once he could eat his cake without everyone watching him. I guess he didn't like all the attention. I am sure that will change in a quick hurry. Then it was time for presents....this he was excited about and knew exactly what to do since we had just had Christmas and had lots of practice opening present. He got a couple of new car toys, a new movie, but mostly new clothes...a big need! He was pretty excited about all his presents, but one of his favorite things he got was a box of fruit snacks from my sister, but of course all of the kids wanted some, so they didn't last very long once everyone had some. For dinner we were going to take him to McDonald's so he could play, but by the time everyone left the kids were pretty tired and I didn't want to deal with another melt down in the middle of McDonald's probably at the top of the toys...which would have meant mom would have to climb through all the equipment not meant for someone my size to go get him down....unfortunately it has happened too many times and since Mike being a 6'5" guy doesn't fit, I am left to do it every time. So we just had a quick dinner at home and called it a night.

Keegan pretty excited about his new car from Grandma and Papa Ashton

Keegan enjoying his cake

Keegan's birthday cake

New Year's Eve Fun

2010-01-12T20:43:00.000-08:00

So being the boring people we are, Mike and I put the kids to bed at their normal bedtime...7pm. Then we decided to watch a movie, which I think we both feel asleep while watching around 9pm. So we called it a night and headed to bed around 10. I figured we could toast the new year in the morning...no difference between midnight or 7am we figured. Well around 2 am my cell phone goes off and based on the ring-tone I can tell it is my sister, Ana's house. By the time I came to, I had missed the call. Then I heard the house phone ring. I figured it was Jonathan, my sister's husband, calling me to wish me a happy new year or something dorky. Well then he called again, so I decided I better answer it, figuring it was probably something important. Well the first thing he says is I need you to come ASAP, I need to take Ana to the ER right now. Well if that doesn't wake a person up I don't know what does. So I jump out of bed, throw on some clothes and I am out the door in less than 5 minutes. Mike was half awake and was kind of confused at what was going on so I said I would call him when I got there and found out what was happening. It's a good thing I only like 2 miles away from Ana. I get there and am worried at what it could be. Well I guess she passed out twice in a couple minute period. The first time she had Aiden, her 9 month old, in her arms asleep. Luckily she could feel herself getting dizzy, so she tried sitting down on the side of the tub, but passed out and ended up dropping Aiden. Another luckily thing was that Jonathan was home and came running in. A couple of minutes later, she passed out again, so Jonathan called 911 and had an ambulance come and check her out. Once they ran tests and said her vitals were good they left per Jonathan opting to take Ana in himself so it didn't cost an arm and a leg. So I spent my new years eve holding Aiden and listening to Addison, their 4yr old talk my ear off. She woke up the minute Ana and Jonathan left and stayed up until they got home around 5am. Then I chatted with them for a while until 7 when I headed home. They ran a bunch of tests and decided she had been dehydrated, so they pumped her full of tons of fluids via IV and sent her home. She did have to wear a heart monitor for a couple of days just to make sure everything was normal and it was. Scare thing to go through though especially holding a baby when it happened. I am so glad everything is OK.

2009-12-26T12:40:00.000-08:00

I had my sister take some pictures of the kids on Christmas Eve in their outfits Grandma Ashton bought for them for Christmas. Also I thought of a cute idea of puting Kairington in a box and taking some picture for Christmas like she was a Christmas present...some of them turned out cute.

Christmas Day

2009-12-26T09:53:00.000-08:00

Christmas was a lot of fun this year as the kids get older and understand things more. Kairingtin was the first up so I got her feed and ready until Reighlyn woke up around 7:30 then she waited as patiently as she could for Keegan to wake up. They were biting at the bit waiting for dad to go down and see if Santa came. After opening their presents from Santa, Kairington went to sleep and mom made breakfast while they played with their Santa toys. Then after breakfast was done and cleaned up we opened the other gifts one by one. It actually worked pretty good and it made Christmas morning last a lot longer. I don't think we finished opening presents until 10:30. Then I made nachos while Mike got everyone ready to go and get things cleaned up. We headed over to the Gleisbergs around 12:30 so we could have some lunch/snacks with them while we waited for Garth to call. We thought he was calling around 1 or 2 but didn't end up calling until 3. Once he called and gave us the number, we had to call him back, it took a couple of tries since he is in a village in Africa, then we had to connect to my dad and sister, Melia in Iowa. Then we had to call Tasha on a cell and had her conference in and have Thayne via text. There was a bad snow storm in Iowa and everyone was snowed in, so not everyone could make it to my dad's, so we got creative to get everyone together to talk to Garth. It was a good talk and we are all looking forward to him coming home in a couple of months! Then we cleaned up the toys that all the kids got out while we were on the phone and headed home. Mike and the kids played Gator Golf, a new game they got for Christmas, while I feed Kairington and got dinner made, then we ate and the kids were in bed by 6:30. They were very tired...it had been a long day and once again Keegan didn't get a nap so they were ready. Then Mike, Kairington, and I sat down to watch a movie and we were all asleep on the couch by 8:30 so we finally headed up to bed at 9:30. I guess we were all tired from a fun Christmas day.
Today we are just going to chill as a family since yesterday was a lot busier than we thought. So we are going to play games together that we got for Christmas, go build a snowman, watch movies, etc. I will post pictures later of the snowman we build.

Reiglyn and her new doll

Keegan's new train....his favorite toy

This is how excited Keegan was about his new train

Reighlyn & Keegan opening the present together

Dad being silly... walking around with Reighlyn's new tent on his head

Reighlyn & Keegan playing in her new tent

Reighlyn & Keegan sporting their new slippers from Santa

Christmas morning before the kids got up... gifts from Santa

Christmas morning with the Christmas lights on

Christmas tree on Christmas morning

Christmas Eve Photos

2009-12-26T09:31:00.000-08:00

Reighlyn and Kairington with their matching p.j.s

Kairington sporting the coolest p.j.'s

Family picture with the matching p.j.'s

Keegan getting ready to take Reighlyn's cookie dough

Keegan cutting out cookies

Reighlyn all smiles while she rolls out cookies

Mom & Reighlyn

Dad & the kids making cookies

The finished project for Santa

Christmas Eve Fun

2009-12-26T09:11:00.000-08:00

Christmas Eve was full of fun for our family. Reighlyn, Kairington, and I started out the morning around 6:30 while the boys slept. We got up and made jello for jello salad we would be having later. Then we put cinnamon rolls in the oven. While those cooked, Reighlyn helped mom bring all of the presents up from the basement to put under the tree. We opted to not put the presents under the tree any sooner, since both Reighlyn and Keegan open any present they see. Later that day, the Gleisbergs came over for our annual Christmas Eve dinner together. Usually it is done at night and over candle light, but this year we had a lunch because Jonathan had to work from 2-10. Therefore we didn't have candle light since it was in the middle of the day, but that's ok because last year the girls all cried when we turned off the lights and the candles almost got knocked over. So we will probably stick with none candle light dinners for a couple of years, until we know we can get through a dinner without crying and starting a fire. Then we opened gifts that the two families got each other. Amazingly all the girls got dress-up shoes and dress-up skirts, Aiden got soft blocks, and Keegan got cars. Kairington was sleeping so she didn't open anything. Jonathan and Mike gave each other movies.
Our next fun adventure was a first for our family. Mike and I decided to start a tradition of taking our family to a movie on Christmas Eve. So we loaded up our very excited 3 year old, our very tired 2 year old (no nap!) and our screaming 7 week old up and headed to a 3 0'clock showing of "The Princess and The Frog". It actually went great for a while....Kairington slept the whole time after screaming the whole way there, Reighlyn loved the show but was a little concerned about all of the people behind us watching the movie. She actually thought that anyone that had to little girls were Addison and Kileigh. Keegan did great until the popcorn and m&m's were gone, then he decided he was sick of sitting and watching a movie, so Mike ended up standing up by the door the rest of the movie with him. But I would say all in all, it went pretty good. Some good tips we learned though were, take the baby car seat in with you so you don't have to hold the baby the whole time, bring more food, and don't bring a 2 year old without a nap!
Our last adventure of the day was opening our matching p.j.'s that I made for the family for the first time and making cookies for Santa. Thankfully the p.j.'s fit everyone ok and we got some cute pictures together in them. Making cookies was fun to do as a family...even though some of the cookies turned out looking quite funny.... they were made with love and I am sure Santa loved them anyways! Reighlyn helped dad leave 3 cookies and a glass a milk out for Santa before heading to bed. Mike decided to eat 2 1/2 of the cookies and drink the milk around 8:30 so he wouldn't forget....well Reighlyn decided to wake up at 9 and check to see if Santa had been there yet and so was shocked when the cookies and milk were gone, but there were no presents yet and mom and dad were still awake. So thinking on our feet we had to tell her Santa came and checked to see if she was sleeping and ate the cookies and would be back later to see if she was still sleeping and if she was then he would leave the presents....Good thing she is only 3 and she was ok with that answer. Needless to say Santa learned no eating cookies until right before bed or early in the morning before everyone else wakes up!

2009-12-21T15:38:00.000-08:00

Grandpa Wright with Kairington on her blessing day

Reighlyn & Kairington on her blessing day

Keegan & Kairington

Reighlyn & Kairington

The Ashton clan

2009-12-20T18:49:00.000-08:00

Kairington's blessing day

Mike & Keegan

Kj & Reighlyn

Reighlyn & Keegan

2009-12-20T16:03:00.000-08:00

Reighlyn and Keegan dressed up for Halloween

Mom and Reighlyn with our pumpkin

Dad and Keegan with their pumpkin

Dad and Reighlyn on the train at the American Heritage Center

Mom, Keegan, and Reighlyn posing for a quick picture at the American Heritage Center

2009-12-20T15:15:00.000-08:00

2009 Ashton Family Catch-up Blog

Ok, well now that it has been almost a whole year to the day since I have posted anything, I thought I would write a blog....a crazy thought, I know. But as a gift to Mike's parents a started a family blog and I thought hopefully that will help inspire me to update our blog more often then yearly.. the goal would be at least monthly....we will see how that goes.
Life for the Ashton's has had a lot of changes in the year 2009. We started the year out buying our first house together in February, also for all you who don't know our family has grown since last year. We now have three children....Reighlyn who is 3, Keegan who will be 2 in January and Kairington who was born in November. Life with three children has been an adjustment, but we are now in the groove of things I think. It was a hard start with a new one because we came home to sick kids and a sick daddy and we all took turns being sick for the first couple of weeks of Kairington's life. Luckily though Kairington never really got sick. Kairington is now 6 weeks old and has started smiling. We have yet to get a picture though...she just started a couple of days ago and it only lasts for a couple of seconds. She is a spitting image of Reighlyn when she was a baby though...so it's kind of weird to see Reighlyn holding a mini her...crazy. We had a bit of a scare with Kairington a couple of weeks ago because she was throwing up so much that we took her in and after 2 ultrasounds, we found out she has the beginnings of a blockage in her stomach that if it continues to grow will have to be fixed surgically, but as of right now she is medicated with some medication for acid reflux and it has been working great. So cross your fingers we will get by without any surgery. She was the smallest baby of the three so she has taken a little bit longer to sleep through the night, but we now have 2 nights of 8 straight hours of sleep....so mom is loving life right now.
Reighlyn is defiantly a 3 year old through and through. When we are in a store and she is deciding to tell mom what is up, someone will look and say you must be 3 and I just have to laugh and agree. She is a VERY talkative little girl and a lot of the time she talks as though she is 10, not 3. I am sure my dad would laugh and say like mother like daughter. Reighlyn's favorite things right now is anything princess. She loves to dress up like a princess( hence her choice for Halloween), she loves to watch them, and seems to think she needs anything that has a princess on it. Reighlyn started preschool this fall and loves it. I called around and found a preschool that would take her in September even though she was still 2 since she was potty trained. She goes 2 days a week, Tuesday and Thursday from 8:30 to 11:30. It is a great thing all around, she gets to go have fun and learn and mom gets a little break and time to spend one on one time with Keegan more. In the new year, I will hopefully use that time to start doing learning time now that I am finally getting sleep.
Keegan has hit the terrible 2's quite early it seems. He seems to be into everything if you give him half a seconds chance. He has decorated our house with some colorful crayons, washed his hands with toilet water, climbed onto the table to eat anything left, and decided that our couches are best when you climb on top and jump off the back. He is quite the dare devil and has hit his head so much I am amazed that we have not had to visit the ER for stitches or broken bones yet. I am sure it will just get worse as he gets older, the life of a boy I guess.
Mike has recently started a new job. He was working for the local radio station selling advertising and decided to change things up a bit and now sells radio advertising for a Internet radio station called yourldsradio.com. The new job brought more that just a new employer...it also meant his new office was our basement office. It was hard adjustment at first, going from getting up and leaving the house to go to work to not leaving your house sometime for a couple of days at a time. Also learning to deal with the daily noise level that happens when you have 3 children 3 years and under. I think that we all have adjusted pretty well. I am still trying to adjust to being booted out of the basement from 8-5 everyday, but have learned to just check my email in the evenings. I am really trying to talk Mike into buying me a laptop, so I can have Internet access during the day too! We will see how that goes. Mike also we recently called to serve as the Elders Quorum president in our ward. He loves his calling and seems to be getting things all organized in the Quorum.
I am of course sometimes running around with my head cut off it seems since I have 3 very young children, but I wouldn't trade it for anything. Along with being a busy mom, cook, house cleaner, taxi driver, and counselor I have found somethings to keep me sane. Back in May or so I started sewing skirts fora local lady who owns her own business. It is the best thing in the world. About once a week or so I go and pick up a load of fabric and the instructions for the skirts I am to make for the week. It is a great stress reliever for me. During the day I can just put the gate up blocking my sewing room and sew while the kids playing the other room and Kairington is either sleeping or hanging out in her swing with me while I sew. My other outlet is I go into Mike's old job, the local radio station, once a week and file paper work, etc for one of the guys that works there. It is great no one is there, so for an hour or so once a week I go and work in complete silence! Church wise I am currently on the enrichment activities committee which is a great calling. We meet once every couple of months and plan things, and then I help set up for the activities. It's great because it gets me involved in things with the ladies at church. Plus its a calling that lets me go to all of my Sunday meetings. I was in nursery from the time we moved into the ward at the beginning of the year until I had Kairington. It was fun at first, but it got old the bigger I got pregnancy wise, so it was good to be done with that calling.
Well that is kind of the short version of what has been happening in our lives this past year. I will post some pictures of the kids to update everyone what they all look like now. Happy Holidays!

2008-12-25T07:13:00.000-08:00

2008-03-24T10:25:00.000-07:00

Happy late Easter to everyone. I hope everyone had a wonderful day and remember to keep the Savior in mind. Easter was good for our family. We decided to celebrate the whole candy, eggs, and bunny on Saturday so Sunday was just about the Savior. Saturday was a pretty nice day but still not summer, so we had Grandma and Grandpa Ashton come with us to a park and we did a picnic and a small Easter egg hunt with the kids. Ok, well Keegan just slept in Grandma's arms while Reighlyn found the eggs. Now you must all understand that the attention span of a one year old isn't very long, so I only hind about 5 or so eggs and they were all around one big tree at the park. Reighlyn knew there was candy in the eggs, so the first egg she found she tired eating all the candy inside before going to the next egg. By the second egg though she caught on and found it fun to get the eggs and put them in the basket. Since it was getting a little chilly we decided to wrap things up. We headed home. Now let me tell you it was very weird to come home and not have a huge list of things that had to be done. This might be new news to some I don't know, but we are moving! We have had our house up for sale about 2 weeks now. That's the reason we didn't have tons to do...I have been working my butt off the last couple of weeks going through and packing things up we don't use to make the home cleaner, staging the house, and deep cleaning. So on Saturday there was nothing to do really. We should have done some yard work probably, but it was nice to just relax. We did go get the car washed, but that was pretty much the only things we did that afternoon/evening.
Easter day was very relaxing for us. We had a little FHE in the morning and then went to church. We only went to sacrament meeting because we went to have a late lunch with Ana and Jonathan, along with Mike's parents. Its a good thing we only stayed at church for an hour because Mike was ready to kill Reighlyn. She didn't get a long enough nap, so she was cross. She was throwing crayons, fruit snacks, and pretty much anything else and when you took it away from her she would scream. That is the bad thing about 1 o'clock church with a child who usually takes a nap from 12-2. Luckily we have started sending her to nursery a little early, I know, but it makes church much better for everyone. So after the first hour of church it is usually easy sailing, except 2 weeks ago she started going through this mommy stage where I can't be 5 feet away from her without hearing, "mama, mama, mama" It was cute at first, but now its getting old. She won't even let dad give her a bath and put her to bed, so most nights I get to bath and put to bed both kids, not Mike's fault. But luckily both kids put themselves to sleep, so it really isn't that bad. And once there a sleep around 7:30 they sleep most of the night. Reighlyn sleeps until 6 or 7 in the morning, Keegan sleeps 6-8 hours gets up and eats and then goes back to bed....oh wonderful.
Reighlyn has decided that she loves to be outside. When we were cleaning out the garage Saturday morning, she was running around screaming like it was the funnest thing in the world. Needless to say when it was time to come in, she was not happy at all. It is just another reason why we are so excited that we are building our new house now. The new house should be done at the end of June/beginning of July, so still plenty of summer left for Reighlyn to play in our new fenced yard. Also the neighborhood we are building in has its own playground so that will be so nice to just walk there instead of packing them up in the car and driving to find a not so busy park somewhere. The playground in the neighborhood is only for those that live in the gated neighborhood, so that will be nice. The new house will also bring a new ward. We love the people of our ward, but they are not our age at all, so it will be nice to go to church and not have our kids be the only ones that make a noise. The neighborhood also has a 2 mile walkway they are putting in that goes along the river, so no more taking walks on a busy street.
So house stuff has been taking up a lot of time. With having to go in and pick out colors or paint, cupboards, carpet, flooring, etc. I never knew it was so time consuming to pick everything out,but when you have to go through and make sure every outlet is where you want it and that all the colors flow well...it takes a lot of time. But luckily we have finished all of that and they should start building in the next week or so. It will be exciting once it gets started and starts looking like a house. Mike and I will have to be out there a lot to make sure everything is going like it should and where it should. Really it will be more Mike than me since I have the kids. Ok, well we will update more later and I will try to get some pictures up also.

2008-03-12T12:59:00.001-07:00

Audrey and Reighlyn playing on Grandpa Wright's stairs

Me, Dad, and Garth outside of the Winter Quarters Temple

Elder Wright with Reighlyn and Keegan

Keegan showing a half smile

2008-03-12T12:50:00.001-07:00

Coming home from the hospital...He is already a BYU fan like his dad

Reighlyn sitting in the fridge..her new favorite thing to do

I know its mean I took a picture first, but she pulled the drawer out and tried sitting on it like she does the fridge and she fell in. I helped her out right after I took to picture, I promise.

Our first family photo with 4 of us

Keegan on his blessing day. My wonderful sister made his blessing outfit.
He even has a white tie on even though you can't see it

2008-03-12T12:42:00.001-07:00

Night before I had Keegan

Keegan's 1st bath..Look at the curls!

Just a cute picture of my baby

Reighlyn holding Keegan,,,he looks worried!

Reighlyn playing with her blocks from Grandpa Wright

2008-03-12T12:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, ok I know it has really been FOREVER since I updated this, but it seems like everyday I plan on doing it or even have a thought to do it, other things come up and before you know it the day is gone, well for that matter it seems the month is gone.

So I will try my best to catch you all up on the last 6 months of our lives since that is really the last time I blogged anything. First thing would be Reighlyn’s first trip to Iowa. That happened at the end of September when Reighlyn and I went on a road trip with Ana and her girls so she could go to a wedding. I am not going to lie…it was a very long trip. Mostly because Reighlyn couldn’t sleep with any other noise and she hates her car seat, so when you have to have her strapped into a car seat for 12 hours with her two cousins in the back right by her, it made for a long trip. It was good to go see my dad and everyone though. Reighlyn is getting more grown up though everyday I think. We had her 1^st birthday in November and it went great. We just had family and a couple of friends over and had some pizza and cake. It was very low key, but I think Reighlyn got enough presents that she didn’t know what to do with them all. It was nice to get her some bigger kid toys though, so she wasn’t playing with the infant toys anymore. The only bad thing about older toys is they are usually musical and annoying. Luckily most of them have shut off buttons. Christmas was quiet but went well. On Christmas Eve we had Ana and Jonathan over for our traditional candle light dinner. It was very nice to have a nice dinner, but it was snowing so bad that day and night, I wasn’t even sure if we would be able to have it, but no worries it went great. All I can say it is nice to play Santa when your kid goes to bed at 7pm. Mike and I had everything out and we were in bed around 9pm. Also the good thing about young children is that they don’t wake up at any crazy early hours. I think we got up and did the Santa gifts around 8 and then had breakfast and then opened the rest of the gifts. Reighlyn’s gift from Santa was a play kitchen which she loved along with a ball and a book.

Well for all those that know how big I get when I am pregnant you understand how uncomfortable I was around Christmas being pregnant with Keegan. It was so bad that I could no longer walk normal without very painful pains, so I was taking some wonderful drugs to help with the pain, Loratab. Well after taking this, it made Keegan very tired in the womb so the doctor decided to take mercy on me and take me 2 weeks and 1 day early. A planed c-section is a lot different than trying to go natural and then having to have a c-section. We checked in the hospital at 8am on the 2^nd of January, were I was monitored for an hour or so while they gave me fluids for the upcoming c-section. Then when it was time, I walked down to the OR carrying my own IV bag, climbed myself up on the table. Then I got my spinal block and then lay down to have my baby. I had some issues with the spinal block…yes it did numb me, but it numbed me way to high and I started having a lot of problems breathing to the point were I couldn’t talk at all because I couldn’t catch my breath and they had to put me on oxygen. Then since I couldn’t breathe I couldn’t swallow so I started to gag and choke on my spit, so they had to suction my mouth out. It was scary, but in the middle of all of that Keegan Michael was born at 10:24am.

Having Keegan has changed our lives, but for good that’s for sure. Everyone asks me if it is so hard to have two children now, if I feel like I am just running around with my head cut off. My answer is always no. I was watching my sister’s kids before Keegan was born, so I was watching a 2 year old and two almost 1 year old, so having just one 1 year old and a new born is pretty easy to handle. Especially since Keegan sleeps a lot still. We have had quite a busy last two months though since Keegan was born. Keegan was born just a couple of days before spring semester started for Mike and I. I had registered for two classes and thought I could handle it and was for a while, but I felt I was unable to give all of the time I wanted to to the kids, so I dropped the classes and decided to be done with school for awhile, at least till the kids are older. Mike is currently registered for 4 classes this semester, but it finding out how hard it is to work a full time job, go to school full time and have two children. We are very blessed to have Mike working were he is though. After my c-section I had a lot of issues with healing. First my stomach took longer than excepted to heal, but that wasn’t the worst part. It was the migraines that I started having everyday when I quit taking my pain medication. They had no idea what was wrong and my doctor thought it could be a blood clot in my brain or leaking spinal fluid from my spinal block, so I had to go to the ER when I spiked a temperature of 103.5 to have an MRI and other tests ran. They didn’t find anything with a blood clot, but I was dehydrated, had low blood count, had a bladder infection, and an infection from breastfeeding. So they treated all of that, but I was still having bad migraines to the point were someone had to be here with me at all times to help with the kids because a lot of the time I was in bed with the lights off and a blanket over my head. Luckily we have great family, when Mike couldn’t be here my sister, mother-in-law, and Lauren helped out. There will never be enough we can do to thank them all for what they did. Well after a trip to a Neurologist, he decided my headaches were due to a sudden change in hormones since I had my baby via c-section when my body wasn’t at all in labor. So they gave me some drugs that helped my get through life until my hormones stabilized. Needless to say things are back to normal and things are great now.

One new piece of news that happened to us is we sold my car in January. Now we did this for one main purpose, my transmission was going out and that is not something we wanted to deal with. So while Mike was on his way home from work one night he just stopped to look at cars and ended up test driving one home that evening. Well needless to say I never saw my car again. We ended up trading in my car for a 2003 Ford Expedition Eddie Bower SUV. It is a very nice car and has taken me a while to get use to it, but I drive it like a pro now. We had always said we would get an SUV when we got rid of my car, so that’s what we did and have been very happy with the decision ever since. We will just plan on driving that to Colorado for our Wright Family Reunion now instead of renting a car. The thing I love about it is that it seats 8 people, which means it has a full third row, so we will be able to grow into that car, but not for a while.

When Keegan was a month old, we blessed him in our home, just like we did with Reighlyn. Now I know some think you should or have to bless your babies in church on a fast Sunday, but you don’t. You just need your bishop’s permission and one of the members of the bishopric to be present when you do it. Mike and I decided to bless Reighlyn at home for a couple of reasons. First was we blessed her on Thanksgiving Day when all of my family was here, so then they could stand in the circle and such. Also Mike and I feel that a baby blessing is a very personal thing, it is that child’s first father’s blessing and that is not something we want to do in sacrament meeting. We make it very personal by doing it in our home. We have a testimony meeting first to make sure the spirit is there and then we have the blessing. My dad and little brother flew out for the blessing which we did on February 3^rd, which happens to be Ana’s birthday and also Super bowl Sunday with year, so we had the blessing and then had a super bowl party and then a birthday party all wrapped up into one exciting, wonderful, eventful evening.

Our next big adventure was making a trip to Iowa for Garth, my little brother, to go through the temple and have his mission farewell. We flew out on Valentines evening and got into Iowa about 11pm. We thought it would be perfect to fly out at 7:30 because that’s Reighlyn’s bedtime, so she would just sleep the whole way…NEGATIVE. First of all Mike and I couldn’t sit by each other because it was a small plane and they only have one extra oxygen mask per row, so we had to sit in front of each other. Well Mike had Reighlyn and I had Keegan. Keegan slept the whole time and Reighlyn was really good until she got tired and then she couldn’t get comfortable to get to sleep so she just screamed most of the time. I think I finally got her to sleep the last 10 minutes of the flight. The trip to Iowa went well and it was nice to see everyone and for everyone in my family to get to meet Keegan before he got big. Thayne brought Audrey over a lot so the girls were able to play together a lot. Audrey is 8 months older than Reighlyn, but they are the same height and weight. They also both communicate on the same level, so they would have their own conversations that were normally couldn’t understand. Garth’s farewell went well. He spoke and played a song he wrote on the piano and then Natasha and I say a song called Praise the Man. Then my dad bore his testimony. It was very nice, and then we went home, had a quick meal and we were off to the air port to fly home. Luckily the flight home went a lot better and they both slept the whole way. Garth got called to the Ghana Cope Coast Africa mission. He flew out to Africa on February 20th were he will be attending the MTC in Ghana until March 12^th, which is today, then he will be off serving the people of Ghana Africa.

I can’t believe that Keegan is already 2 months old. Things have been going pretty good with him. I must say that you learn things from your first to your second child. With Reighlyn we put her to sleep every night and it was very hard to keep her to sleep. That is not the case with Keegan, we have just laid him down, and so he has learned to put himself to sleep which is a great thing when you have two kids. The thing with Keegan is that he just loves to sleep. Right from the moment he was born he was pretty much sleeping through the night. During the day he didn’t do the normal new born schedule of eating every 2 hours, he would go every 4 hours. Then at night he would go about 6 hours. Well now I usually feed him around 7 and then go lay him down and he sleeps through the night and will wake up about 5 or so to eat and then goes back to sleep until 9. Reighlyn is also putting herself to sleep around 7 or 7:30 and then she sleeps until 6 or so, then wakes up, so she usually has a little milk and then goes back to sleep until 8:30 or so. We really are blessed to have children who sleep and are easy to put to sleep. Keegan did go through a stage were he didn’t want to be put down, but do you blame him, he has a big sister who just tries to love him too much. She loves to give kisses and hugs and really thinks she should hold him all the time. Oh and when he is cry she will force him to take his pacifier whether he wants it or not, but she means well, she hates it when he is crying himself to sleep, she stands at the bedroom door and repeats over and over, “Brother, brother”. Keegan now loves to watch Einstein with Reighlyn in his saucer. He just loves to be in the upright position and since he has been holding his head up since a week old, it works to leave him the saucer. Ok well I think that is enough updating for one day, I will update soon…I promise.

2008-01-02T19:37:00.001-08:00

2008-01-02T19:32:00.000-08:00

Keegan Michael Ashton
January 2, 2008 10:24 am
8lbs 13 oz 20 1/2 inches

2007-09-12T13:44:00.000-07:00

Random pictures of a GREAT California trip!

2007-09-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

Reighlyn swimming for the first time in California!

2007-09-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

Reighlyn & Mom going to the into the ocean in California for the first time!

2007-09-11T13:54:00.001-07:00

We are back from LA safe and sound and no gun was needed. Our trip was wonderful, but as usual too short. We started our trip by getting up at 5am to leave by 6am to get to the airport on time. Our plane left at 9:30, so we actually made it through security and everything with only a couple of minutes to spare before they started boarding the plane. We waited till the last call to get on because who would want to get on first and be crammed that much longer with a baby, right? So Reighlyn had her first flying experience and it was great. We gave her medicine to help her sleep,but that didn't kick in until the last 20 minutes of the hour and half flight. But we just read books, played with toys, snacked and kept all the people on the plane entertained. When we got there we had to wait a bit for our shuttle to take us to the hotel, but from there the trip was pretty low key. We ordered some room service and just got settled in while we waited for Marc and Angie and their girls to get there because we were starving. Once they got there, we went to In N' Out, a burger joint only in California for a quick bite and then headed to Venice beach. It was so beautiful there, with wonderful 70 degree weather with a nice ocean breeze. We walked around the 100's of shops they have there and trying to avoid any drunks and bums. Mike bought some new sunglasses and a new shirt so he was pretty excited. Then we stopped and watch the "Calypso Tumblers" do an act. I'm not sure if any of you watched "America's Got Talent", but they were in the top 15 I think, so it was cool to see them in person performing on the street. Then Reighlyn and I made our way onto the beach for our first ocean experience. The water was a little cool, but so beautiful. I will be posting a cute video Mike took of it. Then we headed to dinner at the Universal City Walk.It was really neat walking around, but the place we ate at turns into a night club, so as the night went on more and more people were showing up wearing less and less....kind of weird for a couple of Mormon families out for dinner.
The next day Mike and I got up and ate breakfast at Denny's then went to the grocery store for a couple of things. Then on the way home we saw this place called "KJ's Diner" So I stopped in and asked if I could get a shirt since my name was KJ. They were so nice there, they gave Reighlyn and I a free cup of fruit while we waited for the manager to come in on his day off to get me a shirt....nice people in LA. Then we met up with Marc and the girls and went to Manhattan Beach for a little bit before catching some quick lunch. Then it was time for them to drop me off at the hotel and so they could all go to the BYU vs. UCLA game. While they were gone Reighlyn and I chilled in the room for a while, then we decided to go swimming...also a first for Reighlyn. She loved it! We brought a little floaty for her and some of her bath toys and she went to town. We were down at the pool for about an hour, then it was time for a nap..for both of us. After a nap and Reighlyn waking up having peed through everything, I decided I better do some quick laundry since she had successfully peed through all the extra clothes I brought, included all over me on the plane. So after laundry we ordered some room service, had a quick bath and then Reighlyn was down for the night by 8. Mike didn't get home until about 9, so I just read while I waited up for him.
Sunday was mostly a travel day. We got up and had some breakfast we had bought at the store the day before and then packed. Then it was time to go to the airport to catch our flight that left at 11:20. Well right before we were to board they announced they had over booked the flight by 19 people so they were looking for people to fly at a later time. We decided why not, we didn't have anything pressing to do. So we got bumped from the 11:20 and re-booked for the 4:05 flight. And for doing that they gave us each $400 delta vouchers that are good for a year....YEAH! So we will probably take a trip sometime in March once the baby is born...who knows were though. The wait at the airport was very chill, we just walked around got some lunch and looked at all the shops they have there...it was like being in a mini mall or something. Reighlyn did great on the flight home after the first 5 minutes of crying....she slept the rest of the flight and the whole drive home. And to go with that slept through the night till 7 the next morning....what a good baby.
So all in all it was a very fun trip,but it's good to be home. I was sick of eating out that's for sure. Reighlyn and I will only be home for a week though before we head out to the Midwest to visit good old Iowa for the first time for Reighlyn. We are leaving the 17th, so less than a week! We are traveling fools. So the next update will probably come after we get back from that trip with fun pictures to follow.

2007-08-30T15:40:00.000-07:00

Reighlyn smiling

Mom and Reighlyn

Kj 20 weeks pregnant

Cute family picture

2007-08-30T15:11:00.000-07:00

Keegan's side profile

It's a BOY...no doubt!

Reighlyn and Dad at the park

Reighlyn enjoying a sucker

Reighlyn enjoying some crackers

2007-08-30T14:16:00.001-07:00

All right, so its been a couple of weeks since the last post and it seems as though a lot has happened since then.
First we will start off with the new news with Mike. He quit working at ThermoFisher in the production area after 6 long months of doing something he didn't like and working with people he really didn't enjoy. No worries though, he does have a new job that he is MUCH happier at. He is working for the Cache Valley Radio Group doing sales. He started on Friday of last week since his boss would be out of the office all this week. He is on salary for the first year while he builds his client list up then he will be moved to commission. If he starts making more money with commission than his salary before a year then there is the possibilities to be switched sooner. With this job he will be signing businesses up to do advertising on the radio. Since we all know that radio is pretty much the best way to advertise it shouldn't be too hard to get clients. He loves not having to work certain hours during the day and not having to use a time clock. That is Mike's kind of job for sure.
School has started once again. Mike is taking 5 classes online which is a lot, but we have the time all figured out for the most part so I think it will work. He usually gets off around 5, then he comes home and plays with Reighlyn while I get dinner ready, we eat, and then it's time for him to go do homework in the office. While he is doing homework I get dinner cleaned up, Reighlyn feed, bathed, and put to bed. Then its time for me to do homework. It's pretty nice that Reighlyn goes to bed at 7:30 or so. That way Mike and I can get a couple of hours of homework in along with spending come quality time together before bedtime. Our days start pretty early now, we get up around 6 and right now we just go one walks as a family,but soon I will have a bike and then we will go on bike rides together while the weather is nice. We will have to find something else to do for exercise come winter, we are thinking maybe going swimming a couple of days a week and then just working out in our basement the other days since we have a treadmill and exercise bike.
My days right now are very relaxed and chill. I was suppose to start watching the Gleisberg girls full time as of Monday, but due to a employment change for Jonathan, getting hired on by the USU police department, he won't start work until the 10th of September when he goes down to SLC for 3 months for the police academy. So while I have a couple of days off I have been working hard to get ahead in my classes, which are two, so then I won't feel too stressed when I do have them from 8-5 Monday- Friday.
More new exciting news is that Mike, Reighlyn, and I will be taking a trip to California! We leave next Friday morning and will be visiting the beautiful city of LA. Mike is going for a BYU game with his brother and we all thought why not bring the families and have a little mini vacation. So we will get there Friday morning and start going site-seeing and won't stop except for them to go to the game on Saturday evening. While they are at the game, Reighlyn and I will be chilling at the hotel, taking naps, relaxing, swimming....whatever we want! Then we will be coming back Sunday afternoon so we can be back for our busy work week to begin Monday morning. It will be exciting because I have never been there and obviously Reighlyn hasn't either... so it will be FUN! Don't worry we will take TONS of pictures to show you all when we get back.
Another trip to report will be one Reighlyn and I will be taking without Mike...SAD =( I will be driving home with Ariana and her girls on the 17th of September for her to go to a wedding she is in. Jonathan was going to go but since he got the new job...no more Midwest trip for him. I am SO EXCITED because I wasn't going to be able to go home with year since Mike started a new job and I will be too pregnant to fly around the holidays. I haven't been to Iowa since May of 2006 and Reighlyn as never been there, so it will another exciting new trip for her. I think we are planning on taking the girls to the zoo one day, Tasha is in a Parade the Friday we are there and she is marching at halftime in a football game...so those should all be fun things to take the girls to. The rest of the time will just be relaxing time. We might also do a little sewing during the day since we just found out what we are having....
Ok enough stalling....we are having a little BOY! And before you start thinking you never know it could end up being a girl....no believe me it's a boy, no question about it. I have pictures to prove it. So that will be the first boy on the Wright side and the first boy on the Ashton side to have that last name. So everyone wins. Mike was really hoping for a boy so I am glad it is. I wasn't really hoping either way I just thought it was a boy since I have been so sick on this pregnancy compared to Reighlyn. Good news is I haven't gained any weight yet and I am half way there. The doctors only want a weight gain of 15 pounds so I am doing good as far as that goes. I actually lost 5 pounds at first, but have now just recently put those 5 back on so we are back to 0 pounds gained. I am not sick any more though and everything looked great with our little guy. The name we are thinking of is Keegan Michael Ashton. He is due the 15th of January, so not too much longer to go!
So quick new news on Reighlyn is that she is now the proud owner of 4 teeth. Two on the bottom and 2on the top and they all came at about the same time. Poor girl as got some buck teeth though for the top...a pretty big space,but hopefully that will close up a little as she gets more...if not we will love her just the same. Mike said he would be ok with her having buck teeth till she is 19 then we will get her braces...he thinks that will keep the boys away. I think it will just make her hate us. Reighlyn is also now done breastfeeding for the sake of me since she now has teeth. We decided to put her on Rice Milk, which she loves. Once she is one or maybe a little bit before then we will put her on cow milk. But she is loving her food and has decided that baby food is not for her. She loves noodles, rice, bread, potatoes, cheerios, yogurt, cottage cheese and pretty much anything else mom and dad are eating. She also had her first lollipop week or so ago. She thought she was living large...when really all she was doing we making a HUGE mess...don't worry I got pictures of that wonderful day. Alright well I can't think of anything else right now so I will end. But don't worry there will be more to come soon!

2007-08-03T19:17:00.000-07:00

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2007-08-03T14:05:00.000-07:00

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2007-08-03T10:42:00.001-07:00

Helping mom unpack my bag

Reighlyn sitting on her toy bike

Look I am walking!

I figured out I can stand up now

This is my play area while mom works

2007-08-03T10:34:00.002-07:00

More upbeat news is that Reighlyn turned 9 months yesterday! We didn’t have a whole lot going on. I only had one baby to watch yesterday, Brookley who is 6 months old. I watched her from 8-4. Since she isn’t mobile yet, she likes to just hang out on her blanket or swing, which makes for an easier day for me. Reighlyn has decided that she loves to help mom with whatever I am doing. So yesterday when I was starting to unpack our bags, she decided to unpack her bag, which meant there were diapers, toys, juice, baby food and clothes everywhere….oh what a good helper, right?

She also has learned that she likes being upstairs with mom while she works on the computer. We brought up a little TV for her to watch and she actually just watching her show and plays, which helps me out a lot. But she thinks that she should crawl over and try to push buttons on the TV and play with the cords. Or she just gets right up to the TV so her face is touching the screen and watches it…. I swear my child is going to go blind before she is two.

I did weigh her yesterday for the first time since her 6 month check up and she only weighs 15 pounds, so she has lost weight, because at her 6 month I think she was at 15 or 16 pounds…. But I feed her all the time it seems, so I think we are going to be switching her to vitamin D milk so she is getting all that she needs. She also learned how to feed herself yesterday. Before she would get the food in her hands, but not know what to do with it, but she decided to put it in her mouth, so now she is happier. She can eat her Cheerios at her pace, not moms. As soon as I learn how, I will put a video of her feeding herself on here so you all can see.

Reighlyn’s new favorite toy is now this little bike that Ana brought over. It can either be a bike or you can stand it up so she can walk behind it. Well she thinks it is fun to play with all the toys on it, loves to sit on it and hold on to the handle bars and just laugh, but she has decided today that she loves to walk behind it. I guess now that she knows how to crawl she is ready for the next adventure. She actually does a pretty good job walking behind it. Sometimes she forgets she is standing up and just falls down, but she forgets to let go of the bike she is comes down on top of her. Don’t worry she’s a tough kid, she doesn’t cry really when she gets hurt, she is just ready to try it again.

Ok, well not to make this blog update all about Reighlyn, but she is the only one that has any new exciting news, so that’s all for now…enjoy the pictures!

2007-08-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

Well something very interesting and actually scary happened on the 1st of August here in Logan, UT. The mountains right outside our front windows caught on fire! Now I am sure you have all heard about all the wild fires we have been having here in Utah since it is so dry, but I never thought it would be so close. During the day I kept hearing sirens, but I didn't think anything of it because they do pull people over a lot on Center street and a lot of old people up the hill from us get hurt a lot, but after an hour or so of hearing them I decided I would look out the window and wow was I surprised to see the mountain on fire and just tons of smoke everywhere. I tried calling my sister-in-laws and mother-in-laws because they both live up in that part but there was no answer so I started getting a little scared that they had been evacuated from their homes. Plus with the way the canyon winds are the fire could have easily made it's way down the hill towards our house. So there I am with Reighlyn watching this fire thinking, I am not ready if they come and tell us to leave. So I started packing a couple of bags just in case. Mike called and decided to come home in case we did have to leave, which we would go to Ana and Jonathan's since they live on the other side of town. We ended up not having to leave thank goodness, but we were ready just in case. This fire definitely has made us realize we need to really get our food storage and such together and a good 72 hour kit so we don't even have to worry about any of this, we could just leave very quickly if needed. So that's our goal for the next month to get the 72 hour kits all ready and to work on our food storage. I will post some pictures of the fire and of the planes dropping the red dust that helps stop the fire. At least it made for some cool pictures!

2007-07-30T16:28:00.001-07:00

2007-07-30T16:19:00.001-07:00

2007-07-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

Hello all. I am sure you all thought that I probably had just given up on this whole blogger thing, but time just got away from me that's all. Luckily Ana has been doing a pretty good job of updating you all on our lives also. Well hopefully this will be a start to being back to updating more regularly, but no promises.
Well a lot has happened since our last blog so I will try my hardest to update everything I can think of without making this a novel and a half. We are all staying very busy here in Logan, UT. Mike is still working for Hy-Clone, which is now called ThermoFisher, which is the same company that Ana works for, but they never see each other, totally different jobs. Mike works in the production part of things. He will be coming up on his 6 month mark this week, so for a job we thought might just be a pit stop is lasting a little longer than we thought. Mike works the 2-10:30 shift Monday-Friday. It's hard for him because in the mornings while he is home he doesn't have time to spend with just Reighlyn and I and then by the time he gets home we are both in bed. We have been looking around for a different job for a couple of months. He has applied for a couple within the company which would have the 8-5 hours that he would be happy with so we could have the evenings together. Mike is still plugging away at school, which will be starting up here at the end of August so our summer break is almost over.
I am staying pretty busy for saying I quit my job to enjoy the easy life of being a stay at home mom. I am currently watching Ana's two kids, some weeks its everyday, and some I only have them a couple of days. I am also watching a little girl on Thursday's who just turned 6 months from 8-4. So my days are very full with 2 to 3 kids under the age of 1 and then one 2 year old. Addison has mastered the potty though which makes for one less diaper I have to change which is great when you are changing 3 different butts a day. Addison is quite the helper though, she is very good at bringing me diapers, wipes, toys, holding bottles for baby's, throwing diapers away and most of all entertaining them by standing on the couch and singing her little heart out to every song she knows. It keeps the baby's laughing most of the time. But she is also good at screaming at the top of her lungs when I just got all the baby's to sleep and waking them up. Oh well, what do you except from a 2 year old, right? In the midst of watching children all day I have recently started working from home doing data entry. I have only done it for about a week, but works out pretty well for the most part. Last week I worked a little over 10 hours, which is about perfect for my time schedule. I just bring the kids up with me to the office where I have set up a little TV and DVD player and have toys and they just watch Baby Einstein and play while I work on the computer. If we are having a bad day, I just wait till the kids are gone and Reighlyn is down for her afternoon nap and then get a couple of hours in. Mike has been very good about helping on the days I have deadlines also. The newest news is that we are excepting our second child. I am about 16 weeks along, so we are due in January, but I am hoping when we have our ultrasound on the 30th of August they will surprise us and say it will be December 30th or something. This pregnancy has been a VERY hard one compared to Reighlyn. I only threw up twice with Reighlyn and one of those times was due to car sickness and the other was a bad reaction to medication. With this one I am still throwing up pretty regularly. I have actually lost 5 pounds since being pregnant, which is good I guess since my doctor only wants me to gain 15 pounds, to try and have a small enough baby that I won't have to have a C-section. Since I have been so sick Mike and I are both thinking it is a boy, which is what Mike REALLY wants. I have pros and cons to it being a boy. The pros are if it is then we will be the first on the Wright side with a boy, and on the Ashton side we would be the first to have a boy to carry on the Ashton name, also that means I get to do a lot of shopping for baby clothes and shoes! The cons are I would have to do a lot of shopping for clothes and shoes which means spending a lot of money, but we will be happy with whatever the Lord has blessed us with. So we will keep you all posted when we find out what it is.
Reighlyn, where do I begin? She is defiantly growing up way too fast. I can't believe she will be 9 months this Thursday. She has now master crawling and is loving every minute of it. She can follow Addison where ever she goes along with following mom everywhere which is what she was so unhappy about for awhile. But instead of just crawling and enjoying that she has decided to start climbing and things and pulling herself up on to everything it seems. Yesterday I was in the kitchen doing dishes and the next thing I know she has used the handles on the drawers to stand herself up and was opening the draw to play with the bottles. Then of course she feel down and hurt herself, but that didn't stop her from doing it again. She has also decided that all of the buttons on the sound system, dvd player, tivo are fun to push especially when mom says no and moves her away, she just crawls herself right back over. She is in the process of cutting her first teeth. The bottom two are just about in along with her two top teeth. Needless to say when those come in we will be done breastfeeding. Which will be good that there will be a little break between the two so Reighlyn doesn't try to go back to breastfeeding when the new baby comes. Her hair is starting to turn blonde more and more it seems. It is also getting pretty long on the top, now we just need it to start growing on the sides and in the back, but until then we will just wear a lot of pigtails and whale spouts.
Alright I think that is a good enough update for now I will post some pictures on here so you all can see how big Reighlyn is getting.

2007-04-05T17:50:00.000-07:00

Alright, now that it has been about 2 months I guess it is time to update the website again. I really need to get some pictures on here of Reighlyn... all in good time though.
Well not much has really changed since the last blog. Mike is still working for Hyclone from 2-10:30pm. I wouldn't say he is in love with his job, but he doesn't hate it like Qwest at least, so that is a plus. He is also in the same calling he has been in forever, the Elder's Quorum and I am still teaching primary, ages 10-11. Reighlyn just laughs at the kids in my class... they are so entertaining. I am now watching my sister's two girls 8 hours a day for about 10-15 days a month. I watch them when Jonathan works, and then on the days Jonathan doesn't work I watch them for a just a couple of hours a day while he flies. I know to a lot of you it seems like I am crazy to watch a almost 2 year old, a 5 month old, and a 6 week old....but it really isn't all that hard. Kileigh, the6 week old, sleeps a lot and when she is not, she likes to just chill for the most part. That is the exact opposite of my daughter who tends to be a drama queen and feel the need to be able to see me or have me hold her all the time. She is actually getting a lot better. She is slowly started to scoot towards things and when that doesn't work she just rolls. We are on a pretty good schedule though. She usually takes a nap at 10:30 or 11 for about an hour and half then she takes another one around 3 or so for the same amount of time. So in the morning, Kileigh takes a nap at the same time. So Addison and I do crafts, work on colors, numbers, shapes, etc or just play. Today was a beautiful day, so first we did crafts: made a bead necklace, glued shapes on paper and practiced them, colored, decorated a jar, and painted with water colors. Then we went outside and played with balloons and bubbles. It was a lot of fun. I will have to add those pictures to this blog also. Tomorrow we might attempt to take a walk to the park with all the kids... we will see how that goes.
Mike and I are looking forward to the end of the school semester, so we can have more time to play instead of worrying about school all the time. That is what Mike does in the mornings while I have the girls and then I do mine when he is at work in the evenings after the girls go home.
This past weekend we went down to Wolf Creek Lodge, located in Ogden Canyon. We were there with all of Mike's family for conference weekend. It was a lot of fun... very chill. Mike and I got in the hot tub the first night while Grandma watched Reighlyn, Mike got to go golfing with all of the guys on Saturday in between sessions, and I worked on a puzzle on and off throughout the weekend. It was very nice, but of course nice to get home and unpacked.
Sunday night when we got home, we had a meeting with a group of people. Mike and I planned a secret fund raising for Alisha and Craig for the park they are building in memory of there little boy, Ryan, who drowned in Lake Powell last August. We handed out flyer's... about 5000, and got over 100 volunteers to go knock doors to ask for donations. We raised a little over $2100 on Monday night when we went out. We are going out again with Monday for one last attempt. Then we are going to have a huge BBQ for all those who helped and present Alisha and Craig a check for all the donations. Hopefully it will be a bigger number than we have.
Ok, well I better end now...Reighlyn is getting fussy. Oh speaking of Reighlyn though.. she is growing so fast. She is now eating baby food 3 times a day. We have eaten rice cereal, applesauce, sweet potatoes and green beans so far. She isn't so sure about the green beans but we keep trying everyday. We don't want her to become a picky eater like her mom!

2007-02-19T08:33:00.001-08:00

Wow, OK so updating the website has defiantly gotten away from me for a good couple of months, but the good thing is my sister and brother have done a good job of kind of updating people on our lives.
Well in case you haven't heard, we have had our little baby girl. She was born on November 2, 2006. We named her Reighlyn, in memory of my mother who passed away on December 26, 2003. She was born with a head full of dark, curly hair. After being induced and having my water broke at 8 in the morning, I didn't progress at all throughout the day, so at 6pm we decided to have a c-section. Reighlyn came into the world at 6:39pm weighing 9 lbs 6 Oz's, and being 21 1/2 inches long. No wonder I didn't progress all day, she wouldn't have fit. I heard my doctor make a comment that my uterus was very close to ripping open because she was so big and I was carrying so much extra water.
Well now that I gave you the quick version of that wonderful day, let me catch you up on the last 3 1/2 months. Shortly after Reighlyn was born, Mike started working at Qwest call center. He hated working there, but it was a job with benefits so he stuck it out until February, when he started working at Hyclone, or ThermoFisher(they recently changed there name). So he is now working were Ariana works. He works in the liquids department, so he helps make the liquid orders that come in. To be honest I really don't know exactly what he does. His shift is from 2-10:30pm, which works out great for us. Mike is here during the day to help me with Reighlyn and Addison if I need it. Then he goes to work about an hour before Addison leaves. Then Reighlyn and I do house work, homework, etc until its time to take dad dinner at 7. Then we go have dinner with him at work for an hour. Then we come home and chill until its bath time and bedtime at 10. Then I usually have her asleep in bed by the time Mike gets home from work, so Mike and I have a little of time to hang out, then its bedtime. So really it is the perfect shift for our lives right now. One part of Mike's job is cleaning out the items they use during an order, so kind of like dishes, only a lot more serious. He has to clean everything with strong chemicals to make them sterile, so he used a 2% acid, sodium hydroxide. Well this stuff is strong enough that the first day on the job it ate through his gloves and gave him a chemical burn on his wrist. Then about a week later, he had 2 pairs of gloves on and a couple of pairs of protective sleeves, and it still burned him pretty bad this time. With this acid, it totally just burned his skin off, so it looks pretty bad. We have been cleaning it and wrapping it, but it still hurting pretty bad, so I think he might go the the doctor today to make sure there is no infection and what he needs to do with it.
Well I am still being a stay at home mom and loving it. My days are all pretty much the same. I get up and work out in our basement before Addison comes in the mornings at 8. Then Addison and I usually watch Baby Einstein and eat breakfast while Mike works out. Then Reighlyn usually gets up and we get her dressed and feed for the 1st time and then Reighlyn will usually watch baby Einstein with Addison once. Then we color, or do a craft for a while at the table. Then we usually read for a while. At noon, its nap time for Addison, Reighlyn will sometimes go down at the same time, but not always. Then she sleeps for about an hour and half. While she sleeps I usually clean up the house. Then its time for lunch when she wakes up. By that time Mike is getting ready to go to work for the day. After Mike leaves for work, Addison just plays with her toys or reads her books while we wait for Mom to come and get her at 3:30. Reighlyn is starting to laugh, so she is often watching Addison and smiling at her. Addison loves attention from Reighlyn, so she is often dancing or singing for her when she isn't wanting to just hold her and love her. I think Ana and Jonathan are going to have to watch Addison close with Kileigh though because she is going to be a lot smaller than Reighlyn, but Addison will think she can handle her the same way. Either way though Addison will be a great big sister. Kileigh might just try a lot of foods really early...Addison loves to share whatever she is eating. I think she has tried feeding Reighlyn pretty much everything from marshmallows to apples.
Mike and I are still both doing school online. I am only taking 2 classes this semester though because I knew I would be busy. Mike is taking 4 classes, so we both stay busy with that. I think so far though the semester is going great for both of us, so that's always good. As far as church goes, Mike is still doing the same calling in the Elders Quorum. I am now in the primary. I teach the10 and 11 yr old. I wasn't sure if I would like going from nursery were I taught 2 and 3 yr old to 10 and 11 yr old, but honestly I LOVE it. We have so much fun, I do a lot of fun hand outs and have treats sometimes. I have 2 girls and 3 boys in the class and they all love baby Reighlyn. Mike takes her the 1st hours while I teach the class and then the second hour I take her during singing time. The kids usually take turns holding her, only under the condition that they have to pay attention and sing the whole time.
Well Reighlyn is growing way to fast for mom's liking. I can't believe that in another week and half she will be 4 months old. She came out being able to hold her head up and was rolling over at a month old. She has enough hair that her hair is usually up in a whale spout or in piggy tales. At first I did it just because it was so cute, but now that her hair is getting longer and curlier, I have to put it up or it is everywhere! She has almost mastered sitting up by herself, until then I just prop her up in the corner of the couch, use her beanbag, or use the boppy to help her sit up. She also loves to stand up. She stand on her own, she just need help balancing. She is smiling and laughing all the time now. Also her favorite thing to do is spit bubbles and to talk to anyone that will listen. She can actually coo pretty loud. That's how I know when she wakes up in the morning, I hear her cooing at her mobile in her crib.
Well I think that catches you all up on our lives for the most part. As far as our family is concerned it has been a busy past couple of months. We found out our New Years that Mike's sister, Alisha, is excepting a baby in July and they will be finding out the sex of the baby next week. Mike's brother's wife, Angie, had their second baby girl on January 18, 2007 by c-section. The funny thing is they named her Kylee, which is what Ana and Jonathan are naming their baby girl, just different spelling. Speaking of Ana and Jonathan, they are playing the waiting game right now. They are suppose to be induced today to have their second baby girl today, but I guess there was a lot of women in Logan that wanted to have their baby's last night, so it is pretty busy at the hospital today. I think it is probably due to the sudden change in weather, going form 50's yesterday to 6 inches of snow this morning. Anyway, they have to call the hospital back at noon to see if they can come in today, if not, they it will be tomorrow or the next day. So we are all just waiting. Once they get the go ahead I will be in charge of Addison, and it looks like she will be spending the nigh there tonight if they get in today. OK well that's enough blog today, as soon as we hear something from Ana and Jonathan, I will update and let you all KNOW!

2006-10-31T12:49:00.000-08:00

2006-10-31T12:35:00.000-08:00

Ok, time for a quick update before our lives get very busy and I won’t have time to update for while. I am still pregnant, but we are getting closer. We went to the doctor on Monday and had things checked out. I am still dilated to a 1 ½ and the baby still has not dropped all the way. Also I am still have contractions about 2-3 minutes apart But the good news it that we are going to be induced on Thursday, the 2nd of November, unless she decides to come earlier, but I doubt it since she hasn’t dropped the contractions I am having are not doing anything but causing me a lot of pain. I am just hoping I can get some kind of sleep in the next couple of days so I have the energy to push. Lately I have been getting about 2-3 hours a sleep a night because if I lay down flat I can’t breathe because she is cutting off my oxygen supply and if I sleep sitting up in a chair then my back hurts all night long. So it is a lose-lose situation, but that situation is almost over. That is what I have to keep reminding myself when contractions keeping coming and coming. The one scary thing about my pregnancy is the amount of fluid that I am carrying. There is a very high possibility that we will have to have a cesarean delivery because when my water is broken the cord might come down first. Also since our baby is a very health baby (BIG) then we might have to have a cesarean because I won’t be able to delivery her, but we are putting our faith in the Lord and praying everything will come out as it should.
Mike and I are both trying to get everything ready for our little arrival. This past week I have been trying to deep clean one room at a time, with scrubbing the floor boards, shower, toilets, and shampooing carpets. Once I am done with the shampooing there will be no shoes allowed in our house. Mike is always checking on me and making sure I am not over doing it. I do take a lot of breaks during my cleaning, so I am doing ok. Really I think that all the cleaning is helping me keep my mind off the contractions and the pain I seem to have everywhere. This week Mike and I have been doing a lot of homework also. Mike has been doing homework from when he wakes up till we go to be because he is trying to finish one of his classes completely by tomorrow, so there is less stress for him as far as school goes. He will still have 4 classes to finish after this one, so he will still be busy, but hopefully not as busy.
I am also going to start working on a baby quilt for our little one. Since we still don’t know for sure what her name is going to be, I couldn’t get too ahead of myself. I have decided to make her a Curious George quilt, going off of the theme from the nursery. So tonight or tomorrow Mike and I are going to go pick our fabric for the quilt and then Ana is helping me gather pictures to trace on the fabric. I am going to embroidery bout 20 Curious George pictures to put into her quilt. We are going to get a couple of them traced and ready for me so I can work on them in the hospital. Then I will probably just work on it here and there and finish in time to give it to her for Christmas.
Ok well I think that catches everything up and the next time we write will be announcing our arrival of baby Ashton, with pictures included!

2006-10-26T09:30:00.000-07:00

Wow, so October is almost over, it sure has gone by quickly it seems. I haven’t been very good this month with keeping the website updated, so I will just try and give everyone a quick update on what’s going on in our lives.

Last Tuesday night, the 17^th, I started having some very regular contractions, about 10 minutes apart. So Wednesday we had a doctor’s appointment already, so we deiced to let our doctor check things out first before we went into the hospital. The reason we were a little concerned is because I was only 35-36 weeks along, that’s pretty early to be having a baby, although as you have all seen I am HUGE! So in our appointment we found out I was 1 centimeter dilated and 60% effaced. The problem was that our baby girl had not dropped yet, so I wasn’t dilating past the1 so my contractions weren’t doing anything. Our doctor told us they were probably just Braxton hicks and would go away. Well that afternoon Mike and I went for a walk and the contractions got to be 5 minutes apart, but I wasn’t ready to go to the hospital. Then that night they got to 3 minutes apart, so we decided we had better go into the labor and delivery and find out if we were going to have our little girl. Well the disappointment news was there was little change. I had only dilated another ½ a centimeter and was now 70% effaced, but she still hadn’t dropped and since I wasn’t very far along, they could do anything to help the labor progress. So they decided to give me a sleeping pill and a morphine shot to help the contractions go away since everyone thought for sure I was in “false labor.” Well come to find out on the way home, I am allergic to morphine, so needless to say I was up the rest of the night throwing up along with the next day. At this point I was very sick so Mike went and had the doctor prescribe some nausea pills for me that seemed to help a lot and they told me to take it easy and not to be up and about.

So the short story I guess is, since Tuesday night I have been having contractions very regularly, about 3-4 minutes apart. On Monday, they got to be every 2 minutes, so we went into the doctor again to see if there was any change and if not, why I was having contractions. Well I measured very big for my belly that day; I had grown 2 centimeters in a couple of days, so the doctor decided to do an ultrasound. Well come to find out first I am carrying an 8 pound baby already, plus I am carrying too much fluid, so that is causing her not to be able to drop and also is causing me to dilate because my uterus is stretched to its max and is trying to contract back down to a smaller size. Also we found out that my due date was pretty far off, according to the measurements that did on Monday our new due date is October 31^st. So the good news from all of that is that if our little girl has not decided to come in the next week, then they are going to induce me on the 2^nd of November. With that news in mind, Mike and I are just doing our best to keep our minds on other things. I have been going through room by room and deep cleaning, while Mike focuses on homework. Ok, well I think that catches everyone up for the most part on our busy life. The next post will probably be when she arrives!

2006-10-02T07:31:00.000-07:00

Another two weeks have almost past and it sure went by fast. I can't believe we are already in October! This is especially good because I thought for sure the last couple of months would drag on for me. Well not much going on in the Ashton world, but I will do my best to catch you all up on our exciting lives.
On the 23rd brought yet another BYu game which was home, so Mike got up and headed down to Provo at about 9 in the morning and got home around 7 or so. While he was gone I did my normal cleaning of the house, which takes longer now that I run out of energy a lot faster and laundry. After I got all of my normal Saturday activities done, I decided to rearrange our bedroom. Mike and I were going to do anyways to make room for the bassinet, but I decided to do it while Mike was gone s a surprise. We moved our bed to go by our bay windows and then moved the dresser to where the bed use to be. Then the bassinet fits perfectly in the corner by the bathroom. We wanted it in an area that wasn't by the door so she wouldn't be woke up by people out in the living room and also we wanted her not by the windows so she didn't get cold by a draft or something. Now that it is all moved, we both like it so much we will probably leave it that way even after the baby moves up to her own room. When we take down the bassinet, we will just get a over stuffed chair or something to go in the corner so we aren't left with a big empty space.
This lat week seemed to be a bit busy. Mike and I both had tests this week, so a lot of the evenings were spent studying for tests. Thursday night BYU played TSU, the team that one the conference last year, at TSU. So since the guys couldn't go to the game, they all made a trip to Logan it watch it at our house. Wagon got into Logan about 2 in the afternoon to spend a little time with his daughter before the game started at 4. Marc I think got there right before the game started. Craig came over about a half hour or so into the game. When I got home from work at 4:30 I just went up to the office to study and do homework while they had their bonding time. But boy can those guys get loud!! I was planning on cooking steaks and potatoes for dinner for them all, but first I didn't have enough steaks and second I was so tired after working all day and knowing I had tons a of homework to do. So needless to say the guys had Papa Johns pizza instead of a home cooked meal, but they didn't seem to mind at all. I am not a BYU fan at all, but I like to see them win because that means I have a happy husband.
Since BYU played during the week, this past weekend actually meant I had Mike the whole weekend. We didn't have any major plans for the weekend, just a couple of around the house jobs we want to get done like hang family pictures up, put a shelf up we have been meaning to do for about a month now, etc. But instead we went and helped Ana and Jonathan lay sod in their backyard. Ok well Mike went and laid sod and I babysat Addison. But I think I got just as much as a work out picking up a 20 pound child and hauling her around all day sure took a lot out of me! Jonathan had a couple of guys form work there helping, so it went pretty fast. First before we went to lay sod I had to go up to the university and take a quick test, then we went to there house. We were there until noon, then we had to go to the hospital to have our Lamaza teacher put our car seat in for us. She is a certified car seat something so she puts it in so it will pass inspection. Then it was back to Ana's for the rest of the afternoon. For being October it sure was pretty warm still, about 80 degrees. Then the guys went to General Conference and Ana and I went grocery shopping, fun huh?
Sunday was a chill day, Mike and I just watched the first session in our PJ's. Then the second session we went to Jami's and had a little luncheon with a group of people, it was a bit busy, but fun. Ok well that is all thats going on with us, I will catch you all up in a week or so!

2006-09-27T10:41:00.000-07:00

2006-09-19T06:53:00.000-07:00

So another week has come and gone, yet it seems not a lot has happened. Mike and I are still just working away at our classes. Mike is trying to finish up his last incomplete class from spring along with keeping up with his fall classes. We are still doing the wonderful thing classed job searching. There have been a lot of jobs that he has just recently applied for, so now it is a waiting game it seems. Mike is very excited to be done with the Herald Journal though. It has been a good job, but I think a year is enough. I am counting down the days until I am done with my job. Halloween is my last day, so that means not counting today I have 31 more days of work.

Our baby girl is growing everyday now, which means so is my stomach. Thanks to some recent shopping though, I have clothes that will fit me while we finish out this pregnancy. Saturday was my baby shower and it was a huge success. We invited a lot of people, but I knew that the majority of them wouldn’t come since they live farther away, but it’s the thought that counts, right? We had a good turn out though, not too many people because I don’t like being the center of a big crowd. Ariana and Jami threw the shower and did an awesome job. We did the introductions and then started playing games. The first one was there was a 10 different candy bars cut up on put on to plates. You had to go and look at them and write down what kind they were without smelling or touching them. Some people did pretty well, while others I think just guessed and wrote down the candy bars they could think of. Next we played Mike and Kj trivia. Mike mom and Ariana came up with 6 unforgettable memories from our childhood. Then Jami would say on out loud and you had to guess if the memory was from Mike or me. It was a lot of fun, but I could have done without some of those memories being shared with everyone. Then we played a price is right game. Ariana had printed pictures of 15 baby items off the internet and people had to guess how much the item cost without going over. Then we ate the wonderful food we had there. We had some roll-ups that’s are so good, but I couldn’t tell you what’s in them, I didn’t make them. Then we had bite size cheese cakes, fruit pizza, pasta salad, and finger sandwiches’. Then we opened presents. We received a lot of great gifts, especially a homemade quilt my visiting teacher made for us, it is beautiful. Then I showed everyone the nursery and they all loved it, which is always a good thing.

While the whole baby shower was going on, the boys, Mike, Marc, Jonathan, Craig, and Wagon were watching the BYU game. When they all got up to Craig’s to watch the game, they found out that their power was out. So after a little flipping out, they all came down to watch the game at Jami’s house until the power came back on, then they went back up to Craig’s. I think we were all hoping BYU would win, so the guys would be in good moods, but that didn’t work out exactly. I mean BYU didn’t win, they lost in double over time, but at least the guys weren’t in way bad moods, well at least not my husband. The rest of the afternoon was just a chill time. Then when all the family left, Mike and I had the fun exciting evening of homework!! Oh the joys of being in school. Mike and I went to bed pretty early that night, we were both pretty tired. Sunday was a very relaxing day. I did have one quiz to take, which only took 10 minutes. Then Mike and I just spent the day take a nap and watching movies together….it was wonderful.

2006-09-11T09:02:00.000-07:00

Alright, now that work as slowed down a little, well at least in the mornings, I think it’s time I update the website. Well a lot has happened since the last update. School as officially started for Mike and I. Although we are both taking online classes, it still is very time consuming. We have both take 4 classes each, plus finishing up one class each from last semester. Mine is pretty much done, I just need to send in the assignments, and Mike has a couple of weeks left of assignments before he is fully caught up. We have pretty exciting lives now. When we get home from work, all we do is homework. But hey at least we can due it together, so we are still hanging out together. Mike does a lot of his homework during the day while I am at work and then the rest when I am home doing my homework. Since I don’t have a parking pass I have to come up to campus at 7 to get a parking spot. So I come and do homework for a half hour before I start work. Then I do it on my lunch hour and then anything left over I do after I get off of work. I was going to try and still might try to finish all of my classes before the baby comes. But I think working fulltime and trying to do that might prove to be too much.

Well Mike had a long fun weekend over Labor Day. On Thursday night, the 31^st of August I took him down to SLC to meet his brother, Marc to drive to Arizona. They went down for a couple of reasons. Marc is in the middle of moving from Arizona to SLC, so we was going down to set up the moving company that will come in and pack everything up and move it to SLC for them. Also the reason Mike went with them is because on the 2^nd was BYU’s opening game against Arizona. Wagon, my father-in-law, flew into Arizona on Saturday morning before the game, so the boys went to the game and had an awesome time even though they lost. It was a very long weekend for me. I was home alone from Thursday night until Monday night when he came home. I did keep myself very busy though. I decided that I would get all of the little things I have been wanting to get done around the house done with Mike was gone and surprise him. Ariana and Jonathan was a big help with getting things ready before Mike came home. We made curtains to go over the French doors going out to the deck; we hung “ASHTON” above those doors also that are painted black and look very classy. We tried to hang the shelf that goes in place of the old microwave, but we didn’t have the right screws. Then I went and got my family pictures printed and put into frames that matched the ones we have with Mike’s family pictures, but we ran out of time to hang those pictures up also. We did get curtains made for the office upstairs and the couch cover put on the couch in the front room. Also we got all of the sewing done for the baby’s room, curtains, bumper pads, crib skirt, etc. Ariana and I were in the middle of putting up the wallpaper border in the baby’s room we come to find out it wouldn’t stick the wall no matter what we did. So finally we had to glue it with Elmer’s glue and then put tape to tape it up with it dried. Well I was very frustrated and upset that I didn’t get everything I wanted to get done and the border wasn’t working it was time for me to go pick Mike up in Brigham City. I was on the verge of tears when I got into my car to back out. Well here’s a secret, don’t drive when you’re stressed out and wanting to cry. When backing out, I backed right into Ariana’s car. I was so upset; I pulled my car back into the garage and ran into the house crying very hard. Needless to say I had a panic attack, which in turn made me start having hard contractions. It was a very scary thing, especially since Mike wasn’t there and Ariana couldn’t clam me down. Jonathan had to go pick up Jonathan. When Mike got home he made everyone leave and took me to get some dinner and then we just chilled. My contractions continued throughout the night and the next day. We finally went to the doctor on my Birthday, the 6^th. Everything was ok though, the heart beat was great and I hadn’t started dilating yet. After our doctors appointment I had to go back to work for a couple of hours because I started training my replacement that day. That night, Mike took me to dinner at Chili’s and then instead of going out and buying me a gift, he took me to Michael’s to pick out decorations for our kitchen and living room. It was a wonderful birthday gift. I did go over my budget a little, but our house looks great with all the new decorations. That night when we got home my friends Kristin, Jami, and Loran came over to give me their gifts and to chill for a bit. It was a lot of fun. My mother-in-law did come on Saturday while Mike was gone to take me to dinner and clothes shopping for my birthday since I no longer really fit into any of my clothes. She spent the night Saturday night and then went to church with me Sunday. Also on Saturday Ariana, Jonathan, and I went down to SLC to see a friend who just got home from his mission. He went to lunch and then shopping at the gateway. I didn’t get anything for me, but I did buy Mike a pair of shorts and 2 shirts. Shopping for Mike is so much more fun than for me. I decided after all that happened over the weekend Mike was gone, that he wasn’t allowed to leave for that long of time anymore. There will be a lot of Saturdays I will be by myself now that football season has started, but no nights, so I think I can handle that. Jonathan’s birthday was Friday night, but he had to work, so we just called and wished him a happy birthday. Mike and I did go down to Brigham City to have dinner with his family to celebrate Craig’s birthday which was Saturday. Saturday Mike and his dad left to go to Provo for the BYU game at about 9:30 and didn’t get home until about 8:30 at night. While he was gone I did a couple of hour’s worth of homework, cleaned the house, and then ran errands with Jami and Loran. When Mike came home he was in a good mood though because BYU had won. Ok, I think that is everything for the most part that has happened over the last couple of weeks. Sorry this is so long, I need to keep it updated more often so they aren’t so long.

2006-08-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

So I am not keeping up as well as I thought I was going to be able to with this new website, but oh well, here goes another post. It seems as if August as flown by for Mike and I. I barely believe that August is almost over. The day after our last post is when the month started flying by. On August 9th, our nephew, Ryan Steven Adams, passed away. It was such hard news to hear about and it took awhile for it to sink in for me. I just kept thinking they were talking about someone else and it wasn't our little Ryan. Ryan, who just turned 2 in June, and his family went down to Lake Powell to enjoy a yearly family vacation. On the 9th, Ryan fell victim to a drowning accident. Mike and I as soon as we heard, tried to do all we could here in Logan to get things ready for them to come home. We contacted to Bishop in their ward, but he already knew. About 20 minutes after Mike and I got to his sister's house to make phone calls people started showing up left and right. We had a whole group of sister's from their ward and their neighborhood coming over to deep clean the house so that when they got home they didn't need to worry about that. Then someone had the idea that we should try and fly them home instead of have them drive the 10 hour drive. We finally got in contact with Brother Harris, who is a very wealthy man in Logan who owes a jet. He was already going down to California to pick up family friends and agreed to stop in Arizona to pick up Mike's sister and her family. So Mike was the contact person who organized the whole thing. The jet had enough room to bring home the family plus Craig's parents who were down there because Craig's sister had just had a baby the same day Ryan died. Mike's parents, Mike and I picked the family up at the Logan air port and took them home. It was such an emotional day. I focused on Entertaining Josh,4, and Aubree, 6 (the siblings of Ryan) while Mike's parents and Mike tried to sooth Lish and Craig. The rest of the week seems like a blur. We were up at the house a lot that week. Helping them plan the funeral, and viewing. Also Ariana and Jonathan agreed to help make a memorial video for Ryan that was played at the viewing. It turned out so good, no one could watch it and not cry, whether you knew his or not. The viewing was Sunday evening from 6-8, but it really ended up going till 10:30. People were waiting in line for at least an hour, so that shows how many people love that family. After that night, we got up early the next day for the funeral. There was a viewing before and then the funeral itself went for over 2 hours, but it was wonderful. At the cemetery, after the service, they had everyone take a white balloon and then we all released them, it was a beautiful site. Since then, Mike and I have been just trying to be there for the family. We go up to play with the kids a lot because they need a lot of extra love right now. Also we just go up and take with Lish and Craig, just about anything. On Sunday night we went up and had dinner with them and with Mike's parents. We were going to play games, but it was too late. Monday brought a slap of reality for me. I had to go back to work!! After having more than a week off, it's hard to go back to working all day. It has been very busy at work though. Monday I worked 10.5 hours, Tuesday I worked 11.5 hours and yesterday I worked 10.5 hours. The reason it is so busy is because tutition deadline was Tuesday, so we had all the students that have been putting it off standing in line wanting to pay now. Monday, the 28th, marks the first day of school, so that means it will be busy in our office, for the next couple of weeks, which is fine with me, that means time will fly by, hopefully. It;s so weird to think I really only have like 2 months left of work, I will just have Sept and then October to work. Mike is still looking for jobs all the time. We have a couple that are looking pretty good, but we will have to wait and see I guess. We are both getting ready for school to start in a couple of days. We are going to sit down and map out our assignments though so we are hopefully done with everything before the baby comes so we can just enjoy her when she comes. Ana and Jami have been planning my baby shower also, so that will be fun. I am going to try and get the nursery finished before then, but we'll see. I need to order the curious geogre border and get that up. Then I need to make curtains, bumper pads, etc. Then I think it should all be ready to go. Well we sent Tasha home on the 15th, but it was a drama filled flight. Due to all the new rules at the air port, they made he throw away all of her liquid makeup, hairspray, etc. She was one upset teenager, especially since she had just barley bought all new makeup. I guess the only liquids allowed on the plane now is baby food, formula and breastmilk. Mike's brother, Marc and his Wife are kind of moved to SLC now. While they are looking for a house someone here, they are staying in a hotel, which can't be fun with a one year old. We did just find out though that Angie, Marc's wife, will be having a second little girl in Feburary, so thats exciting! Now we will just wait and find out what Ana is having, she will find out in Oct I think she said. Ok, well I think that is all that has been happening around, for the most part. If I forgot anything I will write another blog to catch everyone up again! Hope everything is going great for everyone!

2006-08-08T09:34:00.000-07:00

Well it's been about two weeks since our last update, so I thought I better catch everyone up. Don't worry though you all haven't missed much. This past week has not been a fun one that's for sure. Mike woke up Sunday morning not feeling so well. By Monday myself and Tasha were sick also we are not sure if it was just the flu plus a head cold or what. I attempted to go to work Monday morning, but only made it about noon. Then the rest of the week was all down hill it seems. I didn't go to work at all, but I would have rather than feel like crap. On Thursday and Friday I had such a sore throat I didn't have any kind of a voice. It slowly came back on Saturday. Saturday I was feeling much better and so I worked out for about an hour in the morning. Then Mike and I decided to start organizing certain rooms. On Saturday we tackled the "junk" drawers downstairs and the office/sewing room. We decided to help the room look less cluttered we would move my sewing machine table and everything into the closet. It does fit perfectly. I have a shelf on one side of the table that has all of my fabric folded up on it, my patterns, and projects that I am working on. Then on the other side of the table is a couple of bins that has other projects I am working on, like my high school memory quilt and a monkey quilt I started making a couple of years ago. It does work out nicely, you can have the doors shut while I am not sewing and it looks very clean, then when I do want to sew I just pull up the extra computer chair and sew away. We then went through all of our school books and figured out which ones we want to keep and which ones we are going to sell. We also went and bought some selves and bookends to help organize everything. It looks great, so hopefully it stays that way when school starts and we get busy. Mike and I are both planning on taking 12 credits each. We are actually going to take two of the same classes I think. It should make it easier and fun to study together. While I was home sick from work last week I started cutting and out and sewing baby clothes. Mike jokes around and says that I must be running a sweat shop or something because I was making clothes left and right. So far I think I have made about 10 or so jumpers, all different colors. I have a couple more of those to make and then a couple of pair of overalls, dresses, and pant/shirt outfits. I also am going to make matching hair pieces for most of the outfits. I guess since I am not a girly-girl, then I will make our little girl one. I am always painting Addison's finger nails, so I am sure I will be painting our little girls from the get-go. I am getting excited for the baby to come though. I only have 3 months left of work, well actually less than that because the 31st of July marked the 3 month mark. Halloween will be the last day I will be working, unless the baby decides to come way early. I would love to be able to be done earlier because sitting all day causes a lot of extra pains for me. More exciting news for the family is that Ariana will be having a baby on the 25th of Feburary and Angie, our sister-in-law, will be having a baby on February 2nd. So our families are growing very quickly and it's so exciting. Well Tasha has been staying with us for the past week or so and it's been great fun, although I don't really see her all that much. She has been at our neighbors a lot. She has been working out with Jami, the neighbor everyday and also she has started deep cleaning her house. In turn for her cleaning, Jami is going to pay for Tasha to get a new hair color and cut. The big day for that is this Thursday, so ready or not dad, or little girl is coming home different. Mike's parents came up on Saturday to look at lots because they are moving here in a year. They didn't make it to our house until about 9:30 at night, but that's ok because Mike and I were busy cleaning and then putting in ceiling fans at Jami's house. Sunday we went to church and then did the chill Sunday thing. We did go up and have lunch with Mike's sister Lish and her family along with Mike's parents. After that we hung out with Ana, Jonathan, Addison, and Jami. We played games and then just chatted while the boys played play station. To catch you all up and the drama with the neighbor, things have gotten worse. The lady has decided that she will stand at her door and just scream at Jami calling her names and such all the time. Also she has decided that anytime Jami leaves her house she is needs to come out on her porch and watch and listen to everything. Finally Jami called the police to make a complaint. They really couldn't do anything unless the neighbor comes into her yard or her dog does. The police did talk to the neighbor and tell her to stop yelling at her and to just leave her alone. Well the lady didn't like that so she called and made a complaint about the police officer. So now the whole thing will probably end up in court. So Jami is having to get written statements from everyone stating everything they have witnesses. I hope that the lady will just move, but who knows. Jami has a feeling that she is going through Jami's mail and her garbage, so we all will be getting paper shredders soon, to help protect us. Because who knows if she is doing it to ours or not. Oh the drama, who knew things like this would happen in good old Logan, Utah. Oh before I forget the other great news is Mike's brother, Marc, who is currently living in Arizona will be moving to the Salt Lake area in the next couple of weeks to start a new job. Mike is very excited to have his brother so close, especially with football season quickly approaching.

2006-07-25T09:25:00.000-07:00

So we have finally hit the 6 month mark, or 24 weeks! For a while it seemed like it would never get here. Only 16 more weeks, or 109 more days, not that I am counting or anything, right. Our little girl is a very active girl. She is always on the move, kicking and punching my stomach, but I don't mind at all, it is very calming me to know she is doing well. But she has decided that when she is not moving she likes to have her feet and hands in my ribs on the right side. This is something that is very painful. She use to move when I would move on her to get out of my ribs, but now she has decided that she doesn't want to move and she just kicks me and stays were she is. So only likes to me in my ribs when I am sitting it seems. Well lucky for me I am sitting at my job for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week! I try standing throughout the day, but I get light-headed if I stand too long, so it's pretty much a lose-lose situation.
Well Mike and I have decided to have my last day at work be Halloween, the 31st of October. So that means I only have 70 more working days!! That day we always have a huge party at work, watch movies while we aren't helping students, and just chill, so I thought how better to celebrate your last day, right?! Plus not that I don't like my job, but I would love to have today be my last day, but that won't happen, I guess we need something called insurance to have a baby. I am sure the 70 days will fly by, hopefully! In another week or so it will start picking up in our office since Fall semester is starting in about a month. Then we will be busy from mid August until about the end of September. Then it will kind of calm down for a couple of weeks. Then probably about the time I will be quitting it will pick up again with everyone getting their Spring semester schedules together.
Well this weekend was a busy one for Mike and I. Saturday morning we went to the temple with our neighbor, Jamie, which was wonderful since the temple has been closed for 2 weeks for cleaning. Then it was time for the normal routine for Saturday, cleaning and laundry. Once that was all done, we decided to paint our kitchen and do touch ups from our other painting jobs. Well we got one coat on the kitchen and Mike fixed a couple of tough spots, like the peak in our living room with our 20 foot walls. After that Mike decided he was done painting for the day. So we went next door and watched a movie with Jamie. Mike had to work Sunday morning, but did get to go to sacrament meeting and one of his classes. After church, it was time for our Sunday afternoon nap. Then we just bummed around, until it was time for dinner. We had a get-together at Jamies, with Ariana, Jonathan, Addison, and Tasha. After dinner we decided instead of watching movies, we would play games, since I can't seem to stay awake during movies. So we played a fun game called "Fact or Crap" and then played "Taboo" It was so much fun and with the last game it came down to the wire, but Ariana, Jonathan, and Tasha ended up winning by 1 point. We called it a night after that since we all we pretty tired. Monday morning Mike and I were going to get up at 6 to get a jump start on all the painting we wanted to get done, but Mike woke up with a Migrane, so we slept until about 7:30. We painted a primer coat of white in the baby's room and got that room all taped up. While that was drying we painted a second coat in the kitchen. Then Ariana and the gang came over to help out. Once they were there the baby's room went pretty fast. We sponged the top half bright yellow and the bottom half solid bright blue. It looks so cute and defiantly looks like a kid's room. Once we have the curious George border up, it will finish the room up. All of the white furniture looks great in the room also. Lish, my sister-in-law, was kind enough to give us her glider, so that is getting painted white to match everything else. The last thing we need to finish the nursery is a futon. Then the nursery should be set. Ariana brought over a bunch of Addison's baby clothes for our little Madison to use. There was a lot, that's for sure. I think she had a tub full of 0-3 month of, 2 tubs full of 3-6 and 1 box for 6-9. So I think that our little girl will not have to go naked, at least not until after 9 months. After all the painting, we all went to our homes to clean up and then met back up at Lish's house for a bug Pioneer Day BBQ. There were a lot of people and food there, so it was wonderful. When we went to play games, all the kids got a little loud and whinny, so we only stayed for one game. We were all tried though, so it was a good ending to a great day. To bad that meant, that we all had to get up and go to work this morning. I promise, one of these days I will put pictures on here, so you have some idea what I am talking about!

2006-07-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Well I guess it is time for another update for everyone on the exciting lives of the Ashton's. It is good to be home since our trip to Colorado. We love traveling, but after awhile, it is nice to be at home for awhile to get back into the groove of things. Since being back home not much as happened. I don't think either of us wanted to go to work on Wednesday morning, but so is life right?? This week is my first full week of work and I have a feeling it is going to be a long one. But the good news is I have Monday off for Pioneer Day, so that will at least make next week go by faster and then we have our next doctors appointment on the 31st, the following Monday. It seems like July is dragging on, but then again it is half way over, so maybe it's just because there isn't anymore big trips to look forward to anymore. Just so everyone knows, little Madison should be here in 116 days, if she comes on her due date. But I am definately ok with her deciding to come a little early as long as she is healthily. Mike and I have been going back and forth lately about the name of our little angel, but I think we have decided we are going to stick with Madison, unless she comes out something different. I know that if she is names Madison it will cause some confusing with Addison, but if Madison is her name, then there is no arguing there, right??
Well its been fun having Tasha with us for the past week. She has been staying with Ana because Jonathan has been in Canada getting ready to fly the new planes home that USU just recently bought. Plus our air conditioning as not been working and the room were Tasha would be staying is upstairs were it is very HOT! So we just recently had someone come out and look at it. I guess we have a broken/leaky valve that let all of the freon out. So we had to have more freon put in, 6 pounds I think. Then we are going to have someone come out in August or September to fix the valve before it gets winter. I guess that is when it leaks, so as long as we get it fixed before then we wont have any problems. All I can say is it has been very nice to have air conditioning. I must be a cold blooded person because even at 6 months pregnant I am still cold 90% of the time. So Mike has it set to were he feels comfortable and I just wear a sweatshirt. The upstairs is finally cooled down though so when Tasha does come and stay with us it should be nice for her. Speaking of Tasha, she is really being a trooper. She has decided that she is going to be committed and loose weight while she is here is Utah. My neighbor, Jamie, has started training her. Last night was their first night and I think it went good. Then just worked-out outside since the gym was already closed. They ran up a huge hill a couple of time along with walking it a bit. Then they did some abs and weight training. Tasha said that she isn't sore yet though, only her arms. I think the plan is to work-out daily except for Sundays and those days she will just take a nice walk for like 45 minutes or so just so she doesn't cramp up or anything. Along with getting her in shape we are planning on give her a makeover, with new cloths and maybe even a new hair style and color. Dad, how would you feel about black hair with caramel and red highlites??
Oh baby's room is coming along slowly. Mike thinks we are right on schedule, but I guess I am just excited and I would like to be able to do everything right now. But time and money wont really allow that. So for now, it is one project at a time. Saturday Ana and Tasha came and helped me paint a dresser white. We decided to do white furniture so everything matches. Plus I think white will look the best against the colors we have decided to decorate with. All I have left to paint as far as furniture goes is the glider, oh and a futon when we get one. The next big project will be to paint the walls. We have finally agreed on what we are doing. We will have a curious george wallpaper border that will go about 1/3 of the way up the way I think. Below the border we will paint a bold, bright blue and then on top of the border we are going to sponge bold, bright yellow. We are looking at getting a bright red rug to go in the middle of the room. Then we will decorate with red and green as accents. I think I will probably make the bumper pads and skirt for the crib, the glider cover, the futon cover, and curtains out of some cute bright green fabric. I will take some pictures of what we have so far, just so you can at least see the furniture we have in there. But once again I need to have Ana come and show me how to post pictures to the website. Maybe that will be this weekend, or sometime this week. Ok, well I will end this now and will be updating you all soon!

2006-07-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Ok, well from the looks of it, I will be the first to comment on our trip to Colorado trip. We all got home I think last night between 6 and 8 pm. This is because we all left at different times. My dad, Melia, and Garth headed out at around 7am so they would be home at a good time. Plus my dad is an early riser, so why not start on the drive home early. Thayne, Sarah, and Audrey headed out about 8am. Then Ana, Jonathan, Mike, Tasha, Addison, and I stayed to clean the cabins and get checked out. I think we were checked out about 8:45 am even though we had until 11 am. On the drive out it took us a little longer because we stopped every 2 hours. This was because I had to go to the bathroom all the time and Addison didn't like being in her car seat for long periods of time. On the trip home though we only stopped twice to get gas and eat.
The vacation went well and was very relaxing for everyone I think. We all got to the cabin about 5 or so and got checked in and unpacked. Dad, Melia, and Garth got a late start since Garth had to work late. Then to had salt to a sore it poured rain and they closed the interstate in Denver, so they had to go through downtown. So needless to say they didn't get into town until about midnight or so. Sunday we all got up early and drove into town, about a 30 minute drive, to go to church. We got a lot of looks since we took up a whole row at church and made up like a fourth of their ward. We had a lot of people tell us Colorado Springs was a great place to live and we should think about moving. It was a great place to go for vacation, but I am happy with living in Logan. Sunday was spent just hanging out and planning the activities for the next day. Monday we all got up early and drive into town to walk through a park called the "Garden of the Gods" I think it was good exercise we all needed and it was fun. We took a lot of fun pictures that I will have to get posted, as soon as I learn how. After the walk, we all went and had ice cream and then headed back to our cabins. The rest of the day we played games and watched movies. Of course the whole weekend the boys: Jonathan, Garth, Thayne, and Mike played in the fire whether we were cooking something or not. It did rain a lot of the time, but it was ok because it was mostly in the evenings when we were in side and it usually cleared up in time for us to go have a roasting party around the bond fire. The bad thing about the rain is we found out our cabin leaked. We had it leak around the front door, in a corner in the bedroom and around the windows up in the loft. We just had to put towels in those areas to soak up the rain so Addison wouldn't fall again in the water. One exciting thing that happened was we had a little visitor at our cabin, a fox! Tasha had thrown a sucker off the porch earlier that day and I guess that is what the fox was wanting. Jonathan took a picture of it actually eating the suck right next to our cabin. Thayne said it would have come into the cabin if he hadn't shut the door. Tasha thinks it would have been really cool if it would have come into the cabin, we all think she wouldn't think that after it got in there and started attacking people. Well to sum it all up it was a great get-a-way and we have already started planning our next vacation next year. We are planning on taking one at the end of May so Garth will be able to be there before he goes on his mission in June.
Life here is Logan while we were gone seemed to go on like normal. We still are dealing with a very mentally unstable neighbor that just wont listen to anyone. She only moved in a couple of months ago and Mike and I went and introduced our selves and she had already met the other neighbor, Jamie. Well I guess she really just doesn't like any of us and really dislikes Jamie's dog. So a couple of weeks ago she decided to put a pile of dog poop on Jamie's front door to send a message about her dog. The whole issue is that she thinks Jamie's dog goes in her yard and she is a afraid Jamie's dog will hurt her dog or something. But the think is that her dog is always chained up so it can go into Jamie's yard. Or it "Runs" out of the house and ends up in our yard, in Jamie's house, or another neighbors house. So when we confronted her about this she got very angry at us and said she didn't do it, but Jamie better not let her dog step into her yard again or else. Well I guess while we were in Colorado Jamie was over in our yard playing with her dog, which is fine with us. Well the neighbor I guess thought she would try and teach her another lesson, so she called the animal control on her saying her dog was running loose in the neighbor and couldn't be controlled. Jamie talked to them and explained the situation and they understood. So I don't know what will happen from here. We have been advised not to confront the neighbor anymore and if she makes anymore threats to call the police. Oh the drama, right?? That is just another reason why we will not ever be getting a dog.

2006-07-06T07:29:00.000-07:00

Well we were going to try and wait and tell people what we were having until we were at Colorado, but we were too excited, so our little bundle of joy is going to be a little girl!! We are very excited and of course I cried when I found out what it was. I know I would have cried either way; being pregnant tends to do that to you. She is a health little girl though, growing perfectly. They measured every part of her I think. It was neat to see all of her different parts though. After all the measuring they said she weighs 1 pound exactly and is around 8-10 inches. We definitely have a modest little girl though. She refused to uncross her legs for the doctor. After a lot of pushing on my stomach they finally got her to uncross them for about a minute, just long enough to see she was a girl then she crossed them right back. They said they are 100% positive that she is a little girl. And the most exciting news besides finding out that she is a girl is that my new due date is November 11th instead of the 16th. Even though it is only 5 days, I am way excited. I am just excited because then it gives me a bigger time period between the day she is due and the day when all of the family comes out to celebrate Thanksgiving. The name we are planning on calling our little girl is Madison; that is unless she comes out and is not a Madison. I think we surprised a lot of people with our news because everyone thought for sure we were going to have a little boy. The most excited about us having a little girl I think is our niece, Aubrey. She really wanted a girl and when we called to tell them you could hear her in the background yelling and jumping around. Once I figure out how to post pictures on this I will up load a couple of the pictures of her.
Ok on to a different subject, Bear Lake. Mike and I went up Friday night and spent the weekend with his family in a condo there. It was a nice vacation. On Saturday we spent the whole day on the beach. I think we were out there for a totally of 8-9 hours. They rented a jet ski and everyone took turns on it except the two pregnant ladies, myself and my sister-in-law, Angie. She is due about the same time Ana is, in February, so they are just starting on the long 9 month path. Then later in the day everyone went out for a boat ride, but I knew I would throw up, so I just stayed behind and kept watch on the camp site. Really I ended up taking a nap, but oh well. I put SPF 30 on twice, but I guess I totally forgot about my feet because they were fried. Come Saturday evening when we were all back chilling in the condo, my feet swelled up to 2 or 3 times there normal size. I took it really easier on Sunday making sure to ice them often. They are still pretty swollen, but at least they aren't burnt anymore. Monday I woke up not being able to walk at all in the morning without my feet turning purple from lack of blood, so I didn't go into work that day. The 4th of July started pretty early for our neighbor Jamie and myself. We had a ward breakfast and were asked to come and help. So we showed up at 7 am and cut up watermelon. We had bought everything the day before; 15 bags of ice and 8 30 pound watermelon and a kiddy pool. They set up the pool and put ice and water in them and then kept the watermelon and drinks in it to keep everything cool. The breakfast went from 8:30-10:30, but we left at 9:30. Then we packed up the car and headed up to Idaho Falls for the 4th. Jamie came with Mike and I. When we got there it took a while to figure out what the plans were, but once we got that figured out it was a fun day. We all went to see the movie Superman Returns...Very long!! Then the boys went golfing( surprise, surprise) and Jamie and I went shopping. We bought Mike some new shorts and shoes which he needed greatly. Then we came back and had a BBQ and then went and watched fireworks. There was about 85,000 people there watching them so we parked about 20 minutes away and walked. It was quit a walk, but I think we all needed to exercise. After the show we power-walked back to the car and finally were on the road about 11:30 pm. I think we ended up getting home right and unpacked about 2 am. All I can say is 6 am came really early and I was dragging myself through the day, but I perked up a lot when we got to the doctor. Well as numerous people have already stated, we are having a little Wright family reunion this weekend in Colorado, so that will be fun to see everyone again and this will probably be the last time until Thanksgiving when everyone comes out here. Tasha will be riding back to Utah with us and spending sometime here though with us and Ana and Jonathan so that will be fun. Ok, well I think I will end this exciting novel. We will probably update everyone once we get back from Colorado.

2006-06-29T08:51:00.000-07:00

Well not a lot has happened since the last update I gave everyone, but today does mark an important day! Today is our half way mark! I am finally 20 weeks. That means only 20 more weeks of being pregnant and 20 more weeks of work!! Don't get me wrong I love my job and the people I work with, but I am very excited to just be at home. Mike is still job hunting. He was hoping to get a job from Hyclone, where Ariana works because it is such a great company but one of the jobs was filled and the other one we found out he is unable to get. Since that job is in the same office as Ana, they didn't think it would be a good idea having family so closely related working in the same office. Ana said she would keep her eye open for other openings in other departments there and just around Logan. Although somedays we are discouraged about not having a new job yet, we know that something will work out in the end, we just have to keep our hopes up. Mike is doing well at his job right now. The biggest push is making sure he gets enough sales every month. We just barley made it last month because the Herald Journal counts the last of the month on the 26th. So last night he went out to get a head start on next month's sales. He took a crew of young boys that go sale the paper from 5 - 10 last night. Needless to say I was a sleep when he got home last night, but he did get half of his sales for the month in one night, so that helps take a lot of stress off him so he will be able to enjoy our vacations coming up.
Although things are slow right now, the next couple of weeks will be busier and a lot of fun. Mike's brother, Marc and his family fly into Salt Lake tonight. We haven't seen the whole family since Christmas so it will be fun to see them. They will be staying with us tonight and then head up to Bear Lake for the weekend. Since Mike and I have to work tomorrow we wont be going up to Bear Lake until Saturday. Then we will have to come back Saturday night since I have to teach a lesson in church on Sunday. Then we will go back up for the afternoon and evening. Then I think the plan is to head up to Idaho Falls for the 4th of July. I think we are going to have Ana, Jonathan, and Addison come along with our neighbor Jamie. Pretty much everyone we would hang out with in Logan, we will just all go to Idaho Falls to watch the wonderful fireworks. Then we have our trip with my family to Colorado the next weekend. I love having little trips throughout the summer. For me it helps me not focus on how slow this pregnancy is going sometimes. But I know that I will have this child before me know it. OH yeah and the fun appointment were we find out what we are having is less than a week away, next Wednesday!! I hope everyone has a fun and safe 4th of July.

2006-06-23T07:09:00.001-07:00

Almost Half Way There...
Yesterday was on 3rd doctors appointment and everything went well. We didn't have our appointment with our regular doctor because she just recently had a baby herself a couple of weeks ago, so we went to a new one just for this visit. She works in the same office, just one floor up. First thing we found out is that I found out I gained 3 pounds in the past 4 weeks, which isn't bad at all when they are saying I am suppose to gain about a pound a week now. So far during pregnancy I have gained about 10 pounds. I am sure since I am maintaining my weight so well now that I will balloon out in the last month or something, but who knows. The doctors appointment wasn't too involved; the doctor gave some guide lines to follow about staying hydrated and wearing my seat belt below my belly. Then we got to listen to the baby's heart beat. I am always relieved when I hear the heart beat to know all is well. I guess I should know everything is fine since I feel the baby moving every 5 minutes it seems like. I guess there is an old saying that if the heart rate is fast then its more likely a girl and if it's slower than its more likely a boy. Well according to the heart rates and if the doctor had to guess, we will be having a boy. But Mike and I are still not guessing which we are having, we will just wait until the 5th of July to find out for sure. We asked if they had anything sooner, but their next appointment wasn't until the 12th of July so we decided to stick with the 5th. Mike was really hoping that someone could do one yesterday, but oh well.
I am still working up at the University full-time. The hours I work starting this week until summer is over will be 7:45 to 3:45. I use to take an hour lunch and then work until 4:45, but I figure I might as well eat lunch at my desk and get off an hour earlier so I have some energy to make dinner at night. Plus who doesn't like getting off early. Before I would go home for lunch, and then I never wanted to go back to work, so this will probably be better. Plus then I only have to walk up and down the hill once a day instead of twice. Mike is still with the Herald Journal, but is faithfully looking for a new job. The Herald Journal has been good for us, but I know he is very much ready for a change and an increase in pay so there will be less stress when I stay home with the baby.
Mike and I have been looking into different ways to decorate the nursery. We know we want to do the Curious George theme, but it is a matter of finding the right items and the money to get everything. We finally found some cheap wallpaper borders of curious George, thanks to Wagon, online so I think we are going to hang that up. Now its just a matter of picking out the color of paint for the walls, the fabric for the curtains, rocking chair cover, and the crib bedding. We are going to try to do a neutral color, so we wont have to change everything if the next baby is a different sex than this one is. We going to decorate with bright primary colors: red, blue, yellow, and green. So if anyone has any ideas for decorating, let us know. I think we are planning on painting and stuff while Natasha, my sister, is here for a couple of weeks in July. It will be nice to have the help, plus I think she is excited to help.

2006-06-20T09:14:00.000-07:00

Hi all, we are going to try this blog trend. I think it will be easier to up keep, plus then all of our past post will be saved which will be nice. I guess this will act as our community journal. Well not a lot has happened since the last time I updated our website. We are currently in our 18th week, but 19 weeks will be on Thursday.
Father's day weekend was nice. Mike and I went down to Idaho Falls Friday evening to spent the weekend with Mike's parents. Friday night we went and got ice cream with them at Cold Stone. I guess that is the happening place for Idaho Falls because I think we waited in line for 30 minutes. Then I made the mistake of ordering a fruit smoothie instead of ice cream. The employee turned to me and said, umm I don't think we make those. I said well its on your menu. Come to find out it was the guys first day and it was the first fruit smoothie every made in that store, so they had to find the instructions for it. But it tasted good, just took a long time to get. Mike decided to stay up until midnight watching old BYU football games with his dad, so on Saturday he was dragging. We got up and went on a walk with his parents for about half an hour. Then Wagon (my father-in-law's nickname) took us out to breakfast; he is very good to us. Then we ran errands with his parents to Target and other stores in hopes to find the right stroller and car seat, but no luck. Then we went furniture shopping for Mike's parents and we actually helped them pick out a couch that they later brought home that day for their front room. After stopping at home for a quick bite to eat, Mike and Wagon went golfing and Peggy(my mother-in-law) and I went shopping to look for Curious George fabric for the nursery. I think we went to 20 stores in the 2 hours we were gone and didn't find anything. Oh well, that's the way life goes. The rest of the time spent there was just chill time. On Sunday I called my dad, brother, and brother-in-law for father's day. My dad had an excited father's day; he got to sit in a hotel room because we was out of town for work. He still has one more week to go. Then he will be home until our Colorado trip on the 8th. Mike and I were planning on leaving around 7 or 8 so we didnt get home too late, but it ended up being about 9 when we left so we didn't get home until 11:30 or so. We were both tired, so I think we ended up sleeping until like 9 in the morning Monday. I took the day off of work yesterday to catch up on sleep and to just take a chill day. Mike and I unpacked everything and then went shopping for new swimming suits since none of mine fit, at least not the way you would need them to to go in public. I found a cute one that is a tankini on the top that almost covers my belly and then the bottom has a skirt attached to it, so it covers a lot. Mike's brother Marc will be coming to Utah on the 29th of June and we all will be heading to Bear Lake for the weekend, so I needed a new swimming suit, since all I can do is play in the water and lay out. I don't think jet skiing would work out for me and the baby. It will be a nice relaxing weekend though.