Barrister's Ball

Chuck and I went to Barrister's Ball (law prom) at the school. We had a little cocktail party with some friends beforehand. It was a fun evening with friends hanging out and dancing.

Ultrasound

Today was our ultrasound. Since Lucy was sick yesterday with a stomach bug, we canceled our babysitter, and I took Leland with me while Chuck stayed with Lucy.

As you all know, we choose not to find out the sex of our babies and wait for the best surprise of a lifetime. Chuck was a little worried I would find out with him not there, but I love the surprise too much to ruin it.

Leland was very excited to see the baby on the TV screen. The baby was moving around like crazy and made it a little difficult for the doctor to capture the pictures he needed on the first try.

Pictures:
top - face profile
middle - face profile with fist tucked under chin
bottom - shaking the fist at us

Heaven

My girls were in heaven today. We took care of a 6 week old baby for a few hours. They loved every minute that he was awake. He was here for 3 1/2 hours, but only awake for about a half an hour of it. While he was sleeping they stood by the door asking when he was ever going to wake up. Lucy cried by the window as his mother put him in the car to go home.

After he left, Leland asked, "When are we going to have our own baby?" I showed her on the calendar how many days she had to wait. The next 136 days will not go fast enough.

Williamsburg

Chuck's mom (Grammy) came for the weekend to spend time with our girls while Chuck and I went to Williamsburg to celebrate our 5th anniversary. We are so grateful that she was able to come and that her flights worked out flying stand-by on 3 flights each way.

We had a fun trip. We went out to eat both nights (Red Lobster and Red, Hot, and Blue both of my favorites). It is so fun to go out to restaurants without the kids tagging along. We could have a nice relaxing dinner, actually take our time, and talk to one another while eating. We had a nice hotel suite with 2 TVs, full kitchen, fireplace, huge jet tub, and a king bed. We walked around historic Williamsburg but it was getting dark so our pictures didn't turn out great.

The girls had so much fun with Grammy and I think it was great for them to develop more of a relationship with her. This was her sound asleep on our couch about 2 hours after we got home. I think they all wore each other out.

Thanks to especially Grammy, but also my mom for being willing to come if we needed her last minute. Thanks to John G for coming to our house late at night so that I could get Grammy from her 1 1/2 hour-delayed flight and not get our girls out of bed. Thanks to Spencer & Heidi for letting her borrow their car so she wasn't stuck at the house the whole time.

All of you helped with a wonderful weekend. We are so blessed to have such great families and friends.

5 Memories of our 5 years

Friday the 13th, Chuck and I celebrated our 5 year anniversary. (We were married on Friday the 13th, too). We went to Williamsburg for the weekend while Chuck's mom stayed with our girls (I'll post about that later).

Chuck and I each wrote down 5 memories of our last 5 years. They were fun to talk about and reminisce on our drive.

Ashley's list:

1. Going to see "Mama Mia" on stage at the Hippodrome in Baltimore. Our first date after Leland was born.
2. Governor's box seats to the Baltimore Orioles games. We went a few times, but the most fun was with our friend's the Cumberworths.

3. Seeing Chuck's excitement for our girls to have a one-on-one meeting with Sleeping Beauty and Snow White at Disneyland.
4. Our 10 day RV Road Trip from Maryland to California with the Cumberworths. (Wow guys, you made my list twice!)
5. Our first night home with Leland. She kept fussing, so I kept feeding her. Then she threw up ALL over Chuck. I seriously have never seen so much throw up in my life, and it came out of such a small baby.

Chuck's list:

1. Thanksgiving (2005) in the Outer Banks, NC with his parents, grandparents, aunt & uncle, and cousins. He enjoyed watching his mom having so much fun shopping with me to decorate their beach houses in CA.
2. Our 2nd visit to the ER in San Diego. Lucy was 6 days old and I was lying in pain with cerebral headaches, trying to nurse/pump. It was horrible, but now it's kind of funny.

3. All the Disneyland visits while living in CA.

4. Our trip to the West the summer of 2004. Watching the sunset from the Grand Canyon Lodge and hiking Bryce Canyon.
5. Camping and fishing with our family the summer of 2008.

Thanks for all the wonderful memories my love. I'm excited to add many more memories to our list. You are a wonderful husband, father, and best friend. I love you!

Dancing Cousins

Last weekend, we went to MD for a few days. Chuck had a conference in Bethesda, MD, so I dropped him off and headed to my sister's house. Chuck and I were also able to go out to dinner and to the temple which was very nice. Thanks Tine for watching our girls.

It is always so much fun to watch the cousins play. It is so great that they are the best of friends no matter how long it's been since they saw one another.

They had hilarious dance parties.

Lucy liked putting on her cousins' socks and slippers. She was cracking us up wearing Afton's socks, then she wanted to wear Nick's car slippers.

The morning that we were coming home, it was so nice outside we let the kids ride scooters and we pulled the little ones around in the wagons. They were having so much fun. My big kid of a husband decided to join in on all the fun.

He first decided to ride 2 Razors like skis down the hill in front of my sisters house. It is not too steep, but still thrilling for all the kids to watch him. Leah, (my 7 yr old niece) showed Chuck how she can jump while on the scooter. She lifted just a few inches off the ground. Chuck then says, "Now you need to learn how to jump over stuff riding your razor. I'll show you how!" He lays one of the razors on the ground in the middle of the hill then proceeds to the top of the hill to start his ride.

He comes down riding, jumps, but then is trying to look and make sure he has cleared it, and leans too far forward and eats it scraping across the payment. As I was cleaning his bleeding hand and arm, I asked, "What in the world were you thinking?"

He replies with 2 things:
"I was trying to teach the kids a lesson on why they should always wear wrist and elbow pads."
"If people didn't try things like that, we wouldn't have the X-Games."

So, I guess he thinks his 5 inch jump on a razor compares to a double back flip on a snow mobile 30 feet in the air. Which I'm sure his response would be - "You have to start somewhere."

I'm glad that my husband was not hurt badly, but I so wish I had the video going so we could all relive how hilarious it was to see a 260 lb man eat it while riding a Razor made for an 8 year old. I didn't even get a picture. I was too busy laughing, I mean, making sure he was okay. His arm and hand were pretty scraped up, but the worse thing was that he had his keys in his pocket and that was the leg that all his weight landed on top of the scooter. So his keys and scooter handle jamming into his thigh left a nasty bruise.

Winter Wonderland

I feel a little silly posting these pictures, now that our weather forecast for the week is mid-60s, but we did have some snow last week. Chuck took more than 75 pictures, but here are my favorite 2. Both were taken from just outside our house, showing the gorgeous view we are lucky to have. My girls never asked to play in the snow, so I didn't take them out. Lazy, I know. They enjoyed just looking from the window. Lucy can now say the word snow, it's really cute.

Not what I wanted to hear

Disclaimer: I am only 18 weeks pregnant, and I know I barely look pregnant, but still not what I wanted to hear.

Leland after seeing my bare belly, yells: "Mommy, your belly is really big!! Our baby is going to be here soon."

Ashley: Well, we still have about 5 more months before the baby comes and I am going to get bigger than this.

Leland: You are going to be HUGE!

Ashley: Thanks, that makes me feel great.

1 here...3 to go

On Sunday we gained another nephew, Houston. We are so excited for Lani and Mike. We have 3 more to gain in February and March. Yeah!

Ee-I-Ee-I-Oh

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