7 Months

This pregnancy sure has flown by and I can't believe that in 12 weeks or so, we will be meeting our little baby girl! I think it has been awhile since I've posted a belly shot (probably because we have been gone for the last 1.5 months) so here I am at 28 weeks/7 months pregnant...




I'm feeling great and I'm excited to be in the final home stretch of this pregnancy! I just had a check up with the doc yesterday and so far I have gained 12 pounds total and I am measuring right on track. This makes me terrifically happy... we'll just see how the weight gain fares after all the yummy holiday food that is coming our way. Hopefully I won't lose all self control :) I am still exercising and I enjoy getting a good workout on the elliptical and with water aerobics. I love feeling this little girl inside of me and I can most definitely tell that she is getting bigger and bigger seeing as she has just recently started kicking up in my ribs. I love it!

I haven't done an update on Ethan for awhile but he is SO much fun and is growing up entirely too fast. Who replaced my little baby with this non stop talking and oh so fun little boy?! I'll do a more detailed update later but here are just a few highlights on Ethan.

- He knows and can recognize all of his ABC's. Thank you Dr. Suess for writing the ABC book.
- He was at least "pooped" trained before we left for Europe but that has gone completely out the window and we are back at square one...sigh...
-He loves to play with kids and can share pretty well
-And he LOVES having all of his aunts and uncles home for the holidays!

Someday when I get my computer fixed i'll post on our amazing trip to Europe! It was so much fun and quite an amazing experience, but we are most definitely excited to be home- for a few weeks at least :) Merry Christmas!

My Birthday/Christmas Present For the Next 10 Years...

While down in Texas for Thanksgiving, I had my 24th birthday. Ever since I left like...elementary school, birthday's just haven't been quite as exciting as they used to be. This year my parents surprised me with by far, my most favorite (and coveted) birthday present of all time! I'll give you a hint as to what it is...

And here it is!!


The Willow Tree Nativity Set, and yep, they bought me the whole enchilada! I have had a slight obsession with Willow Tree figurines ever since we received one of a couple dancing from my aunt for our wedding. I have collected and been given a few over the years but I've always had my eyes on this bad boy and I am so excited to have this beautiful nativity set as part of our holiday decor (and let's be honest, right now it's the only holiday decor we have...sad I know). I love the simplicity of this nativity set and i just think it's all around beautiful!

Unfortunately, one of the wisemen must have had a rough trip over here to AZ and arrived a bit headless.....


But it's nothing a little super glue can't fix!

Thank you again SO much Mom & Dad! I will forever cherish this gift!

We Should Be in Europe But........

We for got our passports.... Nope, I'm not kidding. A real life nightmare! They were sitting in our car in AZ. I cried and still continue to. As we were getting ready to leave my parents house in TX this afternoon I asked Justin if he had our passports. We both knew the answer right away and knew that they were sitting on our console in our car back in Mesa. I immediately started crying thinking all chances of us going to Europe were ruined. Justin (the more rational thinking one) calmly called British Air to see if we could possible do anything to get on the flight without our passports. Of course the answer was no and the guy kindly re-scheduled our flight for tomorrow afternoon and didnt charge us the $300 plus dollars to do so. Thank you kind British man! So Justin's mom luckily had the keys to our car, pulled out the passports and has over-nighted them to us here in TX in hopes that we will get them before noon tomorrow. So while we were suppose to be basking in the beauty of London & Paris today and tomorrow, we will unfortunately miss out on seeing those countries and fly straight to Vienna Austria to make our next flight to Antalya, Turkey for Justin to be able to make it to an agricultural conference the next day.

We are devastated and threw ourselves a pity party today by going out shopping, but I think we were too bummed though to really buy anything! My mom kindly tried to comfort me by saying, "Well, you know Ash, everything happens for a reason." But I wasn't in the mood to believe it at the time :) So with the time that I now bitterly have I have decided to get caught up with some pictures from the two weeks we spent in Mexico this last month and also some pictures from our wonderful stay that we have had here in TX. My sweet husband is letting me borrow his computer while we are still trying to decided what to do with my broken one- nice of him eh?

On a more positive note, this is one less day that I am spending away from my little boy and we have had fun playing around the house. I really don't know what I am going to do not being around Ethan for 2 weeks...it's like I'm leaving part of me behind! He will be so happy here with my parents though eating all the treats and drinking as much juice as he wants- everything his mommy doesnt like to give him :) That's just the way it works with grandparents, right?!

So we stayed 2 full weeks in Mexico this last month and had fun playing and talking with old friends. On our way down, we stopped in Los Mochis at our favorite ice cream place, Tio Sam's. Ethan got his very own cup and devoured it! Check out this huge mouth!

One happy little boy!

One of the weekends we went down to Mazatlan and while Justin and Eduardo worked, Gladyss (Eduardo's wife) and I played with Ethan and Anette. Even though Anette is like 6 years older than Ethan and speaks a completely different language than him, they still have so much fun playing together...

We went to a mall there in Mazatlan and they had to coolest children's play area ever! Sure it cost money but it was so much fun for them! Here is Ethan loading up his grocery cart with lots of carbs.. unfortunately I think he got his mommy's appetite!

Playing in the tunnels....

and sandbox

And riding the choo choo train! He of course loved this part!

He also had fun riding the little ferris wheel there as well.

We then played on the beach for a few hours and enjoyed jumping the waves in the perfectly warm ocean. Seriously, the water was SO warm!
On our way back home to Culiacan, Ethan and I were able to accompany Justin to see some chilis and potatoes that they are treating. Ethan had so much fun running around through the rows of chilis.

This picture is of Ethan on our way back to AZ chowing down on a 6 in. Subway sandwich. We first realized Ethan can eat a whole 6 in. (by himself!) while we were in D.C. and he has yet to not finish a whole one. Amazing really. We just wonder where all the food he eats goes!

TEXAS

We flew out to TX the day before Thanksgiving and arrived at my house to see an early Christmas present to Ethan awaiting him.....

How cool is this?! My parents were trying to think of how in the world they are to keep a 2 year old busy for two full weeks and they figured this baby would do the trick! Ethan LOVES it and calls it his motorcycle. He actually does really well driving this thing all over the yard! Thanks Mom and Dad!

Ethan is in little boy heaven down here with not only the 4-wheeler but with choo choo trains...


plenty of cats to chase around and torture... this goes for chickens to...

and LOTS of tractors and trucks to play in the dirt with!

We helped my parents put up Christmas lights as well.

On Sunday, my good friend from high school, Jamie, and her mom came over for some cake and ice cream to celebrate my 24th birthday. It was so good to chit chat with them again! Thanks for coming!

We also got to visit with my sweet Grandma & Grandpa Sims and enjoyed visiting with them as much as we could. They love to see their little great-grandson and spoiled him with a brand new dump-truck!

Ethan loved playing catch with Grandpa Sims. Turns out, we still have some coordination issues to work out :)


We had so much fun hanging out with my parents and watching Ethan spend time with his grandparents who he doesn't get to see all that often. We slept in, ate WAY too much Thanksgiving food, and I also ate more sweets, cookies and Blue Bell ice cream than I should have. After a week of feasting here in TX and 2 more weeks of yummy eating ahead of us in Europe, let's just say I will be pretty nervous to step on that doctor's scale in a few weeks.. Oh do I ever need to learn more self control! Oh well.

Well hopefully we will have no trouble getting our passports and getting on our flight tomorrow! Wish us luck and hopefully I will have lots of beautiful pictures of Europe to post in a few weeks. Although I will forever be sad that we missed out on London and Paris, I look forward to all the other wonderful countries that we will have the opportunity to see!

Rotten Luck..

So it looks like you guys won't be hearing much from me on this blog due to my basically brand new Mac laptop crashing and burning on me. Bummer. A couple months ago it started to have trouble charging but still worked just fine if I kept it plugged in. I meant to take it in to the Mac Store to see what the problem was but we were out of town so much that I didn't get a chance to go. Well about a week ago it wasn't charging at all and would shut off at random times so I decided to bring it in. I just thought it was a charging problem that was going to be something was easy to fix and wouldn't cost us money, but turns out that wasn't the case. The guy told me today that there is severe water damage to the motherboard and some other important parts that I don't remember and that it had corroded and was growing white mold all over it. Confused, I told the guy that he must be mistaken and surely got my computer confused with someone else's because mine has never even been close to water or any other liquid to where that could happen. He assured me that he was looking at my computer and told me that it would cost $950.00 to fix! I started crying and embarrassingly sniffled out that Justin would be in the store to talk to him later that day. Turns out, they charged us $100 for that service, which they did NOT tell us about! Ohh... it makes me upset when people throw hidden fees at you! I have absolutely NO idea how this could have happened and I am still baffled as to how water got in my laptop! The only thing I can think of is maybe Ethan had his water cup, which is suppose to be spill proof, near the computer and accidentally splashed some on it or maybe he stuck his slobbery fingers into the charge outlet. I never remember having to wipe water off my computer though. Weird and frustrating.
So anyways, all of my pictures are on the computer (which luckily all my info can still be recovered since the hardrive wasn't damaged) so I probably won't be posting anytime soon until we get all this figured out. I'm stuck between 2 choices....

1) take my computer to the fix it place in Houston (we are going there anyways tomorrow) and have them fix it for 900 buckaroos
or 2) Retrieve all the info off my mac and use my old HP laptop that still works well and don't fix the mac.

I dont know what to choose because I basically bought the mac so that I could use iMovie to "scrapbook" our lives through movies with our pictures and videos from all of our trips that we have taken and will take. I feel like if I dont fix it then I wasted $1300 bucks on a laptop since I didn't get to make all the movies I wanted to, but then if i fix it, i'll be spending $1000 more. If I decided to just use my HP, there are some other programs I can buy that allow me to make movies but they aren't near as good as iMovie.... Oh man, what to do what to do. I really dont want to spend that money to fix it but I really want my computer back too. What would you guys do? Would you be absolutely broken-hearted like I am? I seriously would love to know what you would do in this situation...

On a more positive note, We are leaving tomorrow morning ( actually in like 5 hours- i should probably go to bed) to fly out to Texas to my parents house for Thanksgiving! We will be there until next Monday when Justin and I say good-bye to Ethan and my parents for a whole two weeks while we travel EUROPE! I don't know what i will do without my little buddy for two weeks but I'm hoping Europe can keep me entertained enough to where I don't go crazy from not seeing Ethan for that long. We will be going to London, Paris, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary (to pick up Justin's brother from his mission) and Turkey (for Justin's work). It should be fun and I'm really excited to experience this part of the world that I've never been. So anyways, once we come back in mid- December, I'll try to get all caught up on my posts... starting with Halloween. Better late than never, right?! Thanks for "listening" and I hope everyone has a fabulous Thanksgiving!

Our Trip to New York, Philadelphia & DC!

Hurray! I'm finally sitting down to take the time time to blog about our amazing trip back east! Usually the trips we take are work related but we decided to take a vacation and explore these amazing cities without work! Of course Justin still had emails and master classes to worry about but that definitely did not stop us from having a wonderful time! This was my first time out east and Justin hadn't been there since he was little so needless to say we were super excited! I know there are a bazillion pictures but I'll let them do most of the talking.. I promise :)

We flew into Baltimore, MD, picked up our rental car and drove straight to New York, New York! Because our little buddy refused to sleep on the 5 hour plus plane ride over after waking up at 4am, he pretty much crashed on the way...

We arrived in NY and stayed at the Holiday Inn about block away from Time Square and of course we had to stop by and see the craziness of this place for ourselves. We were actually trying to find our hotel and ended up driving right in the heart of this place! It was so cool!

Of course we had to stop by the huge Toys R Us store while we were there and Ethan was so good at pointing out any and all Toy Story characters...

and there was a plethora of Buzz Lightyear toys that would have kept Ethan entertained for pretty much a year....

He was also very impressed by the huge dinosaur there... this place was a little boys dream!

The M&M Factory was pretty cool but man were those M&M's WAY overpriced! We barely filled up our bag and only did because we felt like we just "had" to since we were there and everything :)

Ethan was more than willing to hold our M&M bag for us... oh and, check out that sweet hat hair...

Ethan and daddy trying to take one home...

The next day we headed out early and took the subway to the Staten Island Ferry to go see Lady Liberty herself... We didn't have time to actually go out to the island but I think we got some good pictures of her anyways.

We also became pretty good at managing the stroller up and down the subway stairs. I'm sure we were quite the sight to behold!

View of Manhattan

After that we headed over to Ground Zero. I guess I never realized what a huge impact 9/11 was not only to NY but to our country. It was really neat to see this memorial, the fire station and St. Paul's church where the base of operations took place for Ground Zero. I got teared up a time or two realizing how many people lost their lives on this tragic day, including those brave firemen and others who lost their lives while trying to rescue others. Very touching.

The new trade center they are building..

St. Paul's church located right by ground zero

a little memorial remembering a few of those that died..

Graveyard located right behind St. Paul's church. I don't remember who was buried here but there were some really old gravestones....

After that, we took the subway down to Washington Square located right by NYU. This is a historic area located in the Greenwich Village area. There were lots of NYU students there and while they were mostly a little err... odd... this was really quaint, quiet park area. Cool bit of history: this park area serves as a mass grave where thousands of bodies were buried when the Yellow Fever hit NY. All the poor people that couldn't afford graves were thrown in here and buried. Crazy!

We let Ethan get out and burn off some much needed energy at a little kiddy park here as well

Then we headed on over to the Rockefeller Center to go to the Top of the Rock. Justin wanted to take the Subway but I wanted to walk and didn't think it was that far since I could see the Empire State Building from where we were. Turns out it's a pretty tall building and just because you can see the building, doesn't mean that you are close to it and we ended up walking.. oh.. about 30+ blocks to get there :)

On the way we stopped by Macy's just to see what it was all about. It's huge!

And we found a cool picture spot for the Empire State Building.. not a good picture of me but a good one of the building...

We finally made it to the Rockefeller Building and we wished we would have had more time to explore it! It was really cool and I loved watching the mini documentaries they showed on how it was built. We would totally recommend doing this maybe even instead of the Empire State Building. You get an awesome 360* view and it's a little cheaper.. still expensivo though.

Central Park down below...

The famous ice skating rink where they show the huge US Map during election time and I'm pretty sure it's been in a movie or two..

After grabbing a bite to eat at the Rockerfeller Center, we walked over to St. Patrick's Cathedral. I love to see old architecture like this right in the middle of cities like NY. This place was beautiful inside!

The next day was our day to head down to DC but before we left, we spent the morning in Central Park. This was maybe my most favorite thing we did in NY. I don't know if that's because of all the leaves changing colors or the nice, peaceful break it is from the city but I loved it and thought it was absolutely beautiful! If I was a New Yorker, I would totally go running here everyday!

Here is Ethan & Daddy with Alice and friends

Cool castle that we didn't have time to go explore....

You can see the ice skating rink to your bottom left...

I loved all the bridges and architecture there. I wish we would have had time to explore the whole place but we only got about half-way through it- which is still huge!

And of course what would Central Park be without guys like this??

We said goodbye to New York and made our way down to DC that afternoon. We decided to stop by Philadelphia and see some of the historical sights while we were passing through. Might as well, right?!

We saw Liberty Bell...

and the remnants of where Ben Franklin's house used to be. Apparently they didn't understand the importance of who Ben Franklin was back in the day and demolished his house. So sad. Those are original cobblestones though and they have also unearthed some remains of his house like the toilet hole and such but you can only look at it in the ground through a small pane of glass...

We also went and saw Independence Hall where the Declaration of Independence was drafted and signed. We took the tour but Ethan had had enough by that time and we played outside while waiting for daddy to come out.

I don't remember who this is a statue of but I thought the trees behind it were beautiful! I miss the fall colors!

We also went and saw the Tomb of the Unknown Soldiers from the Civil War...

So we saw and did a lot in the 2 hours we had to spend in Philly. We left there and headed down to good ole' Wilmigton, Delaware to meet up with the Kapfer family. It was so good to see these guys again! Thanks guys for taking the time to meet up with us. Let's do it again sometime!

*For those of you who don't know who they are, they were our upstairs neighbors at BYU. Justin and Steve traded off watching the kids during the day around their own school schedules, while Ashley and I were gone all day for school. Steve and Justin were the Mr. Mom's for those 2 semesters :) They were also our game buddies on nights that we didn't have anything going on. Justin and Steve also worked together and became good buds as well.

Little Maggie and Molly, who aren't so little anymore..

We arrived late that night to DC and stayed with my very good friend, Alicia, who I have known for forever and I have posted about her before. The next morning we took the metro into DC and stopped at the DC Basilica. If my memory serves me right, this is one of the largest basilicas in the world! It was gorgeous inside!

Alicia and I..

After a quick tour through there, we hopped back on the metro and arrived at Union Square to get off and see the Capitol and the Library of Congress...

Here we are in front of the Capitol building

Alicia was kind enough to watch Ethan for 2 hours while Justin and I went inside and toured the capitol. Turns out they don't let you bring in any water bottles of any kind, empty or not, or any food. I wasn't about to throw away my $15 water bottle that goes everywhere with me or our PB&J's that Alicia slaved on that morning so Alicia volunteered to have some good one on one time with Ethan... what a sweetheart, eh?! Luckily he was a good boy for her (so she says anyways) :)

The office of Nancy Peloski

We went into a room full of statues of different people and any of you have any guesses to who this man may be??

Yep, it's good ole' Brigham Young! We were excited to see him there!

Ethan in front of the Library of Congress

Inside the library. Luckily Ethan slept through this tour or else it would have been impossible to do! I wouldn't have minded living inside the library as much as I did at BYU if it would have looked like this though!

After that, we got a quick bite to eat at a nearby Subway and then headed back to the mall area for a guided tour of all the monuments/memorials. We did the "DC By Foot" tour and I would highly recommend doing this! We had a retired high school history teacher as our guide and he was AWESOME! We learned SO much and had so much fun doing doing this. The best part? It's for free! He just accepts donations at the end. For those of you who live in DC or are just visiting, this is a must!

Because we did the tour at night, we didn't get the best pictures of everything but they still turned out ok..

In front of the Washington Monument..

WWII Memorial. We got to see all of the memorials there and my favorite one was actually one of the lesser known ones, the Korean War Memorial. I don't have a picture of it but the tour guide told us some really cool things about it and I just love it, especially at night..


The next day we woke up well rested and ready to tour again! Although, our feet were hurting us by this time with all the walking we had done in the past 5 days.

We started out by going and seeing the Thomas Jefferson Memorial. What a pretty location this memorial has right on the Potomac River..

We then headed over to the old post office of DC and went to the top to get a 360* view of the whole mall area...

Here you can see the CIA Building below with the Washington in the background

Lincoln Memorial

WWII again

and The White House...

Believe it or not, Ethan did fabulous for the whole week we were there! He spent so much time in his stroller and probably ate more goldfish than one human being should consume but he was for the most part so happy and made our trip so easy! he did have a few meltdowns though as shown below...

But who can blame him when you are two, not in your own home for more than 2 weeks at a time, trying to adjust to time changes and going non-stop with your parents from sun-up to sun-down? :) He was such a good little trooper!

After that we ran over for a tour of Ford's Theater where President Lincoln was shot. We learned some really neat things and here we are in front of the box office where Lincoln was assassinated.

The we headed over to Arlington Cemetery. This place is so incredibly beautiful and the colors of the trees definitely added to its beauty...

The Kennedy's.. John, Jacqueline, and two babies that died at birth...

Ted Kennedy's grave

We of course had to stop by and check out the changing of the guard at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. If you want to learn how intense it is to be one of these guards you should Wikipedia it. Talk about some dedication! We are so grateful though for those men who serve and have served our country! Thank you!

Jeff and Alicia then took us to a nice restaurant called Chop House(?) there in DC. It was so fun to chat with them and to get to know Jeff a little better.

Thought we were done for the night? Of course not! After dinner we headed down to the Washington National Cathedral. This place is SO beautiful even at night time! We didn't get to go inside but I was satisfied with just seeing the grounds. So peaceful and romantic!

We were finally done for the night and crashed pretty quickly once we got back to Alicia's place. The next morning was Saturday, and we had half a day to see more things before I had to take Justin to the airport so he could catch his flight to Cancun for work ( I know, poor guy, right?) So we decided to hit up some of the Smithsonian! First stop.. The Air & Space Museum! We had been telling Ethan the whole week, "Ethan, if you are a good boy, we will take you to go see some airplanes and rocket ships!" and boy, did this place have both! Needless to say, I don't think Ethan left very disappointed!

This was an Apollo ship but I don't remember what number..

Lilianthal' s airplane

and of course we had to see the Wright Brother's airplane!

Ethan unfortunately wanted to get inside and drive every airplane we saw so we were lucky when the kid's play area had one for him to play in!

We then headed over to the National History Museum where a lot of Night at the Museum 2 had been filmed.

Ethan loved the dinosaurs!

And I loved the Hope Diamond :)

We were sad that we had to blow through those two museums so fast when we could have spent seriously a day in each, but I guess that is why we will just have to come back again! This picture is in front of the Smithsonian Castle...

So we dropped Justin off at the airport and Ethan and I headed back to join Alicia and Jeff in their weekend adventures. We went to a Halloween party that night where they dressed up as the wicked witch from Snow White and her mirror...

and Ethan and I went as ourselves.. there just wasn't enough room in the suitcase for a costume I guess!

Alicia and I probably stayed up way too late at night chit chatting but I had so much fun talking about old times, the present and future. I love that girl!

The next morning we went to church and then Alicia and I took a drive to see the beautiful DC Temple! The grounds on this temple were amazing!

The view from the freeway...

Pretty beautiful huh? I couldn't stop taking pictures!

We then had a chill night at her apt talking, laughing and watching Ethan be his crazy self! That next morning Ethan and I took off for the airport for the long flight back to PHX. I'm sure I was a funny sight with trying to carry 2 suitcases, a stroller, a car seat, toddler and my huge diaper bag full of plane goodies. When we got to the airport I found out that my flight was delayed to Houston and that because of that I wouldn't have made my layover to PHX and would have to spend the night in the Houston airport. Luckily the lady was nice and pulled some strings to get me a one-way flight to PHX on a different airline! Sweet! The only problem? She put Ethan in a middle seat across the aisle from my middle seat.. hmm...yeah. not cool! So I was stuck with carrying an ancy two year old in my lap for the whole 5 hour flight. Oh and did I mention that I had the middle seat? Luckily I was seated next to 2 people who were younger and didn't mind Ethan crawling all over them. He even sat on the guy next to me's lap because he wanted to see out the airplanes window. Like I said before, considering what all we have put this little guy through, he did SO good! It was an awesome trip and I hope we can go back to visit the east coast soon! A HUGE thanks to Jeff and Alicia for letting us crash at their house! You guys rock!

Whew.. long post I know. But now I can move on with life and start posting about other things! Thanks for reading!