Castles & Airplanes!

We were over at one of our friends house (the Sanchez family) for a Christmas party one evening and Ethan LOVED playing in this little castle they had in their backyard! The father asked us if we wanted it since his daughter never uses it. We of course said yes and now Ethan is always very excited to go "Out!" and play in it! It's really cute huh? -Especially for free!




He loves his little slide as well!

Airplanes have become quite an obsession to Ethan as of lately. Justin made the mistake of showing Ethan pictures of airplanes on his Blackberry one night and Ethan has never forgotten it. When he sees his daddy, he will automatically dig in his shirt pocket, pull out Justin's phone and say "airdane!" over and over. If he doesnt get to see it, he throws a tantrum! He can hear airplanes in the sky and will loudly call out "Whoa! Airdane" multiple times even if he cant see it. He carries around a wooden airplane that Justin's grandpa made for him EVERYWHERE he goes. (He had a melt-down last night because I wouldn't let him take it in the bath-tub with him.
He even sleeps with it....

And of course plays with it all the time!

He is starting to pretend that different things are airplanes ( or trucks). For example, he loves taking the building blocks we have and "making" an airplane out of it. He has the noises to go with it as well! I actually think it's really cute that he is attached to certain things and I love how little boys go through obsessive stages such as this! However exciting as these stages may be, we will very patiently wait for the "knowing all the names of every dinosaur that ever lived" stage :)

Here is a video of Ethan making sure that we both know that he is looking at an airplane. You can see in the video also that sometimes Ethan gets so excited over airplanes that he kinda makes a hyper-ventilating noise, gasping for air. We had about 5 min worth of tape of him saying "airdane, airdane!" over and over but don't worry, I cut down the time of it to save you your sanity...

How Can Kids Do This??

Yesterday, I was vacuuming the house while Ethan was suppose to be eating his lunch and I walked in the living room and saw my sweet little boy struggling to stay awake while eating. Although, I probably should have laid him down to sleep, I instead quickly grabbed the camera and starting filming him head bobbing while I continued vacuuming. I was laughing so hard I was crying watching him struggle to stay awake! After about 5 min of him doing this, I figured that I had probably gotten some good footage and so I went in to get him our of his high chair and lay him down. Half-asleep, Ethan proceeded to tell me that he wanted "Wa Wa" (watermelon) and then a "Moo-gee" (movie). I don't think he quite knew what he was saying! Hope you enjoy!

I tried to speed the movie up while editing it, but couldnt figure out how.. sorry! Also, sorry about the vacuum noise in the background. I would have muted it but at the end he starts talking. :)

I Saved $30 Bucks!

How did I save $30 you might ask??? Well, I gave myself a haircut! Have I ever cut a girls hair before? Nope! Did I even know how to cut hair, layers, etc?? Nope! I just remember watching my old trusty hairstylist, Meg, cut my hair in layers and so I gave it a try! I would have never thought of doing this except for the fact that I was in serious need of one ( I haven't had a trim since April) and also because I'm in Mexico and they have sort of a bad rep here for really bad haircuts. My thought process was... "Well, if I'm just going to pay 30 bucks for someone to give me a terrible haircut, I may as well give myself one for free!" So, I did and I don't think it turned out all that bad! Justin wasn't home to help me so I don't think it's cut completely straight but luckily long, curly hair is pretty forgiving! Well, here are some pictures of my first attempt at cutting my hair! If you are a hairstylist and reading this, please don't look too closely and I promise to not go that long without trimming my hair again :)


The front look showing some of the layers. It may appear as if I didn't cut any off but I infact did cut about 1 1/2 to 2 inches off!

And the back view...I just love little Ethan popping his head out in the background!

The Minute Mommy Turns Her Back....

The minute Mommy turns her back, this is what Ethan does.....



He climmed onto the couch, dragged his car up there with him, went up to the very edge, squealed with delight and said "Weeee!" as he went plunging to the hard tile floor. Luckily, I ran over in time there to catch him before he seriously injured himself. Am I a bad mom that I let him do this again only for picture sake? :) What can I say? I thought it was pretty funny!

Cool Video

Im not sure how many of you have seen this video but I thought it was pretty cool that Elder Ballard and Elder Cook were willing to talk with the news and the world about our religion and set some facts straight. I think the more wicked our world becomes, the more necessary it will be for our Lord's servants to speak out like this. I'm so grateful and proud to be a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints! Enjoy the video...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ehNbBt0OpdU

A Late Christmas Present to All...

Over the Christmas holidays, I found that my wonderful mother-in-law had made a 4 week meal plan complete with side dishes and all to feed her family. Once the month is up, I think she just goes back to week one and repeats...simple and easy! She had all 4 weeks written out on index cards and so I typed out all the meal plans and included all the recipes to go with them in what I hope is an easy and organized format to keep recipes in.

For a late Christmas present, I thought I would share with anyone who is interested this 4-week complete meal calendar with the recipes attached! And because it is saved in Word, you can delete/add different recipes that you want in your meal plan pretty easily, but I will tell you that my mother-in-law is a very good cook! She cooks great meals that are easy and are not time-consuming (she has 8 kids!) so you might want some of the recipes!

Unfortunately, I couldnt figure out a way to get the Word document on here but if you are interested in receiving this you can either leave me a comment with your email, or if you arent comfortable with this you can send me an email at ashleighsims@gmail.com

Thanks!

Before Christmas...

I meant to post these pictures before the Christmas holidays started but I must have forgotten to do it!

We were invited to a Christmas party at our good friends (la familia Sanchez) house. Eduardo works a lot with Justin and his wife, Gladyys, and I love to shop together. They have a 7 year old girl named Anette, who just loves Ethan to death and is so good playing with him! What's a mexican party without the famous Pinata?! They really do have pinatas at any party they have..it's a lot of fun! You cant tell in this picture but Ethan was terrified of it! This is about as close as he got to it...



This picture was taken sometime at the beggining of December. I think it's such a cute picture of him that I had to add it in here...


During Thanksgiving, we bought our Christmas present for Ethan, a brand new play kitchen! Of course we couldnt wait for Christmas to give it to him (mostly because we knew it would be a good time occupier toy for Ethan and a good toy that we could play with him also). Let's just say it was a huge success and remains to this day one of Ethan's (and our) favorite toys! If he was a girl.. I'd say he is pretty sassy in this pic :)

And.. We're Back!

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and a Happy New Year! We most certainly did! We started off our holiday vacation by making the long drive back up to AZ to spend a few days with the Smith's before heading off to Texas for Christmas. What was suppose to be a 14 hour drive from Mexico took us over 18 hours with accidents, border waiting and other stops that slowed us down. Ethan was definitly ready to get out of the car but was a good trooper through it all. We had a lot of fun in AZ with lots of eager aunts/uncles/grandparents awaiting the arrival of out little guy. Here are some things we did...

Arizona

We went to Justin's brothers volleyball tournament. Ethan loved all the cheering and would clap and loudly say "YAY!" when he would hear it. Nate is a really good setter and watching made me miss my volleyball days...

This was one of Ethan's favorite things to do with his aunts. They would wrap him all up in a blanket and drag him across the carpet. tile, pretty much all around the house.. he loved it and his hair was sticking up everywhere from the static!

Texas
A few days before Christmas, we flew out to the great state of Texas to see my family. I was there in August with Ethan but Justin hadn't been out there in a whole year. It was nice to have his company there and for people in my hometown to see that I was infact still married
!


My parents have a lot of property out there in the woods of Texas and I'm pretty sure Ethan covered every inch of it. He loved all the cats and would chase them around everywhere! it was pretty muddy and rainy while we were there so my mom bought him some rubber boots to get muddy in... he was pretty much adorable in them. My younger brother has a sweet jeep that my dad restored from scratch which is pictured above.. why didnt I have anything like that!?! !






Ethan made out like a bandit for Christmas with both sides of the family spoiling him pretty well! He got some really cool toy trucks, a lawnmower and many more toys that make lots of noise:) As for me, Justin gave me some beautiful Australian crystal earrings that he bought for me in London that match a georgeous necklace that he gave me for our anniversary- note this is my first pair of non Claires /Wal Mart jewlery so im pretty excited! But I was also the lucky recipient of a new Bosch Mixer and Blender... ridiculously excited? Yes! I didnt think i would get one of those until I was like 50, but Im excited to improve my cooking skills with it! Justin got some brand new work shoes ..I finally got rid of his Vans! Yes! Thanks to all our family for making our Christmas so special, We love you

Back to Arizona

A few days after Christmas, we flew back to Arizona. The family picked us up from the airport and we headed right on up to some condos to enjoy the Arizona snow! We had a blast and Ethan had fun enjoying his first experience with snow...! !

Ethan quickly found the vaccum (his favorite toy) and helped us clean up the condo multiple times a day. We spent the morning playing the Wii for our first time ever! It was so fun and such a good family interactive toy! I boxed Justin and beat him a good three times but paid for it dearly for the next three days- I was so sore and felt like such a wimp being sore from a stinkin video game

We met up with the Smith's neighbors up there to go sledding and ""snow knee boarding" (which is where you are kneeling on a kneeboard, holding on to a rope and being pulled behind a truck in the snow- fun??oh yes!! ) We were all bundled up pretty good! It was cold!!



Ethan and his Aunt Chanda had fun sledding and playing in the snow together. We had trouble keeping Ethan's gloves on. See, he's a little funny with his hands... he doesnt like ANYTHING to be on them! Therefore, he didnt want his gloves on but when he would fall down in the snow and get snow on his hands,, he would spend forever looking at his hands , studying them like, "what is this and how do i get it off!"We have taught him to "brush it off" on his pants but you can tell it still drives him crazy! As youcan see, Justin had fun tackling me in the snow too!






After 2 days enjoying the cold, we came back to the house in sunny Mesa and had fun goofing off and talking with everyone. Ethan had fun playing with the dog and taking him for walks and i had fun working with Chanda (my sister-in- law) in our temporary beauty salon fixing everyone's hair curly and showing them the beauty of naturally curly hair! Pictured below are Chalene and Caryn (who normally have straight hair with a little body). With a little work, we made their hair beautiful with tons of curls! !)



It was a great Christmas and New Year and we feel so blessed that we were able to spend a lot of time with family. We are now back in Mexico and hopefully I can post more updates on Ethan,Justin and I soon! Stay tuned for more!