JUNK MAIL!

I'm probably not the only one, when I say "I HATE JUNK MAIL!" Why does it even exist!? I got our mail from yesterday and today and finally just went through and got rid of more than half of it. Can you believe that? You're probably thinking, "She doesn't go through her mail everyday?" No people I don't. It sometimes gets really bad where there's a huge stack that I have to go through ugh. I need a system.

Anyway I just wanted to vent off some steam about yucky junk mail. I need to find a way, besides recycling, to make use out of it. Maybe I can shred it and make confetti! Or maybe i can get those paper making kits and shred it and die it to make new colored paper for cards, stationaries, etc. Who knows?

I Love You Daddy

Stella has been expressing her love to Curtis with the following line from Shrek:

I don't know if the is good or bad... but she sounds just like him. "I Love You Daddy."

I might try to teach Stella to pull on his ear when she says it. 

Freaky birthday present

Last night as we were coming home I noticed a small shadowed figure in our front yard. It was a cat laying there. Stella tried scaring it away with her growls, but to no avail. I didn't think anything of it, since we have lots of stray cats in our neighborhood.

As you all know, it rained pretty hard last night. Well this morning, the morning of my birthday, I still see the cat in our front yard just laying there when I took out the trash. I thought "hmmmm that's weird." Stella has a tendency of following me every time I go outside. So we decide to go up for a closer look and lo and behold it was DEAD!! GROSS!!!

Curtis comes home from work and I ask "So did you see the dead cat in our yard?" He said "Yeah," then I asked "What are we going to do about it? Bury it? Call an animal shelter or something?" He says "I'll probably just bury it." He went outside and I assumed he was taking care of it. When we leave for our date, I noticed that it was gone. I asked Curtis if he buried it and he said no. Creepy.

Now we have a few theories for the disappearing cat: 1. It maybe still was alive and just walked away, 2. Cannibal cats, 3. The economy is rough...people need to eat, or 4. Some people who work at Filibertos, Alibertos, Rigobertos, etc. walked down our street....enough said. I feel sorry for anyway who might've had carne asada tonight.

Hotel Weekend

This past weekend we got to stay in a really nice hotel for FREE! Yeah pretty crazy. Curtis' job had an awards dinner on Saturday and offered their employees a night stay in the Arizona Grand Hotel or $100 gift card. Curtis wasn't able to get the gift card since they only had a limited amount, so instead we got the night stay. We arranged to have the kids watched for the night and got to spend a night just me and him!

Before that though we took Stella and Lincoln to the hotel's water park which was so much FUN! They had a kiddie pool with springs bursting up water, a lazy river, a wave pool and just a regular pool with a basketball hoop and volleyball net. It was fancy shmancy. Stella loved the springs. She took a plastic cup and copied what another boy was doing, but then ended up just collecting water in it and pouring it in the kiddie pool haha. Who knew one could have so much fun with a plastic cup.

We went down the lazy river a couple of times, which was nice. One section, towards the end, had small rapids and we got splashed. The whole time Lincoln had such a somber face and when he got splashed in my lap he had no expression at all hahah. He usually is a smiley boy, but the whole time he was expressionless or looked kind of mad. lol

We didn't get to enjoy the slides since we had the kids, but all in all it was still a blast. Stella had 3 days of swim lessons under her belt at that time and she was brave enough to go under water and everything; when before she would FREAK out and cry. I'm glad swimming lessons are helping her enjoy her water experience :)

After the water park fun we dropped off the kiddos with my mom and came back to the hotel to get ready for the awards dinner. There were so many cute and fancy dresses that the ladies were wearing. They had games before the actual dinner and a meet and greet with GRANT HILL Phoenix Suns player. Yes I got to meet him, shake his hand and get his autograph. AMAZING! Curtis won a nice fossil watch with an olive toss in the martini glass game and then came dinner. It tasted soo good. I wasn't a fan of the dessert, but the salad and the main course were awesome!

And that's what we got to do for our weekend. :) Too bad we didn't win any of the door prizes (i.e. Ipad 2, Wii, XBOX 360, Dbacks package of sitting in the dugout, etc.) Maybe next year hehe

Camping, Mother's Day and many more updates

 Just an fyi this post will be quite lengthy. I won't be too sad if you don't read through it, but there will be fun information and pictures, so your loss not mine haha jk.

Ok so Stella and Lincoln were attending a Kindermusic class and they absolutely LOVED it! Every week Stella would ask to go to her class. I liked it because they were learning about different animals, sounds, instruments and just having a great ol' time! It was a gift from my awesome mother-in-law! Here a couple pictures (all taken at different times). They had their last day a week from yesterday :( We'll see if we can do it again the next semester.

 

We finally got to go camping the weekend of April 30th with my good friends Shalyse and Chase and their two sweet kids. It was so fun just to get away and enjoy nature. Stella had a blast playing with Kael, getting dirty, exploring and riding on the quad with mom. I'll admit I'm not a professional quad rider and I was freaked when I first started, but I was ok and Stella had fun. Hopefully I can get more comfortable one day. Lincoln wanted to be everywhere but he enjoyed being held and playing in his pack n play and in Claire's. They became buddies, but I think Lincoln liked her too much because he was mauling her and she just looked up with an expression of "Help me, please." Good times.

My sweet Lincoln loving the outdoors

Going on a walk to explore the area

The view

Stella's delighted face on being able to get dirty and not get in trouble haha

 On the actual day of Mother's day there really is nothing to report. We had a normal morning that became hectic and became even more hectic for me in primary. You may ask "Why is primary hectic?" Well first of all our ward is combined with the spanish ward which means a TON of kids! And secondly for the second half we (the primary presidency) were handing over the reins to the elders and priests of our ward, while we got to enjoy Relief Society. All in all though I LOVE my calling! Even though it always seems hectic, I love seeing the sweet faces and hearing their silly comments :) Oh yes the reason why Mother's day was so anti-climactic was because I received my AMAZING gift 2 1/2 weeks before! It was a new sewing machine!!!! Yay!!!! I was so happy and it seriously has made sewing so much smoother, faster and just a dream. I had my mom's old one, which was given to her by her cousin, which was given to her by an old lady who she cleaned for. So yeah it was pretty old! It only had one stitch and NO backstitch! Anyway I'm thankful to my awesome husband! He set the bar high for Mother's day, so we'll see if he keeps it up ;)

I finally finished a bag that I purchased the pattern for back in FEBRUARY! Oh my gosh what a heart ache it brought lol. Luckily Curtis is so patient that he would say stuff like "I'm sure you can figure out a different way to make it if the instructions don't make any sense." And lo and behold I did! Hurray!

Didn't like the size of the tie. I'll probably make another one so it's bigger

 

Another piece of information is that we bought a zoo membership last week and Stella's favorite part or at least the part that she constantly mentions are the monkeys. She kept saying "Monkey assedent." Translation the monkey had an accident. While we were in the Orangutan exhibit, which is so cool by the way literally because it has AC inside, the baby orangutan was climbing up the the glass and was just hanging there and felt the call of nature and just let it go right in front of us. It was pretty hilarious!

This peacock was awesome! It was just walking around and posing :)



Tried to take a quick picture because it was a cute area.



 

Lincoln staring at Stella running through the little splash park

On a final note, I make a tribute to the sweet and loving husband I have. I've been sick since Monday and have not had dinner made this whole week! Yikes! Yeah I've been a slacker, but you can't blame me fully because not only was I sick, but my sweet little ones were pretty sick too! So it was a TRIPLE whammy! But instead of complaining or asking "what are you cooking tonight?" He just went to the laptop and researched a recipe and cooked for us! What an awesome husband huh?! That was every night this week :) Yeah I'm blessed I know. I need to thank my Heavenly Father constantly for sending him my way and for blessing with two adorable kids, who like to test mom's abilities to the fullest.

Not daddy, you curtis

Stella can be such a funny girl sometimes lol. We're sitting down eating dinner and Stella points to Curtis and says "Curtis get me some juice." hahhahaa Curtis says "Did you just call me Curtis? I'm daddy to you." She responds "Noooooo, you Curtis." Then he points to me and says who's that?" Stella says "Mommy." hahahah Curtis says "Noooo that's Ashley." And she flashes her quick response "Nooooo that's my mommy."

Oh man the things she says. I seriously love being a mom and children bring the most sweetest and tender moments.

Slowly but Surely

Lincoln is a little bit on the slower side when it comes to the moving around skills. He still does an army crawl, but he sure gets around FAST! A couple of days ago I noticed him sitting in his crib playing when I had laid him down. So he finally sits up on his own now :) And just now I walk into the front room and he's standing leaning up against the coffee table!! So that means he pulls himself up haha.

There still might be hope for him to walk by a year old, but I'm in no hurry lol. He gets into plenty of things just crawling. I can only imagine what havoc him and Stella would reak with both of them on two feet :)

Anyway that's a small update on how we're doing. I have a lot of pictures that I'll post soon!