The Duck Pond

One of Ashlee's best friends is a little girl named Ellie. I go to nursing school with her mom so needless to say our girls have gotten to know eachother. I watch Ellie every Wed. I try to keep them entertained so they don't get bored and on eachothers nerves too much. One day I found this cute little picnic area with a pond and some cute little ducks. I took the girls there one day to feed them bread and they had such a blast. Some of these pics turned out so cute. Enjoy!!

Pioneer Day!!

*note ashlees closed eyes. Well her dads were closed in the first one and I got mad at him. So I think she did it cause she heard me tell Cody not to do it. What a little turd!! They both just love to tease me to death.

Ok so I'm playing catch up today. I realized I haven't posted anything fun in a while. And I finally decided to sit down and try to make my page cuter. All this time I thought it took a computer geek to figure it out. But hey it was so simple. Anyway, Ashlee and I had a fun pioneer day while Cody was at work. First we went to the Washington City parade. Not the best parade I've ever been to but hey Ashlee had fun. Then we headed to the park for all the fun and games. They start the festivities off with races for the kids. We tried this with Ash last year and it was a disaster. She was all excited to go and she was at the start line with grandpa and grandma and was supposed to run to me and cody. I say supposed to because as soon as the guy yelled GO. She stopped in her tracks and cried like no other. It was so sad!! But I always like her to try new things so I thought I'd have her try it again. This time grandma started her and I was at the finish line. And she did it. She didn't win but she sure tried. I was so happy when she crossed the finish line, I just couldn't believe it. So after that we decided we would attempt the booths and stuff again. I was afraid she would be like she was at the 4th of July park things. But she wasn't she played every game we took her to and she did it with a smile on her face. Infact she didn't want to leave. Then grandma took us to In-n-Out for lunch. It was a super hot but fun day. We went home and took naps so we could enjoy the fireworks late that night and waited for daddy to come home. The Washington City fireworks always out do the St. George fireworks by a mile and they were once again great this year. We were a lot closer to these ones than the ones for the 4th but that didn't faze Ash. She loved them, as long as her fingers were in her ears that is. Hope you enjoy the pics..

Family Reunion Time...

A couple weeks ago we went on a camping trip with Cody's mothers side of the family. We went to Pinevalley and had a blast. It was the first year Ashlee was actually fun to take. She slept good at night and had a great time during the day and never caused any trouble. Even better she didn't have any accidents and was even dry through the nights. The weather was great during the day but at night the storms would come. One evening we went down to the reservior to fish but quickly headed back to camp after we were all drenched and had welts from marble size hail. that was pretty miserable. Poor Ash was screaming because the "ice balls" hurt her. She is scarred for life I think because she keeps talking about how the storm is coming and says "remember those huge ice balls, we didn't like them did we". But thats OK it was still a wonderful camping trip.

Then the very next weekend we were back to Pinevalley for Cody's fathers family reunion. This time we didn't camp though. We just went up for dutch oven, a family auction and then games and catching up with family we hadn't seen for a while. It was also a lot of fun. Ash met some cousins she didn't know she had and made friends with a very friendly butterfly. By the way, have any of you heard of silent football? Oh my gosh it was this new game we learned there and it was one of the funnest games ever.

A Case of Cellulitis

So the other morning Ashlee woke up with this flaming red, swollen, and super hot area on the top of her foot. I took her to her doctor that night and they said she had cellulitis. They wanted to cut it open and drain the infection but decided to instead draw a circle around it so I could watch for it to spread easier and then put her on a strong antibiotic. I was kinda worried about her cause for those of you that don't know what this is, it can get pretty bad. I have seen cases of cellulitis where the skin gets so infected it starts to die and turns black. Then they have to do surgery to cut away the dead tissue and hope new grows in. These pictures don't really do it justice, I think it looked alot worse in person but I couldn't get her to hold very still to take good ones. Anyway, I think it is better but not all the way gone. She finisherd her last dose of antibiotic last night and she still has a little red area on her foot with a hard lump under it. Which is still some infection looming I guess. So hopefully the medicine keeps working for a few more days and it totally clears up otherwise I will have to take her back to the doctor.

Fourth of July!!!

We started our morning at 9am at the Vernon Worthen Park. It looked like a lot of fun but Ashlee didn't think so. She would not do any of the cute games until she got to ride the train. But we were trying to wait for grandma and grandpa chadburn to get there before she did that. After a half an hour of walking around doing nothing we finally went to buy tickets to some of the bigger rides. The first was the train, she was so excited to give the guy her tickets and we stood in line. But when it was her turn to board the train she freaked. I couldn't even coax her so we went and got her tickets back. Then she said she wanted to ride these merry go round type swings. I was not too excited to stand in line again just to have her get scared at the last minute but we went anyway and warned the guy not to tear up her tickets incase she wouldn't ride. Well, she got on without a fight but she really didn't look to be having much fun. Next we went to a blow up slide/obstacle course and she again was so excited but after she climbed the stairs to the enterance she freaked out. The mean mom I am shoved her through the hole anyway thinking she would calm down and come out the other side but I was wrong, I had to pull her back out of the hole and once again go get our tickets back. At this point I was done I was hot and wanted to go home. But grandma and grandpa wanted cotton candy, snow cones and face painting. So we did that, she liked the stars on her face after the fact but she appeared to be scared to death during the whole process. We tried to get her to jump in a bounce house too but it was a no go. Before we left she wanted to ride the swings one more time so I let her. Besides I still had a boat load of tickets left. We gave our last few tickets away and then she played a game of golf with grandpa, ring toss, football (with coaxing). We went home after that and she took a long 4 1/2 hour nap. When she woke up we went to a BBQ with some friends and then split off on our own and watched the fireworks. She enjoyed those as long as her fingers were in her ears. What a silly kid!! The Washingon County fair is coming to town next month and before this day I thought about taking her. Oh I forgot to mention that as we were leaving the park she commented on the cool train and how fun it looked to ride. She is definately 3!!!!!

Comfort Suites

My mom is dating a guy from up north that comes down pretty much every weekend. For Ashlee's birthday he came and brought his two grandson's (garrett 5 and cashman 3). So after the party we went to the Comfort Suites where he was staying to swim. It was so much fun, the water in the pool is so nice.

Swim Lessons

Ashlee has now taken swimming lessons 4 times. The first 3 times was parent tot and this last time was her first level one. The first day was pretty sad, she walked through the glass door to her teacher that was standing right there and I quietly said, "This is Ashlee and she's gonna cry, sorry but its her first time". He said thats ok and took her in his hand and shut the door. As soon as she realized I wasn't swimming too she went hysterical. I couldn't hear her but I could see through the glass that she was crying pretty hard, her shoulders were moving up and down it was so bad. Cody said he thought they were gonna kick her out. I was nervous that it wouldn't work too. Well, about 20 minutes later she finally quit crying. The poor teacher, a 17 year old boy, just carried her through the water I felt bad. The second day, I couldn't peel her off me to set her down into the water, but she only cried a few minutes. The third day was much better. She was funny in that she would cry to swimming lessons and for a few minutes the first couple days and then also when we left saying she wanted to go back. Once she wasn't crying she had fun. She was the youngest in the class but did everything they did. Except do anything but what the teacher asked. She was his favorite!! By the last day she was so attached to this kid that during free time I couldn't even get her to come play by me. She just stayed by Joe like he was her best friend. Ashlee is pretty shy so this whole experience was good for her. Even though its a pain to get off work pick her up and then take her 15 minutes to swim lessons and not get home til 7, I think I'm gonna do it again. It will help her not be so shy. Here are some pics. I was most impressed by her going down the big hydrotube and crawling across the green lilly pads, she was never daring enough to do it.