January

January, January, January.  What a month it has been!  We started things off crazy with trying to finish getting ready to close on our new house, clean it, paint what we want to paint (okay... just one really pink-ceiling and dingy wall room), pack, move, clean the old house, close on that.  It was so busy!  We made it.  I was so tired and worn out I thought I would take a breather of all the craziness and not be in too much of a rush to unpack and organize myself.  Little did I know what was in store!

Dylan, Jayden, and Ethan were also all playing basketball.  Jayden was also playing indoor soccer as well.  We were busy with so much life happening!

We regularly have visits from princesses at our house.  I love my girls!  There are so many fun aspects of raising boys, and so many fun aspects of raising girls.  I'm just so glad I get to experience both. It makes everything girly stand our so strong after all these boys!

Here is Jayden's birthday celebrated at the Gibson's.

One day I went to get Ashlyn up from a nap to find her without her shirt.  I still can't figure out how she did it.

At the end of January is when life got really crazy.  Jayden started having headaches that increased in frequency. I thought it might be his eyes.  I told him we should make an appointment with the eye doctor and see if he needed glasses.  The headaches got bad enough he was asking if I had made an appointment for him yet.  We finally got in on Friday, January 30.  The doctor was concerned and sent us to another doctor who was concerned and ordered an MRI the following Monday. The main thing he seemed concerned about was a possibility of a brain tumor. This weekend was a long one for me.  That Friday evening after we got home from all the doctors visits Devon was gone on a campout with the scouts.  So the kids and I tried to have some fun and made a fort in the basement to sleep in.  Jayden didn't feel very good and layed around for a bit before just going to his room to sleep.  This was a tricky evening for me as I watched all my sweet kids and just worried about lots of "what ifs."  How I love all my kids! The thought of anything bad happening to them made my heart ache. And seeing how sick Jayden was feeling added to my worry that the tumor might be a reality.

Dylan's Science Fair Project

As a 6th Grader, Dylan was required to do the science fair.  He actually enjoys doing the science fair. Its something he would have loved to do every year if he planned ahead enough.  It turns out this was only his second time doing it.  

Dylan really wanted to do something with animals and we looked and looked for something he could do in a short time.  Life was so crazy between Christmas and our move that we didn't get started until about 2 weeks before it was due.   Dylan had actually done some research and brain storming over the last 2 or 3 months, trying to come up with a great idea. The first one that he wanted to do that we thought would work was a wolf pack tracking idea that we found online.  When we finally went to order the information he needed for it, it said it was unavailable. He was so bummed!  Then we found an idea about seeing how elodea in a fish tank is effected by the number of fish in the tank.  He decided he liked that idea.  He really liked the idea of having some fish! So, we went and bought some fish, some elodea, and some containers.  He put the same number and length of elodea in each bin, then varied the number of fish to see if the number made the elodea grow more.  We were a little worried the goldfish would die, since that's what goldfish tend to do as pets.  But they all lived!  I had some lights that are for growing plant starts that we used as the tank lights.  

We never took a finished picture, but this is what it looked like as we began getting it ready to put on a poster.  We covered the poster board with paper so you couldn't see the old marks on it.  It turned out pretty nice- I wish we got a final picture.  Dylan did a good job.

Ashlyn at 14 Months Old

Ashlyn loves to climb. She climbs steps,stairs, stools, and anything else she can find.  She does pretty good getting up and down by herself.  

She loves to play patty cake and does all the actions to the songs.  She also loves peek-a-boo , and is so cute when she misses covering her eyes, and covers the sides of her face instead.  

Ashlyn does not like sippy cups.  Instead she prefers drinking from a normal cup.

She likes to stick out her tongue and squeal, and be funny with mom.

She has an adorable smile with 3 teeth.  One on top, and two on the bottom.

She can walk on her own, but her primary way of getting around is cruising and crawling.  I think cruising is her favorite. She goes along the walls, cabinets, and couches to get just about anywhere.  The last few days she has been getting more adventurous at trying to just walk on her own. 

Ashlyn loves to read books.

She can bark like a dog, make a snake sound, and a train sound (choo-choo0>

She says mama (in the last few days it has evolved into the perfect, cutest "mama" ever!).  She also says "hi" and "milk."

She absolutely loves dolls.

Moving Day

We were so excited to move into our new house!  We were so amazed by how everything in the moving process seemed to fall into place.  There were small hiccups, but nothing too bad.  We had so much help moving, it was amazing!  I put up signs to help guide people to the rooms things went to.  For example: they just took things from "Dylan's room" and put it in "Dylan's room" in the new house.  It went pretty good.  We only ended up with a few boxes put in wrong places.  All in all I would call it a success. We had 25 people show up to help, that includes some of the kids friends who came to help.  We also had a lot of people help with babysitting, cleaning and even painting.  I really appreciated all the help.  It really made me feel like a lot of people really care about us.

We found this gem behind the desk when we moved it.

New Year's Day

We love the traditional 4-wheeling and sleds on New Years Day with the Gibsons.  All the kids had so much fun!  Then we enjoyed some hot chocolate inside.