4th of July, the Obispo, and the Elder!

So I've been meaning to update for at least a week but haven't found time to do so because of all our adventures in the last week and because of Ashley's uncanny ability to ruin anything I'm trying to do on the computer. Her naps can be few and far between so it doesn't leave much blogging time. :)

Last minute we decided to spend the 4th of July weekend up in Boise where my Uncle John's family lives. From Vegas it's about a 12 hour drive I think (I'm not sure since we broke it up) and that's with traveling with Ashley. On Thursday the 1st we drove to my parents' house in Kanarraville, UT so we could be there early Friday morning when the were leaving. We didn't get out of the house until after 10 I think but hey, at least we got out of there. :) Anyway, we spent a really fun weekend with all of my mom's siblings and most of the cousins. It was really fun. On Saturday we had a pool party with my Aunt Michelle's side of the family followed by an awesome home firework show. On Sunday, the actual 4th of July, we of course went to church where my Uncle's ward sang a VERY rousing "The Star Spangled Banner" which made me think that all of our government leaders should listen more carefully to all of the verses.... and later that evening we played an impromptu baseball game (with a tennis ball for the safety of kids and windows...) and watched local illegal fireworks. The whole baseball/firework thing made me thing of the movie "The Sandlot" which I love and was pretty excited to reenact. We've got some pretty cute pictures to illustrate the weekend!

 Spencer threw Ashley all around the pool and she loved it! He can throw her much higher than I can and though this shot doesn't shower her going as high as he was able to throw her, she was delighted all the same. :)

Ashley also learned so surf in my Uncle's pool that weekend. She had a blast, had a few spills, and is ever braver in her attempts to surf in swimming pools.

Dad, Mom and Ashley, Uncle Dave, Aunt Kristin, and Aunt Barbara. They were happier about sitting and watching the chaos in the pool rather than participating in it. ;)

And my favorite picture of Ashley this weekend! Ashley loves dogs and I'm pretty comfortable saying that "doggie" was Ashley's official first word. :) My Uncle's dog, Shadow, was very gentle and was so good at putting up with Ashley's poking and prodding all weekend. I'd venture to say he even liked it. At least enough to sniff her ear and send her into a hysterical fit of giggles.

Our little family.

 My family, minus David who is on his mission, and Alan and Alexis who were not able to come that weekend.

And of course Ashley played a game of baseball with us! She took turns with each of us helping her to bat. She loved it! We're hoping she'll be a little athlete some day. ;)

Okay, that's all the pictures for this post. :) We drove home from Bosie all day on Monday for Spencer to be back into school on Tuesday. We left again on Friday night for another fun weekend at my parents' house. My dad was called to be the Bishop of a university ward and we wanted to be there for the occasion. The reason for the title of this post (the Obispo) is because "Obispo" is Spanish for "Bishop" and Spencer has been teasing my dad since before the call was even made by calling him Obispo whenever he got the chance. Now dad is lovingly known as the Obispo to us. Ashley cemented the name when she became bilingual and called dad "o-hee-o." We thought that was close enough. ;) We also were able to stay for Daniel that night when he was made an Elder. This was our last time seeing him until November and we wanted to spend time with him, especially to have Ashley see him. He's leaving today for basic training and we'll miss him lots but we'll sure be praying for him while he's there.

We're back home now fore a few weeks and Ashley is anxiously awaiting the arrival of Grandma Sorensen on Wednesday night. She'll be with us for almost a week and then next month we'll be spending our time up in South Jordan with them!

Ashley's Fat Lip

So Ashley has this horrible habit of playing at the computer while one of us is using it (she's wreaking havoc as I speak) and we're always trying to drag her away from it. She can reach the keyboard while we're typing (if there's spelling/grammatical errors I don't catch it's because of her haha) and she loves to open the CD drive. Anyway, so she's playing around the computer on Thursday and I keep grabbing her and sitting her down, hoping she'll get tired of having to climb back up and about the fourth time, she climbs to her feet and then her hand slips and she hits her poor little face right on the leg of my folding chair. It was so sad! And of course she cried and she cried and it was so dramatic. :) I was a little upset and in an I-told-you-so mood until I saw the blood. :( Her little mouth was bleeding all over the place! She'd bit her bottom lip wide open with her brand new top teeth. So I ran to the bathroom and got a cold washcloth to hold to her face and we sat on the couch to watch cartoons while she calmed down. Thankfully I didn't have to take her to the doctor (let's face it, I have no idea where to take her anyways, it got me thinking I should work on that...) but the poor little thing has got a HUGE lip! By today the swelling had gone down quite a bit and now you can't even tell she did anything. As you can see she resumed her happy face when the trauma was over. :)
We had to change clothes because of the blood but then we headed to the park to play on the swings and to blow some bubbles! Unfortunately it's so stinking hot in the afternoon that our park adventure lasted all of about 15 minutes before red-faced and sweaty we had to head back inside. I got some cute pictures out of it though!




The other day I walked into Ashley's room and she was trying to cut her toenails haha. Good thing they were safety clippers and she couldn't have cut herself. :)




And did I mention that she likes to play inside her toy boxes???




At the pool with mom and dad, I figured I'd put a picture of dad in since he's not in here much. ;)




Ashley does this funny monkey walk on Sundays when she's wearing a dress. It's absolutely hilarious and thought you would all enjoy it! ;) I'll try to get better pictures of it next week. :)

Our new place!

So I didn't realize while I was adding these images that they were all in the opposite order that I wanted them to be and I'm too tired and too lazy to change it haha. I finally got our house clean enough throughout the whole thing to take pictures of it and feel comfortable with everyone looking at them. :) I'm a little self conscious about things like that but here they are! The pictures I've promised!

Like I said, the order of the pictures is super awkward but whatever! This is our bathroom and I know most of you are thinking, "Seriously? They posted a picture of their bathroom?" But if you have ever stayed the night at my house, or even if you have ever visited and had to use my bathroom, you know how excited I am to have a real bathroom! With a counter and linen closet and everything! And guess what? Shley has her own bathroom of the same size! *gasp!* I know, I'm so happy for me too.


The following are pictures of my lovely bedroom, complete with two walk-in closets! Fortunately for us, it's pretty popular in Nevada to build homes/apartments/condos with large walk-in closets. Our bigger closet is full of our clothes (yes, Spencer can fit all his in with mine) and our smaller closet is used for storage which is also something that our other places or residence were lacking. Storage space. We love it!


This is Ashley's bathroom! It's so stinking cute and I have to thank my mother for the adorable wall stickers that make her bathroom so cute. You can't see them well here, but there's a bunch of stickers on the wall of sea animals and stuff. Awesome!


Here's Ashley's room. It's pretty dang cute if I do say so myself. You can even see Shley's cute little bald head in a lot of these shots. :) Ashley also has a large walk-in closet and a door to the bathroom which we've blocked with a twin bed for whichever grandma happens to be visiting at the time. It's a big room for Ashley and I'm so happy she can finally play in her room without me worrying she'll hurt herself. (Ashley's last room was small and was filled with storage bins. The poor thing could hardly go in there.)


Here's our kitchen and office space. In the kitchen is another door to a laundry room! This is another thing I've been dying to have again, especially since having a baby. We were without a washer and dryer for the last year and a half and it has really irritated me. Hooray for laundry rooms!


The dining room and the door to our bedroom...


My super sweet living room complete with super sweet baby...


And yes that is a new couch and a bean bag! This is also the first place we've lived where we weren't in constant fear of putting nail-holes in the wall. We were threatened with our safety deposit in our previous apartments so it's so nice to have lots of pictures up everywhere!

I hope you all enjoyed the pictures. We love our new place and couldn't be happier! Now that you've seen it and seen that it's much easier to spend the night at our house than the last few places we've lived you should come visit us! Right now!

We Moved!

Well we finally did it! Spencer and I both graduated from BYU in April and since then we've been very busy. On May 1st I ran a half marathon, moved out of our Wymount apartment, and we went to a Real Salt Lake soccer game which was a blast! And the month did not slow down after that. We then moved in with my parents down in Kannarraville, UT and left Ashley there while we took several day trips down to Las Vegas to look for housing. After two weeks with my parents and frantic apartment searching we settled into a place in Henderson. We love it here and it's almost twice as big as our last apartment! Best of all, no more laundromat!!!! :D (I promise to post pictures of our cute little condo soon!). After settling in we took a quick trip back up to Kannarraville where my little brother Daniel graduated from high school, got sworn into the National Guard, and had his 18th birthday. It was a fun trip even though it was fast.

We're finally back home and Spencer has started into his first semester and the University Nevada Las Vegas! On the first day of class he began the dissection of a 90-year-old female cadaver. Having worked with cadavers before this wasn't a huge deal however cadavers smell much worse while dissecting them than they do when you're studying an already dissected cadaver. Perhaps this is why all of the students get together at the end of the semester and burn their scrubs... the smell never comes out! He's enjoying being in class and getting to know the other kids in his program. Interesting side note on his class: there are 15 boys and 15 girls. All but about 3 of the boys are LDS and married. We don't think any of the girls are LDS and only 1 or 2 are married. Interesting numbers, yeah?

Ashley has finally adapted to the change and recognizes this as home. She didn't sleep well for a while but now she's sleeping through the night again, a huge relief for mom and dad. :) She misses her cousins and can't wait to play with them again. In our last post we mentioned that Ashley never showed signs of wanting to crawl... boy did she change that! She's now everywhere and into everything! She's pulling herself up on just about anything and getting ready to walk. The other day we stood her at the edge of the pool so she could jump to us. Spencer let go of her hands and she stood for a good 10 seconds! She had a look on her face like, "holy cow I'm standing!" and then she promptly fell in and has not attempted to stand that long on her own since. :) She's got a ton of energy and keeps herself very busy.

As for me, I'm getting use to being a stay-at-home mom. Ever since Ashley was born I've had class, homework, and coaching but now that I've graduated and Spencer is in school full time I don't have any of that anymore. It's super weird and sometimes a little depressing but I'm adjusting to the schedule and as weird as this sounds, I'm adjusting to having free time during Ashley's naps. I've taking advantage of them by keeping up my workout routines at home and reading every book in the house. :) I tease Spencer that I need another kid to keep me busier. I'm sure once that really happens I'll wish I had only one again haha.

We're loving our new place and hope that anyone and everyone stops by on their way through!

So it's been a while and a lot has happened in the last few months. I knew I would never be this diligent in keeping up with a blog so I guess I shouldn't be too disappointed. :) Ashley has started sitting up on her own, eating everything in sight, clicking her tongue, and standing at the coffee table without any help. She can't pull herself up, we have to put her there, but she'll stand there unsupported. She hasn't made any effort to crawl so we're thinking she may be one of those kids who walks before they crawl?

We never posted any pictures from Halloween so we'll stick one on here but Spencer and I went as characters from Monsters Vs. Aliens (Spencer was Bob and I was Ginormica minus the white hair since I couldn't find a white wig under $20... so sad) and then little Ashley was the cutest lobster I've ever seen!



We had a great time going around grandma and grandpa Sorensen's neighborhood with some cousins trick-or-treating. Spencer and I decided not to collect candy for her this year since she doesn't care and Spencer and I don't need the calories... :)

We missed getting pictures during Thanksgiving but it was a wonderful day to spend with the family. We had a lot of fun and stuffed ourselves silly. We even had Ashley at the table with us eating a jar of sweet potatoes so she could feel like she was feasting on Thanksgiving dinner too. :)

Not too long after Thanksgiving we took Ashley to buy her first Christmas tree. It was so fun!



Feeling the tree and all its pokyness... :)


My brother got married Dec. 12th down in the Las Vegas Temple so we did the six hour road trip down for the occasion. Ashley was such a good baby and I'm not sure I'll ever get this lucky again with a baby! We had a great time with some family we rarely see and got some great pictures out of it too. :)



While on this trip Grandpa Grimm gave Ashley her first taste of Diet Coke. As you can see her mouth is wide open and ready for it! Shortly after this pictures she stuck her tongue farther into the cup haha.
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Here's the whole dang family (except David who's on a mission)! It was a fun day and we were all so excited for Alan and Alexis!