Family Time

In the meantime while my grandma was in the hospital my mom, dad, and sister from Mobile, Al came up to be with my grandma. They stayed with us and boy was it a nice visit. You can see that we finally got a picture with the grandparents with their grandgirls!! Ashlyn has never been one to cooperate for pictures, except for Aunt Tonia's camera. She always cheeses for that camera. Here is Tonia taking a picture of herself with Ashlyn. It's such a cute picture!

A Scary Day

It was a Wednesday morning when I was coloring with markers with Ashlyn and Hadley was taking a nap. All was quite in the house when my mom called. I knew something was up because I had talked to her the day before. She wanted to let me know that my grandma (her mom) had had a stroke and was in the hospital. She didn't know how bad it was or anything. My heart sank and I just started crying. Ashlyn looked at me so funny so I told her that we needed to pray for Nenny. So right there in the kitchen floor we went on our knees in prayer for our sweet grandma who needed our prayers. God is so good! He heard our prayers and my grandma who could not even speak that scary day gained about 90% of everything back in just 2 short days. You can see in these pictures how happy she is to see her great grandchildren. Life is so precious and can so easily be taken away before we know it. It has really made me slow down and spend as much quality time with my family as I can.

Happy Baby

Hadley is crawling all over the place. Listen to her happy noices!!!

Ashlyn's Beads

Nathan's Grandma died a few months ago and part of the whole process was going through her things. It was terribly sad but Ashlyn brought some humor to everyone. Nanny had a closet full of beads she had collected throughout the years. Some of them were back in style so her grandaughter and I got a lot of them. Ashlyn loved trying them on and claimed some for her own. Here she is trying some of them on.

The Bath

So, I decided to give the girls a bath together for the first time. I figured it would be much easier for me. I would only have to bend over the bath tub and do everything that goes with that one time. I also assumed the girls would enjoy it too. Well, I was wrong. It was ok at first, Hadley really liked it. They were playing with toys and Hadley's foot touched Ashlyn and it was all over from that. Ashlyn started crying and would not stop and it scared Hadley so she started crying and wanting to get out of the bath tub. I just hurried up and bathed Hadley and got her out of there because she was very over whelmed with all of Ashlyn's crying. I wish I would have got some video footage of it. It would have been funny to watch. Here in this picture is before the crying started, but look at Ashlyn, she is really paying attention to where Hadley's feet are.

Two Monkeys and a Dog

These

are Ashlyn's loveies. When she was a baby she had a paci and then when she turned about 8 months old I started weaning her off of it by giving her a stuffed animal to sleep with in place of the paci. The first animal was a small plaid green frog. She did good with it for a while and then one day she picked up her orange monkey from her little rocking chair in her nursery. I bought it for her when she was still in my belly, even before I knew she was going to be a girl. This monkey replaced the little frog and soon became her best friend. She does everything with her monkey. She burps it, plays ring around the rosy, makes it pray, and everything else. The other two are her Build a Bear animals. The dog is Snuggles and the other monkey is Suie after the sound a razorback makes. These animals go to bed with her and spend the day in the living room with her. But the orange monkey, named monkey is the favorite.

Just Bragging

I have to brag on my little girl. Ashlyn has been a little slow to start talking. She said momma, dadda, hi, bye, bath, duck, etc.. at the right ages, but I was concerned with learning new things and recognition of colors and such. I started working with her a few months back with a different color each week. I was beginning to think I was doing it for nothing because she didn't show any interest at all. One day about a month ago she blew me away. She started naming colors and matching them with the correct items. It didn't stop there though. She named several shapes, and counted from 1-10. I guess she just held all of her new knowledge inside until she wanted to show it off.

The best thing of all is after any book we read Ashlyn folds her hands, bows her head, and says "pray". Nathan and I started reading her a preschool Bible story at bedtime each night and then we pray with her. She claps her hands after every prayer. It is so cute. The other day we were in the mall and she found a book to look at. After she looked it over she folded her hands and wanted me to pray. Of course I did, how can you not with those sweet little eyes looking at you anticipating what we'll thank God for next. Sometimes I don't feel like praying when she wants me to, but it is a great reminder that even though we may not feel like it we still need to.