An Eventful Past Week!

This past week has been so crazy busy, so please forgive me for not writing (especially you, Dad!). I have hardly had time to sit down and blog, let alone even think about blogging! But I thought it was about time to sit down and fill you all in about what's been going on, so please forgive me if it's super long. I will try to condense as much as I can! ;)

The craziness all began last week on Tuesday. My best friend Kyla, who lives in Logan, was due to have a baby girl on May 15th, but had been having contractions for a couple weeks. She was really nervous about having the baby early, especially because her husband Dan was going out of town for all of last week and her mom was in Arizona. So I told her she better call me if she went into labor and I would be up there as quick as I could to be with her. So last Tuesday night, I turned on American Idol and had a really strong feeling that I should go down to the family room and check my cell phone to see if I had any messages. But of course, I'm such an American Idol freak and just coudn't bear to pull myself away, so I ignored the prompting. So 8:00 comes, American Idol is finally over (by the way, Blake was so freakin' awesome! If you want to see his fabulous performance, check it out! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0o28DMu0CDc), and I finally decided to check my phone. Sure enough, there's a message and it's from Kyla saying, "Hi Ashlee, just wondering what you're doing tonight cuz I think I'm having a baby!" My heart sank. She had left the message at 6:40 and here it was, 8:00. I tried calling her but of course she didn't answer... I tried calling the Logan Hospital, but of course they wouldn't tell me anything because of privacy policies. I was in tears, I couldn't believe I'd let her down like that. So I finally just got in the car and drove up there, shaking the whole time because I was so sick about the whole situation. When I finally got up there at 9:30, I found out that she had had the baby at 8:20... naturally, no less! Fortunately, her sister-in-law had been with her the whole time, along with a neighbor, so I felt a little better when I found that out. So I stayed and visited with her until about 11:30, and got home about 1:00. It was so great to see her and her cute little baby (who they named Adrienne, by the way), but I am still kicking myself for not listening to that prompting. I guess it's one of those mistakes we can all learn from! ;)

The next day was a bit chaotic because we were trying to get our house ready to be appraised for the refinance we are doing right now. We were so nervous about it cuz we really needed our house to appraise for $214,000 so we can afford this new loan - but trust me, we had our doubts. We hadn't heard of any house in the neighborhood appraising for that much, so we were really nervous. So when the appraiser came, I tried to do as much shmoozing (sp?) as possible so we could get as much as possible. But I still had major doubts when he specifically told me that he thought the estimated $214,000 our loan officer said we needed was probably unattainable. Believe it or not though, we heard back from our loan officer today and she said it came in at $214,000! Is that awesome or what? Trust me, that was an answer to a prayer! ;) (I thought I would stick a picture of our house in this section for those of you who haven't seen it yet...)

So moving right along... this past weekend was also quite busy! Another good friend of mine, Lara, had a bridal shower this weekend so I stayed at my parents' for Friday and Saturday. Of course, Gavin was thrilled to see his Poppy and even decided to be like him on Saturday morning by trying his hand in yardwork! It was pretty cute, but I'm still nervous that he might have done some slight damage to my dad's perfect yard! Lara's bridal shower was great and it was so nice to see her. I am absolutely thrilled that she has found the right one for her and wish her all the best! The shower was made even better by getting to see another good friend of mine, Emily! She brought her daughter Rylin and she and Gavin were able to play for a while, but wow, sometimes I forget just how busy 2 two-year-olds can be when they play together! ;)

Greg came down later that night to pick me up. He had my car on Friday and Saturday because on Thursday, (to my complete surprise) he sold his Bug! Wo!!!! I guess he decided it would take too much work and money, so he started looking for a new (old) car. He actually found one he wanted on Saturday and, believe it or not, I don't mind it too much! (Crazy, huh?) It's a 1967 Volkswagen Fastback. It still needs quite a bit of work, but Greg bought it for $1400 cheaper than he sold his Bug for, so at least he will have some money to fix it up with. What do you think?

And last but not least, I turned the big 24 yesterday. I know, I know, I'm ancient... ha ha. I actually had no intention of even writing about all this, but I felt like I needed to to show what an absolutely awesome family I have! We started celebrating on Sunday when my family all came up for dinner and cake and ice cream. We had a great time just hanging out and I got some very nice presents from everyone. Funny enough though, I actually think my favorite part of the night was blowing out all of my candles! I haven't been able to do that in years, dead serious! haha. Then, Greg took yesterday off to take care off the boys so I could have a break and spend some time with my sisters and my mom. They were extremely patient with me (which I appreciated a lot!) as I went from store to store to store just looking for something to buy with my birthday money! (It's so hard to spend money like that when you never have money for yourself the rest of the time...) Overall though, Sunday and yesterday were great days, and just reaffirmed to me how great my family really is!

Well hopefully that wasn't too annoyingly long. I just wanted to share all of that with you, and I knew if I didn't do it all at once, it would never happen! Oh, but I did forget one thing... How about those Jazz?!?! Wahoo!!!! Until next time! -Ash