Love and Marriage, Love and Marriage...

I have so many memories of staying up late in the summer when I was young and hearing my parents watch Married with Children. Such an interesting theme song since there didn't seem to be much real love in their marriage... :) But anyway, funny enough, whenever I think about a wedding and getting married, it's that song that comes to my mind! And it has really been in my mind a lot lately as we had 2 weddings in the past 2 days! I absolutely love weddings (they always make me cry, of course) and I am close to both of these brides, so I thought it was something fun to write about and share with ya'll!

On Thursday, my good friend Lara Bagby married a guy named Eric Izant. I think he looks like Clay Aiken (just a very straight version!) but nobody else seems to, so maybe I'm a bit off my rocker! Greg and I went to their wedding dinner that evening and it was absolutely beautiful. (We were also invited to the ceremony, but there was a miscommunication and we didn't go, so all I have to write about is the dinner.) They seemed so happy, which you should be on your wedding day! Lara's wedding dress was so beautiful and it had a way cute green sash around the waste which I loved! What a cute idea! (**Hint, hint, Kristin... just kidding!) Anyway, congrats you guys and we wish you all the best!

On Friday, my cousin Elise married a guy named Ty Lichtenberg. For those of you who don't know Elise, let me give a little bit of background (don't worry, Elise, it's good stuff!). She is 30, going on 31 and is one of the absolute sweetest, most down-to-earth people that you will ever meet. With her, what you see is really what you get - she isn't deceptive at all. Since we could always see these attributes in her and what a great person she is, we were so confused about why she was dating so many guys and nobody seemed to be marriage material for her! And in the end, I am sad to say we superficially decided she was just too picky. But as we all know, hindsight is 20/20 and we can all see now that just none of those guys were right for her. And the guy she married, Ty, is absolutely perfect for her! So I am sure I can say on behalf of our entire family, SORRY, Elise!!! You were just holding out for the best and you got it, and we couldn't be happier for you. Anyway, back to the actual wedding! They had a yummy wedding breakfast at the Joseph Smith Memorial Building and were then sealed in the Salt Lake Temple (the entire morning was quite reminiscent of our wedding, just backwards!). But I have to say, their sealing was the absolute neatest sealing I have ever been to. My Aunt Kathy (Elise's mom) knows Elder Holland from when she worked with him at BYU years ago, so he was able to seal them and it was neat to see him in person! But honestly, what he said at the sealing was the neatest part for me. He just explained marriage in such an exceptional way and it really made me rethink the way I treat our marriage. It was just a really neat talk. And of course, I cried as I do at literally EVERY wedding I go to! :) (I was actually sobbing at the end of Kyla's wedding but at least I can blame that on pregnancy... I haven't had that excuse any other time!) It was just a great wedding and I am so thrilled for them, so congrats you guys! And don't wait too long to give our kids second cousins! :)

Anyway, it was just a really fun past 2 days to be able to celebrate weddings, and it was a highlight for my summer. The only thing I'm sad about is that they are both in the Caribbean right now and I'm not! I think there should be a rule that all newlyweds should be poor and only be allowed to have lame honeymoons in Salt Lake like we did! :) Seems fair to me! Ha ha. Until next time! -Ash

An Update on Tyler

You would think my blog has turned into a radio station with all the requests my Dad keeps putting in! :) His most recent request was that I write about Tyler, which is funny because I was thinking the same thing just the day before. For those of you who haven't seen him in a while (or haven't seen him at all), I thought I needed to give you an update on just how much he's grown and what a sweet boy he is! After all, what parent doesn't love to brag about their kids?

First, and probably most importantly, Ty has the sweetest temperament ever! He is happy to go anywhere, anytime with you, and loves to just look around. Just about everything fascinates him at this age! :) Last night was the perfect example of this. We went to see some Chinese Acrobats at the Sandy Amphitheatre with my entire family and were there from 7:00-10:00. Tyler literally did not make a peep for the entire 3 hours. He either sat in somebody's arms or in his car seat and just looked around! It was fabulous. Also, as anyone who has seen him knows, he literally lights up when he catches you looking at him. He absolutely loves attention and will give you quite the show if you just give him just the slightest bit of attention.

Ty is also a fabulous sleeper. I really don't know if I could ask for anything better from a 6-month old. For about the past 2 months, he has been sleeping anywhere from 10-12 hours straight through the night, and if he does wake up, he can typically put himself back to sleep. While he doesn't sleep nearly as well during the day (a lot of the time, he will only nap on our bed as you can see from the picture!), we appreciate the fact that we are able to get some sleep at night!


Tyler is also getting extremely strong these days. He can lift his head up really well and he rolls around quite a bit (which can cause problems in his crib because his head gets stuck under the bumper!). This picture is one of his signature moves - a little like Superman, huh? While he is showing no signs of crawling or being able to sit up on his own (thank heavens!), he loves to roll onto his tummy, lift his head up, and just watch Gavin. They are both extremely fascinated with each other and I honestly think they will be great friends soon.


Anyway, there's an update on our little guy. It's hard to believe how disappointed I was last July when I found out we were having another boy. I just wanted a girl so bad! But now that I have Tyler, I wouldn't trade him for any girl in the world! He is seriously just such an angel and we absolutely love having him as part of our family. Okay, enough of the cheesiness... We hope you are all doing well and having a good summer! Until next time! -Ash

Good News All Around!

As usual, I apologize for not writing recently. Either I have so little to do that I am almost bored to tears, or I have so much to do that I can hardly even find time to sit down! And lately, it's been the latter... So forgive me again... But we have had some exciting things happen lately (at least exciting by our standards!) that I thought I should write about.

#1 - After a month of sharing my Envoy with Greg (or should I say basically giving it to him), I am finally getting it back! For those of you who don't know what's been going on, Greg's new car was not driveable when he first bought it so he has been working on it for the past month to get it working properly. Fortunately, he finished everything he wanted to do on it himself this past week, and it is now in the shop getting everything else fixed. It will be done on Tuesday and I couldn't be happier! After the past month, I have an extremely hard time understanding how families can function with just one car. I thought it wouldn't be too bad, but... it was. So hallelujah is all I have to say! ;)

#2 - We finally got grass on the side of our house! When we first moved in last summer, the entire yard had grass except the side (I think the original owners wanted to do concrete, but just never did). It was such a disaster, there were weeds 2-3 feet high! In fact, we even got a warning in the mail from Roy City that if we didn't cut them down within 2 weeks, we would be fined $100! (Mind you, we had only lived in the house for 1 month by that point... kind of annoying when it wasn't our doing!) Anyway, I didn't want that to happen again this summer, and I just wanted our yard to look nice and finished! So after much pushing and prodding, I finally got Greg to work on it and he did a great job, don't you think?

#3 - We finally found Green Ramone! Ha ha, for those of you who are wondering what in the world I am talking about, let me explain... Gavin is a huge fan of the movie Cars. Ever since he got the DVD for Christmas, it has pretty much ruled his/our life. He knows almost every character by memory (about 30 of them) and says "Ka-chow!" about 20 times a day! Well last February, my parents gave him 3 of the little collectable Cars cars for Valentine's Day - Lightning McQueen, Sally, and Doc. Wow, what a mistake that was! (Ha ha, just kidding Mom and Dad.) But in all seriousness, Gavin just fell in love with these cars. He had to take them everywhere and even sleep with them at night! So we occasionally started looking for other characters on our own time to give to him (it was just so cute to see how excited he would get). However, over time, (just as Disney was hoping for I'm sure) we got hooked on finding every collectable car they made! Not only would I look everytime I went to the store, but even my parents would look for us! And of course, over the past 4 months, Gavin's collection has kept growing and growing (in fact, his last addition was purchased last night... it's sad, I know.) Crazy enough, we are up to 30 now! What a spoiled kid! Anyway, getting back to the point... So last month, we couldn't find the Green Ramone and Gavin was quite devastated. We searched the house numerous times together and couldn't find it anywhere. I was convinced it was gone, never to be seen again. But to my amazement and Gavin's sheer excitement, he found it last week - hidden behind the trunk in our living room (where I'm sure he dropped it and then forgot about it). So he is quite happy now, and I'm happy because I don't have to hear him whining anymore! And that's definitely good news! :) (Just for kicks, I thought I would stick in a picture of Gavin with his collection of Cars cars - all 30 of them! It has gotten out of control, I know, and I think we are done with our collecting (once we find Fillmore of course! ;) )

Well, that's what's been happening with us lately! We hope all of you are doing well and having a great start to your summer. I know we are! We pulled out the pool for Gavin yesterday and he had a great time. Until next time! -Ash