So True...

So my dad sent me these comics in an email and I thought they were too true to keep to myself. Seriously, can you believe analysts are projecting gas prices to be at $4.00/gallon by Memorial Day? It makes me sick! But hey, at least these can make us laugh in the meantime... (And on a quick, but related sidenote, anybody want a gas-guzzling SUV?! :) We're selling our '06 Envoy if anybody is interested...)

Happy Easter!

Sorry this blog is a little late. I have just honestly not been in the blogging mood lately! But I'm glad the rest of you have... I've been having fun reading everybody else's blogs.

Our Easter this year was fun! We started out on Saturday night coloring Easter eggs. Gavin was really excited about this, and was asking about it all day. I figured Ty would want to get in on the action too, but had no idea just how hard it would be to keep him away! He was trying to squirm out of my arms and when I wouldn't let him down, he just cried and cried... poor kid! Sadly though, the colored eggs are all still sitting in our fridge... :)


On Easter morning, we had our annual Easter egg hunt. Now bear with me as you see these pictures... Gavin slept in his diaper and shirt from the day before, and Tyler woke up with wet pajamas so that's why they are not dressed! If you think we're white trash now, just wait until you hear my tooth story later in this blog! :) Anyway, the boys had a great time finding all the eggs. We just did it in our house because frankly, the Easter Bunny did not want to hide eggs outside at 10:00 at night! I always knew Gavin would love the Easter egg hunt, but it definitely surprised me to see Ty get so excited about it! He got more eggs than Gavin! The only letdown to the morning was that according to Gavin, the Easter Bunny brought him the wrong dinosaur (even though he never specified what kind of dinosaur he wanted). But it's okay, because he "loves him anyway." Ha ha!


We then got the boys dressed in their cute Easter outfits. I tried to get pictures of them but was extremely unsuccessful, so hopefully you can see them from the other pictures. That afternoon, Gavin and I went to church while Greg stayed home with Tyler (he has been really sick with a horrible cough the past few days), and after that, we headed off to Mike and Lindsay's for a fabulous Easter dinner (go Mike!). While we were there, my parents did a little Easter egg hunt for the boys, which once again they loved. But of course, with all the craziness, I didn't get many pictures, so sorry about that.


Overall though, we had a great Easter! Holidays are so much more fun when you have kids and get to see their excitement over the littlest things!


In other news, I am officially missing a tooth. Yes, I know... I am TOTALLY white trash (or at least that's how I feel). Fortunately, it's in the back of my mouth so you can't see it when I smile, but I feel like such a joke. Here's what happened... Remember my tooth that cracked? Well, when I went into the dentist, he recommended that we do a procedure called "crown lengthening" where a periodontist basically goes up into your gums and builds up the root, making it really strong so it can handle a crown. Well, I went into the dentist last Thursday to have this done, and they put me under IV sedation before I even met the periodontist. The next thing I know, I wake up an hour later to Greg telling me they just had to extract the tooth. I guess when the periodontist got in there, he realized that the crack was so deep that the tooth was really beyond repair. If they did do the crown lengthening, it would probably just break in a year or two and I would have to go through the whole process again. So they asked Greg to make the call (since I was out), and I am now officially toothless! Lovely... Fortunately, my dentist offered to do a bridge with the two teeth around it and just fill in the gap with a crown for the same price it would cost to just repair that one tooth. Still, I feel totally white trash and am not thrilled about forking over $2,000 for this bridge. Stupid teeth!


Well, we hope you all had a wonderful Easter too. I posted more pictures of our day at the bottom. And hopefully my love for blogging will come back soon, but in the meantime, bear with me! :) -Ash

Gavin dipping (or should I say dropping) an egg!

Tyler trying to get out of my arms and to the eggs (this is before he started crying).

Mmmm... Candy!

He did have an Easter basket, somewhere...

Ty happy as usual, even when he is sick as a dog!

My Rantings About The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom... Bear with Me!

So, about a month ago, I started seeing commercials on TLC for a new show called The Secret Life of a Soccer Mom. I was curious to see what it was all about, so I watched it a week ago and honestly, I was anything but impressed. Basically, they give stay-at-home moms the opportunity to do the job they turned down years ago to be a soccer mom. The episode I watched involved a girl who had two young boys (preschool age) and the show let her work as a cook in a high-class restaurant for a week. In the end, the owner of the restaurant offered her a full-time job starting at 8:00 the next Monday morning. She was given some time to talk it over with her husband, and then had to give the restaurant owner her answer. She ultimately decided to still stay-at-home with her kids, but was pretty torn apart by the decision.

I guess what frustrated me so much about this show is that it basically acts like there is no value in being a stay-at-home mom, and to me, it seems like the whole world acts the same way. I honestly have nothing against moms who decide they want to work, I know many that do and I hold nothing against them. But I just find it so sad that the world has a hard time respecting women who have made a personal decision to stay at home. Instead, they come up with this show in an attempt to "rescue" moms from this "prison". As I was watching the show, I kept thinking that in the end, they would give the girl a position that would allow her to have the best of both worlds - work part-time, and be home part-time - but instead, they offered her all or nothing. It was just hard for me to see them put so much emphasis and value on the job, and nothing on being a mother. Anyway, I just really wasn't very impressed with the show and was wondering if any of you who have seen it felt the same way? Just a thought. -Ash

More Pictures of the Kids... Just for You, Dad!

I haven't posted much about my kids lately, so I thought I should. (Plus, these are the posts my Dad likes best, and after watching all four rambunctious grandsons at dinner on Sunday, I think he deserves this!) So anyway, here are a bunch of pictures of what the kids have been up to lately.

A few Sundays ago, Gavin found our shoes after church and was having so much fun putting them on and walking around in them. However, he definitely did better with Greg's than he did with mine!

Notice how he has the feet mixed up!

My 2" heels were a bit wobbly for him!

As for Tyler, his messy eating habits have only gotten worse over the past couple weeks! He now not only smears food all over his face and into his hair, but he also gets it in his eyes and ears! Needless to say, he's not very happy when the food starts stinging his eyes...

Ha ha, isn't this picture hilarious?! This would be one of those food-in-the-eyes incidents. We had homemade pizza over the weekend, and look what he managed to do with the small amount of pizza sauce on his tray. What a kid! (Just a side note, doesn't he totally look like a munchkin from The Wizard of Oz?!)

Also, I have to admit that it's been really weird for me to see Gavin grow up and make new friends - I guess it just doesn't seem like he should be that old! But he is, and he's become best friends with a neighbor boy who lives across the street. His name is Nicholas, and his mom Dana and I always joke that our kids have a relationship going on! Ha ha, not really, I promise our kids aren't gay! :) But they just want to be together 24/7, and they are always asking about each other and what the other one is doing! It's pretty funny. Anyway, we like to get the kids together a couple times a week to play, but with this winter being so long and cold, they have had it with being cooped up inside our houses. So we've started taking them to the Newgate Mall where they have a little play area, and they love it. They have a blast together, and the moms get to sit and talk! It's great!

The "two peas in a pod" sitting on some completely random turtle in the play area! :)

After letting the kids play, we usually take them to get lunch at the food court. They have little kids tables in there, which the kids love. (The other little boy is in our ward, in case you were wondering.) Even though we've had fun taking them to the mall, I am still so excited for nice Spring weather so we can go outside!

Speaking of nice weather... Since the weather has turned nice within the past couple days, I have been able to take the kids outside and they have been having a blast! This winter has been way too long, cold and snowy, and we are all ready for Spring. So yesterday, I took them out on the trampoline for about an hour and they had a blast just being outside. Ty is new to the tramp and loves it. He just sits there and laughs while Gavin jumps and bounces him around!

Just look at the excitement! :)

Who knew jumping could be so exhausting?! (Notice that we still have some snow in our backyard!)

Tyler was a ball of static electricity after continually crawling around the tramp. Can you tell by his hair?!

Well, hopefully that wasn't too boring for everybody. I've just had a bunch of pictures that I've meant to post for a while, but just haven't gotten around to it, so I thought I'd do it all at once and just be done! Hope you enjoyed it, Dad! :) -Ash

My Annual Obsession...

Even though I usually make fun of reality shows and am not the biggest fan of them, I admit it... I am a huge American Idol fan! Yes, I know this probably categorizes me with young teenage girls who have nothing better to do with their lives than sit around and gush over the contestants, then vote all night, but I just don't really care! In fact, Greg probably wouldn't openly admit this, but I have him hooked too. :) (I have secretly seen him watch it on the DVR! Same with Bill O'Reilly...) Anyway, I have been way excited about the show this year because I think there are some really good contestants! So, here are my favorites who I'm hoping will do well (sorry the pictures are so small, they won't go any bigger!):

Michael - He is probably my favorite. I think he has the best voice and he always sings flawlessly. I don't think he will win, but I still really like him.

David Cook - He is a very close second for my favorite, probably because he plays the kind of music I love, and he totally sounds like the lead singer from Lifehouse, one of my favorite bands of all time! Plus, there's something about him that's really attractive, but I haven't figured it out yet... Ha ha! Still, I don't think he will win because of...

David Archuleta - So I think he will win, hands down. He could forget his words, trip on the stage, make a total fool of himself, and all the 12- and 13-year old girls would still vote for him. Now don't get me wrong, I think he has a really good voice, I just like the other two guys more. I would, however, be happy if he won for the simple fact that he's from Utah. We need some redemption after the whole Carmen Rasmussen fiasco!

Brooke - So honestly, I think the guys are much better than the girls this year, but I still like her, probably because she's so cute and Mormon! Yay! Ha ha, but seriously? Has anybody noticed this infatuation Simon seems to have for the Mormon girls? He always loved Carmen Rasmussen, and I think he's got a secret crush on Brooke.

Carly - I really like her as well, despite her nasty tatoo all the way down her arm. She has a really good voice, but based on what a flop her last album was, I don't see her winning this or being very successful afterwards.

Anyway, there's my shpeel on who I like. I guess we'll see how things pan out, but I would guess these 5 will do really well. As for the rest of my life, I just need to vent momentarily about dentists, so bear with me!

Two summers ago, I went to a dentist in Logan to have a bunch of work done. I hadn't been to the dentist in five years, and it showed! So he did two root canals in two of my back teeth, filled them, and sent me on my way. Well, I went to my new dentist down here for a cleaning last summer, and after taking one look at my X-rays, he told me I needed to get those two teeth crowned or they might break because the fillings were so big. My first thought was, "This dentist is young and he's just trying to get money out of me. My teeth will be fine." Well, Monday night I was eating Goldfish crackers of all things, and suddenly felt a sharp jab in my gums. I started freaking out, checking out my tooth to see what just happened, but I couldn't see a thing. Well, the next day when I was brushing, I got looking closer and realized that one side of my tooth was moving as I brushed, so I made an appointment the next day with the dentist. And sure enough, my tooth had cracked all the way up into my gums because of my huge fillings. It sucks enough that it happened, but probably the crappiest part is that we lost our dental insurance when we quit T-Mobile. So we now get to pay $1500 out of pocket for one tooth! Lovely! I guess I am just incredibly irritated that my first dentist didn't initially do a crown like he should have. Grrr... Oh well, I guess we will just pay for it and move on! But seriously, who knew teeny teeth could be so incredibly expensive?!

Well, that's all for now. Sorry if this was a really boring and annoying post, but that's basically all my life has been lately! :) I will try for better next time! -Ash

(P.S. to my Dad. I wrote a post about Ty walking back in January (you can look back at it), and I refuse to write about Gavin's potty training until he goes in the potty again! Which hasn't happened since last week... But I promise to include both boys in my next post, potty training or not!)

Blogged Out?!

Yes, I am still alive! :) I have just had nothing great to blog about this past week! I have also been really busy, and have been hoping to have a chance to sit down and catch up on everybody else's blogs at one point, but I'm afraid it's just not going to happen for a couple more days. So bear with me, and hopefully in the meantime, something eventful will happen for me to write about! :) -Ash