When It Rains It Floods (Featuring Lots of Pictures of the Cutest Little Baby Girl)

Long title, I know...and long absence from the blog. I have been busy giving lots of kisses to my sweet little baby (and changing lots of diapers and other more mundane stuff that I will not mention : ) We are all doing great. Ashlyn is such a sweet little baby, it is so fun to have her in our family. Before I had her I was so nervous to have three kids. Everyone who had three said that it was such a big change, that three was the hardest number to have, etc. So, I was expecting to just be tired all the time and have no time to do anything, and have the boys act out and be super, extra wild. So, all those things have happened, just to a lesser degree than I was expecting, so that makes it seem not bad. It is all about your perspective. And I decided that I am just going to enjoy Ashlyn's newborn time as much as possible. I will have the rest of my life to clean our house but she will only be in that wonderful little, teeny, tiny stage for such a short time that I am trying to enjoy it all. The last two weeks have been even crazier because Tim went back to work. Jace and Brax have been good though, all things considered. Some days I feel cooped up and a little crazy from being home so much so I am sure it is magnified being 4 and 2 : ) They LOVE their sister though and always want to hold her and give her hugs and kisses. Jace even likes to help change her diapers and burp her. He has been a big helper. And the trampoline...best investment ever. It has provided hours of fun and entertainment. So brace yourself, lots of pictures ahead. But keep in mind that I have taken over 200 pictures of her since she was born so you are only really seeing a very small percentage of them. :)

So obviously this isn't Ashlyn, this is what happens though when I take a minute to brush my teeth. Thanks goes to Braxton for this fun little mess. FYI-that is almost an entire roll, it soaked up all the water in the bowl.

Here is our sweet little girl, getting a ride around the house from daddy.

Jace picked out this outfit because it has the abc's on it and he took this picture of her. He has taken a good amount of the 200 pictures. It is sad because his pictures are usually as good as mine : )

An outfit change...still cute.

Yes, we rescued her just seconds after this was taken. I had to include it though because I laugh everytime I see Brax because this is his new "picture smile". Nice, huh?

In all the other pictures her hair looks darker than it actually is. This was taken in from of an open window with no flash and it shows that her hair is actually a light brown and Tim and I swear it gets lighter everytime we wash it. I love her hair. My mom said that I had hair just like this when I was born. Maybe that is why I like it so much, one of my children finally inherited some physical characteristic from me!

Seeing stars from the flash going off 50 times in her face : )

This is what she thinks of more pictures. We haven't taken her to church yet but we got so many cute little newborn sized dresses for her that I decided to dress her up on Sunday anyway.

My three little kiddos. There is nothing I have found so far to compare to being a mommy, so hard, yet the best. They have three big pieces of my heart. : )

So the father son campout was last weekend. They were supposed to go up to the mountains but couldn't because of the snow (yes, snow, in June, the crazy weather continues). So Tim (in an act that should win him some kind of award) decided to set the tent up in the backyard because the boys were so excited to camp. They took the sleeping bags and flashlights and the boys had a great time. While I was up in the middle of the night with Ashlyn I heard it start to rain, get windy and expected them to come in any moment but Tim made sure they were warm and they stayed out there all night! Tim didn't sleep great, but that's the price you pay for being a great dad I guess. : )

This is the next morning, they just like hanging out in there. : )

Okay, to explain the title about the flood. Last week we had tons of rain here. So one morning after a heavy night of rain, I hear Tim get up to get ready at about 6:30. Braxton wanted a drink then, so he went into the kitchen to get it but comes running back into our room and starts to frantically put clothes on. I asked him what was happening and he said the basement was flooding. Our beautiful, new, so close to being done basement! It had rained so much that water just filled up the window wells and was pouring in from the windows. We have a little portable pump that hooks up to the hose, so he was out in the rain trying to pump out the window wells and had towels out trying to soak up all the water that had already flooded in. It was a fun morning at our house. I couldn't even help much because all the kids were awake and I didn't want them to go down there and I couldn't really leave Ashlyn alone, so Tim got to work like crazy all by himself. He was at it for almost 3 1/2 hours. THANKFULLY, we didn't have the carpet in yet. It would have been completely ruined. We had it ordered, just not installed yet and we are counting our blessings. We actually fared well compared to a lot of our neighbors. (Almost everyone in our neighborhood I have talked to had some flooding). We didn't have any major damage done and feel very lucky. Tim is now installing automatic pumps in the window wells to prevent this from happening again. : ) Nothing like a newborn and a flood to keep things exciting.

Two other exciting recent events (thankfully in a different way than the flood), my sister Elyse got engaged over Memorial Day weekend to Andrew. We are so excited for them! They are getting married November 1st in CA. Jace is really happy for them because that means he gets to go to Disneyland! I would post a picture of them if I had the energy to figure out how to import it from a website...just trust me when I tell you they are a cute couple.

And not to be outdone, my brother Tyler got engaged a week later to Carissa. We are also so happy for them too! They are getting married August 29th here. Again, just trust me when I say they are a cute couple. So, like I needed more motivation to lose the baby weight, now I have two weddings that I would like to attend in something other than a mu-mu. It will be fun to go from the only one married on my side for almost 7 years to having more than half the fam married now. It will be a fun rest of the year!

So I will end this novel now. Everyone is now asleep except for me and I am jealous so good night!