There is No Charge for Awesomeness

This post could have been titled a lot of things...like, "Ashlyn's Blessing", or "Happy 4th of July", or "We Finally Moved Stuff Down to Our Basement". Instead I chose to go with a quote from a great movie we saw this past week...Kung Fu Panda. If you have a boy around the ages of 4 or 2 who like to fight (play fight or the real thing) than they will love this movie. Our boys were mesmerized through the whole thing. It is the first movie Braxton has ever watched without running around at some point. It was even enjoyable for Tim and I which is always a plus when you go to a cartoon. However, at the beginning the Panda says "There is no charge for awesomeness...or attractiveness." I thought it was funny and have decided to remind Tim how lucky he is that that is my policy as well. : ) So...it has been a long time since I posted. I don't know if it is having a newborn or three kids but my free time has dwindled down to zero. It is 11:45 right now and I keep thinking I should be in bed sleeping before I wake up in a few hours with Ashlyn. I will try to start being better again because when I am not you end up with what you have already started reading if you are this far...the SUPER long post. And, because of lack of sleep, I have a hard time remembering things after like 24 hours so...I am missing a lot of stuff I want to remember. Anyways...it has been a good couple of weeks. We have been busy with moving stuff down to and organizing the basement, family visiting, the 4th of July, Ashlyn's blessing, and just the normal everyday life stuff. Ashlyn continues to be the cutest little baby girl ever as you will see in the pictures below. First is her blessing...

We have church at 9 am so these pictures are all after when we had all the family over. She was pretty tired by this point but still so, so cute. : )
After Tim got done blessing her Jace leaned over at said "Is Ashlyn a princess?"

My sweet little girl, I never get tired of looking at her or kissing those chubby little cheeks : )

We attempted to have my sis-in-law, Heather, take some pictures of the whole family. As you will see when 3 of the 5 are 4 and under this is hard. Especially when there are 15 other people walking around the room you are taking pictures in. We didn't get any with everyone looking but that's okay. : )

Attempt #2

Attempt #3--after this both the boys ran to the kitchen where lunch was almost ready so Tim and I tried with our one child who can't run away from us.

She still wouldn't look, oh well : )

My sisters and I at the lunch after the blessing. Jenna, who is the youngest, is now the tallest.

Family 4th of July picnic. Ashly with her great-grandma, Oma. Tim's grandma, and you will never find a sweeter lady. She held Ashlyn for a good hour during the picnic and bonded with her. : )
The whole group

Jace enjoying his hot dog...this little boy can eat 3 hot dogs in one sitting. I think he is going through some kind of growth spurt.

Braxton eating, he is the opposite of Jace. I am happy if he eats 3 bites of hot dog in one sitting. : )

Ashlyn has a Rasmussen nose, we affectionately refer to it as a ski jump.

Like father, like daughter. We start young so they know which school is the best. She is our newest little cougar.

Today I took the boys swimming at some friends' house with Brennan and Tyler. They had so much fun. They both love to swim. Here is Jace flying through the air. Tyler was a good sport throwing them about 100 times.

As a super fun bonus this pool has a slide, Braxton had no fear and loved to do it all by himself.

Here it is! Our basement is finally done and we have moved stuff down. It has been SO nice. The boys go down there to play first thing in the morning and play down there a lot of the day. This is the family room where we have put all of their toys and books. You can also see their little house under the stairs. It is so nice to have so much more space. Our upstairs stays so much neater too, which I love.

We plan to one day also have some couches and a TV down here...someday. : )

Here is the toy closet. A big thanks to my mom who came up one day to help me move all this stuff downstairs and organize it. All these toys used to be spread all over our house upstairs and I will never stop being happy that they all go downstairs now. : )

The guest room, we have an office/craft room too, but it is not done being organized yet so no pic of that.

Our bathroom which still needs a few finishing touches like a shower head and a door on the shower. But the potty works and Jace loves to use it...he thinks there is something special about the "basement potty" Now if I could just get Brax to think that and be potty trained...I know wishful thinking since he is just barely 2.

This parting shot is for everyone who is a big Harry Potter fan like I am. Notice the lightning shaped scar in the cantaloupe we found when we cut it open. If you are a fan you will know how cool that is.

Okay that ends this long post. I hope everyone had a great holiday!