3 months??? LONG POST!

Has it really been 3 months since I've posted on here??? YIKES! I've got some serious catch up to do.
In August we went to DC for Zach's brother's wedding. We had a good time...here are a few highlight pics. I'll try to get a whole post dedicated to that trip up sooner than later.

She was very excited to be on an airplane!

 Riding the carousel at the Washington Mall

Zach is in over-drive trying to get his final project for this semester finished. It is due in two weeks so I won't be seeing him much until after the first week of December.

I realized yesterday as Zach and I were at dinner that I have something going on every weekend until mid January! I can't believe how busy this time of year is. I've been working hard on getting Christmas presents made. So far I am super pleased with how they are turning out (except for one...I can't decide whether to re-do it or just scrap the whole thing and come up with a different idea).

I got a new calling a few weeks ago. I am now the primary chorister and I'm super excited! I've got 4 weeks to teach the kids two Christmas songs and then a week of fun and then it's time for program songs. I think it will be a great program next year. I'm excited for the songs I'll be teaching the kids. (If you'd like to hear part of one of the songs click here and about half way down the page there is a little music note that says "listen" above it. Click on it to download a portion of the song.)

So between prepping for singing time, Christmas gifts and practicing my flute (I've been asked to play a song at December's enrichment and I'm accompanying the choir on a few numbers for the Christmas program) and all my usual mom duties I'm pretty busy. 

Madie is growing up so much I can't hardly believe it. She loves all things princess, Mickey Mouse, doing things "all by myself", playing with her cousins, Christmas trees, Santa, wrapping presents, and helping mommy bake. I realized that I must do a lot of baking with chocolate chips because the other day I was baking and she wanted to help, so she pulled a chair up to the counter, got up and said "I want a chocolate chip". 

We were at Target the day after Halloween and the employees were setting up the Christmas trees. We went to look at them and Madie looked around for a few seconds and then looked at me and asked "Where's Santa?" I thought that was so cute. Christmas is going to be fun this year! 

Speaking of Halloween, Madie was the cutest Snow White ever! Several of the people handing out candy at the trunk-or-treat commented on how cute she was and it showed when you looked inside her candy bucket!

 Her first trick-or-treat stop...Grandma & Grandpa's room.

The other day she came out of her bedroom wearing her panties, a hat, flip flops, sunglasses and a purse and told me she was ready to go to the beach! It made me laugh. I wish I had taken a picture of it! She's never even been to a beach, but she does enjoy going to the park to build sandcastles. 

I had a good birthday. Kristi watched Madie for a while so that my mom and I could go shopping for some new shirts (most of mine have holes where they rub against my jeans), then we had some yummy greek food for lunch, I got a little nap in while Madie watched a movie and Zach surprised me by coming home from class early to take me out to dinner. We went to Olive Garden and it was delicious! Thank you to all my wonderful family for the birthday wishes and the great gifts. I must admit, I enjoy being spoiled on my birthday!

Sorry for the totally randomness of my post, I realize it was kind of all over the place. I'll try to add more updates before another 3 months passes. :)

Jumping in (not so) muddy puddles

Madie loves this little cartoon called "Peppa Pig" and on it they quite frequently jump in muddy puddles. When it started raining a few weeks ago, Madie wanted to jump in the puddles.

She even made Zach & I get in on the fun, and fun it was. We all had a blast!

After it had been raining for a few minutes the rain got really cold so Madie wanted to dry off. Well that didn't last long and so she went back into the water sans clothes.

And decided that it would be a good idea to lay down in the puddles!

And a little video of her jumping in the rain.

Museum Trips

Thanks to the culture pass and to the School of Bio-Engineering (Zach's work) we got to go to the science center and the museum of natural history...for FREE!

Pictures from the Science Center

Watching a combustion demonstration

This wall was so neat. It had computerized "rocks" that fell down this screen and you could use your shadow to catch them.

Madie pulling herself up...with some help of course.

Spinning around and around.

Pictures from the Museum of Natural History

Madie looking at a dinosaur outside of the museum.

This is the first thing you see when you walk in the door.

There was a huge wall with dinosaurs and plants and a little stream. Some of the dinosaurs even moved their heads or roared.

Every 45 minutes or so they have a "flash flood". The lights flash, there are sounds of thunder and a bunch of water pours down the stream. Madie didn't care for the lights and thunder but enjoyed the gushing water.

This looked so much cooler in person. For some reason the flash makes the painting look super fake.

Madie panning for gold outside the museum.

Monkey

After watching this video Madie came up to me and said "not aahh aahh, a cow".

Tour of the fire station

We got invited by some of our friends to go tour the fire station with them in May. Madie LOVED it!!! In some areas of her life she is quite girly (shoes, painted nails, make up, princesses) but she is also partial to some "boy" things, such as tools, trucks and dinosaurs. The whole time she kept asking to see the truck and was excited when it was time for that part of the tour.

She was not shy! She got right up in front with kids she didn't know so that she could see all of the equipment that the firemen were showing us.

She even got to go inside the fire truck, but apparently we don't have any pictures of that. And the best part of the trip? Right toward the end they got a call and had to race into the truck and drive away with lights and sirens on!

Summer Randomness

In an effort to get caught up on posting...here are a bunch of random pictures from over the summer.

Madie likes to pretend she is riding a horse...or an elephant, whatever.

Madie, Jenny & Katie enjoying a tea party.

Helping Grandma make cupcakes after the tea party was over.

Helping shuck the corn. Madie kept saying that the corn was hiding.

Doing some quality control :)

One of her favorite phrases lately is "Madie's turn." Here she is having a turn wiping off the table. This was her idea not mine, in fact I couldn't get her to give me back the wash cloth so I had to go get a different one!

Apparently she needed wiped down also.

Zach was laying in her tunnel and she crawled through it just so she could crawl over him.

Taking her baby doll for a ride on the little blue car.

Playing dress up in Auntie Lori's shoes...

...and wearing her shirt as a dress.

I just love the look on her face in this picture.

Pulling Lori in the wagon.

Zoo trip

We took Madie to the zoo in June. Yes it was hot, but we went early in the morning and didn't stay very long...plus it was free! Thank you very much culture pass. 

When we first got through the gates we asked Madie what animal she wanted to go see...she picked the koi. We literally had to pull her away from them to get her to go see other animals. 

She enjoyed the frog statue...

I wish I had had the camera for this picture, she was smiling so big and laughing when she put her hand in the frogs mouth.

Here she is looking at some of the real frogs. She loved running from window to window to look at all the different varieties.

It was hot, but we had a good time. I think we'll try and go back in the fall/winter. Maybe we'll even get a picture of her face!

Welcome to our new blog!

As you are aware by the email that you received, we have a new blog! Don't worry...all of our old posts are still here, we are just at a new address:

http://ashleyandzachwatson.blogspot.com/

Enjoy!

Joining the "Private" bandwagon

I've been considering doing this for quite some time now. I'm going to make this blog private. Please just send me a email or leave a comment on this post with your email address so that I can invite you to read our blog.

Why am I going private?
I've received too many hits from countries where I don't know anybody there and also the number of spam comments I'm getting have increased lately.

Exciting News!

It's been nearly two years since this happened...

but now we have this!

Yep, we bought a car!

It's been almost two years since the Saturn was totaled and we've been with only one car. We have been very fortunate to be able to borrow my mom's car a lot and to have my sister drive Madie & me around. Thanks so much mom & Kristi!!! We seriously wouldn't have been able to get around with out your help.

It's a 2007 Malibu. All day long Madie kept saying "daddy home, blue car" meaning "when daddy's home we're going to get a blue car". As we were getting ready to leave the guy's house tonight I asked Madie if she wanted to ride home in the green car or the blue car and she looked at me with her eyes all big and said "blue car!" And then she cried when I made her come in the house instead of letting her play in the car. I think she likes it :)

And no we didn't buy a house or anything...my camera battery is dead so I took a picture off of the craigslist ad.

Vegas Part 2

Apparently when I did the post for part 1 of our trip I didn't include pictures of Tuesday afternoon. We went back to the strip after rest time to see the flamingos at the Flamingo.

Madie wasn't too interested in them. Instead she spent her time there chasing ducks.

This picture is especially for Zach's brother, Adam. Yep, we're sinners! (we actually didn't do any gambling, but since he called us sinners for going to Vegas we had to at least take a picture and pretend).

Then we walked around a bit and saw the lion outside the MGM.

The Statue of Liberty outside NYNY (which we looked up later and found that it is about half the size of the real one in New York).

Inside NYNY, a statue made out of jelly bellies. You could smell it as you walked by.

Now on to Wednesday!

We did a lot of walking on Wednesday. There are bridges at several of the intersections on the strip so that you don't have to cross the street. Well Madie thought they were great and wanted to stop and look at the cars and buses go by.

She also decided that she didn't need my help to do the escalators that take you from the bridge to the street and vice versa. This made me quite nervous, but she did really well.

We went to M&M world...kind of a bummer. Lori & Justin went there and said there is a little video you can watch about the making of M&Ms but it was closed for renovation while we were there. Oh, well.

Outside of M&M world, were two people dressed up as Woody & Buzz. It was random, but Madie likes Toy Story, so we got a picture.

Then we went to the MGM. Did you know they have a lion exhibit inside? There was a male and a female lion and we got there right as they were having there lunch. Madie thought it was great that the lions were eating out of the trainers hands.

And they have a glass cave type area where you can actually walk under the lions.

She was entranced the whole time we were there and kept asking to see the lions again.

Later we went to the Bellagio to see the garden they have there. It was really neat and Madie enjoyed it WAY more than I thought she would. They had all these giant bugs and some really neat flowers and some water features, one of which sprayed the water out of the ground up into the air.

This chocolate fountain is in the Guinness Book of World Records for how tall it is. 

We also got to see the fountains outside the Bellagio. They do a little show  to music and Madie loved that the water went "up high". She still talks about it!

And one of my favorite pictures from the whole trip!

We had a blast! I would love to go back with just Zach. Maybe someday.