Ashlyn Rose

And there she was.
She was tiny and perfect. She had what looked to be two perfect little dimples on either side of her face that had to have been carefully etched by God himself. Beautiful blue eyes, perfect complexion...
She was the first baby I ever really held. The first baby I ever loved. Before then, kids were these little creatures whom I wanted nothing really to do with. I never was one of those people who saw a baby and wanted to hold it. I was the one that when a little kid would come up to them, I would search around the room in panic looking for someone to make them go away.
She taught me how to be a mom. She gave me the security that I was totally capable of caring for someone other than myself.
She was my princess and still is.

And yesterday was her first day of school.

Ashlyn has exceeded all my expectations for her. She is absolutely beautiful, which I always knew she would be. However she always has such a beauty that radiates out from inside. She is caring, and sweet. Smarter than any 5 year old I've ever met. She learned how to read this past summer and is already advanced into 2nd grade reading levels.
And what's even better is that her favorite presents are books! That used to be (still is) my favorite presents when I was younger! Yeah she's a nerd like me! She reads all the time. Yesterday she got a bookmark in her new student packet and started jumping up and down yelling, "Just what I've always wanted" and ran and got her Bible which she has been reading and replaced the paper receipt which has been marking her place with her new bookmark. She was so thrilled.
Last week I got her four different chapter books that are on a 2nd grade reading level and she's already read two of them, totally comprehending everything.
She is such a wonderful sister and cousin. She mothers Lyric in the sweetest ways possible. She is Lyric's favorite person as Lyric always wants to go see "Ash".

My sister Courtney said she was so nervous yesterday morning. Nervous to make new friends, nervous to meet her teacher, nervous just to be growing up if you ask me.
But boy should you have seen her when she got home. The first thing she did when I saw her was she ran to me yelling, "Dee I LOVE school!" That just made my heart soar a bit.

So now she has started the track I know all of my nieces/nephews/daughter/son will follow... it's exciting and scary all at the same time. Exciting that they are expanding their minds. Learning and taking in the world around them. They will start developing opinions about society, history, theories and music. I love that.
But then it's scary as you hope that you have raised them right. That when they experience new ideas and thoughts that differ from how they were raised, that they will stand true. That they will be open and dialogue with you if they have questions. That they will know right from wrong and always stand up for the person who is being wronged.

I'm proud of my little girl Ashlyn Rose. She is now in Kindergarten. She's amazing.

A Real Day of Rest

Today has been really relaxing and I'm so excited about it.

I just have chilled. I haven't cleaned (well I picked up a little), I haven't done laundry, I've honestly just chilled.

Jon got up this morning and made Lyric and I breakfast of fresh strawberries and bananas.. yum!

Then he had to go downtown to an immigration appointment, and around this time Lyric should be going down for her first nap. Well she hasn't been taking a very long afternoon nap, so Christina and I decided to cut out the morning nap and make her just have one nap a day. Well she gets so tired in the morning still, so around 10:30-11:00 she was fussy and crying and wanted her pappy (Passy). So I called my sister and she sent down the troops to keep her occupied :) My nieces Ashlyn, Madysen and Kadyn came over and kept Lyric up till 1pm :) We ate lunch together and they played with the Little People, and colored and we watched Princess Bride. Parents of only children totally understand the fabulousness of having other kids over to occupy your child. You just havd no idea.

I just now put Lyric to bed and hopefully she'll have a good long nap that will coincide with my good long nap :)

No shabbat meal tonight as my parents are in DC, so I am hoping that we literally don't do anything all day and all night. I would be fine not even leaving the house :) I feel like I just need a major recoop time and life will become peachy.

Last night I literally woke up 4 times to pee. I am having some major constipation problems and I think it's making my bladder hold even less pee than normal. That was SO annoying! But then I keep reminding myself it's only going to get worse from here... :)

My dearest me (dear meat) friend Missie is having her baby boy today! She went in this morning and I can't wait to hear all the details, and yes she will dish all those details because she's cool like that :) Her blog always makes me laugh :)
So good luck and congrats Missie!

So off to watch more Law and Order SVU. I'm in season 3 now, and I've already seen season 6 and 7, so only 2 more seasons to go :)

I hope everyone has a relaxing/productive/fun day today!

Shabbat Shalom!

My aching...

I wish I could sit here and go on an on about this TMI ailment that is "ailing" me... okay fine, I will. I have a case of the roids.
DEAR GOD!
I blame Ryan and Tiffani as if they had not gotten married, I would not have been on my feet for 2 days straight, dancing and carrying around a 16 month old baby who didn't want to be put down... in honor of them, I've actually named my roid after them, I call it Ryffani.
So Ryffani- I curse you and hope you go away very, very soon!

In other news, I'm still tired :)
Yesterday I left church early, only to go home and lay on my side the entire day, hoping that Ryffani would go away once and for all, which didn't happen. Let's just talk about how Jonathan needs to get a cousin of Ryffani so he can understand the pain I feel. He basically just called me lazy all day and everything he did for me, he did so begrudgingly, which is so frustrating when all you want to do is say RYFFANI MAY BE SERIOUSLY MAIMING ME PERMENANTLEY! but he just doesn't get it.
One of these days, he will. He'll be moving a couch, running a marathon or be playing racquetball and he'll come hobbling into our bedroom, begging my forgiveness. "If only I had known how evil Ryffani can be... I would have gotten your diet coke without telling you to get it yourself 3 times. I would have made you a tuna sandwich and remembered to bring you the cheese dorrito chips too... I wouldn't have told you to get your lazy butt out of bed and get them yourself..."
One day Jon, one day.

So today hasn't been the best day for me, but I've been REALLY busy which is nice, except when I have to walk upstairs, that's not nice.

Lyric has hit another talking zone and is saying more and more words! It blows my mind. This past week she started to put together 2 words. "Hi Dada" "Moe pssz" If only I could get her to say drink better. She said "daay" which no one but those who keep her know what she's talking about.
Also, she is getting into that stage where I have to start watching what I watch around her. Yesterday I was watching XFiles the movie and she was fascinated with it, so I had to keep distracting her during the scary parts. I liked it better when she was blissfully ignorant of everything on tv... but I guess that is just part of her growing up!

My oldest niece Ashlyn is GONE!!! She went to our church's Kid's Camp this week. Oh goodness was she excited about it! You would have thought that she was going to Disney World. Courtney got all of her stuff ready, and she got a new sleeping bag and got to pick out her own snacks for the week. I saw her off at the church that morning because I had to be there early. I was able to help her put her tshirt on and her bandanna (she's on the pink team). She is going to have to much fun! Her counselor is Brad's sister Brandi and the Jr. Counselor is Taylor Smith. I can't wait for her to get back and hear all her stories... then in another week or so, SHE STARTS SCHOOL! I swear I view her as one of my own, so I feel this motherly pang when thinking that she is going to start school... she's just so big now!

Well I need to wrap some stuff up so I can get home. I've been craving Olive Garden and Baked Potatoes. Since I don't want to drive to Olive Garden tonight for dinner, baked potatoes will have to do the trick. So I need to get on home to get the oven turned on! Yum!

Later people!

Bath Time - Fun Time

Last night was quite productive in the Vandeput household.

As I've previously mentioned, our house is in chaos. When our house is in chaos, it feels like my life is in chaos. I don't like to move as I'm too overwhelmed with the ridiculous state of my household and I just don't want to do anything as I know it's going to take a lot of work.

Well enough is enough. So I sat down and wrote a long detailed list that I could just check off throughout the next few days.

Jonathan became the world's best husband and when I got home, he already had the living room checked off (besides that i need to re-sort toys and get most of them back in Lyric's room) and the kitchen done.

I proceeded to go through and collect all excess dishes, throw away all the trash. Go through the mounds of mail, sort dirty clothes, etc.

I then proceeded to make a scrumptious meal of chicken spaghetti. Before commencing all of this, Lyric and I went down to Aunt CoCo's house because she was standing in the kitchen crying "dado" (which means CoCo) because she is used to going there directly and we deviated because I had groceries. She is quite in love with her Aunt and her cousins.

Well upon our visit, I decided to bring Kadyn home with us to entertain Lyric while Jon and I continued to cook and clean. It worked out nicely.

Then we ate and the girls got SO dirty, that I decided to give them a bath. Here is the cuteness of the bath time-fun time!





Lyric fell and bit her top lip. Look how swollen it is:


Here they are swimming (yes the floor was soaked)


So it was super cute and super fun.

Jonathan also decided to COMPLETELY rearrange our room. I don't know how much I like it, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. It just emphasised how much we need to get a bed frame (yes we are ghetto like that).

Anyways, today is my Friday as I don't work tomorrow, but it's already shaping up to be kind of stressful because the restaurant we are going to today refused to give us the back room by ourselves and we have a meeting where we need to talk, so we are going to have to be louder than normal... and of course this will be my fault, but I just now got ahold of the manager this morning to try to talk to her. But she said she could do it if we moved the lunch to after 1, which of course we can't do...

sigh.

Anyways, happy times.

I think this weekend is going to be great!

Oh and HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO KORBIN!


Korbin turns 2 today and he is such a great little boy! Just ask him what a horse says and you'll be rolling with laughter :) His birthday party is Saturday, so be expecting a fun kid picture filled blog soon! :)

Ok, back to the grind!

Oh so relaxing

Today has been nice.

It started off gloriously with Jonathan getting up with the baby and letting me sleep in till 9:30! That is the latest I have slept since I don't even know when and it was SOOOOOO nice!

Last night was Austin's birthday shabbat. We had a good time, but I was really out of it most of the night due to my incredibly tiring day yesterday.

Here are just few pictures:








We went and saw HellBoy later that night. I thought it was really good, but I am a huge fan of stupid comic book type movies.

Then today I slept in and then Lyric and I took Maddy to Build-A-Bear to celebrate her 1/2 birthday! :) She had so much fun!

Maddy helping to fill her bear up


Getting the heart ready to go in the bear


Giving the bear a bath


After "Lyla" was all ready in her pink and rhinestone outfit


Then we came home and ALL took a LOOONG nap and then decided to go to Olive Garden where Aaron Goodman waited on us and I proceeded to eat waaay too much and now am sitting on the couch trying not to upchuck my dinner while Jonathan is playing xbox and Lyric is playing with her babies.
She has a baby packnplay that she likes to climb into. Here she is:




Tomorrow Jon and I are on Aaron and Christina's team. I need to get Lyric bathed and in bed and somehow manage to keep my dinner down. So wish me luck!

A Day In the Life

Yesterday was a typical day for me... typical meaning random.
That's how most of our nights are. There isn't ever anything planned. It's not always KNOWN that we chill out at home on week nights.
With all my family living in a 2 mile radius, and more specifically my sister living 4 houses down, it's always a draw where we'll end up.

Last night Jonathan informed me that he was taking a pastor who was in town from Belgium out to dinner. Not speaking French all that well, I was able to easily get out of having to go with him.

So... what does an extremely tired pregnant, full time working mother of a toddler do? Calls her sister with 4 kids under the age of 6. No one can be more tired than her right? True, but still even though she's always crazy busy with 4 kids ages 5, 4, 2 and 5 months, when I'm super tired, she always helps out with Lyric because she's super mom!

So she told me they were going up to the Church because the youth group (which my BIL is one of the pastors of) is having a summer party complete with dinner and a bounce house. At first i was like...nooo... I'm tired! But then she gave me the whole, "Lyric will have so much fun..." line and I figured I better do it. And Lyric did have so much fun. My niece Kadyn and her always have a great time playing together, and so they kept eachother company.
Here are some pics:

Aunt CoCo and Lyric on the slide




Kadyn and Lyric playing






We didn't stay too long because it was freaking HOT, which caused me to get a headache. We did stay long enough to snag some food for the kids and catch a bit of Princess Bride which they had playing in the Atrium.

Then I went and got Courtney and I some Pei Wei's and we went to her house and watched So You Think You Can Dance.

Good times had by all!

I was just thinking about how random my life is. It's not scripted in anyway. Jon and I rarely get into routines. But it's nice. It's fun. It's different. I like that.

Which brings me to blogging. My sister is about to start up on her own blog. I'm sure that is going to be really interesting as her life is FULL of crazy stories.

Are you BLOG deprived and interested to know what other Mom-Type blogs I read on a daily basis? Come on, you know you are a sucker for reading about other people's lives! Don't try to deny it! Well here is what is in my RSS Feed in alphabetical order.

Adventures in Baby Wearing- I really enjoy her posts. She is a SAH mom of 3 boys and is pregnant with her 4th which is a little girl! She posts a lot and it always seems to be upbeat and genuine. It's a great read.

Chicken and Cheese- I just recently started reading this blog. She is also pregnant with her 2nd child... though she is just about ready to pop.

Culture Feast- This one isn't a Mommy Blog. But it's a blog with many different authors and just talks about life and culture as it relates to the DFW area and other random things like book reviews, movie reviews, political analysis and more.

Dooce- I mean, can you seriously have an RSS feed and not include Dooce in it? She's basically one of the most popular bloggers in the world and always has something wildly inappropriate and over the line. She talks a lot about her daughter and her life as an ex-morman. Really funny stuff, if you don't get offended easily. She also has a new picture of the day, a new dog picture of the day and a new style section of the day. Dooce is one of my faves. I was watching an interview with her and do you know she makes like $40,000 a MONTH off of her blog. Wow.

From Dates to Diapers- This is a mommy of SIX kids AND she homeschools! Wow. Mostly this blog is a product review, but she does giveaways ALL the time. I have yet to win, but I'm going to keep on pluggin away!

Her Bad Mother- Ok, this one is a bit crude at times, but still always makes me laugh. She just had another baby about a month or so ago and a rough time at it. And boy does she let you know! It's a great blog though!

I Should be Folding Laundry- Once again, this is a great blog. It's a mother of 2 who recently just lost her identical twin boys when she was around 20 weeks pregnant. She is openly grieving and I find her blogs so raw and honest and I really enjoy them. She also is just a great blogger.

It's Not Me, It's You- Which is my friend Liz's blog. Though she doesn't update NEARLY often enough... but when she does, they are always fantastic blogs!

Jessica and Her Boys- another friend of mine's personal blog. She has two boys and is pregnant with her 3rd boy.

Motherhood Uncensored- once again a little R rated, but I love this blog. It NEVER ceases to amuse me. She is OH so honest and OH so blunt about it seems everyone in her life. I wish I could be that blunt on my blog, I think I play politics too much... Great blog!

Musings of a Housewife- Ok, I just subscribed to this one today, but in reading it over, I think it's going to be a good one!

Savvy Auntie- This AMAZING website is going to get it's own post very soon. I just need to get it all together. But if you have EVER thought of starting your own business, you need to eat up all the wisdom from Melanie. She is absolutely awesome and gifted.

Alexis Neely- This woman is a lawyer focused on the family and helping families have the right kind of planning in bad situations. She's pretty stinkin' cool from how her blogs and Twitters portray her. She doesn't update super often, but I always enjoy it when she does.

Twilight Series Theories- this site will give you ALL the goods on the Twilight Series by Stephenie Meyer. This site updates A LOT, so be prepared to have a full RSS feed every morning.

Penelope Trunk- Her blog subjects don't always apply to me. She writes a lot about business and what not. But they are always great reads.

Of course this doesn't cover all the MySpace blogs I keep up with, plus a few others I peruse via Twitter links. But those are the ones I read daily in my RSS feed. I encourage you to click on a few of the links and check them out for yourself!

Oh the joys!

So I know I've been a bit lax in the writing once again.

I just haven't been feeling all that swell, but I'll try to do better this week. It's not sickness, it's just tiredness. Which is evident by my dirty, dirty house and laundry that is piled up.

This weekend, per usual, was filled with activities. Although I did manage to have some cute little niece bonding time as well as some quality Zelda playing time that did make the weekend that much better.

One crazy story that did occur happened while my 2 nieces spent the night with me. The next morning we woke up and decided to go get donuts and chocolate milk. Like good girls they put their chocolate milk on the table and were sitting on the floor in front of the tv watching cartoons. I walked into the kitchen, only to walk back right in time to see my daughter attempt to grab the chocolate milk off the table, and manage to pour the entire thing on her head.
She immediately starts crying as the milk is cold and she is surprised, but of course, due to the exorbitant amount of milk on the floor, she immediately slips, tries to stand up, slips again, hits her head on the corner of the table, stands, slips and I grab her right when she is about to slip again. She is SCREAMING so I grab her and run to the bathroom and put her in the bath tub. I manage to get her clothes stripped off and diaper off (thank GOD there was no poop) and all the while she is still having a panic attack. Then I quickly turn on the water, however, I didn't make sure that it would come out the faucet, and it was still on the overhead shower, so freezing cold water from the shower head shoots out and lands on her which made her jump 3 feet in the air and scream all the louder. I fix it quickly, but this time I couldn't get her calmed down. I couldn't even get her to sit down in the bath after I got it fixed and she loves baths. So Maddy is standing next to me and I'm like "TAKE OFF YOUR CLOTHES AND GET IN THE BATH" thinking that she would calm down if her cousin was in there, but oh no. She just kept screaming. Somehow I manage to get her washed and cleaned and out of the tub. All this happened in a matter of less than 5 minutes, so it was a bit of a panic time.

Oh the joys!

But we did have a great time with the girls. We went and saw Wall-E, which I really enjoyed! As we were driving home, a storm was rolling in and Ashlyn HATES storms. So she is sitting in the back seat of the car, shaking like a chihuahua. It was pretty funny! :)

OK, back to the grind.

Magic Trick

Ok, Ashlyn out of no where surprised us with her amazing magic trick of making Maddy disappear. We laughed so hard, I made her do it for the whole family a few days later.
Enjoy:

Ashlyn's dance recital!

My niece Ashlyn had her dance recital on Friday and Saturday night and she did absolutely FANTASTIC!

I was such a proud, proud aunt!

She did 5 dances, but I'm just putting one of them on here for your viewing pleasure. It was her tap dance routine to the Shirley Temple, 'Baby Take a Bow'. She's on the end with the curly hair.



Here are Lyric, Kadyn and Madysen and some of the Watkins cousins. There are 20 grandkids total in the Watkins family, so there are a bunch of them!


Ashlyn dancing to "Going to the Chapel"


Madysen and her cousins Kate and Elizabeth (Jim and Maebeth's kids)


Ashlyn the STAR!


She got a lot of roses, because she said her middle name is Rose so she needs roses.


Afterwards we went to Braums for icecream. All of the girl cousins squeezed into one booth to eat their ice cream


Jodie and Judah-Buddah


Brian, Aaron and Nathan


So anyways, as you can see I am very proud of my niece. She got a medal for some reason or another and is wearing it everywhere. But she says most of all she's glad ballet is over and she gets a break! :)
Maddy starts up this fall, so it will be double fun next year! :)

Kaydn's 2nd Birthday Party

We had Kadyn's 2nd birthday party today at the park and we had such a great time!















The birthday girl!


















Birthday video:







She had such a great time! I can't believe she is already 2... wow time flies!

Maddy's Birthday

Click HERE fo pictures!

Happy Birthday Madysen!

just wanted to send a big fat HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my beautiful niece Madysen Paige on her fourth birthday today!

I have never seen a kid so excited about her birthday!

Maddy is a beautiful little girl who loves to play with her baby dolls and put on makeup, basically anything that is girly, she loves it!

She has such a black and white way of looking at things, which I think is so funny and hates when she is left out.

She LOVES when all the attention is on her! :)

She was born the day before I left for Cyprus. My sister got induced because she wanted me to be there at the birth. It was the saddest thing I have ever done, was to say goodbye to my niece who was only just a few hours old and know that the next time I would see her would be 6 months later. I missed out on a lot those first few months, but I like to think that I definately made it up these last 3 1/2 years.

I love my maddy girl so much and am so happy she was born!

Click HERE for pictures!