Christopher Turns 6!

Christopher's 6th birthday was the talk of the house around here for the past few months. I worked really hard at getting Christopher to remember his birthday. What ended up working is that we told him that people won't be able to wish him a happy birthday or get him a present if he can't tell them when his birthday is. Worked like a charm...he remembered it in lickity split :) I fact, he went so far as to say his birthday this year is "September 16, 2008", which we thought was pretty cute.

On his actual birthday, I made an awesome Whipped cream-Cream cheese with Strawberries Cake for him. That is, in fact, the official name ;) I think he liked it, but that he thought it was a little rich because he didn't want any leftovers of the cake. Oh well, more fore everyone else! The cake was fun to make it and even more fun to perform "quality control". In case anyone is wondering, I prefer baking to cooking anytime.

His birthday party was extremely small. It was really last minute and so I only invited one other family with boys, The Verdon's. They have 3 boys, all around the same age of my 3 kids. Their names are Malik-5 years, Gabriel-4 years and Trey-20 months. It was a lot of fun, but I could kick myself for not being more "camera ready". I only got pictures of the very end, when he was opening his presents. The main things I would love pictures of are: 1.the kids hitting the life size Superman Pinata, 2. the "Party Animal" cupcakes from Cupcakes, which were heavenly, 3. It seems I got a picture of everyone except Javier, Papa, GiGi and Uncle Phil...geez, what is up with my complete lack of photography skills?...Bummer.

Christopher was so excited about one of his Transformer's toys, he didn't want to look at the camera.

Tearing into the presents.

Marley: trying to be helpful ;)

Malik
Gabe

Trey

Fran Verdon (mother of the 3 nice boys) and TiTi enjoying some adult time.

Grandma Merle.

Though she looks totally unhappy here, she was actually very pleased to be at our house around all of the family.

Christopher seemed to really enjoy himself. Happy 6th Birthday! OXOXO

*Sorry about the photos not being too great; I used the wrong camera which does not take good indoor-at-night pictures.*
**Special Thanks to Javi, my dad and sister for their help. We all appreciate it :)

Marley's New 'Do

I call this hairstyle Braided Headband. I got the idea from this blog for shorter hair styles and here is the original idea that I tweeked a little.

See how happy she is when I fix her hair?I started with an off center part and did the braided headband down both sides of her head. Unfortunately, I forgot to get a photo that showed her side part. In the top 2 photos, her side part is at the top of each picture and virtually impossible to see, but you get the idea, right?

I wasn't sure how I wanted to end the style, but I knew I didn't want to end it like the original does, with all the hair in the middle of hear head out and curled. Marley was going to school this day and I wanted it tight and neat. So, I parted the hair down the center of her head, from the top of the headband to the nape of her neck.
Then, I just did a low braid and wrapped it around the last pony/elastic of the headband on the same side. I secured it by just wrapping an elastic around the whole wrapped ponytail. Since she has naturally curly hair, I didn't need to take a curling iron to it, but I would have otherwise. The 3rd picture shows how I wrapped the braid around the last elastic of the braided headband a little better than this one.

Christopher and the Treasure Chest

In Christopher's Kindergarten class, his teacher, Ms. Wilson, has a system of acheiving stars throughtout the day. For instance, there are 4 main groups: followed directions, completed work, kept hands to self and worked and listened quietly. These main groups are on a grid on a paper that goes home every day so we can see if he got stars in all 4 of those groups. However, she also looks for other things throughout the day like: shared without being asked to, helped w/o being asked to, followed directions on the first request. All of which a student can accumulate stars for. At this point in the school year, a student can get 7 stars in one day (including the 4 from the main groups) and they will eventually build up to a total of 10 per day. Well, should any student on any day accumulate the maximum number of stars, he/she can pick any one item from the classroom Treasure Chest. So far, Christopher has gotten to chose something from the Treasure Chest 3 times in the last 2 weeks (she just implimented the plan 3 weeks ago). So, needless to say, we are pretty proud of him and he of himself as well! Score for everyone involved, especially Ms. Wilson!
Christopher, being such a goofy guy, picked out these sunglasses that happened to be from Old Navy (I know this because they came in an Old Navy pouch). We couldn't help but to laugh hysterically at his choice! Who knows what prompted him to pick out this pair of sunglasses, rather than a remote car or something I would guess would be his first choice, but he was very proud of his choice, nonetheless.
Once I told him I wanted to take a picture of him wearing the sunglasses he was game. He even thought that one of his poses should be lying on the ground!

"License and Registration, Please"....

Doesn't he look like a Police Officer from the early 90's?

Coming Soon: Wait until I scan the picture he drew of his family. You will be howling!

A super cool style

This is called Hair Net by the woman who's blog I learned this style from. I really like it, but it took me 1 hour and 20 minutes! Yikes! I can't believe Marley sat through it all, but she did and since it took me so long, I left it in for 2 days. The nice thing about Marley and me fixing her hair is that she is fairly patient with me because she knows that her hair will look pretty when I'm finished and she likes that! Thank goodness for that since I really enjoy fixing it :) Anyway, besides it being nice that it stays in place for a few days, all kiddos love this style and I was requested by my thick-haired neice, Mirella, to do her hair the same exact way. What a nice compliment!

Out with the Blonde, In with the Brunette

The new photos are finally revealed.

Please let me know your opinion, even if you don't like it. I contemplated dying my hair close to my natural hair color for 6 months before I finally got the guts up to do it. Almost every single one of my family members thinks of me as Blonde Ashley, rather than Brunette Ashley and I sort of always thought I looked better blonde. I have 2 main concerns about keeping it blonde:

1.It's just a major upkeep and I have a love/hate relationship with it when it's blonde. I love it when it's freshly done and hate it when I need it re-dyed because I don't want to pay for it too frequently. So, to put it simply: Cost.

2. I can tell that my hair has really been through some rough times and it's breakage is proof. I knew I had a fair amount of breakage. But the straw the broke the camels back was when my sister was flat ironing my hair a few weeks ago and she said "you can tell you dye your hair because of all the breakage". So, to put it simply: hair healthiness.

I haven't seen my true natural hair color, free of dyes, since I was in 7th grade! I don't even know what color it really is, except what you see on regrowth. And that's not enough to really get a good idea, I mean what about natural highlights from the sun and everything else that affects a hair's natural color?! So, the goal was to dye my hair close to my natural color and only get trimmings as needed for a while.

I want to see what a whole head of natural, healthy hair color is for me. So, it's darker than my natural color, but that's okay because my hair always fades when I go darker. Here we go:

Oh, yeah. I'm pretty chubby right now, so don't let the new hair color make you think it makes me look heavier. It's not the hair color, it's my poor eating habits. I need to get back on the ball with my diet and I plan on it immediately. Just wanted to say that incase you were thinking it ;)

Okay, there you have it. BTW...I wasn't trying to tease anyone or make you wait even this long. Javier has been totally hogging my computer and this was my first chance to post this. I actually shot these photos this past Tuesday, thinking I would put them up earlier. Sorry for the delay.

Have a great day!

I dyed my hair

And it's pretty dark brown...is anyone interested in seeing a picture? Lemme know :)

Beautiful Pinetop, AZ

We left Phoenix and it's 101F weather for beautiful Pinetop, Az on Friday August 15th. Yeah, we're all so accustomed to the hot, muggy weather Phoenix provides us during these L-O-N-G summer months. Granted, the best part of our hot, muggy weather is the Monsoon storms we hope for, but it's not until you arrive in much cooler weather that you realize you deal with quite a bit of heat. Though the total drive is around 3 hours and seemingly long with 3 kids in tow, traveling to the White Mountains brings with it some great scenery and tranquility. So, I decided to take a few pictures while my Love drove (okay, I may have been a little bored, but nonetheless, I got some fantastic photos!).This sunburst (though, not as cool a sunburst as Sara's pic on their way home from Durango) is what orginally prompted me to pick up my camera and from that moment on, we saw several beautiful things along the way.

A storm is a-brewin!

I'm not the most knowledable person when it comes to birds and their "tell-tales", however I do know why they fly in circles, as we saw a group of birds doing beneath these clouds (note: the bird where the two colors of clouds collide). They take advantage of the different thermals in the air and fly almost effortlessly, which makes sense that these birds were flying in this pattern while a storm was approaching. To us, it was a "tell-tale" that a storm was in fact on it's way.

Also, we noticed off in the distance was a hazy sky beneath the clouds, which almost always indicates rainfall (as you can see in the 1st photo). With those 2 indicators, we figured we definitely would have to drive through this storm.

"What fun!", I thought, "we get to drive through a rain storm!"

Luckily, the rain wasn't so bad that we had to pull over (although, it was raining 'cats and dogs,' as I grew up hearing), therefore it was indeed an extra fun drive. Have I mentioned I love monsoon storms?!

Here is one of our favorite views from the top of the Mogollon Rim...while driving. Majestic!

I'm sure I'm not enlightening anyone in regards to the Mogollon Rim and it's awesomeness. However, when I did a Yahoo! Search for it, I came across a Coconino County website referring to their campgrounds and info. On that website there were a couple of photos I thought were mighty nice so here they are:Javier told me the Mogollon Rim stretched pretty far, but I had no idea how far until I read this!

This is by far a better picture than anything I can take while doing a drive-by photo op...

Okay, getting back to our trip:

If you squint really hard, you can see a steeple of a LDS church to the left of the road. Here is another sunbeam, which appears to be shining right towards the church itself. Now, that is enlightening (these are the jokes people)! I thought this picture was pretty neat.We saw about 4 different rainbows on our way up to Pinetop...boy were they everywhere. It was difficult, however, to get a photo of one that you can see fairly well. This photo is the best one of the several rainbows we saw and photo'd. Hopefully you can see it behind the row of houses and vegetation.

Something I find pretty cute is I have had some interesting conversations with Marley reguarding rainbows (the 2nd one was for sure during this car trip). For example:

Marley: "Mommy, can we go to the pot o'gold at the end of the rainbow?!!!"

To which I replied: "Marley, I'm sorry, but that's just make believe, there's not really a pot o'gold at the end of any rainbow...trust me, I wish there was".

Sidenote: As a kid, I can remember going with my sister down the dirt road alongside the canal, in search for that magnificent pot o'gold. We ended up running out of energy before every finding the end of the rainbow...so I knew, for a fact, that there is no such thing as a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. (sigh)

Then, Marley asked: "Can we slide down the rainbow then?" I said: "I'm sorry, that's only on Mario Kart (one of the funnest games ever!); a rainbow would never be able to hold us, it's not solid".

Ahh, the innocence of childhood :)

In fact, it had begun to hail by the time we got to Pinetop. And can you believe the temperature dropped 47 degrees from the time we left Phoenix to our arrival in Pinetop?!!! I couldn't believe my eyes:

Home sweet Home er, Condo:)

Here is our view from the front door:

On our way home, I captured this view of the Mogollon Rim (yes, again). And low and behold, it rained again on our way home. Have I mentioned I like storms? :)