To Mommyhood and Beyond: September 2014

My baby turned 5 in July and I had to make her birthday as special as I possibly could. I felt guilty for not having a 3rd birthday and always said I would make it up for her 4th. Well little did I know that we would be moving to Denver a few days before she turned 4, so once again no birthday party for little Ash.

I had 2 party's for her....the first one was a special appearance from Queen Elsa. She had a few of her little girlfriends over and they got to spend 45 minutes with the Queen. I've never seen such happy little girls :) Ray had to keep touching her, I still don't think she could believe it.
Ash still talks about Elsa coming to her house!!

Her second party was for all of her friends and we went to a gymnastics' place for an open gym. She just loved having her little friends there to play with.
Her favorite gift of all times was her American Girl doll from her Aunt Gay!! She adores this doll so very much.

We had an awesome summer, we really enjoyed being outside....being from AZ our summers were spent indoors :(

We attended two weddings this summer, one of which was my brothers!!
His wife is from a little town in Michigan called Holland. What a beautiful place!!
That's where they had the wedding, so we got to spend a week there, meeting her family and just taking a little vacation :)

The wedding was beautiful and I got the honor to be one of Brooke's bridesmaids!! I had a great time being included in all the festivities and meeting her friends.

I absolutely love my new sis in law.....she's so good for my bro and makes him so happy which makes me happy :) Our entire family is so happy she's now a part of our family.
Our commute home definitely made the books for one of the worst travel days in Goddard History!! I won't go into details but I should've just listened to my hubby when he said, there is a pretty big storm coming so I just say we go get a hotel room here in Chicago for the night and try to get out in the morning.
We had been away for almost a week so I said No way dude!!!! Lets get home now!!!
Well we didn't get home until the following evening after sitting in an airport and a hotel for 2days with no luggage :( so not fun!!

Our second wedding was my cousins wedding in California.
Our little girls were the flower girls, and the cutest flower girls I've ever seen I might add :) They practiced their big role for months and it paid off because they were great.

My aunt who is a wedding coordinator joked and asked if she could borrow them for all her weddings.
I'm a proud mama!!!

The biggest moment for our summer was our baby started Kindergarten....We got a lucky seat at a phenomenal charter school here in Broomfield.

She's in the PM kinder which is nice so I still have her in the mornings and since we're all pretty lazy in the mornings it works great :)
So far she really enjoys school, she doesn't share much about it but she's happy everytime I pick her up, so I'm not complaining.
It used to annoy me so much when my parents always hounded me about my day at school, so I figure when she's got something to say, she'll say it.
I thought Ray would have a hard time with her sissy being at school, but I think she really enjoys coming home and playing with all of Ashlee's things :) We keep that our little secret hehe
Ray just enjoys the process of taking and picking her sister up from school, she's a little social butterfly and loves to say Hi to all the kiddo's. The sad part is she knows their names better than I do.

The kids are both still swimming twice a week and doing very well.
Ashlee completed her float test a few months ago and just recently moved up a level. She's doing so well....she swims the length of the pool going from her back to her tummy. She's now learning to freestyle across the pool.

Reagan is doing very good too, she's got her back float down and is now doing it independently. Her next step will be the float test :)
With a lot of hard thinking Jake and I decided to put the girls in an 8 week session of ski lessons. We bought season passes this year and really want to take advantage of the mountains and the awesome skiing. We figured the only way to do that is to get their little butts comfortable in skis.

I feel like we're doing this for our own selfish reasons, but hey they're really enjoying themselves so I don't feel so bad.

Jake and I have been skiing for 11 years together and it's so neat to have our little girls joining us, we just hope they like it as much as we do.
As for me, just hoping I can do this 1/2 marathon in October :/ I haven't done much training running, but I go to the gym and work out on a regular basis. We'll see how it goes, I plan on doing a lot more running in the next few weeks. This starting school thing has really made my life even more chaotic :)

Jake is really busy planning Spare Life's conference next fall, and he's been working the friendly skies quite often, trying to save save save for a house :)
We really enjoyed our first full summer here in Colorado and spent a lot of time outdoors. We are very much looking forward to fall as it is my favorite season for sure!!!