The Past Few Months...

Much has happened since the last blog post! We moved! We are loving it so far in Littleton, CO and hopefully this will be our home for a long time!

Since so much has gone on and I am so behind, I will just do a quick update with lots of pictures...

Emily with Brandon Platte

Angela at her Henderson Elementary Field Day:

For Angela's bday, she got this little kitten. She was at Angela's soccer game watching...

Emily makes these crazy cute faces with crazy cute arm motions. Hard to explain, but boy is she a cutie.

Angela looses her first front tooth!!! It happened just this month in August!!!! So exciting!

Only about 2 days later this month, Angela's second front tooth came out! She is so cute!

Learning Time this summer!

One day we made bookmarks for our Book of Mormons we use as a family when studying the scriptures together.

Before moving away from the Crawfords, we got to babysit them for a couple of days!!! Their parents were out of town. It was the perfect good-bye for our family. They were the perfect backyard neighbors and it was emotional (and still is) good bye.

Angela with her best friend, Journey, from Henderson.

We play "cow" or "horse" with the Crawfords pretty often when living by them. ANGELA CAME IN SECOND PLACE before we moved! She beat almost all those Crawford boys at shooting the basketball!

More Angela with Journey!

We made "Family History" notebooks this summer!

At the zoo one last time before our membership expires. It's a bit further from us in our new home so I don't think I'll be renewing our membership anytime too soon...

In our new home, we LOVE the fact we live right by a pool! Just blocks away. The girls made AMAZING progress in 4 weeks in their swim lessons coupled with swimming every day we fit it into our day! It was so fun! Caroly and Angela are doing butterflies while Emily can now swim under water (in just two weeks she went from not liking her face to even be splashed to jumping in the deep end all by herself and swimming under water!)

More learning time!

Angela and Carolyn both enjoyed soccer!

Carolyn's birthday! I love the signs that Emily and Angela made for Carolyn to decorate.

More soccer!! (just in case you can't tell, these pictures are not in order :)

For Carolyn's birthday, she wanted a day with Kaycee, her very best friend! They went to Carolyn's soccer game and then went and watched Angela play. Then, they played at home and ate some of their favorite food (piggies in a blanket) we went to movie and then out to eat. After that, we went back home and opened presents and ate cake and sang to Carolyn. As well as played some more. It was a fun day.

At the movie theator...

Out to eat...

I thought Angela's picture was so cute that she drew at the restaurant...

Being silly and opening gifts...

Daddy got her her very own golf clubs...

Outside in the rain playing with little confetti shooters :)..

Carolyn and Angela LOVE teaching their little sissy, Emily. What a lucky little girl :)

We needed to empty out that huge old water tank full of water. So, for a few weeks everyday, the girls would get their swimsuits on and we would empty that thing out - one container at a time. The girls loved it and our grass got some good watering :)

More of Kaycee and Carolyn...

The moving truck when we moved! Girls had fun riding in the front with Andrew.

Good-bye Brighton, CO! You have been so good to us. That home is full of amazing memories of growing closer together as a family and growing closer to our Savior. I think we all will forever smile when we see that home! Brighton was so good to us.

In the moving truck...

For Mother's Day, I got tickets to go to "Wicked" with Andrew. I love that I get to go on dates with the best husband a girl could ever dream of. (Our seats were amazing...I didn't zoom in this picture! This is how close we were).

This summer, Andrew challenged us all to give heed to President Benson's vision/counsel. He said he in-visioned missionaries going out into the field with hundreds of passages of scriptures memorized for a world so need of light and truth!! So, for 13 weeks in the summer, the girls (and Andrew and I) worked hard to memorize one scripture each week. Angela and Emily memorized all 13 articles of faith. At the end of the summer, we all loved a day at Elitches Garden (amusement park) together.

DATES WITH DADDY! This is what the girls love. All of us girls love dates with Andrew! :) Emily got to go to the Chatfield Lake right by us. She loved her time there. They even swam under water in there :)

The Kim Reunion!!! With the Carolyn and Randy Kim side of the family (them with their children), we enjoyed an awesome reunion at Bear Lake!!

Top: Jannie, Andrew, Carolyn and Randy Kim
Bottom: Emily, Carolyn, Angela :)

Carolyn with cousin Anna Kim (Chris/Janeil Kim's daughter)

After the Kim Reunion, I took the girls to St. George for a Ashton Reunion!

There was a chair in the room we stayed in that Carolyn insisted she slept on :) Every night I thought she looked so uncomfortable :)

Carolyn and Grandpa built a sprinkler for the backyard!

HOME again!! We came back from St. George to our new home in Littleton! The girls have a large room (the Master Bedroom in the house) in which we call "The Girls' Suite". Here they are in their suite taking a bath. I love that the girls can all be together in the same room!!! Sisters are the best!!!!

The Library in our loft! They like to play "Librarian" there.

Coloring great coloring books Grandma Ashton put together for us. I love coloring with the girls...it's so relaxing and fun to talk and color at the same time. One of my favorite things to do with the girlies :)

Luckily, we live close enough to our old city that we can still meet up with old friends from Brighton. Last week, Kaycee and her younger siblings came over for the day. And before that we met up with our good friends, the Muirbrooks at a splash pad. This is Carolyn and Mayci.

Carolyn, Ashlyn, Kyla, Angela, Emily, and Mayci in back.

Here's more pictures from this month's huge happening of Angelas tooth falling out! Yahoo!

I love that Angela likes to write letters to the tooth fairy :)

More swimming lessons! Here is Emily...

And Carolyn...

And Angela...

More from our last day at the zoo! Just this summer they put in a place we can get closer (and feed) the giraffes. Exciting for Emily - she loves looking at the giraffes.

Lego Lion at the zoo.

Service Project with our new Stake here. Beautifying and building to Gilly Gultch Rec Center.

Andrew went out of town for a couple of days. We had girl's nights :) The girls made my hair look crazy one night :)

We love watching "Studio C" together as a family (it's a TV show done by some BYU alumnis). There is an episode where one guy tries to take all the groceries in on one load....even though with a crazy amount. Here Carolyn and Angela are trying to reenact this :)

LOVE that our new house has a "side yard"...this is from my kitchen window while doing dishes. I look out and see the girls playing baseball (or whatever) in the HUGE open space next to us. It was a major draw to the house :)

More at Elitches...

THE END!

After snuggling my sweet Angela and singing to her for bed, she said, "Mom, the most important thing we do at night is our personal prayer."

How blessed am I to have an angel sent to me from Heaven.

...she also felt little brother kick in my tummy this week. She's the only kid that's felt him kick yet. I was sitting on the couch in family room and called her over (he is a KICKER...just as Carolyn was...very active in there :) She felt him kick and right away ran upstairs yelling at the top of her lungs that Carolyn and Emily HAD to hear what just happened. She was pretty excited about it.

Emily will often ask me the same question. She asks me when doing various things throughout the day. Normally during our normal day-to-day activities. She asks, "Mom, is Jesus with us right now?" When getting dressed or something she might ask, "Does Jesus know what I am doing right now? Does He know that I chose to make my dress modest?" I have a testimony that our Savior is always with us and if we allow ourselves to stop and feel Him with us, strengthening us, guiding us, standing with arms stretched out - we can feel Him with us. How grateful I am to have a 4 year old daughter who is constantly reminding me to be sure I am always feeling Him near me.

Today Angela got a new pencil for marking her Book of Mormon. As she sat down next to me to begin reading her scripture and using her new pencil, she asked, "So....we mark what makes you feel happy?" Two minutes later, she showed me a verse she had marked about Jesus teaching

Angela turns SEVEN!

This spunky and sweet girl turned seven!!! What would we do without this angel?!?!

 I love that the girls went and spent some of their own money on Angela for her birthday. I did give them a little bit to spend, but some came out of their own pockets. They teach me so much!

 Carolyn got this for our little princess Angela:

 This was Angela's favorite gift she received :) She named her Lucy and brings her around everywhere now :) Andrew picked it out...I always spend a lot of time figuring out the perfect gift for the girls and Andrew will go on a whim and pick out something (like this cat) that will be their favorite present. Ha! :) Seriously happens like every time :)

 I love that after every gift this sweet Angela opened, she hugged the person who gave it to her. I should have made her lots of homemade gifts for extra hugs. She is sure a sweety!

 Emily had a hard time picking something out for Angela at the dollar store but I think her picture frame was cute :)

 Carolyn spent most of her "money" she "earns" at school on getting this nail polish for Angela...

 Love that face!! We love playing games as a family and Andrew picked out a good one for Angela!

 Angela's soccer game on her birthday! SHE SCORED A GOAL!!!!!!! It was so exciting that her first goal of the season was on her birthday!!! YAHOO! Angela!!!! What a star! She really is aggressive out there on the field when she wants to be!

 After soccer (since Angela choice everything we did as a family that day), we headed to the zoo. We visited her favorite buddy, the donkey. Donkeys aren't necessarily her favorite animal but her and this donkey have "moments." He responds to Angela's silliness by turning his ears towards her when she claps and such.

 ...the elephant show....

 ...at the zoo on your birthday week you get some fun little things like ice cream and carousal ride.

 After cake and ice cream, she snuggled Andrew and watched "Malificent." We sure love our little angel!!!

...and this is her being sung to the next Monday after her birthday. She brought cupcakes to share with the class. Here they are singing to the birthday girl :)