Merry Christmas!

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We hope you and yours have a wonderful Christmas day! We love you!!

Adventures in Babysitting

First off, I have to say a few things. I am not a parent. I love kids, but I don't have any - well, besides Brent of course. As a non-parent, I've noticed that parents can talk for HOURS about poop. I've never had a poop story before. Now I can join in!

Another thing - Courtney had her baby on Sunday. His name is Aaron and there'll be more about him in another post. Seriously, it's a good poop story.

And because of the graphic nature of my poop story, I apologize in advance for some of the words that are going to appear in this blog. If you are a non-parent, like me, and a bit squeamish when it comes to poop, I would recommend not reading further.

So, because of Courtney's baby-having, we became the instant "parents" of 3 kids this weekend. It's really fun, usually. Ok, on to the poop story.

I get to Court and Brad's house early in the morning on Saturday so that they can head on up to Silverdale to bring this newest member of their family into the world. Court and I are discussing things to do as the instant "parents" of 3 kids.

She says, "Oh, and Kyle hasn't pooped for a couple of days. Give him some medicine. And, did you read John's blog about the potty training?"

"Yeah," I say.

"Well, let's just say, don't put the poop in the toilet...it will clog." (You've got to read John's blog.)
HUH? Who signed up for this? I signed up for good kids who basically take care of themselves and only need me to play with.

So, I give Kyle some medicine and hope that it takes a couple of days to kick in.

If I was only so lucky.

Look at that little face. Isn't he just adorable? You would never think something so... Back to my story.

Suddenly, Kyle disappears to do what we all know he's going to do. He's in his room with the door closed for way too long. Opening a door after a 2 year old has poop is not one of my favorite things about kids!

Anyway, he's finally done filling his diaper and now ... well, now it's my turn.

I just can't be too graphic. I've been trying to think of someway to describe what was in his diaper. Let's just say...it was the size of a soft ball. Literally. How could that much stuff come out of such a tiny body? Seriously, it's a tiny body. He's been really into running around in nothing but his diaper and he's a skinny little thing! It was all I could to to not have dry heaves.

Then, the topper is, I'm telling Court about this when we go see them and she says, "Yeah, his regular poops are huge too."

Is it because he's a boy? I haven't changed as many boy diapers as girl diapers. Is it because he has too much fiber in his diet? Is it just because he thinks it's funny? I don't know the answers to these questions, but...at the next dinner party when the parents start swapping poop stories, I'm bring out the soft ball poop story. This is going to be awesome!!

Musings

I'm sitting here looking at my HUGE list of things that need to get done before Christmas and thinking about last night. I'm the first counselor in the Young Women's in my ward. There have been good times and there have been a lot of bad times. We've been having some "growing pains" and I get frustrated sometimes. But last night reminded me why I keep at it even when I'm frustrated. We went caroling. We did this last week as well, but we didn't finish our list - such is life when you live in a ward that is bigger than a block. Anyway, we had a great time. We laughed, we sang, it was great. I just love all those girls that I serve. They are amazing! I'm so thankful for my opportunity to know them. They are awesome!

I took one of the girls home last night and she asked me about patriarchal blessings. We had a great talk about what they are and what she needs to do to get one. I'm so excited for her to have that opportunity. It will be great for her!

I have to admit - I feel like I have spent most of my life "catching up" with the Mormon lingo. I think that there should be a Mormon to English dictionary. I feel very behind all the time. But you know what? I'm really not. I can answer all these questions the girls come up with. And most of the time, the answers are pretty good - if I do say so myself. It still amazes me. But I know that most of the time, it's not me answering the questions and that amazes me even more. How cool is that?

I remember one time we had an activity when we were going to all read the Book of Mormon together. (We were trying to read the whole Book of Mormon before camp.) Anyway, it turned into a question and answer time. Another one of those times when the Spirit was there and we all felt it. It was so cool. What an awesome experience!

Young Women's is one of the hardest callings out there. But I just love it. I know that's normally when you get released, so I hope that's not going to happen. But, then I'll love my next calling and miss these amazing girls. If you ever get the chance to work with the youth, do it. It can be frustrating and tiring, but it is so worth it.

Another Good Quote

"Common-looking people are the best in the world; that is the reason the Lord makes so many of them."

-Abraham Lincoln

Quote

"Do not pray for tasks equal to your abilities, but pray for abilities equal to your tasks. Then the performance of your tasks will be no miracle, but you will be the miracle."

-President Thomas S. Monson

Under Construction

As you can see, I'm working on the look of my blog. Unfortunately, the computer is not working the way I want it to, so before I throw it out the window, I'm going to leave it boring for a little while.

:)

Catch Up

Ok, so it's the last week before Christmas and I'm pretty busy, so...I'm not going to be blogging much. I'm planning on typing up some great quotes, so check back for those.

I haven't been as good at blogging lately, so I'm going to catch up. That way you can look at some great pictures. Just for fun, let's start with the newest pictures.

On Saturday, Brent took me out to dinner for my birthday. He ended up having to work on Saturday, so I took the foot ferry over to Bremerton and met him at Anthony's. Anthony's is a great seafood restaurant that I love! Dinner was very good and fun.

After dinner we went over to the Harborside Fountain Park. They had decorated it for Christmas. I LOVE looking at Christmas lights and it's become kind of a tradition. This year was a little different from the last couple of years. It was FREEZING and RAINING, but fun to see anyway.

The day after Thanksgiving, Ryan, Marcela & Reyes came down for dinner. We had a great time. Reyes was in love with Brent and would follow him around everywhere. She's getting really friendly and fun to be around. I think it's the cutest thing when she sucks on her thumb. For her birthday we gave her a similar blanket to this one that she loves. So when she saw another one with the knots on the outside, she was pretty sure it was time for bed. It was cute.

Here we are at Thanksgiving. We had dinner with Court and Brad and the kids. The dinner was great. And I think I made the best pumpkin pies ever! As always, Brent made rolls. They were awesome!

I think this pictures is hilarious. The girls were making Indian feathers on their heads. Kyle couldn't quite figure it out, so... Makes me giggle.

While we were waiting for dinner to be ready, Brent started throwing marshmallows in the girl's mouths. Kyle thought Chloe wanted him to put one in her mouth. If you look on Chloe's chin, you can see the marshmallow that Brent threw at her.

At the beginning of November, Court and I took a girl's day and went to Time Out for Women in Tacoma. It was a fun day. And on the way home we got some Panda Express. What could be better? (In this picture we were both trying to have our eyes open. It turned out a little scary. Sorry)

So, it's almost the end of 2007. It's hard to believe. It's been a good year. Hopefully 2008 will be even better! I'll see you all then! (Except for the quotes...as I said before.)

Wow, Where Has the Time Gone?

So, yesterday was my 32nd birthday. Where have all the years gone? The young women kept asking me how old I was going to be and when I said 32, they would invariably say, "You don't act like you're 32!" What exactly does that mean? I'm going to take it as a compliment. Thanks girls!! The crown is from a Christmas cracker that Kyle wanted to try. It's great, isn't it?

I had a great day! We thought that Brent would be working a lot this week, so we planned on having the main celebration on Saturday. Brent's stuff ended up taking less time than they thought, but we're still going to do the bulk of the celebrating on Saturday. It will be great.

Brent made me a pumpkin roll for my birthday cake. It was his first time trying it and he did an amazing job! It was so good. Court, Brad and the kids came over to help us eat it. Even the picky Brown kids thought the choice of cake was great. Thanks Love!

My cousin Jennifer sent me the cutest e-card. It had a "birthday carol" in it. I'm going to write down the words and you have to imagine singing them to "Carol of the Bells"...

It's your birthday
hip hip hooray
Look what I baked
The birthday cake
(Happy Birthday)
Here is your song
It's not too long
-I can't figure out what this line is-
another year
Make a wish and blow out all the candles

Hee hee! Makes me laugh! Have a great day!

P.S.

We are going to Colorado in March to enjoy the greatest month of the year by partaking of the madness that is the NCAA Tourney! its serendipity baby!

And Ashley wants me to add that it will be nice to see family and the new nephew, blah blah.....

Welcome to the World Cayden!

On Friday, December 7th, Brent's brother Jared and his wife Katie welcomed little Cayden Merle to the world. When Jared called us, we were at our ward Christmas party so I had to tell everyone that we had a brand new nephew. I am so excited to meet him in March. And Brent will be really excited to play with him when he can talk. Brent just doesn't really like babies. We love him anyway though.

Don't you just love that hat? Who could possibly have made that cute hat? Ok, I'll admit, it was me. It turned out rather cute. I was so worried that it wouldn't fit him because it looked so small, but .... it seems big!

Congrats Jared and Katie! We love you so much and are so glad that Cayden is here healthy and happy!

Wait - Where are those Plans for the Ark?

I know I'm a couple of days late with this post, but life hasn't stopped.... more on that later.



This past weekend was a CRAZY one for us here in Western Washington.



It started on Saturday. We woke up to snow. It doesn't snow very much here, so it's kind of exciting to see it. All told we got about 2", but it rained in the middle of that, so we would have had more. Here's a picture of the trees behind our house. They look aweful pretty.

Sunday dawns to a bit more snow. Here is Western Washington, people aren't used to snow. Plus it's really hilly, so the roads can be dangerous. (Although everyone they talked to on the news said, "I can drive in it, I'm just afraid of everyone else driving in it." Seriously, everyone isn't good at driving in it and I'm pretty sure all those people were just fooling themselves.) Brent had meetings at church at 10a, so he started to leave at 9:30 when the phone rings. On the other end of the line is one of the bishopric saying that they're not going to meet until 10:30 and if he doesn't feel comfortable driving, he doesn't have to come. (This member of the bishopric is from here and so is naturally afraid of the snow.) Brent hangs up the phone and makes a snorting noise. He says, "I can get to the church because 1) I have a 4 wheel drive truck and 2) I can drive in the snow and 3) it's only slushy out there." He's so funny.

So, off to church Brent goes. Last year there was a day similar to this when they did cancel church. Apparently during bishopric meeting, the bishop asked each person there if they would be uncomfortable having their wives drive in this weather. When Brent told me the story, this is how it went:

Bishop: What about you Brother Linton?

Brent: She'll be fine.

Wow, there's a lot of love and caring in those 3 little words. When I was bugging Brent about the conversation later, he ammended his answer to the following:

Brent: Ashley's a good driver, she knows how to drive in the snow, so I'm not worried about her driving here to church.

I personally think the first one is closer to what he said.

Anyway, I kept waiting for Brent to call and say that church was canceled. But, the call never came so I went over there. The other two wards in our building had canceled, so we were the only tough ones that day. By that time it was raining and the roads really were just slushy, but I learned something that day. If you're the only ward in the building, it's really quiet!

We get home from church and are fixing dinner and hoping that the power won't go out. The wind had kicked up at this time and whenever there is wind there are power outages. Our power went out just after dinner - luckily - but then came back on after only a few minutes. We were happy. I mean, I would have missed Amazing Race.

By the end of Sunday, it had started to rain....and rain...and rain.

Monday dawns to some SERIOUS downpours! People are starting to worry about flooding. I'm starting to worry that it's never going to stop. I took a video of the rain from our back deck. You can't see if very well, but you can really hear it. It did this for nearly the whole day.

So, in 48 hours, we got 13" of rain. For those of you who are visual learners like me, that's 13 FEET of snow in a 2 day period. It was INSANE!

Every river in Western Washington flooded. There was just no place else for the water to go. There are sinkholes EVERYWHERE - including over by our post office. In Grays Harbor County, there were 36,000 people without power and you couldn't get to the city of Auburn at all! ALL THE ROADS WERE BLOCKED! Either by downed trees or mud slides. The city of Tahuya was completely cut off when the bridge was taken out. About 1 miles of I-5 was completely underwater - about 10 feet on Monday. Now it's down to 4 feet. Getting better. The detour for that 1 mile stretch of highway is over 400 miles. It is INSANE! There were pictures on the news of salmon swimming up the street. And, Gorst, which I've complained about before was completely underwater thereby cutting Port Orchard off from Bremerton. Luckily, they kept the foot ferries going so Brent had someway to get home.

It was a CRAZY DAY!

Here's the best part. We got through it ok. On Tuesday, our garage was a little damp, but I'm pretty sure most of that was from the cars. We didn't have any flooding and we didn't lose power. I had to finally stop watching the news because it was making me sad. A lot of people have loss their homes or at least, they have to do a lot of clean up. We were blessed!

Once again, this was a pineapple express weather system. What do the Hawaiian Islands have against us?

Hope the weather isn't as crazy where you are. It's definitely dried off here, but we did get another inch of rain on Tuesday. I think we might be in for it this winter.

Have a great day!