The one that got away... thankfully!

So this is a picture of the house we didn't buy....

                                                   

Amanda will probably take it off of here once she realizes I've updated the post.  Which, if anyone is familiar with us, might take till the first of the year.  We were supposed to close on the house while we were on vacation, then come back and move right in.  In fact, Amanda and I had spent quite a bit of time and effort getting most of our house packed up before the trip so we could move out when we got home.  Needless to say we found out two days before closing that there are flooding problems with the neighbor and our crawl space.  

So we're in the hunt again....

Washington Trip

So we went up to Washington for a final summer vacation before we started teaching.  We didn't actually go to the Space Needle this time.

We rode up to my parents lake house in eastern Washington for some fishing, swimming, boating, and eating (we may not show it, but we Grimmers can put the food away - and we start them young).

             Ashlyn's eating a PB&J

What boating trip is a success unless there's some beautiful girl leaning over the bow with the wind whipping her hair yelling "I'm the King of the World!"

 

With a company such as Wyatt, Cody, Bodey (Samantha's BF), Andrew Ashmore (a friend of ours) and myself; and a giant water trampoline, somebody had to be the king of the mat!  It took just about everyone to toss Bodey into the water. 

From Lake Palmer we took the North Cascades Highway (Hwy 20) back over to Darrington.  On the way we stopped at the top of Rainy Pass to take a few pictures.

Just as we were coming of part of the pass and into Winthrop we stopped and said hello to some of the locals.

The Day Before we left we made a trip out to San Juan Island, which is part of the San Juan Islands in the Pudget Sount Area.  It was about an hours ferry out to Friday Harbor.  While there spotted many wild creatures:

While on the island we went out to Lime Kiln Point to see if there were any whales hanging out.  

And then we went out to Roche Harbor.

We had quite a bit of fun throwing a football around, playing with Ashlyn and taking pictures  every once in a while.

The worst part of the whole trip was getting stuck behind the slow poke ahead of us.

The dramatics and excitements!

Well Ashlyn is almost walking! We're so excited for her, but also a little nervous for her little head. She hasn't had too many falls yet so we're thinking that we're just awesome parents:) haha:)

Along with all of the excitements in life, there must be drama. Ashlyn happens to of taken my place with the drama since she's gotten older:) (Ok, maybe not completely taken over the drama, but mostly! haha). This happens to be an hour before her bed time so she was a little on the tired side and this is what our baby angel turns into........:)

a recap

So, we've been a bit busy lately, hence the few posts of the last few months.  We're alive and doing well and as busy as ever.  For starters, we graduated about a month ago (finally) and will soon enter into the real world.  

Amanda is currently student teaching out in Parker/Egin Elementary, which is somewhere out in the middle of the desert.  She came home and told me she was going to buy a witch's hat.  Apparently the third graders she's teaching were being a bit out of control - she was at her whit's end and said "You kids are making me into a really mean person, and I'm not a mean person".  I guess the kids all quieted down and were pretty scared after that.

Amanda had a birthday, 22 years old.  We celebrated by taking a bike ride on her new blue bicycle.

We had our two year anniversary.  That was exciting - we did something fun...I can't recall what it was.  I'm sure after Amanda reads this she'll get on and fix it.

I had my 24 birthday and Amanda made me breakfast in bed.

  

Ashlyn is getting pretty mobile.  Amanda and I have a bet as to when she'll be able to walk.  I think it'll be before her birthday in June.  Amanda says it'll be after.  Right now she can do pretty well walking along the wall or holding onto a finger.  Every once in a while we can catch her off guard and get her to stand up without holding onto anything.  Yet after she realizes there aren't any safety lines, she squats down pretty darn quick.

For those of you who occasionally look at our blog, we apologize, it may be another month or so before we even look at it!

It's a race!

So on Friday, one of my friends, Trina Busch, needed a babysitter so that she could go to the temple with her husband. Trina has a daughter named Melanie that is only 1 week older than Ashlyn, so we get together once a week and let them play. I told her that I could watch Melanie and we had a blast! Her and Ashlyn were playing so cute together, but once they started to race towards me.........well you can see Ashlyn's reaction for yourself:)

FHE Boats!

For FHE tonight we decided to do something really quick for the activity because Ashlyn was really tired and ready for bed. So we put her in the bath tub and while one was watching her, the other was in the office making a paper boat:). When both of them were done, we decided to see whose Ashlyn would destroy first so here it is!

Happy Valentine's Day!

Well Valentine's Day started out just like a pretty typical Saturday, except that Jared got to spend more time with me and Ashlyn because it's a 3 day weekend, HURRAY! Ashlyn peed everywhere so she had to take a bath, which turned out to be her first bubble bath-Jared's idea:) Later on, Jared and her got to take a nap together which was absolutely adorable. Jared gave me a sweet card and also.......Florence's chocolates!  Funny Story: Ever since me and Jared have been engaged, I've always talked about how great Florence's chocolate's are. My mom only gets them every Valentine's Day and Christmas because their pretty expensive. I told Jared, "The way to a woman's heart is with Florence's chocolates." Do you think Jared ever bought me Florence's chocolates? No, haha, it's Jared. But finally, I dropped enough hints that he got them for me this Valentine's Day and I was so excited! It only took 2 years and there's no going back:) Don't get me wrong, Jared does so many other sweet things for me everyday, he's the best thing that has ever happened in my life and I love him so much. 

During the afternoon, we got to make sugar cookies, that was a lot of fun. They turned out perfect too! I was so excited, so we took some to our new neighbors that are living in my grandma's house, it was really nice to meet them. 

Later, we went to eat at Big Jud's for dinner with my parents. Jared and I have ate at Big Jud's every Valentine's Day because it's not your most typical place to eat for Valentine's Day. The first time was when we were engaged. We made shirts before we went and Jared's said "I'm with her," with an arrow pointing to the side. Mine said, "He's stalking me!" haha, good times. Anyways, it just kind of became tradition!

The white stuff on my nose is Jared's doing-whipped cream from our shake:)

This is one-whole-pound-of-meat-burger! It's called a "Big Jud." We get it every year because it's shaped like a heart (well, it's supposed to be a heart).

Lots of fun together

Alright I'll be the first to admit that I'm not very consistent at updating our blog, but it gets done once in a while! Haha, Christmas vacation was great, we went up to Washington to visit Jared's parents and family and while there we discovered that Ashlyn weighed 17.5 pounds which means that she probably weighs close to 19 pounds now! She's getting really big and we just love having her with us. Jared and I are both back in school, Jared is doing his student teaching at Skyline High School in Idaho Falls and will graduate in April! I'm planning on doing my student teaching this summer, hopefully here, but we won't find out until March. Going to school and having a baby has been really hard for us because when we're together and with Ashlyn, we just want to play with her and be with each other! I know that I couldn't do it without my mom and sister though, it's been a real blessing in our lives to be going to school here and getting our education. As you can see, I'm not the best with blog and I can't figure out how to rotate the pictures so you may have to slightly tilt your head:) 

Seattle Science Center

The table grew!!!! Ashlyn doesn't know what to do:)

Ok well in this picture Jared shrunk:)

Space Needle

Ok, I know this is getting old, sorry!

Back Home

I decided to put Ashlyn in the middle of all of her toys because she was really upset that she couldn't reach some

Pop! Goes the Ashlyn!

We recently discovered that Ashlyn  LOVES baby puffs. As you can see from his face, Jared was the mastermind to this mess:)

We also use them as bribery to crawl:) She hasn't quite got it down yet.

Jared and I went to the bookstore and bought me a new bag for my teaching, Ashlyn fit perfectly in it! Whenever we would walk by anyone and Ashlyn would make a noise, they had to double take cuz they weren't sure where the sound came from:) haha