Happy birthday Princess Ashlyn

Happy 8th birthday to the most beautiful, precious princess in all of the land. My dearest Ashlyn I love you with every ounce of my spirit, mind and body. You are the breath in my lungs and the beat in my heart and I cannot imagine my life without you. When God gave you to me, it was the biggest blessing to my life and I do not know what in the world I did that was so good to deserve a special gift like you.

Here you are just 3 years and 2 mos ago...it was the first day that you started walking. I remember it like it was yesterday. You were 4 years and 10 mos old. and the day was such a special day! You sure have come a long way baby --- from being a tiny baby battling those beastly infantile spasms for a year, unable to do much at all.... to the feisty, fast, silly, loving, beautiful, sassy, precious princess that you are today.

Look at you running now!!!

Happy Birthday Beautiful!

A look at Ashy through the years

Baby Ashlyn

Noodle girl

Ashlyn, baby brother Mason & big brother Spenser

Me & my daddy

Mommy & Ashlyn

Learning to walk with a walker

Ashlyn in her *wilder* days, LOL

You lost your first tooth at 7 years old

You being beautiful you!

what's that smell?

Mason is the craziest kid around here. He has always been a *smeller*. The boy smells EVERYTHING....good or bad! He has always smelt everything that he puts in his mouth and anything else that comes his way. A few weeks ago my best friend Renee (who lives in Oregon now) was visiting us. Ashlyn stayed busy pulling things out of her suitcase and tossing them around the bedroom. I walked by the room and see Mason inspecting a bag on the floor. It is a clear Ziploc bag with round, brown objects in it. I see him swipe his hand across the bag and then smell his hand and he walks off. I bust out laughing and asked him what he was doing and he tells me "I was seeing if that was poop in that bag!" Haaa haaaa it was a bag of chocolate covered nuts :)

So when it is time for my best buddy to go back home we take her to the airport and pull up to help her unload her bags. I knew that we weren't going anywhere else so I let Mason get in the van without taking any shoes. When we stop and unload her bags he gets out and decides that he wants to know what the airport smells like! I try to talk him out of it because he has no shoes on and his booty is a little too big for me to carry around....but I end up caving. After all, how could I deprive him of *smelling* the airport? So here we go- me carrying his big ol' booty, cradling him like a baby in through the sliding doors...tell him to get a swift sniff and we run out the other door! Ahhhh the things we do for our kids!

Princess A~

New parents who get a diagnosis of Down syndrome for their baby are often frightened and concerned about how this will affect their other children. My son Spenser is 12 years old now (almost 13) and love his little sister Ashlyn to pieces. How many pre-teen boys do you know that will let their little sister sleep with them at night? Ashlyn has been so spoiled this summer by NOT sleeping in her own bed. She wanted to sleep with Spenser about a month and a half ago and now asks every night to sleep with "Pensa" aka Spenser. Those rotten rascals lay in there and watch t.v for hours and I know that it is going to be so hard when school starts back less than 2 weeks from now.

Spenser has told me several times that he will always take care of his little sister and that as long as he is around I would never have to worry about her. I hear stories all the time of how siblings *argue* over who will take care of their sibling with DS because they both want to care for the sibling with DS.... awesome to hear that they aren't arguing because they *don't* want to care for them. :) I think these pictures speak for themselves........

Rain rain go away....

ooooops, wait, wait never mind...we are having too much fun~~