2nd post in a week, go me!

Ok well I promised I'd be better about posting and I'm doing my best to keep that word! This week we have been feeling really accomplished about getting some stuff done around the house. Tomorrow marks exactly 1 month since I left my job and although it took a little time to get into a groove (and motivated, the holidays took alot out of us!) we are finally settling into a good routine and that feels awesome! It's nice living in a clean house again, not the cluttered, "a one year old lives here" tornado mess it was while we were both working. It always felt like there were never enough hours in a day to keep up with it all, and still enjoy spending time together as a family. Our next bigger project will be moving the office from the 3rd bedroom upstairs, down to the bedroom in the basement. Not really sure yet what we will do with the old office upstairs when it's empty as we dont' have an extra bed to put in there and make it a guest room, but i'm sure we'll figure out something to do with it. Ok, obviously it'll be another nursery at some point, but I can assure you that won't be in the next 9 months :-)

Ashlynne continues to grow, grow, grow and learn, learn, learn!! This week has been a big clothes dressing/undressing week. She has learned how to take her pants off (which has been alot of fun trying to get her to keep them on let me tell you!!:)) and also she's big on socks. Her socks, Daddy's socks, Mommy's socks, she's an equal opportunity sock fan. She's been pulling hers off since she was probably, I'm not sure, 6 months old?! but now she's figured out she can put them back on, and its even funner to get ahold of big people socks and put those on as well since they have bigger holes and easier to get on. It's pretty funny, they come clear up over her thighs!


Well that's all I have for now! Justin and I begin "operation get the heck back in shape" starting on Monday next week, so I'm sure we'll have something to post about that!

WOW it's been too long!!

Holy Holy! Life got way to much away from me and I have severly neglected our blog! I promise I'll be back from now on! Well, being that my last post was in September, clearly alot of things have changed since then, and instead of writing the worlds longest entry I will try and do more of a summary. Ashlynne is now 15 months old and my oh my how time flys! She is our little defiant, opinionated, sassy pants all rolled up into a sweet, huggable, teddy bear if that is at all possible. It's been fun to watch her vocabulary grow and how she interacts with her world now, and things seem to change day to day and week to week.

Here is Ashlynne on New Years Eve :)

I know in our last post I talked about how we had all these new changes with work, Justin went to graveyards and I went to full time. Well Justin is still working graveyards and it only took about 3-4 months for us to figure out that me working was not the life for us. So as of December 15th I became a full time stay at home mom. Best decision we've ever made! It's not like we're independantly wealthy or anything, we are blessed by Justin having a good job with excellent benefits (and one that he escaped recent budget cuts on thank goodness) but we also know that this was a decision that would come with some sacrifices, in order to receive the blessings of being able to raise our child/future children first hand. Its been intersting how learning to live less friviously has made us so much happier. We learned the value of our tax paying dollar and Justin now goes to the library for books (instead of 15-30 bucks a week easily spent), we cancelled our rediculousy priced digital cable and home phone we never used anyways and instead opted for just the good ol basic comes through the wall 30 channels and the cheapest netflix package. Cancelling cable seemed so hard at first, in theory, but then once we actually did it, we noticed we dont miss it at all. It's really intersting how you can be so much happier with so much less.

So I would say thats our nutshell catch up on the last 4 months I've missed on here. We had a wonderful holiday season getting to spend time with family and friends visiting town, and are now looking forward to settling into our new routines around the house having me around full time (leaving work right before the holidays didnt' set us up well for an immediate routine, however I will say it was soo nice to be off for those couple weeks!!) We hope everyone else is doing well, and I'll update more soon!

-Beth (Justin and Ashlynne)

Life as usual...well ok maybe not! :)

Well September seems to be bringing many changes for our household! Justin started a new shift (graveyards 4 nights a week) and I'm settling into my new work schedule of being back full time again (for the first time really in 1 1/2 years) . Oh yeah, lets not forget the major change....Ashlynne is WALKING! I would officially say she is a walker, she mostly chooses that as her mode of transportation now and she acts as if its no big deal, been doing this all along mom!! Of course with any new walker comes a new multitude of bumps and bruises and she wasted no time last night tripping and falling into a side table and bumping her noggin! :( Justin reminded me that its bound to happen and with a quick redirection she decided the world wasn't going to end after all!

At the end of August Justin and I celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary and its amazing how 2 years can seem like forever but also fly by all at the same time! Nothing like celebrating your 2 year anniversary and then having your first childs first birthday one day shy of a month later! Lets just say we have a plan and it doesn't include another one...just yet;)

Last weekend Ashlynne and I stayed back and Justin took an extended weekend trip to southern Idaho to climb Mt. Borah with his Uncle and some cousins. I think it ended up being a little bit more of a daunting task then he originally imagined but he did it and we couldn't be prouder of him! I'm sure he could write a much more interesting blog about the trip and climb then I could trying to do it for him so maybe I'll persuede him to work on that ;)

Other then that life is great, we're staying busy as always and its been so fun to watch Ashlynne grow and develope, especially over the last month, she's become so much more toddler like lately and less like a baby...which it's been a blessing to begin to get more sleep again, but at the same time very sad to realize just how fast they grow up! We hope everyone else is doing well!




Justin with "some more" to go!

The White gang at the top (Justin, Christian, Ben, John and Eli)

-Beth (Justin and Ashlynne)

First blog :)

Ok well I (Beth) have decided that we need to do this to help everyone keep up to date with us. I will teach Justin in due time so look forward to some future posts coming from him! I can't believe that it is August already! Where has the time gone?! To think that just a year ago I was sweltering in the Eastern Washington sun, being horribly, misserably 8 months pregnant! All the while being so eager to meet the littlest White growing in my belly! Well a year has come and gone and here we are, proud parents of the most stinking cute monkey on the planet (she really is a monkey, does everything with her feet!) So here will be the intro update:

Justin- Is still working away doing an excellent job of supporting us, especially in a job that not many people could handle doing. He just bid for his fall schedule and will be switching from working swing shift to graveyards. That will be a hard adjustment I think for all of us to make but it's somewhat necessary, and we'll actually end up seeing each other more that way...I say it is necessary because...

Beth- I have decided after 10 months of staying home with Ashlynne (and 2 months of modified bed rest before she was born) that I would like to go back to working full time. So between my m-f 9-5 type shift, and Justin working graveyards we won't need anymore daycare then we already use right now for Ashlynne. Which is great! It's been a hard decision to make, but I feel in my heart this is right, and I know we could use the extra money around the house (being new homeowners and all in Jan 09) I should be starting to full time schedule in the next 2 weeks I believe. Its the same job and dept I've been doing for 2 days a week part time since before Ashlynne was born so thank goodness no change there!!

Ashlynne- She is already 10 months old! I can hardly believe how fast the time goes. In less than 2 months we will be celebrating her first birthday! (Which of course I have already started planning!:)) She has been crawling for about 3 months now and as of the last 2 weeks or so she'll walk between people and starts to take more steps on her own...it will just be a matter of time before she takes off! She has 8 teeth (has had them since 8 months) and we think 9-12 are on their way in as well. The poor thing has been teething since 3 months, I feel for her! Our joke is that she'll be eating a steak for her first birthday if she keeps it up!

Here are some pictures I took of her today over at Grandma and Grandpa Gehret's house