I Love Buffalo!

so as i have been reading friends and families blogs regarding thankfulness, i have been inspired. thank you to everyone for that! i shall embark upon a year of expressing gratitude and love, blog-style. and first up would: buffalo!

1. i love the snow! who knew? a rain-loving girl with no aspirations of shoveling anything, except sand occasionally, could love this crazy stuff that seems to be in abundance here at times, but never as much as i think we should have. mexico, ny gets all the love!
2. friends here have been my actual saving grace. all of us in my little family have made such fabulous friends, and i don't know quite how to tell them all how much they have blessed our little family, so thanks to any of you who read this!
3. since dental school is here, it definitely fits into the buffalo thanking department! now, i don't love all the time glenn is away from our family, or the stress he occasionally feels, but i am grateful that he is here doing what he actually wants to do. getting here, was so hard and disastrous at times, which translates into a huge testimony building experience, at least for me. and that is why i love UB!
4. we left a truly amazing ward in portland, & i was very nervous to meet our ward here, but of course they overwhelmed me! the ward kind of fits into our "friends" category, but is so much than that, so i gave it a special spot for it's own. we fit in perfectly here, with students & "normal" families alike. sometimes i am blown away by the generosity of the people in our ward, & the acceptance that seems to radiate from most of the members. we wouldn't quite as happy a family without our extended family here. love you!
5. that we don't actually live in buffalo, is definitely on the list. i love how we are in the "country" and yet only 5 minutes from target and wegman's. it is beautiful here, & very peaceful & so safe that sometimes i wish we could stay here & never leave. but alas, in a couple of years we will be out of here, with only memories and friends to take with us.


now i know that this is not a big list, but i love it all and i'm so grateful for all the things on it!

Rakin' In the Kids

one day last week i noticed that the leaves had piled up so much that i could no longer see the flagstones for our walkway, and i decided to have special one-on-one time with the rake. after a few minutes the kids caught on to my sneakiness, and they tried to help me, but with only the 1 rake they got creative. caleb used a sand shovel and a lot of force, while toran found the tiny broom and swept away the leaves on the ground!

i ended up playing with haven for awhile once she woke up from her nap. and her new boots proved to be very cumbersome on the slide. i of course purchased them a bit big so as to get 2 seasons worth out my $, but they kept popping off her tiny feet when she would try to get her legs onto the actual slide from the ladder. eventually, she ran away after one episode in just her socks, and stayed that way until we went inside for some serious bath time!

ciela graciously took over my actual assigned duty of raking and did a marvelous job, all the while caleb is foiling her almost just as quickly with his lightning quick shovel moves!

the boys had been begging to play in the leaf pile that "the men" as we call them (actually the landlords hired help who thankfully take care of the yard a lot) had made from all our leaves several days previous to this, and so i gave in and they went hog wild, with my piles!


the boys can be happy in almost any situation of dirtiness and loudness can be involved. they buried each other and then both together so they would look like they were one of the leaves!

haven is growing so fast lately! she says a lot more words now and her curiosity for all things not baby approved is daunting. her vocab list includes: book, baby, ciela, toran, caleb, cup, more, outside, bye-bye, shoe, up, down, banana, pablo, dora, boots, backyardigans, elmo, mouse, mama, mama (actually meaning dada), no, stop, and bath. she gets very excited for most things still and kicks and giggles and has a silly lop-sided huge grin! she is currently teething 8 teeth at once, and just went to the dentist for the first time. she of course, cried.

Halloweeny

halloween at our house was long with several days of partying, and way too much loot! the second day of parties began with the kids having their school shin-digs, and then coming home and heading off to the tae kwon do party. this was great fun, with games and stunts performed by some of the instructors. there was a halloween costume contest and caleb won for the 3 and 4 year olds. although i feel like we cheated a bit because they thought he was the "bow-tied dinosaur" (what is that?) and it is plain to see that he is pablo! he won a tae kwon do gourd for his prize, i was just glad it wasn't a bag of candy!

here's all the kids after the tkd party and full day at school, as we are heading to go beg for treats from the neighbors. they are all frazzled, with bits of costumes left at various location and and some dinner and other food adding to the loveliness. we barely got this shot, everyone was so whiny and tired, i don't even know how we made it walking around the few blocks that we went to. ciela ended up staying out extra long with some neighbors from across the street who have kids her age. she had a great time, and no one complained about needing anymore candy. in fact, caleb asked many times to go home before we finally did, and even stopped trick-or-treating for about 1 block. haven on the hand got better at each house, and near the end would baby sign for "more" when she got up to the door, and stopped fussing and gave up the binky entirely! it was a lot more fun than i thought it would be this year. haven is ready for anything now!

the best close up of haven we ended up with . she was a blue octopus, and so cute. the first party we went to she wouldn't wear the hood, so i put her hair into 8 little bear-ears (buns), so so cute! by the 3rd time in the costume she loved the whole thing and kept the hood on all the time. we never got good shots of ciela or toran, but bayla was hannah montana with a wig she seriously regretted begging for. and toran was a fighter pilot, a pretty cool costume i found for $7 after glenn realized his homemade optimus prime wasn't rain weather friendly (though if you know the gman you know it would've been totally sweet! with big chunks of boxes painted with decals for the choppy body parts, way better than the 2-D version from the store) and so i had to make a costume run!

thankfully caleb was willing to be pablo again this year. this boy has the most creative costume ideas and i really wish i would act on them sooner. last year he wanted to be a red apple, and i contemplated how to make one and even searched the internet for costumes but i was not willing to pay the crazy prices, so i convinced him that pablo would be even better. this year he wanted to be a stool! i really had no idea what to do, and didn't even try looking for ready-made ones, i just frequently encouraged pablo again, and again. sometimes caleb does listen.

Various Knots and Nots!

things are moving along here in the ashfam house, and while i fiddle around with a different picture program i am trying to update the world on our happenings. here is toran tying a "cape" to haven, and while she is sad here, she did love it for several minutes! you can see toran's room here with red and white stripe walls and the navy and hammered-metal dresser, which we spray painted to change the previous color of tan.



here is ciela wearing her new blue belt, which she received earlier in this class, with toran in the low-belt family class. they are sparring eachother here. now ciela is considered a high belt, and so they won't be taking any classes together again for awhile. ciela had to test for blue belt at another location for the school (they have 6) and that was very difficult for her. but after a few minutes of tears she talked with one of the instructors who dates one of ciela's instructors, and relaxed enough to go onto the floor.

glenn grew out his facial hair for halloween with intentions to have a costume to go along with some "look". but we ended up running a bit late for our day-of-halloween party, and so no fun could be had then. nevertheless, the following day glenn began demonstrating his artistic abilities in the form of hair. here is the the cowboy stache

one of my least favorite offerings would be the slimy stache! and here is the green in the tv room portion of the front room. i love it!