Seven Weeks Lost

Wow, the last seven weeks have flown by. Our sweet little Ashleigh is almost 8 weeks old. Like her big sister, she loves to be held all day (and sometimes all night). She is a cute little girl and we feel so blessed to have our little family. Sorry for the lack of pictures and updates. One broken laptop + one broken camera lens = zero blog updates. I'll post pictures soon. Mike and I have also been busy watching our nightly dose of the Glenn Beck show. Our country is at a scary crossroads right now. Mike even started a blog about it: www.changeblindness.blogspot.com. We may seem crazy, but some of this stuff is scary. I would recommend that everyone should at least check up on the stuff that our government is doing. It never hurts to be informed.

Anyway, life is good and the girls are doing great. I'll get some pictures on here soon!

Ashleigh Jane Richards

I realized that I never officially told anyone our babies name. We had decided awhile ago but I hadn't figured out how I wanted to spell it until they made me fill out the birth certificate before I left the hospital. So we now have some more pictures of our little girl. Not as many as I would like because she spent two days in the hospital in her tanning bed trying to get rid of her jaundice. We think that it is all gone but we will know later today if she needs the lights at home or not, hopefully not. She has been home since yesturday afternoon and just hanging out and sleeping, well at least during the day. She decided that it was play time at 4 am last night and that wasn't so much fun for Mike who was kind enough to hang out with her downstairs. Caitlyn seems to be doing a little better with her sister and woke up from her nap asking where baby was. She does like giving baby her binki and bottle and I think it is the cutest thing ever. Here are some more pictures of our little girls.




The first time Mike held Ashleigh in front of Caitlyn, she had a little bit of a meltdown and threw herself on the ground and was not to happy.

By the time we took her homw she seemed to be a little more happy with the baby and kept smiling at her on the way home and trying to make her smile.

She even gave a little clap for her when we finally got home.

Baby Girl Richards #2

She is finally here!! I can't be more excited, and Mike also. We are still waiting on Caitlyn, she seems to be warming up to the idea but it has only been 24 hours so we will give her a little more time. She is just sad that Mommy and Daddy haven't been around. Our beautiful little girl arrived June 22nd at 5:09 PM. Now here comes the fun news, she came with a bang at 10 pounds, yep 10! that's a whole lot of baby and everything that comes with it (PAIN)!!! She is beautiful and wonderful and has the cry of her sister, so anyone living within a 5 mile radius beware if the two of them decide to let it all out in unison! So here are a few pictures of the new baby. I just realized there are that many good ones so I will take on the picture taking because I take about 100 at once to get the good ones. And A few of big sister just hanging out being her crazy self.




Nothing says summer like a slurpee and chilling in the car. I love this girl!!!

Happy Birthday Mike, a week or so ago..

So I am really bad at this posting thing!! Seriously it was Mikes' birthday last week and I was going to do a post for him but then I just kept putting it off. I feel that I don't have anything new to say since my life is pretty much the same everyday. I will say that Mike is the best husband in the whole world and I don't think that anyone could top him as a dad, just ask Caitlyn!! He is the best dad and she loves him more than anything! So life is the same and Caitlyn is still a little on the crazy side! So here are some fun pictures of her as she is slowly growing up and becoming more and more of a little girl each day. I don't like it very much but I guess that it will happen no matter how much I complain.


Caitlyn used to have the cutest picture smile, but now every time she sees the camera she turns into cheesy fake smile girl, at least it is cute still! My sister is here with her 3 month old baby so we pulled out the old baby toys and Caitlyn has really enjoyed them, a lot more than she did back in the day!

Caitlyn has now learned how to climb into the second shelf and just hang out! Her new thing lately has been to try and dress herself. so she puts on all these clothes over her other clothes and we have some interesting outfits that come out of the whole thing. Just check out the shorts and pant combo going on!! Plus the pants are from last year and are 9 month pants.

Caitlyn loves her stuffed animals and cuddling with as many as possible, she has four in this picture even though Mulan is getting the short end of the deal with her hair being pulled. Caitlyn's other new thing is to wedge herself into the couch cushions and just hang out there, she is crazy as I have mentioned before!

Sunday, wonderful Sunday

I love the weekends more than ever! Mainly because Mike is home and that makes Caitlyn and I very happy. Caitlyn's perfect world is her mom and dad right by her side at all times. My perfect world would be that Mike wouldn't ever have to work again and just hang out all the time with us and with Caitlyn so I could sleep!! As I mention often, Caitlyn is a crazy girl. First funny story is from church. We always sit on the very last row in the cultural hall so Caitlyn has plenty of room to roam in the back. She was walking around when she saw the bread come by and decided that she wanted some, so I gave her a piece. Well she decided that wasn't enough and proceeded to follow the poor little deacon around most of the way to the front to see if she could get some more bread. We do feed her and bring lots of food for her, but it never seems good enough for her. Then after church she started something that has continued all week. Mike was reading a book so she got all of her books from her basket and decided to read with him. She was very funny about it. She would get a book and open some pages and jabber away as if she was reading the book and then throw it to the side and pick up a different book. This went on for about an hour. She then wanted to share the pillow with dad while reading and then decided that her chair was the best place for reading and would read over there and than run across the room to get a new book. She is a funny girl and we love it. Mike has always said that he wants to teach his children to love reading and learning, so I think were off to a good start, if only we could insure it would last forever, yeah we'll see!!

18 Months, plus a couple days...

Our little girl is getting so big. It is hard to believe that she has hit the 18 month mark already. Everyone told us that things get really fun at 18 months. I think that Caitlyn has been fun for awhile but she just gets funnier every day. It is exciting to see her personality coming out everyday. Caitlyn was born was personality and attitude that has continued to grow since then. She is a funny little girl that is a little OCD at times and makes me laugh everyday, most of the time multiple times during the day. All that personality has its draw backs and the attitude comes out more and more, tantrums and screaming are two of her two new favorite things. There are some other things that she has started to do. Her new favorite is to clean, with wipes, and put a diaper on all of her stuffed animals. I think it is funny to watch even though it makes quite a mess, but I have learned that a little mess is a minimal price to pay for her happiness and not whining. She also likes to dress up all of her stuffed animals with cloths, bows, and especially shoes. She loves shoes and loves putting them on everyone around. It shouldn't be a surprise that my daughter's 5th word in the world is shoes. She also loves to put things in baskets and transfer them back and forth between baskets. Most people might think that is weird and boring but I think it is the funniest think in the world and that she is the cutest kid ever. I can't think of the other things that she does. Oh, she loves to take her dads hat and put it on and laughs hysterically and thinks she is the funniest thing in the world. Other eventful things have been a burst eardrum that started leaking blood, yeah that one freaked me out a little! And then the ensuing antibiotics for the next two weeks, which was horrible to give to her and made her pee smell horrible. She has attempted to go to nursery for the last two weeks, which has not gone so well. She runs in there and doesn't even look back, until about 15 minutes into it and then she realizes that we are not in there and freaks out. Caitlyn is not like some kids that can be consoled or distracted once she works up into a frenzy. So she hasn't lasted very long. Hopefully it will get better, they are supposedly splitting the nursery since there were 20 kids in there on Sunday. The leaders are great but 20 kids is insane and they don't like the parents to sit in there the whole time, which is understandable with that many kids and everything. So her are some more fun pictures of my little Rouske doing some of her favorite things. It is getting harder and harder to get a good picture of her because she moves so fast and when she looks at the camera she stops smiling for some reason, but she is still cute!

Where are you Spring?

I have learned that I don't really like winter that much. It is nice for about a week and then I am done with it. There is nothing fun about it and I think that it should only snow in the mountains and then be about 70 degrees at my house all year long! That would be my perfect world. So to help with this dream Caitlyn and I took a little trip to California where it is nice and warm!! My sister Holly just had her baby so we went to visit her and my other sister Mary and her two kids. It was Caitlyn's first time on a plane and it was a good thing my other sister Diane came with us or the person that would have had to sit next to us wouldn't have been a very happy person. She didn't really cry, just wiggled around and wanted to be everywhere, which is very normal for her. Being a first child, Caitlyn has never had to be around other kids for an extended period of time and this didn't go over very well at first. I time to socialize the little girl but we get to go home to her house after about an hour. So she had Evan and Sadie around her 24 hours a day. She would just cry every time Sadie came around and tried to touch "her" toys. After about 4 days she caught on to the fact that it was fun to have kids to play with and her and Sadie seemed to like each other! It was so nice to take a week break and be in warm weather and play outside all day. Caitlyn loved playing in Evan's "park" in his back yard. We even made a trip out to visit my grandma in LA and she had fun riding Sunny the dog and going to the beach for the first time. She wasn't so happy about the sand at first on her feet, but she liked it after a minute and played around and had so much fun! She is a funny little girl that doesn't like sand or dirt or anything on her hands, she gets that from her dad! So her are some fun pictures from the adventures. To make my hatred of winter worse it snowed the day that we came back and has been cold for the last week. I hear next week is supposed to get warmer, we will see!!