My Baby is 9!

Ashley is celebrating 9 years old today, and tomorrow, and the next day! She is excited to be "partying" for 3 days! She started off early about 5:30am to be exact wanting to crack open those presents, I made them (Emma was up too) wait until 6:00. Ryan was not happy with me, but I was as excited as the girls! I love opening presents! Here is the loot! Heavy, Heavy, hang over on herself? Emma got distracted by other presents during her turn for heavy heavy hang over.

There it is, she FINALLY got her own "American girl" knock off doll and a horse named Show off to go with her. A couple of doll outfits and a couple of outfits for herself. I of course had to make another twirly skirt, I am just loving those!

Ryan helping get Mary Lyn dressed, what a good Dad! Although he was pretty upset about the whole 6AM thing. He could get up and go to work at that time, but he didn't think we needed to get up that early to open presents???

Justin playing Mary Lyn's violin, she is a musical doll and she even came with tickets to her own snowflake show. How appropriate for Ashley, the QUEEN of shows!

Her birthday pancake.

What a BEAUTIFUL girl! We Love our Ashley!

Lunch with Mom at school (and Claire)She got an ice cream party with her school class
And she got 2 cards in the mail from Grandma Nielson and Grandma Violet! What a lucky girl!

Ryan and I are taking her to see Alice In Wonderland tomorrow night and then we will have cake on Sunday, see three days of parties, what more could a nine year old want!

Ashleys Past 9 Years

This is my first attempt at scanning pictures. I obviously will have to work with it a bit more! Here is our baby girl 9 years ago;6 lbs 6 oz, March 12, 2001, 6:48 am She was 10 days over due, surprisingly I can remember all of that myself! Ashley at 1 year, she got this pony for her birthday. 2002

The top picture is 3rd birthday 2004, and 2nd birthday with a Pooh cake and a fuzzy headed baby sister! 2003 This is Ashley at 4 in 2005.Ashley's 5th, in 2006 notice the tiara and the shirt says Beauty Queen, so ASHLEY!
This was in the Fall 2006 before her 6th birthday, what a pretty little girl!2008 she turned 7, and designed her own cake! Yummy strawberries!Special # 8 in 2009!TODAY 9 years old in 2010

Claire's Routine

Claire is following suit, she is waking up in the night every night! So frustrating! All of our kids have done this and then starts the sleeping in our bed routine which we are NOT going to fall into this time. (i hope) We do really good keeping little babies out of our bed, with out fail they hit 2, 2 1/2 and they think they need to sleep with us. Fortunately Claire is still in her crib so she cant come in our room in the night, unless I give in and bring her in. Last night it took a couple little pats on her back and she was right back to sleep, so I don't know. Monday night she woke up crying for her sister, I said "do you want your sister Emma?" Claire said, " I want my sister Justin." SO cute! Justin just loves to hear me tell everyone this little funny, and then he says, "she means me, her sister" So funny! Wish us luck tonight!

Jr. Cheer Clinic

We have been up to our pom poms in Cheer this week, it has really been SO MUCH FUN! I have loved getting to help out a little! The girls are so cute and so willing to learn. Almost all of them have caught on so fast and easy, it is AWESOME! I cant wait to see them perform, they will do GREAT! Just thinking about it makes me EXCITED! GO TIGERS! (toe kick)
READY, OK.


Little girls posing, with BIG smiles!

We Are The Cheerleaders!
The older girls figuring it all out! They ROCKED! I will post pictures of the performance later this month!
thanks everyone who helped me out! marcie, lain, april,sara,becky!

Celebrating Spring!

We had a get-together last night celebrating Spring, new baby calves, and whatever else we could come up with! Sara and I were so pleased with our doughnuts last week that we wanted to invite someone over to share them with. We figure we made over 100 doughnuts last night and had about 40 + people come to celebrate! We had a great time, although, I am still having mixed feelings about spring already being here, I am not ready to let go of my husband yet, but I am SO ready for warm weather!
A sampling of doughnuts for YOU!



Ryan rolling some out, Sara wouldn't be photographed in her present pregnant state, she did look very cute though dipping all those doughnuts!

Some friends visiting, and a few babies!

LOTS of kids! Jaci came up to me and asked, "Aunt Mijken, why are all of these kids going CRAZY?" It was so cute and sweet! She didn't quite get why everyone needed to be BOUNCING off the walls! Thank goodness for the basement we didn't even hear any of them, except when someone got hurt of course......
Justin slipped and hit his eye and nose on the kids couch, it almost broke the skin, we would have been headed to the ER instead of enjoying the party, thankfully it was just a bloody nose and a little black eye. He was not very happy though and ended up going to bed with a house full of friends over, he was to exhausted!
He is much better this morning though, just a little swollen and dark. Ashley also got a bloody nose, she some how hit her nose on someone else's head, OH the coordination we lack in our family! She is fine this morning too, all the kids went to bed easily and with no complaints! We are fortunate to have so many good family, friends, and neighbors! I think we may have just started a new tradition!

Name That Movie

Yesterday was no school for the kids so we had time on our hands to watch a family favorite. I will give you a couple of hints: Ashley and Justin are riding horses, Emma is yelling, "Jessica!, Jess!" And it has a really great soundtrack to go with it. Give up? Its Man From Snowy River, of course! The kids LOVE this show, Ashley especially. She watched both of them yesterday and they all had a great time re-enacting it all! Funny kids!

Sundays Photo-OP

We attempted some pictures yesterday before church, as you can see we weren't very successful! Claire wanted to continue playing, Justin had a dirty face and wouldn't come to get his hair combed and Ryan was behind the camera. All of those elements combined does not make for good pictures AT ALL! Oh well, at least we took some. Ashley and Emma are both growing like weeds lately. Last week at church I kept seeing Emma's underoos because her skirt was to short so I decided It was time for some new Sunday clothes that are long enough for my long legged girls. I had seen this skirt tutorial on the Shedoeshair blog and it seemed simple enough, I actually really got going on it and ended up making 9 little skirts, a couple of them were American Girl sized. They turned out cute and my girls were MUCH more modest for church! Now if I could figure out something to do with their pants, we need to just get some shorts weather because I don't want to buy another pair of jeans this year! Emma started out in size 6's then to 6X and now her size 7's are getting to short!! Same story with Ashley! We need Spring to hurry up and get warmer!

Sunday Afternoon

Ashley had a great idea to dip some pretzels in chocolate this afternoon, they were gone before the girls even quit dipping! Yummy!

A Cook in the Kitchen

Justin was helping me make some potato salad for a (another) funeral in our little town. (I hope our elderly population doesn't all die off in one year! It is sad the amount of funerals we have had lately!) ANYWAY, I looked over to check on him and he was checking the recipe, and no, he cant read, actually he can hardly identify ANY letters, he was just pretending, it was so cute, I made him do it again so I could get a picture!
Always wanting to help!

Story Time

Today was a pajama party at story time! The kids had a great time showing off their PJ's! It was a lot easier to get ready on time too, I wonder why? Jaci got to go with us because her mom was working so that was EXTRA special! They made these cute butterflies to put on the fridge. The children were quite well behaved today actually, one of our quieter story times which was nice!