Am I a lucky girl, or what?

Most of you know that Morgan works in downtown Salem. Well, he's had to switch parking garages and the one he currently parks in takes him right through the Wednesday Market. It's like the Saturday Market only it's on Wednesday. Anyway, my thoughtful man has been bringing me these beautiful bouquets of flowers. Here are pictures from my desk.....

In case you're wondering......

How Old Navy handles a kid crisis, they do a really good job! So today, I dropped Chase off at Vacation Bible School and Dylan and I decided (and when I say Dylan and I, I just mean me...) to do a little shopping. I was in the clearance section of Old Navy chatting with Dylan and all the sudden I realize that I can't hear him anymore. I swear that about 5 seconds before that, he was talking to me. So, knowing Dylan I figure he's hiding from me and I use stern mommy voice, first and middle names, and start looking through the racks of clothes. Well, that doesn't work. I check the aisles to my left and right but don't really want to leave the last place I saw him. My heart is beating a little faster but I was still thinking he was hiding so I looked through the clothes again and still nothing. (here's the part where Old Navy comes in) I am not panicking (yet) but getting there for sure when I see the dressing room monitor walk toward me. I say to her, "I feel really dumb but I totally just lost my kid." All the sudden she is on the radio, the doors are locked, the music is turned off and ALL of the workers and yelling for Dylan. It was amazing, really good teamwork. Plus apparently with everyone yelling, Dylan came out of his hiding place. I knew it. Little jerk.

One of my new favorite things......


If you have never tried LUSH, you should. My first LUSH was from my friend Diana, she got me stuff for my birthday one year and Laci just gave me this..... it's dusting powder but it smells SO good. I love this stuff. If want to check it out go to

http://www.lushusa.com/shop/


Just thought I'd share.

Hmmm....

So this week and next I have Chase and Dylan signed up for swimming lessons. Chase is 5 and doesn't swim at all. I figure it's time for him to learn how to save himself should he ever fall in a body of water. And Dylan loves the water. Loves the bath, loves the kiddie pool... so I figured he should learn how to save himself when he jumps into a body of water. Chase's classes are set up so that there are only 4 kids to a teacher and they go in without the parents. I take Dylan into the water for his lessons. I have been almost dreading these lessons because I thought that Chase would hate the lessons, hate the water, hate that I wasn't with him. Could I have been more wrong? Chase LOVES swimming lessons and Dylan hates them. He screams "OUT" and "NO WAY" almost the entire time. Well, when he's not crying anyway... the thing he did like to do today was learn how to get out of the pool. Go figure. My kids, just when I think I know them, I realize I don't.

Oh, and for my Tiesha mention, Tiesha, I'm glad you are running with me and LeeAnne. Even though most of the time I am panting and wheezing, it's nice that you are there :)

So some of you may know that I've started running with a good friend of mine. We've started doing a program called "couch to 5K" It's cool 'cuz it gradually (yeah right) gets you running a 5K in about 9 weeks. I was doing really good up until this point. I'm at week 4 now and had to run for 5 minutes at a time. What the heck??!! I thought I was going to die. Thankfully on my last 5 minute cycle (yes, I had to do it more than once) Dylan started crying and needed me to hold him. It was the perfect excuse to quit. So, I guess I only ran 4 minutes the last time. My friend wanted me to make it up by running up and down the stairs at the track. Luckily Dylan still needed me so I had to walk them. I mean seriously. I'm waiting for my runners high, so far all I have is shin splints.

Tiesha, someday maybe you'll come back to my blog. I look for your comment everyday. Just want you to know that.... ;)

When Chase, Dylan, and I have no place to be we usually eat our breakfast and then go outside and play. I don't play, I drink my coffee and watch them play. That's how I stay in such excellent shape... Anyway, today started out in that same way, we got up, they asked to go outside, I said after you eat bloddy bloddy... So we eat and Chase and Dylan go outside. I am making my coffee when Chase comes in and says, "mom, there's a bird on the ground. and that's not the interesten thing about it. the interesten thing is that his eyes are open" and then he proceeded to do a fairly accurate bug eyed dead stare face.

Of course I do not want to investigate this. Those of you who know me know that I HATE birds. But, you know, I had to suck it up for the kids and see what was going on. Chase of course didn't want to be near the bird and Dylan most likely wanted to kick it so I headed outside. Right outside the sliding glass door to the immediate right was a dead bird (or so it seemed.... doo doo doo doo). There was also a bloody smear on my sliding glass door where it tried to fly in. (seriously?) So I had Dylan come back in and we watched a movie instead. About an hour later I am walking by the sliding glass door and there's the bird. Just standing there. I guess it was just stunned.....

Well no, it was more than stunned because the next time I walked by (no, I'm not obsessive or anything, well, actually I sort of am, but I was working on switching the computer room to another room and kept making trips by the bird. You know I didn't WANT to see it.) it had migrated over toward the bbq and was dead. again.


Later on................................

So, trip #527 by the bird and it's standing up again but I realize that it's left leg is tick tocking back and forth in about the spot a knee would be if birds had knees. And ew, it left a disgusting mix of blood, bird poop, and something chunky I'd prefer not to think about on the concrete by the bbq. Sick. At this point I just closed the curtains. I looked a few minutes later and it was gone. Yay.

Morgan gets home from work and I tell him about the bird and ask if he could please clean up any evidence (so I can pretend this did not happen) and also look in the yard for the bird because it wasn't looking so good and I thought it might not have gotten very far after it finally left. He proceeds to tell me that next time I should just get towel and put it over the bird and then it'll just lay there. AS IF!!! I must of looked horrified at this because then he just laughed. I mean really, I've been with the man for 11 years.

Of course Chase had to demonstrate the bug eyed dead stare face for Morgan. He also pretended he was a bird and "flew" into the kitchen cabintes and then landed on the kitchen floor. That was pretty funny. Oh, and in case you're wondering, the bird had just gone back to it's original spot and finally died.

Dude.

P.S. Tiesha, I am offended and hurt that you haven't checked my blog.... I will most likely mention your name in all my posts until you check it ;)

So, since I usually stay up later than I should (because my kids will be up early!!) and check facebook and surf the daily news (and when I say news I mean celebrity news), I figured I should at least update my blog. I totally don't have anything to say but this should keep Tiesha off my back for a good couple weeks! ;) Just kidding Tiesha! Well, I mean, sort of....

The boys had their birthday's this month. It's amazing to me how time flies. I can't believe that Chase is now five years old!! It seems like maybe a couple of years since he was born, not five already! And Dylan is two, he surprises me daily with all the things he's doing (or trying to do) and saying. He's so smart. I guess I forget how fast they learn things at this age!! They play together pretty well most of the time too which is SO cute. I love it! Just today they were chasing each other around the house pretending to shoot each other. I guess Chase got Dylan because all the sudden Dylan pretend moaned and fell to the ground and played dead. Chase stood over him and said, "wooks wike it wasn't your wucky day". Dude, it killed me. Then I obsessed about whether or not they were going to grow up to be sociopaths.

For their birthdays my mom bought them bikes, those were a hit for sure. They love them!!! Here are some pics of them in their gear. Pretty cute. Morgan and I keep telling them they just need to wear their helmets and not the knee and elbow pads but they like to have all of it on. They crack me up! I fricken love my kids.

So, I'm slightly better at getting my kids hair cut than I am at updating my blog. Sad, I know. It's just that I don't love having their hair buzzed (which is the extent of talent that Morgan and I have for hair styles) and I hate making phone calls so I put off making an appointment for them until their hair is really long. It grows really fast too, in my defense. Anyway, I knew it needed to be done but I didn't know how badly until we were all in Fred Meyer one afternoon and this guy told me how adorable my little boy and little girl was (the little "girl" was Dylan). I corrected him of course but he still kept telling me how cute "she" was. It was then that I knew something needed to happen, I mean, he was old but not THAT old. So, here are before and after pictures of Chase and Dylan getting buzz cuts from daddy.

I mean, really, a girl?? Okay, it's long but it's not that long..... just because his bangs caught on his eyelashes... he has long eyelashes. (Whatever it takes to make myself feel better...)

Clearly this is not his favorite thing to do!

Pilo 'o hair. It didn't look as impressive in the photo so we measured it next to Morgan's ginormous foot to show how big the pile really was.











Chase's before... this kid has a lot of hair

He's a pro, he thinks it tickles

Chase's pile 'o hair

The after shot. My kids are the cutest kids on the planet.

I know, I suck.

"Don't know what you got, 'till it's gone..."
Cinderella (the 80's rock band)

As some of you know, I have again been without my computer for what seems like years but was really only a month. The first time it broke the computer people said it wasn't Vista (as I mentioned it might be since we didn't start having problems until we upgraded to Vista) but just that we needed a bigger video card to handle Vista. So, we got a new video card installed and tweaked a few other things. Our computer worked for a couple weeks and then went down again. We took it to the same place who had it again for a week and said it was fixed. We brought it home but unfortunately, it never turned on. So, we took it somewhere else who (after almost 4 long weeks) put XP back on for us! I think (fingers crossed) that my computer is going to be fine. It runs so fast now and kicks butt. The only problem is that the speakers aren't working. For those of you who are wondering why on earth we upgraded to Vista in the first place.... it's becuase Morgan somehow accidentally deleted the speaker drivers on our pc. Since our computer didn't come with the XP disks and HP didn't support our computer anymore, we just upgraded to Vista. Basically, we are back to where we started (except short some mula, bummer) with a fast computer that doesn't make a peep. Normally this is something I would complain about but since I'm just happy to have my computer back, I'll complain about it next month. Like the title says, "you don't know what you got, 'till it's gone..." (I know, I'm dating myself with the 90's rock but whatever.)

It's the little things......

When I was about to have Dylan one of my major dramas (little things can become very dramatic when you're me and pregnant...) was what type of stroller to get. I don't use an infant seat, so I needed one that would lay flat for a newborn. I was pretty sure that Chase would still want to be in a stroller (he will still sit and nap in the stroller) so I needed a double stroller, and I needed one that would fit into the trunk of my car which is not very big. What I ended up with was the Zooper Tango which is a side by side double stroller. It is a great stroller, it steers well and is really well made. It came with all sorts of covers and it was a manly navy since I had both boys. Oh, and it was pretty much the only double stroller that fit in my trunk..... I loved it last summer, we took it for walks almost every day. Then came the rainy season..... and walks indoors... and then I realized, this stroller blows. It was such a hassle to try and maneuver it between aisles in the mall or the grocery store. And forget about looking at the clothes in Target... so finally I got a sit 'n stand stroller. You really can't appreciate how nice a single wide stroller is until you push around a double wide for awhile! I love my new stroller and Chase loves it too. Once in awhile I feel bad because he wants to sleep so he'll kneel on the platform (where his feet go) and then lean over the seat and sleep. That's kind of sad but it doesn't happen often anymore and I try and plan trips around times that I know Chase will be tired. But, that stroller pretty much makes my day every time I get it out. It barely fits in my trunk, I have to keep the front tray off for it to fit but the hassle of taking it off and on every time is worth it! Oh, and in case you're looking for a double wide stroller, I'm selling one and it's in excellent shape!

What the???!

I know, even though my computer has been fixed for a few weeks, I still haven't posted in awhile. I have a good excuse though, I started a new job and have been pretty busy with training on crazy shifts and stuff. Our life will hopefully be back to normal in a few weeks. I should be working mainly swing and weekend shifts, this past few weeks I've done day and graves. Graveyard sucks, by the way. A few weeks ago I had to take Chase to the dentist. It was his first appointment and I wasn't sure how he would do. Those of you who know Chase know that he has personal space issues! I took him to the dentist that Morgan and I go to and Chase did great! They were very good with him and showed him the tools before putting them in his mouth and stuff. Chase made it through most of the cleaning before he decided he was done so they quite. Here are are a few pictures.....

Checking out the air blower and getting teeth cleaned....

Dr. T. checking out the teeth and a picture of the thee of us when it was all over!

I know what you're all thinking........

You're thinking that I had already quit updating my blog. I'm sure even some of you were thinking, "big surprise, that didn't last long, I knew she wouldn't keep it up...." That's okay if you did, I would have too and totally don't blame you with my past behavior. But, that was not that case. My computer broke last week and I only just picked it up a few hours ago. It was a long, traumatizing 8 days but thankfully it's back and working again. How I even lived without a computer, I don't know! Anyway, sorry for being away, I'll update later when I have all my stuff loaded back on my computer!

Amazing Grace

At Easter Service at Morgan and my church this past year, one of the songs we sang was "Amazing Grace (My Chains are Gone)". I don't know if you've heard this version by Chris Tomlin on the radio but it's a beautiful version of Amazing Grace. I was really moved by it on Easter and it was stuck in my head for a few days. I heard it again on the radio while driving Chase to school the other morning and was almost brought to tears and it's been stuck in my head ever since. Here are the words:

"Amazing Grace (My Chains Are Gone)"

Amazing grace

How sweet the sound

That saved a wretch like me

I once was lost, but now I'm found

Was blind, but now I see

'Twas grace that taught my heart to fear

And grace my fears relieved

How precious did that grace appear

The hour I first believed

My chains are gone

I've been set free

My God, my Savior has ransomed me

And like a flood His mercy reigns

Unending love, Amazing grace

The Lord has promised good to me

His word my hope secures

He will my shield and portion be

As long as life endures

The earth shall soon dissolve like snow

The sun forbear to shine

But God, Who called me here below

Will be forever mine

Will be forever mine

You are forever mine

I guess I just feel moved by the words in that song and I feel like I want to write them down. I feel like it describes Morgan's and my life together. When we met ten years ago we didn't have a relationship with God. Over the years our lives have changed and completely turned around. We are so much happier with each other, with our lives, and with other people. We turn to God first and have so much peace now. We feel so blessed with our family and really do feel like God has rescued us. I am also amazed and proud of Morgan. He is a great leader of our family and at times I forget and then he'll do something that reminds me. The other day I was grumpy and feeling discouraged and I was venting to him. While I was talking, Morgan just said, "let's pray." He held my hands in his and prayed for me and our family. It was so sweet and it was such a different action then the person I met at Hewlett Packard ten years ago would have done.

Wow. I totally didn't know that was going to come out. I thought I was just going to tell you guys how awesome that song was. Cool.

Look at these two little beautiful babies? Who wouldn't feel blessed?

Wow. I am almost (don't worry, only almost) speechless about how long it's been since I posted. This time frame exceeded even my own very low expectations of myself..... No worries though, I am once again inspired to have a blog. I really love the idea of them and it's great for people like me who have family and friends that live out of town (and state!) so that my peeps can stay updated on our lives. I don't know what my problem has been. Anyway, I have a friend who has the cutest most bestest blog ever (http://www.jexamae.blogspot.com/) and she's inspired me to start doing mine again.

I know most of you number one: aren't reading this right now since you probably quit checking for updates about, oh, a year ago! and two: won't trust that I'll actually keep updating my blog! I'm really going to make an effort this time though! So, that being said, what's been going on for the past two years? Oh, not much, pretty much the same old thing except... well, I got pregnant, Morgan switched jobs, we moved to Albany, I had a baby, I started selling Scentsy, I am babysitting again, Chase is now in preschool and let's see, I think that's all. Maybe I'll start at the beginning......

I pretty much left off in Corvallis. Morgan and I had just sold our house in Lebanon and moved into an apartment in Corvallis. We lived in that apartment for almost two years. But, as suspected, we got really tired of the close quarters. It was small for the three of us and then in September of '06 we found out we were having another baby! In addition, Morgan got a new job at Regence Blue Cross in Salem. His comute was pretty long every day from South Corvallis to downtown Salem so we decided to start looking for a new place to live. We found a place about a month before we had our second son, Dylan. We now live in Albany in a much nicer and bigger place.

On June 4, 2007 we had Dylan Royle Ayer. He was 9 pounds and 8 oz. and breech. That should have given us a warning about how his personality would turn out... ;) He has been such a blessing and great addition to our family. We can't even imagine life without him! It's been so fun watching Chase play with him and telling us how much he "wuves his brother". Dylan is almost a year old now and so full of personality which we all know is code for, a complete handful. We love him anyway, of course!

About 7 months ago I started selling Scentsy. Actually, my friend Jessica (see above note about cutest most bestest blog ever) was our Scentsy consultant while she lived here. When she moved back to Boise, we needed a new consultant and I decided to give it a try. It's nice to have something to focus my creative energy on and Scenty is a cool product. Go check out my websit: www.scentsy.com/courtney

Chase. What has Chase been up to? Well, he's a big boy now, almost 4 years old. He's going to pre-school now and loves it! He is learning all sorts of things from his teacher who happens to be a friend of mine. She is teaching pre-school from her home. I feel really lucky to have Chase in school with her. Chase has grown so much in the past few years. He talks all the time and is so into Thomas the Train! He loves trains. It's pretty cute. He is also into the Power Rangers which is not cute. It's annoying, I mean, if you've seen a Power Rangers movie they are just lame. (No offense to those of you who think they are cool or by some crazy chance are the makers of Power Rangers, then they are so cool).

Well, I think that's it for now. I need to make lunch for Chase and Kohbi (the little girl I've been babysitting....) More later!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know, okay! Hey, I already admitted that I suck at this kind of stuff and besides, I'm really busy. I do things like, um, I read and I'm raising a child, and sometimes I cook for Morgan. See, I don't always have time to update my blog, I'm a very busy girl. Here's what I'm going to do though, I'm going to try and think of all the updates on Chase that I can and I'm going to post a lot of pictures and that way, you people should be satisfied for awhile. Because let's face it, I'm not going to be updating for awhile, we'll be lucky if I get Christmas stuff on here...... Okay, here goes:

Chase will finally get into water! That was exciting news. He wouldn't take a bath or go swimming. Showering with him was kind of a pain. I can thank my friend Heather for the water progress. Chase and I were over at her house and LJ (her son) loves to swim and had a little pool. Well, apparently it looked like fun when LJ was in the water so Chase decided to play with him and ever since he's totally been into it. Sweet.






Let's see, what else..... well, obviously Chase turned two. I'll put a few b-day pictures on here (I think I promised to do that already) of his party because to be honest, I rocked it this year. It was all about construction and trucks and I did find the best decorations. I even made a dirt cake with gummy worms in it and stuff and put it in the back of his dump truck--and not only that, but we used a shovel to scoop it out. I know, I told you, I totally rocked it this year. It's going to be hard to beat that... Chase's uncle Matt sent him some Tonka trucks for his b-day this year and one of them is so big that Chase can sit in it.



For awhile Chase and I were watching our friends baby (Sidney) and Chase loved him. He still asks me every morning where the baby is. I guess Chase is ready for a baby brother or sister!!









Chase's Aunt Jennifer and Uncle Dwayne went to Chicago and brought him back a t-shirt and fitted hat. It's pretty cute and he loves to wear the hat (see previous posting about Chase and hats).

The only other thing I can think of (that's semi interesting to people like grandparents and stuff) is that Chase is ready for a big boy bed. He loves beds. When we go to friends houses he is always climbing into their beds and snuggling down. Last weekend we were at K-Mart and there was a bed set-up and he climbed in and got under the covers.



I think that's about it for now. We are going to L.A. in a couple weeks but don't look for those pictures for another year or so... ;)

Wow, it has been a loooong time since we posted anything. We have had the busiest past few months and are happy that things are slowing down. Hopefully we can enjoy our summer now. For those of you who don't know, we sold our house and moved into a new place. It's not bad, it's been a bit of an adjustment getting used to the smaller space but we're figuring it out. Chase had his second birthday last month and that was fun. He's getting so big so fast and it's kind of sad but also really fun watching him learn and grow. I know I've said this before, but I will post some pictures of him at his birthday party soon. I know mom, but really , I will!!! I just don't have time to download them this second. Anyway, just I'd post an update. Talk to soon!

Some of you know this but I have decided to try and quit swearing
(Morgan is still trying to decide ;) for two reasons. The first being
that since Chase is starting to talk we don't want some of his favorite
words to be swear words and the second being our faith. It's really
difficult for me because I have been swearing for so long and a lot of
my words or phrases were really funny! Also, sometimes certain
situations just don't feel right unless you have a swear word attached
to it. I have a friend who wrote this for his blog and shared it with me
and it's really good (thanks Scott!!) so I'm posting it on Morgans and
my blog.

Does Jesus care if we Cuss?

So, this seems to be a HOT TOPIC now-a-days. Everyone has to
validate "why" they use cuss words....even the so called Perfect
Christians.....that's an oxy moron if I've ever heard one.

I will agree that there are some words that make me cringe and
then there are some I pay no mind to when others use them, and
sometimes - honestly - there is just no better word to describe the
situation or feeling we may be in "at the moment."

So I went online and googled "The History of Cuss Words" and the
articles I found were endless. So I have attached some of the links
for you to look @ and I will let you decide what YOU think!

Does Jesus care if we Cuss?
http://www.bible.org/page.asp?page_id=3055
http://home.snu.edu/~hculbert/cussing.htm
http://www.souldevice.org/ethics_cussing.html
http://www.deanesmay.com/posts/1123151436.shtml

Things that my son loves to do:
he loves to say no. to everything. seriously, everything.
he loves to chase the dogs around the house with his stroller and run into them.
he loves wearing hats, especially his daddy's hats.

Things that my son doesn't like:
he doesn't like to be shown how to do stuff, like figuring out toys and eating...
he doesn't like water (makes bath time fun)
and he clearly doesn't like the swing

Okay, I started this blog so that friends and family who don't live near us can see pictures of Chase and read about our lives. So far, I've gotten stuck trying to make my fonts prettier and making the name show up as Courtney and Morgan. I've spent so much time doing this that I don't have any pictures up and no time to do so or write about our lives because Chase is up from his nap and now I have to go get him. Mabye someday this blog will get a little more interesting!!