Christmas week

Bramdon and I had a wonderful Christmas. it was very busy. we first had the Clifford Christmas party on Friday the 21st. it was very fun. the whole party is a big tradition. we have dinner and we play the nut game. whoever finds the nut wins the rnament. Grandma hide's a nut somewhere in the food. i dont remember the last time i won. i guess i'm nt eating the right food. then we have our program. each family does a little part. it is fun. one family gets assighned to do the nativity each year. then we sing songs and santa comes and brings all the kids presents. then while the kids are all occupied with the toys they just got the adults play the elephant gift exchange game. there are usually about 80- 100 people(including all the kids) i dont think we had that many this year though. but it was great. then on saturday Brandon and i finnished up some last minute shopping. on sunday it was my Birthday(yes it stinks having it so close to X-mas but oh well). I was a big procastinator this year so sunday morning i was hurring to finnish making some gifts i was giving to my family. We had church at 11am then after church i wrapped gifts for Brandon's parents and for the Skousen family. then we went over to Brandon's parents house and gave them their gifts. Debbie loved the quilt i made. i was so happy she liked it. then we went over to Tracy and Diane's house for the Skousen Christmas party. this party is full of tradition also. we always eat Papito's french dip sandwiches, and Nannie always has a ton of jello ;) then we play throw the ping pong through santas mouth. it is really hard. and we tell the christmas story as we sing songs. then we all open gifts. and since christmas is so close to my birthday nannie always gets me a cake that says Merry Christmas and Happy Birthday Ashley.

Brandon had to work on christmas eve so we left for prescott around 4pm after he was done and we finnished packing. we had christmas eve at brad & mindy's house it waqs fun my grandpa's brother and his family was able to come for dinner. we don't get to see them very often so it was a great treat. after dinner grandma and grandpa both told some stories aboout christmas. the kids were traking santa on the internet and they would come and tell us every so often where he was. it was so funny. anyway we all woke up on christmas morning around 7:30-8am santa came and brought all the kids some pretty col stuff. Dallas(my13yr old cousin) got a cell phone in his stocking, annie got an ipod shuffel. and Mckell got an Ariel kitchen. i dont think Mckell stopped playing with her kitchen until we went over to Randy & Lisa's for christmas dinner @ 12. so we had our christmas lunch/ dinner. then we opened all our gifts. there were a ton of presents uinder the tree. it was fun brandon and i got PS2 and guitar hero. it is alot of fun. so if anyone wants to come play just give us a call. i made the coolest necklace for my mom here is a pic of it:

So to make this long post a little shorter We had a great Chrsitmas and we hope everyone else did too.

Top Of Class

Okay so i have to brag about Brandon since i know he wont....
This afternoon Brandon recieved an email from his Accounting Professor, she asked Brandon if he would be interested in particiapating in a national auditing competition hosted by KPMG(one of the big 4 accouonting firms)(one f the firms brrandon is interested in wrking for). She said that she wanted to give him 1st choice because he was the TOP junior student in the accounting classes. This competition is between 44 colleges around the country. Brandon will be on the ASU team representing the Junior class(the teams are made up of 4 students one from each grade). the 44 teams will complete auditing problems/cases and the top 5 teams will get to go to New York for the final competition.(all expences paid)
I am so proud of Brandon he is such a hard worker. he has done so well this past semester. he got A's in all of his classes. he now has 3 semesters to go and he will have his bachelors degree completed. The Masters Program at ASU is 1 year after the bachelor degree. He will be going straight into the masters program after he graduates.
I will keep you updated on how he does in the competition

Day Spa!

okay so the Dentist i work for is AWESOME! on friday we had our work Christmas party.It was an all day thing. Friday morning the girls in the office had 9am appointments at the Pheonician Day Spa. this was the coolest experience. i had never been to a spa before. when we got there they showed us to the locker room and we changed into robes. after we changed we went back up front and they called my name. i went back and got a 1 hr massage. it was amazing. after that i went to the water atrium waiting room. the girls and i talked until we got called back to have our 1 hr facials. i have never had a facial and it was really cool. my skin felt so good and still does. after that we all went up to the salon and had chocolate pediures. they served us hot chocolate and chocolate candies. all of the scrubs they used smelt like chocolate it was really neat. when we were all done with that we went back to the water atrium and we ate lunch. when we were finnished we went back to the salon and got chocolate manicures. okay so this might be getting long but it isnt over sorry if you bored.... after our manicures we all went and took showers and then went back to the salon and got our make up done for the night.(sorry i dont have any pics my camera was dead). after we were all done with make up it was 5pm and we had dinner reservvations for 6 so we hurried to Connie's house(my office manager she just lives dwn the street from the spa) to finnish getting ready. then we went to dinner at City Hall Reasturant in scottsdale. Brandon was a little late to dinner because he had a finnal exam for school. he got there as we were being served our steaks. just in time for the main course. dinner was amazing and after we all went to Tempe Improve. i don't remember the last time i laughed that hard. we saw Alfonzo(he won last comic standing)
this was such a great work Christams party i never expected to get so much from an employer. if anyone is looking for a great dentist call me. the one i work for is great!;)

Papito & Nannie's 50th Anniversary

On Saturday my Dad's parents had their 50th wedding anniversary party. It was very nice. We had it at the Farmhouse at Schnepf farms. It was fun to see all my extended family that I don't get to see that often. It was a little family reunion. My grandparents had some friends come that they have known since they had been married, it was neat to meet them. They all kept telling me "oh my goodness I remember you when you were just this high." and then they say "wow have you grown up."

it was very cold last night though. I think my toes are still frozen! Here are some pic's of my family. There was a photographer there and these were all taken the same time she was taking them.

BLACK FRIDAY!

So my mom and i woke up at 4 am and went shopping amongst the crazy people out there. any way we had a great time. We went to Walmart 1st and that was crazy. people were crowded around tv's and stuff just waiting for the 5 oclock announcement so they could grab what they wanted. i was bummed they didn't get the guitar hero shippment in so i had to go to another walmart but my aunt & uncle in prescott were at walmart up there and found it for me. so merry x-mas brandon. After walmart we attempted Target but there were over 1000 people waiting in line just to get in. so i gave up on that and we went to kmart to get my mom's xmas tree. kmart needs more employee's b/c the line to check out was longer than the line to get into target( a wee bit of exaggeration;)) so after that we went back to target and it was so picked over after the 1st hour. i couldn't belive it but we still managed to find some great $3 movie deals. by the time we finished there me and mom were a little hungry so we went and grabbed a bagel then we headed off to JoAnn's in search for a sewing machine for me. but on the way we stopped at another target to see if they might have the guitar hero guitar's i was looking for and they did. i was very surprised i thought for sure they wouldn't. while we were in target my mom ran into someone who had just come from JoAnn's and they said if you are getting fabric get your ticket right away b/c they waited for 1hr till they got their fabric cut, WOW! so we got our ticket right away when we got there. the first thing we looked at were sewing machines. they were having great deals my mom got me a singer. i am so excited. When she bought it she said Happy Birthday & Merry Christmas. se say's that with almost everything she gets me but this time it is for real;) in the end my mom and i did pretty good with everything we got. I am done christmas shopping well except for a few little things but pretty much done. i love black friday!



after shopping i went to my aunt MaryAnn's and quilted my first quilt. that was so fun i can't wait till my quilt is finished. but here is a pic of all the stuff my mom and i bought and my quilt that i quiltted.

Happy Turkey Day!

We spent thanxgiving with Brandon's family this year it was so much fun. We had Dinner at his parents house. i got to carve the turkey(that was cool). The food was wonderful. after we ate we just chilled out for a little bit and reminisced about thanxgivings when we were kids. It was fun to hear of some of the old traditions Brandon's family had.
Then we went to the movies and saw August rush such a good movie I loved it. If you haven't seen it I would recomend, esspecially if you enjoy music.
That was what we did for turkey day.
Here are some pics from thx giving

Tawnya & Erin

(our Sisters)

Davis & Damon(our nephews)


Brandon & Davis
Watching a movie

At the movie
Brandon, Tasha,

Mom & Dad
(Brandon's Parents)

At the movie

Brandon,Tasha,Tanner,

Erin, Dad, Mom

Waldo's BBQ

This weekend my grandparents and my uncle Brads family came down to the valley. we all went to dinner on friday night to waldo's BBQ it was fun.

Here is Dallas, Mom, Annie, Randee, & Grandpa

Here is Grandma, Me, Mckell, & Brandon

The 3 girl's

Annie & Randee being silly

Mckell's crazy face ;)

Dog Sitting

So this past week Brandon and I(mostly me) have been waching my mom's dog (my dog before i got married) Gizmo. It is so sad the past 2 days he has been so sad, everytime i come to see him he thinks my mom is coming in the house after me and he waits by the door. i took a picture of him he is out cold on the bathroom floor. it was so cute. He is the best dog.

My mom come's home on thursday i hope he can make it a few more days. ;)

Okay so i wasnt allowed to go watch Brandon play dodgeball this morning. i was a little bumed out but i really wanted to have some pics to put on our blog so i took some silly ones of us in the car driving home from walmart today. here they are...

Date Night

Brandon and I went on a date tonight to the movies. We saw the movie Martian Child it was very good. It is about a man who adopts a boy who thinks he is a martian from Mars. it is a great family movie i would recomend it to my friends and family.
After the movie we got ice cream at coldstone which it usually a good thing but i think it is now too cold for icecream outside at night;) and for some reason my chocolate ice cream tasted like bannanas(grose).
So here is a quick update on us.....
Brandon is participating in a charity event with his accounting club tomarrow morning. They are having a Dodgeball competition. I think it is kinda funny. I might go to take some pics of the action. It should be fun. I am going to be working on Christmas gifts tomarrow. I think it is crazy that Christmas is almost here this year went so fast. unfortunatly i think they just get faster and faster.
That's all for now.

1st post

So we got this family blog and now i suppose i need to post something and put it to use. there really isn't anything too exciting going on right now in our lives so i hope i dont bore you if you're reading this.

This week has been kinda slow, i cant wait for the weekend because Annie, Randee, and Mckell are coming down to my mom's house and we are going to have a girls weekend. The girls want to go shopping at the mall. I think i can handle that. ;)

Brandon is going to california with his brothers this weekend. They are going on one last trip before Lansan his youngest brother leaves for his mission in 2 weeks. I'm sure they will have a blast i just hope they stay out of trouble;)

Thats all for now hopefully there will be more to come soon!