So, besides the fact that me and my family have been very busy these last few months we have had something very interesting happen to us recently.
Here's the story...
About two months ago I stayed up watching a movie late one night and had planned to clean up the huge mess I had made the night before planning my Sharing Time lesson for church, while Steven and Ansley were sleeping. I had cut up a ton of little papers that were scattered all over our living room and no matter where you stepped you would hear the crunch of the papers. I ended up just relaxing on the couch watching my movie, my motivation was shot for any sort of movement, so much so that I had debated just sleeping on the couch instead of climbing the stairs to go to bed.
Eventually after the movie ended I climbed the stairs and went to bed. It was still a warm point in the year, but the breeze through the windows were finally starting to cool down when I went to bed around 2AM. For those of you who don't know, Steven actually has a paper route and gets up around 3AM to go to work, so about an hour after I went to bed he left. I don't really wake up when he leaves or returns but he got back to the house around 5:20AM and I briefly had recognized him getting back into bed. I am usually a heavy sleeper, so it doesn't bug me when he gets in and out of bed.
Around 5:40-5:45 I hear is Steven yelling at the top of his lungs, "HEY, GET THE H*** OUT OF MY HOUSE!" I hear Steven running down stairs and a lot of noise. That woke both me and Ansley up instantly, and I grab my phone and dial 911, letting the operator know that there has been a break in in my house and giving them our address. The operator had to keep telling me to calm down because they could not understand me. I was very panicky. I was running down stairs to see what was going on (Ansley was still upstairs in her crib, crying, but she was fine, so I left her there so I could deal with what was going on) when I got down stairs I saw a flash of Steven's face which is very serious and he was unlocking the front door to chase these people, he ran back inside withing 30 seconds grabbed the car keys and took off after them. Within 1 minute the police drove by our house (at a very high speed) to try to find these people. I waited at home by myself while the police and Steven were searching. Within a couple minutes Steven was back and his hand was swollen, and he took the phone to talk to the dispatch and explain what had happened...so here is what he said...
He was laying in bed and was half awake, he heard a noise that was abnormal for that time of the day(our room is facing the front of the house and the window was open, our bedroom door was open as well so we could hear if Ansley woke up during the night). He said that when he heard that noise he was totally awake just listening for anything else that would seem out of the ordinary, that's when he heard a crunch, crunch, crunch...which was the sound of the men walking on the cut up pieces of paper on the ground in our living room. He said that was when he knew someone was in our house, he got out of bed and walked out of the room into the hallway upstairs and flipped on a light, which then he heard scrambling and he started yelling. He ran down stairs and that's when I got up to follow him calling 911, he unlocked the front door and ran outside.
They were parked just outside our house and Steven had run up to the window, he said the person sitting in the passengers seat gave him a look like, what are you going to do? So, naturally Steven started punching the window to break it so he could pull the guy out of the car, the passenger started yelling to the driver..."GO, GO, GO!" They took off before he could get them, so that's when Steven ran inside to get the car keys to track them down, unfortunately and fortunately they were gone and he didn't know where they went. When he came back he was holding his hand funny and it was swollen, we woke the neighbor up who is a nurse and she looked at his hand and advised us to get it seen.
We waited for the police to return and Steven had a good ID of the vehicle, and a neighbor of ours who had heard something looked out the window and saw the car drive off and gave the same description. They had found the car within a hour, and the lady it was registered to said it was stolen, however it was parked outside her apartment and it had no damage for forced entry. The police also had mentioned that it was started with a key. So the police followed her around and took the police dogs out there and the scent was tracked back to her house, she finally admitted her husband was involved. We had the Crime Scene Investigation out at our house and they had fingerprints they got that had matched to the suspects as well.
While we went to the doctors to have Steven's hand checked out we found out it was broken and one doctor's office wanted surgery, since it was too expensive we had them reset the break and wrapped to have it heal.
The break in(s) for our neighborhood have been all over the news right after this happened, and fortunately we were the last ones in the neighborhood to get broken into. Last I heard they are all in jail!!! Thank goodness!!! It has taken us a Alarm System and time to be able to sleep again. But no matter what, sleeping at night is still the hardest part of the day. We are very thankful that it wasn't as bad as it could have been, and the second best part is those jerks didn't get off with any of our stuff because Steven caught them!!! HaHaHa!!!
So we have been just a little distracted lately, but I am so glad the whole ordeal is over with, now it has become just a memory, or nightmare I guess would be a better description. Despite the fact that Steven's hand is still healing.
The Birthday Boy!! 26! Happy birthday hun, I am so very proud of you, I hope next year for your birthday were on vacation. =)
Steven wanted to play twister, I still don't understand why, but hey it was his birthday so who cares, right? Steven, Jeff, Ansley and Steve(his dad).
Steven, Me, Ansley and Melinda.
Ansley still LOVES her jumper, except she rarely jumps, mostly she spins super fast, Ill have to post a video of that in the near future..
After her braids came out. Her face is messy because Auntie Celeste brought some powdered donuts for us. Mmm...
Aren't the braids super cute? I had to talk her into letting me put them in her hair, but hey...it worked!
My happy 2 year old..
How is it that a sleeping baby can just melt your heart? Today she wanted to sit on the couch with her blanket, barbie and flamingo pillow and watch Baby Einstein. Awe...I rarely get moments like this with her anymore. Love it!
So this past Sunday Ansley and I were waiting for Daddy to get home from church from his calling and I found Ansley in her diaper box with her Barbie. Okay okay, so I didn't just find her in there, she asked me to put her in the box, but she sure looked surprised in the next picture.
There she is hanging out with Barbie!
One of Ansley and my favorite things to do together is to dance, its rarely ever very good, but we sure have a blast. Here we are, I hope she remembers these moments!
One of Ansley's favorite things to do now is to jump off of anything that is off the ground, and most times without warning...so we have to always be aware. Here she jumped on Uncle Tim.
She has also started this jumping pose? I'm not quite sure why or where she got it from, but she throws her arms back as far as they will go and then stands up and jumps, here are the pictures of it...its really quite funny in person.
Yep, jumping off of the "Princess Castle", meaning...the coffee table covered in a blanket.
Here arms look silly, but she does it whenever I ask her to!
Starting her pose.
Jumping on Kim (Tim's girlfriend).
Ansley in her Princess Castle.
Ansley made Kim and Tim get inside the Princess Castle with her, I thought it was funny so I took this picture.
Funny story about her and Uncle Tim...
Here is my mischievous little one. You can tell she is thinking of something naughty!
Ansley was trying on a headband that she had when she was a baby a couple of days ago and here are some of the pictures, she even put it on herself!
My FAVORITE picture!!
Always being a naughty 2 year old, but she is just so dang adorable I can't be mad!!!
So here are some more reason why I think Ansley is just hilarious. First of all, she is such a Mommy's girl right now that she want to be around me all the time and do everything I do. As you can see in these pictures she pulls her step stool up right next to me and wants to brush my hair, plus she gets mad if I move. She is always asking me if she can brush my hair...jeez I love her!!
Showing Daddy her new hairstyle.
Very concentrated.
The other reason I love my daughter, especially today, is because of this...She is so obsessed with closing all the doors in our house that quite often she closes herself in a room. Well this morning she happened to close herself in the downstairs bathroom with a brand new roll of toilet paper that I had literally just changed 5 minutes prior to her going in there. She has never done this before, so I didn't feel like there would be any harm with her being in there. Usually she just tells me within a couple minutes, "Mommy, Mommy, Mommy...I'm stuck!" Which then I go get her, however this time she was very quiet, so when I went to check on her, this is what I found....(gotta love these moments, it slips through your hands so quickly, that I just sit with her and laugh when I can't help how cute she is being, even if she is naughty). 
She's telling me about what she did...
Dragging the big pile of toilet paper all over the place.
Showing me her disaster.
Doesn't this just make you smile? It did for me!
Stuck.
Luckily it is easy to clean up.
Well you already found me, so I might as well enjoy it, right?
Uh-oh, Moms' here! 
So this morning I got Ansley out of her crib and brought her into my room and she went in my closet and found a pink dress of mine. She couldn't stop talking about how it was "So Pretty" and she called it a "Princess Dress" and "Cinderella Dress". (However because she is so obsessed with Princesses, everything is either "Cinderella" or as Ansley says it "Sleeping Booty"). She wouldn't quit until I put it on her, and she made me take her pajamas off so she could get the full effect. She wore it around the house for a couple hours, and she loved it, until she tried to climb the stairs...the dress was a little long obviously. She is quite my girlie girl...I love it!!!
Got a little frustrated because she kept tripping. 
It looks like shes posing, but she actually her getting annoyed with the dress.
So we planned a weekend camping at the beach in June and looked up the temperature for the weekend which said it would be 81 degrees, which in fact it was 51 degrees. We had not planned on it being that cold so we had to wrap Ansley's in her purple pajamas to keep from freezing. We had a lot of fun, but ended up driving home late the same night because we had not prepared for something that cold. We ended up stopping at a Drive-In theatre on the way home in San Luis Obispo and watched Transformer 2...We had such a great time, especially because Steven and I first held hands at the Drive-In's, very sentimental...too bad we don't have one in Fresno, it was a great place to take a child to see a movie!
We let Ansley take the wheel while we were driving on the sand. We were only going 5mph, plus there were no cars on the sand, Ansley drove us straight toward the ocean. But she just thought it was hilarious.
Look at her excitement!
When Ansley plays in the sand she just throws it everywhere, if you look closely you'll notice she is covered in sand. 
I though this was a very artistic picture, one of my favorites of Daddy and Ansley.
Ansley's Birthday was July 9th, and she turned 2. We decided to go to the Zoo especially since she is in the age where she loves animals. I started her birthday off with bringing a cupcake into her room in the morning to wake her up to a fun-filled day. She loved that, it just took her a couple minutes to realize what was going on. The first picture is at the restaurant after the Zoo eating some ice cream the waitress brought her.
Ansley's happy face...
I don't know why for the first time in her life she is afraid of water, especially with Grandpa...?.JPG)
Looking at the reptiles....JPG)
This owl flew just a couple inches above our heads at the bird show, luckily Grandma Ryan got a picture of it, awesome!.JPG)
Watching the bird show, Ansley loved it.
Donating a dollar that Grandpa Ryan gave to her to help save the Rain Forest..JPG)
She wasn't so sure sticking her hand in there...
After she woke up, she was thrilled to have a birthday cupcake..JPG)
Feeding the Giraffe....JPG)
Just Cute
Yeah I'm 2!
Wait, this is awesome!
Is she really singing right now? What is going on, why would she actually bring a cupcake into my room this early?
What is Mom doing?
