What a Month

The month of September was the month of trips. We started out with a weekend trip to Utah for my freshman roommate's Open House. It was so good to see her and meet her new hubby! It was also nice to see friends and family that live out there. We had about a week to recover from that trip before going to Maine for almost 2 weeks.

It was so nice to have Ashton come with me on this trip to Maine. Usually, I'm traveling by myself and it gets stressful. It was a nice change to be able to walk around without lugging all the carry-ons with me, especially when going into the bathrooms. It was also nice to be able to have him around visiting with my family. My nieces and nephews loved having Ashton around, too. He's much more fun to climb on. It's always nice to have a new person around to try antics on.

I didn't take as many pictures as I usually do, but I did take some. My nieces and nephews are getting so big. I keep trying to tell them that they need to stay small, but they're not listening. We had a good time listening to everything they had to say though and they said some pretty funny things.

One of my nieces took to calling Ashton "Ducky." I'm not exactly sure why, but the whole ducky thing came up when I called her a "lucky ducky." She thought that was funny and kept saying "ducky" the whole night. Somehow, it became associated with Ashton and he was "Ducky" for the rest of the trip. When we went up to my other brother's house, I related the story to them and their girls overheard. So, they took great delight in calling Ashton, "Ducky," "Mr. Duck," "Mr Pig," "Peanut," as well as some other names. Ashton was a good sport about it all. It probably helps that they all called him by his actual name as well.

The other things they did or said, weren't as long lasting, but still funny. It never seems like I get to spend enough time with them. All I know is, we might be in trouble if we have a little girl. Ashton would be wrapped around her little finger in an instant.

We had such a great time seeing everyone that we could. I think we actually did a pretty good job of being able to visit with the majority of the family that we have there. Not always an easy task. The majority of the time we spent in Maine was visiting with family and catching up with some friends. We did get to go to the Common Ground Fair, which was so much fun. They had such good food there, and it was nice to walk around and see some of the things they had on display there.

I also introduced Ashton to Gifford's ice cream, which is the best ice cream ever. Ashton tried a couple different flavors and loved both of them. He tried one that was called "Maine Lobster Tracks." The description is this, "Pure Vanilla Ice cream with loads of lobster colored chocolate cups filled with a thick caramel swirled with a unique eclair crunch whirl." The funny part was when he ordered it, the lady went to scoop out the ice cream and when she came back she said, "Here's your Maine Lobster Tracks, and here's your lobster bib." Yes, she did hand him a lobster bib. We got a good laugh over that and brought the bib home with us.

Now that we're home, it's back to the daily routines. For those of you who want to know, we're finding out the gender of the baby next week. So, if you care to guess whether we're having a boy or a girl, you better get your vote in soon! We're hoping that the baby isn't feeling shy or something. It'll be nice to be able to get the pronoun right for the baby. I've been feeling the baby kick and move, which is pretty amazing although a bit strange at the same time. Ashton thinks he might have felt the baby kick, but most of the time, as soon as he puts his hand on my stomach, the baby seems to stop or moves locations. Ah well, I'm sure Ashton will get to feel the baby soon.