Super lame blogger...That's me!

I used to be a good blogger...funny even.  When something noteworthy happened I used to think, "how will I word this on my blog?"  Ahhhhhhh!!!! Life just gets in the way sometimes, huh!?

 Anyway, a noteworth occurance in my life- The Elton John Concert. 

Now, I'm not really a huge Elton John Fan, and I learned that evening...I'm not a Leon Russell Fan AT ALL!...but it was a fun night none-the-less.
  my sister randomly won tickets to the show on a radio contest, and wasn't able to sell them online.  She asked her husband if he wanted to go- he said no. She asked my sister in law if they wanted to go- they said no.  She asked me if I wanted to go, and I said I would ask Dave, who said a RESOUNDING-NOOOO!!! He said, "Go if you want! Take Sherry! Just please don't make me go!"  Well I thought...I hadn't been out for a "night on the town" in a loooooooooooong time, so why not!?  I texted My gal pal Sherry and although she too thought it was a bit of a strange invite- she accepted! 

  The tickets said, "Leon Russell" on them as well...so we figured it was the opening act.  We looked him up on Google, and decided he wouldn't be our thing...

The show started at 8, so we figured if we got there about 9, it would be just in time to catch Elton.  We walked in about 8:50, and Elton was going strong! What the heck? 

So we got to our seats, which were really quite good- row 16! And sat next to, around, surrounded by, lots of drunk Elton John Fans, all singing along and frequently dancing along to the songs.  It was fun to people watch, and I do like some of his songs. 

  After a few songs Sherry (who, let me add right here, is quite the opposite of me. She would rather die than ever call any undue (or due) attention to herself) leaned over and whispered (read: yelled) ...it was really loud in there...

 "Would you stand up and dance like that?"

Well, in the loudness of the concert, I misunderstood her question- I thought it was something like a dare- daring me to stand up and dance like a drunk fool by myself to a very non-dancy Elton John song...uhhh...she must not know me very well...but..NO PROBLEM!!!

   In actuality it was her being shocked and mortified for the drunk dancers and actually meaning, "Who could ever get up and do that? PERPOSTEROUS!" 

   Due to my misunderstanding, at the beginning of the next song, which happened to be "I'm Still Standing" (Coincidence???) I jumped out of my seat, Yelled "WAHOOO!"" and started Dancing myself silly! 

Sherry was mortified. to put it mildly.  She tugged on my shirt with a look of absolute horror on her face and said repeatedly, "NO! Please no! NO! NO!" 

I sat back down, and we sorted out the whole misunderstood question. Woops. My mistake!

  Anyway, after that song, Mr. Leon Russell came out on stage, and he and Elton proceeded to sing together for almost an hour! ARGGGG!!!  It was awful!

  We kept saying "If he's not finished after this song, we're leaving"

"Okay this song."

"No really! This song!"

Finally he finished ,and by that time it was almost 11.  We stayed for a few more of Elton and then decided to beat the crowd. 

Some creepy Cabbies outside followed us halfway to our cars trying to get us to take a cab home, then have someone bring us back to our cars the next day (I think this is a practice of drunk people...but I'm not sure...) anyways...we ditched them and locked the car doors fast! 

 We laughed all the way home about ...well...everything and counted it as a night well spent!

YAY FOR GIRLS NIGHT!!!

PS- we weren't very creative in our posing were we???

Christmas Mini Sessions!

Hello!  I am shamelessly advertising my photography on here for a second- I am going to be doing Christmas Mini Sessions on Friday Dec. 3rd and Friday Dec. 4th. 
Sessions are $40 for 15 minutes, with a disk of 5-10 high res pictures that belong to YOU!
email me at nzashleyrogers at gmail dot com to book your slot!

But....
I NEED YOUR HELP!!!
Once again I find myself in need of the perfect chair or bench.  I can't tell you exactly what it looks like...only that I will know it when I see it!  So, if you are willing to let me borrow a cute, shabby chic, a little funky or vintage, or just plain cool green/black/red chair for a week or so, I would gladly do a free mini session for you, or pay you the $40 dollars that a mini session would cost! 
Just email me a picture of your fantastic chair, and I will get back to you.  Please don't be offended if it's not the right one for me...like I said, I know it's out there...I just need to see it!

Tender Hearted

Let me start with the story of Leslie Quan-
  Once upon a time when I was in the fourth grade, There was a group of five best friends- Me, Presley, Jenny, Rachel, and Leslie. I was the new comer, having just moved to California that year, but I slid into the group pretty seamlessly, and it was just perfect.  Until.
  Leslie Had a birthday party. Her parents got tickets to a cute princess play. Everyone got to dress up in their fancy dress, and go to the princess play, and eat out at a fancy restuarant in their fancy princess dress, and order whatever they wanted, and then sleep over and giggle all night.  Everyone but me that is.  See, Leslie's parents only got 6 tickets...one for Presley and Jenny and Rachel and Leslie and Mom and Dad. No Ashley. Of course I knew about it. Of course I heard all about it. In detail. I cried and cried. I cried the day the invitations went out, and every day until the party. I cried the night of the party even though my mom took me out and did something fun. I cried after the party when I heard how much fun they had. In detail. I was heart broken...but nothing compared to my mom.
   To this day I don't think I've ever seen her so angry.  I was never allowed to Call Leslie again. Leslie was never allowed at our house again. Leslie's name was poison to my mother's ears.  The mention of Leslie raised my mom's temperature by at least 20 degrees, causing flames to shoot out of her eyes and steam to pour from her ears. seriously.  And you know what? I'm pretty sure my mom shed more than few tears about that darn Leslie Quan and her darn birthday party.
To this day you CANNOT mention Leslie Quan to my mom if you want her to have an enjoyable afternoon.
(consider yourself warned...)

  I never did understand this seemingly unreasonable hatred of poor Leslie Quan.

Until now.

My poor little boy is old enough to have his tender little feelings hurt, but it is nothing compared to the hurt this mama bear is feeling.  3 things have happened recently that have left him sobbing and asking me why someone would do those things, and I don't have a good answer because they just shouldn't have been done.  We talk about Jesus and how he loved the people who put him on the cross, we talk about asking Heavenly Father to take our hurt feelings away, we talk about showing extra love to the people that hurt our feelings so we can always make good choices and never hurt others...all the while I want to shoot flames out of my ears and let steam poor from my ears, and give a few people a piece of my mind...and a knuckle sandwich to boot!

  I will tell you about one of those things here, because I did it, totally accidentally.  I explained the best I could, but tender 4 year old feelings are just that- tender 4 year old feelings. 
  Sunday night we were at my parents house to have dinner with my parents, and two siblings and their families.  Jaxon had done something naughty (no idea what it was...) so I took him inside for a 4 minute time out.  I set him on the front door rug and went back to the kitchen. Just then Jaxon's best little buddy Oakley let out a blood curdling scream in the backyard.  I turned to Dave and Said, "I'm sure glad Jaxon isn't out there!"  Why? Because I knew he wasn't the one responsible for causing the scream, and I knew the scream didn't come from him!
  4 minutes later I went to get Jaxon out of time out, only to find him sobbing silently into his hands.  (This is unlike Jaxon, because he's not really phased by timeout...)  I picked him up and he wouldn't look at me. I sat on the stairs with him on my lap and asked him what was wrong. He could barely get it out.

 He said, "Mommy, you said something so mean about me, and I heard you, and it's making me so so sad!!"

I said, "Jaxon! What did I say!?"

He said, "You told Daddy you were so glad I wasn't out there with you guys, and then you laughed. That makes me so sad when you don't want me with you!"

(seriously, stop a second here...wouldn't your heart just break? Mine did. In about a million little pieces.)

I did my very best to explain what I had actually said, and what I had meant, but I could tell he didn't quite know whether or not to believe me.

a couple other things have happened, (which I'm not going to repeat so don't bother asking) and I'm so sad for my little tender heart.  Ahhhh...it never gets any easier being a mother does it?

The BEST of the BEST!

I think as long as I live, this will stay in my top five pictures of Dave and Jaxon-

My handsome guys were Mario and Luigi for Halloween.  It was not a very original costume...I think I saw about 15 Marios and at least 8 or 9 Luigis at our ward party...but to a 4 year old...that just verifies that he is wearing ONE COOL COSTUME!  He stuck close by his dad all night, becuase you've never seen a boy more proud to be matching with his dad! It seriously brought a tear to my eye more than once!  All night he would say something, then look at Dave, and say, "Right Brudder?" (Still doesn't say his "th")

Jaxon told us that for the rest of his life, he just wants to be Mario for Halloween, we will just need to get him a bigger costume every year.  That's just fine with me, because then Dave can keep wearing his costume... which by the way, I totally put together! The adult Luigi costume was $50, and I said NO WAY! I bought a hat and a mustache for 10 bucks total, found a shirt at Savers, and borrowed the sweet overalls!

Jaxon thought his belly was the funniest thing ever! He would say, "Hey Brudder! Look at my fat belly! How did we get so fat???" I love that the seam and the blow up tube in the front look like a belly button and underwear line.   I wish I would have gotten a picture of his buns in this get-up...he had the biggest wedgie all night because the belly was taking up so much room in the front!

Yes, MORE Halloween!

And this isn't even all of it!!

With Dave's busy season and Jaxon's early bedtime, we never got around to carving pumpkins.  Instead we got this awesome Mr. Potato Head decorating kit and made the cutest vampire you ever saw! Only problem? They game us two mouths and no eyes!  Here is Jaxon trying to figure out what to do about it-

Poking homes for the parts-

Coloring in the Makeshift eyes-

Being a goofball...as usual!

Is that a real smile I see? STOP THE PRESSES!!!

I have seen several people post on their blogs about Vertuccio farm here in Mesa.  It's a half as expensive and twice as close as Schnepf Farms so we decided to give it a go! IT WAS WONDERFUL! We went before school got out and were pretty much the only people there. We got to do everything Jaxon wanted, as much as he wanted, and the whole thing cost me a whopping $7!!
We spent the majority of our time here-

Took a barrel train ride-

Conked a few crows-

Look at that air he's catching!

Did our very best to ring the bell....

Without a whole lot of luck...

Dispite the fact that we aren't seeing much of Dave, we are really enjoying Halloween, and the beginning of a wonderful Holiday season!

Halloween begins..

Jaxon had his Halloween day and party at preschool today.  This is only half the girls in his class...but ALL The boys! That's right! 2 boys and 9 girls!  Jaxon doesn't seem to mind, but his teacher keeps moving him around becuase he gets too "mothered"...all the girls want to help him do everything, make sure he follows directions etc! I think it's just supply and demand...boys are in low demand in that class so they are going to supply lots of help!  Don't worry, even though they are NOT boyfriend/girlfriend, (we don't even joke about that at this age) Brailyn (Ariel in the picture) is still his NUMBER ONE BEST FRIEND (he told me today) and yesterday on the way home they decided that they will get married. Today they decided that they will both be Lady Gaga for Halloween next year!  YIKES!

Jaxon's teacher, Who is great, dressed up as a witch with a green face and big wart on her nose. Jaxon didn't want to go ANYWHERE NEAR HER for a picture...I think the picture says it all!

Today was the second to last day teaching AD at hte gym, so a bunch of us got together for a big Halloween blowout! It was great fun- so here are a few pics. I actually had a really cool witches hat, and green lips...but I had to take the hat off to wear the pic in the tracks that I taught, and you can't really see my awesome lipstick!



COME JOIN ME!!!

 Okay, for anyone who has followed this blog for any amount of time, you know that I teach an aqua class at the local gym. I love it, it has been so great for me all around, and I love it! (did I mention that?) Well, for a lot of reasons that are hard to explain (but we will chalk it up here to one word- MONEY) the gym is not going to offer this class anymore! I had the choice to turn my time slots into a different class (That I don't totally love) or give them up. After a lot of long and hard deliberating...I chose to give them up. *sob*
 I'm seriously SERIOUSLY going to miss teaching. I love the interaction, the people, the workout, the fun, and let's be honest... I LOVE BEING ON STAGE WITH A MIC!!!!! :o)
I think that later in my life....or next year...I will learn a different class and start teaching again, but now is a good time for a break.  Who knows what fertility will bring, and it will be nice to have one less responsiblity weighing on my mind and schedule...

HERE IS WHERE THE "COME JOIN ME" COMES IN-
THIS TUESDAY (THE 26TH) AT 8AM
AND FRIDAY (THE 29TH) AT 9AM
ARE MY LAST TIMES EVER EVER EVER TEACHING THIS CLASS!!!
 EVER!!!

So, I want it to be a major party.  I am inviting everyone and anyone from near AND FAR to come join in the fun.  If youre not a member of Fitness Works it doesn't matter, I will get you a guest pass.  I want to go out with a bang, so please PLEASE come join me!  Let me know here, or in a email if you are going to come, and I will make sure to you get the pass! I promise it will be fun! I'm bringing treats and prizes!
YAHOO!!!