Ashley

I love Ashley. She is the sweetest, nicest girl I know. This morning she said, "Mom, do you want to know what I love the most? I love cuddling with you and praying." This from the girl who

at 3 years old said to me, "I'm a good prayer, want to know why? Because I pray from my heart." I am in awe that I get to have this girl and to learn from her. She is good. She has no guile. And she already has learned to make other people happy and to care for other people's feelings. It's amazing. And so you can see why I would miss her when she is at school. I really do. Quite a bit, actually. And it doesn't help now that she is so busy after school and developing her own life. I miss her just writing this. She has started ballet again. She loves it. She is not the most graceful girl around, but she is amazingly flexible and enjoys it completely. She also goes to art class on Wednesday afternoons. She also loves that. She has a gift for art. We're taking a 2 month break from that to do soccer again so she can exercise (her words). I'm confident she'd rather do art and told her she could, but I know she wants to please my by exercising since she knows how important that is to me. She is a good little soccer player. It's fun to watch. I'm trying to keep her activities closer to home so we spend more time as a family. She is such a great first child. I hope the kids want to be like her. I do. Oh, and she lost her other front tooth and has a cute toothless grin.