What I Love About Sundays

I was originally going to call this post "Driver's Ed", because, as you will see, there are so many pictures of Ashley "driving".

However, while I was sitting here waiting for them to upload... I started thinking about what a great day today was and the song "What I Love about Sundays" popped in my head.

"What I Love about Sundays" is a song by country singer Craig Morgan, who reminds us to appreciate (first and foremost) God and all of the "little" things that are so important to our lives.

These pictures summarize MY version of What I Love About Sundays: my husband, our daughter, our dogs, horses, and land. Sunshine and laughter. That's what I love about Sundays.

The big event this afternoon was giving Ashley her new "Cozy Coupe" car. I have been looking for one at a garage sale ever since last summer when Ashley had her ear tubes put in (Children's Mercy Hospital has an entire "fleet" of Fisher-Price automobiles for their patients to ride in the hallways.) Now that I went ahead and bought her a new one, I am sure I will be seeing them everywhere!
I asked Jeremy to put the car together while I unloaded groceries, thinking that it wouldn't take very long.
Oops. I was wrong. Try explaining that to a one-year-old who sees a pink car in the driveway and knows it is for her!
She likes it already :).
But, her sitting in the car was not helping Jeremy assemble it any faster, so I thought of a distraction:
I let her "drive" my car while we waited!
This picture (above) is going to make me sad when she turns 16.

But then I can look at these and laugh :). Yes, that is Ashley saying "CHEESE" at me through the windshield.

It is always good to look both ways.

If you are ever laughing this hard while driving, be sure to do like Ashley and keep both hands on the steering wheel.

She may be growing up too fast, but she's still little. :)

When the newness of pretend driving my car wore off, I took Ashley to the barn to see A.J. and the horses. She thinks A.J. is funny. :)

I apologize if I over-use the semicolon/parenthesis "smile" in my blogging, but I can't help it... the girl makes me :).

On our way back to check on Daddy's progress, Ashley became (once again) fascinated with our gravel drive. Then she started "finding" rocks and bringing them to me.
Thank you, Ashley.

She has one in her hand that is for Daddy. That's him in the upper right corner still working on the Cozy-Coupe.

Real men work on pink cars.

At la-ast!

Look at that face! She has the look of a nine-to-five-er sitting in bumper to bumper traffic on a Friday afternoon.

Backing up uphill. It's not as easy as it looks!

If you are ever in a fender-bender - never admit fault. (That's what I hear, anyway.)

After a while, Ashley gave the car a break and decided to walk to Gran & Grandpa's. (We live next-door to Jeremy's mom and dad. That's their house and pool.)She found an acorn on the way and sat down to take a closer look at it.

Back to the car. I love this one of her getting in and shutting the door!

Finally, sometime around 5 or 5:30, I had to force Ashley to come in. She was not happy about it, and kept going to the sliding glass door and pointing outside. I gave her a bath, which was a nice distraction, and then she played with her Mrs. Potato Head while I fixed dinner. She didn't fuss or make a peep, and I laughed out loud when I saw this:

She was just too exhausted to stay awake another minute!

And, like always, her Gracie was there to watch over her.