Happy Thanksgiving!!

I have been overly blessed in my life and I have soooo much to be thankful for. I am especially thankful for these two little boys who have made me into a mother, which is truly my calling in life and brings me an incredible amount of joy. They are my world!



And of course I'm thankful for my handsome hubby, who is such a great daddy and husband. He knows how to bring laughter into our home.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Asher Turned One!

Good morning birthday boy!

I cannot even begin to say how much I love this little boy. His first year has been full of love and smiles and he's got such a fun personality that I know there's more love and smiles in the years to come!
The day after his birthday Asher decided to grow up; he got up on his hands and knees and started rocking! (See, that's funny because some babies are walking by the time they are one, and my baby doesn't even crawl!! Ha ha ha...we still love him.) He's really good at the army crawl and he gets around real quick. A few days after his birthday my dad was babysitting and he said Asher had pulled up to a toy and let go and stood there for a second or two! He's never done that before--and he hasn't done it since so maybe my dad made it up :) And he also started pulling up in his crib when he wakes up. Funny how so much happened in that first week after his birthday!

Asher has 8 beautiful teeth (that I still think are big!). With those 8 beautiful teeth he still eats baby food but I've been trying to give him more grown up food. I think the only thing he's spit out is broccoli (who can blame him, really) but it wasn't cooked or softened. He loves cheese and yogurt. I'm hoping he'll be a good eater like his brother.

I really need to start feeding him more grown up food, I guess, because at his one year check up he weighed 18.9 lbs (3%) and he was 28.1 inches (6%). Of course his head is at 81% so at least his brain is growing nice and big :)
Asher loves to pull everything out of drawers and cupboards. In fact, I think most of the time he'd prefer to play in a drawer than with a toy. My bathroom and kitchen are (more) unorganized now because I've lost the will to put back everything just exactly where it belongs. Knowing it's gonna be pulled out again in about ten more minutes, I just try to get it out of the way. Rylan, being the good big brother that he is, was very concerned about the glass bowls in Asher's favorite kitchen cupboard. So we moved those out of Asher's reach, as well as cast iron skillets, blenders, and anything else that could cause more harm than a cool whip bowl.
Rylan's train is also a big hit with Asher. Especially when Rylan is playing with it. One day they'll be able to play together with the same intent. But for now Rylan likes to push his trains around the tracks and Asher likes to pull the tracks apart. Bad combination. But Asher sure does have fun being the destroyer, which we allow him to do every once in awhile!
For his birthday my sister Deborah came and took his pictures. We took some outside and then did a cake smashing session which was slow. Really, how could he know what to do? We just expect him to go at it and bathe in the cake which isn't exactly how it went. We'd show him by sticking our finger in his cake and licking our finger and he would do the same...just barely touching the cake. Rylan kept asking if he could show Asher how to do it because he wanted more of that cake! It was so nice of Deborah to come do it though and I'm excited to see how the pictures turned out. Don't get me wrong; he did end up eating too much cake and was messy enough for a bath.

I absolutely love birthdays and I think everyone should have a big fun birthday every year. But for some reason when it comes down to it I don't plan things for my boys' birthdays. I know a big reason is I don't want to inconvenience anyone by coming to a birthday party for a one year old who doesn't even care. So we just invited people over for cake and ice cream. And then guess what...I didn't even make a cake! Yeah, that's how lame I am. BUT, I did make some brownies and we had some ice cream. My parents came and gave Asher a little farm set, Amy came with her girls (Charlie was working on their house) and Tami came with her fam. They gave Asher a see and say and some tennis balls. They also brought him some balloons earlier in the day (and Deborah brought balloons, too!). I am always happy to have balloons around the house. Deborah's balloons were accidentally let go outside (and Ry still talks about it. It was sad but a little exciting for him). The balloons Tami brought are still floating around our house (a week and a half later) and it's so fun! I love walking in the house and seeing balloons! There are lots of games to play with balloons so we've all been having fun.

Happy Birthday my Asher love!

Halloween 2009

Rylan seriously loved Halloween this year. I asked him probably 29,000 times what he wanted to dress up as and he usually answered "a cowboy". I didn't know if he said that because he really wanted to be a cowboy or because that's what he was last year so he thought that's just what he was on Halloween. We looked at lots of costumes online and in a few stores but he always said "no, I'm a cowboy". He was such a cute cowboy last year that I had no problem with him using the same costume. Kevin tried his hardest to convince Ry to be a fireman and it worked for awhile. But then I couldn't find a fireman costume that I liked. When it all came down to it, I dressed Ry in his cowboy costume, he was happy with it, and he looked super cute again this year!
Rylan's little preschool playgroup had a Halloween party on Tuesday. The boys wore their costumes and played in slime, painted pumpkins, made pizza faces, created balloon ghosts, pet a real tarantula skin (one of the mom's in our group has a pet tarantula who recently shed his skin. Good timing for Halloween! It was totally creepy and Rylan almost destroyed it.) and practiced trick or treating. It was cute and Ry had lots of fun!


Kevin's work has a costume contest every year. In the past he's always been at the warehouse and he's never been able to fully participate. So this year he was excited to dress up. He made some creepy paper mache arms and dressed up as a tall creepy guy. He got an honorable mention with a $50 gift card to Mimi's--yippee! He's determined to win the $1000 prize next year!
We had a pumpkin carving party with my family last Sunday. Kevin carved a jack o lantern and when he was done Rylan called it his very own jack o lantern. We do it all for our kids, right? We ate sloppy joes and delicious pies and had a fun, fun time!

On Halloween we almost missed the Main Street trick or treating but we made it in time for a good practice run for Rylan. Kevin wore his costume and loved having people stop him for pictures or just to talk about how cool he was. There were tons of people and Rylan was thrilled with all his candy. I was hoping to get to the popcorn stand for popcorn (obviously). Just as we walked up they handed out their last bag...sad! We walked by the firetruck and Rylan marveled from afar. Asher of course was in the stroller the entire time making a mess with his graham cracker. Have you ever seen a lion eat a graham cracker? It was a mighty cute sight :)
We met up with Deborah and Josh at my mom's house. They came down so we could all see Abbi in her super cute ladybug costume. Deborah had told me earlier in the day "It's so cute it'll make you want a girl"...and she was right! Josh's mom made the costume and wowzers was it adorable! Again, Kevin was in his costume and we took Rylan, Asher, and Abbi around the cul de sac for some trick or treating. Okay, while on Main Street Rylan would say "trick or treat" but super quiet. So before we left for the neighborhood I had Rylan practice saying it louder. So we walk up to the first house, and immediately Rylan says real loud "Trick or treat". He did such a good job! Unfortunately that was before he even knocked on the door and the people answered! Ha ha ha...it was cute. Of course when the door was answered he thought his job was done and he just stood there waiting for his candy. So it took him several houses to get it down just right and by the end he was the best trick or treater out there! He said it nice and loud and he was saying "thank you" before he ran off to the next house. We had a good time. I was carrying my little Asher lion who was getting very heavy and tired so we went home to hand out our own candy. Sadly we missed the bulk of the trick or treaters and now we have lots of candy. (not good because Kevin and I are not eating candy this year as a silly new year's resolution and Ry certainly doesn't need it all. We'll be distributing it to kids, neighbors, primary kids, family, friends...)

There is evidence of lots of trick or treaters at this home!

So that was our Halloween. I had lots of thoughts of Halloween last year since that was the day Asher and I came home from the hospital!