Happy Birthday Asher!

I can't believe I have been a mom for 4 years! I am so happy to have Asher in my life. I want to share a few of my favorite things about him

*He is my right hand man. He is very good at remembering where I put my keys and cell phone, and where Maddie discarded her shoes. I have a touch of ADD and it is wonderful to have my junior Paul around to help me keep it together.

*He is really into wanting to be funny right now so laugh at him at your own risk. The other day he came out of his room in his underwear with one sock on, I made the mistake of laughing at him and now I am surprised several times a day with half naked Asher. In public I have negotiated that he can only manifest his favorite outfit by being fully clothed, but secretly he only ever wears one sock now, and I can't help but laugh so this habit is probably with me for a while.

*He has been conning Madeleine into letting him have his own way for two weeks by saying he is almost the birthday boy. She says "Oooohhh", obviously impressed, and lets him have his way.

*He thrives on a schedule, while I do not, so he put me on one. He asked every day for weeks what time it was when we did certain things and memorized what I said. Now he looks at the clock on our oven and all day long I hear things like "Momma, it is 10 o'clock, time for snack" "Momma, it is 7:00, time to help me get my jammies on." Heaven help me if I try to do things against his idea of the correct order.

*He always wants to know if I think things are cool, like his latest sandcastle or his toys. He is the first person who has ever trusted that I have a clue if something is cool. My own mom doesn't think I'm cool.

*He is so sweet to his sisters most of the time. He always wants matching sets of everything from lollipops to toys because he isn't satisfied unless Madeleine has her fair share. He would bring her everywhere with him if he could. I love that they are so close.

*He loves to learn and is very self-driven. He discovers something he wants to learn about and then talks about it constantly until he has mastered any given subject. He has done this with learning his left from his right, days of the week, and more recently visually recognizing numbers over 10. Now every time I take him to the supermarket he concentrates on numbers and practices recognizing the numbers.

He has been begging for a birthday party and I gave in because I felt like he was old enough to appreciate it this year. We did it for him a week early because Paul had that Friday off.


Paul spent nearly two weeks working on this pinata, designed to Asher's specifications. For those of you who don't happen to be Thomas the Train buffs, this is James. James is a red engine with a five on his side. Having an engineer design a pinata has it's downsides. It was so structurally sound, despite his best efforts to create a perforated break line, that all of the boys got 4 turns each and then Paul had to take 4 or 5 good whacks at it to get it to brake.


Asher's favorite color for two years was blue. Everything had to be blue until about a month ago when blue and green were his favorite colors. Since Paul made the pinata, Asher's new favorite color is red, and he was a bit disappointed when I told him that his balloons were blue and green because I had pre-ordered them. As soon as he saw them, however, he was so delighted. Balloons are so magical to Asher and they really made his day.

My little Mozart

We had a busy day today. Vanessa had a Primary Program practice with Asher at the church and so Madeleine had to come with me for our Young Men's fundraiser. We were blowing out sprinklers and so we walked around most of the day and Madeleine did the cutest thing. It was approaching lunch time and we were going to have pizza. I hyped it to Madeleine so she would suffer through a few more sprinkler blow outs. I had her on my shoulders while we walked from one house to the next and she started singing a song she made up.

Pizza, Pizza,
I love pizza.
It's delicious.
Do you want some? (repeat)

She made up a four line song and with its own tune and it even included the word "delicious". Time to start filling out the application for Juilliard...and financial aid.

6 weeks

I am in love with this girl's sweet smiles and blue, blue eyes .

Return to the Pumpkin Patch

Last year we went to the Country Mercantile for their Harvest Festival and had so

much fun that we had to do it again this year. I had the day off on Friday and we could all use a day out so we braved the colder than normal weather to head to the Pumpkin Patch.

This year the kids decided that they wanted to find the smallest pumpkins, which worked out to save us money and save me the hassle of carrying all the pumpkins back to the wagon for the hay ride. I love watching the kids wander around the pumpkin patch. This is Madeleine with her spotted little pumpkin (that failed to register on the scale, so it was basically free).

One of the highlights for Asher is always the hayride pulled by the tractor. Often, though, he takes his fun very seriously like he did here.

Madeleine's favorite part was the animals in the barn. She loved the cows, because they looked just like her "Moo Cow".

Asher also loved the hay bail pyramid, which he conquered like it was Mt. Everest.

And he also loved the hay bail maze. He kept chasing me through the maze while I pushed Lydia in the stroller.

And, finally there were some giant pumpkins and the kids kept trying to climb all over them. I thought this was a particularly cute picture of Maddie.

I think we have really established our first Tri-Cities tradition.

All ready for church

Grateful

Yesterday there was a terrible accident on the freeway near our house. The whole freeway was shutdown which turned my typical 15 minute commute into an hour long commute, with all of the extra time taking place in the 2 miles between the second to last exit, which I could have taken, and my exit.

It made me thankful for a few things. First, that me and my family have been safe and healthy. And the second and less important, that in the 3.5 years living in the Tri-Cities this is maybe the third time I have ever gotten stuck in traffic.

It is so nice to not spend time stuck in traffic away from my family. This year they are reconstructing the interchange at the end of the bridge I take to work. It has resulted in occasional closures forcing me to take the other bridge and the "long route". It added just a minute or two to my commute and I didn't have to make any significant changes.

This is one of the things that we love about living here.

I won!

First of all, I just wanted to brag that I actually won a blog giveaway! My talented friend Amy is going to make me a fabulous bag and I am so excited!

Lydia is almost 4 weeks old! I swear I am starting to see real smiles, but so far I am the only one to see them. I may have post-partum psychosis, but at least it's the happy kind. Lydia looks so much like Asher did as a baby to me. It's strange because I didn't think Asher and Maddie looked that much alike at all.