Asher's 2nd Birthday

So the title of this post was Asher's Birthday, but the first picture turned out to be the beautiful Ayana Grace. She is such an amazingly wonderful little girl. She is very smart and loves to help her Mom, Dad, and Brother. She loves any kind of art project as well as books and pretend play. She is a great example to our family, and is always super excited for prayers and going to church.
Our little two year old, Asher, continues to be a light in our lives. He is hilarious and loves to make people laugh and smile. He likes to make silly faces and to be sneaky. He has the cutest little giggle and smiles. I continue to believe that Heavenly Father gave him the cutest smile he could com up with because he knew Asher would need a way to compensate for his mischievious nature. He attends toddler lab on campus and greatly enjoys his class. He also loves to go to his nursery class at church and say his prayers, but he could do with out the sitting still for an hour in Sacrament.

He loves Mickey Mouse, so he had a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme for his birthday party. We had a small group of friends gather at the park for a barbecue and cake/presents I attempted my first real decorated cake and was quite pleased with my results.
He received a lot of wonderful gifts but some of his favorites were these dress up sets from his sister. They both love to get on costumes and pretend.

It is hard to believe that he is two years old already, time sure flys by! What a wonderful little boy, we are so blessed to have him in our family!

My Star Bellied Sneetches

As I was typing the last post about Asher's birthday the kids reminded me of their star bellied sneetch costumes. Several months ago they had a family activity on campus called Dinner with Dr. Seuss. There was a costume contest, and I wanted the kids to be unique, so I made them Sneetch costumes. They were so adorable I wanted to post a picture for all of you to see.

Christmas Time!

As usual Christmas was busy and wonderful at our house. Ayana is old enough this year to understand about Santa Claus this year, so it was fun to see her get so excited about meeting him and telling him her gift request (5 trains, some train track and a train table). Our Christmas season officially started at our church Christmas party where Santa claus made an appearance. Asher was not fond of him at all and decided he would fill the role of the screaming kid on Santa's lap, though he cheered up pretty quick when he got that candy cane!

Of course we got a real Christmas tree, we found a real pretty Frasier Fir and Trever got some large LED lights for it. I just love Christmas trees, they are so fun! The kids had a blast decorating, though I now understand why Mom had to "redecorate" every year after we went to bed when we were young. The kids sure liked to hang all the ornaments in one spot.

Christmas morning was it's usual mix of chaos, excitement and happiness, here are a couple of pictures of the kids in their new Christmas pjs before all the craziness began. Ayana got so excited to see that Santa had come and filler her stocking and left her some gifts.

They got many wonderful and well-loved gifts, but their favorite was their gift from Santa of a new train set. They could hardly contain themselves as they climbed all around that big box trying to get all the wrapping paper off. Trever got to spend most of his morning playing the typical Christmas morning Dad and putting it all together, but the kids have already spent many fun hours playing with them, so it was well worth it.
No Christmas would be complete if the kids didn't have at least as much fun with the packaging as with the presents, and Ayana and Asher were no exception. Here they are trying to pop some of the air pillows.

All in all, a wonderful Christmas season. I got a really nice, new viking sewing machine for Christmas and I can hardly wait to start my creating. I think my first project will be new aprons for the family along with Chef hats for the kids. Trever got mostly practical things, which is a switch for my kid-like husband, but he is excited to have a new backpack and shoes as well as a few video games.

I hope that all of you had a joyous season as well and that you took the chance to remember the Savior's birth along with all the other things that fight for your attention. Hope your new year is filled with adventure, fun and success in all you undertake!

Halloween Fun

We had a great Halloween! On Tuesday our ward youth hosted an awesome kids carnival, Ayana and Asher had a lot of fun playing the games and seeing their friends. Then on Friday we went to a place called Trick or Treat Street in Idaho Falls. It is an event where some of the local RV dealers loan the use of their RVs for local businesses to decorate and pass out candy from. We went with our friends the Lewises, they have 2 kids close to Ayana's age so they have a lot of fun together. After the trick or treating we all went out for dinner and had a great time. Then on Saturday night our complex had a dinner/Trunk or Treat. I made some peanut butter balls that looked like eye balls and won the award for best presentation, so that was pretty fun. The kids got so much candy at the Trunk or Treat that Asher couldn't even carry his bucket anymore because it was too heavy! All in all it was a great time. Trever and I did decide that we need to dress up next year, we felt lame at all the events in no costume. I made Ayana's with costume, and am pretty pleased with how it turned out. It is the first time I have ever done sleeves or a zipper in clothing. It was far from perfect, but she was the cutest witch ever. We bought Asher a hamburger costume at Old Navy and it was sure a hit, everyone commented on it and thought he was so adorable. Hope all of your Halloween's were as wonderful as ours! Here are some pictures of our little monsters!

5 Silly Monkeys

Someday soon I am going to take the time to put a real post on here again...until then enjoy this adorable video of our little angel Ayana singing her new favorite song!

So summer finally arrived in full here in Rexburg. Less than a month ago we were still having weird snow flurries, but now we are in the 80s everyday. It is hot, but fun. We are definitely missing our old apartment with the air conditioning. Right now in our apartment it is 84 degrees, that is with the windows open and the fans running 24-7. Oh well though, we'll survive. We have been enjoying the summer sunshine and having lots of fun. There is a program that provides free lunch for kids at a couple of the local parks 5 days a week. So almost every day we either walk or ride the bike to the park for the lunch and to play for a while. At Porter Park there is the splash park that some of you played at with us last summer. The kids love it. There are a lot of different size fountains and a few water slides. Ayana finally got brave and now goes down the water slides on here own. Ayana is still in toddler lab at the University and she enjoys all the different activities they have there. The teachers are very creative and there is always something new to try. Her favorites are playing at the sensory table (usually has water or rice in it), playing outside, and the role play area (mini grocery stores, etc.). Today while Ayana was at class we brought Asher's little push toy that helps him walk and he LOVED having long hallways to walk down instead of crashing into the walls all the time like at home. Our other summer activity is the library reading programs. We go to story time every week and Ayana loves to get stickers in her program book for being read to every day and get her prizes like passes for the carousel at the park, etc. I am in a reading program too and have been able to earn some fun certificates like free ice cream and a swimming pass. We are excited for when Trever is done with school in another month so he can join in more of the fun with us. Other than that we just hang out at home and try not to melt. Last Saturday we went with some friends to some local caves and had fun walking through them. Asher got a little bothered by the dark toward the end, but Ayana loved using a flashlight and did really well walking on the uneven ground and scrambling over the rocks. Anyway, here are some pictures of our latest adventures. Love you all!

Ayana and Asher with their friends at the caves


Splash park fun







Ayana enjoying the country girl lifestyle at a local stores anniversary celebration

Lesson of the day

Today at church a man told a story that really struck me. I though I would share it on here, both so I can remember it for the next time I need reminding and also just in case it help any of you. Here it is:

There was a man who desperately wanted a nice lawn. He spent all his time out in his yard trying to get rid of the weeds that were growing among his grass. Every Saturday he would go to the local nursery and buy another product to try to kill those weeds. When a week passed and he didn't see a noticeable difference he would go back to the nursery again and get another product to try. He did this for a couple months with little success in killing all those weed for good. At the nursery there was an old man who had been a landscaper for many years and was an expert in lawn care. After several months of watch the young man come in and buy weed killers he finally approached him and gave him some advice. He told the young man to forget the weeds and spend his efforts fertilizing and nourishing the grass. Then with only the exception of a few necessary pluckings now and then he would no longer have the weeds. Instead he would have a beautiful lush lawn that kept the weeds from growing in the first place.

The speaker then compared this story to us as parents. How often we spend our energy on the things we see as faults in our children. We put so much effort into plucking out and killing the weeds in their lives that we are out of energy to do the fertilizing. Sometimes we even do the same thing in our own lives. If we focus on encouraging and nurturing the good things we see in our children and ourselves then we will discover that those things will blossom until there is no more room for the bad. So save your plucking for the really big things and otherwise just spend lots of time fertilizing and enjoying the wonderful lawn it produces in our lives.