Imagination

I remember seeing a sign in the pediatrician's office about milestones babies reach and at what age they happen. I saw that "imaginative play" was listed between the ages of 18 months to 2 years. At the time I thought that was crazy because babies that age were too young to understand how to use their imagination. I was so wrong! Asa pretends all the time now. He turns his food into airplanes, he shares with his stuffed puppy, the list goes on and on. I managed to capture a couple of pictures of Asa in the tub the other morning while he was doing some of his "imaginative play". Here he is with his little people man and a squirty tub toy bird. He set them up to face eachother and pretended they were talking, playing, jumping, etc!

It was so cute to watch and I am amazed at how fast he is growing up.

Fitting for the Season.

I'm sure most, if not all of you, have heard this story about the painting of Christ which was salvaged from the remains of the Provo Tabernacle. The loss of the historic Provo Tabernacle was such a sad thing. It was a place built and dedicated for the purpose of worshiping Christ. I went to many meetings in that building and sang in choirs there too and I always loved the feeling that historic building held. This article tells the story perfectly:

http://www.heraldextra.com/tabernacle/article_db328b06-0b0f-11e0-a131-001cc4c03286.html

At this time of year, it is always nice to hear stories like this one that make us think about the reality of Christ, his purpose, his mission and his love for us.

Merry Christmas to everyone!

Asa-Isms.

This age is awesome! Asa keeps me laughing all day long. he is really starting to talk up a storm now and there are so many things he's said that I have been meaning to write down. My favorite phrase right now is "big meow". Big Meow is what he calls the King Fu Panda movie. The kid is totally obsessed with this show and Big Meow is the name he came up with because of Tai Lung (the bad tiger). We watch "Big Meow" twice a day if not more.
Asa has learned what the word watch means. He is constantly telling us to WATCH before he does something. Usually it precedes a bout of jumping up and down or holding up his body with his arms between the couch and the footrest.
Anytime Asa sees a toilet, whether it's ours, his, one of TV or one at the store, he will say quite loudly "I poo-poo". He has used his own little potty a few times and definitely knows what toilets are for.
Asa's favorite foods are chicken nuggets, blueberries, macaroni and cheese, waffles. He calls chicken nuggets "bawk-bawk", blueberries are "bee-bees" and macaroni and cheese is "moni cheese". Waffles are "faffles".
He has become very physically able. He runs everywhere, sits and jumps on everything, climbs on anything he can. He has also become a big fan of drawing, playing with play dough, painting (when I'm brave) and building with blocks.
Asa knows and loves the song "Itsy Bitsy Spider" and thanks to that song, spiders are now called simply "bitsy". He sees a bug that even looks like a spider and he runs around screaming "bitsy" until someone comes to see it and/or dispose of it.
Asa now understands that when Berkeley or I say "no" to him, he is being reprimanded. Now when one of us says no, he will get this really sad face and say "daddy, no, no" or "mommy, no, no". We then have to say "yes, we said no but we still love you."
Asa now sings. He sings random mumbles all the time, but now he actually sings a real song! He sings "la la la Elmo's world la la la elmo's world" all the time. Yup, he loves his Elmo's World DVD. He loves Sesame Street too. He watches old clips on youtube where the sesame street puppets talk to the little boy, John-John. He walks around talking about "john-john" all day.
Here is a little video of Asa showing off some of his Asa-isms. I pretty much think he is the sweetest little guy in the world, but I'm biased...very.

Thanksgiving 2010

As always, Thanksgiving was tons of fun. It was super nice this year because we had our Thanksgiving dinner at the church, so there was tons of room to run around and the kids could go crazy. We pulled out toys from the nursery, set up a paint station to decorate Christmas ornaments, had a projector screen with couches for movies and the wii set up too. Dinner was great and spending time with family was even better. Here's a look at our Thanksgiving through a ton of pictures!

First Snow!

Asa has been an "outside boy" his whole life! Seriously, we don't go 30 minutes inside before he is begging to go back outside. We spent most of every summer day outside. Needless to say, this transition to winter has been rough. Berkeley and I decided it would be a very good idea (for our sanity and Asa's) to invest in some good snow clothes for the little man. We had our first snowfall and Asa absolutely loved being able to go tromp around in it. We even played at the park. The only problem is that snow clothes take forever to put on, especially when your child is completely impatient and would out into the freezing cold naked if I let him. Oh well, it's worth it if I'm able to let the caged animal out from time to time.

Today We Found Out...

We are THRILLED!

He Learned How to do Push-Ups From Me.

Here's the proof.

Another First!

Yep, he was taking a bath and started climbing out. When I asked why he was getting out, he told me he told me he needed to poop. He sat on his little potty and did his business. We haven't been potty training him, but we ask him every so often if he wants to pee in his potty and he does sometimes, but this was the first time he initiated it. Hmmm...maybe potty training will come sooner than I thought.

FREE!

I don't think there is a word that makes me feel as happy inside as the word "free". Especially when the items you get for free are awesome. Well, we went by Berkeley's parent's house the other day and noticed that the neighbor had this Little Tikes castle just sitting on the curb by his garbage cans. We went over and checked it out. It was in perfect condition! We couldn't believe he was just going to throw it away, so we went and knocked on his door. Sure enough, he was just throwing it out and said we could have it if wanted it. Um, YES! That thing is like a 2 year old's dream come true! We were taking the castle apart when that same neighbor came over and said, "So, do you want a truck?" He went to his garage and rolls out this PowerWheels electric truck! Those things are like $200! Heck yes we want the truck! Thank goodness Berkeley and I happened to stop by his parent's house that day (and before the garbage man came) because we got two hot ticket kid's items for FREE. Yep, I love that word.

"Mow-Mow!"

Asa is totally obsessed with lawn mowers. He's been obsessed with them for a very long time now. If I had a nickel for every time we said "mow-mow" in a day, I might be rich. I keep waiting for this lawn mower phase to pass, but so far there is no end in sight for his total love of grass cutting machines. My mom bought this little bubble blower lawn mower for him at the beginning of the summer and it has been the best investment ever made. He would just push that mower around our yard all day if I let him. Asa also loves to watch videos on YouTube of people mowing the lawn. We can hardly get the computer out without him mauling us and demanding we find videos of "mow-mows". It is like Christmas when Berkeley mows the lawn. We get discounted rent for doing lawn work, and the lawn here is enormous! Mowing this lawn takes quite a bit of time, but Asa will mow with his little mower right along side Berkeley without a break until the job is done. I took some videos and pictures of the boys in action today.

Welcome Home Elder Ward!!

Berkeley's brother Douglas got home from his mission last week! We are all so excited to have him back. He served in the Albuquerque, New Mexico mission and did a wonderful job teaching the gospel to the people there. Here are some pictures from the welcome home party at the airport.

If I Had Time...

I am always in a battle with time. I am the mother of a super active 20 month old, wife to an awesome husband who I want to spend all my extra time with, and full time student preparing to student teach in January, oh, and I'm pregnant. I'm busy! Sometimes, like today, I sit and make lists of things I want to do when I finally have expendable time. For example, I really enjoy cooking but I usually just make the same 7 recipes because they are fast and I have them memorized. Someday, when I have time, I want to flip to a random page in my cookbook, go buy all the ingredients and make something new! Here's one I want to try...

If you have more time than I do and want to try this recipe, go here...
http://recipesbyme4you.blogspot.com/2009/02/gourmet-recipes-chicken-stew-with.html

Another thing I want to do is learn how to play some sort of instrument. My secret confession is that I want to learn to play the Ukulele so I can sing and play songs by Ingrid Michaelson and Jack Johnson all day long.

I want to write children's books. I have lots of ideas, who knows how good they are, but given time, I want to sit down and create storyboards for my ideas. Form those ideas into text, find an illustrator and get published! Dreaming big? Maybe, but maybe not.

Someday time and I will get along, but for now I am just trying to enjoy the "stuff" I currently have loaded on my plate. Thank goodness I have Berkeley and Asa to keep me happy and sane.

Oh, take a second and vote on what you think the gender of our baby is. We find out in less than three weeks!

I Need to Get My STUFF Done!

He might as well be drawing ME in this clip...

Seriously, it has been one of those weeks that I have had tons of "stuff" to do.Did I do it? NO! I procrastinated and spent my time doing who knows what, nothing productive...and then today I lived a day from Hell as I scrambled to get a week's worth of school crap done in 3 hours. I know I did a shoddy job and I've been so grumpy the rest of the day. I think I've learned my lesson. Maybe. Maybe I'll learn it tomorrow?

They Should Hire Me.

The sizing department for Halloween costumes needs to be taught the actual sizes of kids. Last year, we bought Asa a teddy bear Halloween costume. Last Halloween Asa was 8 months old. We bought him a 0-6 month costume and it totally swallowed him whole. I had to fold and safety pin the legs so he could even crawl ad roll the sleeves. He still looked adorable...



Well, this year I have been trying to decide what kind of costume to get him and what size, I pulled out that teddy bear costume and tried it on him. IT FIT! The sleeves were a little short, but every where else the costume fit him perfectly. My son is almost 20 months old and if I wanted him to, he could be a teddy bear again for Halloween in a 0-6 month costume! What's up with that? Here is a picture of his recent fitting...





Yep, still as cute as ever.
Although we could re-use this costume, we aren't going to. I found one that I love and I can't wait to put him in it and take pictures. I'll post them when I get then. Here's hoping the costume fits.

Two?! Here's Hoping We Can Handle It.

We are very excited to announce the upcoming arrival of Ward baby # 2 due May 7th. The picture of Asa in the T-shirt was how we told Berkeley, but he didn't get it. Weird, I didn't think anything could be more obvious, but for some reason he thought about the book 1984 and not about the big news the T-shirt was trying to announce. Lame. After a minute or two of looking at his confused face, I ended up just saying, "um, we're pregnant." Now I just have to be patient for 8 weeks until I find out the gender!

Camping from Hell

Berkeley and I only got to go camping twice this summer. Normally, I really love camping. I always have, but some things have changed. To start, I was always just a passenger along for the trip, so I only had to worry about my own stuff. Now that I have acquired the title MOM and WIFE, I have also acquired the responsibility of packing everything! Who knew camping required so much crap!? Food, bedding, tents, cooking and eating equipment, Asa's necessities (which aren't few), etc... It's like it takes a whole day to prepare for one night out of camping. I coped with the packing both times and managed to retain my excitement for the trip until... TRIP 1: got to the campsite, set up tent and unloaded stuff from car only to find that we had forgotten our sleeping pads and pillows. I don't sleep great ON the freaking pad, so a night on the freezing ground with nothing but my sleeping bad and a bunch of clothes under me was sheer awfulness. Asa woke up unwilling to be calmed and we ended up spending half of the night in the car. Asa and Berkeley crashed out, as Asa had a carseat and Berkeley can sleep anywhere. Not me. I was awake and totally ticked off all night. That takes us to camping trip #2. This time it was our ward's campout and the letter they sent home with us said that we would be in cabins with bunks and reminded us to bring bedding. We packed up Asa's pack-n-play, sleeping bags, pillow and a couple extra blankets. I was more than willing and even excited to go camping knowing that we would be on beds with mattresses. The drive to Heber Valley was gorgeous and we were all in good spirits. We pulled up to our cabins, unloaded our stuff, opened the door to the cabins to find the promised bunks but WITH NO MATTRESSES AT ALL! Nothing but slabs of wood! I immediately wanted to cry. We brought no sleeping pads again and the drive there was like an hour and 15 minutes. Berkeley assured me that we should be better than last time because we were in a warm cabin and we had brought extra blankets for padding under our sleeping bags and we had pillows. My entire prayer before going to bed was that I would able to sleep decently and not be a total grouch. I guess it's true that the Lord doesn't answer some of the trivial prayers because the night was a holy terror! We were in one of those group cabins so lots of families were in this one big room with us. We took Asa on a drive and he fell asleep and transferred to his pack-n-play great and then we got in bed. Needless to say, I slept horribly after the first 5 minutes on. Asa woke up freaking out at around 1:45 and would not be consoled. Worried about waking or keeping everyone else up, we again made our way to the car. After driving for a bit and parking and trying to sleep for another 40 minutes, we finally decided to go home. We packed all our crap back in the car and made the drive home at 2:45 in the morning. We didn't get home until close to 4, but my own bed has never felt better in my whole life. We all crashed out and didn't wake up until Asa did at 8:30. Needless to say, I have NO desire to go camping again anytime soon.

Great News!

The Lord really has a way of making us trust in his timing. I have been so frustrated with school over the past year. Transferring to Weber meant going from 2 semesters left to 4 semesters left simply because I had to do filler classes that Weber required. Well, I only have two classes left in the program before student teaching but they were offered at the exact same time on the same days. LAME! This meant that I would have to take ONE class this semester, ONE class next semester, wait the summer, and then student teach in the fall. I prayed that I would have patience and that things would work out the way they should. I have been in school one week already, but on Friday I got an e-mail from the teacher I am supposed to have for my class next semester. She told me she had a couple students dropped and that the morning session was open for me if I wanted to add her class. I can't tell you how excited I was to get her e-mail. Now I can complete my classes this semester, student teach next semester and graduate in May!! It is hard to believe that in 9 months I will be done with school...unless I do the master's program, but right now I am not even thinking about that!

Document!

Words Asa can now say, or some what say...

-momma/mommy
-dadda/daddy
-truck
-lawnmower (mow-mow)
-grandpa (pa-pa)
-grandma (ma-maw)
-bike
-scooter
-swimming (ING!)
-Karl (kar-kar)
-David (day-day)
-belly button (bee-bee)
-bug
-pee pee
-poo poo
-outside
-Jesus (he-suh)
-cookie
-binky (me-me)
-bottle (bah-ble)
-maunya

I'm sure I have forgotten some and he is beginning to mimick quite a few more words. It is so fun to hear his little voice and know he is learning to talk. He is still signing and knows many words by their signs. It is interesting to see him link words and signs together. For example, the other day, Berkeley and Asa saw a bike outside of the store. Asa touched it and realized that the sun had made it very hot. The entire ride home, Asa would say bike followed by the sign for hot. What a smart little guy we have.

The Boy Loves His Daddy...Especially Since His Daddy is Clark Kent.

Asa is a daddy's boy! There is no denying the fact that Berkeley is the favored parent when we are both together. I am more than okay with that and I love to see the two of them together.



Sometimes Asa will find Berkeley's clothes, say "Dadda" over and over again and insist on wearing them around his neck. Once he has decided he needs to wear Berkeley's clothes, he refuses to give them up. Here he is eating lunch with Berkeley's shirt wrapped around his neck.


The last few days, Berkeley has become obsessed with the old Superman TV show. He has been watching episode after episode on Netflix. My little brother gave him a pair of glasses that look like Clark Kent's. I am not kidding when I say that he wears those glasses every time he watches Superman now. In fact, he is watching it right now and wearing the glasses. Sometimes I think I has two sons. Here are some pictures of my "two little boys" watching Superman.

Still Alive!

We are still here. I have just been burned out on blogging lately. I have decided to keep an actual journal again (you know, the kind where you have to use a pen and paper), so that is where I have been writing lately. It's nice. I have missed private journal writing. I thought I would get on here and write a quick update for the few of you who read this blog. We are doing well. I have been very much enjoying my two weeks of summer and I'm happy to report I got all A's during the summer semester of school. Now I only have two classes and student teaching left before I graduate. Hallelujah! Now that Berkeley has finished all of his military training, he will joining the ranks of college students everywhere this fall. He will be going to UVU full time and working part time. It will be great because the military will pay for his school and pay us extra per month which is what will make him able to only work part time but still make the same income per month. He is looking into teaching as well, but has not decided what area he wants to major in. He still has a couple semesters before he needs to apply, so hopefully by then he will feel good with one choice. Aside from school, we are just enjoying life and taking care of Asa. He is now 18 months and doing well. He is beginning to say quite a few words. His favorite words right now are scooter and bike. We have been having a really difficult time with his sleep schedule lately. All of a sudden, he totally freaks out when it is bed time so we've had to take him on drives to get him to sleep, and then he wakes up crying a couple times each night. We are hoping it is just a growth spurt or teething that has made things so rough lately. Other wise, he is a happy, healthy, funny boy who we love very much! Overall, we are doing fine and enjoying summer.

Playdates, Ball Pit and Cracking Up!

Asa is now 17 months old and has so much personality and SO much energy! I sure love him and I sure love bedtime too!
He has had so much fun the last week playing with cousins. Summer came over to play and then Cade came over the next day and spent the night with us. It was so much fun! He also loves to play in his crib and his favorite thing is to throw his stuffed animals at me.

Summer Fun!

We've been having an awesome summer so far. Asa is a total outdoors man just like his dad. I love the outdoors too, so we are in good shape this summer. On Saturday, we went to Big Cottonwood Canyon to do some rock climbing, but it was totally packed, so we decided to do a hike instead. Berkeley's brother Cameron, his wife Jackie, and their kids came with us and we all hiked to Donut Falls. It was gorgeous, the perfect temperature, and a leisurely hike (which I always enjoy more than the rigorous ones). It was so leisurely that Asa was able to get out of his pack and walk (or meander) quite a bit of it with us. He had a great time! On the way back, we stopped in a little grove of trees and ate snacks, took pictures and made friends with a little squirrel who was more than willing to let us share our food with him. The minute Asa sat in car seat after the hike, he was out like a light and slept for 3 hours! Here are a couple videos and some pictures:







Asa has learned to do a lot of animal noises, but his favorite one is the sound of a dinosaur. It is practically the only one I can get him to do on camera for me. Here is a little video of Asa growling like a dinosaur. The face he makes along with the sound is classic.


We bought Asa a potty chair yesterday. We are in no way trying to potty train him right now, but the potty chairs were half price and we thought it might be good for him to see it, get familiar with it, and hear us talk about it over the next year. SO far this is what he does with his new potty:


Last, Asa and I did a photo shoot a couple nights ago. Here are the results: