"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.