easter {preparing our hearts}

Thanks for all of your encouraging comments about what a great big brother Asher will be. I hope you're right! ha!

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Easter is absolutely one of my favorite holidays. I'm so excited that it is this Sunday! It's always so awe inspiring to me to think about what Jesus did for us all. To make himself covered in sin - my sin - but then not to let death have the final word by rising again. It's amazing!

As a parent, I feel like my greatest obligation is to ensure that Asher knows all about Jesus and what he did for us. We do lots of things to incorporate God's word into our daily life, but Easter gives us an extra opportunity to tell the story of Christ's overwhelming love and sacrifice.

One way we do that is by using Resurrection Eggs! Asher loves them!

{I first heard about these last year and thought about making my own, but by the time I priced it all out it was cheaper just to buy the kit. You can find them here.}

Each day during the 12 days before Easter you open an egg revealing a symbol that goes with a part of the Easter story. We still have a couple days to go, but so far we have been opening the eggs, reading the story, and placing the symbols on our Easter tree.

Asher is obsessed with the eggs. We probably open and close the eggs 5 times a day {if not more}. He certainly doesn't understand the story yet, but I'm a big fan of speaking scripture, regardless of what he seems to understand or not.

This is going to be a yearly tradition for us - might as well start now! :-)

We still love candy, egg hunts, and all the spring animal aspects of Easter too. I just think Asher's "What is Easter?" book says it best...

Okay now I get it,
The Easter bunny is okay,
And Easter eggs are fun.
But Easter's not about that stuff.
It's all about God's son!

 

a son and a bun

...in my oven, that is.  :-)

Thank you all SO much for your congratulations and well wishes on yesterday's post and on Facebook.  We are thrilled to be expecting this little one and are equally thrilled to have friends and family to celebrate with us!

When we found out we were expecting the first order of business for Drew and I was deciding what we're going to call the baby while I'm pregnant.  If you read my blog when I was expecting Asher, you'll remember that we didn't share his name until he was born and called him "bean" during my pregnancy.  I loved having his name be a birth day surprise, but also liked having something other than - baby - to call him.  This bambino is no different!

So, without further adieu, meet...the Bug!

Isn't he/she cute?  :-)

With Asher I only had the 20 week ultrasound, but I've been able to see this baby twice already.  The first time was when I went to the ER after being so sick for a few days.  I was really worried that the dehydration would hurt the Bug, so I got some fluids and a quick ultrasound to check on him.  His little heart was beating away, healthy and strong - praise God!  This second ultrasound was just on Monday at my regular OB appointment.  Bug is still too small to hear with the doppler, so my doctor took a quick peek to check on the heartbeat once more.  Still strong and beating away at 162 bpm.  Yay!  

We do plan to find out the gender in a few weeks and will share that once we know.  So who knows, Bug might turn into Ladybug - time will tell!  The name, however, will be a surprise at the end again.  :-) 

Baby bug is estimated to join us on November 4th, but given that Asher came a week early it's definitely possible that the Bug will be an October baby. 

Right now Asher is in complete denial - ha!  He definitely is just too young to comprehend what's going on.  We'll do our best to prepare him as we go along, but I feel like it might just be a shocker when the Bug finally arrives.  Hopefully we'll have some time to be around other babies in the next few months so he can get more comfortable with me holding babies {right now it's a major problem - yikes}.  If you could start praying NOW for his adjustment, that would be great.  :-)

Thanks again for sharing our excitement - more baby news to come!

asher's little secret

Turns out Asher is a great secret keeper...

until he turns around. : )

{more details to come!}

 

phone dump friday

I haven't been able to blog during the last few Fridays and really missed sharing all the photos that gather on my phone. I use this thing A TON to capture life as it happens!

For starters, check out my awesome March Madness bracket - all of my Final 4 teams are still in it! Drew's pretty mad at me for not entering our family competition. There might be a little $$ involved. : )

For the past few weeks Asher has been pointing to the featured books on the back of his nightly story, asking to read a book that we don't have. He wanted to read it SO badly, so we took a trip to the library - fingers crossed that they would have it.

Ash insisted on bringing his reference book along so I wouldn't get the wrong one - ha!

Lucky day for us...the library had it! Woo hoo!

Asher calls it "library book" and carries it around all the time. So sweet. We might have to put a copy of this story in his Easter basket {don't tell}.

Speaking of so sweet - every few days my little guy is extra loving. I know I showed a photo like this before, but just the other morning A insisted we hold hands while eating breakfast. He knows the way to his mama's heart, for sure.

During the rest of the week he rotates between regular sweet and, um, not so sweet. We've been testing a lot of limits, throwing fits, and showing major displeasure when the boss {that's me} makes a call that's not popular with the toddler segment.

This afternoon Asher wanted a snack and I rejected all of his top 3 suggestions - cookies, Popsicle, and cereal bar. After a bit of crying {that didn't work on this mean mommy} Asher decided he'd go the martyr route and requested a slice of plain bread.

Fine by me.

Ha ha - this boy makes me laugh so hard sometimes.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends!

 

smiling at the end

The end of vacation always makes me sad. Although it's great to go home, it's still kind of a bummer to leave behind being free from schedules and having lots fun family time. Luckily Asher doesn't feel the same way - mostly because he doesn't understand time concepts like "tomorrow we're going home" and such. Every day is a vacation until it isn't!

I took these right before our last trip to the pool and A was just as excited as he was on Day 1.

Cutie patootie - ha!

 

wordless wednesday - tricycle training

 

easter preview

When we were in Florida a few weeks ago Asher gave a little sneak peak of his Easter outfit and asked me to share it here. : )

How cute is my handsome little guy! I suspected this might be my only chance to buy a pink kid's shirt, so I had to go for it - ha!

He just loves his Daddy...

and grandparents.

We love you too, Asher!

 

out for a ride

I mean, rides.

Still catching up on our Florida trip here - oy vey - some day, right? In preparation for our visit, Asher's Grandma and Poppa got him a really awesome bicycle trailer to cruise around in!

Ash rode in his first bike trailer last summer at the beach and loved it, so we figured he'd be excited to see it again. Right-o! He. loved. it!

I don't know why I was surprised. Basically anything that lets him parade around like King Tut on the Nile is a winner in Asher's book - this was no exception.

After a little cruising we went over to a local park so Asher could show off all of his impressive climbing, running, and jumping skills.

He chose to swing the whole time.

Oh well - it was vacation after all. : )

 

the sunshine state

Wow, being sick really put me off my game.  That was a bad one - I haven't been that sick in a long time!  I wrote the Disney posts early last week, so it was easy to log on and post them, but I never got around to posting about the rest of our time in Florida!

Now that I'm feeling a ton better I should be able to get back to blogging and catch up on everything that you all have been doing as well.  :-)

After our fun morning with Mickey and friends, we headed to Drew's parent's house for a few more days of sun and fun {and a little rain, but what can you do...ha!}

Asher had a lot of fun "plashing" in the pool with Daddy.

Did I mention that he calls us Daddy and Mommy full time now?  It is SO stinkin' adorable.  :-)

He might have reached for the ball and fell in once.  Poor guy handled it well but looked a little drowned.  It's scary how quickly they can go under even when you're less than a foot away.  Pools are fun, but scare this mama to death sometimes.

Keep your eyes peeled for more posts about our fun trip!

a bunch of characters

On our second morning in Disney we got up bright and early to have breakfast prepared by Mickey Mouse and his friends!

Asher loves, loves, loves Disney characters!

First through the doors was Goofy.

Asher wasn't sure what to think at first, but had really hit his stride when Mickey came to say hello.

We all just love Mickey. :-)

Then, my oh my, his favorite appeared - Donald Duck! The fact that he was now a chef {and not a frontiers-man} didn't faze Asher. Doesn't the joy in his face just melt your heart? It does mine.

Kiss for "Duck" mmwah!

Personally, I love Minnie. Asher was nice enough to let me get a photo with her {and him}.

Pluto brought up the end of our character parade and we loved meeting him too!

I think the character breakfast might have been the highlight of Asher's visit. He got such a kick out of giving hugs, kisses, and high fives to all his friends. I'm just glad he wasn't afraid of them!

All in all, a wonderful fun-filled day and a half in Disney World!