Well, we definitely had the bug going around here this past weekend.  Poor little A-man got it first, and boy did it hit him hard.  Jeremy and I had never seen him like that before.  He wasn’t talking, just moaning, and acting really delirious.  You can tell by this picture, he was just not our spunky little Asher.  We were thankful to have something other than lung issues to deal with, but throwing up is pretty terrible too.  Jeremy and I felt so bad for him.  I’ll never forget some of the sweet moments we had though of him constantly wanting us to hold him, and falling asleep in my arms – the last time that happened he was an itty bitty baby.

On another note I just wanted to scream it out that I hate potty training, and have in fact given up…at least for right now!  I’m not ashamed to say I really love diapers (besides the cost of course).  After a couple of weeks of Asher not initiating telling us when he had to go to the bathroom, and accidents upon accidents, we decided to take a break from the big boy underwear.  The last straw was when he peed in his car seat.  Are you kidding me?!  That thing is the worst to take apart.  I just decided, what the heck is the rush.  He’s not going to be in diapers forever, so why not enjoy a few more months of not worrying about accidents or having to pull the car over a million times to use creepy gas station bathrooms.  There is so much peace that one diaper can offer.  So, we haven’t failed, we’re just on a break :).

Father’s Day

I came in from outside and was walking past the window to see that Jeremy and Asher were sitting in the little pool and Jeremy was just letting Asher squirt him with the squirt gun right in his face.  I wonder if Asher knows that he has the best Daddy in the world?  He will one day…

Totally Toddlers

So we’ve taken quite a few toddler classes, and classes through a couple of different cities around here, but nothing beats the Totally Toddlers.  This class, and Coach Lance rocks!  I’m sure I’ll be posting more pictures from this class because we just signed up for the 8 week session.  The best part is, Asher gets to see his buddies Chase and Carter every week!  Coach Lance does an awesome job organizing the class, and keeping things moving and active, and even teaching the boys that ladies go first.  There is lots of running too, which takes the cake for our little man.

I have to make a note about the picture of him with his bat in the air and his hand over his face laughing…this week that we went it was just Asher and two other girls in the class.  It was Asher’s turn up to bat, and he totally whiffed it which made the girls chuckle.  Asher thought this was the best thing ever.  He couldn’t stop laughing, and kept looking back at the girls like, “remember when I swung really hard and missed it, yeah, that was so funny!”  Oh my gosh, I was just dying laughing watching him ham it up.  This kid loves an audience!

Blast X-Treme

Blast X-Treme is our church’s version of Vacation Bible School.  We plan all year long for this week with the kids, it’s x-treme everything from the presentation of Bible stories to the snacks.  The kids love it, and I can’t wait until Asher can be a part of it.  Ashley and I had to bring Asher and sweet Paisley to walk around campus and peek in on all the fun.  It was a great morning with lots of activities, singing, dancing, and of course Daddy.

I had to include the picture of Asher hunting for bugs in the tent, I’m not sure who took the picture, but the look on my face says a lot.  I make that “eewww” face a lot, and I’m sure most people with boys do, ha!

Well…can’t say we didn’t try.  We really did – all parties involved.  Ms. Nicole, Mommy, Asher, we all did our best at encouraging and working hard, but in the end we only made it through one of the two weeks of swimming lessons.  Asher really started out pretty well, and he seemed to be excited about the idea of swimming, but three days into our little adventure he wasn’t so sure.  Unfortunately for Asher (and all of us, ha!) we don’t have a pool at home, so we really haven’t been able to work with Asher on scooping and kicking.  I keep trying to convince Jeremy we need to move to a house with a pool for Asher’s sake, but he’s not budging (shocker!) so I guess we’ll mooch off our friends, use our little play pool, and fill the bathtub up really high :).  Anyways…

Asher’s achilles heel was keeping his mouth closed.  He just couldn’t do it.  We would practice all day long and he did great, but as soon as his little mouth would submerge he would open wide and stick his tongue out, and come up coughing and burping…oh my…he let out some of the manliest burps I have ever heard!!!  I felt so bad for him, he just couldn’t get the hang of it.  And then the straw that broke the camel’s back was when he threw up after he got out of the pool because he had drank so much water.  That was not fun.  So we were done…at least for this year.  We’ll be back with Ms. Nicole next Summer, after a year of working with him on keeping bubbles in his cheeks :).

Here’s a little video of him when things were happy…

Well, today was the day.  Today Asher went to his Sunday School class while Jeremy and I went to church.  Lots of mixed feeling were going on.   We are really excited about Asher being a part of the ministry (I’ve been working in Children’s Ministries at EVBC for about 8 years, so you could say I’m pretty fond of it :-)), being able to hear more stories about God, meeting friends, and listening to someone else besides Daddy and Mommy.  Of course there’s this other side – this other side that has drawn us to praying for God’s protection over him from bad germs.  We have been so blessed by friends who have watched Asher for the last couple of years so Jeremy and I can still go to church together, and Asher could have some time to get a little bigger, really SO blessed by SO many people.  We may pull Asher out of Sunday School again once all the wintery nastiness starts back up, but for now we’re living blissfully :).

Asher of course walked into his class like he owned the place with his Tigger backpack, sippy cup and enzymes.  This kid was ready for his debut!  Side note…we had a little incident with a kite this weekend involving Asher fighting with the string, so yes, those are rope burns, and no he didn’t cry he just rubbed his neck afterwards.  Ouch!

Here’s a little video we captured on the way home after our celebratory, “You Made It Through Your First Sunday School Class Without Causing An Incident Report!  Yea!”…

We were getting ready for a bath and I was pulling Asher’s shirt over his head when he stopped me and said, “Mommy ha ha ha ha *hand over his mouth giggling* take a picture ha ha ha ha!” And then he had these huge belly laughs when I showed him the picture on the camera. What a crack up!

I found a few videos on the camera from our Legoland trip, and have probably watched each of them at least 10 times today by special request :).  So I figured I better put them up on his blog so that he’ll always have them.

Here’s a video of one of Asher’s favorite rides.  You’ll notice his recurring question, “Whoa!  What’s that?

If not for this yummy cookie, our little cookie would have been passed out, ha!

He caught a second wind for another favorite ride.  He did in fact go “one more time” :).

I don’t know.  When can you technically claim that?!  We still have diapers in the house for naps and nigh nigh time, but besides that he’s in his little underoos full time.  We’ve had a few accidents here and there, but for the most part he’s rocking this whole stage.  Tonight he told me he had to go “pee pee in the potty”, walked over to the toilet and stood on one leg while he shimmied his little cheeks onto the seat, went pee pee, unrolled a reasonable amount of toilet paper, wiped himself, then got down and flushed the toilet!  I just stood there so proud.  We high-fived and I told him he got 2 M&M’s for that (2 M&M’s is the going rate for poopies in the potty :)).  We were both pretty excited!

We had gotten Asher one of those big boy potties that sit on the floor to introduce the idea to him, but I’ve gotta say after the first poopies went in there I was completely done with that thing.  Maybe there is some trick, or some easy way to clean them, but I just couldn’t stomach all that.  So, he graduated to the really big boy potty pretty quickly, ha!  Also, the magical power that a little M&M holds is pretty amazing :).

So, I’m not sure we can completely claim the potty trained label yet, but we’re sure proud of our little boy!

Jeremy and I got to get away to celebrate our 10th Anniversary this last week, and Asher got to spend time with his Grandma Olimb and Auntie Bonnie.  I think Asher traded up!  He had such a great time playing new games, eating new meals, doing fun things, and getting to spend time with a lot of his cousins.  He’s probably going to be really bored this week now :).  Grandma was nice enough to take some pictures of their fun times while we were away.  Thank you SO much Grandma and Auntie Bonnie for taking such great care of our little boy, and allowing us to get away to celebrate our marriage!

I just had to put up a few pictures from our vacation…emphasis on few, I only took 50 pictures all week because it was just too much work to carry the camera around :).  Our trip started out on a pretty exciting note which involved plane delays, the attendants yelling over the intercom for Rachel Olimb to get to the front of the plane immediately, racing me down the emergency exit, throwing me in a van and screaming across the airport to our plane, meanwhile Jeremy is literally running across the entire airport to get to the right terminal.  Thankfully we made our plane!

The resort we stayed at was really beautiful.  They had so many different pools to choose from we could have kept rotating all day all week.  They also had this lazy river that went around much of the resort that was incredibly relaxing, and we spent hours in.  Walks on the beach, reading lots of books (well, Jeremy, I only read 2), playing rummy and lunches by the pool, naps, people watching…everything that makes a vacation great!  We had two really fantastic memories from the trip, one was a photo shoot that we did together.  We have never done anything like it before, and it was the perfect timing and perfect keepsake for our wedding anniversary.  And, the second was taking this boat ride to a beautiful beach where we had dinner and entertainment on our anniversary night.  When we were pulling up to the beach Jeremy and I were drooling over the best tables hoping we would get placed right on the beach…of course we did.  God gave us such a gift that night!

Just wanted to scream it out that our team has raised $6296.19 so far this year!  This is the total after all of the walk money has been collected and accounted for.  Isn’t that wonderful!  We’re so thankful to everyone who has joined us in our fight to find a cure!!!!!  The Great Strides Walk here in Tempe collected a total of $239,962, which is an incredible amount of money!  I get so excited when I see numbers like this, because 90 cents of every dollar collected goes to research.  That’s a lot of research going on!

SAVE THE DATE!  We already have the 3rd Annual teamASHER Silent Auction scheduled for April 2nd, 2011 from 4:00-6:00p at East Valley Bible Church!  We did send out an email a few months ago with a different date, so this is a new date.  We’re already looking forward to it!  Put a big circle around the date, it’s going to be a great couple of hours!  We already have a bunch of people offering their services and talents for the auction!

We’re so thankful for all you teamASHER people!!!!

Last night was SO gorgeous outside!  We feel like we need to soak up all things outside now because the dreaded heat is coming any day now.  So we met Jeremy at the duck pond for a picnic, and to feed the ducks and walk around the lake.  It was such a wonderful night!