HAPPY BIRTHDAY ASHER!

My baby boy turned 2 today and I can't believe it! He is our little sunshine and just such a happy boy to have around. He seriously makes us smile everyday and I can't imagine our family without him.

We celebrated his birthday on Saturday with a few friends and family. We had an airplane themed party because Asher is obsessed with airplanes. He can somehow pick out the sound of one no matter where we are or what kind of commotion is going on. : )

Here are a few (ok, TONS) of pictures from the party:

Asher LOVED his cake. He kept pulling over his little chair to peek at it and saying "Cake! Clouds! Air-pane!" Made the effort of making the cake/cupcakes worth it : )

Our favor "suitcases"... Steve helped me design them and then I put it into my silhouette to cute out. They turned out really cute. I wish I had gotten a picture of the back of the luggage tags too though, we had everyone's names on them as well. Actually, we were lucky to get what pictures we did. Our camera died completely right before the party ( great timing!) so we borrowed my brother's for some quick pictures. Oh well! : )

We put all of the presents under the "baggage check" sign.

Our airport itinerary screen shot ( I had Steve put it on the tv and so of course they're all Canadian flights) : )

The kiddos coloring Asher's custom coloring pages in their "airport seats". I didn't get a picture of that either but I made little seat signs for "Asher Airlines" that had their seat number on it. We also made an Asher Airlines- Celebrating 2 yrs in service sign to go on our balloon wreath for the door. (again another thing I didn't get a picture of)

Our "pilot's lounge" for the adults

Singing Happy Birthday...

Blowing out the candles ( He was sooo excited to do this!)

Grandma Kent and Baby Claire....Uncle Jason and Aunt Crystal

Pin the propeller game

Opening gifts...

The kids were all very interested in the present opening of course

Asher was the one who actually lost interest the quickest! : ) He sure loved the tissue paper though!

Everyone flying their paper airplanes. We were lucky to enjoy a gorgeous spring day

around 80 degrees.

The kids had a great time playing on the swingset outside.

My good friend Erin and "prego buddy". Her daughter and Asher are just a few months apart, and now we are due just a week and a half apart this time around! : )

Having fun digging in the garden bed

That's the kind of smile you only get with hands that dirty! : )

Grandma Kent and baby Claire

Uncle Jason and Papa

Baby Claire headed to the airport : )

I tried to get a good smiling/looking at me picture of him but these are all I got : )

Hooray! I'm 2!

Baby Bump: 20/21 weeks

So I know my chalkboard boasts 20 weeks, but my camera is on the fritz so we couldn't get this taken until today when we borrowed my brother's. I'm actually 21 1/2 weeks now, but hey, who's counting? : )

20 WEEKS:

Well, I'm halfway there, of course I haven't made it to 40 weeks yet, so maybe a little more than halfway. : ) I've been starting to feel a lot better this week. I only had to take Zofran once and my appetite has been returning. I haven't gained any weight yet (but I gained back what I lost, hooray!) so I'm pretty sure I need to make up for lost time...Cheesecake Factory, anyone?

My baby bump has definitely turned into a baby belly lately. It's been fun to see the change. I think I've gotten a lot bigger faster this time around. Third times the charm, right? : ) What's crazy is my bump is a lot highter than normal so I've been able to still weart ( and I'm talking normally buttoned) my regular jeans! That's never happened, and it's definitely not for a lack of belly as you can see, but just comes down to placement this time I guess.

He's a busy guy in there though and I've been feeling so much movement. It's nice to know he's having a good time :) We've started talking about names. I have a terrible time with boy names! Of course, if we were having a girl, I'd probably be having a tough time with those too. Aubrey's top picks right now are 1. Rocktore and 2. Robin Hood Redd. She's shot all of my names down. This could get interesting...any suggestions for for baby boy #2?

21 WEEKS:

I'm still feeling good. I have a not-too-large baby bump, little man is moving all the time, and my appetite has returned full-force! My energy, not so much, but I'm pretty sure that's just because I'm also a mom to a precocious 4 yr old princess, and a fast lil' 2 year old boy. They definitely keep me busy. My bump looks a little small in this picture, but this was after all, pre-fajita dinner. After dinner, it all changes! : )

I love feeling our little guy in there and have started feeling a lot bigger movements as of late. Big enough that I think Steve will be able to feel them too. Unfortunately, it's hard to coordinate our efforts it seems and baby boy always stops as soon as he feels a hand.

Aubrey was asking me today what things we had to do for the baby and so I mentioned diapering, and giving the baby blankets and toys, etc. Then I said we have to burp the baby after he eats and she said, "Yuck! Not me, that's gross! When the burp they spit up!" It seems she remember more about the baby days of Asher than I knew. : ) She also said, "Whew, babies sure are a lot of work!" Yes, yes they are but oh so worth it...

Leprechaun Trap

I decided to do a little something fun for the kids for St. Patrick's Day this morning. They've been excited about it coming since they got their fun package of St. Patty's Day goodies in the mail from Grandma and Grandpa Redd (thanks again!).

I told Aubrey about leprechauns and how they like to leave their gold at the end of rainbows. I told her we should try and make a leprechaun trap to try and trick the leprechaun into leaving us some of his gold, which I hear has chocolate inside of it! : ) She loved it and so we devised a simple trap using her crayon box and her hand-drawn rainbow last night. She was so excited and went right to bed, because of course leprechauns are very shy and only come out at night after little children are in bed.

She even said, "I better not get too excited about this or else I'll wake up too early, right mommy?" ( She has a habit of waking up SUPER-early on days she knows we'll be doing something fun so I usually wait until the last moment to tell her those things)

Well, I guess our trap worked because the Leprechaun came and left us some of his gold, green bead necklaces, and rainbow candy!

They loved their St. Patrick's Day surprise. It was like Christmas morning in March! Seriously, they were both so happy and wiggling around and diving right into the candy. Asher thought eating candy first thing in the morning was probably the best thing he's ever done! : ) It was so fun to watch them get so excited over something so small. It makes me want to put forth more of an effort to do these little things with them more often because they get such joy out of it. They won't always be this thrilled about chocolate leprechaun gold, but for now, we are enjoying every minute with these "wee" ones! Happy St. Patrick's Day!

Baby Bump: 19 weeks

IT'S A BOY! We had our ultrasound on March 9th and I could tell even before the tech said it that we were having another little man. We are so excited and it was wonderful to be able to see our little guy moving around on the screen. In fact, he was moving so much the tech had a terrible time getting him to hold still enough to enough take measurments! : ) I think I might be in trouble! They said he's weighing in at about 9 oz, right on track. Everything checked out well and we even got a great profile shot out of it all. I never got that with the other two kiddos so that was nice. The kids were really good for the whole thing and Asher kept saying, "Baby?" over and over. Aubrey really liked seeing the baby's legs and arms on the screen. We were glad we could share that with them.

They did find a calcium deposit on the bottom of the muscle connected to the left ventricle of the heart. Apparently it's pretty common, and often doesn't mean anything, but can be a marker for chromosomal abonormalities so they are sending us in to see the perinatologist to get a more detailed ultrasound. I go in on my birthday, the 3oth of this month.

We had fun sharing the news of our new little boy with our family the day of our ultrasound. We had my parents and brother, sister-in-law and their newborn baby girl come over for a little "gender reveal" dinner. We kept it simple, and for me that's saying something! I designed some little scratch-off cards for everyone to find out baby's gender. (Thanks to our out-of-town family for being such good sports about waiting for their's in the mail!) We had a good time eating pizza, visiting, and looking over the ultrasound pictures.

Pink or Blue?

Aubrey's contribution to the decorations. She wrapped almost everything in crepe paper : )

Grandma Kent, Aubrey, and Cousin Claire ( isn't she a doll?)

Papa snuggling baby Claire

Go Mavericks!

We have a minor league hockey team in our area now called the Maverick's. Steve, being the true Canadian that he is, has been enjoying going to every game he can! We've been lucky to get quite a few free tickets lately so he's been able to have a few guy's nights out.

His area at work decided to get tickets to go together to a game so here's a few pictures from when our family went. Grandma and Papa Kent were kind enough to stay home with Asher ( he wouldn't have made it to 10 o'clock). Aubrey had a great time, but was pretty focused on making sure she got the cotton candy we promised. : ) She had the poor guy staked out from across the rink and was waving at him almost the whole time. She finally got her pink cotton candy and all was right with the world : )

We had a great time cheering on "the Mav's" !

Aubrey insisted on having Daddy help make her her own sign before we left, complete with the Maverick's mascot, a stallion : )