Saturday, October 31, 2009

Happy Halloweeeeeeennnnn…

Now that I’m not in school any more, it was time to put the effort into Halloween that I’ve always wanted to.  For the first time since I was pregnant with Brennan, we carved pumpkins!  I gave Asher a small one and a sharpie with which to color it, but quickly realized that was asking for problems.  He did color it a little though, as you might be able to see from the pictures.  (His is the far left pumpkin).  Brennan quite enjoyed helping scoop out the guts.  He sort of drew a face (or rather, just colored the pumpkin) and said he wanted a jack-o-lantern face.  Although I did the cutting, Brennan is quite proud of is pumpkin.  Mine is the sunshine, and Brian’s is the fancy-schmancy Darth Vador.

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Yesterday was a busy day.  In the morning when Brennan asked what we were going to do that day, I started rattling all sorts of stuff off, then I stopped.  I knew he’d keep asking me all day as he tried to remember, so I got a step ahead of him.  I drew out our plans as little pictures on a piece of paper.  Brennan absolutely loved it.  Every half hour he would grab the paper and explain to Brian or I, pointing at the corresponding pictures, “First Asher will have a nap time, then we will go trick-or-treating at the stores [i.e. Downtown Corvallis], then we will visit Jodie, then we will come home and have a snack, then we will go to the birthday party, and then we’ll come home and go to bed!”  Asher ended up napping until 5:00 (the time the birthday party started), but I managed to get those 3 main activities accomplished.  They put their costumes on and we spent about 20 minutes downtown just hitting the stores on either side of one block, then we did a quick stop to visit Jodi and give her some Halloween decor Brennan made, and got the birthday party with plenty of time before the piƱata and all.  The kids had a GREAT time yesterday.

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Tuesday, October 27, 2009

Chuggin' Along


We're all doing great, just chugging along. Brian's still in school. We're still poor, but still blissfully happy and greatly in love. That's all we need, right?

It's beginning to occur to us that Brian's expected graduation in less than 4 months away. Yaaaay! Unfortunately, it's also beginning to occur to us that Brian will need additional training before he's ready to really enter the work force in his chosen occupation. His degree in information technology is simply not offering the level of experience in specific areas that he really needs. So, (and I don't know if this will start before February), Brian will continue his education through certificate degrees in specific things like FLASH. Of course, when your field of study is technology, there's bound to be continual certification for the duration of his carreer. Anyway, we're hoping start wrapping things up and getting him ready to be completely qualified and confident to start a *real* job.

Kids are good. Really good. Brennan is a busy and silly little boy as always. He is such a thinker. You can't reason with him anymore... or rather, he'll out-reason you. He's definitely in the "why" phase, and it blows my mind the extent he can follow a discussion as you attempt to answer all of his questions. When you try to simplify your explanations, he seems to call you on it, and things get totally complicated. The other day he was asking me what energy is and trying to make sense of my blustering answers. "Is energy breathing?" (As in, equal to) "Well, we use energy when we breath" "We use it?" Etc. Also, one of my favorite Brennanisms occurred about a month ago. On the way home from church I was telling Brian that I wanted to visit Jodi after lunch, a lady on my visiting teaching route who resides in a nursing home. Brennan piped up from the backseat that we wanted to visit Jodi as well. I politely declined for whatever reseasons. Brennan responded, "But Mom, I just really want you to share your life with me." Brian and I laughed the rest of the way home. Where did he hear such a phrase? We have no idea.

Asher is also doing well. The highlight of his life it taking Brennan to and picking him up from preschool 3 times a week. Asher knows exactly what building and room to go to with the abundance of toys. Man, this kid is growing up so fast. He LOVES LOVES LOVES balls. When we're at a playground, he ignores everything to try to jump in to a basketball or soccer game... well, he'll try to steal the ball at least. He's darn good at catching too. Has been for quite a while. Definitely our little athlete, though who knows where that trait came from. I'm sure it starting with the couch jumping. Asher still babbles all the time, and says very little of actual words. We're hearing him say more and more, like last night he was identifying boats shown on the TV. He can say it perfectly. Interesting that he knows "boat" and not words like "milk" or "more." I think a lot of it has to do with my not picking things out. Like with Brennan, all words were "da" or "dada" for a long time, until he started obviously improving on pronunciation. With Asher, I susbect he says "milk" in his own pronunciation, but it's mixed in to a full sentence of babble and I'm not activitly looking for identifiable words. Anway, it's just a thought.

There is a movie made by Leapfrog called "Letter Factory." We borrowed it from a friend when I was telling her how Brennan has never been a big TV/movie watcher, much to my often dismay (when he was younger at least) when I wanted to get things done. This movie is all about the sounds the letters make and it proved to be as big a hit as she told me it would be. The movie uses the tune to "the farmer in the dell" to sing each letter's sound. Tonight as I was getting the kids ready for bed, Brennan requested it, so I started singing, "The A says ___" and right on cue Asher sang out "AH" I was surprised, so went on, "The A says _____" Again, Asher answered, "Ah." I finished, "Every letter makes a sound, the A says____" And again, on cue, Asher sang "Ah." I couldn't believe it. All this time I've been singing with Brennan, Asher's been listening. A few minutes later, as we started the song again, we did A, then B, then on. "The C says ___" and Asher responed *bhe* because that's what we had said the previous verse. I'm so pleased to discover he's soaking stuff in from observing me work on stuff with Brennan.

Anway, this was supposed to just be a quick check-in because originally I didn't have anything to write about. Geez. So, we're doing well and looking forward to all the upcoming events in our lives.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Yesterday was a beautiful day... not the first as of late, but for some reason it attracted the neighborhood. One of Brennan's friends came over and invited Brennan outside. It didn't take long for the band of boys to start chasing each other around the houses with their pretend guns and cool gadgets. I couldn't resist. I just had to snap a few shots of the neighborhood Sunbeam Boys.


Asher also enjoyed himself outside. He loves running after the big boys, but is as equally content to stay close and play with anybody hanging around. I started playing with some camera settings.

(Totally unaware of the approaching Sunbeam Brigade)


Asher is notorious for his serious facial expressions. I get so many comments about what a serious baby he is. It's just a front though. If others aren't around or he thinks they aren't looking, he's all smiles.

(A neighbor's popular recycling truck)



















...See ;-)

September 2009


For a period of time last month Asher became a huge fan of couch-jumping (and consequently Brennan a fan as well). One night, as they were having so much fun together, I indulged them, and shot a bunch of pictures as well. I love my cute boys!








I love this picture. Look at those eyes!

The glare people know and love =-)