Family

There have been a lot of really wonderful things about adding Asher to our family. Some of them we anticipated, and some we did not. One of those unanticipated blessings is the special relationship that has formed between our now oldest and youngest. I had imagined a special bond between Evan and Asher as the boys of the family or between Katie and Asher due to their shared heritage. Both of those may well come in time. But right now, without a doubt, Asher's favorite sibling is his biggest big sister. There is no jealousy between them because they are boy/girl, first grader/baby separated by 4.5 years and two siblings; they really do not compete for anything.  They simply love each other. Miriam's maternal side has come out, and she loves helping and playing with Asher. He in turn loves having a devoted and doting playmate. Sissy equals fun in his mind and his face lights up when he sees her headed his way. Truly, theirs is a special sibling relationship we are so very blessed to watch develop!

Christmas day dawned bright and early. We're so mean and made the kids wait until after breakfast to open all their presents.
Miriam got some princess dolls from Grandpa George... she loved them.

Grandma W got her a camera (!) and she has been going nuts taking
pictures since then. Seriously, our house may never be the same again
she is always snapping away.

Case in point.

A few pictures from Evan's haul... big boy legos from Grandma W and a Buzz Lightyear (just like the movie) from Grandpa George.

Katie was excited by her magnetic dolls and new doll house furniture from Grandma W.

It took Asher most of the presents to get good at ripping paper but he got there!

He also enjoyed a ride on his new trike rocker from Grandpa George.

Looks like dolly got some new things too!

Given the way the living room looked after the fact, I think they were pleased with it all!

As I said in a previous post, since we spent the holidays at home for
the first time ever as a family, we have been able to start some
traditions of our own. One of them is that on Christmas Eve we make
Christmas pizzas for supper. The shapes this year were a tree and candy
cane. Daddy makes the dough. Momma shapes and assembles the pizza. And
the kid decorate. Everyone eats. :)

Before we attend our churches Christmas Eve service, the kids may each
pick one gift to open. Asher opened his very first Christmas present.

Even after that, this was the tree they woke up to on Christmas.

We're staying home for Christmas this year and this has given us the
opportunity to start some new traditions and spend more time with
friends as well.
Mid-month two of my homeschooling mom friends came over with their
families and we had a little Christmas party. We made Christmas pizzas
for lunch. I got the idea from this Pinterest link. The kids thought it
was way cool to eat a Christmas tree and snowman pizza!!

After lunch, we made a Gingerbread Nativity which in our case actually
used graham crackers. I got the idea from this Pinterest link. We had
lots of fun and I thought ours turned out well.

The first Sunday of December, Miriam was in a little Christmas musical
at church. We are blessed to have great little children's choir at
church which Miriam very much enjoys. This year they did "Just Believe"
the story of a church children's choir that doesn't get to do the
preformance they intended but along the way learns some important
lessons. Miriam played the part of a sheep. I know I'm bias but Cutest.
Sheep. Ever!!! I was so proud of her. She was in the front of the stage
the whole show and she did so well singing out and saying her Bible
verse (John 3:16). The last 6 months have seen a big jump in her
maturity and it show in places like this.

One final bit of proof that Pinterest is not a total waste of time... I
made this new decoration for our family. A felt Christmas tree the kids
can play with and decorate! It was easy to make and I think they did
enjoy being able to decorate over and over.

This post is for you, Grandpa George. :)

We have the tree up. The kids were so excited to pick it out, drag it
home, and set it up. After bed time, Mommy put the lights and garland on
and in the morning three little kiddos hung the ornaments. Thank God
for break proof balls (which actually DO break but not easily... ask me
how I know!) I have a few new favorite ornaments this year that I found
in Guangzhou.  The kids had so much fun and really did a great job
although Katie over did "her spot" and I keep finding that balls move
from the side of the tree to "her spot" through out the week. They move
back when she isn't looking.

The nativity is up. I love my main one... carved white stone.  We have a cloth one for the kids to play with too.

I also made a felt Christmas tree the kids can play with and decorate. They like this a lot as well.

We spent Thanksgiving this year with our extended family which meant doing some traveling. To be honest this was not a trip I wanted to make for many reasons. I hate traveling at holidays. I was afraid of the effects on the kids as none deal with change or being out of schedule well and Asher had only been home two months at the time. To make things worse we were going to have to travel through the night on Wednesday to actually make it there in time for the family celebration. I dreaded it so much. So much so in fact that I almost had a nervous breakdown the week before, but I digress.
As it turned out, I did have reason to worry about Asher. He actually handled sleeping in three different places in the course of 6 days much better then I feared, but it did make for of some rocky times. For example, he did not go back to sleep after our 2AM arrival. I'm not exactly sure when he went back to sleep as his two exhausted parents gave up at 4 AM and just put him in the bed between us to play and went to sleep. Sleep issues are actually still not quite back to normal. Sigh, and I was just getting used to him sleeping through the night. But
back to our Thanksgiving...

We spent a few days with Grandma and Brian's side of the family. Asher and his cousin Jonathan started to explore together.

We were blessed with some beautiful weather so the kids played outside.

Miriam helped Grandma put together a bike for the girls to ride.

One evening we took the kids to a wonderful new play place in Brian's hometown. I was so proud of Katie and Evan for climbing WAY up high in the "ship" . Yes, that's them up there!

On Saturday we headed to see Mimmi for a few days. On the way, we stopped at the Children's Museum again. A wonderful time was had by all.

Asher's first carousal ride... he wasn't a fan. 

On Monday we packed everything up and headed home so Brian could be back at work on Tuesday... and that's when the adventure really started. We were 30 minutes outside of Cincinnati, OH when our minivan, which was 12 years old with 270,000 miles on it, suddenly begin making the most horrible metal crashing sound a car can make! Brian was forced to pull across 2 lanes of traffic to a narrow shoulder of the road in the pouring rain... oh, yes it was pouring!! Opening the hood proved that the horrid noise was indeed coming from there, so there was nothing to do but call 911 and wait.
At this point, two of my three potty trained children declared that they must go NOW and one needed to poop!! No, I'm not kidding! Thankfully while I processed this new horror said child realized that the options of hanging a naked butt out in the cold rain or using Asher's diaper somehow had scared the poo-poo into staying put for the time being.

After about 20 minutes a cop showed up then a wrecker and we found ourselves being towed into a small shop in the middle of Nowhere, Indiana. Incidentally, did you know it is legal to ride IN your vehicle while being towed on the top of a platform truck? I sure didn't before. The adults in the vehicle found it a bit scary and surreal... the kids loved it!

We were towed in by the mechanic who owned the shop and he quickly confirmed our fear that something major was wrong with the car. He thought it was almost certainly a rod. So that meant we would be leaving the van right there for good. The kind man and his wife then allowed us to stay in their office for almost 3 hours while we tried to figure out want to do next. They even helped us call car rental place after car rental place... and can you believe no where in the city of Cincinnati could we find a minivan to rent (that would rent one way to our local
airport)?? It became clear that we were stuck and would be spending the night. At this point the kindness of others really kicked in.
When we first broke down on the side of the road I had posted on facebook asking for prayer. The first responder was a friend living in Kenya, who let me know his sister lives in Cincinnati and that he would email me her number. He did email the number and copied her. When we were having trouble getting a rental, we called her to see if she knew somewhere that might help. She offered us a place for the night. When it because obvious we were stuck, we took her up on the offer. Only
problem was that her home was 30 minutes away and her small car would only hold 3 of us. Just was she was getting ready to make the first of two trips to get us, her boss offered to follow her and get us all at once. So we found ourselves cleaning out our minivan in the rain hoping we got everything and heading to our new friend's home. She was a wonderful hostess providing a place to stay, food, and even toys for the kids.
Our hostess had to work early the next day so we were on our own to find a rental. Brian talked a Hautz located near by and the man there tracked down a van and had it delivered to him. He even knocked off $80 on the rental fee (it was STILL crazy expensive!) Our hostess's neighbor kindly drove Brian to the rental place to get the van and waited so he could follow her back. So we were back on the road about 24 hours after the breakdown thanks to all the kind people who helped us, and we arrived home late that night. I don't know the last time I was so glad to be home!

Well sort of.... Mimmi was here visiting this last week while Mommy was
playing single mom. Let me just give a shout out to all my single mom
friends... seriously, you all ROCK!!!!
Back to the point of this blog post. So with Mimmi was here, we took a
little day trip to a wonderful aquarium. We had been meaning to go for
sometime and it was every bit as much fun for the kids as I had hoped.

We saw fish of all sorts.

Got right up close to some of them.

We saw sharks.... lots of them.

Also a sea turtle.

We saw string rays. Many kinds in fact.

Miriam even got to pet one. (Mommy too.)

The rays were a HUGE favorite.

The other favorite part of the day was the penguins.

Miriam totally fell in love with this one named Suzie.

Asher did so well through out the day. So I got to leave you with a few happy Asher pictures! :)