Sweet Asher

Asher really is at a fun age.  He loves to interact and can I just say he has the best eyebrows I've ever seen?  They are so expressive.  He sits and giggles and laughs like this on a regular basis.  I'm totally smitten by this boy!

Video:

Before church this morning.....

I wanted to snap a few pictures of the kids because they looked so cute.  I trimmed Saya's hair last night, and it looks so cute curled under.  I'll still do piggies, but I love this look so much!  Similar to a time when Chani was 2.

And now on to the pics from before church.  A couple of good ones:

And here is where their personalities shine:

 Saya admiring Asher, which she does a million times a day, mostly while she's squeezing his neck extra tight.

This might be the best picture of Saya I've ever taken.

Update

My siblings and I try to regularly send updates about what's happening in our lives.  Here's the update I sent tonight.

We're tired of winter here in Wyoming.  We've had more snow than the last couple of years, which has been nice, but the wind and bitter cold has been awful.  I think spring is coming though, because our chickens went from laying a total of one egg every two days to 9 eggs a day.

Emery started scouts in November and is loving it.  He and Clint made a great car for the Pinewood Derby.  Our troop is 3 wards combined and in the Derby the three little 8 year olds from our ward had the fastest cars.  Emery won first, and so his car will be competing at districts in April.  He and Clint will have their work cut out for them next year to hold off the other boys from our ward.  He's done other cool activities, last week some girls came with service dogs and taught the boys how to care for dogs, and he came home with a brush for Molly's teeth and some poultry flavored toothpaste.

Chani has finally decided that reading is cool.  She has been devouring the Junie B. First Grader books, and she and I together have been loving the Mercy Watson books.  They are really hysterical.  She's loving ballet classes and I've decided I don't make a very good dance mom.  We're thinking about switching over to swim when school lets out.  She is also toothless and loves to make bracelets with color loops.

Since Saya is two, she loves to change her clothes 10 times a day.  She especially loves dress ups and Chani's church dresses.  She clomps around in plastic princess shoes all day long.  We're practicing letters and counting and she loves to help me measure ingredients in the kitchen. 

Asher is 8 months old now.  He can finally sit up unassisted and will play happily until he has pushed all the toys out of his reach.  Asher loves the dog. If Molly is in the room, Asher won't give his attention to anything else. He's also very distracted by the kids and his dad.  He won't eat if there's any sort of action that he might miss.  He enjoys food and sitting at the table with everyone else.

Clint has been really busy this semester developing an online class for the college.  He's hoping to have the bulk of it finished by the end of the week, but will still have about 48 hours of lecture to record.  He's also serving on several committees at work and running a lot.  We're hoping things will lighten up when the semester ends.  He started his racing season last Saturday with a 5th place finish in a 5k with over 2000 runners competing.  The weather was crummy (cold and REALLY windy) so we're hoping for a better time next time.

I just finished teaching my second year of beginning sewing at the college.  It was really fun.  There's such a wide variety of skill levels in my students.  I had a few perfectionists and a couple who had no eye for making their projects look polished.  We are looking forward to planting the garden soon and can't wait until it's warm enough to enjoy our yard.  I've been trying to improve my yeast dough skills, so I've tried lots of roll recipes, and a couple of weeks ago I even made my own hot dog buns.  They were delicious.

Emery's Native American Research Project

Emery and Chani are both have 4 research projects to complete in school each year. Right after Christmas Emery had to make a Native American dwelling.  He wanted to make it out of food, so we used rice krispie treats to make a long house. There was a learning curve for sure, and after the entire structure collapsed once, I was a little better prepared to go it a second time.  Everything on the pan was edible, except for the string tying the fish together and a few tooth picks. In addition to the structure, we had to include things that the Native Americans would have used in and around camp.  

Furs were draped over the doorways. The circle in the above picture was a plaque that they used to identify each clan. Emery drew a hawk for his clan. The biggest long house ever built was more than 700 feet long.

The fire pits were made out of candy rocks, red, orange, and yellow coconut, and pretzels. The beds were made of graham crackers and pretzel sticks with fruit roll ups for blankets. Swedish fish were strung up as food, and tiny jaw breakers were berries.

I told both kids, next time we have a project we're doing a Venn Diagram, which we did with Chani's weather project.

Clint's legs

The Cub Scout leader is also the nursery leader. So, in addition to Emery's funny stories, she also tells me things about Saya. Last week she was sitting with Saya  and Saya reached over and touched Sister Galloway's leg. She said, "Your leg is fuzzy." Sister Galloway agreed.  Then Saya said, "They're fuzzy like my dad's legs."

Cub Scouts

Emery loves that being 8 means he's a cub scout.  He loves going each week. He's been working pretty hard to get his Bobcat.  His leader was going through the first section with him, and they were talking about the Child Protection section. We'd talked about it, but I'd forgotten to sign it. Sister Galloway said, "Did you guys work on the Child Protection section?" Emery said, "What's that?" Sister Galloway said, "You know, talking about keeping you safe and child abuse."  Emery said, "Oh yeah. My mom's really good at child abuse." I really can't make this stuff up.

Our first big event was the Pinewood Derby. I am really glad to have Clint, he was awesome at helping Emery cut out the car (twice) and graphite the wheels a lot. I was the runner, and only had to make three trips to the craft store for supplies. It was not the prettiest car, but it was fast.  It didn't have the fastest time, but it was really consistent.  At our Derby, they ran the cars multiple times and two cars had faster times, but they also had slower times.

Emery was the Wolf Winner.  He was also the overall winner.  His car will go to Districts in April and he's excited. The next two fastest cars were also Wolfs from our ward. Emery's going to have a run for his money next year.

I'm the mom who didn't take a single picture of the car. I thought we could check it in and take pictures after. Once it won, they keep it until Districts, so hopefully we'll get a picture then.

The furnace

In January, our furnace died.  It was a Monday morning and we were going through a pretty harsh cold spell (so cold the kids didn't go out for recess all week) and it cooled off in the house pretty quickly. We had a repair man come out to take a look. The good news was that it was fixable. The bad news was that the part had to be ordered....and wouldn't be in until Wednesday or possibly Thursday. I went out and got a few supplies for using the fireplace. We hadn't had a fire before, but it wasn't too hard to get it going. We had some friends bring some wood (thank goodness for a great ward) and when I knocked the flue closed another good friend came to my rescue. With the fire place and a few well placed space heaters, we were able to stay warm enough for night and day. The part came in on Thursday and we were back in business.

Idaho

We made a fast trip to Idaho after Christmas. Clint found a gun he really wanted for a great deal and the weather was looking really good for a few days, so we were able to just pick up and go. It was fun to visit Grandma and Grammy and Papa and some siblings and cousins. Chani got the stomach flu at Shelly's house (sorry again about that Shelly) and Saya gets extremely carsick, but other than that it was a great trip. We had a lot of fun.

When my parents were here for Emery's baptism, we didn't get a picture of them with the kids.  I was really sad about it. So, when Clint proposed the trip, I knew I could get my picture. It's not perfect, but it's real.

Funny things we heard in the car:

We were talking with the kids about Grammy and Papa's house.
Saya said:
There's horses at Grammy's house?
There's titty tats (kitty cats) at Grammy's house?
There's a trampoline at Grammy's house?
There's Papa at Grammy's house?

Chani got car sick. She said: I think I threw up all the yogurt I ate.
Emery replied: No wonder it smells like blueberries back here.
After Saya barfed (yes really, and no it's not the flu) Emery said, "Ok. I'm getting used to the barfy smell."

Christmas

We had a really nice Christmas this year.  We stayed in Cheyenne, and it was great to be able to be in our own space and not have to worry about hauling gifts and everything else out of town.

Here's the list:
Emery got a bike and some Legos
Chani got a horse for her American Girl Doll and some matching pj's and Christmas dress for her doll
Saya got a new bedspread and a doctor kit, which she loves!
Asher got diapers

Santa brought our family the coolest gift.  He brought 12 months of gift certificates.  We've already been bowling and we're doing out movie tickets this week.  He also brought a trip to the aquarium, zoo, ice skating, mini golf, swimming, and a few others.  The kids are loving it, and I like that it's spreading out our fun and there are no additional toys to be cleaned up/lost/broken.

We had some friends come for breakfast. We ate our traditional breakfast of sour dough waffles and sausage ring. After they left, we watched movies and played with our new stuff.  We had a nice quiet dinner of appetizers.

Emery's baptism (plus Thanksgiving)

Because Emery was baptized on November 30, and Thanksgiving was so late, we were able to combine two fun events.  We were really grateful for the beautiful weather that made traveling a breeze.  However, because it was Thanksgiving, we had a very small crowd with only Great-Grandma Betty (Clint's grandma) and Grammy and Papa (Jill's mom and dad).  It was wonderful to have them with us.

Grammy and Papa came into town on Tuesday.  Wednesday we had the traditional "Stewart Pie Day".  I invited a friend and we made 9 pies.  Thursday morning, Great-Grandma arrived about 10:30.  We had a delicious traditional Thanksgiving meal of turkey, potatoes, yams, stuffing, rolls, and corn.  We spent the rest of the day hanging out, visiting, and a little online shopping.

Friday was another relaxing day, with some leftovers, visiting, and a bit of shopping.  Clint and I even snuck away for a date.

We gave Emery a few of his presents on his birthday, but since several of them related to his baptism, we opened a second round right before his baptism.  He got a cool notebook that looks like Legos (he's wanted it since February), a set of scriptures (from Grammy and Papa), a beautiful leather scripture case made by a dear family friend, and some money from Great Grandma (he's saving it 'til he can earn some more).

Emery's baptism was so nice.  Grammy gave a great talk on being baptized, Chani led the music (she was so sweet about it, we practiced a lot), I spoke on the Holy Ghost.  Papa and our dear friend Brother Waddell were witnesses, and Clint performed the baptism.  Emery invited a lot of his friends.  One friend from school, Evan came, and Clint's college roommate too.  We had some friends from our ward and another little girl from Emery's class who goes to a different ward.  We had donuts at the church and then came back to the house for biscuits and gravy (Emery's been talking about his baptism meal for ages), fruit salad, and a fun caramel apple bar for dessert.  It was a lovely day. 

Both Great Grandma and Grammy and Papa left Saturday afternoon.  It was a great weekend and we're so grateful for the love and support that Emery was shown.