Do Christmas Differently This Year

Ohio Thanksgiving

This past weekend we traveled for the first time with both boys to Cincinnati to celebrate an early Thanksgiving with my family. Asher enjoyed playing with all of my cousins' children that are pictured above.

Asher was busy all night long playing with the toys in my mom's basement. When I was growing up, I used to play "school" with the chalkboard that Asher is writing on. Glad to see toys that can cross generations.

This is Asher's first attempt to ride a bike (would help if his feet could touch the pedals).

A sweet picture of Asher with his cousin Ayanna. He is still talking about "yanna" (what Asher calls her now). He enjoyed chasing her around and giving her hugs.
Before heading back to Nashville, we met my dad at a Starbucks. Jonas slept the entire time but Asher kept us all busy as he enjoyed running around the tables and kept asking to be chased (thankfully there were very few customers). We made it back to Nashville safely but are not in any rush to take another road trip. Traveling with two little ones is not easy, especially when you have to stop twice on your trip to feed a baby and a toddler who doesn't understand "we are almost there." However, David and I did have a fun time singing every nursery rhyme, children's song and even Christmas songs that came to mind to keep Asher entertained.

"Waterfall for a dishwasher"

Picture from here.

Some of our dearest friends that we made while living in Kenya were the Conways. The Conways have two sons, who grew up in Kenya. We often dream of what it would be like to raise our children in Kenya. We believe that it would open their eyes to an entirely new world. David spoke with their oldest son, Andrew, yesterday and learned about his last big adventure. Andrew now attends ACU and for his spring semester, he traveled to Australia with the National Outdoor Leadership School. "For the Australia program the students canoed for 40 days, backpacked for 23 days and lived with Aborigine guides on an island for seven days." You can read about his adventures here. It's not what most parents expect their children to do when they go off to college, but I find it to be so amazing that a college student would take this challenge and discover a simpler way of living.

Moving

We have been very busy the past few weeks packing up our home and getting ready to move. To make things a little more fun for Asher, we would let him color on the boxes with his crayons (one of us drew the mower, which is something he always asks us to draw). We also would let him play inside the boxes and he really enjoyed being pushed around in them. Tomorrow is our moving day! We will miss our sweet friends in our neighborhood but enjoy spending time with family and friends we normally don't see on a daily/weekly basis. Thanks to all who have brought us dinners, watched our kids, helped us pack, or brought us packing items. We could not have done this without you.

Jonas is 1 Month

Jonas turned one month this past week. We love having him in our family. He is such a sweet baby and is sleeping well, which makes our days so much easier.

When not swaddled, Jonas often sleeps with his hands in the air. We find this to be quite amusing.