T-R-O-U-B-L-E

He may look innocent but he is TROUBLE! Nash really did spoil us, because Asa is into EVERYTHING!  I have to be watching his every move or he will be drawing on walls, emptying trash cans, dumping buckets of toys....he is a TORNADO!

 He loves his daddy and wants nothing to do with me when Darin is around.  He often walks around the house screaming "DAAAAAA" and then some jibberish that sounds like "where are you?"

 Where's Waldo????

 Church is crazy.  We are so happy if we can make it through sacrament meeting with one or two REALLY LOUD SCREAMS!  I try to always sit in the very back, I find he is more manageable back there and we don't get as many looks for having such an irreverent child.  I am not even kidding when I say there was a family who moved away from us during the prayer...haha.  We spend a lot of time in the hall or primary room so we can actually here the talks.

Nursery has been an adjustment.  This ward does not allow the kids to come in and get acclimated before they turn 18 months.  Which was really frustrating.  I am the Primary councilor over the Nursery so I am slowly working on this because some kids need to have that adjustment period where mom and dad come in with them.  Asa so far is doing okay.  He is just not okay with closed doors, so when the door opens and closes a lot during nursery he is a wreck!  Grandpa Willardson says Asa has "an open door policy!"

 This is not an odd sight in our house.  Asa is always getting in these little predicaments.  And then screams like you did it to him.

 This next picture makes me laugh.  Nash is behind the door hiding from Asa.  The poor little minion had no clue where his brother was and was very upset about it! 

 Nash was very proud of himself. 

 Oh the drama that comes with Asa being sick....

 Asa is definitely our hat boy.  He loves to put on hats!  Luckily we can put a hat on him in the store and he doesn't think he has to buy it just quite yet.  We did have to buy the sword because he used his little chompers to take a bit out of it.

We sure do love this little ball of trouble!  He is Nash's little sidekick and is quite lost when Nash is at school.  Asa can out eat all of us and is great at jumping in at dinner and trying everything on his plate.  He is also VERY good at throwing.  He always has a ball in his hand.  You need to be on guard at all times because you never know what is going to come flying at your head. 

New Baby...

I don't think I have ever announced on this blog that we are expecting another baby!  It came as a bit of a shock to me as I had just finished nursing Asa and we were getting settled into our new home.  I felt a little sick and thought I had the flu, never did I think I was pregnant since I do not get morning sickness during my first trimester.  Well I took a test on a whim and when Darin got home that night I gave him this sign and told him to go put this on Asa's crib....

 The best part about it is he really started walking back to Asa's room while reading it.

I perk about Darin's fellowship is he is part of the ultrasound fellowship too so he is able to bring home one of the ultrasounds.  Asa wasn't very happy about another baby coming into the family at this point and Nash was flat out mad about the gender.

Because Darin is the one that got find out that we will be expecting a little GIRL.  What a scary thought.  I have had a hard adjustment to it as well.  Not that I don't want a girl.  I just fully expected another boy and was happy with that since we have everything for a boy and I know how to raise boys...some what.

There are all the same issues with this pregnancy as there were with Asa.  I have lupus and test positive for schogrens (sp) disease so the baby runs the risk of having congenital heart block.  So they have been tracking my kidneys and whatever else comes with a billion doctors appointments.  I am not a huge fan of the 24 hour urine sample... UGH!

The doctors appointments at GRU are awful one of my appointments took 5 hours.  I am not always able to get a babysitter so Asa has to come with me and I have Nash go to lunch bunch after preschool just in case I am not done in time to pick him up.  Life certainly does get more complicated with each child.  But when you have moments like these.... 

Makes me happy we have been blessed with these beautiful children in our home.

Backtrack to fall...

I have jumped ahead of myself...this is why I should not procrastinate blogging!  We waited patiently for autumn to hit South Carolina.  When it did the colors were pretty but were NOTHING compared to what we experienced in Pennsylvania.

I took the boys on a hike around an old plantation.  I guess a tornado came through a couple of years ago and destroyed a lot of the trees.  It was a great way to enjoy the fall colors.

I wish I had taken more pictures of this fun park.  You really can only play at it during the winter months because it is so hot.  Everything is made out of wood and tires.  My kids love it there.  To be honest it is the most dangerous park I have ever seen but we frequent it quite often, and I plan to take some spring pictures there. :)

It is ALWAYS a wonderful day at the park with Darin gets to join us!

Christmas Cards...

We did try to get family pictures for our Christmas Card but it was an epic failure.  Someday I will get around to looking at them again to see if any are worth editing.  So I decided to have small photoshoot with just the boys.  Holy Moly what a process! (No they are not all edited.)

 I wanted candid relaxed pictures of the boys.  So I tried just talking to them while I snapped away.  But I mostly just got this kind of a response from Nash....

Yes I adore all these little faces they weren't quite what I was looking for on the Christmas Card...

Then I thought it would be fun to have the boys look at the ultrasound.  Nash hasn't been all that excited that the baby is a girl.  Here is his honest reaction looking at it.

I finally decided that these pictures of Nash would be good enough.

 

Asa watched Nash through the process so he was a little more eager to give me real smiles.  But he had his moments of silliness too!

And his reaction to the ultrasound....

The poor boy has NO IDEA!

 It was a debate between these 2 pictures on which would make the Christmas Card.  In the end I let Nash decided and he said he looked like a zombie in the first so we needed to use that one.

 And the finished product....

Frisbee Golf...

 Nash was very set on playing Frisbee Golf with Alex while he stayed with us.  That is probably the only fun thing we did with Alex besides Thanksgiving. :(  There are quite a few frisbee golf places around this area.  Darin had taken the scouts and Nash to play a few weeks prior so he was familiar with the Greenway.

Alex let Nash borrow his hat...I am not sure the Blue BYU fan in Darin liked it so much.

 Alex is so great with kids. He helped carry Asa around and really made Nash feel pretty awesome during the game.

Asa was not a fan staying with me...

 Any chance he got he had to hold one of the frisbee's and be part of what the big boys were doing.

 This next picture is so Asa, anyone that knows him will know that annoying sound that is coming out of his mouth!

 Nash is ALWAYS running!

 Asa was VERY determined to stay up with the big boys.  He could walk but he was much faster at doing his Igor crawl.  Notice how fast he is trying to get away from me so he could be with the boys.

 Remember those 80's pictures where they had your face faded in the background in a different pose.  Ya Alex and I were laughing about them and decided to attempt it for his Christmas Cards.  Next time we will use a black back drop!

New Ride...

 I hope Alex will come visit us again because this trip was a complete bust.  Darin picked up some moonlighting shifts so he was gone quite a bit.  Then the Friday after Thanksgiving we knew Darin needed to get his brakes fixed on his car.  The car needed a lot more work done to it so we decided instead of getting it fixed we would try to trade it in.  So we spent the WHOLE day at the Toyota dealership.  However, we walked away very happy with our Toyota, Sienna.  I never thought I would be a van person, but I have to say when you have kids there is NO OTHER way to travel in comfort!

OUT with the OLD...

IN with the NEW...

The hardest part about getting a new car is knowing you have payments.  We haven't had to pay on a car since we lived in CA almost 5 years ago. But oh so worth it, look how much room the kids have and the LOVE IT!

Nash especially likes that his door can be opened by pushing the button.  I don't know how happy he will be in a couple months when he gets booted to the back seat. :)