All About Asher

Asher turned 3 last month and I never did his birthday post so this post is all about him. :)

1.  Asher's name means happy and it absolutely fits him.
2.  Asher could make himself burp (and still does) at only 2 and half years old.
3.  Asher is my most affectionate child.
4.  Asher is my most destructive child.
5.  Asher can wink at only 3.
6.  Asher has been my most expensive child from birth to present and still counting. ;)
7.  Asher is my most polite child...he says please and thank you more than any of my other children did at his age and even now.
8.  Asher is also my most rude child...he already talks back to me and calls people stupid (which is only funny when he is right). ;)
9.  Asher loves animals.
10.  Asher put away the dishes out of the dishwasher the other day but if you ask him to help clean them he will tell you "no."
11.  Asher loves to play with light sabers especially with his brother.
12.  Asher calls all his siblings by "my" and then their name (ie: My Austin, My Allie, My Abbie)
13.  Asher loves the Avengers and Transformers just like his dad and older brother.
14.  Asher runs his mother ragged all day long!
15.  Asher is the light of our lives and our family wouldn't be complete without him!


We had the kids pictures taken a couple of weeks ago and the lady gave me all 650 shots taken.  I am so glad she did because although these may not be "wall worthy" they show Asher's true personality.  He was so good when we got the pictures taken but he kept making these funny faces trying to "smile" for the camera.  I am so glad that I have them now!!!

The Many Funny Faces of Asher

Food I have been cooking lately...and the stories behind them.

So much of our life is surrounded by food.  We eat three meals a day plus snacks.  We get together with friends or family and there is usually a nice food spread.  We plan our meals, shop for them and spend time cooking and cleaning up after them.  A LOT of our life is consumed by food.  That is why the last several years I have tried to make it as enjoyable as possible.  And I have learned to love cooking in the process.  In my opinion, food = love and love = food..

I am not a photographer.  Most of these pictures were taken with my husbands i-phone so they are not great but they each have a story, nonetheless.  So here they are...in no particular order.


Asher celebrated his 3rd birthday in August!  When I asked him what type of cake he wanted he immediately responded, "Chocolate!"  A while back I remember seeing a "S more's" cake that I really wanted to make and it was a lot of chocolate plus marshmallows (and he loves marshmallows too) so I knew this would be a winner!   If you can't tell from the picture, it has 2 brownie layers, 2 chocolate chip cookie layers, a graham cracker layer, a cheesecake layer and 2 frostings!  Now, I was a little weirded out by the cheesecake layer because I thought that is really didn't fit with the theme of the cake...but boy how wrong I was...it was what MADE the cake!  Both frostings are also amazing.  If you would like to try this lovely decadence yourself than you can find the recipe here.

This is my favorite of the all the food pictures because it is the ultimate expression of love!  My wonderful husband  got my two oldest children up at 5am to make me this wonderful breakfast.  They tried being so sneaky and quiet but I knew they were up to something...because mom's know everything, right?!  Allison drew me the cute banner and made the fruit plate.  Austin helped cut veggies and set the table.  And Chris made me tasty hash browns, sour-dough toast and an omelet!  Oh, and they went and picked flowers from outside too!  Simply beautiful!

Here is my birthday cake.  Chris wanted so badly to make it himself but I picked out a kind of complicated cake.  Not that he wasn't up for the task...we were just sooo busy and he didn't really have the time.  He made the brownie layer all by himself and helped with the other two layers. Even though he is completely capable, lets face it, when it comes to working in the kitchen I am just faster. :)  If you like coconut than this was "to die for!"  You can find the recipe here.

This is the cake and ice cream I made for Chris's birthday....way back in May.  It was so good, I had to include it.  Chris would NEVER ask for a cake for his birthday.  Every year I have always made him a quick-no-bake type cheesecake.  He loves them.  This year, I pleaded for him to try something new.  He said "yes" as long as it wasn't cake.  ;)  I told him about this cake and he said that if I thought he would like it then he trusted me.  So I went to work making this cake, along with home-made vanilla bean ice cream.  They were both so-so good.  And this was a lot easier to make than the previous two cakes.  So if you want to try the ice-cream, go here (I made the french-style kind)....and if you want this amazing cake, go here.

My husbands cousin wanted to throw her daughter a huge princess party and asked if I would cater it.  I said  I would be happy to.  She wanted me to make the butterfly cupcakes that I have made before but I saw a super cute princess cupcake that I thought would fit the theme better and really wanted to give it a try.  I didn't get any pictures of the rest of the food but, luckily, I did manage to grab a few quick shots of the cupcakes.

My sister-in-law, who has two boys, has been waiting a long time to have a little girl and was finally blessed with one in July.  We were planning to throw her a baby shower before hand but she was put on bed rest literally 2 days before it was schedule (in SLC) and couldn't make it down.  Unfortunately, I had pre-made the cupcakes and froze them, as well as had already made the toppers.  So I put the cupcakes together anyway and took pictures and sent her a virtual baby shower.  :)  We are so glad that Zoey came healthy and happy!

First Day of school 2012

Wow, 3 kids in school!  Am I getting old, or what?  It is just crazy!  It has been 7 years since I had only one kid to take care of.  Now for almost 4 hours a day it is just me and Asher.  It is nice to spend some one on one time with him.

Austin started 5th grade...last year of elementary school.  He actually picked his teacher this year.  I don't usually request teachers but he brought me the request sheet, filled out and asked me to sign it.  Since it is his last year of this school, I agreed to sign it.  I am glad I did because he is loving school so far this year.  He has always liked school (contrary to what he tells other people to maintain his "persona") but this year he even likes doing his homework! :)  He also got chosen to be on the student council and is excited about the new challenges and opportunities it will bring.   

Allison started 2nd grade this year.  She picked out those shoes she is wearing...she HAD to have them even though I didn't think they went with any of her clothes.   She definitely has a say already in what clothes she will and will not wear...even when I totally do not agree!  Girls! ;)  I actually love having her around. And I can't wait for a couple more years when I can buy her lots of girly things and then "borrow" them from her. :)

Abigail was so excited for Kindergarten to start.  She wants to be a big girl like her older siblings so bad.  I cried a few times before she left thinking about it but was just excited for her on the actual day she left. She really has grown up a lot in the last year and she is absolutely ready for school.  When Chris picked her up from school on the first day, she said, "this was the best day ever!"  I am so glad! :)

Summer Project: Getting Grass

Once summer comes, we have a list of projects that we start working on.  It is a little sad because I have actually started dreading summer a little because we are so busy...TOO busy!  I am hoping that since we have a few of the major ones completed finally that next summer things will start to slow down.  I have always had the mantra, "Reprioritize and Simplify," so that our life doesn't get so busy but it seems like the the last couple of years it doesn't matter what we do, we can't seem to slow down.  I am open to suggestions. :) 

This summer, I knew we would be finishing the backyard.  My husband, being who he is, means there is  A LOT of planning that goes into everything we do.  I have a LOVE/HATE relationship with that.  Everything we do seems to take twice as long as what it takes everyone else because he is so meticulous.  But I have come to realize that in the long run it does save us time, money and heartache. 

So, just like all of our other projects, planning the backyard took us several weeks.  We looked at things from every angel and what future situations/problems could arise so that we don't want to end up changing something again or wishing we would have done it differently.  We probably (NO! we DO) think about things too much but it IS what we do. :)

This is the home of our future raised garden beds...already plumbed for watering.  SEE...what good planners we are. ;)

We have this wall in our yard and because I am so short it is a pain to just walk up.  So Chris built me these cute little stairs.  YAY!  They are my favorite now.  Also, we cleaned up our window-wells.  I don't have pictures but we painted the inside and put cute little rocks in them so that the kids don't feel like they are in a gross dungeon when they look out the windows of the basement.

The first year we bought plants for the yard, they all died.  I decided that I cannot rely on myself to water them so once we got the drip system in we attempted planting a few more.  Now that they have survived a year, we figured we could go ahead and buy a few more.  We bought this tree, 2 smaller bushes, 1 large tree-bush thingy, 4 peonies bushes and a couple more lilies.  Cross our fingers they last (and are low maintenance).

Asher thinks he is going on 13 instead of 3 and wants to do everything anyone else does. He jumps right into helping whenever he can.  I am not complaining. :)

I am kinda brain-dead so I never got pictures of the whole lawn done.  My camera doesn't work so the only one we have right now is on Chris's iphone and he never around when I remember that I need to take pictures so you will have to use your imagination. :)

Summer Project: Remodeling Office

My office is the catch-all for everything in the house.  Kids school work, homework, books, scouts, bills, computer stuff, work stuff, craft stuff etc., etc., etc.  If I don't know where to put it - it goes in the office.  If I am working on it - it goes in the office.  We had two desks, a large folding table, a book shelf and two filing cabinets but it still seemed like we had no space.  Both desks and the table were always covered in stuff.  If I cleaned it all up, by that night it seemed like it was in chaos again.  It was just always a mess!  Sooo...I started planning.  We are really good at planning.  :)  I thought that if I just had bigger file cabinets that were right next to me than that would help me out a lot.  Than it developed into a built in desk that would go around the entire room so there was more space for the kids to do homework.  But if you have lower cabinets than you have to have upper cabinets, right? Right! So, we have been working on these plans for about a year.  Chris drew them up in auto-cad.  I figured we still had another year before we were going to actually make them become a reality but...not so much!  This looked like the year to make it happen so, happen it did.   

We sent the plans to his brother, Robert who was going to help him build them.  Once he got a hold of them, things evolved again.  It took them over two weeks of working on them from the time they got home from their day jobs until sometimes midnight or later and on Saturdays to build them.  Sometimes, I wanted to pull my hair out because my house was a mess from the construction, I never saw my husband and the cost kept going up and up and up.  I told Chris it felt like we were spending money like water.   A month later we are still trying to play catch up.  But in the end, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE how they turned out.


Here they are building the lower drawers.

This is the lower section finished.  There are a total of four desks.

We really wanted to hire a counter top person to come and install the counter tops but they were at least a week out and we wanted them done by the next day (I told you this was a spur of the moment project)  so we saved money by doing them ourselves.  Yay for saving money!

Luckily, we have a cabinet builder in the family who let us use his cabinet building shop.  We are so grateful for his help because it would have been sooo much harder without it. They built all the upper cabinets there.  There were a total of 8 large upper cabinets built.

 We tore out the carpet in this room and put it downstairs in the boys new room (yes, another project...with pictures to come).

We put in this beautiful new floor which I love. 

We also took out the clothing rods and put in two more shelves on the left side of the closet for even more storage space.  

This is the finished East wall.  

 This is the finished South wall.  My favorite part of the room are the filing cabinet drawers in the middle.  We splurged and bought expensive drawer glides but it was worth it because they hold lots of weight and are sooo smooth!  I love having the filing cabinets right next to me. 

Here is the finished West side.  

Another view of the room.