Because we're brothers. And we sorta like each other.

It's fun to watch Asher and Jack start to act more like brothers. Jack smiles and giggles every time he sees Asher. Asher must know where Jack is and what he is doing every second of the day. Of course, the other side of being brothers is the fighting over toys. Anytime Jack can get close enough he grabs whatever Asher is playing with and sticks it in his mouth. This, of course, irritates Asher to no end.

I guess Asher finally got tired of Jack taking cars from him and decided that Jack just needed to start playing. He asked me to put Jack on the bed and he went and got two trucks and started telling Jack exactly what to do.

Asher drive big truck and Baby Gack drive dis truck.

No Gack, no drive dat way. Drive dis way.

Jack already thinks Asher is the greatest thing ever. Asher also thinks Asher is the greatest thing ever.

The other night we stuck Jack in bed with Asher after bath time. Asher was afraid Jack was going to snatch his blanket and dog. He had good reason to be worried, Jack grabs that stuff anytime it's near him.

Celebrating Asher's Birthday

We had so much fun celebrating Asher's birthday this year. We decided to go ahead and just celebrate the day before since it was a Sunday, so we started off the day with a little party with his church friends.


We took some Dunkin' Donuts and let Asher share them with all of his friends. He had so much fun going around to everybody and giving them a doughnut hole. They all sang Happy Birthday to him (just a random fact: there is no Thai birthday song, they just sing in English) and he clapped really big when they finished.


Since we had a few doughnut holes left over we found one of our friends (who just happens to be named Friend) and shared some doughnuts with her family. Asher was pretty much over the whole birthday thing by this point, he just wanted to go home and take a nap.


Sunday night we invited several of Asher's Aunts and Uncles over for pizza and cupcakes. He had fun playing and running around with a house full of people.


Asher loved eating his pizza off of his Lightning McQueen plate.


We lit some candles (somebody, Roger, accidentally bought trick candles) and Asher tried for a long time to blow them out. He actually managed to blow them out 2 or 3 times. Finally we had to put them in a bowl of water.



Then it was time for the cupcakes.


Asher was really not into getting his hands dirty, so he just stuck his face right into the icing. I don't think he ever made it past the icing.


Asher got some pretty great presents from everyone, but his favorite was the little tricycle that Roger and I got him. I guess I should have not rolled that out first. He pretty much just sat on it and refused to move. I opened his presents and he just sat on the bike looking confused.


It was even more fun to celebrate Asher's birthday this year since he sort of had an idea that something big was going on. I still don't think he quite got it, but he still loved all of the singing, the cupcakes and the presents.

Happy Birthday Asher!

My two year old is worn out after celebrating his birthday twice yesterday. He played hard, ate a lot of junk and got some cool new toys.

What a Poser and Updates

I've been trying to interest Asher is something other than playing cars, watching Cars (the movie), going outside to wash our car, going to the mall to ride in the cars or going for a ride in a car. My latest venture is the world of coloring. Of course in order to interest him I did get a Cars coloring book. Oh well, he's a boy and his life revolves around transportation.

I grabbed the camera while he was coloring the other day and tried to capture a few candid shots of the young artist at work.


I only got one shot before he started posing for me. Where did he learn to do that?!?!?


Asher's favorite part of coloring is dumping all of the crayons on the floor....


...so he can pick them up again. What a funny kid!



In other Asher news....

He has now started saying little two word sentences although they are pretty funny and mostly involve discussing his cars. Current favorites are:
Pool Quack - The ducks are in a pool.
Light Car, Light Truck, Light Taxi - Referring to headlights. I love that he's evidently picked up a bit of Thai grammar and puts the adjective before the noun.

We spent most of the morning at the hospital today because Asher has been sick for the past few days. Turns out he has RSV. He had a blast playing at the indoor playground while we waited to see the doctor and he had all of the nurses singing to him during his nebulizer treatment. I was letting him watching the Chaang (elephant) song on my phone and when they realized he was watching a Thai video they all started singing the song to him. I really like our doctor here in Bangkok, in fact he may be one of my favorite pediatricians that Asher has had (I think we've had 4 so far, one in each country).

In non-Asher news:
Roger and I recently did our first language evaluation and both received excellent scores. Our supervisor thinks that Roger can be done with full-time language study in the next two months. This might not sound like a big deal, but this means Roger will complete this part of his studying in only 9 or 10 months. They expect most people to reach this level in 18 months. Way to go! I'm just a little ways behind Roger and have a glimmer of hope that I may finish before the baby arrives.

Prayer for our Friends

This past week some of our friends came into Bangkok and two of their kids came to our house to play.

Here's Asher, he's super excited to have another little guy at his house to play.


Meet Nolan, he's a year older than Asher and full of energy. He also thinks I'm a bit of a super hero because I took him on a skytrain ride.


This is Grace, she is a wonderful big sister and was probably bored out of her mind in our house full of cars.


Asher and Nolan had a blast chasing each other around in circles and playing cars.

And since they are little boys they seemed to always want to play with one car. We solved that problem (sort of) by switching the car between them every ten minutes.

I think this was during Asher's turn to play with the car. Nolan was just watching and waiting. Asher decided he better hold on tight and sit next to Daddy.


Unfortunately the reason for all of this play time was that their little brother Micah was visiting a doctor and having some tests done. We found out last night that Micah has a large tumor on his spine. His family will be leaving Bangkok quickly and heading to the States for him to go to the doctor. Please pray for Micah and his family during this time. They have a lot of traveling and a lot of uncertainty in their future.

Catching Up and Bubbles

Our computer has been in and out of the repair shop lately, so I haven't been able to keep everyone updated quite like I like to.

Asher is still all boy. He is obsessed with anything that has wheels. Good thing for him we live in Bangkok where we see cars, taxis, trucks, busses, motorcycles, tuk-tuks, and bicycles everywhere we go. He has recently learned to say truck and tuk-tuk. He won't say taxi, he just calls it a car, but every time he sees a taxi he holds out his arm just like Roger and I do when we need one to stop and pick us up.

Asher has also gotten really good at doing a "wai." A wai is the Thai greeting that is done by putting your hands together in front of your body. When we tell him (in Thai) to say hello, goodbye or thank you he will do a wai. We love it and the Thai people love it, too.

I haven't taken too many pictures lately, but here are a few from this week. Asher and I were enjoying a morning playing with blocks and cars.



Our newest toy is Asher's bubble maker. We bought it at the weekend market recently (for $1!) have spent many hours sitting on the front porch making bubbles. Asher loves to chase the bubbles and yell "Bubble!" when they go off into the yard.



Baby #2 is still doing great. We got to see the little one last week, but really it looked more like blob than baby. The due date is December 22 and I am just praying that this one will not be as late as Asher. I am hoping for a December baby. For now I am looking forward to this first trimester being over and hopefully getting some of my energy back and getting past all of the nausea.

A New Place to Sit

We went to the Thailand International Furniture Fair recently and bought a house full of furniture. Okay, so maybe not a house full, but we did pick up a few things to start furnishing our house with. My favorite find of the day was a table and chairs for Asher. I have been looking for something like this since we got here and I found the perfect one.

Check out the chairs. There's an elephant, a bear, a cat and a green thing.

I sort of planned on putting the table upstairs in Asher's room, but it ended up downstairs because that's where Asher spends most of his time. He has figured out how to climb up in the chair by himself and he spends a lot of time each day playing cars on top of the table.

Besides playing cars and reading books at his table Asher has been watching this video a lot lately.

It's called "The Chang Song" and it's in Thai and we only understand one word: chang (elephant). The song is super catchy and we listen to it several times a day. I'm sure Asher will understand all of the words long before Roger and I.

Christmas Day 2009

Asher had a wonderful Christmas, he had no idea it was Christmas, but I still think he had some fun. He was a little more into opening the presents, he actually tried to tear off some of the wrapping paper. Actually he was only interested in trying to open the first present, the other two he never really noticed.

Asher got three gifts this year, but he has only gotten to play with one so far. The other two are staying in their packaging until we get to Bangkok (in 34 days). We got out his new truck for him to play with and he loved it.

He spent most of the day driving his truck around the house saying "car" and making lots of car noises.

His other two gifts were some wooden blocks and a bead roller coaster. Thank you IKEA, I did all of Asher's Christmas shopping in about 5 minutes.

Of course one of the best parts of Christmas was getting to see Mimi and Uncle Mel. They came to Vancouver for a week to see Asher before we move to Bangkok.

Asher's Canadian Room

I have had this dream of having a nursery for Asher for a while now, like way before he was born. It didn't happen in Indonesia (not enough time), it didn't happen in Kentucky (no room) and it didn't happen in Virginia (not our place). Now that we have settled down in Canada for the next four months in our very own apartment Asher gets to have his own room and my little dream has come true!

Here are some pictures of the fun stuff in Asher's room.

Thank you Beth Jackson for making the letters for Asher's name, it is a wonderful gift. Beth made them to match Asher's bumper pad and I think they are amazing. She even made them out of foam board so they would be super light weight and easy to pack.

Asher's elephants are all from Bangkok, except for the big one, it's a humidifier from Target.

We got all of the stuffed elephants while we were in Bangkok for our honeymoon and a few years later when we were there for vacation. When we got them I never dreamed they would end up in my baby's room.

The coat rack we also bought while on our honeymoon in a neat little shop in Chiang Mai, I can't wait to get back there and buy more fun stuff for our home in Bangkok. Each of the hooks is a little elephant. Asher's winter coat and hat are ready for the cold days ahead, he hasn't worn them much yet, but it is definitely getting colder here. Asher's little backpack (his birthday gift from Mimi) looks so cute hanging up there.

Asher in Virginia - Week 3

Sunday afternoon after his nap, Asher wanted to see what was going on outside. He likes to walk over to the door and check out the world, sometimes the glass confuses him and he walks right into it.

After a busy Monday Asher had fun playing in the tub and I had fun playing with his hair. When he gets really excited he beats on the side of the tub, he loves the noise and the splashing that it creates.

Tuesday morning before school Asher was crawling and rolling around on the floor. He loves shoes and was enjoying playing in our big shoe pile. In order to prepare to live in another culture everyone has to remove their shoes when coming into the Quad, the result is, of course, a huge pile of shoes for Asher to play with.

Wednesday night Asher was getting ready to go to bed and he decided he needed to take one last crawl around our bed before heading to his room.

Thursday morning before school Asher was playing in the kitchen floor while we packed his bag for school. His toy of choice these days are the empty water bottles that he finds all over the place.

Friday morning before school there was fog covering our campus. Roger went outside to take some pictures of the lake and Asher and I watched from inside.

Saturday, our day of no school, found us shopping at the outlets in Williamsburg before heading across the Chesapeake Bay to Cape Charles, Virginia. Asher has been to the beach before, but his was the first time he was interested in the sand. He played in the sand and walked in the water for a long time before we cleaned up and had crab cakes for dinner.