Asher Loves His Mommy!

and he makes daddy a little jealous . . .

Ready, Set, ACTION! by Asher

Playing with Toys

Rolling Over

Aunt Leslie Comes to Town!

My sister, Leslie, is in North Carolina for training before her deployment, so she decided to come visit us. (We're only 6 hours away, instead of the usual 12+ hour flight) We had a great time and hope to meet up with her sometime again this summer. We went and toured DC. She has a bear that her boyfriend gave her that she took pictures of it in different places to show her boyfriend all the places she's been. I did the same thing with Asher:)

First we walked through the sculpture garden. There is metal tree that was a cool sculpture.

Birds even landed in it like a real tree.

The optical illusion house.

And the fountain in the garden.

Me and Asher in the Natural History Museum in front of the T-rex.

Asher being fed to the dinosaurs:)

This next photo is one of my favorites!

"Roar, I am ASHER!"

Asher and Leslie's bear. He loved having a buddy in the stroller with him.

Asher and the bear in front of the watering hole.

Entering North America, home of the wolf.

The grizzly bear. Leslie's bear in front of the bear was pretty cute too;)

"seriously mom?"

In front of the elephant in the main entrance.

Snakes and snails and puppy dog tails, that's what little boys are made of. I don't know, Asher's way cuter.

Summer Picnic

Saturday was Ryan's firm's picnic. Here are some photos documenting the event.

Ryan and Asher

Everyone enjoying the good food: hot dogs, hamburgers, chicken, rolls, watermelon, corn on the cob...

And of course dessert was Ryan's favorite. They also had cotton candy!


Too small and too big:)

Ryan participating in a race.

Tossing the bean bags. Go Team Asher and Mel.

Team Ryan. He lost! Final score was 6-0.

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the dad's and future dad's out there! (Spencer, Carl, Trent, Robert, Calvin, John, Ryan, Richard, Reed, Daron, Brian, Adam, Blake. Just to name a few)

I have to say that now that I have my own child, I am much more appreciative of fathers and am glad we have a day to celebrate and acknowledge them!

I love you!

I'm the luckiest girl in the world. I have an amazing father who is supportive and honest and loving and did a great job raising his kids. And now I have an incredible husband and father to my own child.
Ryan, Thank you! Thank you for being the best friend I could ever dream of. Thank you for always making me laugh. Thank you for working so darn hard to support us, even is it means late nights in the office. Thank you for thinking about the details that I never knew existed; Thank you for taking care of them. Thank you for being willing and supportive in anything I want to do. Thank you for being a great example. Thank you for politely correcting me when I say something wrong and for teaching me new things. Thank you for being excited to come home to Asher and me everyday. Thank you for watching Asher when I need a break. Thank you for being the best father to Asher. Thank you for loving him, and me. Thank you for all the talking and sharing. Thank you taking out the trash, even if it's 3 days later:) Thank you for listening to me. Thank you for letting me take care of you and being willing to take care of me. Thank you for YOU!

Asher at 4 months

Asher is now 4 months old! He is getting so big. We just had his check-up yesterday.

Asher's Stats:
Weight: 18 lbs.
Height: 26.75 in.
Head Circumference: 17 in.

He also got his shots. Poor guy didn't like that at all. The nurse said he is really strong and unfortunately tensed his legs when getting the shots so he bled a lot. I'm not surprised though since he loves to hold on to my hands and pull himself up to a sitting position and then all the way to standing.

The poor little guy was hurting. It was easy to tell with the fussing and him not moving his legs at all. I put some warm wash cloths on his legs which seemed to help. He is such a trooper.

Here are some fun things about Asher and what he can do now that his is 4 months old!

He outgrew his bassinet. We kept him in the bassinet probably longer than we should have because my cousin Kendra was staying with us in the other bedroom.

Way too big for the bassinet. He loves the crib and being able to spread out! He has even had a few night that he sleeps without waking up once.

Asher also has discovered his toes. He has been close for a while grabbing at his legs and pants, but never quite got to his toes. But just in the past 2 weeks he found them:)

And of course he still sucks his thumb all the time. He is getting better at it too.

Though the other day I found this:

Hmmm, a hicky!?
That's right, sometimes his thumb isn't quite good enough so this is what happens.

His arm must taste pretty good.

Asher is so fun to have around. He is a handful sometimes when I'm trying to get things done, but that's probably because I have too much fun playing with him instead of actually working:)


He can roll over!!!

He has been getting this far for a couple weeks, but that arm always was in the way and he never quite made it all the way to his belly.
But today I turned around to check on him and I found him like this:

I had left him on his back and he rolled all the way over by himself. I'm just disappointed I wasn't watching.

Sometimes the process seems a bit painful, but I guess he's more flexible then me.

Asher also laughed for the first time a few weeks ago. It was so cute. He has this deep little chuckle going on (we've tried recording it but he doesn't want to cooperate).
He is definitely more active. He holds himself up, which makes holding him much easier. And he has started to play with his toys.


He is so much fun and still a pretty content little boy. His parents just love and adore him!

National Pinball Museum

We went to the National Pinball Museum on Saturday with the King's. Ryan was in Pinball Heaven. He loves pinball! Whenever we are anywhere with an arcade we HAVE to look and see if there is a pinball machine. If there is, we HAVE to stop and get quarters because Ryan HAS to play it. Needless to say, I am starting a "Ryan wants a pinball machine" fund. Feel free to send gifts or donations:)

Here is Adam with Laneia and Ryan with Asher in front of the Pinball Museum.

It was fun to walk through it and to see all the different pinball machines. There was even a video about pinball machines and their history. It was pretty interesting since I didn't know anything about pinball.

Of course, Ryan's favorite part was playing pinball.

The main entrance room was a Jurassic Park life size pinball playing field.

Here's our family picture in the playing field.

There were a lot of pinball machines and a lot of old ones were on display. There were a few we could play but most of the older ones were show only. What makes the museum even more impressive is that it is one person's personal collection.

Some of the older machines.

Ryan playing Indiana Jones

Asher joining in the fun, well if you count watching Ryan play as fun.

All in all, it was a fun museum and I'm sure we will go back:) My only complaints was that it was pretty warm in there, and Ryan got to play more than me!

Washington Post Hunt

On Sunday we participated in the Washington Post Hunt. As its name suggests, its sponsored by the Washington Post. However, a bit more interesting is that it is designed and run by Dave Barry, Tom Shroder and Gene Weingarten. Basically, it involves 5 puzzles located somewhere in an 8x8-ish block area of DC. Each puzzle (if solved correctly) gives you a clue for a final puzzle. After three hours, the final clue is given, and then it's just the first person to solve that puzzle wins.

We had a good time, but were a little frustrated at how little we got right. Especially when it's so easy and obvious when you know the answer. Video solutions to the puzzles are found here: http://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/magazine/2011-post-hunt-the-acrobat/2011/06/05/AGRO1lJH_video.html


Here we are at the beginning of the race. The first clue is in the background on the right.

In the first clue, there were Government Agents Providing Solutions on the stage. Basically, there were three people answering questions. Their answers were hints to which agency they represented. Their agency was then used to fill in the blanks to a puzzle, which told you what numbers to add to get the final answer. We only got part of this one :( The problem is that there is no direction, you just have to solve them based on what you see. We didn't connect the random fill in the blank sheet in our goody bag with this puzzle.


There were tons of people. The Hunt started in Freedom Plaza.

Next, we went to a puzzle that was a bunch of black columns. However, when mapped out, they looked like a key board. There were numbers on some of the columns. When put in order with their keys, they spelled fifteen. I got that one :)

Then we went back down Pennsylvania Ave. to find this clue. The setup was straight from an ad in the Washington Post Magazine. So we turned to the ad and tried to figure out what number could possibly be the answer. We noticed right away that the mirror was missing from the setup, but weren't sure what to do with that. We added up the price of all the objects, took various permutations, etc., but didn't come up with any good answer. We left this one stumped. (Go to the video answer link at the top of the post for the solution).


Here are some of the pieces used to solve the puzzles. The map is from the Washington Post magazine which comes with the paper on Saturday. It was essential to the game. The scratch card was another of the five puzzles. It says "Scratch ONLY Where Needed." There were lots of letters that turned out to be words written vertically. We scratched all of the O's, N's, L's and Y's, and added the revealed numbers. They added to 50, which was a possible solution. Unfortunately, it was wrong :(


The last of the main puzzles was an acrobat doing a routine. After her routine, she said to put our thinking caps on and text the word "lemons" to a specific number. When we texted LEMONS (all caps because we're smart like that), it said that the answer was not that easy. The key was that she did a headstand when she said the word "lemons." Melanie figured out that the answer was "SNOW37." When we texted that, we got a response "WE." Unfortunately for us, there were some skaters illustrated on the map in the magazine, and the skaters were saying "Wheee." So we thought that the clue would be where the skaters were drawn. It wasn't. We then figured to turn WE upside down to get the map coordinate 3-M. The clue was there, also upside down. Go us!


With all five of the puzzles done (but not solved), we were actually able to fill in the numbered grid we received at the beginning of the hunt using just the two we were certain about and a good guess at what the picture was. It was an outhouse (you can see this 2 pictures up).

For the final clue, each of the Beatles sang a brief part of a different song. Because an outhouse is a "John," we were supposed to know which Beatle was actually giving us the clue. We didn't make that connection either, but based on what each Beatle sang, his was the only clue that made sense anyway. His clue sent us to map coordinate T-4.2, where we received business cards with a phone number. Again, the phone number was not correct, but when properly rearranged, gave the final clue. Unfortunately, I only partly rearranged the numbers. I got some random person's voicemail. It's likely that this person received a number of unexpected calls that day.

Anyway, all in all a great family activity. We definitely want to do it next year, and invite any and all to join us.