Asher is 4!




2 days old!



One!



Two!

Three

Asher turned four years old on November 3rd! Four years of blessing, four years of wonderful chaos as I have watched this beautiful little boy grow. He is blessed with so much JOY! His name means happy and he lives up to that meaning. He has so much energy. He is ALL boy. I want to remember some of his favorite things and funny things about him right now, so excuse the bullet point list, but this is for preserving our family memories :)

-He loves being outside, doing anything, but especially riding his bike, digging in the dirt, playing with sticks (imagining them to be swords, guns, hammers, telescopes, binoculars, etc--it's amazing how many things a stick can be)
- He is obsessed with superheroes. Spiderman is his particular favorite, but he also loves Ironman, the Hulk, Batman, Superman, Captain America, etc. The only one he said he doesn't really like is Thor (?) I'm still not really sure how he got in to this other than maybe books from the library and his friends from school because he hasn't ever seen a movie
- He loves his sisters! They are his best little friends. He is always hugging and kissing on Isla and rough housing with Honor (poor girl ;)) He is THE BEST big brother!
-He sleeps with his teddy and turtle blanket animals. He has a very strict bedtime routine which includes bath, PJs, brushing of the teeth, reading a story, prayer time, asking for water, and getting out of bed a few times to tell us he loves us and we are his best friends before finally falling asleep.
-He knows several bible verses by heart. We have read through the story book bible at least twice. It makes my heart happy to hear God's word from his little mouth.
-He will try to charm you to get out of trouble, grinning, laughing, hugging, etc. (Bad habbit we are trying to break, especially because it usually breaks me hah!)
- He loves to read.
-His favorite food is chicken nuggets and chocolate milk. He would probably ask for that for every meal.
-He refuses to wear jeans. He only wants to wear sweat pants aka "soft pants"
-He really likes to dress up in his super hero outfits. He got some occupational dress up stuff that I think he is really going to have fun with.

I'm sure there are so many other things I can't think of right now. He makes us laugh every day. He has such a tender heart and is so kind. He has taught me so much about love. He loves so passionately, so genuinely it breaks me. It doesn't matter who they are or how they treat him, he just loves. I pray that I will love others like that. The Lord has been so gracious to allow me to see life through the eyes of my young children in all of their innocence and purity of heart. I pray that being a mom will continue to change me, grow me, challenge me and make me more like Jesus.

To celebrate his actual birthday, he said he wanted to go to the park. So we got up, made pancakes, gave him his presents (a bike!, a football helmet and Honor picked him out an iron man shirt ;)) Then we headed over to Gadsden and ate at Chick-fil-A per his request and then went to Nocalula falls, only to find out they are closed for the winter--egh! But they have a pretty sweet playground that we played on for a while and got to look out over the falls. He was happy to just play. He's not hard to please.



Closing his eyes for his birthday surprise



a BIG bike!



Honor excited to give Asher her gift: Ironman!



He also got a glove and baseball and a football helmet. He was excited!

Monkey Bars!

Pigtails!!!

Best Buds!

We had a family lunch for him on Sunday. We are out of the big party business for a while...maybe next year... Here are some pictures from our fun day.

Thanks Uncle Seaver for the cool artwork on the wrapping paper!

How many Dads does it take to figure out how to put together a toy?

My friends are so pretty!

Addie having fun as Wolverine!

Happy Halloween!

I LOVE Halloween! I love fall in general, but Halloween is especially fun. I love dressing up, dressing my kids up, seeing what creative costumes people come up with and especially the candy! Our church does a fall festival every year with big blow ups, hot dogs, a hay ride and candy. The kids loved it this year. They fearlessly charged up the biggest blow up slide out there and went up and down about twelve times. They unfortunately still don't understand the whole candy thing though. They came home with about four pieces each... Well maybe next year.
This year Asher of course had to be Spiderman. Honor wanted to be spiderman too, but she wavered between Spiderman and the Princess Merida from Brave. When she mentioned wanting to be a princess, I....well let's just say I encouraged it haha! We dressed up as Merida Halloween morning, wig, bow and arrow and all, but then a sweet friend of mine gave me a couple of her girls' old Halloween costumes and Honor came home and tried the Skunk costume on and loved it! And that's the story of Honor's evolution from Spiderman to Skunk. Sweet Isla Rose was a flower....because I waited until the last minute to get her something and it was the only costume in her size at the store. She was the most precious flower I've ever laid eyes on. I plan on being much more creative with costumes next year. ;)



Love how Asher stays in character as long as he has his mask on



 

 

Honor going down the big slide with Daddy! She knows no fear



Nonnie and Isla Rose



Presh!

Honor and Bella Grace



All of the little boys in Asher's class dressed as superheroes this year.....it was too cute! Here are a few pictures I got with some of Asher's buddies.



Asher and Iron Man Walker

Asher and Iron Man Marshall

 

It was a fun Halloween this year! Now bring on Thanksgiving!!!!

Here we grow again!

..Zack says the title of this post is overused, but I'm using it anyway. Our family has some exciting news! We are beginning the process of international adoption! We created a new blog to chronicle our journey and you can follow it here We are so excited about how the Lord is leading us. We hope you will share in our anticipation and commit to pray for us as we bring a family to an orphan. We'll continue to blog about our family here (well as frequently as I can manage haha!)

Pictures!!

We had some pictures made of Isla Rose by some dear friends H+M photo. We snuck a few family shots in there too. Here are some of my favorites!

 

6 months old

A favorite!

My little sillies

The three amigos

Looks so much like Honor here to me.....

A favorite

There were so many bucket ones I loved it was hard to chose which ones to share

Love this squishy girl

Todays

Isla Rose was seven months old yesterday--how did I let that slip by me? Blessed third child. And don't get me started on the fact that in a little over two weeks Asher will be FOUR! When did that happen?? I have to try really hard to live in my children's "todays". I refuse to spoil this day by grieving what has passed or consequently longing for what has yet to come. I constantly live in that tug of war between anticipating the future and longing for what has been, with being ready to have a baby that sleeps through the night or eat table food without being fed to watching my little boy grow up much too quickly, running, jumping, doing flips (sometimes I think where did this big kid come from??). So I am committed to living in today. I don't want to regret anything about this time of young motherhood. I know before I blink, this time will be over.


Things are our normal every day crazy. We stay pretty busy just with all these little ones running around our house hah! Asher is learning to write his name! It is so neat to watch him hold a pencil and write the letters to his name and actually watch him learn! I have plans/dreams to homeschool so I know there will probably be lots of days like this, but I marvel at watching something finally click. I decided a while ago that I wasn't going to push him to learn letters or writing before he was ready because I really want him to have a joy for learning. He will have many many years to be in school and write his name. I'm excited that he is beginning to show some interest in it (as long as he can write with his super hero pencils :))

Don't you adore this handsome face

Honor is about as sassy as a little two year old can get. We are constantly laughing at her little personality.

See what I mean?

Beauty

She will do anything that Asher does. My mom kept Honor this past weekend while Zack and I were out of town for a wedding and she was asking me what she liked to do. I honestly thought, I'm not sure. She just loves to be with Asher. She follows him every where. She plays what he plays, says what he says, jumps when he jumps. It is so sweet what good buddies they are. An answer to my prayers.

At story time

Playing police officers. I was informed they were fighting bad guys and bears.

Cat face buddies

Big brother including Isla in the fun

The three amigos

 

My whole heart, right there in a wagon

 I remember praying before Honor was born that she and Asher would be best friends (and again when Isla was born) and the Lord heard my prayers and blessed us with children that have fun together! (We'll see if this is still the case in 10 years hah!)

And then there's sweet Isla Rose--by far our sweetest baby...I mean for real people, she is the sweetest thing

Like a little baby doll

 She babbles and giggles all the time. She is sitting up by herself, but doesn't seem to have any interest in going anywhere yet. If I lay her on her tummy to try to get her to scoot around, she just rolls over on her back and laughs and coos.  Asher was sitting up at 5 months and crawling at 6; Honor was sitting at 6 months and crawling around 8 months, so I guess Isla will follow Honor's pattern. She is so easy going. We took her with us this weekend out of town to a wedding and she just went with the flow. We were out until after 10 oclock Friday night and she stayed happy.

Wedding weekend with Mommy and Daddy

 She is content as long as she has something/someone to watch. She is going to be so observent. Even last night at our connection group, we were led in Bible study by Jay and she just sat in the floor and watched him while he talked for most of the time. She is such a joy. I guess after the first two, I earned a calmer baby. I'm sure that will change when she can move around and follow the older two. But I'm not rushing that. In other happy news, we went to the ocularist last week and they told us she will get her painted shell (prosthetic eye) at our next visit in December! I'm excited to see the process. It will be interesting. But at the same time, I will miss her look. Her sweet little eye is so endearing to me. but this was always our goal right? I read something on a friend's blog of mine a while ago. She was blogging about her daughter who is in a wheel chair and said that the world sees her daughter and says she is disabled, but God has seen her daughter and declared her wonderful. WOW! I speak that truth over my precious Isla Rose. God has seen you baby girl and declared you wonderful! I remember blogging about this before she was born, before I knew what she would look like or how her personality would be so precious that I could literally eat her up! I think even then God was preparing my heart for this girl. I believe with everything I am and all that is in me that God is going to use her little life for HIS glory and to share His good news. (I believe that and claim that for all my children) Ok didn't mean to go into all that.....but sometimes I can't help but share how the Lord continues to give me so much grace and work in my heart!

Other news: Zack's birthday is on Friday--entering his last year in his twenties! If I don't mourn over my children growing up, can I still be sad that we are getting older?  ;) I'm only halfway kidding--cherish the present--right?

Summer Bucket List

The Casey Family Summer Bucket List in Pictures.......

Pick berries!

Park Play!

 Summer Reading! (The kids each read over 30 books!! We love the library!!)

 Movie!

We took everyone to see Brave! It was awesome!! They are still talking about it hah!

 The BEACH!!

The most wonderful 7 days I had all summer was spent at one of my most favorite places!! Look at those girls in their matching digs :)

And of course, lots and lots of swimming!!

 We had lots of fun checking things off of our list. We did lots of little things too like pizza night, watching a sunset, VBS, watching fireworks, taking a picnic, going to the Farmer's market, catching a firefly, building a fort. Needless to say, we have had a FUN and busy summer.