Central Park Serenade

I got this really cute book for the boys from borders a few weeks ago, called Central Park Serenade. It has the coolest cartooned map of Central Park at the beginning and end of the book, and it has made me so excited to get to explore Central Park this summer.

Saturday was THE most gorgeous day, so after the boys' naps, we had a little family outing to Central Park. We just walked to the entrance on 110 and walked down. I really wanted to go see Bow Bridge, but we were only able to see it from afar, because by the time we got there, we had walked almost 3 miles, and the kids were ready for the playground. But we did see the great lawn

This is the view of some of it from Belvedere Castle, but you can mostly see Belvedere Lake and the surrounding grassy areas. It was SO crazy in the park. You would have thought there was a concert or parade going on with how many people were there, but it was just beautiful weather.

Dad and Asher climbed up to the top of Belvedere Castle

While Sayer and I chilled at the bottom

We walked down through The Ramble, and walked past The Lake

and then finally saw Bow Bridge...

... which I thought was beautiful. We walked on past Sheep's Meadow which was PACKED. I should have taken a picture... it was amazing! After that, we just went to a little playground and fed the boys dinner in-between their playing. We caught the subway home on 72nd, and were able to put the kids right to bed. It was such a fun day, and I can't wait to have many more like it, as we still have many more miles of the park to explore.

Boys...

These boys are crazy! Sayer is at such a fun age, and both boys have been loving playing together and making each other laugh.

SO excited!!

"I cooking mom!"

These boys love to read. Well, Sayer isn't a fan of being read to, but he sure loves to look at the pictures by himself. I love how the book is upside down in this picture.

This is a video of a typical night at our house. It's pretty much their favorite activity. Don't mind Asher's amazingly full diaper. It looks like it's about to fall off!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

It's a beautiful day!

Today was THE most gorgeous day! We spent the majority of it outside, because who knows what tomorrow will bring. In the morning we (and by we, I mean me) decided to pack a picnic and head over to Morningside Park. Our friends met us there, and the kids had a blast running around, playing soccer, giving each other hugs and kisses, and of course eating.

Asher and Addi hugging...

Take One:

Take two:

Take three:

Soccer time:

Asher and Addi kiss...

Take one:

Take two:

Take three:

Take four:

Take five:

Aren't they so cute?!?


Sayer and Talli...

Asher in action...

throwing a baseball:

Asher definitely didn't need his coat on, but he insisted. Addi and Talli are sisters, and are 14.5 months apart. Addi is about 6 months younger than Asher, and Talli is 2 months younger than Sayer, so they are all pretty close and are great friends. The cool thing is that they live in our building, and we will both be here for awhile, so our kids will get to grow up for a few years together, which has been, and will be fun. I have to say... if I could have asked for one thing before we moved out here, it would have been to have great friends, especially in my building. We have definitely been blessed with that, and I am so grateful, as I think I would be pretty lonely without good friends so close!

My little swimmers

Easter Sunday

We had a lovely Easter Sunday. It was a beautiful looking day, but it actually ended up being pretty cold. The kids woke up and got their Easter baskets, minus the baskets (I was too cheap to buy them). Sayer got a really soft and cuddly stuffed ducky and bubbles, and Asher got a dinosaur puzzle and bubbles. Sacrament meeting was wonderful... the choir sang most of the time, and then I think we had one speaker. I had to put Sayer to sleep, so I didn't get to hear everything, but the songs I did hear were beautiful. They sang "This is the Christ" which is one of my favorite songs.

Our church is right during nap time for both kids, so Asher was pretty tired by the time we got home, and was very grumpy for the rest of the evening. Unfortunately, I waited until the kids were "done" for the day to take their pictures, just like I did last year. Oh well, I still managed to get some cute ones in their handsome little outfits. (and just for fun, here is the link to Asher's first Easter...)

We also managed to do a little egg hunt for Asher, which he was not too excited about because he was so tired, but he enjoyed eating the candy. (please don't mind my eye pitched talking at the beginning... just tune it out!)

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Asher has really been enjoying Family Home Evening these days. I have a bunch of FHE packets that I got from doing exchanges, and some of them are so cute and creative with lots of pictures and fun games. It is not uncommon for Asher to ask to have family night on random nights of the week. Well, we never got a chance to have our Easter one during the week, so we did it on Easter. While Asher was attentive and loved all the pictures and objects, I'm not sure it all clicked for him. That's ok though. As long as he is enjoying learning about the Gospel, I'm happy.

We also had a nice pork roast dinner with homemade rolls and garlic mashed potatoes. It was all scrumptious. We invited one of Nate's home teachees over to enjoy it with us, and that was fun to get to know her better.

Hope everyone had a wonderful Easter!!

Running and weight loss...

I think I mentioned on here earlier that I was training for the Long Island Marathon on May 3rd. Well that was before I started having knee problems, and had to walk 2 miles home from the middle of Central Park in freezing cold weather because it hurt too much to run. Yeah, it was a sad day. But now, about 3 weeks later, things are getting better and I am slowly starting to run again. Sadly, I will not be ready for my marathon, but I have a couple of halfs that I am excited about, some awesome open water swims in the Hudson, a tri with the fam in August, and possibly another family marathon in the fall. I know, you've heard that before... 3rd times a charm... promise! 

But, in spite of my sad knee problems, I have managed to lose about 13 lbs since the beginning of January, and now only have a few lbs left to get to my pre-pregnancy bod. Pure joy!! I can't even describe to you how wonderful it feels to fit into my old pants, and not even have them dig into my sides. I honestly felt like I would never get there again, but alas... But, like I said, I still have a little ways to go, but I have been feeling so good lately, that I just had to toot my own horn. So, yay for me. :) Only now I feel like we need to get new family pictures taken, because every time I look at the ones on the sidebar, all I can think is "I can't believe how chubby I look!" (although I have to admit, I do think my hair looks pretty good!)  No wonder I have been having so many people from my ward comment on my weight loss... to them, I was a chubby girl.  But, no more.

**Ok, so I honestly feel SOOO dorky for putting this picture up here, but I kind of wanted to for my own interest sake... so that I could see it with my own eyes. You know how it's sometimes hard to tell that you've lost weight to your own eyes. Anyway, I know, I could never be a model, because I cannot for the life of me figure out the most flattering poses (I think the ladies in Hollywood must go through some special course on how to find their most flattering angles), but you get the idea.  Morgan, 3/30/09, sportin' her "skinny" jeans.  13 down, 4 more to go!  Oh, and for those of you who asked... weight watchers, running and swimming.

Bedtime

A little while ago I posted about the disaster that was Asher's sleeping. Well, I am pleased to announce, that that is pretty much a thing of the past. Things were pretty bad for awhile, he wasn't getting near enough sleep, and was a basket case all day, everyday. What we did...

We put the lock on his door, like I said we would. I ended up putting one of the crib mattresses on the floor next to the door, so the first few nights, he would cry for about 5 minutes, and then just pass out on the mattress. I could just imagine his thought process... "I'm just gonna take a little rest on this mattress, until they come open the door..." and then he would just conk out. After that, he pretty much stopped getting out of his crib, and would lay in there quietly before he fell asleep. We did end up getting a twin bed, which he LOVES to jump on. He actually does really well sleeping in it too. Sometimes he will ask to sleep in his crib, which is fine for now. Most nights he comes to the door and asks for "sippy cup milk", and we tell him that if we give it to him, he has to stay in bed and stop talking to us through the door... and he does. So that's working for now. Eventually I am going to stop the milk thing all together, but for right now, I know he will go right to sleep after we give it to him, so I am letting it slide. The important thing is that he is getting the sleep he needs and I don't have to be a meanie-mom. 

A few mornings a week, he will still wake up between 6:00 and 6:30, which we are not fans of. Throughout his entire young life, he has never woken up before 7, he has always been amazingly consistent with that little skill (aside from when we are out of town or when he is sick, etc). But when he started climbing out of his crib he would wake up so early, and he's just never really gotten all the way back to how he was before. I am hoping that this is not his new routine. He does still have his good mornings though, so we're still hoping he'll get back there.

Anyway... so yeah, disaster fixed. Bring on the next one. No, just kidding, not yet. Ok?!

Milk buddies

Asher has been in this phase lately, where he wants to be just like Sayer. When Sayer drinks his milk, Asher wants to drink his on the floor just like him. Today I took Sayer's onesie off so he was just in his diaper, and Asher insisted on taking off his clothes to be like Sayer. When I try to get Sayer to walk to me, Asher steps in front of him and walks to me instead. It drives me a little crazy sometimes, but I thought this was a cute picture of brothers drinking milk together. While we're on the subject of milk, Asher has turned into a HUGE milk drinker. He used to not care whether he got milk or water, but now it's almost always milk he wants. I do regulate it, but he really would drink milk all day if I let him. Oh well, there could be worse things.

Cookies

These are from awhile ago, but I thought they were cute, so I wanted to post them. This is Asher rolling and cutting out sugar cookies for Valentine's Day. He had so much fun getting messy and playing with the dough. I gave him his own little section that we weren't going to use, so he could do whatever he wanted with it. He loves to help out with stuff like this.

Staten Island

This week is spring break. Coming from BYU, we are so not used to all these breaks, but we'll take 'em! Nate still has lots of studying and reading to do, but today we decided to take a little day trip to Staten Island. It was so weird, as soon as we got out on Wallstreet (the kids fell asleep, so we decided to get lunch before we got on the ferry), it felt like we were some place far away. It felt like we were on a vacation. While we were down there, we got the impression that kids on Wallstreet are somewhat of a novelty. The people in the little cafe we went to were quite taken with our children. Nate said it was like when the Chinese see blond kids in China, the way people reacted to our kids. So that was kind of fun.

The New York Stock Exchange

After lunch, we walked down to the ferry station and got on. Asher was thrilled to be on the boat, and kept exclaiming that it would be dangerous and scary to go swimming. I'm glad that he seemed to have some sense of danger when looking down from the boat into the water. 

When we got off, we walked down the harbor and stopped for a little while on a little "beach" area. Asher and Sayer would have been happy throwing rocks there for hours and hours. It really made me so happy to see them so happy and having so much fun. My boys seriously love being outside, and it makes me sad that we haven't been able to be outside much lately. Thankfully the warm weather is fast approaching, and days like today will be more frequent. 

After the beach, we decided to walk to this park we saw on our map. Of course it ended up being MUCH further than we anticipated, not to mention completely uphill and in the ghetto. I was very grateful when we finally found it. It was worth it... it was a very nice big park with a little lake and lots of grassy areas. Again, the boys would have played here forever. 

We did have a little scary moment, when Asher decided to almost run into the busy road. He had been walking up the hill, just looking around, but then all the sudden he decided to run toward the road, and Nate (in my opinion) was not running fast enough toward him, and I was freaking out. Luckily, as I said before, Asher seems to finally be sensing when things are dangerous, and instead of heading into the road, he just turned onto the sidewalk and started running down it. But Nate was so far behind him, he totally would have been able to run into the road before we could get to him. Oh my gosh... it makes my heart beat faster just thinking about it. Anyway... when Asher came back, I gave him a little talking to, and he almost seemed to be expecting it. 

Heading back to the ferry was much more pleasant, and we had a nice quick trip back to Manhattan. By the time we got off the boat, Sayer was starting to lose it. He has a bad habit of taking his binky out while in the stroller and dropping it on the ground, and unfortunately, he chose a time to do it when Nate and I were deep in conversation, and so we didn't notice until much later. So the poor tired and hungry kid had a rough ride home without his binky.

Despite the rough ending, it was a very fun day. The weather was perfect, and I think Asher and Sayer really had a ball. We are hoping to be better at the family outings once it starts getting warmer, and are already looking forward to the next one.  Well... we might need a nap first! ;)