TIMBER!
One of our large trees is an Ash. Unfortunately the introduced Emerald Ash Borer, a beetle that is making its way across the East, has been found in our town and it is only a matter of a few years before all of the ash trees in town will be infected. There is no good treatment, especially for large trees. As our tree had some dead limbs already that worry me everytime we have a wind storm, we made the decision to take the entire tree out. It was a sad day but somewhat exciting. It will be nice to have a non-shady area in the yard that so that we can finally grow veggies in our own yard.
Some pictures of the action:


The tree really was large! Our neighbor remembers when the tree was planted 45ish years ago. It was probably 4 feet across at the base.


Plenty of firewood for our little fire pit!

Asher 1 Month
Time flies when you are not getting any sleep...
Asher weighed 10 lbs. 5 oz at his 1 month checkup, an increase of about 2.5 lbs from birth. He is chunking up - probably because he is nursing every two hours round the clock {still!}. We celebrated by having a campfire in our backyard. Cadie has been praying for "my tent and campfire to be set up" just about every prayer she says so I guess it was time for her parents to come through for her - at least partially.


We roasted hot dogs and marshmellows. Smore anyone?

Here is a 1-month close-up of the boy. Poor kid has been dealing with a lot lately, cradle cap, baby acne, and THRUSH- yuck! Luckily, he managed to avoid Eric's cold.

Lay Low
I took one picture this past week:

We took it pretty easy trying to get into a groove with a Toman family of four. We are so blessed that Eric can work mostly from home this term. He is able to help out occasionally during the day. I don't know what else to write about - my brain cells are not all firing due to sleep deprivation. I'll just add some photos from a week ago (Asher 14 days old). We were supposed to have a photographer take newborn pics but she got in a car accident the morning of and so we tried out our photography skills. I'd like to take a class one day when I have some free time.

Asher Goes Out
With my mom in town we had an appropriate ratio of adults to kids (at least 2 adults are needed to handle Cadie right now) to take an outdoor excursion or two. We introduced Asher to the Columbus zoo. He was snuggled warm and cozy against me and slept the entire trip.


Some of the animals were frisky with the cooler weather but the polar bears were quite lazy.

We even had a Jack Hanna sighting!

We all really appreciated mom being around. It was especially great for Cadie who was showered with attention. It has been a rough transition for C but she is doing a lot better.

The next trip was to Lynd's fruit farm for apple picking, hay ride, funnel cakes, and other yummy goods at the market.

The fresh apples were delicious - Cadie ate three before we left!

No picture evidence, but Asher spent the trip the same way - asleep snuggled against me.
One last picture of the little guy - what a cutie!

First Day of School
Due to the unexpected early arrival of Asher, the outfit Cadie had picked out for the first day of preschool was still in the laundry pile. We substituted something pink and she found an empty backpack to fill with supplies the night before.
"I think I will need some yarn at school"

All ready to go!

I'm glad that she has something she enjoys to get her out of the house this fall.
Cadie is gradually adjusting to sharing the spotlight, with a few bumps along the way. Luckily grandma flew in last week to shower her with attention and love. Cadie is also getting some one-on-one time with dad. Found a giant ant to ride!

Asher is sleeping, eating, and pooping and is already back to (more than?) birth weight. He is a little embarrassed by his pink hand-me-downs. Babies are great.

It's a BOY!
Asher Fielding Toman
born 9/3/2011 6:09pm
7 lbs. 13 oz., 21.75 in.

Asher is a biblical name that we liked (Jacob's 8th son) and means "happy, blessed" and Fielding is a family name. It took us a while to finally settle on the name but it seems to fit him well so far.

The story:
Asher's due date was 9/11 and we were not expecting a baby for at least another week as Cadie had to be induced at 42 weeks. Needless to say we were not quite prepared when my water broke at 1:00am Saturday 9/3 morning. I found Eric downstairs watching US vs Costa Rica men's soccer. And his response, "well I guess this is why I couldn't sleep." Our night-time emergency person was out of town for the weekend and so we called an awesome neighbor to come stay at our house with Cadie until morning. We got to the hospital around 3:30am and basically waited around until Saturday afternoon for contractions to become more significant. Me in the L&D room at 7:30am trying to pass the time:

Luckily we had the crazy football fans to watch out the window and plenty of football on TV to watch. This is the view out of our room - that is the football stadium with the Goodyear blimp circling overhead. Glad we arrived at the hospital before game day traffic. (for those of you not fooball inclined - the horseshoe, OSU's stadium, seats 105,000 people and Saturday was the season opener vs Akron. OSU fans are crazy.)

At 3:00pm we made the decision to start pitocen to induce labor as I was still not very far along. This took about an hour to kick in and then boy did it ever! Hard labor lasted about 2 hours and I was so grateful to have Eric there to lean on (literally as he totally supported my standing body) and to coach me through it. Progression was so quick that no one was ready when Asher wanted to come out. My nurse-midwife did not make it in time and Asher was delivered by the resident MD. Ask Eric to tell you a funny story (funny now but not at the time) of our nurse throwing her phone across the room as she was trying to call someone (anyone!) to help.
Cadie spent Saturday and Saturday night with two neighbor families - going to soccer practice, farmer's market, and the pool. She thought she was on vacation. Eric chose to spend the night at the hospital with me.

Cadie came to meet little brother and gave him tons of love (even though he is a boy):

She made a picture to hang in his bassinet.

We are still getting used to having Asher here, there is definitely going to be an adjustment period, but I think we make a nice little family.

Summer Still
Still feels like summer around here, especially with an internal heater. Cadie hasn't started preschool yet and the pool is still open. However, the neighborhood kids are back in school and before they went back we had our annual block party. Complete with silly string, shaving cream, and water balloon fight, and a visit from a firetruck, ambulance, and motorcycle policeman. Here is Cadie after getting her "ticket" from the policeman for wearing her bike helmet - a ticket for free ice cream cone.

All the kids lined up for the frozen T-shirt contest.

The day wouldn't be complete without face-painting. Meow.

We met friends at a new splash park downtown - it was only a 7 minute drive away. We will definitely be back.


One last picture and note - we said goodbye to our beloved Subaru last week. It just was not going to work with 2 car seats, a dog, and Eric's legs. We don't have a replacement yet but it won't be anything nearly as cool. I guess it is time to grow up. Tear.

Kirtland, Ohio
Both Eric and I had ancestors come through Ohio in the mid-1800's, traveling by boat on the Erie canal and landing near Cleveland. His eventually followed the Oregon trail to Idaho and Oregon and mine moved with the Mormon pioneers to Utah. My extended family has a reunion every two years for some of these ancestors and this year the reunion was in Kirtland. It is only 2.5 hours from us so we decided to join. We didn't know anyone there but it was still fun to learn about these ancestors and what they did in Kirtland.
Cadie and Eric learning how to chisel rock at an old limestone quarry.

A really cool water-powered saw mill:

The extended family worked on service projects at an old historic farm, including planting lilac bushes that were taken as trimmings from our great... grandmother's plant dating back to the 1850's.

We were able to attend church services in the Kirtland Temple. This beautiful building is 175 years old and was originally built by the Mormons in Kirtland. It is now owned by another church that conducts tours but it was really special that our extended family received permission to hold meetings inside.

During non-reunion time we wanted to check out Lake Erie. Did you know that Lake Erie has some pretty great beaches? I did not. Too bad we didn't have our swim suits handy. This place deserves another visit in the future. When I am less large. Especially since we found an awesome burger/dawg/ice cream place nearby.

On the way home we took a little time to explore Cuyahoga Valley National Park and found a... drum roll please...
SKI RESORT!

This is what a ski resort looks like in Ohio and yes that is the entire park.
Well - we will have to visit Cuyahoga again but probably not with skis (unless they are cross-country). There are hundreds of miles of bike trails and a passenger train that goes through up to Cleveland. All in all a great extended weekend.