28 Weeks

This is Allyson's belly at 28 weeks...

...and this is the sweet little guy inside of her belly just waving hello!

Today is the first day of our 3rd trimester of this 2nd pregnancy. That. Is. Crazy. It is amazing how fast this pregnancy has gone. We think it has something to do with a little boy named Asher who keeps us nice and busy!  We had a great check up with the doctor yesterday. It is always nice to hear that you have a healthy growing boy inside of you:)  He is definitely an active guy. He really likes to move around a lot at night when his mommy is still and resting. His brother was the same way. If he turns out anything like Asher he will be one lucky boy. Asher is going to be the best big brother. He loves snuggling up to mommy at night and resting his head on her belly. We think he already loves his brother. Notice that we keep calling this baby "Asher's brother". That is because he is still nameless! It is so hard naming a second baby. I don't know how people do with more than two!  I don't think we can leave the hospital without a name, so an end to this has to be coming.  We promise that we aren't keeping the name a secret. If we knew, we would definitely share! Hopefully sometime over this Christmas break we can come to a decision, but no promises!

Blessings,
Mark, Allyson, Asher, and Asher's little brother

New Big Boy Room!

There is no denying it. Asher is a big boy now. Since, baby brother will be making an appearance sometime in the next 2.5 months, we figured it was time to transition Asher out of his old room (which will belong to baby brother), and into a new "Big Boy Room". We really wanted Asher to be nice and settled into his new room before Brother showed up so that he didn't feel like he was being kicked out of his nursery. We tried really hard to make this a big deal to Asher and as you can see by the smile on his face, it has totally been a success! He has slept in his new room for almost a week now and has done fantastically.

This is a view from the doorway. As you can see, Asher loves sports, so we went with a sports theme thanks to Target.  He still needs some wall art, but it has made a nice start. You can't see from the picture, but his bed is a platform bed. He has 2 pull-out drawers under it for extra storage.

This is a view of the other side of the room. He also has a love of all things bike, car, and bus. He has his new car track in his room as well as all of his cars.

This is sweet boy sleeping in his new bed on the first night. His pj's are even sports themed. He almost blends in!

Allyson is officially off work for Christmas break as of 3:30 on Tuesday afternoon, so we are enjoying some "family of 3" time here in Indiana until Sunday. Santa is coming to our house on Saturday night/ Sunday morning, then we will head to church for our Christmas service, followed by a road trip to Ohio! Asher (and his parents) are excited to spend the week with lots of Ballinger's and Frank's!

Merry Christmas!
Mark, Allyson, Asher, and Asher's baby brother

Who is this kid?

Asher cracks us up on a daily basis. Whether it is his crazy facial expressions, or his new found "words" we are always being entertained. Just look at some pictures of our crazy kid.

Much love,

Mark and Allyson

New York, New York!

 Last weekend was our annual Sally, Abby, Jane, and Allyson shopping trip. We have been doing this for about 6 years now. The first Christmas after I got married, Abby and I were both living in Indiana. Our mom's decided that they would drive over to Indy for the day and do some Christmas shopping with us. At the end of that day we decided that we should be doing this every year, and definitely for longer than a day. The next two years we found ourselves in Chicago, followed by another year back in Indianapolis because I was about 8 months pregnant, returned back to Chicago the next year, and then this year...thanks to our very own New Yorker, we flew to New York City to stay with Abby and shop until we dropped! We had the best time. I will spare Mom and Sally by sharing of their "stories" about simply driving to the airport. If you see them, you might have to ask them about rolls of wrapping paper and GPS systems.

Friday morning we got up and headed over to the "Today Show". We met just a few of our friends there...

 Al...

Matt...

and some Waltons that might have made Sally's year...

Matthew also lives in New York and Friday just happened to be his 25th birthday. Isn't he a cutie?

Friday we shopped around at Macy's and then Friday night we went to Radio City to see the Rockettes! It was sooooo good. I had seen a similar show in Nashville, but it was really fun to see the show in New York with some new parts as well.

Saturday and Sunday were spent shopping, shopping, shopping. I can't divulge too much info or certain people might know what they are getting for Christmas.

Basically we had a fantastic time. Can't wait to see where our adventure lands us next year!

 

Much love,

Allyson

Thanksgiving in Georgia

Where did the past 7 weeks go? Holy moly, we forgot to blog! We could make a long list of excuses, but who cares...we are back! It is almost Christmas, so why not blog about Thanksgiving? This was a Georgia Thanksgiving for the Thompson clan. We traveled down on Wednesday morning before Thanksgiving. Wednesday night we met Jenna for dinner and had a great time of catching up. Thursday morning we headed out for our 1st Annual Thompson Thanksgiving Trot. We decided on a 5 mile walk that should start around 8 am to leave enough time for cooking afterwards. This is a picture of Asher at about 7:30 am. He is sporting his awesome "race t-shirt" and of course his Alabama hat that hasn't left his head in the past 2 months.  He loves that thing. As you can see, he is also clutching onto his other love, Matchbox cars. He can't get enough and doesn't settle for carrying one at a time:)

Here is a quick family shot in the car while we were waiting on our other "racers" to arrive.

While we were waiting, we saw a little friend, also known as a WOLF, a little ways away from our car. Ummmmmm, are we sure we want to walk here?!?!

We decided that we would brave it and took off for our walk. Let's just say that we didn't exactly check the "race route" before the walk so our 5 mile walk missed a turn and became more like 6.5! 

 I think we definitely earned these muffins after the race!

 The rest of our trip was spent hanging out with family and generally having a good time. Asher did decide to get an ear infection at the end of it, but he was a trooper as always. We are looking forward to the Christmas holiday and all of the family gatherings that will come with it!

Much love,
Mark, Allyson, Asher, and Asher's still nameless brother