I love my kids :)

current Ryan-isms

A quick quick post while I'm thinking of a few things!  It's just about morning time; alright, Ryan's already awake.  I peeked into his room and he was laying in bed "reading" himself books.  Sweetest thing ever, I loved it :)

A few Ryan-isms for you since it's been awhile:

My favorite, even sweeter than him reading himself books in bed:
The other day in the car we were talking about the picture he colored in church and about Jesus.  He tells us that "Jesus lives in my heart"  Wow!!!!  He then asked us if Jesus lived in Daddy's heart, Mommy's heart, Abby's heart, and then even Kitty's heart.  Awesome!

the joys of raising children in Cherokee county and doing your shopping at Walmart:
"Why that man wearing jeans all the way up?" (yup, you guessed it, overalls)

Unprompted niceness:
As we were leaving lunch at Wendy's with Grandma, Ryan hollered after her: "Say hi to Grandpa!" 

Just because we love you

So in my previous post, I mentioned that we bought Abby's birthday present over the weekend.  If you know Abby's Auntie Sarah, I'm sure you'll understand the need for this follow-up post.  After claims that she's not sleeping at night wondering what the gift is, I've decided to celebrate the one-week-til-my-baby-girl-turns-one-day with a sneak peak of the coming fun. 

The party theme is flowers, mostly in pinks and yellows, going along with the daffodil pictures on the invitations.  I have had a little too much fun shopping for the party; this just a sampling :) 

Abby's jewelry box!  We happen to think it's beautiful.

Abby Caroline

Happy 1st Birthday

Love, Daddy & Mommy

Live a little, Love a lot

Whew, yay for spring break!!  We're certainly glad for a break!  We've been busy, busy, busy, but loving every minute of it.  Ryan & Abby now have something every day of the week and it's sure been nice not having any where to be the last two days.  I'm still in pajamas at 10am, can't tell you the last time that happened!  Of course, I've still been up since 7:30, which unfortunately is sleeping in these days, oh well! 

Mondays are speech, Tuesday preschool, Wednesdays more speech, Thursday Ryan has preschool and Abby has Music Class, Friday Asher spends the day with us and the boys go to Sportykes class.  Saturdays are swim lessons and Sunday is church and Amy's tennis.  Abby loves her little music class, especially holding the drum sticks and crawling around to the Elephant song.  Sportykes is also awesome, the boys played baseball this past Friday and basketball for two weeks before that.  It's a quick intro to four sports and lots of running around & fun.  I've been very impressed with that class! 

Recent highlights include a trip to the mall on Saturday for a Build-a-Bear birthday party, buying Abby's birthday present, and riding the "merry round."  We also put down our red mulch, grilled out with the 2/3 of the grands, Amy played three sets of tennis on Sunday, and a couple more bike rides & playing on the new playset.  Yesterday the kids & I made the best of a sunny 80 degree day with two walks to the neighborhood playground.  Abby did great on the playground, too good actually :)  She mastered climbing up the steps almost immediately, loved sliding, and had a great time in the tunnel that goes underneath the playset.  It was a fun day! 

our new swingset!

Ryan and Abby have the best grandparents ever!  They all chipped in and bought us a new swingset!  It was installed today and we love it.  Ryan played out there all afternoon.  We are looking forward to a lot of fun and a lot of playdates and being outside all summer long.  Thanks so much to Grandma, Grandpa, Nana, Pop-Pop, Granddaddy, and Grandma Jo-Ann.  We love you very much and are very thankful for all you do for our family!!

Happy Birthday Maxim!

Happy 3rd Birthday Maxim!!  We spent Maxim's birthday weekend with him & his family in South Carolina.  The best part of the adventure, at least to the three year old boys, was a ride in a big yellow school bus!!  How fun!  We also enjoyed lots of family and spending time together.  In addition to the party, Maxim was baptized at their church on Sunday morning.  It was a wonderful celebration and we were honored to be a part of it.  Happy Birthday Maxim and thanks for letting us share your special day with you!  We love you!

Ryan's new bike

Wow, can you believe my baby is old enough to be riding a bike??  I sure can't!  Ryan got his first real bike last week, thanks to a great deal at the consignment sale.  He's been soo anxious to learn how to ride a bike and he did a great job!  He's had a few pedaling toys so the concept wasn't new and he just took off right away (with training wheels of course).  It was great fun watching his excitement as he rode around the abdandoned neighborhood behind Grandma's house.  Unfortunately it has been cold and rainy since the intial ride, so we haven't gone again, but I'm fairly certain there will be plenty of bike rides this summer!  I'm so proud of you Little Man and I love you!!

my Joy mentor

We are doing a book study with some good friends entitled the Life You've Always Wanted.  It's been a good read and I've picked up a few bits of wisdom to implement in my life.  Thus far my favorite chapter featured Joy and how important & spiritual it is.  I'll try to summarize quickly, without the use of the book or my notes since they are downstairs and I'm lazy and running out of time since the kids are starting to stir.  But basically, Joy is like an unofficial commandment.  There are many, many verses on Joy including the one that has been running through my head for the month since we've read that chapter: the Joy of the Lord is our strength {and of course do it again, do it again!!. :)}   One suggestion for learning to find Joy in life is to team up with a Joy mentor and see if their optimism & happiness can rub off on you.  I thought for a few moments of who might be the happiest person in my life, and then continued a sentence or two before reading that your Joy mentor can be any age.  Duh then, that's my Abby!!  She is the happiest person I have ever met.  She laughs and smiles constantly.  She's had her fair share of struggles and health issues, but that hasn't slowed her down one bit.  In fact, the pediatrician once commented that perhaps because she went through so much, that all the colds and ear infections and eye junk and breathing treatments are a walk in the park to her.  The last time I took her for a sick visit, I felt kind of silly because she was still laughing and smiling - but since she was so stuffy she could hardly breathe and her eye was closed up, I figured I had too!  The pediatrician has also nicknamed her the Happy Wheezer (because of those previously mentioned breathing treatments). 

She is so expressive & Joy-ful in all the little things.  Dancing to any & all music, a walk, a ride in a swing, seeing us open a bag of crackers, watching her brother, bathtime, reading Jingle-Jingle with us.  Bouncing in the car-stroller so high that her bottom comes off the seat & stretches the seatbelt as far as it can go.  Her whole face lights up, her whole body shakes with excitement.  She points and waves and hollars "DA!!"  I love watching her feet when she's happy.  They kick and kick, notice in the swing picture below that they are stuck straight out, tensed with delight!  She has that total pure innocence about her and loves life to the fullest.  I just pray that she will keep this happiness forever and that the world can never take it from her!  Thank you my Baby Girl for showing me how wonderful life is and for modeling a perfect example of Joy!  I love you my sweet Abby!!



busy busy!

Just wanted to say a quick hello to my few & far-between, but much-loved & appreciated blog followers!  This past week has been a great week, but at the same time one of those weeks where I feel like I can hardly keep up there's been so much going on!  While exhausting, it's been fun.  The weather was amazing towards the end of last week and the kids & I enjoyed several playground playdates, yay!  Saturday was filled with friends in the morning and family all afternoon.  Aunt Lolly, Uncle Brian, Aunt Lucinda, Uncle John, cousin Steve, & cousin Howard all converged on Mom & Dad's for the 2011 version of the cousins get-together.  We had a great time visiting with everyone, eating really good food, eating some more really good food, and then eating some more :)  Ryan & Abby loved all the attention and we loved catching up with the extended fam.  We're looking forward to another exciting and super-busy week again, hopefully I can keep current on all our adventures for you!  Love to all and have a great week :)

spring & my new toy

I got a great new camera for Christmas, it's all fancy and sleek and maybe a little too sleek - it doesn't stand up very well on it's own.  And if you know us, well really just me, you know we love to take pictures of ourselves, either with Coleson's extended arm or the camera's timer.  So I bought an awesome gorillapod tripod so that we can all be in the photos again.  It just arrived today, but I've already been having lots of fun with it!  Here's the tripod sitting in the tree, just to see if it could really sit in a tree, and yes it can :)

We have a great tree in our front yard that we've been enjoying checking on this spring.  This one tree has a bird's nest and six cocoons in it!  Ryan loves the cocoons (think The Very Hungry Caterpillar, which was already a bedtime favorite, but then became a speech book so a week's worth of practicing words that included cocoon).  He's always excited to see how they are doing, see how many we can count, and talk about the "beautiful butterflies" growing inside.