Vacation Pictures

We are finally getting caught up on chores and laundry and preparing to leave on Friday. Here is a taste of what we did on our trips to Hills Alive and Tennessee!

Mom and Dad bid on passes to Bear Country at a Hills Alive Auction and won them for $40, saving us about $80! It was HOT, but still fun. We went on Sunday morning before the concert started up again. Rylan is proficient at growling like a bear now and she loved to see the little animals up close!


Papa and his grandkids sitting on a bench that reads "Beware of the Bear." That would be him sometimes!


Aiden considers taking care of Ry a big job. He pushed her around and here he is talking to her about the otters and pointing them out.


I'm not sure what is making Auntie Echo laugh...


I had to include this pic-it's my new favorite band-Remedy Drive. We saw them in May at the Wright Town Hall and I LOVE them so we had to watch them again at Hills Alive. You should check them out. They're from Lincoln, NE and their music saw me through my somewhat darkish period in May. Good stuff.


We went to the Knoxville Zoo on a beautiful, not too muggy day last week. I think we might be looking at the elephants or maybe the lions. The elephants were for sure my favorites-and Ry and I love to practice our elephant sounds.


Rylan pulled herself as close as possible to the animals!


"Should I get out and join the monkeys, Daddy??"


Ry and Daddy looking at the red panda. She was enthralled watching him eat.


Auntie Paige feeding Rylan snacks


Mimi Sharon-perhaps giving her more food?


Mimi Sharon blowing bubbles-Rylan tried hard to blow into the tube to get bubbles out!


Aunt Vicky holding Ry while Uncle Glen tries to play with her-she was hesitant with him at first but quickly fell in love.


Ry and Uncle Glen playing with the clown that does "Pop Goes the Weasel." I think they look alike (Glen and Rylan, that is)!


Showing off her bottom two teeth. I thought she still had only four teeth. Yesterday when I told Mom that Rylan was running a bit of a temp and I was sure she was finally teething she did some digging around. She found 3 molars already through-one that has clearly been through for a while! How did I miss them? So, our dear daughter has 7 teeth.


I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this pic Shaun caught of Rylan laughing at Uncle Glen. We had time to print up a copy for Mimi Sharon and Kessie, and I can't wait to get one done to hang in our house. I adore it.


Since Shaun will be with over the weekend I will have some pictures, but I will have to try hard to get some during the week at Elizabeth's place. He is clearly the great photographer in this family!

Quick Check-in, again!

Well, we've finally made it home from our travels for a few days. We are home so that Shaun can work four nights and on Friday morning we'll be off to Iowa for a Nehring family reunion. Shaun and Rylan have never been to Iowa to hang with family, so it will be a fun trip! Shaun will leave with my dad on Monday morning and I'm headed to see Elizabeth and crew for a few days with Rylan. We're hoping we can somehow see Stacey and her kiddos while I'm around that area. That's what's to come; what's behind would take too much time to type out! I'll just leave a few pics for now with the goal of getting vacation pics uploaded this week!

I had a great time at my work conference in Denver. I learned a ton about being a success with students and about my teaching friends. We ate dinner at Cheesecake Factory for my birthday. It was delicious and my boss paid! I had the coolest birthday this year-7/8/09-and Carmen said I should take a pic of myself at 10:11! So my buddies helped me out-I'm using Missy's phone to show the time while saying good night to Shaun on mine.


My friend Jody is awesome and got tickets for 10 of us to see a Rockies vs. Braves game! It was lots of fun and the Rockies pulled out a win.


The weekend I got home, Rylan and I tried to be as lazy as possible. In fact, when I went into WalMart after church that Sunday she was so tuckered out that she slept through the entire store!


This is a taste of our work in the library (I'll post more pics when it is all decorated and gorgeous)! I think I'm trying to pull staples from the pillar here. The red, white and blue are all covered (what is shown times 4 walls and 3 other pillars-I was so tired of painting!) and we have started to rearrange furniture. I couldn't have tackled this HUGE project without lots of help and planning from Shaun. My friend Jody, Echo, Paul and Mom and our Pastor's wife and daughter also helped during the week. On the third night-very late-Tucker and another little mouse also helped finish it up! I am grateful to all of them!!


That week Rylan also had her first little haircut. Her bangs were in her eyes all of the time and Mom kept threatening to do a little trim work for me. We avoided that by letting Ry get a cut while I was getting my hair done.


We enjoyed having Shaun around the last two weeks and he took some great pictures of our shining star. I don't know how he does it-but just you wait and see how awesome he did! Yesterday was our 6th Anniversary! Can you believe it? We can't. On our drive to Nashville to catch our plane Saturday, Paige had a CD mix that included "Wonderful Tonight"-which Shaun sang to me at our reception-and "Your Song"-which played while I walked down the aisle to Shaun! I felt all melancholy listening to them. He was and continues to be my "true companion" (the song we danced to) and the love of my life. How blessed I am to call him my life partner. Thank you God for truly giving me my dream man! And now that I fixed all of my errors from earlier I think I will go enjoy one of my favorites of summer-a nap!

4th of July Weekend

Well, luckily for you I am in the middle of a thousand things and have no real time to blab but I do want to keep up on my pics. Shaun would tell me I'm wasting time even now and we can't have that! I just got home from seeing My Sister's Keeper with, of course, my sisters. Good show, but not as good as the book. Tomorrow I leave for a work conference in Denver. We have fun things to do at night but I'm not looking forward to being away. Shaun is working his crazy 14-hour days, so Rylan gets to spend the week with her Mema and Papa! When I come home on Friday I might head to NE with mom and Rylan to see Carm and Scott. Next week, my cousin Chloe is coming to baby-sit so Shaun and I can meet a crew of teaching friends at school to paint the library. Friday we are having a HS reunion picnic. Saturday morning we leave for Hills Alive! Woohoo! We will leave from Rapid on Monday morning to hit the road to Denver and catch a plane to TN for the week and visit family and friends. So, no more lazy days for us and maybe no time to blog!

We did have a relaxing weekend, watching the parade, going to Ella's 2nd birthday party and watching fireworks. Rylan wasn't very thrilled that we woke her up to go watch them and she only stayed up for about half of the show. Poor baby. Anyway, off to pack some more. Hope your 4th was super!

Hanging out in Echo and Paul's newly redone backyard. It's awesome!



Ry can be found standing on anything these days!


I was trying to get a nice pic with her Mema but Ry refused to look at the camera.



Papa was playing drums and Rylan thought that was awesome. Echo is giving lessons out of her home now. We might have to sign Rylan up!



Playing with the ball the Roeslers gave Ella for her birthday


Rylan's daddy loves to taker her pic and then make it look fancy on the computer!



Doing what she loves-making music! She is truly a girl after our hearts and we love her to pieces!

Pea Pie

Since I dedicated my last post to my trip to Seattle, it is time to have a post about our Pea Pie! I've been thinking lately about the things we call Rylan and wondering which will stick and if there are any we need to quit calling her. Like "Baby Girl." I'm pretty sure we will quit using it once she has a new cousin in November and she's not the baby anymore. But what if she ends up being called "Baby" like the girl in Dirty Dancing? That would not be good. We've also been known to throw out "Ry Baby," "Pea Pie," Ry Pie" and just plain ol' "Ry." I think I've only been pondering it because I've heard other people using them to address her. What if we're setting her up for future embarrassment? Just something that's been on my mind lately.

I could have titled this post 'The Screamer' as Rylan does a lot of that lately. She screams when she's happy and when she's mad at someone or thing. I think she's going to be a bit like me in that she gets really frustrated when she doesn't get something the way she wants. She used to jabber to herself about things not going right, but now she is starting to let me know when she's ticked. The other day she was trying to climb up her high chair and the lid wasn't attached so down on her bum she went! She screamed at it, then proceeded to walk over to me at the sink jabbering the whole time about it. Pretty funny.

Her jabbering lately has been out of control! Some of it you can understand, but most just sounds like jibberish. There are several things she says, though, that we do understand. She uses "no" to answer everything, even if she really does want what you have. We know that "Dad" is for her daddy and "Dada" means Papa Wilson (she calls it as we approach their house now, "Dada, dada, dada" even though often he's at work when we are there)! "Mom" is for her mommy and "Mama" is for Mema Wilson. She calls cousin Aiden "Day" but hasn't tried Ella. Maybe that's because the two of them hardly ever get along. Last week they were squabbling about something and Rylan started screaming. Aiden was blocking my view of them, so I calmed Rylan down and we went about our business. When Echo came she found a nice bite mark on Rylan's hand. That's what all the noise was about. Oops! She still says "What's that?" and "Who's that" though not as often as she used to. Her newest phrase is "some more," which she said to everything the other day. It got really old by bedtime! Let's see....oh, she calls Tucker "Tuhtuh" and once in a while she will call her daddy "Shaun." I swear I didn't teach her that one, but I encourage her to do it when she starts because I think it's funny! Shaun and Tucker swear that the other night as they were sitting at the table conversing Rylan said "I love you." She hasn't said it again, however, and I wasn't there to hear it, so I'm not sure it's true. She was eating a hamburger bun at the time and she ADORES them; maybe she was declaring her love!

Shaun took Rylan to her 15-month check-up while I was in Seattle. The little stinker is not quite 22 pounds, putting her at the 30th percentile. I can't remember her height but she was at the 70th percentile. The doc wants us to focus on more dairy products and making sure she gets a daily vitamin dose. Other than that, everything looks good. I hear that Ry got scolded by Dr. Ammari for jabbering on and on and not letting the doc talk to Shaun. When Ammari asked Rylan to wait she obeyed, so Shaun got to hear how she's not dumb and we need to make her mind!

Ahhh, making her mind. Some days she makes me want to pull my hair out. We tell people that she's very busy but someone close to us described it a little better: she's high-maintenance. The girl wants you to know that she is available to play and wants your full attention. She is pretty strong-willed about most things. This week, though, she has done a great job at picking up her toys and not throwing a fit when asked to do something. Echo gave us a Dr. Dobson DVD on discipline that we started watching. I have memories of my mom listening to him while doing dishes when we were little. I think we turned out okay, so I'm going to listen to what the man has to say! She is still ever the entertainer and loves to be out and about with other people. Getting to greet people in stores is still one of her favorite things to do and she continues to woo all she meets.

We are trying to fill our days with lots of fun activities and I am loving my time at home with Ry Baby. The next couple weeks will be very busy so the ones at home have been a nice treat. Rylan gets to spend most of next week at her Mema and Papa's house. I leave for a work conference in Denver on Tuesday morning and Shaun is on days starting Wednesday. We decided that instead of Shaun taking Rylan to my mom at 5 a.m. and picking her up at 8 p.m., it would just be easier for Shaun to stop and say hi to her when he is done working and leave her there for the night. I'm sure she'll have fun being spoiled full-time. And now, since Shaun and I are going to a late movie tonight, I'm headed up to join Rylan for an afternoon nap. I love summer. Hope yours is going well, too!

Rylan adores blueberries-but she's not great at processing them!


Aiden about to splash in our kiddie pool


Rylan kickin' it in the pool-she would have stayed out all afternoon if I had let her!


Shaun cleaning his garage-we got a lot of cleaning projects done last week. Woohoo!


We took Rylan to play at the City Park on a beautiful Sunday afternoon last week


"I'm going up these steps and you can't stop me!"


Playing peek-a-boo with Daddy


Hanging out with her cheesy Mommy


Eating a cupcake from the odd neighbors. They know when we have a baby-sitter or other company and that we spend a lot of time with Tucker. It's weird to hear about what you're doing from someone you don't talk to often--but the cupcakes were tasty (and we're not sick so they weren't poisoned)!


Rylan loves the song "The Right Stuff" by New Kids on the Block. She didn't do as much "oh-ohing" as she normally does in this clip-maybe she knew I was recording!