Rylee's 1st Birthday! Party- April 2, 2008

Rylee actually had two birthday parties for her 1st birthday. We celebrated with my family (Price side) a day early, since we had family in town and had other plans for the 3rd. We had a Sloppy Joe BBQ, opened gifts and had cake & ice cream. The cousins ran wild and we ate left over Sloppy Joes for the week following.

The cake, her very own cupcake and some pictures we displayed.

Cousins gathered around to sing happy birthday!

Rylee digging in. Happy birthday baby!

Our baby turns one!

Where does the time go? I can't believe that a year has already come and gone. On April 3, our sweet Rylee turned one. This is the first picture that we took of her(born via C-section). I love it, it's like, "I'm here world!"
What a pure joy this child has been. A true blessing. She is so full of personality and spunk and is just sweet and silly. She's got a tender heart, but is also tough as nails (she has to be with that brother of hers).

She was such an enjoyable baby. I remember just being able to sit and hold her forever. I loved her pure sweetness. She's always been happy and content. Hardly cried, slept well- dream baby.

It's funny thinking back now- she was born during tax season, we had just moved here, just finished potty training Jace, we were in the heat of building our house and were living with my parents at the time. It was full of busyness and chaos and I was nearly at my breaking point. And then Heavenly Father sends us this perfect and beautiful little daughter and it was truly a tender mercy. We absolutely love and adore this girl.

Rylee through her first year:

Melts her dad's heart.

Sweet!

Easter- March 23, 2008

We had a fairly quiet Easter this year. The Easter bunny found our house and filled the baskets, but we also wanted to remind our kids of the true meaning of Easter. For FHE that week, we had an egg hunt that had different things about the life of Christ in each egg, then I made this booklet for Jace (from the Friend). So it reappeared Easter morning. I've heard of people who do the E.B. stuff on Saturday and leave Sunday to celebrate the true meaning. I'm thinking of adopting this for our family next year.

Jace's basket was apparently very large, because he got this new T-Ball/pitch softball machine. This is him & Jus trying it out. It should be fun for him this summer.

And our little Rylee-Poo in what became her Easter dress. She actually already had this one, but the one she got for Easter ended up being too small for her. She is a little chub-the dress was 18-24 months! She totally struck out because her new little shoes were also too small. But, she still looked cute. Happy Easter.

What is Easter without a Good Hunt?

The day before Easter, we headed over to good 'ol Broulims for
their Easter egg hunt. Broulims does an egg hunt you wonder? I asked myself that same question. Who knew? Since it was freezing cold outside, I decided that it wasn't a bad option.

Well- this is how it went down. Isles 2 and 3 were reserved for the hunt- one for smaller kids, one for bigger kids. They hid the eggs amongst the items on the shelves and then each egg had candy in them, but they also had some with prizes(someone took home a DVD player, we on the other hand- a dozen glazed donuts). The Easter bunny was also present, which I practically had to force Jace to get even this close to and they also had a bin full of live baby bunnies.

But back to the hunt. They break the string and the children are off. I tell Jace to walk straight to the middle, since most of the other kids are working their way down the isle. Jace gets several eggs right off, being the only one with strategy apparently. Anyway...egg hunt is almost over. Here comes a late comer with a baby who is maybe one (and doesn't probably care in the first place). Mother is pouting wondering where all the eggs went. Looks straight into Jace's basket, sees his maybe 6 or so eggs and proceeds to say, "Well that's where all the eggs went- that is horrible that a parent would let their child do that." WHAT? Are you talking to me, I wonder? Apparently I'm not familiar with egg hunt protocol. I didn't think that was excessive- is each child only supposed to take one or what?

Although I could've said a lot of things, (like don't show up late for a 2 isle egg hunt), I ask Jace if we could take a few eggs out of his and put them back on the shelf for a few other kids to find. He's fine with it. So, I turn the other cheek and let her have her plastic egg glory.

St. Patty's- March 17, 2008

Decided to pick back up on our blog by catching up on some missed holidays!

Okay...so St. Patricks Day! What do I even say about this holiday besides why do celebrate this & what's the point?

To give you an idea of our excitement for St. Patty's, when Jus was leaving for work I said, "Hey, you're not wearing green- did you forget it's St. Patrick's Day?" To which he replies, "I'd rather get pinched."

So...being the ideal mother that I am, I try to keep the holiday spirit alive. I get the kids all dressed in green (which Jace then thought was necessary to do every day after the fact as well). And ended our night with a green eggs & ham dinner. The result? No one got pinched and I ate the green eggs all by myself. I can't believe I actually bought a decoration for the blessed event. Cheers to the Irish!

Backstage Pass

Hooray! I finally made the switch to private. That was stressful- making sure everyone's emails were in, etc. Hopefully you all got your invitation. Leave me a comment letting me know you did. Now that the switching over took all my spare time, you'll have to wait a bit for a real new post.

I've got to download pics from my camera- but on our blog break we've had lots happening- parties, visitors and a whole lot more.

Keep coming back-

Edit: Holy shmoly! Today is tax day, which means that Jus got home early for the first time in 4 months today! Rylee doesn't feel well, so she's napping and Jus took Jace to do some errands and pick up a movie & pizza to celebrate having our dad back!

Which only means one thing- I've got some free time! Yay- I feel like this hasn't happened for awhile. So I'm going to try to catch up on the blog. (since it is no joke--snowing outside. Yes, on April 15). By the way, does any know if you can pre-date a post?

Last Call Ya'll

Okay this is the week we'll be switching over to private. (See post below) Thank you to everyone who emailed me or left a comment requesting an invite. We hope you'll still enjoy keeping in touch, even with the added inconvenience of logging in.

I'm going to start inputting emails this week. We've had a lot going on these past few weeks, so we'll have some fun updates once we get everything switched.

Just wanted to give one last chance. So...if you've been looking at our blog or just came across it and want to continue stopping by, leave me your email and I'll send you an invite.

Thanks!