Holiday! Celebrate!

What a fantastic holiday season! The only thing that would've made it perfect was if we had some time with Larry's family, some time with Lauren and her family, and if Larry was able to take off work this week. BUT, we are thankful Larry has a job and L3 has work, so we are blessed. I have a new appreciation for all parents of families who celebrate with Santa. Whew! It's hard work preparing for his arrival and delivery of gifts! This year was a practice run for us...the bar is set for next year and I so hope we succeed. I'm taking notes. Leading up to Christmas Day we worked hard making and delivering gifts for friends and family to help teach Rya the true meaning of Christmas. She kept reminding us that it was Jesus' birthday. Even though she LOVED giving presents to everyone, I must admit, that the morning after Christmas Day she woke up asking for more presents for her to open. :) Santa was very good to our family this year. I was given a new washer and dryer (with steam function on both!) along with other items to make me a fantastic domestic diva and mother of two. Larry was given a beautiful guitar and some new electronics, clothes and photo keepsakes. And the kids were spoiled rotten with clothes and toys. Rya's favorite gift is a truck that Luke was given. And Luke's favorite toy is a Special Agent Oso car that Rya was given. Go figure. :)
Mom and I have been busting our bums since Thanksgiving getting ready to deliver the books to the children. We set out with 94 bags of books for children. We delivered almost all on Dec. 15th. We were unable to deliver to a few homes b/c the homes had been abandoned or a new family had moved into a house and the children we had on our list no longer were there, or we just couldn't find a particular address. Overall it was a success and we learned a lot about how we'll go about it next time. We are still being blessed with books and donations so we are planning for our next delivery to be sometime in March.
Rya is doing fantastic. She is just the sweetest thing. I think she is still worn out from Christmas. It's nice having her and Luke home this week from "school". I know it's only Monday, so that song might change by Thursday, but I do like it. We are trying to decide on preschool for the fall. Registration opens in February and we are already on a wait list for one school. I think we have it narrowed down, but ideas and thoughts keep popping in our heads so we'll have to keep thinking and praying about it over the next month or so.
Luke is now 9 months old, has two teeth (both on the bottom) and is working on his third (one of the big ones on top). This one must be a doozy b/c he is one unhappy camper. He is crawling and pulling up & cruising. I walked into the room he was playing in the other morning and he was just standing there...not holding onto anything...but I told him to cut that out b/c I'm not quite ready for him to be walking yet. He gets into EVERYTHING as it is...add walking and running on top of that and we just might have a disaster or two on our hands. He has his well baby tomorrow so hopefully I'll have some stats shortly. Here are some pictures from pre-Christmas celebration:

My Michelle...

...takes the most beautiful pictures. Here we are at Baytowne. We went to listen to the symphony brass band. They didn't show up, but we still had a nice time hanging out and eating pizza with Michelle and Richard. We love them so much and cherish the time we get to spend with them.
Time is flying. Luke will be 6 months old tomorrow. All I can say is "DANG! Where did the last 6 months go?!" He is rolling all around and trying so hard to sit up. Poor boy wants to, but he gets so excited that he starts kicking his little legs and makes himself fall over. He truly is a very happy boy. I was worried for the first 5 months b/c he was just so unhappy and so sensitive. He's much happier and just loves anything that involves causing a commotion...aka, his sister. :) Speaking of Rya: she is doing fantastic with potty training. We ventured out of the house in just trainig underwear the other day and we didn't have ANY accidents. YAY! She was also sick this past week and had to go to the doctor. 5 days of fever = no good. The dr. thought maybe she had a urinary tract infection, so she wanted Rya to give a urine sample. She asked Rya is she would go pee pee in the cup and Rya was like "yes" so off we went to the lab. I admit, I was thinking "Yeah right, like this is going to happen" to myself the whole way there while also pumping her up with confidence. Ha ha. Sure enough, she peed in the cup! It took a little bribing, but she did it! I was so impressed. Of course every other time going pee that day, she asked to pee in a cup, but still. She's getting to be a big girl and it just amazes me. She's just the sweetest thing:



I have a feeling, her brother is going to come in at a close second:

Rya feeding Olivia

Warning: May contain adult content. ;)

I love it how her lips move as Olivia is "drinking". Kind of like when you feed a baby from the spoon, your mouth opens too with each bite. Too cute.

Happy Birthday Larry!

Larry celebrated his 33rd birthday on Tuesday. Since Memorial Day fell on Monday, we celebrated with a four day weekend and it was very nice and relaxing. Larry is a homebody so I think he enjoyed just laying around watching the Rays (and Rya) play. I did drag him out on his birthday for about two hours to go get some food and do a little shopping. We went to HarborWalk Village for some BBQ. It was nice sitting outside overlooking the harbor...and parking lot. Thanks Mimi for watching Rya & Luke for our little getaway. :) I can't believe this is the 15th birthday of his we have celebrated together! So crazy wonderful! I'm so fortunate to have all these years with such a fantastic man, husband and father!

Pictures from Larry's birthday weekend at the beach

Praying HARD our beaches will continue to look this beautiful for our children. This BP oil spill has really put a damper on people's moods around here. It seems like everyone is coming to get "one more look" at the beaches before they are changed forever. We enjoyed this evening at the beach together and hope to have many more nights like this.

May 9th, 2010

I can't believe Rya is 2!! We had such a special day this year. Her second birthday fell on Mother's Day this year and we also had the kids baptized that Sunday. Such a special and memorable day for our family. Rev. Ed Chandler baptized me when I was confirmed and it was such an honor for him to baptize Rya and Luke for us. I've attached some photos of the day. The pictures aren't the most beautiful (I just had a baby for Pete's sake), but they are definitely special. It was like Christmas in here! Rya had so many presents to open...spoiled little girl. She's worth it~she's a big sister now! :) Some of her gifts include (but aren't limited to) an awesome folding camping chair, some play earrings and tiara, a vacuum (hopefully this will help her get over her fear of the vacuum), a lawnmower that blows bubbles, clothes and a cool computer learning board from our dear friends in Jax, new books, finger paints (those haven't come out of the box yet), a Bullseye from Toy Story flashlight, a Wonder Pets Fly Boat, STICKERS, a stroller for her baby dolls and a 120 piece train set!! She loves all of them so much! Last year she flipped out when we gave her the cake. She just wasn't a fan, but THIS year...watch out! She LOVED it and ate the whole HUGE piece.

Merger

I have decided to cancel www.ryajohnson.com and just make one big blog/website for the whole family's updates. It will be easier than trying to keep up with one for Rya and one for Luke plus doing all the other "extra" memory making things I do around the house. I merged all of the posts from ryajohnson.com and so hopefully nothing will get lost. :)