Oh, Hello!

It has been such a long time since I’ve blogged and I’m going to pretend nothing ever happened and just pick up from my most recent pics.  I have way too many to ever catch up on anyway. 

As far as the last couple of months have gone, we are finally up here in Washington, all settled, and loving it.  That about covers it!  Ryan loves working at the church and we love our new house.  We had quite the heat spell as you probably heard.  Everyone was telling us that we brought it from California.  Yeah right, we came up here to escape the heat!  After another brief hot spell, we’re back down to normal.

So, let’s dive right in!

My FOURTEEN AND A HALF MONTH OLD is now finally walking!  I was beginning to doubt that she ever would.  She can now carry around her dollies and stuffed animals which pleases her immensely.  (We were having a bad hair day.  Bad mommy didn’t fix it when she woke up from a nap).

The wee one is also now an accomplished climber.  She managed to get up on a dining room chair and after bouncing around a little, fall off.  She survived.  And climbed back up.  These pictures were pre-fall.

I know you didn’t really need 3 pictures of the same thing (well, maybe the Grandmas did), but how could I choose just one since they’re all so cute?!

Speaking of cute…

Warren is now the big 3!  I’m sure it didn’t feel any different since he was saying he was 3 about 2 months before his birthday.  We had a few people over for his party, including Grammy and Papa, who were up here visiting.  His birthday (and our anniversary) fell during the nasty heat wave.  It wasn’t so much fun having people over when the house was 95*, but we all lived.  It’s just a fading memory now anyway, with the only thing to remind us of it is all the pink cheeks in the pictures.

The Cubs hat from Great-Grandma was (and still is) Warren’s very very most favorite of all time present.  He wears it non-stop, and yes, even to bed. 

Check out how sweaty Johnny is!  The poor kiddos were so hot and red.  Hey LeProhon’s—that cool dump truck has never looked the same since that day!  It always has rocks and dirt in it now.  Instead of shiny and yellow, it is now dusty and battered.  In other words, he couldn’t love it more.

 Instead of a cake, I made cake balls.  They were awe.some.  Cake on a stick, I guess you could say.  It was a bit difficult making them in 100* heat, but overall they turned out great, quite a hit with the kiddos.

Here are just a few random shots from recently. 

It might be hard to tell, but the boys are holding hands here.  I caught this sweet moment from inside the house.  They didn’t know I saw them!

At Lake Washington celebrating Micah Thompson’s 1st Birthday!  What a gorgeous day in Washington.

 

Check out the wave hair-do!  I love it.

 

 

 

 

 

And finally, Aubrey enjoying her first of many (I’m sure) Tootsie Pops.  Tasty.  This was back in July at my parent’s house.  Ok, so I did post some oldies.

See ya’ll soon!

Happy 4th!

Aubrey was feeling very festive in her red, white and blue stars today.  She even kept a hair bow in for around 2 1/2 minutes, enough for me to get some cute pictures.

The boys got some scooter riding in, and lots of playing today.  My grandma was over for most of the day, and Ryan and I did lots of packing up.  Most of our stuff is still in boxes in my parent’s garage, but what we did bring in, we’re now re-packing.  We load up the moving truck tomorrow after church.

We just finished up the apple pie my mom and I made.  As soon as it gets dark enough, we’ll play with the fireworks we got for the boys.  Late night tonight! 

(Look at me go…2 posts in a couple of days!)

Here We Go!

We can finally say with certainty that we are on our way to Washington!!  Ryan will be the new Associate Pastor of Student and Children’s Ministries at Eastridge Baptist Church in Kent, Washington.  I have been avoiding talking too much at all about our move because we just didn’t know if this was a sure thing.  Now we do, and I can post the pics I have, and tell you about our visit several weeks ago.

I’ll start at the beginning in case you don’t know too much about the situation.  The senior pastor (John) of Eastridge and Ryan have been friends for 5 years now.  They met the first day of seminary and were buds all the way through.  They had talked casually during school and after graduation about ministering together, and now the Lord has brought that to fruition. 

So, the 5 of us flew up 3 1/2 weeks ago for a visit for the purpose of the church getting to know us, as well as for us to look for a home.  The day we flew was Aubrey’s 1st birthday (June 4th) and John and his wife Trish had a little party for her!  My sister and family came as well as John’s daughter and family.  Trish made 2 cakes, one for Aubrey to eat/destroy, and the other for the rest of the guests.  The cakes were so cute, and Aubrey had a blast digging in.  She systematically picked off all the little frosting balls all the way around the cake and ate every single one!  She then proceeded to destroy the rest and get cake everywhere.  Pretty awesome.

 

The next day (Friday) we spent with John and Trish looking for a place to live.  We left the boys with my sis and tortured Aubrey with a day of in and out of the car, which ultimately paid off because we found an awesome house.  I can not emphasize enough the awesomeness of this house.  It sits on 2.5 acres of beautiful open land with horses and cows surrounding the entire property!  I was ready to sign the lease papers before we even stepped foot in the house, but my more reserved half wisely made us look around inside too.  Which was also great.  Here it is:

 

Front

 

 

 

 

 Out behind the house. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It’s a dream come true for 2 little rambunctious boys and their mom who needs them out of the house sometimes.  Ok, so it’s more than sometimes.  But I digress…  The property management company held the house for us and now we’re moving this coming Monday. 

Saturday of our visit Ryan played in the church annual golf tournament in the morning while the kids and I spent the morning with my sister and her kids.  We crammed her two car seats in our rental van, and combined with our three, it was quite squished.  I think the kids all had fun together though.

That evening, Ryan headed over to church to speak to the youth group.  The kids got a chance to get to know him a little bit.  The little people and I spent the afternoon and evening at our hotel for some down time before a long Sunday ahead.

Sunday, Ryan preached in the church service and again for the youth group.  After church there was a barbecue where we got to meet and talk with quite a few of the people.  Looking back on the weekend, we were very struck by how friendly people were.  It was a great day!

We spent a good deal of Monday just hanging out at the hotel.  We were all very tired from a long and busy weekend.  We packed up most of our stuff and for dinner met our good friends the Thompson’s at a nearby mall.  They are serving at a church in Seattle, and we are so excited to be living close to them too!  (The picture is Aubrey and her betrothed, Micah Thompson at dinner.)

Oh, Monday, we also went by the church to take a few pictures.

 This was Warren’s Sunday school class.  He loved the Noah’s Ark mural.

We flew home Tuesday exhausted, but so pleased at how the weekend went.  We were more excited than ever to be up in Washington at Eastridge.

A couple of weeks later, Ryan flew up to the church for a very short visit for a Q & A Friday night, and then a men’s breakfast Saturday.  It was just another opportunity for the congregation to get to know him.  The church voted that Sunday and called him to come on staff.  Amazing!

Sorry for all the boring details; I wrote them down mostly for my benefit later when I’ve long forgotten what we did that weekend.

Now the plans are: pack up what little we’ve unpacked while here at my parent’s house this weekend, pack up the moving truck Sunday, and take off Monday!  My parents are driving our truck up to help us out, as well as see their other grandkids for a couple of days.  We will be staying with some friends Monday night in Grant’s Pass, OR, having lunch Tuesday with Ryan’s sister in Portland, and hopefully arriving at our new house sometime Tuesday afternoon.

I’ll keep you posted on our trip after we’ve arrived!

Slacker

Helloooo

I bet you thought you’d never see me on here again!  For those we don’t see regularly, we’re still here.  There’s been lots going on with us the last month and a half, so I’ll quickly recap.

Ryan graduated (again!) on May 10th from The Master’s Seminary with a Master of Theology in Bible Exposition.  He also graduated magna cum laude, I might add/brag.

 It was a long 5 years in seminary, but so worth it.  Our family almost tripled in size during that time!  Well, technically it did, but one is still unborn. :)

Speaking of the unborn…I haven’t actually told you on this blog that he’s a boy!  I had my mid-way ultrasound on our moving day.  Poor Ryan was at home with his sem buddy Joey slavishly loading the moving truck and watching 3 other rugrats while I was watching the wiggles of our little guy on the television screen in the ultrasound room!  As of my last appointment on May 28, all is well with he and I.  The Lord continues to give me easy pregnancies, for which I am very thankful.  Other than being tired towards the end of the day (and who wouldn’t be after keeping up with two very boyish boys?), I’m feeling great.  We have just recently begun trying to come up with a name.  The hardest one to please is Jake!  He hasn’t liked anything so far except Daniel, which is the current favorite. 

Speaking of moving…We left our little Temple City place on May 29 (my mom’s bday too!).  We’ll miss that little house, especially the yard.  I loved having the yard gated all the way around because I didn’t have any fears about the boys and strangers and running out in the middle of the street and such.  Well, except for when they slipped under the gate, but hey, they didn’t figure that out until right before we moved, so it worked out just fine in the end.  We also had great landlords, a quiet street, close grocery shopping, and Grammy and Papa a short jaunt down the freeway.  Except for the close quarters, it was the perfect place.

Since we knew we were leaving southern California, we did some fun things before we left:

Descanso Gardens in La Canada with Grammy…

 

The Aquarium of the Pacific with Jake’s Master’s Kids class…

 

(gazillions of Nemo and Dori fish)

(Jake took this picture of us, pretty good)

Riding the huge carousel at the mall…

  (Don’t you love Warren’s cowboy boots with his basketball shorts?  Guess who got himself dressed that morning?)

(Aubrey and I sat on a bench rather than ride a tiger or something.)

Master’s Kids Graduation…

(Jake and his best bud Evan from Master’s Kids)

 

Some general silliness…

 

And a birthday party for the wee girl who is now 1…

(The boys decorated her cupcakes)

(One last goodbye for all the cousins)

Busy times.  There’s much more that’s been going on since we moved up to the Bay Area with my parents, and I’ll have to reserve that for another time.  There’s two little guys here who want an otter pop something awful. 

Thanks for bearing with my absence, I will get to the newest pics sometime soon, as well as a current update on the latest with moving to Washington.

TTFN.  (My aunt Lori gave the boys The Tigger Movie, can you tell?)

Playing Catch Up…Again

Hello one and all.  Not much going on around here, we’ve been in full Holy Week Swing, with Resurrection Day approaching tomorrow.  It’s been a great week watching the boys learn more about the death and resurrection of our Lord.  We made our usual resurrection mountain and have been acting out with the pipe cleaner people events that happened during the week.  Of course, we always wonder just how much they are learning because the attention span of a 2 and 4 year old is nothing to write home about, but then little moments like this happen that make it all worth it:

  This is Jake explaining to Warren what each of the Resurrection Eggs means, and Warren was listening to him!  It was great.

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So last night as we were on our way to church for Good Friday service, Jake was explaining to Warren how Samson killed a lion with his bare hands.  The conversation went something like this:

And Samson killed the lion with no gun and no lightsaber!  He had bare feet and bare hands!

It was hilarious.  We were trying not to laugh out loud so as not to discourage Jake, but it was priceless.  Samson didn’t even use that lightsaber he had!

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This past Wednesday, Grammy and Papa took Jake and cousin Hannah to a bubble exhibit so we told Warren he got to go to McDonald’s and play on the play thing.  I got some great shots while we were there.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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My parents came for a visit and the only evidence I have is this:

 My dad’s legs with boys attached.

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Aubrey is into everything.  It’s pretty well impossible to keep this girl contained.  She likes to squeeze into tight places, like between our couch and end table.  I don’t know how she fits in there, but we’re having to yank her out of there every once in a while.  When Ryan was taking out the trash one evening, before we could bat an eye, she ended up here:

Playing in the trash cupboard!  Gross.  Her favorite place to explore is the toilet, so we now have to keep the bathroom door closed.  Hopefully this stage will not last all that long.

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And most of you probably know by now that there will be another little Trzeciak joining the ranks in late October.  We are all excited, Jake most of all.  He’s SURE it’s a girl.  We think he wants another girl because Aubrey hasn’t reached the annoying little sibling stage yet and he likes girls for now.  I go in Tuesday for my registration (paperwork) appointment, but will also get an ultrasound that day as well.  We’ll keep you posted!

For Shilo

I am indebted to Shilo for asking me to get a picture of Aubrey’s teeth, because the result was one of the funniest (that’s a word, right?) pictures I’ve ever seen of these guys!

 Messy face aside, it’s pretty cute eh?