The Mandatory Pics

Here are just a couple of pictures from Christmas day.

We had a wonderful December leading up to our Savior's birth, and Jake took everything in with an open and trusting heart, a true child! He loved playing with the Nativity sets around the house and memorizing Christmas hymns and songs. He told us next year when he and Warren are bigger that he'll teach his brother all that stuff too. On Christmas morning we ate Happy Birthday muffins complete with a candle while Ryan read us the story of Jesus' advent. If it sounds idyllic, it wasn't. This was all going on with a sometimes screaming, sometimes laughing baby in the background. But, it is the significance of the celebration that we pray they won't forget any time soon. Anyway, we then opened presents and later on went to Ryan's parent's for Christmas lunch/brunch. Fun times!

What more could a dad ask for than a young boy who loves Home Depot? He was thrilled with his Home Depot tool box.

The class clown (and yes, that shirt is way too small for him!)

Until next time...

SoCal Perks

Despite the overcrowding, heat, pollution, etc. of this paradise known as Southern California, there are some perks to living here.

• You're never more than an hour away from either the beach or the mountains.
• You can wear shorts or capris practically year-round, except for the 8 days it rains all year (like today).
• And, perhaps the coolest of all, the Rose Parade Flyover, featuring 3 of these bad boys:

This is the F-15 Fighter Jet. Since we were watching the parade live this year on TV and saw the flyover, we decided to look out the window because we live only a few short miles from Pasadena (where the Rose Parade is held), and sure enough, here come the 3 F-15s coming our way! They didn't fly right over our house, but it was still an awesome sight to behold!

Warren the Singer

He's available to rent for parties and weddings-just call for pricing.

Beanbags and Cookies

For his birthday, Jake's Grandpa & Grandma gave him a beanbag chair. Both boys love to sit in it and look at books, but mostly they like to run and jump on it! I haven't captured that yet, but here are some cute ones of them relaxing in it.

Last weekend we went to Ryan's parent's home for the annual Christmas cookie decorating party. Dennis and Cathi and the Rutherford family have been getting together every year for the past I don't know how many years, probably since they were all in college, to decorate cookies, and at Easter time, to decorate eggs. It's quite a production now with the expansion of the families (our family alone is now 11, and the Rutherford's this year were 8), but it is a fun time to catch up and eat (decorate) some yummy cookies. I only got 1 picture this year, I was too busy frosting!

What do two VERY cute boys look like?

THIS!

How Boys Play with Toys

The Golden Compass

Hi all-

Al Mohler has a great review of the movie The Golden Compass and why we should be concerned as Christians about the message of the movie. You can read it on his blog here.

Birthday Fun!

Our little guy, our firstborn, is 3! His birthday was on Friday, and he had a blast turning a year older.

On Friday, he got presents from us and lots of balloons, which he and Warren loved. All the helium is gone now, but the boys are still playing with them, seeing what it takes to pop them (and torture mom). Warren's favorite method is biting.

We topped the day off with a pizza dinner (which Jake picked out) and cake with dinosaur candles.

Saturday afternoon we met Ryan's parents and the family at Downtown Disney and took Jake to the Rainforest Cafe for dinner. Before dinner, though, one of his presents from Grammy and Papa was to go to the Build-A-Bear workshop and make a stuffed animal. Jake picked out a puppy and named it Petey.

At Rainforest, we couldn't have had a more perfect spot to eat! They sat us right in front of one of the huge aquariums so we got to watch the fish swim during our meal. They kids all got a kick out of that.

After dinner, the 4 of us walked over to the huge Christmas tree on the way out to the car and took lots of pictures. Jake had been begging to see it ever since we arrived at the park, so we just couldn't turn him down.

All in all, it was a great celebration of one special boy!

Pre-Thanksgiving Fun

Before we left for my parent's, we had a little get-together with Ryan's fam. The kids made hats and actually kept them on for pictures. I guess Warren really likes his because he wore it to breakfast this morning.

Ouch

Good thing we already took our Christmas pictures...

Otherwise we would have had to wait a couple of weeks for this baby's face to mend!

Straight from the boy's lips

While gazing up at the sky the other day, Jake commented, "Look at all those birds, they're in a pile!"

Yep, It's a Baby

So I went yesterday for what I thought was just my registration appointment where I fill out all the paperwork, write my name and address a thousand times, decline all the genetics testing, affirm that my husband is the father (they really do ask that), and so on and so forth. And yes, I did do all of that, as well as let them take several vials of blood from me, but something new that Kaiser just implemented is performing an ultrasound at this appointment as well! I was pretty excited about this; I always am at the chance to see baby's heartbeat and wiggles on the monitor. Not so many wiggles this time, but a definite heartbeat. And only one baby too. I had thought perhaps that this might be a multiples pregnancy because of the way my body is expanding so rapidly so early on, but several people have told me that it's ok. This is my third after all, my tummy muscles aren't what they used to be, and I'm several years older than I was with my first. So who cares that I'm only 9 weeks and having to break out the ol' maternity jeans? (Me, a little, but I'll get over it.) I won't bore you all with a fuzzy ultrasound picture of what appears to be a peanut in my uterus, but I just wanted to share the rest.

I think that I am already starting to feel better. I don't want to say anything too early lest it not be true, but yesterday I ate breakfast and a huge lunch all without wanting to gag! Ryan's mom took us out to lunch for our usual Wednesday lunch date and after practically gorging myself because it felt so good to have a full belly, I felt great. So far this morning I've been ok too, so we will see.

We leave Saturday for the trek to my parents to spend the week there to celebrate Thanksgiving and Jake's 3rd birthday. It will be nice to get away for a while and maybe have to wear a jacket. It's much cooler up there than our recent 80's and 90's. Crazy fall weather.

Happy Thursday everyone.

No No says the Wookie

Warren's new favorite word is "no." He uses it all the time, even when he means to say yes! If we ask him any question he answers in the negative. Here's a cute example:

And the reason I called him the Wookie is because of this:


This was Jake's Chewbacca costume from 2 years ago and Warren loves to wear the hat!

Catchin Up

Hello to everyone.

My sister reminded me that it was about time to do another entry because it's been 2 weeks since my last post! Thanks sis, and here goes.

Even though this happened weeks ago, many of you may not know that the church in Kansas decided not to hire Ryan after all. As you might expect, because of our excitement and enthusiasm about moving to Kansas, we were quite disappointed and shocked. At first. We had, after all, already planned our lives in Emporia. In our minds, we were there. This was a done deal, no question about it. In hindsight though, we got ahead of God's plan for us. Sure, we prayed that His will be done and we only wanted to be where He wanted us, but we were convinced Kansas was where He wanted us! We are so very thankful for the time we did spend out there and for the friends that we gained and the lessons learned.

Many of you ladies who suffer(ed) from morning (all-day) sickness during pregnancy may be thrilled to know that I, the one who skated through 2 blissfully un-sick pregnancies, am now finding myself wanting to run to the bathroom any time food nears the vicinity of my mouth. I have to eat though, because my insatiable hunger, if it goes for too long, makes my want to curl up in the fetal position and die. So I choke down as much food as possible at a sitting and hope it stays down. I also cannot brush my teeth without gagging at some point during the necessary ritual. Must be a girl this time because everything's so different, right? I know this may be TMI for some of you, but hey, pregnant women love to tell their stories!

What else...oh yes, my parents came for a visit a couple of weekends ago. We had a super time as usual, and also as usual, the time went way too quickly. My mom brought Warren back the quilt she made him and by his reaction, it was the coolest thing he had ever seen. By far. We laid it out on the carpet and he squealed with excitement and walked all over it. Pretty cute. My dad is known as the Candy Grandpa because he spoils these guys with it, and he was true to his name again. He also brought Jake a cool new semi-truck which Jake loves, but you'd never know it by the picture.


Lest you think by these pictures that my boys never smile, here's a great one of Jake playing outside a couple of days ago.



This morning after Ryan got home from school we went to the park and let the boys play for a good long time. They had lots of fun.

On a super-exciting note: Ryan registered for his last class in seminary! Woo-hooo! Party time! What a great time it has been for us to be here, but we are eager to move on to the next step. We can't wait to see what the Lord has in store for us.

That's about it for now. I hope you all are doing well and I look forward to hearing from you soon!

When's That Baby Due?

I keep getting asked that so I better address it.

Sometime in mid-June. I'll refrain from giving a specific date this time around even after I go to the doctor and get an official one because it's always wrong! Except if you're one of the 5% of women who actually deliver on their due date, and in their cases it was a fluke anyway because the doctors just don't know! My due dates for the past 2 babies were way off. I was late 6 days with number 1 and 8 days late with number 2, and would probably have gone way longer than 8 days if they had not induced and subsequently done an emergency C. So. Let's just say that sometime in June, possibly around the middle or middle-end of the month we are going to add a newbie to the mix.

There ya go.