Purple Kara Eater!

....she really does exist!

Question

Scene: Driving home on Saturday night. Ryan is staring out his window.

Ryan: "Daddy, why are the stars following us?"

Daddy looks at Mommy and they both shrug their shoulders in agreement.

Mommy: "Because we are lucky, that's why."

Silence.

Ryan: oh. ok.

Mommy looks at Daddy and winks.

Ryan Funnies

Sitting at the dinner table this evening...

Daddy: Ryan, please eat your green beans.

Ryan: I don't want to grow big like you!

sweet siblings....

...sitting and snuggling on the sofa smiling simultaneously and saying cheessssssssssse!

Happy New Year ~ 2010

image

We rang in the New Year (as we do every year!) at the Richards family casa along side our good friends, the Gaston's and Wallander's. The children (all seven of them!) LOVE getting together to create chaos play. This year the Richards also hosted our "Friends Christmas Party" that same night and we enjoyed a yummy soup and salad buffet. It was scrumptious! After dinner, we let the children open their gifts from their "aunties and uncles"...

Here is sweet Jaylin opening her gifts. She is obsessed with shoes and purses...such a girly girl and her "aunties" love it!

The three musketeers (Ryan, Owen and Caleb) getting ready to dig into their gifts!

Ryan loves his K'Nex. Mommy is not a fan of stepping on them.

He got the game Hullabaloo this year and it is so much FUN to play!

Kara opening her princess blocks.

Crazy-hair Kara feeding her water baby.

After opening the gifts we got the kiddies into their pajamas and worked on a special craft.

I had heard about these cool 2010 glasses from a fellow blogger, Tara who has the most amazing blog named KIDZ. We decided to give them a try and here are a few pictures of our creative creations!

Ryan thought his glasses were too "pick-rrr-ly" and refused to put them on his nose.

Kara didn't mind and modeled them for us!

Of course Mommy had to join in the fun...

...and Daddy was a good sport and tried on the bigger pair! (this picture cracks me up!)

Here we have Jimmy (aka Mr. Wallander) giving us his best impression of "being gangsta while sporting a knock-off Ed Hardy tee and looking cool in 2010"...this guy is hysterical!

The rest of the evening...into the early morning hours of 2010 was spent doing this...

...we actually missed the ball drop this year because the girls (and Ryan) couldn't get enough of this game! I think we might ask Santa for a Wii next Christmas. (this coming from the one person in this house who said we would NEVER own a game system...ever!)

As Chris and I say good bye to the last decade, we are reminded how many wonderful things happened in our lives since Y2K. We met. We married. We bought our first home. We were blessed with our adorable son and then our beautiful daughter. To sum it up, the past 10 years have been a blessing. We can't wait to see what the next 10 bring us!

Our wish for everyone in 2010 is hope. Hope for a brighter and better future. Hope for Peace...and may you always
LIVE. LOVE. LAUGH.

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year's Day. ~Edith Pierce

Darling Duo

updates on our darling duo are in the works...

HAPPY 2010!

Lucky 7

December 21, 2002

I Spy

Ryan decided to decorate the Christmas Tree with his own "ornaments". I SPY are Ryan's favorite books to read.

This picture reminds me of I Spy.

What do you spy in the tree?

supermodel material?

For the record-Ryan asked me to take his picture (with Kara's sunglasses on) and HE came up with the poses all by himself!

This kid cracks me up!!

Daddy Love

Ryan's 4th Birthday Review

invite created by Christy

Can you guess the theme?

On Ryan's actual birthday (11/19), I surprised him with a lunch date at Friendly's! The waitstaff sang a silly birthday song and served the birthday boy a candy sundae. Ryan had a very confused look on his face during their serenade. After they left the table I realized we had never taken Ryan to a restaurant to celebrate his birthday! haha. He was a little disappointed that they didn't just sing the "birthday song" but quickly got over that after the first bite of his sugar creation.

Here's my 4 year old making his new "signature" pose...

Ryan insisted on taking a picture of Kara and me at the restaurant. I have to admit, he captured a really sweet picture.

That evening Ryan helped us make the bugs that would sit on top of his cupcakes.

Then we sang the traditional birthday song...

....and he blew out his 4 candles.

On Saturday, November 21st we celebrated a bug themed birthday bash with family and friends!

Ants, Spiders, Centipedes, Ticks...oh my!
The bug cupcakes turned out great!

Believe it or not, the bugs were a lot easier to make than the our failed attempt with Kara's flower cupcakes!

And what goes well with bug cupcakes?

Dirt Cake of course!

(hands down, the easiest dessert we have ever made and EVERYONE loved it!)

I came up with this favor bag the day before the party. Originally I wanted to just stamp the bag with some sort of bug stamp, but I couldn't find one I liked. My mother-in-law found a large container of spider rings and I thought, hmmmmm...wouldn't it be neat if we could string the spiders on the bags to make it look like they are crawling down the bag?! With some fishing line and a hole punch, we were able to make it happen! (thanks aunt gibby and sahira for helping me with the bags)

SPIDER BAGS!

Our friends and family are always asking why we "go all out" for our children's birthdays. My response to this question is, why not? We enjoy coming up with creative ideas, cooking and entertaining our guests. We only have to host two parties each year (one in June and one in November), so to us it's not a big deal...plus the look of pure joy on our child's face makes all the time spent planning and exhaustion afterwards worth it. :)

The one thing that I do find difficult to do while hosting a large party is taking the time to document the event!!! I always find myself saying, where is the camera? Hey Chris, do you have the camcorder? Shoot, we didn't get a picture of that before digging into it!

Well you get the picture (no pun intended)...

Luckily this year my nephew took some photos for us and I was able to snap a few myself. Here are some of my favorites from Ryan's big BUG day.

I love having a craft for the kids to do together. This year we had them create bugs with little pom-poms. Sadly, I did not get pictures of this craft! I also had planned a few bug games to play with the children, but it turned out to be such a nice day that they played outside instead. Which was fine with all the adults because the boys had a ton of energy to burn off.

I am titling the next few pictures Girls versus Boys.

The girls spent over an hour playing nicely in the sand box AND were able to keep the sand in the box. Amazing.

While the boys spent that hour running around the back yard and wrestling each other!

My nephew Joey turned 5 years old on Nov. 18th. Ryan and Joey are only one year and one day apart. We joke that Ryan didn't want to share his birthday with his cousin so our stubborn boy waited a few more hours to be born!

Here is Joey with the gift we got him....

This next picture of Lily makes me smile. Tired?

I will title the next three pictures Baby Fever because this little one makes me want to have another one!

Meet Emma.

Isn't she the cutest?! Kara really, really liked Emma too. (sorry the silly picture wouldn't turn) We were surprised how nice and gentle Kara was with baby Emma. It gives me hope that she will be a wonderful big sister someday...well that's if we decide to have more.


Just look at that face....sooooo adorable!


Here's an artistic shot of me and my mini me.


I am sad that we do not have a picture of Ryan with us. He was having too much fun playing with his cousins and friends to stop for pictures!

Time to sing to the birthday boy!

All we had to do was announce CAKE to get the children back into the house!

Kara enjoying some sweetness!



Then it was time to open the gifts!

I love this one from our dear friend Luci! Both Ryan and Kara (and mommy too) think this puppet is neat! We sing There Was An Old Lady Who Swallowed A Fly all the time now.



This talking microscope with bug slides is really COOL!

Bugs, bugs and more BUGS!

Ryan loved that Pop-Pop and Mom-Mom Delp gave him a Leapster! He plays with it every day.

But Grandma and Pop-Pop High surprised him with what he wanted most...

Yep...that's right. Ryan is now the proud owner of his very first guitar!


Happy 4th Birthday to our funny, sweet, bug and music-loving boy!