Spray park and Tugboat Island

I think this picture is so funny of Ryan with his swim diaper on his head :)

And this one of him hanging out on his racetrack

A couple of weeks ago, I took Chelle, our friend Isabel and Ryan to the spray park and Tugboat Island.  

Tugboat Island was amazing!  It is huge!

Ryan had a little spill on the steps at the park and got his first half black eye...just a bruise on his eye lid and on the side of his eye.

The spray park was cool too but the girls liked playing at the park a little better I think :)

Ryan and I had fun too!

Yakking

A while back, Micheal bought a kayak.  The cool kids call them yaks.  Apparently I am one of them :)

He was excited to take it to Wildwood to put it in the lake.  We are still in a severe drought and have been praying for rain for weeks.  All it took was for Michael to put his kayak in the water and look at that sky:

Right after I took this picture, we took the 15 steps back to the truck and it started POURING!  It hasn't rained that hard in MONTHS! I was cracking up....but a little nervous because it was also lightening and thundering like CRAZY!  

Chelle and I went out the deck to see if we could see Michael and that is him in the distance:

It rained for 30-45 minutes and then it cleared up and was beautiful!

The lake at Wildwood is SO low.  All this green grass is usually water.  

We need more rain please!!!!

Girl's Weekend!

Alecia, Michelle and I had a trip planned to Houston for a girl's night but because of her move, Michelle was not able to make it :(. But Ellen got to come with us :) We had such a good time!  I am glad I am to the point that I am ok if I leave Ryan for a night...every once in a while :)...far, far in between!

We went to our hotel, The Magnolia, in downtown Houston and were able to check in early.  Alecia had the names of a few restaurants close to the hotel so we walked past a couple of them until we decided to stop at Treebeards.  We finally figured out the they must have gotten their name from moss in trees...treebeards!

I had chicken and sausage jambalaya, salad and jalapeno cornbread...so yummy!! It was a neat, cafeteria style restaurant but did not have the cafeteria style or feel to it at all. Very cool.

Every time I am in downtown Houston, walking somewhere,  (which is NOT often!) I remember how neat downtown is!  It has a little of the New York feel...a little :)  

After lunch we walked back to the hotel and went to the roof top pool.  This is the view of Minute Maid Park.

We walked to the Astros game that night to watch them get their butts kicked 8-1.  Oh well, we had fun anyway!  And they had fireworks after the game so a lot of people stayed till the end instead of leaving early.

I love The Magnolia Hotel!  It is so clean and modern. I love that they have a free drink at happy hour and free cookies and milk at bed time. I love that they have a awesome breakfast included in the price too. So yummy!

I also love this old church that is right across from the hotel.  This picture does NOT do it justice.  It is beautiful!

I had a GREAT night of sleep that night :) and the next morning we went to Rice Village to shop.  Things we did there:  drove by some of the gorgeous houses that are near there and ohh and ahhh like crazy people, decided on a wedding dress for no one in particular (wink), spend an enormous amount of time at Pier 1, like we don't have one here too (but I got an AMAZING deal on a rocking wicker chair that is so comfortable. Normally $170...got it for $42 because of a minor flaw!!!), fell more in love with my iphone because of the walking directions on the Map app that lets you type in the name of a place that you want to go (ie: La Madeline's) without having the address and it gives you directions to the 2 blocks that you need to walk to get there...amazing, had a great time with some wonderful ladies!

Willy Burger

There is a new burger joint in town called Willy Burger. It's so cute and fun!  It feels like an old timey burger joint :)

The main part of the restaurant is small and it is attached by a hall to a small airstream trailer...very unique!

The wall decor is really cool!

It's hard to see but if you look really close you can see the airstream trailer behind  the big, white truck.

We need to bring Michael back to try it out!

This and thatI

I am so behind in my blogging so I am trying to catch up a little bit at a time.

I love this picture of Ryan playing with our cotton balls :) He seems very proud of himself.

Michael bought this cowboy hat for Ryan for his baby shower. So handsome!

A couple weeks ago was sick week at our house. This was one of those days...pjs, no makeup or hair fixin :)

I stayed home with him for the first 2 days, one day he went to my parents and one day he went to Michael's grandma's house where Michael's mom, aunt and grandma watched him. Pretty sure he was livin it up!

This was Ryan's latest measurement on the growth chart that Auntie made Ryan for his birthday :) Growing up!

Ryan loves his new toy his daddy bought him.

This is us watching "Signing Time" on PBS.  Great show and Ryan loves it! (loves it as much as Ryan loves tv...which is not much.  He likes to dance when they are singing songs and that's about the extent of it! OH!!! But he does start to do the sign for "more" when it comes on so I think he somehow relates his sign to the signing show.)

My mom and dad came with me to Ryan's eye doctor appointment in Houston.  We are to keep doing what we are doing...patching his eye for 1-2 hours everyday (or as many days as we can!) After that we went to IKEA for a little bit. Ryan enjoyed riding in the cart.

And walking around the store

Michael got a kayak and took it out in Village Creek. Surprisingly there IS still a LITTLE water left!

Snow cone machine!!

Michael's Grandpa King had a cafe in Orange in the 50's and they used this snow cone machine. Now Michael has it so we were able to do snow cones the other day :)  

It chopped the ice up very fine and they were a big hit!

A few things...

I forgot to mention that while we were hanging out at the pool in Destin, this lady and her kids passed by in front of me while I was sitting on the edge of the pool. They needed to hang on to the side so she excused them because I had to move out of their way.  She looked at me and said "do you blog?"  I was shocked!  I said yes and she said "you look like a fellow blogger" :)  Made my day!

While we were in Florida, Ryan started WANTING to walk!!  That is a MAJOR answered prayer!!!  HE takes OUR hands to walk....not us trying to make him walk.  Since we have been home, he does this constantly! He doesn't crawl/hop much at all anymore.  He would much prefer walking with our assistance.  This has been my prayer for the last couple of months...that God would tell his brain to tell his body to walk and that he would have the desire.  This encourages me so much!!!  I was getting pretty discouraged before since it had been a couple months since I felt like we had made any progress.  Thank you Jesus! I am so excited for him to walk...I know he will wonder why he waited so long!

Ryan is going to be moving up to the next class at his school.  I am sad to leave his sweet teachers but I think it will be good for Ryan. He did great with the last transition and I think it will be the same this time.  He already knows his new teachers and most of the kids (if not all) in his class.  He is the oldest in his class right now.  They have kept him in there since he isn't walking but I guess they feel that with the kids in there, it will be fine.  I think they do more language development in that class so that will be great. (p.s. I talked to one of the teachers that will be in Ryan's class the other day.  She said "I am so so excited that Ryan will be moving up to my class! Can't wait!!!" That made me so happy!  I really pray for Ryan's teachers and I am so glad that they enjoy him :)

Ryan has started throwing mild fits.  I say mild because I know they could be much worse but they are definitely fits. I first noticed this maybe 5 or 6 weeks ago.  He will (from a sitting position) throw himself on the floor, cry, roll and flop around. (It usually only lasts maybe 10 seconds.) Oh dear.  I saw one of the kids in his class do this one morning and I asked his teachers if Ryan did that.  They say "oh no...we have never seen Ryan do that." Well that's good at least!  I asked a friend of mine about it and she said her son learned to throw fits and he isn't in daycare...just learned on his own :)

Ryan has started trying to put on our shoes.  He thinks it's funny.  He also likes to put tupperware on his feet and laugh real loud with this fake laugh :) (p.s. you might not want to eat out of any of our tupperware:)

Ryan has been talking more and more. I can't even remember all the words now.  Truck, auntie, lala, car,  choo choo.

His favorite toy right now is his choo choo. 

Last week was sick week in our house.  Started with Ryan having fever last Sunday night through Wednesday night.  Tuesday afternoon, his ears started oozing so I knew a trip to the ear doctor was needed.  Michael actually took him to the doctor for the first time by himself!  It was a good one too...had to suck Ryan's ears out and everything!  Not fun.  But so good to get the junk out of there.  He is still on meds and doing fine now.  It was pretty amazing to see his loss of balance during this time.  Ear problems mess him up.  Michael was sick (achy and yuck on Friday) and I had stomach yucky and a little fever.  Thank God that has passed and we are feeling good once again! 

Lake Livingston

Last weekend, we went camping with Amy, Dennis, Kate, Laura, Jenny and Chris! We went to Lake Livingston like our family had done last July. We enjoyed getting to hang out with everyone!

Sweet Kate is growing up! 

So is Lala! Kate was Laura's age when I started dating Michael.

We enjoyed the spray park again this year...

And Ryan and the girls enjoyed the beach...

It was hot, hot, hot as usual for July so we played in the Wagner's trailer for awhile...and pretty much destroyed it!

We went out to eat for dinner and there was a cool area outside at the restaurant.  The girls practiced their lasso skills :) Not bad!!

Jenny and Chris at dinner

That night, Jenny and I decided to play UNO!!!  We loved that game growing up!  

I think we were a little "underwhelmed". I guess with two people it is just not very fast paced and the games were really quick.  But we did have the best laugh of the weekend :)  and I can't remember what it was about!

That's my favorite thing about camping...hanging out with family--extended family or just our little family.  Making memories and being together.  I love camping :)