Cinnamon rolls

Jenny and I have been wanting to make Pioneer Woman's Cinnamon Rolls and we finally decided to do it!!!  A while back, Poppi told us that he loves cinnamon rolls but he can't ever find them with raisins. So we thought, why not make him some?!

Early (9:00) Saturday morning, I went to Jenny's house and we got started!  

To start the day off, I ruined the first batches of dough by putting the yeast in while the liquid was too hot.  The dough would not rise.  The mistake cost us 16 cups of flour and 4 pouches of yeast...and 3 hours of time!!  That was the most annoying part.  This was us watching to see if the yeast was active:

Finally, we got action!!

The first batch was kinda messy but we got a little better by the second batch. They turned out pretty and delicious!

It should have taken us about 4 hours to do this but we had a 7 hour day due to the early mistakes :)  Oh well, we will know better next time!  Jenny and I don't get a lot of hang out time so I had fun being with her.  And now we have cinnamon rolls in the freezer!

On Sunday, we delivered the rolls to Poppi.  I think he was excited about them! Or maybe it was just getting to see this cutie :)

Update...

on Ryan.  Just want to document HOW CLOSE Ryan is to walking!!  He is down to barely hanging on to our finger to walk.  We have started holding the back of his shirt (up by his neck) so he can have both hands to help balance.  Last night, he walked through our kitchen, living room and all the way to the changing table with me holding his shirt...he laughed the whole time like he was having a blast!  Then sometimes if I let go of his hand and take his shirt, he gets mad and sits down and is DONE with walking.  You just never know!

I couple of my favorite Ryan words today were "pizza" and "happy" :)

Forgot to write that a few weeks ago, Ryan saw a white CRV like his Auntie's and he pointed to it and said "Auntie"!  Then today in the WalMart parking lot, he saw a white pick up truck and said "paw paw"!  

Oh....Ryan is really trying to climb now. This was him tonight...with his foot up on the coffee table.

Big changes ahead.

Good job!!!

Ryan is talking more and more.  I love it!  A couple of my favorites are "big truck" (every time he sees a truck) and "bus"(every time he sees a school bus). 

Another one I love it "good job".  The other day, he was emptying out my make up bag (which he loves to do and I let him sometimes because it keeps him occupied :)  (oh, but I always tell him that boys DO NOT wear make up...only girls do :) As he was throwing each thing on the floor, he clapped his hands and said "good job!" I love it when he cheers for himself :)

He still loves to wave at everyone who drives by our house and blow kisses to them.

I think I forgot to write about what happened to us at the store a while back...Ryan, as usual, was waving at everyone he saw on each aisle.  We kept seeing the same older lady over and over again and Ryan kept waving and saying hi each time he saw her and she was loving the attention from Ryan.  Finally, she stops and says "do you want to come home with me?"  (uh...no ma'am.) She then proceeds to take out her photo album and show us 10 or so pictures of her dog and tell Ryan that he would have so much fun at her house with her dog.  (oh, you didn't know, ma'am, that Ryan isn't really a fan of dogs?) The last picture she showed us was of her dog tucked into his bed....which happens to be a twin HUMAN bed.  Oh dear.  We then said bye bye and left the store.  

God bless the little old woman.

P.S. Ryan has discovered he can open doors now.  I was sitting upstairs in the closet and Ryan kept closing the door on me. I kept opening it and he kept shutting it.  Then he shut it and I was sitting on the floor and saw that door knob turn....uh...who is it? Ryan was so proud of himself!

September 11, 2001...ten years later

This is a picture of Bryant Park in New York City.  They set up 2,753 empty chairs...one for each of the lives that was lost at the World Trade Centers on September 11, 2001.  

For our generation, this was a day that no one will forget.  Where we were...what we were doing...how we felt. 

I was at work a little early that day.  Someone said that a plane had hit the World Trade Center.  I didn't really get it.  I didn't rush to the television.  I didn't know that our world would never be the same.  

A little while later when we heard that a second plane had hit the tower, we knew that something was terribly wrong.  We sat at work for the rest of the day, glued to the tv.  There was no work happening at work that day. 

I remember when they put up the picture of the attack on the Pentagon. I thought they must have the wrong caption on the picture...I thought "That is wrong! The planes didn't crash into the Pentagon. It was the World Trade Center!"  I was the one who was wrong.  It WAS the Pentagon too.  And the field in Pennsylvania.  It was horrifying.  

I remember people whose loved ones were missing holding their pictures up for the cameras.  They were desperately looking for any sign of their husband, wife, child, sister, brother, best friend, boy friend or girl friend.  Slowly over the next few days, most of these people hearts were broken...one by one.  

I remember people jumping out of the windows from 100+ stories up.  There was no other way out. 

I remember the firemen who walked into the Towers....going to fight a fire that could not be fought. 

I remember the triage stations that had been set up to help all the injured people who were expected to come out of the ruble.  I remember how empty the stations were....after the first little while, there were no more injured people.  No one was coming out for help.  The magnitude of the towers falling was too intense for people to survive...

I remember watching the first tower fall.  I remember watching the second tower fall.  I remember my jaw dropping.  I was in shock.  The whole country was in shock.  I remember watching the people covered from head to toe in the dust of the towers.  They looked like walking zombies.  

I remember seeing the throngs of people walking over the bridges leading out of NYC. Some people were walking home...some people just wanted out of the city.  People were scared.  We were all scared.

I remember being consumed by what had happened.  I remember not doing anything for awhile...just being sad. Every night was filled with watching the recovery effort.  The firemen, policemen and the many others who spent so many hours searching through the rubble for anything they could recover to give to the families of those who were lost. There were not a lot of bodies recovered (considering how many lives were lost).  They seemed to have disintegrated...vanished into thin air.  It was hard to imagine the magnitude of what was going on...but I felt such a weight of grief for so many people.

When firemen go into a fire, they have a sensor they wear that beeps a loud beep in the case that they are injured or are overcome by smoke so that they can be more easily found.  In the hours after the Towers collapse, the sounds of those sensors coming from the debris was deafening...so many beeps, so many injured, so many lost.  They gave the ultimate sacrifice.

Our entire country was united.  Our entire country mourned and prayed together.  Everyone was affected.

 

Now that 10 years have passed, a lot has changed.  We, as a country, have had a hard 10 years.  I hate to say that because I don't want the terrorists to win.  I don't want them to think they have succeeded in any way.  But the truth is, it has affected us profoundly.  It has affected our view of the world, our military, our economy, our prejudices.  It has changed forever the lives of the over 3,000 military (and their families) who have lost their lives in the wars that followed September 11th.  It affects the lives of the soldiers and their families who have been gone for 1,2,3,4 and more tours of duty, many being gone for 1 year at a time...missing births, birthdays, anniversaries and every day life with their families.

On this 10th anniversary of September 11th, I remember the way we were and the ways we have changed. I pray that God will continue to have mercy on America. I ask Him to help us, starting with me, to repent from our sinful ways and turn to Him so that He can heal our land.  

God bless America.

To do list

Michael and I made a "to do list" for around the house awhile back and have hardly scratched anything off.  It has been WAY to hot to do anything outside and Ryan likes to be right in the middle of whatever we are doing so that makes it a little hard to get anything done :)

We were in need of a date night so Ryan stayed the night with my parents and we combined date night and work day.  

Date night started out at the shooting range.  Michael's dad had given me a new gun awhile back (thanks Mike!) but I had not gotten to shoot it yet.  I feel a lot more comfortable with it now.  So glad we went.

Then we went to eat the The Grill.  I had heard good things about it but never been before.  It was really good!  It's more pricey than we normally go for but it was nice to eat somewhere extra nice :)

My "to do" project was the fireplace.  This is the before picture:

The fireplace was one of those things that I did not like when we looked at the house.  It looked dated and "deer camp-ish".  I did not know exactly what to do with it.  Jenny saw a before and after picture in a magazine that was very similar to ours so it gave me the confidence to do it!

After 6-1/2 hours of priming (with a 1" brush because there were so many deep grooves that I had  to get into) and 3-1/2 hours of painting, this is the after picture:

I love it now!  Looks so much brighter and more updated.  Not like the dark spot in the room anymore!

We missed Ryan but it was good to get this done.  Ryan had a good time!  This was his big accomplishment:

climbed into the chair all by himself!  He tries to do that with our couch and recliner but they are just a little bit too tall.  This chair was just right :)  

Love him.

Houston and Texas Children's Hospital

Warning: this post probably has a lot of information that I have already written about (Ryan's health) in the past.  I, however, cannot remember what I have written as far as the details go so I am writing this so I will remember down the road.

Back at Ryan's 18 month check up, his doctor suggested that we take Ryan to see a neurologist at Texas Children's Hospital, due to the fact that he was not walking and really showing no interest in doing so. His statement was "at this point, his brain should be telling him to walk".  We considered this and decided to do it...just  to cover all of our bases.  Everyone we have talked to think his delays stem from the ear infections that he had when he was a baby.  (Don't know if I have ever explained this or not...I think that Ryan had ear infections from May until I took him to the ear doctor in November.  The reason I think this is because Ryan has a head nod for lack of a better name....he nods his head like he is saying "yes".  Not all the time...just sometimes.  I asked his old pediatrician  about this and he thought maybe it was just a habit...he liked to rock in the rocking chair so maybe he liked the way it felt to rock his head??  Not to totally knock his first pediatrician (I DON"T CARE FOR HIM!!!:) but he did not give good care to Ryan.  He never looked IN his ears...just shined his light in the general direction of his ear.  I am not exaggerating.  When I finally took him to the ear doctor, I did so because Ryan had been having the problem with gagging and throwing up his food if it wasn't totally pureed baby food.  I researched this on the internet and a few people had said that they had taken their babies to the ENT doctor for this.  When the doctor looked in his ears he said they were VERY infected and they had been for awhile.  We have asked every doctor we see about Ryan's head nod and now knowing that he had ear infections, they all seem to think that when he had fluid in his ears it was some relief to him or something.  That just breaks my heart.  Sooooo...I said all that to say that his head nod started in May so I think he had ear untreated ear infections for 6 months. :(  (p.s. Ryan was not fussy during this time or pulling at his ears so we really had no idea he had ear infections)

Ok...back to this post :)  It took us 3 months to get into the neurologist and during that time, Ryan improved greatly!  He changed from NOT wanting to walk to taking our hands to walk to now he is walking with us holding just ONE hand!!! He is doing so good!  He still tries to walk too fast and gets ahead of himself...he wants to run!  I try to get him to just stand still and get his balance but he won't be still!

Ryan's appointment with the doctor was on a Wednesday and we had a 9:00 appointment.  They called us back at 8:59 and we were done with the doctor at 9:30.  Seriously....Texas Children's has it together!  The doctor was really nice and personable with Ryan...did the Donald duck voice and everything :)  ( I had read about him before we went and he graduated from Harvard in 1986.  So judging him from that I assumed he might be stuffy.  Not even a little. Very nice!) He advised that we get a MRI, blood and urine tests.  He seemed to not be too worried about Ryan...thought it might all stem from his ears but wanted to make sure.  The blood work was NOT fun...they ALWAYS have trouble with Ryan's veins.  I am sure this is very typical.  They finally got a vein in his hand and got all the blood they needed.  Apparently, Ryan knows the color green because one of the tubes they were taking blood in had a green lid. Ryan pointed to it and said "geen".  WHO KNEW??! 

This was his sweet hand after the blood taking:

The MRI and another appointment with a reflux doctor were scheduled on a Monday so we decided to go the Houston for the weekend in our trailer.  There is a really nice campground about 10 minutes from the medical center.  They have a nice lake that you can fish in, a walking trail around the lake, a nice pool and playground. 

Apparently there are big fish in this pond but the little ones were the only ones out while we were there.  They are still fun to catch though! 

Saturday during the day we went to visit my Amy, Joe and Peter in Friendswood.  I didn't take any pictures while we were there :(

I loved this picture of Michael reading to Ryan:

Ryan's eye was still healing. We ONLY had 4 people (literally) at Texas Children's ask us what happened to his eye.  I told them he slipped on a step at the park.  Michael told me that was the oldest line in the book but it is true!  Glad they didn't report us!

I wondered when Ryan would find this fun cubby hole and enjoy playing in it :)

We ate lunch at Chuy's...yum!

And all three of us took a long nap

Then we played on the playground

We walked on the walking trail several times that evening. There were lots of REALLY nice trailers at this park.  This one in particular stuck out to me.  Is Garth Brooks in town?!

More fishing that evening

We had to be at the hospital at 7 even though his appointment wasn't until 8:30.  We had a little time to kill before we got called back.

This is a really sad picture (Ryan with his IV in) but 2 minutes later he was using his hand to play. Must not have hurt after the initial stick.

The MRI took about 1 hour and we were really glad when they called us back.  He hadn't woken up yet so we got to be there when he opened his eyes.  His first word was "ba ba".  Poor thing was so thirsty!  He really did well that morning with no food or drink but he kept reaching for my bag asking for "juice".  I was glad when I was able to give him some!

Ryan recovered quickly and they released us to go.  We had a couple hours to burn until our next appointment so we went and hung out in the cafeteria (Their cafeteria is really nice with a good view of the street and all the cars passing by. Ryan likes watching everything.)

Our appointment with the reflux doctor was interesting.  She was a little very nice to Ryan but asked me a million questions about Ryan's medical history and would say things like "slow down, slow down, you are going too fast" and " what you are saying doesn't make any sense"!  I felt like I was getting the third degree!  Our appointment with her lasted 1-1/2 hours!  She ended up being very helpful though.  She wants us to increase Ryan's dairy (up his yogurt since he is not drinking milk) and uped the dosage of his reflux medicine. She told me something that no other doctor has every told me...reflux causes ear infections.  Epiphany,  Makes perfect sense.

We have gotten results back on all the blood work, urine and MRI and everything is normal!  Thank you Jesus!  We are glad to have confirmation about what we thought.  I am now thoroughly tired of doctors and hope we don't have to see any for a long time!