Founding Day

Halloween marks the 7th "Founding Day" for this little bundle of joy that my cousin, Katie, saved from the Fresno gutter and we adopted into our household.

Look what a beautiful lady she's grown to be.

Happy "Founding Day" Rita!

Pumpkin Patch

This weekend, we all went to Fresno to spend some time with Grammy Beth and Papa Don. We had a great time. I got to go shopping at Anthropologie and Ann Taylor Loft and Phil went to the Apple store. Phil and I also got to go on a date to the Limelight. The highlight for Ryan was going to the pumpkin patch. He loved all the pumpkins and feeling the different textures. His most favorite part was collecting the corn cobs they had mulched to make the ground cover of the pumpking patch (as you'll note in the above picture). He came home with two little pumpkins and one larger pumpkin.
Usually balloons are of significant interest for Ryan, but the pumpkins and corn cobs trumped all on this occasion.

Mud

So tonight I invited my parents and Julie and Dana over for dinner. Phil and I had found a fantastic new recipe for burgers. They're called Feta Sun-Dried Tomato Stuffed Prosciutto Burgers and they're fantastic. My parents came over early because they wanted to play with Ryan. Upon arrival, my dad promptly took Ryan outside to play and my mom stayed to help me in the kitchen. I commented to my mom how fantastic it was to be able to cook dinner without my little munchkin hanging onto my legs and how quickly everything was going with another set of hands. I noticed that I hadn't seen Ryan run past the kitchen window in a while, but I figured my dad had everything under control. I went to get something from the bedroom and my mom yelled for me to get the camera and come outside. I went outside and this is what I found:
My dad triumphantly announced, "Ryan's learning how to play in the mud." Ryan took this opportunity to squeal and crawl through the mud to come give me a hug. All I could do was laugh. What a cutie.
He was so tired by the end of the evening that he carried his blankie and sippy cup of milk to his bedroom and just stood there, leaning up against the door jam, waiting for me to put him to bed.

Boden

A friend of mine gave me a catalogue from a company called Boden last night. The catalogue she gave me had kids clothes in it and they are sooooo cute. I went to their website today and discovered that they also have women's clothing. Everything is anthropologie-esque and I love it. It is a British company so if you order, definitly check the size charts as they are not the same as U.S. sizes. Enjoy!

Ryan's One Year Pictures

Ellie took Ryan's one year pictures about a week and a half ago and we got the proofs back yesterday. I think I have one handsome boy. Here are some of my favorites.





If you'd like to see all of his pictures, go to flickr.

Our Weekend

We had a very busy weekend. On Saturday morning, Ryan and I got up early and went to Grandma's house to visit so Ryan could watch Calfey eat breakfast. He thought that the cows were really cool, but a little scary at the same time.


Dana was the one that fed Calfey her breakfast. She ran right up to Dana and slurped her milk down in a hurry, then chased after Dana with her milky mouth, ready to slobber all over him. Dana did his best to get away, but Calfey was pretty persistent.
Calfey was unsure of us being out in the pasture with her, but she still let us pet her (mostly because Dana was there with the milk).
Today, Phil, Ryan, and I all went to Via Arte at the Marketplace to see what the chalk drawings looked like. There were two areas of chalk drawings. One area had smaller squares where most of the drawings were weird anime pictures. I was feeling a little disappointed with those, but I later found out that those drawings were part of the student/kids section. In light of that discovery, I was proud of those kids for participating and expressing their artistic voices. We found the large drawing section next, which had a few good pieces, but most were still pop art kind of drawings. This was one original (I'm assuming) creation that I liked.
My favorite drawing was done by the fabulous Ellie Grover, our photographer-friend, who has taken all of Ryan's professional photos.

I don't think these pictures do Ellie's drawing justice because you can't really see all the detail that is on the right side of the picture.

I really enjoyed going to an art event here in Bakersfield and supporting the art community.

Ryan's First Birthday

Even though its been almost a month since Ryan's birthday, I thought I'd share some photos of the event. I thought that since Ryan gets into everything, a monkey theme would be appropriate. I found some really cute pictures of monkey cupcakes, which inspired me. These are the ones I made.

Ryan really enjoyed the day and especially liked the cake.
We just had a small gathering of family so as not to overwhelm Ryan, as the birthday festivities were exciting enough. As an added bonus, Ryan also started walking 2 days before his birthday so I think he enjoyed his toys even more because he could actually push the toys that were designed for pushing and pick up other toys and carry them around. Overall, it was a great day.

Welcome to Our Blog

I've really enjoyed reading the blogs of friends and family and I've appreciated being able to keep up with the happenings of so many people. I've also been inspired by several creative layouts so I thought I'd give blogging a shot. We'll see how well I do with keeping the blog current.