365 DAYS

Well, Ryan is a year old now. It seems that time has past so quickly but at the same time, he seems to have become such a part of our lives that he has been around for much longer. He also seems to act much older at times, exerting such a huge personality for such a tiny body! We are so happy to have little Ryan in our family. On his birthday we had a party with family and friends to celebrate the occasion. It was really fun and even though I am certain Ryan had no idea what was going on, he seemed to have a great time. We were so excited to have so many of his friends celebrate with us.

Funny, the entire time, Ryan had a baseball balloon tied to his belt loop because he kept getting frustrated when the balloon would get away from him. If you look in the pictures, in some of them you can see the balloon floating above his head. And we still have all of the balloons at home, he has been playing with them while they slowly deflate!

This picture is for Sara. This is the banner that I found online. The party was a baseball theme.

Ryan opening his presents with Mom and Dad. It was a little challenging to keep him interested....he wanted to look at everything except the presents!

Ryan in his cutie baseball shirt!

The cake! I made it with my friend Tami, when she went with me to order it and they said it would be over $200, we decided we could make it ourselves...I mean hello, I have seen like a million Ace of Cakes episodes. It turned out pretty good. The balls and the bat are made of chocolate!

Ryan enjoying a chocolate baseball....it was his birthday after all.


I can't believe he is already a year. Time has flown by too fast. We love you Ryan!!

A Quarter of Century

Well, my 25th birthday came and went. To make it seem like a bigger deal, I have been referring to myself as a quarter of a century. It makes me sound older, or maybe just ridiculous. The day was fun, we went to the Cheesecake Factory...and like my friend Chris says, when you have 10 pages of "specialities" are they really that special? I think not. I was given a telephoto lens for my birthday which was totally awesome!


Other than that, we recently got back from the beach. Which was really awesome...except for Hurricane Gustav being there are the same time as us. The first day was beautiful and really warm. The second day was nice but kind of windy. By the third day, the beach was gone and the Gulf had swollen all the way up to the condo we were staying in. Luckily, we were only there for the long weekend so we were heading home anyway. We were excited because our friends Ginny and Shawn came with us and of course brought their little girl Charlotte.


While we were there, we put Ryan in this trampoline bungee thing and I have the best video ever, so stay tuned, but I will post a picture of it right now. The thing is, he was the smallest kid there, (obviously as he barely met the 20 lbs requirement) and people all over were watching him. Some of them thought he would pop right out the top and I'm sure they thought I was a bad parent for putting him it but he LOVED it. And he cried when we took him out. The beach was pretty low key and we had a good time just getting away. Enjoy the pics!!

Ryan hanging out on the balcony. He loved it out there. This is also one a MILLION crackers that he ate while we were there. It seemed to be his food of choice.

The view from the balcony.

Ryan getting started on the bungee trampoline!

He was squealing and flapping his arms the whole time, it was hysterical!!

They had this kidzone area, which had like sprayers and stuff. Ryan liked it, Charlotte did not! The huge bucket of splashing water freaked her out! I don't know if Ginny knows I took that picture :)

Mom and Ryan in the lazy river. This would have been a lot more fun if I had a tube myself, but since I was keeping up with Ryan I just walked around with his little floatie.

That is Matt body surfing in the double red flag waves. Ginny, Shawn and I were laughing so hard. It was awesome.

You have until August 31st

To win this most fabulous prize

My cousin is a Scentsy consultant, she is giving away this prize to celebrate her 100th blog....I just realized I only have 45 which seems like pittance compared to 100. Moving on, go to her blog http://www.sumtinfishy.blogspot.com/ and leave a comment. Then you are entered into the drawing....SOO easy.

PS I have a bunch of great pictures, and we are headed to the beach for the weekend so we will have more, I will post a ton when I get back, BUT for your enjoyment until then....

This is before church but they brush their teeth together every morning, funny huh?

The Boy Can Walk!

Well, Ryan has decided that it is time to walk! He has made a lot of progress in the past week and I have made several attempts to catch them on video. I may have to put together all the clips, but seriously it is over 10 times of trying. Every time I got out the camera he either got so close to me and wouldn't walk away that I couldn't get him, or he became interested in something on the floor or just thought I was being funny so he would just sit and laugh. Finally I decided that I needed reinforcements and made Matt hold the camera so that I get Ryan far enough away to actually capture his mad skills.

You can enjoy this video here!

To mark this auspicious occasion, I bought Ryan some new shoes and sandals. Madi says that I mark every occasion with a shoe purchase, but lets be honest, girls have the market cornered on cute clothes. Shoes is all boys have. So check out these awesome ones. They are still soft sole like Robeez and Pedipeds but they have rubber traction at the toe and heel so they are a little more substantial for outside use. Also, I believe they are completely adorable. These people also make some of the cuter girl shoes I have ever seen, for those of you in the market.

We haven't been up to anything to exciting as of late. We have been spending time at the pool to keep away from the heat. We also enjoyed going to the zoo with Lindy and Anya. It was really fun and Lindy had my expectations set fairly low so I really enjoyed myself! I will post some pictures from that later, they are still on my camera.

Fourth of July

We had a wonderful Fourth of July weekend. It was nice to have time to sit and not do anything. On the Fourth we went to the Shields for a BBQ and fireworks. Before we arrived I sliced off the end of my finger with a mandoline, I was prepping some onions for the burgers, which by the way were some of the best onions I have ever had. Anyway, when I think about the incident I still cringe because it was gross and I couldn't get my finger to stop bleeding, luckily the Hamilton's were coming to the BBQ and Dr. Hamilton was able to come to my rescue!

Ryan enjoyed the fireworks way more than we thought he would. He was entertainment for everyone else as he kept yelling out at the fireworks as though he was trying to boss them around. It was really funny and entertaining for all of us.

On Saturday we took Ryan to his first Braves game. Matt has been wanting to take him for a long while. The last game we went to was when Spencer was here and we had the MOST amazing seats like 5 rows behind the dugout. This time we sat way higher but we were on the air conditioned concourse. This was my decision and probably one of the best ones that I made. Whenever Ryan was getting fussy, I could just take him inside and we would enjoy the air conditioning and watch the game on one of the big screens. The following sequence of pictures is exactly what it looks like....Matt trying to interupt Ryan from watching the game so the he could take his picture.

Yes!

Yes!!!

What do you want Dad? Don't you know you're interupting the game?

All in all we had a fun weekend and we were sad when we had to return to our regular routine!

For Suzy

A little late but not too bad. Over Memorial Day weekend, Nathan graduated. We went to the new amphitheatre to see the ceremony and it was really fun. The amphitheatre was a really cool place to have a graduation, it was a little hot but Ryan finally fell asleep towards the end. For pictures see Sara's blog as I forgot to bring my camera. We also went to PF Changs that night and Ryan spilt an entire glass of ice water all over Sara...oops! Sorry Sara!

On Memorial Day we did some shopping and then we went to the pool. Ryan seemed to enjoy the pool but the water was pretty cold so it took a little getting used to.

Yikes, I started this post a really long time ago...namely a few days after Memorial day. So to summarize. Summer has been busy, fun and hot!! We have been having a great time going to the pool, the Botanical Gardens and spending time with our friends!

I have all of these funny stories, but alas, no time to post. Ryan is not being the best sleeper and has been sick this week. We ended up at the hospital in the ER which I can say was one of those moments when you think, oh I am really in charge of this little person, because I had to be the grown up, (on a side note, when we arrived this guy tells us that we can't park there because we HAVE to use the hospital valet...ummmm....hello, this is the emergency room, if I am already parked you are actually going to tell me to repark because I HAVE to use the hospital valet...right???? Then he reparks our car in the same spot.)

Okay so enjoy some pics. I will post more soon.

Graduation and Mother's Day

Long time no post. I have been meaning to put something up but I just haven't. Hmmm...We have been having a lot of fun around here. Matt graduated the same weekend as Mother's Day. We went down to the Georgia Dome for the graduation which was totally different than BYU's. As in they had concession stands, Dippin' Dots, Hot Dogs, Popcorn you know regular concession food. They also had confetti and firework type things. It was really fun, but not like the very serious graduation that I experienced!

That night we went out to Fogo de Chao. Best restaurant ever! We can't wait to go back. It is one of those Brazilian places but it is really good. They have a few other ones around, I know there is one in Dallas, but if you are eve given the chance to try it out, DO! Yum.

Then Sunday was Mother's Day. Matt was so great and got me a great gift and a card from him and a card from Ryan. It was really cute and fun to celebrate. You only get one first Mother's Day, right?!

Ryan has been crawling everywhere and has really perfected the fastest way to crawl. He is getting into and up on everything. He seems more interested in walking. I hope he doesn't master that for awhile as he already seems to be getting into everything!! This pic is from when we went to the park with Grandpa!

A long time ago we went to the park with John and Lindy and Sue Ann (for those keeping track I think Sue Ann was here more than a month ago) and we played this awesome game called Kubb. It is totally something Grandpa Salmon would be into. You throw sticks to knock down other sticks!! Sound ridiculous but it was actually quite challenging and really fun!

I am going to post something about whatever we do for the long weekend so stay tuned!!