While Dad is Gone

Ryan left for Baltimore early Sunday morning. The following are, again, mostly pictures for him to show that we were alive and made it to church. :)

Pardon the super spazy photo, but after church, I got to go meet Sylvie! She is my dear friend Amanda's sweet baby girl they just adopted from Japan. She was one month old. I was so thrilled to get to hold her.The whole adoption process was incredible and we are so excited for them to welcome her into their family.

If at first you don't succeed... try, try again. 

Pierscen is a master builder/creator. The stuff he comes up with is pretty amazing. Neither of the photos below really showcase the creativity and how neat his marble tracks are. 

But lucky for him, he was able to share this love with others. This is taken through the security door. He took his sets outside and started building with the two neighbor kids. 

And then more arrived...

And then they moved to the driveway to take advantage of the slope. It was pretty cool to see so many neighborhood kids working together on it. 

Below is Devry and her betrothed, Henry. Haha. They have since moved away, but we have plans for these two. They are so stinking cute together. 

Valentine's day arrived while Ryan was gone. (Not that we do much anyway). I tried to be a tiny bit festive in at least my food for the kids. It wasn't much. Ha!

Just some more smiley fun. 

It had been about two weeks without dad, and the next day things were about to get crazier...

Gramps and Daddio Visits

The beginning of the year sparked some big changes for my dad as they moved production for one of his businesses out to Tennessee. On the way out, he stayed in Albuquerque, but he was with some of other travel buddies and they arrived super late and stayed in a hotel. So we didn't even get to see him. On the way back, he didn't have much time either as he was trying to make it home to finish some reports. At this point he had already been driving for a couple days without sleeping. I have no idea how he did it. Anyway, the only chance we had to see him was to drive to the north end of town and meet him in the Home Depot parking lot. We hung out and chatted for a little bit while Devry popped little snaps. It was probably the quickest visit we have had from anyone, but I was sure grateful to be able to see him. And even more grateful he made it home without falling asleep at the wheel!

Darren was asleep for that little visit, so I snapped a photo for my dad when he woke up so he could see those pretty blue peepers. 

Pierscen received this in his mailbox at school and it sure made his day. We still have no idea where it came from, but small acts of kindness like this really do go a long way. 

Ryan got home from his trip to Portland late Friday night. Instead of giving him a day to recoop before he had to leave the next day for another business trip to Baltimore, we dragged him to Explora for the day. :)

Love these pals. They were pretty cute to watch enjoying their lunch together. 

I can't get over the picture below of P and D. It's been a year. A whole year. And of course Darren has grown up a ton, but I am shocked at how young/little Pierscen looks here. I don't know what it is, but he just looks so... little!

We also gave solid food a try! You can see how well it went. Hahaha

February Beginnings, Baby is 5 Months

 I currently have a dozen plus posts drafted with pictures and just waiting for captions. I pulled this one up and almost started crying. Why? Because in this post there are some videos of Devry dancing during the Super Bowl Half Time Show. Guess what today is? Super Bowl Sunday. No, we didn't watch it this year. But that means I am a whopping entire year behind. It's so discouraging.

And it also makes me question why I take so many pictures. Many of which probably don't really matter. Ha!

This may be one of them... but for us, planting season in February is still a novelty. I love our growing season here. 

For a while I thought Darren might be a finger sucker. But it didn't last. Even though there is a pacifier in the picture, he's never really taken one. It was just a sweet photo. 

The transition to Sunbeams was rough. (A year later getting her to go to primary is still a little rough.) But this particular Sunday she would not sit with her class. I told her the only option was to sit with her class or lay on the floor and take a nap. You can see which one she chose:

No actual nap, of course, but she laid there dutifully while little brother slept away. 

The Super Bowl videos I referenced:

The pictures below were largely for Ryan as he left on two back to back work trips. First he went to Portland, then he went to Baltimore with only one day between. (In the following post.) It was hard to have him gone, but we lived to tell the tale.  

Darren turned five months old while Ry was away. Yet another disadvantage of waiting an entire year to get caught up on this is that I can't give you any specific details other than the fact that he is sweet, happy, hungry and can make anyone melt with his amazing smile and blue eyes. 

This is obviously not February, but I found this while cleaning up. For Thanksgiving the elementary kids do a disguise a turkey project. This are some of my favorites from Pierscen:

And a few more goofy pictures of our big, lovable five-month-old: