Christensens²: June 2009

Rya is becoming more and more independent. She surprises us with what she picks up. The o

ther day she decided she wanted to go swimming. So she took it upon herself to make the preparations. She took her pants and shirt off and was trying to put on a swim diaper when I found her.

She has started going to the pantry and picking out a snack for herself when she gets peckish. I watched one day as she got into the pantry, pulled out a can of peaches, found the can opener and then attempted to get the can open. It was pretty impressive.

However, not all ventures go quite according to plan. But they are great picture ops. (Her bowl floweth over)

And, the last bit we’ll share on this matter is my favorite. She is learning to help put things away: toys, clothes, shoes, trash. In fact, she is getting so

good at it, sometimes she even helps me put my things away.

Now I never said she always put them away in their correct spot—I can see how it can get confusing sometimes. It makes me feel like I am playing some homemade version of “Where’s Waldo”. Can you find my shoe?

These are the little things I don’t want to forget—they bring a smile to my face and make me realize how lucky I am to be around to see it.

So it is bad when your husband, who has little to no interest in the blogging world, starts asking whether you have updated your blog, and then begins recommending topics. I am not saying this happened to me, merely hypothetical. But if it had happened to me, all I am saying is it would be bad. (*hehe*) But, I definitely would love and appreciate my husband for helping me get on top of things, hypothetically, of course.

This post will serve as a whirlwind catch up of the last few months and get us up to date. And, hopefully this will relieve the hypothetical me of my guilt for my procrastination and appease my hypothetical hubby as well.

To begin, and much to the excitement of us, we finally got a camera—this should definitely help in the blogging pursuits. Heck, I would take a picture of the camera, but that poses challenges of its own.

I broke this up into sections, to make it easier to digest in smaller chunks. Good luck and happy reading!

Easter

To begin our story, we go all the way back to…Easter. We had so much fun this Easter. It was the first time Rya was really able to participate. I don’t know what’s more fun; being a kid and getting to participate in all the fun activities, or being a parent and watching your kids participate. We spent the day with some close family friends, who take it upon themselves to spoil Rya rotten. The festivities began, following in tradition, with an Easter egg hunt.

There was a slight learning curve to the whole looking for eggs. As you can see the eggs were not hidden with any degree of difficulty. At first she wasn’t quite understanding the whole point of collecting eggs, but she loved her basket.

It didn’t take long before she caught on

and

starting actually looking for the

eggs

She quickly became a pro and scoured the yard for the hidden treasures. She had a sharp eye and by the end walked away with a basket full eggs stuffed with toys and goodies.

In fact she picked up on the tradition so quickly that it became a small problem. While taking pictures afterwards she spotted a bunch of eggs, and conveniently they were all in one spot, and so naturally she went straight for them. That’s where the problem came in—unfortunately they were in the basket of one of the other girls. (*hehe*)

After the egg hunt all the kids got an Easter basket full of goodies: books, shoes, toys, and more. Like I said, spoiled rotten—and she loves every minute of it. We feel very lucky to have friends that love our little girl so much. It was such a great day!

Okay, so the rest of this post we’ll really fly through, just to catch everyone up on our goings on.

House

The past few months we have kept very busy with projects on the house. For all homeowners, I am sure we are in agreement that there is a perpetual list of projects. Cody’s parents came for a visit- and they are house project experts. So, we took advantage of their expertise while they were here and put in recessed lighting in the kitchen. Unexpectedly, it was a back-breaking project…literally. It was so terrible, Cody’s dad ,while working on our project, threw his back out- and yet still helped finish the job. We have decided the next time they visit, all they get to do is enjoy some much needed relaxation. No more injuries on our watch. But, in all seriousness, we couldn’t have done it without them and we are so grateful for their help—the lighting in our kitchen is amazing thanks to them.

We also worked on our curb appeal a little bit. We took down a couple trees in the front; they were blocking the view of the house. (And, a huge thanks to the Ratsachaks and Dragovichs for all their help—they were a big part the reason it happened!!) And, then we worked on the flower beds. Cody was so happy with the results, he wanted a picture for posterity. So here you go…the new front of our house (right pic).

(Don’t pay attention so much to the dirt yard- we hope to get that taken care of soon—but check out the beds and that you can see the house now without that giant tree on top of it)

Car

Our car finally gave up the ghost. On some levels, I am sad to see it go. I liked to think of it as my “little engine that could.” When we bought it we discovered it was missing 2nd gear (and for those wondering, it was an automatic- go figure). It really wasn’t as bad as we thought once we adjusted our driving to it. Although, we were worried that missing a gear would shorten its life, but that little car went the distance.

Just recently, it lost 5th gear, again; not too bad. There were worse gears to lose, which we soon found out. A few months later it lost 3rd gear; that made things a little harder. We had to get going down a good hill in 1st gear to get going fast enough to get to 4th. In fact, a couple times we got stuck behind a biker we weren’t fast enough to pass (*hehe*). Finally, it lost reverse. We figured we could still use it as long as we always parked with a getaway strategy, but thought against it. Now, I am not complaining, we actually feel really grateful for this car. Never once did it leave us stranded, and it worked on less than all its gears for more than 70,000 miles. What a trooper! Also, it gave us more than fair warning to start looking for a new car before it completely died.

Well, we finally found a new car…we only hope it will be as valiant as our last.

And, lastly, the biggest change of all…RYA

For this I will just post a few pictures, the changes are obvious. She is a little girl now, almost unrecognizable. In fact, for Mother’s Day, we went down to Texas to surprise my mom. My brother told her he was babysitting his friend’s daughter. When he walked in with Rya, my mom just assumed it was his friend’s girl. She had a moment’s hesitation, where she commented on how similar she looked to Rya, but it didn’t really click until I walked around the corner. They just grow so quickly. It was a good surprise!

But, here you go, my little girl:

Her favorite things to do right now are taking care of her little babies, reading, watching and playing with princesses (which she is quickly turning into), driving the car (don’t worry, its missing all its gears *hehe*) and playing with friends. She is growing too fast and there is nothing I can do to stop it. But, how we love that little girl!!