California Adventure

     We just got back from our summer vacation. We spent it traversing across California, visiting family and playing hard. We started out our vacation at Cody’s Grandparents house near Sacramento. (Don’t ask me where, I am still a little fuzzy about that, but they live on a large plot of land that backs up to a nice little private lake.)

We met up there with Cody’s parents and two of our nieces (Lindsey and Brooke), his brother Derek and his family, and his sister Kelly and her husband. It was a real treat to see them; it was the first time Rya was meeting some of her cousins, and it has been ages since even Cody and I had seen many of them. Needless to say, it was a lot of people jammed into a house just having a good time. (Poor Grandma Millett, though, I think we almost ate her out of house and home.)

Great- Grandma & Grandpa Millett	Grandma & Grandpa Christensen

Grandma and Grandpa Millett’s house is a magical getaway. Lake aside, they’ve built their own little paradise away from it all. Their property is surrounded by redwoods with secret trails cut all through the property by Grandpa. Along the trails, you’ll find everything from a trampoline and a secret berry patch to an authentic looking t-pee and a gigantic see-saw, among other things. We spent most of our time exploring the outdoors and enjoying the perfect California weather, and of course we also spent some time on the lake. They have a boat that is, well let’s call it vintage, but we had a lot of fun taking it out on the water. Sometimes it was an adventure just trying to get up on skis, but that didn’t slow us in trying. If you could hang on long enough and endure the onslaught of water, when you finally got on top of the water, the pull was worth it. (I even managed to slalom for the first time.)

Cody, Derek, Rya & Kylie on the paddle-boat

After Grandma and Grandpa’s we drove down to Anaheim headed for another Magical Kingdom, that of Disneyland. Rya, I think overall, really enjoyed it. She loved certain things like the castle, the Merry-Go-Round, and anything princess, but was really freaked out by the costumed characters (which I would be to if I were her size, just the heads on some of those characters could crush her). Albeit, we didn’t get tons of photo ops but we had a great day. I think some of Rya’s highlights were waving to Cinderella from afar (she never would have lasted waiting in the line it was so long) and shaking the hand of Tinkerbell (she also noticed us peeking in through the exit area and was nice enough to come over and talk to us- again the line- they were crazy).

The last few days of our vacation were spent in LA with Cody’s sister Kelly, and her husband Rhett. We went to the beach for a little bit, but for the most part we just took some much needed down time. 

It was a memorable, dare I say “magical”, vacation. And, that about sums it up.

Happy Birthday, Rya!

  Rya turned two today! My sweet little baby girl is growing so fast. I know I say that a lot but it is hard for me to fathom the growth and changes in her in the short two years she has been around (see for yourself below). She brings me joy beyond explanation, she awes me with her ability and potential, and she challenges me daily to be a better mother and person.  

(Rya at 1 day old)

(Rya in her second year)

Happy Birthday, Sweetheart--  I love you!!

 

Party

    Rya is really into princesses lately- so we gave her a birthday party fit for one. We had a small intimate party with close family friends where the adults doted on her and showered her with gifts. The “banquet” in her honor consisted of food fit for a young princess: Mac ’n’ cheese, fish sticks, nuggets, PB &J sandwiches, Jello Jigglers…the works. As for the adults, it will be a while before we work off all the carbs from that meal, but it was fun reverting back to eating like I did at two years old. And, yes, for her birthday we even went as far as to make her a princess birthday cake—she was delicious (probably more fattening than you would expect from Barbie). Rya loved her “Princess cupcake” as she referred to it. It was a night full of fun and frivolity fit for a princess.

  

Tulsa Zoo

We visited the zoo a week ago. I had an appointment in Tulsa and we thought we would make a day out of it and spend the afternoon at the zoo. I had looked forward to it the entire week before because I knew Rya would love to see all the animals. But, by the time we got there, I think the temperature was near the hundreds combined with an unbelievable humidity level. I don’t know who I felt worse for, the animals stuck in cages or us walking around in the heat. We did enjoy seeing the animas, and for the most part they were in doors so we were able to get small stints in the cool air between exhibits. The really cool part was that it was a smaller zoo, and there were not tons of people there, so we got pretty close to some of the animals. But, rather than carry on, let’s get to the good part—the pictures.

How CUTE are the monkeys at this zoo! Am I right?! And this last picture (right) was taken approximately 2 minutes after leaving the park…the sign of a good trip (or a long day in the hot sun without a nap—but I prefer to think it was the former).

Hodge Podgy POST

 

 

 

 

 

So, for the first time, I haven’t posted because not much has been going on. Not much until this last week or so— since then there have been a few noteworthy events. ** WARNING: This post will contain a wide variety of elements, including, but not limited to potty references, home maintenance, and random pics.**

 

Potty Talk

Okay, so let’s get the “potty-talk” out  of the way first. I think I am way more excited about this than anyone, but felt the need to include it as a way of preserving Rya history.  Rya used the potty for the first time last Sunday.  Without going into too many details (and don’t worry, no pictures will be included in this section), but she used it to its fullest extent. Who knew such bodily functions could bring such excitement and celebration. She has the general idea down, but we are still working on it. Hopefully, she is well on her way to getting out of her diapers. To all those who read this far, thank you for appeasing my motherly excitement!

Home Maintenance

Taking the example from my female family members and the many amazing women in our ward (church), I have started taking home projects on myself. Cody works so hard, and doesn’t always have the time to finish all the house projects we want to do; so I have been trying to see how many items on the honey-do list I can transfer to the honey- I do list. It has been fun, and a new challenge each week. Lately, I have been doing a bit of electrical work (purely amateur stuff). I have put in new light fixtures in the laundry room, hallway, and spare bedroom. I also hung a new chandelier in the kitchen. And, my latest venture was taking all the outside lighting and giving them updated coloring. I was pleased with the outcome.  (fyi…the one on the left is the before pic)

  

   

Random Pictures

So because it has been so long since we have had a camera- I thought I would post some fun pictures of Rya. Some of you may not even recognize her for all the growing up she is doing. Enjoy!

 
What a doll, huh? My sister was down visiting. She has a little boy so she had a real blast playing dress up and doing hair on a little girl. Check out Rya posing for the camera.  

These next ones are of Rya just waking up—I felt like the paparazzi snapping unwanted pictures. But aren’t they fun—look at that bedhead!

And, last but not least…Left: watch out because eating at our house is a full contact sport (or so it would appear). Right: With Rya, there is most always a tongue picture, but somehow she manages to pull it off.

  

Rya is most definitely the cutest thing in our house, it would be a shame not to want to show her off. I hope you enjoy these pictures as much as I do.

Independence

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.

Catch-up

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!!

If you made it through the whole post, congratulations! Hope you enjoyed your whirlwind update on the Christensen's.

Look at my teethes…

               “Who has teeth? Well,.. look around and you’ll find out who. You”ll find that red-headed
               uncles do.  TEETH! They are very much in style. They must be very much worthwhile.” 
                                                                                                                                          -- Dr. Suess

 

So, I couldn’t agree more, but up until now Rya hasn’t really been very toothy. But, finally, she is getting a few more teeth…teeth #5, #6, #7, #8 and I think #9. Now some may question whether this is blog worthy and I submit that yes it is. She hasn’t gotten a tooth since she tuned a year old. If you know her well, you know this hasn’t slowed her food consumption, in fact she still eats more than Cody and me, but for the past 8 months she has been swallowing her food whole because her four front teeth weren’t very helpful in chewing. Well now she is more than doubling the amount of teeth in her mouth all at once- what a way to go!. She is getting a couple molars and a couple canines in that we can see- I am sure the others aren’t long to follow.

Sorry, our camera is still on the fritz so I don’t have any pictures of the momentous occasion, but I am sure you can imagine what lots of little teeth look like.

So YEA! and OUCH! for Rya. We are very excited you will actually have chompers to aide you in your eating endeavors.