Archive Page 99

11
Jun
07

New Website and June Update

By Julie P. 1 Comment
Categories: Rilyn

Well, it’s been awhile and we have finally gotten our website to where we want it so that means we can blog a lot more and update videos/photos often.  We’ve been busy lately!  We had my 28th birthday and our 6th wedding anniversary in May(we got new furniture and frames to fill up our house), Rilyn’s 3rd birthday party/barbeque(at The Little Gym and then back to our house for food), VBS(I taught the 3/4 year old class with Rilyn in it), Rilyn’s first dentist appt. (she has a developmental cavity-which means she was born with it)  😦  She will have to get some anesthia and have it filled in a month.  She also had her 3 year portraits done which she did a great job smiling.  Now we are settling back down into the routine of things…

Rilyn's First Trip to the Dentist

Rilyn's 3-year old Portrait

Ella is 17 months and talking like crazy.  She repeats nearly everything she hears but her favorite things to say are “I did it!” and “share” (she loves to say that when Rilyn has any toy in her hand).  Rilyn is such a big girl, she is fully potty trained now!  Hallelujah!!!  She keeps us laughing.  Some of our favorites:  Rilyn tripped on the floor and said, “Wow, I just freaked out!”

Rilyn sometimes likes to greet mommy by saying “Hello, my heiness.”  (She heard that from a cartoon, daddy does not call mommy that.)

Rilyn saw her name written in cursive on a piece of paper and she said that it said, “ChickFila” because she is so used to seeing the ChickFila sign and it is in cursive.

Rilyn likes to tell us when we say something nice to her, “You can say that again!”

I told Rilyn that daddy killed the fire ants in the yard.  She said, “Did they die on the cross like Jesus?”

17
Apr
07

We’re in Austin (actually Manor, TX)

By Julie P. 1 Comment
Categories: Community and Family

We apologize for not updating our website sooner but we had a major life change happen in March as we moved from Houston to Manor.  We officially got all our boxes to Manor on March 15th.  We still haven’t sold our house in Houston…We know God has His perfect timing, but it is hard with double mortgage payments!  We are settling in with our new neighborhood, church- The Austin Stone (www.austinstone.org), and our old college friends (have we already been out of college for 5 years?)  We live right next to the Suhs, Pecks, Richardsons, and Douglass’.  What a blessing!!!

Ella is now 15 months old.  She started walking at 13 ½ months old and now is lovingly referred to as our “monster truck rally” because she just runs over everything and falls most of the time but doesn’t care.  Don’t get me wrong-she cries-a lot too- but only if you look at her wrong or if you are a man.  She got 4 more teeth which brings the total to 10 now (although I admit that I’m not checking her mouth anymore for fear of my fingers being bitten off.)  She has a vocabulary of about 10 words.  Her newest words are ‘duck’ and ‘sista’ for sister.  She loves bubbles, Backyardigans and lions (because they say “roar”.)

Rilyn is half potty-trained.  She easily will go pee-pee in the potty.  But don’t ask her to go poo-poo cause she will run and hide.  Her favorite tunes these days are all on the Backyardigan CD which we have listened to every day in the car since we got it and so that makes the grand total to about 100 times.  Luckily the Backyardigans have made themselves a special place in my heart too, so I don’t mind-that much.  Rilyn and Ella had a great Easter with both sides of the family coming to spend the day with us in Manor.  She had an Easter egg hunt in the front of our house even though it was 40 degrees outside.  Right after the hunt we came inside to pray and eat.  During James’ prayer for the meal, Rilyn interrupted and said, “Thank you God, that I can find MORE eggs.”  She continues to be our little adult and cracks us up daily with her use of language.  Her latest thing she likes to do is tell mommy what she wants me to wear or not wear.  She prefers me in stripes and doesn’t like my old college t-shirts.  😉

02
Feb
07

January 2007 Update

By Julie P. Leave a Comment
Categories: Ella

Ella turned the big 0-1 January 5th.  We had family come to our house to celebrate her big day.  She had to being awakened from her nap to join the festivities so needless to say she was not in the best of moods.  (see video)  She loved her cake as you can see from the pictures!  Ella is about to walk, she takes 3-5 steps by herself right now so Rilyn is looking forward to when Ella can chase her around the house.  She loves to wave bye-bye and kiss things now too-very cute!  Her new word this month is ‘night night’.
Rilyn is being potty trained (attempt #….I lost count).  She is doing really well this time though, so maybe it will stick!  She really wants to fill up her sticker chart so she can go to Chuck E Cheese!  Her favorite tunes these days come from the Pocahontas soundtrack and her favorite cartoon is Wow Wow Wubbzy.  Pizza is her entrée of choice and the last time she had it she told us that she likes the frosting on the pizza best.  (Referring to the cheese as she peels it off the top to eat.)
Well, January has been a busy month for us as we found a home in Manor, Texas (30 minutes from downtown Austin)!  Why Manor you ask (population 3,000)?  Well, it is a long story, but it is definitely a God thing!  So, we close Feb. 26th and then we have a lot of repairs to do (we bought a foreclosure-what a deal!!), and so we should be moving in at the beginning or middle of March.  Our house hasn’t sold yet in Houston, so that is our BIG prayer request!  Also, we would appreciate your prayers for a smooth transition to Dell in 2 weeks.

13
Jan
07

December Update

By Julie P. 2 Comments
Categories: christmas, Family and James

Ella and Rilyn had a wonderful Christmas!  We spent Christmas day in Fort Worth and celebrated again with my family later that week.  They are SO blessed to have amazing grandparents on both sides of the family who shower them with love and of course gifts!  This was Ella’s first Christmas and she wasn’t too into opening presents.  In fact, a lot of the time she would put on a pouty face and cry if too many people were looking at her.  I think the holidays were too much stimulation for her!  Rilyn was more than happy to open all of Ella’s presents for her though!

Ella points at everything now and mimics sound really well.  Her first word (besides mama and dada) was ‘ball’ and she says ‘uh oh’ and ‘wow.’  She loves throwing things off of tables and saying ‘uh oh’!  Ella must be going through a growth spurt because she just has to eat everything we are eating PLUS her own baby food.  I’m sad to say she has had plenty of pizza, french fries, and chocolate already! (maybe we as parents should get better eating habits!)

Rilyn continues to make us laugh daily.  She picked up a bent french fry and said, “This french fry died so now I’m going to eat it.”  She was getting jealous of me rocking and feeding Ella a bottle once afternoon and climbed up on my lap with Ella.  She said, “When I get bigger, can I be a baby and drink a bottle like Ella?”  I love her childlike innocence…

Our big news is that James just accepted a Financial Advisor position with Dell in Round Rock, TX.  We really wanted to be closer to family and so we felt it was the right time in our lives to make the big move.  We currently have our house on the market and will soon start the house hunting process in the Austin area.  James starts his new job in mid-February.

05
Dec
06

November Update

By Julie P. 1 Comment
Categories: James and Rilyn

Rilyn is now 2 ½!  She can’t wait for Christmas and to see “Santa Closet” (as she calls him) at the mall to take a picture with him.  When she saw a Mrs. Claus standing in someone’s yard, she asked, “Can I see Santa’s mommy, Mary?”  We are trying to teach her the true meaning of Christmas, but there is so much commercialism around, it is no wonder a small child gets confused!

On another note…with daddy’s Cowboys doing so well, football games have been on the TV a lot these days.  She asked daddy last weekend, “When I get bigger, can I play football with the boys?”   “We’ll see…” is all he could think to say.  As you can see from the video, Rilyn loves to serenade us with the classic tunes of toddlerhood.  It’s no wonder she knows the songs so well because she requests her favorites to be put on ‘repeat’ in the car CD player.  I think I tune out when I hear the Itsy Bitsy Spider being played for the 10th time.

Ella is 11 months old now.  She cruises (and crawls) around everywhere and it won’t be long before she can stand up on her own.  She is starting to sign now.  She can sign ‘all done’ and ‘more’.  We taught some basic sign language to Rilyn when she was this age and found it to be extremely beneficial!  As you can see on the video, Ella is fearless (I know the video looks bad; but she really only cried for a second after I got her) and she continues to test the limits in all things.  When we tell her ‘no’ she just looks at us and giggles and then proceeds to do it again until we physically remove her from the situation!

06
Nov
06

October Update

By Julie P. Leave a Comment
Categories: halloween

Halloween night was really fun for Rilyn.  She loved her lady bug costume and never wanted to take it off.  We first went to our church’s fall festival where she played lots of games and won prizes and candy. Then she went trick or treating and once she discovered that you actually get candy when you go to a house, she would run down the street to each house and was fearless going up to the doors.  She could’ve done it all night but Ella was getting tired.  Ella was our cute little pumpkin!

Ella is 10 months old now.  She is officially a crawler too!  James and I are trying to adjust to chasing her around as she gets into every toy of Rilyn’s that she is not supposed to, (crayons, coloring books, stickers, magnet letters, puzzle pieces…)  Rilyn never crawled so this is a new experience for us!  She is very fast and very curious.  She has become our little trouble maker it seems.  Rilyn never got into as much (even when she became mobile) as Ella gets into.  Ella has 6 teeth now and continues to teethe.  She chews on everything including the knobs of our cabinets (see October pics).  She is pulling up on everything and we are sure she will start cruising in the next weeks.  She is our little daredevil as you will see on her video.  She wants to be aware of everything around her at all times and is always ready to join in the fun, so feeding her a bottle is rather difficult because she won’t sit still!  (Baby food is a challenge too as seen on the video.)  We sometimes have to hold her arms down and go in a dark room where Rilyn is locked out so she will drink! 

Rilyn is almost 2 ½ now and continues to make us laugh with her rather matter of a fact statements.  She told me during a thunder storm recently, “There is nothing to be scared of mommy, it’s just me, Rilyn, and the couch.”  Or the time when she found a Cheerio on the ground , she picked it up and said, “Yep, that’s my booger-it came out again.”  Her imagination is running wild these days as she is starting to be afraid of the dark.  She tells me, “The shadows are spooky.”  She loves to play David and Goliath with daddy as he is the giant and she fights him.  She is a great big sister as you can see on the video.  Sure, they fight, (as seen on last month’s video), but she loves to make Ella giggle and I can’t wait to see them grow up together and play.

 

28
Sep
06

September Update

By Julie P. 1 Comment
Categories: Ella

As Ella becomes increasingly mobile, I foresee many “that’s my toy!!!” coming from Rilyn’s mouth.  I was able to capture their first real fight (I couldn’t intervene and ruin such a funny moment!) and rest assured Rilyn got a talking to about being rough with Ella. 

Ella is almost 9 months old.  She has 4 teeth now and can almost crawl.  She loves to bounce and the nursery workers at church think she will be an astronaut when she grows up because of the way she loves to ‘blasts off’ when she is in the bouncer.  (We think she will be our athlete.)  Her hair continues to grow upward and I have gotten many comments on her Mohawk! (no I do not style it that way, it is natural)  She got her first ear infection last week (in both ears) so we dealt with some fussiness, but other than that, she continues to be a smiley, sweet-tempered girl. Rilyn started her second year of preschool this year.  We attempted to start potty training her, but realized she is still not ready.  (I mistakenly bribed her with chocolate and then one day she picked up her poo in the potty chair after she went because she thought it was chocolate.  We thankfully got it from her before she could put it in her mouth!)  She has a treasure chest full of wrapped little gifts and she still tells me “Mommy, I won’t go pee pee in the potty!”  She is very opinionated!  We think Rilyn will be our cheerleader/singer of the family.  She loves to belt out any Disney tune and makes up lyrics to any song on the radio.  She keeps us laughing as many say she is 2 going on 15 years old.  The other day, I must of interrupted her ‘cell phone’ conversation because she told me “wait a minute, I’m on the phone.”  She loves playing tea party, watching Caillou on TV, and ‘scrapbooking.’  Yes, I have created a mini scrapbooker-she will sit along side me and put hundreds of those tiny round stickers on paper and is perfectly content.  (It’s our bonding time.)  I’m so proud of her.  😉 

 

30
Jul
06

June and July Update

By Julie P. Leave a Comment
Categories: Ella and Rilyn

Ella is almost 7 months old!!  Where has the time gone?  Ella can now sit by herself and has gotten her second tooth.  She went ‘swimming’ in a pool for the first time and loved to splash around.  Ella continues to be such a sweet-natured baby, the only thing to be aware of is her Jaws-like attack for your fingers!  She loves to bite anything!  (see movie).  Her favorite thing to do right now is bounce in her bumper jumper that we hang from our door frame.  She is working those leg muscles! (maybe that means she is getting ready to crawl soon??)
Rilyn continues to make us laugh with her funny sayings.  “Oh man, that’s crazy!” or while playing with her cash register in her room, “I would like a #5, diet Dr. Pepper, fries and a drink.”  (We know that’s a sign we’re eating too much fast food!)  During a recent stinky diaper change, her Sunday school teacher asked her, “what did you eat?”  Her response-“Vegetables.” Rilyn also spent a week by herself at “Camp Oma & Papaw” (James’ parents’ house). While there, she went on her first picnic, went to the zoo and had a great time.  

 

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