Summer Fun at Meijer Gardens

Catching up on all the photos from all our adventures this summer. This is from when Katherine's brother and family drove all the way up from Texas to spend a week with us.


Butterflies!! Hurray!!


Great times with our cousins, playing in the Great Lakes at Meijer Gardens.

Happy Birthday Aunt Anna!!!

My little sister Anna turns six today! Whoa! We can't wait to see her and the rest of the family next weekend at the annual Ring Family reunion. We'll have to be sure and sing Happy Birthday to Anna while we're there.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY ANNA!!!!!

Happy Birthday Uncle Ryno!!!!

Our extended family has grown a lot in the past few months. Since November, Lyla and Will have gotten a new cousin, a new aunt, and a new uncle... all of whom they're very excited about.

Today is Uncle Ryno's (Julie's husband) birthday so we wanted to wish him a happy birthday and take a moment to say how glad we are that he is part of our family!!!

So here we go:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY UNCLE RYNO!!! WE'RE VERY GLAD THAT YOU ARE PART OF OUR FAMILY!!!!

Seriously, though, Ryno's a great guy: kind, funny and all sorts of awesome. I mean, he's good enough to marry my sister and that's not something I say lightly. (I've actually threatened a boy who was dating my sister because I thought he was being disrespectful... I take my job as a big brother very seriously. I am very happy that Ryno is part of our family.)

Here are some pictures from Ryno and Julie's wedding last year:

Happy Birthday Lyla!!!! *or* Holy Moley, I Can't Believe My Daughter is TWO!!!

Seriously? When did Lyla grow up? It seems like just 730 days ago that Katherine was telling me it was time to go to the hospital. Yet somehow my Little Button became my Little Baby and my Little Baby become my Little Girl. All those country songs suddenly make a lot of sense...

Friday, December 4 was destined to be a special day even before it began. For us the magic began the night before when the first snow fall of this winter began to fall. We were forecast to get 3 or 4 inches over night and boy did we. We awoke Friday morning to a blanket of soft, white, beautiful snow covering everything.

Typically I have mixed feelings about the snow. I love the serenity and the beauty of freshly fallen snow, but I dread the cold and the exertion of shoveling our walks. But this was different because this was going to be the first snow that Lyla got to play in and that she would remember. And it happened on her birthday, what a neat gift.

I think that Katherine and I were slightly more excited about Lyla's actual birthday than the Birthday Girl was. Granted she had been talking about her birthday non-stop for at least two weeks and had made us sing "Happy Birthday" to every single person that we know, at least once. But I awoke that day more excited than I'd been in awhile.

We started the day with a special breakfast: blueberry pancakes. Special because we seldom make pancakes. They were good. Then we got dressed and all went to Target, whoopie!! Look, just because it was Lyla's birthday doesn't mean we can avoid the day to day tasks of running our lives. We all went together so that was fun.

After Target, we came home and Lyla got ready to go outside. We got her snowsuit on plus her hat and these great winter boots she got from her friend Sadie. Out Lyla and I went and shoveled the path. I had bought a small snow-shovel for Lyla a couple weeks ago and she was more than happy to help me clear off the snow. After shoveling, she and I built our very first snowman. Nothing too special, we used a carrot for the nose and leaves for everything else. Lyla really enjoyed packing the snow down. I think he turned out rather nice and he sort of looks like Grover from Sesame Street.

After playing in the snow we came in and were treated to a nice lunch of grilled cheese sandwiches and soup. It was the perfect meal to warm us up from the cold. After we finished, the kids went down for naps and Katherine and I started to get ready for Lyla's party.

For her party we wrestled for a long time as to what to do. Last year we invited a few friends and their kids over, four families in total. In the subsequent 365 days, 3 of the 4 families had another child and all the other kids aged a year. As a result, having the same families over would have been pure chaos.

So instead, we invited two families for dinner. I made pork street tacos and they turned out pretty good. After dinner we did presents and then cupcakes. After dinner, the chaos slowly ratcheted up until the kids ended up hitting a wall. The following pictures will give you some idea of how chaotic just two additional families can be:

Playing with friends...

More friends, more playing...

Adults trying to converse as the kids play...

More playing...

Pretty soon Will had had enough...

So we opened presents...

And then we played with the presents...

Pretty soon Will and Kevin had had enough...

So it was time for the cake...

Lyla likes cake.

So does Ian...

So does Sadie...

And then it was over.

The next day, we woke up and played with our new toys.

Lyla drying her hair with Mommy..

Later that morning, we went over to Sadie's house for her 2-year-old birthday party. I decided that Will and I should dress a like... I'm glad I did.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LYLA!!! WE LOVE YOU!!!

Happy Birthday Emily!!!

Wow! I can't believe my little Emily is FOUR YEARS OLD!!!

She went from this:


To this:

For those of you who don't know (how can you not know?), Emily is our niece. The first born daughter of Katherine's brother Dave and his (awesome) wife Faith. We've been so blessed to have Emily as our niece and to have been able to see her as much as we have since we live so far way from her (boo). Emily for sure holds a special place in our hearts. She and her sister, Ally, are right up there at the same level as our own kids (Lyla and Will... remember?).

One good thing about Emily getting older is that pretty soon she'll be old enough to come up and visit us on her own... not that we don't want David and Faith to visit, we're just looking forward to some niece/cousin time with Emily and Ally.

Anyway...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, EMILY GRACE!!!!!

WE LOVE YOU!!!!

Happy Birthday Ally!!

So one of the only things I love as much as being a Husband and a Father is being an Uncle. And I'm super lucky to have the two best nieces in the world. Today (well technically yesterday because I'm posting htis Friday morning) is one of my niece's birthday!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, ALLY MAY!!!!

Ally turns 2 today, which is kind of unbelievable especially since she's just over three months older than Lyla (wait, Lyla turns two in three months? AAAAAAAHHHHH!!!!)

This (and the one above it) are pictures from when we saw Ally and her family in Missouri last July:

Here's one of my favorites from last Christmas:



And of course, who could forget this?

WE LOVE YOU ALLY!!!!

Ring Family Reunion 2009

So I was going to start this out by reminding you about our trip to St. Louis for July 4th last year (2008), but it turns out I didn't write about it. I only wrote 4 blog posts last July which I'll chalk up to having a 7 month old and the fact that it was summer.

Anyway, since you don't know, my family (the Rings) has an annual reunion in St. Louis, MO. It's been going on for like 16 years but last summer was the first time I (and thus Katherine and Lyla) had been. We had a blast, enjoyed seeing a ton of my extended family, and showing Lyla off to everyone. So we decided to return this year in order to have a blast, see a ton of my extended family, and show Lyla and Will off to everyone.

We drove down on Friday July 3rd and it took us about 9 hours, which isn't bad for having to stop frequently to feed a baby. We definitely were worried about having the kids in the car for that long but they both did fine. Arrive Friday and spent the next two full days visiting with family, eating a ton of food, drinking beer (sorry if you're offended by that but it is part of the weekend's events), playing with kids, and NOT taking pictures.

One of the things I've noticed about having two kids is we hardly have time to take photos any more. I thought that it would be because the novelty would have worn off by the second kid, but that's not it. I love taking pictures of Will, he's so adorable and stinking cute. Unfortunately, having Lyla run around makes it hard to focus on taking pictures. Plus our digital camera is O-L-D old and the compact flash card will take about 10 pictures and then get an error requiring it to be reformatted, which means stopping, uploading all the pictures onto the computer, and resetting the card. And if you only just started reading this post, back up a few lines because I just explained that WE DON'T HAVE TIME FOR THAT!!!

So if you want more pictures of Will and Lyla, feel free to donate either a new digital camera or a new compact flash memory card. We'd appreciate it.

The main thing we were looking forward to about this trip was Will getting to meet all of my family. Which, he did. Magnificently. Here's a list of people that Will got to meet for the first time (and Lyla got to interact with for the first time where she could remember who they were and interact with them... which was super cute.):

My dad, aka Grandpa Ring, aka Mosquito Mike (his nickname back in the days when I was a kid and we used to wrestle... we don't do that any more):

Aunt Julie (I think this photo is funny because Lyla seems to be baffled by that plastic Easter egg):
Uncle Jeff:
Fei, Uncle Matthew, and Aunt Anna (I'm bummed that I don't have pictures of them with either Will or Lyla because there were definitely opportunities for some cute ones. Fei if you got some with your camera, please email them to me.)

Here we all are. This is the first time my immediately family has all been together in awhile so it was definitely a great trip.

Here's a cute one of Lyla and Will posing together.
This one it pretty cool. It's a picture of all the Ring men. From L-R: Uncle Pat, his son John (my cousin), John's son Allen, my brother Jeff, Dad (in the red shirt), my brother Matthew, me, lil William, my uncle Bob, my cousin Mike, my uncle Tom (Mike and Robert's dad), and my cousin Robert. Very cool.
Here are Mike and Rob talking with Katherine (Will's in there too).
Here are John and Allen, avoiding being photographed.
Here's my camera's version of the annual group photo. It was a very muggy day and the lens had fogged up. Great jorb, camera!! (Seriously, anyone want to donate a new camera?)

The trip was short but definitely fun. I would have liked to spend more time visiting but we didn't have it. Plus we had to head out on Sunday to get to Branson, MO where we spent a week in a vacation rental with Katherine's family. I'll post pictures from that trip soon.