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!!!

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.

Clownin' Around (Will edition)

Clownin' Around (Lyla edition)

A pretty typical morning in the Ring household

Shoes and poop.

Mike's graduation from Bethel

My cousin Mike graduated from Bethel College in Mishawaka (aka South Bend), IN with a degree in Awesomeness. Since Mishawaka's only a little over 2 hours from Grand Rapids, we were very happy that we got to go see the ceremony.

Here's our view of the stage.There's Mike with diploma in hand. You can see my cousin Laura behind him and to the left... she'd gone up closer for some action shots of Mike on stage.
The Rings enjoying the ceremony.
You can see (sort of) in this picture the Sudyks (Mike's family). His parents are all the way on the right, about 3/4s of the way up right next to the rail. His sisters, Jenn and Laura, his brother-in-law, Andy, and nephew, Axel are on the same row as his parents but in the next section to the left right on the aisle (look for the baby in the car seat and the man in the blue shirt staring right at the camera... that's Andy).
Me and Lyla. Lyla only got about a 20 minute nap because of the travel so we let her have the pacifier to keep her calm. Despite the lack of sleep she did great all day.
Katherine and Will. Will had no problem sleeping.
Lyla cheering with the crowd as names are called.
Here's video of Lyla cheering, you can just catch her yelling "Yay!" as the video begins.

It was a long day (it took us 3.5 hours just to get ready and get out of the house... traveling with small kids is the nuts). But it was a lot of fun and so wonderful to get to celebrate Mike's accomplishment. I still remember when he and the rest of his family came to my college graduation in 2000. I really appreciated that they made the effort to come out and see me graduate all those years ago and now we've come full circle. Congratulations Mike!!!

Will's fist doctor visit

Last Tuesday we took Will to his 2-week doctor's appointment. It was quite the adventure for the little guy as he hasn't really done much other than sleep, eat, get his diaper changed, and lie around. He has continued to impress us with how calm and good-natured he is. I'm sure there are going to be plenty of circumstances in the future where he and his sister will have us pulling our hair out, but I must say that Katherine and I both are amazed and appreciative of what a calm baby he is. Especially given all the things we've had to deal with in the past three weeks.

Given how good of a baby and now toddler Lyla has been, we were expecting (and our friends were secretly wishing) that Will would be more difficult. If anything, he's better than even Lyla was. I'm not sure why we're so lucky, we definitely don't deserve it but we also not complaining. It's just one more thing on a long list of wonderful attributes of our beautiful children.

Here are the pictures from the visit to the doctor's.

Getting ready to go... Will sure doesn't like being put in his carseat.
LET ME OUT! LET ME OUT!! LET ME... (tuck him in with a fuzzy blanket) ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ..............

He awakens in a strange place... hmm, this can't be good.

Hey, Beardy! What's going on? Where am I? Where's Lyla?

What the deuce?!?! That thing is freezing! Where are my clothes?

Oh, mom's finger! Excellent, I'll use this to call Lyla. She's come rescue me!

Seriously, Bearded Guy. What the heck is going on here. p.s. Do you have your tickets?... To the GUN SHOW? POW POW!!

Okay, that wasn't so bad. I got my shirt and socks back. I guess we'll go home soon, nothing else is going to happen to me.... wait, why does that guy have a needle?

Ow. That really hurt. Do you not see how scrawny my legs are? Why would you give me a shot in one? And I don't even get a Snoopy band-aid. What the heck!

Mom, you and the Bearded Guy better take me back to Lyla. I'm so over this place.

According to the measurements, Will has already grown an inch and a half and gained about a pound and a half. Surprise, surprise he's going to be tall. Who knew?