Family Outings

Must be spring, the bike came out

Trick or Treat!

Ryley's First Motorcycle Ride

He had a moment of panic... I could tell as they were pulling away. I'm glad he didn't freak out. As I walked back in the door at home he immediately said "That.Was.AWESOME."

Yes kid I know. I remember those moments with my dad (and mom) pretty vividly actually.

Taylor wasn't entirely sure about the skull cap... she kept taking it off.

Baseball finally!

The last three games have been rained out so it was nice to actually make it through a whole game today.

Christmas 2008

Christmas Eve with the Hoke family, I caught Taylor with Grandpa Lyle.

The kids hung out with Grandpa Ron on Christmas morning.

Ryley must have been pretty good this year. Santa brought him his heart's desire.

Taylor wasn't really sure what to think. She liked the pretty paper and ribbons and got some really great toys. Ryley had to help her open a few presents.

Buddies

Rotary Dinner

Every year the local Rotary club has a Christmas dinner with local entertainment and they bring Santa Claus in for the kids. Lyle is a member of Rotary so we always get to go. This year was fun as is every year. Santa Claus is typically played by our good friend Harry.

Shauna and Carl brought the kids down this year too and we got some pictures of all the kids with grandpa.














He always looks so innocent doesn't he?


































This is an okay picture of me, so I guess I'll share.





















This may be the last year we fooled Ryley with Santa. Several days afterward he was still pondering how much Santa sounded like Harry.


















We got lucky. She didn't make a fuss about sitting on Santa's lap at all. Of course we didn't get it, but she smiled after this shot.

Halloween

In a sea of baby pumpkins, Taylor decided she needed to be a spider for her first Halloween. She slept through the entire event but she looked cute doing it!

















Ryley was a rockstar vampire this year. We had to cover Taylor up so she wouldn't get terribly frightened.

Educating Americans

1. Please hope that your child doesn't require a special diet.
2. If he does require a special diet, please have a sense of humor.
3. If you fail the sense of humor requirement, have patience.

It's not that Ryley has serious diet limitations, he's just lactose intolerant. In general he can have a splash of 1% on his cereal but downing a carton of milk at lunch is pretty much a no no.

The way the school system works these days, if he wants to have pig in a blanket at school along with his classmates instead of PB&J from home, the lunch ladies are required to put a carton of milk on his tray. I've paid for it, fair enough. The problem is really the chocolate milk. It's like heroin for a 6 year old with lactose issues. He can't say no and they offer it as an option. Because I know he has a problem, I have a couple of options.

1. I can send him with PB&J every day and listen to him whine.
2. I can have him come up with a solution to the "milk problem".

Ryley's rather fantastic solution is that on the days he wants to eat at school, he takes a juice box from home. Awesome.

We tried to execute this plan in the last week but it's more difficult than it would appear.

The lunch ladies get pretty irritated if you rock the boat. They have to put that carton on his tray. The only way they won't is if you send a doctor's note to school indicating his "special diet". I don't know about anyone else but I'm not about to take my kid to the doctor just so I can tell the doctor that milk gives my kid the runs and the doctor can write a note. Kids, that's $100. No thanks. Try explaining that one to the school system. They must think we all run off to the doctor the moment our kids sneeze. Not in my house.

I talked to his teacher at length about this yesterday since she called me about it. She talked to the head lunch lady and emailed me to let me know that he could take his own juice but that they would have to put the milk on his tray until such time I provide a note about his special diet.

Fine. I told Ryley he had to take the milk but he didn't have to drink it and I don't want him to drink it. He got it.

Today the school nurse calls me because his teacher asked her to. Guess why. She had to ask me for the note from the doctor about his special diet.

And Ryley's teacher thinks he's the one with ADHD.

Didn't we just clear this up yesterday?!?!? Why is this so difficult and why are we wasting so much time over a carton of milk? I think the nurse got it but I'll probably get a call from the principal tomorrow.

Ol' Blue Eyes

I may have to beat them off with a stick in like... 10 years.

Rubber Duck Dash

The United Way of Western Nebraska does this thing every year called the Rubber Duck Dash. Basically, you purchase a rubber duck for $5 and they put numbers on it. On the day of the race they dump all these ducks that have been purchased into the river and the first duck across the line wins a car. The duck tally this year was 18,000.

This was my first year attending the event. I wasn't really sure what to expect but they had stuff for the kids and Ryley seemed keen on going. I only included a few pictures of the ducks here but it's an amazing site to see all these ducks come around the bend in the river. I'm pretty sure my 5 ducks were in the back getting caught up in the river bank.

We drug Grandma Linda along to make a morning of it as well. Here she is helping Ryley decorate his gift duck.

They have a theme every year. I'm guessing this year's theme had something to do with motorcycle ducks.

Ryley tends to get food all over his face. I guess with the size of the cinnamon rolls it wouldn't be so hard to do.

Taylor wasn't that into it. The race was cutting into her morning nap schedule.

Here they come around the bend...

Duck wranglers at the finish line.

Spongebob... the girl kitty

Ryley brought home two kitties from his last trip to Wyoming. They apparently had 9 kitties running around and we needed some mousers.

Ryley wanted to name this one Spongebob but since they are girl kitties, we convinced him that Sandy was perhaps a better name. Still revolving around the Spongebob theme, but more gender appropriate.

When we got them out of the box, I was rubbing Sandy's head on the bottom of Taylor's foot just to see what she would do. I think she liked the sensation but I'm not sure she realizes that her foot is in fact attached to her body yet. Sometimes she still seems really confused by things touching her feet.

The other kitty is all black. It became my unfortunate job to name the critter but I'm really bad at animal names. I'm still undecided almost a month later but mom suggested "Coal". When I mentioned it to Ryley, he really liked it. Secretly I will probably call it something else. No pictures of Coal yet. She's sort of shy.

I have proof!

In the event that someday Ryley decides that Taylor isn't all that
cool... I have proof that once upon a time he really liked her.

As much as he wanted a brother... he seems to be okay with having a
sister. I often catch him doing things like this with her...

Child labor?

Really. He doesn't mow the lawn yet. An executive decision was made to let him putz around the yard on the lawn mower. He had fun, and Todd got to take pictures. It was a win win situation for everyone apparently. I'm sure the day will come when he hates the lawn mower.

Just looking at this picture... I see so many things to comment on. Yes, that's a mound of ashes in the yard. It would appear that we are redneck enough to have a bonfire in the yard, but really, you're allowed to burn things like slash and weeds here. That is a little barn like shed on the left. It is badly run down but may eventually be a fort / playhouse for the kids. It just needs some work and no... there is no earthly reason for a mailbox in front of it. We have no idea what that's about.

This does give you an interesting look at the east side of our property. That is the neighbor's house. They've been remodeling it, hence the enormous roll off dumpster you see here. The dumpster is actually gone and the house is almost done now. It's almost like a Mexican villa sort of house.

And really I posted that picture so that I could now brag about my gardening skills a little.

Here's what happened to that piece of dirt you see behind Rye.

Ryley has to be in a lot of pictures. He sees the camera and assumes you're taking his picture. He is awfully cute though.

Anyway, this garden was something of an experiment this year. We moved in at Easter while I was very pregnant and didn't have a lot of time / energy to devote to the project. At any rate, it came out pretty good. We did corn (duh), lettuce, cucumbers, green beans, sweet peas, carrots, onions, pumpkin, and watermelon this year. I had to actually pull 4 pumpkin plants out as I had no idea how they grew. They were taking over the garden. We now have 5 actual pumpkins and 3 watermelons going. I will probably have to give away a ton of cucumbers as I had no idea how they grew either. I'll end up pickling the mass amounts of green beans I ended up with. The sweet peas were actually a vine variety so they didn't go quite so well but we enjoyed being able to nibble on them as we weeded the garden. The lettuce, carrots, and onions were perfect. So now that we know what we're doing, the garden will double in size next year and we'll add some other things like tomato, peppers, celery, and berries maybe. It's kind of nice to spend $10 on seeds and have fresh produce at your fingertips. If I could figure out how to construct a greenhouse I might actually try to do something all year long.