ONE!

This precious child turned one last week! It's birthday craziness around here... Reason #452 that we haven't purchased one Christmas present.

He is 50% weight, 95% height
He is not walking yet and isn't all that interested
He loves to "talk" and loves saying "ro-ro" in his deep voice
He plays with cars with full sound effects like big brothers & can throw a ball across the room
He is TOUGH and now yells at his brothers when they are bugging him or hurting him

We did his cake a bit too late... he was ready for bed!

Again, pardon all the horrible iphone pics!

Mac's Big 3rd Bday!

Mac, Tucker, Issie & Jackson on the train for Mac's Birthday. Mac's "party" was hanging out with friends at Chick-Fil-A and riding the mall train! He loved it and felt celebrated. I have a friend whose birthday is in this same time period and when I was pregnant with Mac she told me how horrible it was to have a birthday in early December. I dismissed it originally because it is 3 weeks before Christmas, but I now see it is actually the worst/most hectic week of the year!! Eek! Poor Mac.

We did celebrate originally in St.Louis over Thanksgiving. In VINTAGE form, the pirate cake he wanted so much was in my parents' house for all of 4 minutes before he dug his fingers in and "erased" Charlie's name from the cake!

The train...

Safety First

Tucker's "flotation device" outfit while going over his memorized airplane safety instructions.

What?! You didn't grow up with your brother forcing you to play "emergency landing" over & over?? (Mac's required to wear his bathrobe during these sessions)

Thanksgiving...

Sean, Patrick & Kyle during our visit in middle-of-nowhere Illinois! We had a great day gathering all the Ryan boys during Thanksgiving.

I will need to fill this in as I get some pictures from people in St.Louis. We still don't have a camera so we are relying on others for capturing our lives :)

Happy Halloween!

Charlie's Halloween inspiration - Willie! (Uncle Brian's St. Bernard)

This first one is purely to see our St.Bernard's head :)

Fall Festival Overload

We attended two fall festivals today... the boys had a blast and are sleeping soundly! First they had to pick out a pumpkin.


This sweet thing is going to be ONE in a month. HOW?!?!

The onslaught of pumpkin patch pictures begins now1

Mac's class at the Pumpkin Patch. He has been wearing his pumpkin hat for about 3 months, but today it finally made sense. We LOVE this kid.

From the iPhone.

We've been soccering...


Mac either is dressed to "play" or dressed to entertain. Above: Mac & his buddy Harrison! Below: The definition of friendship. David & Katie are our dear, dear friends. This was Shelby Kate's first football game and she has now been to 2 in her 5 weeks of life. Kyle is an incredible coach (no surprise there) and the Eagles are 7-0. It has been a fun, fun season.


Look who is almost ONE. What?!!?

He is a crack up.

A lot of pictures showing our middle child's personality. Themes of late: goggles or sunglasses EVERYWHERE. Sleeping anywhere and everywhere. Being "spunky." Pardon the bad iPhone pictures mixed in here.

You've Got One Thing Right.

I've really been trying to convey the gospel to Tucker more.

After a ridiculous spazz out by Mac that resulted in me putting him in his room for a cool down, I walked back in the room to Tucker. Tucker said "Well, you've got one thing right... Some of us are just not born perfect."

Apparently the first time he missed that NONE of us are born perfect, so we had to review that part.

Big Mac

Mac has actually cried most days as Tucker went to school for the past two years. His day has finally come!



... all from my iphone thanks to my dumbest move of 2011...I took a few pictures of the boys outside this morning, left my Nikon on the back of my bumper and drove off with it on the back. It will not turn on right now and I am sick.

First Day of Big School

Ms. Mathis & Tuck





Just a few other shots of the day-to-day around here. We limped through the end of summer. We tried to do a few fun activities a week to get everyone out of the house, but there was a LOT of fighting and arguing over fairness. It was TIME for school to begin.


Charlie is a crazy crawler and can find every small lego piece... this is my only break. The pack n play. He mostly loves it.



The dinosaur train airport.