Happy Birthday, "Deere" Dave!

It was Dave’s 29th birthday on April 6! To celebrate that day, I went with a hands theme. I am into themes, as you might know, and go hog wild off of whatever the theme is. I gave him a card with hands on it that said “Take 5” on it, tying in the hands thing and sent him with hand-shaped cinnamon-sugar toast for breakfast. His co-workers at lunch had a party for him, so that was fun for him. This was his last week at the office, and he’ll miss his friends there, especially Kim and Nelson. Emma loved decorating our house for his birthday, and wrapping and hiding the present. That’s what she always wants to do for birthdays now, hide the presents and have the birthday person find them. So that’s kind of fun. I gave him a cute handmade card as well, with coupons for things I can do for him with my hands (massage, dinner of choice, going for a ride together on the 4 Wheeler while I hold on for dear life, etc.) and a movie. When he got off work, we went to Holy Smokes BBQ (I highly recommend) out in Layton for dinner, which is one of our favorite places. Delicious ribs, chicken, pork, sides like corn muffins, and don’t forget the green Jell-o that comes with each meal! Then we came home, turned our living room into a drive-in theatre and watched Superman. We also had Reese’s PB Pizza for his cake and sang to him. We love Daddy!

I had the kids all wear shirts that said something about Daddy. Emma's shirt was "Rad Like Dad!" "Daddy Makes Me LOL". Of course he does. Dave is a hoot! He always makes us laugh!

"Daddy's [littlest] Little Princess". He's got those girls wrapped around his finger, that's for sure!

During the day, the kids and I made him a picture with the kids handprints. It said:

“Sometimes you get discouraged/ Because I am so small/ And always leave my finger prints/On furniture and walls/ But everyday I’m growing big/ And soon I’ll be very tall/ Then my little handprints/Will be hard to recall./ So here’s a special handprint/Just so that you can say/ This is how my fingers looked/ When I placed them here today.” Dave loved it! Here it is...

His birthday cake for that night, the Reese's PB Chocolate Pizza!

It was a good day, but the birthday fun wasn’t over yet! I have been planning a surprise birthday for Dave for years now, since he’s never had a surprise birthday party before for him. I was going to do it when he turned 25, but it never happened, so I thought 30. But since we won’t be around all of our family and friends next year, I thought we’d better do it this year. So I’ve been scheming and planning for quite some time. We had a John Deere themed-birthday, since he loves those tractors and all things John Deere. It was the 8th of April, and I was so sneaky! I told Dave that day we had Emma’s kindergarten shots in the morning, and later a play group with some of my friends in south Davis County. Really, I was down in Bountiful making preparations for his birthday! We decorated the cake and cupcakes, made food for the dinner, got the decorations finished up. We schemed with the Millers, they were so great to help out! Dennis called Dave up and they went gun shopping down at Cabella’s, something they’ve been talking about for a while, after Dave got off work on Friday. Then the plan was for Dennis to drop Dave off to meet me at his parent’s house since I had just gotten done with the play group. So he did drop him off at the Ryerse's, while we all hid, ready with our noise makers and poppers. When he came in, he was so surprised! He had a huge grin on his face and was so happy, he couldn’t believe it! He had no idea! I’m proud the kids kept it a secret, they did a great job! We had many come, and many that couldn’t. Those who came: Dave’s mom Sue and dad Dad, sister Julie, brothers Randy, Brian, and Jeff, Jerry & Stacy with their kids, my parents Scott and Dianne and brother Marko, my sister Amy and brother-in-law Jeff, friends from work Nelson and his friend John, Kim and her husband, long-time family friend Eric Sahm, college friends Brandon & Katie Bills, friends Dennis & Calena Miller and their kids. It was a good time! I invited many of Dave’s friends growing up, and his favorite mission companion, unfortunately, not everyone could come. But it was great! Dave introduced everyone, and then we said a prayer and had BBQ chicken sandwiches for dinner, with lots of chips, green salad, calico baked beans, fruit, bow-tie pasta salad, and homemade root beer, some of Dave’s favorite foods. It was pretty tasty, if I do say so myself! I am so happy so many were willing to help out to make this happen, thanks! We then talked and just hung out. I had John Deere decorations out, and had some JD toy tractors for the kids to play with, along with some JD coloring pages. I had a needle in a haystack and some other games I planned, but that didn’t ever happen, we were all too busy enjoying each other’s company. We sang to Dave and had him blow out the candles, then we had cake and ice-cream.

Here are some pictures I took, which weren't many since I was so occupied doing other things. But it's a little sampling of the night and the fun we had!

Dave's JD Cake! The cake turned out pretty well, and was so easy to do. I put a JD tractor toy on there, along with a JD Barn, and then made a little garden plot which I put fruits and vegetables on that I made out of air heads and food writer markers, and had a fence all around I made out of pretzels. I wanted to put an astericks * on the cake with a little note on the bottom of the cake saying "This cake not to actual scale" because the watermelon was half the size of the tractor and the tractor was larger than the barn. He he! It was fun though.

The scrumptious cupcakes. Why, oh, why do I always take blurry pictures? Me and my Dave - surprise!!

Happy birthday to you!

Enjoying time with some friends, like the Bills, Brandon and Katie! We love 'em!

Dave's work buddies. Nelson, John, [Kim's husband], and Kim.

The Miller's holding Kaleb, and Lucy, while Grandpa and Julie chill in the background. Good job, Dennis and Calena! Thanks for making this work so well! The kids had fun together playing and running around. Here's Cal, cousin Tayla, and friend Alec jumping on the kids couch! Kolby and Amy holding one of their favorite nieces...the other being Emma. (: Okay, so they only have nephews besides Lucy & Em. And they just happen to be one of our favorites as well. Julie, what can I say...she pretty much rocks! Cousins Brody and Lucy at their first of many birthday parties (besides the party that began when they were born), just about 1 month apart!

Uncle Marko, Dad Ryerse, Randy, and the Bills enjoy the company. It was actually Marko's real birthday that night, and he actually still came to part of the party. Yeah!

Mom Ryerse, the birthday boy and Katie Bills eating and talking. The best part about parties, the food and the people!

Brian, Jeff, Eric Sahm, and Mom Stoddard getting ready to sing to the man of the hour.

Dave getting ready to blow out 29 (or as many as were in the box) candles! Happy birthday to my DAVE!

It was a memorable night, and it made my love's night, or maybe week, month, and year! We are so grateful to all of our friends and family, we have the best! These people are the best presents we could have!

The final party for Dave was on Sunday, we had a co-birthday for Dave and Marko at my mom and dad’s. Cal and Emma slept over at Amy and Kolby’s the night before, so we picked them up there. They had a great time with Aunt “Mamy” and Uncle Kolby for their sleepover! While they were sleeping over, Dave and I hung out. It was nice to have some quiet time to ourselves. We watched an edited version of “137 Hours”, which is a movie based on a true story of a guy who was hiking in Southern Utah, and his arm got stuck under a boulder in a narrow ravine. It was very interesting, I liked it a lot. We picked up Grammie and brought her down and got to talk to her on the way down. I love my Grammie, she’s so neat! We chatted for a while, then ate some dinner. We had sub sandwiches, homemade onion rings, salad, and potato nachos. We continued a tradition Amy suggested, and that was to go around the table and say something nice about the person who’s birthday it is. I am grateful for Dave because he always says the nicest things to me that make me feel good, he’s so supportive always, and I love how he is with the kids. I just love him in every way! I love Marko because he’s just fun. I told him he’s like the comic relief in our family. He really is! We got to Skype with Adam, Meghan and Steven, which was probably the high-light of the night! Then we did cake and ice-cream. The cake was a large sub sandwich and was very cute! My mom is simply amazing and has shared some of her knowledge and skills with me, though I ail in comparison. We had Birthday Bash and Moon Pie ice-cream, they were both amazing, I tried both. I am a connoisseur of ice-cream, you know. The birthday boys, and some party guests!

We thought it was funny that Marko and Cal's clothes were kind of matching!

Me and my girls!

The kiddos just love Uncle Marko, I do to, you know! Happy birthday to you, too!

Exciting Updates, Mishaps and Adventures

So I'm playing catch up today, I haven't blogged in a long time. So here are some snippets of what's been going on... Dave got his acceptance letter to Washington State University in Spokane to attend their Masters of Health Administration graduate program, and we’ve decided to go there. He applied to some other schools as well, but we both just feel WSU (the other WSU, he he!) is a great fit for Dave and our family. Hooray for him and his diligence! He also has just a few more weeks until he’ll get his medical coding certificate. I’m so proud of his hard work. It gets so stressful at times, but he just does a great job juggling everything. I also love just watching him with the kids, they love and look up to him so much! He also just got a new job at the University of Utah Hospital, where he already works. He’ll be working in the morgue now, doing all of the legal and financial things for those who have died in the hospital, and he’ll start a week from tomorrow. He loves his team and what he does and will miss that, but needed a change of pace. The lady who was over him makes everyone in the department’s life harder. So he’ll try this job for a little bit, while we apply for jobs up in Spokane. So yes, we’ll be moving this summer, at least by August up to Spokane. Which is exciting, but kind of scary. It will be great to move on with our lives, get a bigger place to live in, have our own little adventure and further our education. But I’ve got some anxiety about moving away from familiar surroundings, people, and the life I know here. It will be good though, we’re looking forward to it. Here's the building he'll be in most of the time.

We went to the Ogden temple on Tuesday night for the last time as we know it. They are going to basically tear it apart and put a new temple back together. The new one will be done in a few years, which is exciting. But we’ve had some great spiritual experiences there. This temple is special to us because it is the temple we went to with a group of friends back in college, when we were just friends, every Friday afternoon to do baptisms for the dead. That was great to do and always ended the week off right. Then as we dated, we kept going with our friends. In the upper parking lot, we practiced how to drive his manual truck, because I didn’t know how to drive a stick shift. That was fun. (: Good times. After we were married, we began going to monthly (or as close to it as we could) to do endowment sessions and initiatories. The Spirit is always so sweet at the temple and I’m grateful for all we learn and feel each time we go there. We’ve been blessed to have a temple that is so close it just takes five minutes to drive there. Now it will be the Bountiful for a while, which we don’t mind at all, since it is our favorite you know! But we had a great time lingering a little longer at the temple this last time, taking one last look at the temple we’ve called ours over the last seven years.

We've been enjoying the weather, whether that's snowy (like this day a few weeks ago when we went sledding), or 70 degrees and warm. This time of year is funny, you never know what to wear or what to expect. But we'll take the warmer days when we can and we're looking forward to spring!

Here are the cute cousins and we've seen them quite a bit lately! Emma, Tayla, Kaison, and Cal. They are all pretty close in age and have such a good time together!

Emma’s doing great! She has been continuing on with preschool, that she still likes, but is feeling more grown up than the other kids. She loves her dance class she’s enrolled in and is taking piano lessons, too so she’s a busy little girl. She had a sleepover here with her cousin Tayla a few nights ago. These two girls are so much fun and just love each other. I love hearing their conversations when they think no one is listening. They are just growing up way too fast and will start kindergarten in the fall. She says some of the funniest things. A few weeks ago at FHE, we were talking about the Word of Wisdom. We were explaining that Heavenly Father knew that smoking was bad for the body before all of the scientists and people knew it. “So Heavenly Father is, like, a hero!” she replied. It was super cute. Another day, we were discussing the resurrection and how we’ll live after this life and our bodies and spirits will be united. “So it’s like on Scooby Doo Cyber Chase how they go from one level to the next?” Yep, kind of like that. Then I explained that there is no “Game Over” for us. I like how she conceptualizes things. She is a sweetheart, though! She loves little kids and is such a sweet “junior mommy”.

She loves trying on my wedding dress! Always hopeless romantic.

She loves getting all dolled up, dressing up and doing makeup. She's getting better, believe it or not.

She likes doing silly things, like making silly faces, putting tights on her head and running around the house.

Emma on the Princess Day we did. Here she is getting her foot bath.

She enjoys doing arts and crafts. She made this sand picture and had a great time doing it.

Emma with little friend Alec, he just loves her! And she loves all little kids.

Cal is growing up! He’s talking up a storm now. It cracks us up what he says. He’s Emma’s little side-kick, always tagging along, and when he’s not with her, he says “Where’s Emma?” And Emma sticks up for him. One day, while playing with the cousins, Tayla called Cal a “punk”. Emma got upset and called Tayla a punk back. She was very sad Tayla called him that. When I asked what was going on and they told me, Cal said “Tayla punked me!” Cal also loves his baby sister. He always says “Hi Lucy, Hi Lucy! Hey Sweetie girl!” He gets so excited and just loves her! He’s got very good manners and is very good about remembering to say “please” and “thank you”. He’s got so much energy and is always on the go!

Always making us laugh!

Emma loves to dress Cal up. He doesn't love it so much.

Or, maybe he does...? We're trying to teach him what's for girls and what's for boys. He's learning.

Little hick boy.

Cal loves to play with balls and play catch. This ball he deflated and then put on his head as a hat. We had a little mishap with Cal in March. I was working on finishing up Lucy’s birth announcement cross stitch, but Cal got to the needle and was pretending to cross stitch as well. The needle fell on the floor and Cal stepped on it, breaking it in a few pieces. One of the pieces we found on the floor, and we found another part of it, which Dave pulled out of his foot. Poor kid was crying and in so much pain! We cleaned it out, dressed and bandaged it. Then he was fine, walking on it and playing all week, and said it felt fine when we asked him about it. Later on in the week, when I saw it on Thursday night, it wasn’t looking good. It was all discolored darkly around the area he stepped on the needle. When I showed Dave, and went to my parents on Friday with the kids, they all said I should definitely take him in. So we went to the Instacare Clinic in Bountiful, about noon, and they checked it out, and did X-rays. Sure enough, the poor kid had about a centimeter of needle stuck up pretty far in his foot. So the top, pointy part of the needle got lodged up in there. They referred us to Primary Children’s. So we went there and waited, and waited and WAITED. It was so busy, they were calling in other doctors to the ER. We played with Cal a ton in the waiting room, trying to keep him entertained. He did pretty well considering what was going on! Then we were finally seen by a doctor, who said he thought the best thing would be to have the Radiologist do an ultrasound on it so he could pin point (no pun intended) the exact location and angle of the needle, and get it out with a quick incision and . The Radiologist was busy for a while, and it was after five, so we had to wait longer for them to round up some nurses who would stay past their shift to help out. Cal did so great! He never really cried, even when he was being poked with IV’s, he just said “owie” very softly, which surprised the nurses that he handled it so well. They gave him some sedatives, and then they took him back into one of the Radio-active rooms to do the ultrasound and operate to get the needle out. He came back to us about a half an hour later, and was so out of it! We had to stay there for another hour so they could make sure he was okay. His eyes were going crazy, and he was so out of it, but still kind of knew what was going on. He muttered some things we couldn’t understand, sang some songs like Old Mc Donald, said “I wanna go!” and “ice-cream” (he was starving but couldn’t eat anything, we promised him we’d get ice-cream after, I guess he remembered), “I want my car” (we brought some toy cars for him to drive around, that saved the day! He loved driving them all over the hospital), and gradually regained full consciousness. He wanted to try to stand and sit up, but would just fall to one side or the other, it was so sad, yet funny! And when they brought him some Gatorade and some crackers, when he tried to put it in his mouth, he couldn’t quite make it. When we gave him his favorite toy car, he drove it all over his hospital bed, and kept saying “Watch this, Mom!” or “Watch this Dad!” Then he’d do tricks with it while laying down. He was a little drowsy that night, but was just fine the next day, and has told us his foot doesn’t hurt at all. So he’s all better! I swear that boy, he is always going to the doctors! It seems he takes after his father, who was always getting hurt! (: He always seems to get every sickness going around as well. He went to the doctor a couple of times in February already, once for an upper-respiratory infection, and once for a double ear infection, where his ear drum burst. He got chicken pox, Emma never got it. He got Swine Flu, she never got that either. He gets the colds and flus. And then he’s been so much to the doctors and specialists for his allergies and growth problems. I’m just grateful (but waiting) that he hasn’t broken any bones yet, or gotten major stitches, with the way he is. He’s just such a little crazy boy, and always getting hurt. I’m grateful; that overall he’s a perfectly healthy boy. Going to Primary Children’s always makes you so grateful to have health. It makes me so sad to see the ones with chronic conditions or diseases that are incurable. I feel such heartache for those children and their parents, but know Heavenly Father has given them those trials to grow from, and me different trials to deal with.

Growing up too fast, buddy! I think he looks so grown up in this picture! Lucy is growing up! She’s now 6 months and loosing the newborn look. We gave her a binky a few weeks ago, and she loves that! She’s now starting to smile (but stops every time we get the camera), and it looks like she may have a dimple or two. She still loves her beauty rest but is awake more now. She’s starting to hold her head up better and she’s getting stronger. She’s also been a bit more fussy lately. She met her new cousin Brody, who is about a month younger than her. They are about the same size! It’s so much fun! They’re too cute!

Here she is at exactly one month. Cute!

Lucy and Brody, such sweet cousins!

And to end things off, a little video. This is Emma's first piano recital! My mom has been teaching her for the last two months. We went shopping and bought her a new dress she picked out. To wear and everything She was very excited to do it. We weren’t quite sure if she’d follow through with it, as she gets very shy sometimes, like when she was supposed to give a talk in Primary a month ago, she froze and wouldn’t do it. But we practiced very hard and she did it! She was Grandma’s first student to perform. She went up there and did both of her songs well. She even remembered to take a bow when she was finished. Also, before it started, my mom had Cal come up and show everyone how to bow, because he has been practicing with Emma this past couple weeks to get ready. Everyone thought it was really funny, it cracks me up when he does it! He grabs his belly, and it’s just so cute! Bravo!