Happy Heart Day!

Valentines Day started with Rylie and I receiving beautiful orchids from Brandon. We both loved them! We spent dinner together as a family and then Brandon and Rylie came to the basketball game I was coaching at. All in all, it was a pretty low key Valentines Day...Brandon and I are planning on celebrating next week after our schedules lighten up a little bit! :)

We had 2 different cute little Valentines outfits for Rylie to wear...but both of them were short sleeved and it was cold and rainy all day yesterday! So she does have one of her heart shirts on, just under her red jacket. :)

She was very excited for the coloring books and stickers that she got as a gift. :)

Rylie with her Valentine. :) I love these 2 to pieces!

Lately

I apologize to all of my loyal blog readers on how much of a slacker I have been lately. :) I have been coaching a high school cheer team all year and am coming up to the end...our schedule has been crazy! But, I have definitely missed blogging, so hopefully there will be a lot more posting in the upcoming weeks.

Rylie has literally grown up overnight! She hit 20 months old and started talking. I mean, she has always been pretty chatty, but the actual words started pouring out of that cute little mouth! :) She will say anything we ask her to and is pretty easy to understand most of the time. Just about the time she hit 21 months, 2-3 word sentences started coming. Now we regularly get "Mommy's here!", "Daddy, come play!", "Mommy, kiss please?"...and we love them all!

She still loves her books, but I will often now find her reading them by herself. She loves to flip through the pages and point out stuff she knows. She recently has started liking the I Spy books and any of the finding the picture books. She doesn't really have one favorite, just any books in general.

Rylie loves music! She has started to sing along with us or the music in the car and definitely has her favorites! She just recently got over her obsession with The B-I-B-L-E (we are very grateful...30 min drive with a 45 sec. song on repeat = a whole lot of The B-I-B-L-E!) and now really likes "Jesus Loves Me" (Mommy, Jesus?), "Deep and Wide", "Joy, Joy, Joy" (she loves to say Where? with that one), and "This Little Light of Mine" (she also loves to scream the No! after the hide it under the bush part). She will sing "Twinkle Twinkle" and "ABCD" all day long if we let her. :)

She is not a huge fan of eating or food in general right now, but still loves her smoothies. She also loves the salad bar at AJ's, speghetti, and mac and cheese (but who doesn't?).

Rylie is finally down to one nap a day and usually sleeps for about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. She is a great sleeper at night (11 hours normally) as long as she is in her own bed...not so great anywhere else. :)

She loves to say the ABC's and count to 10 (though she won't say 1,7, or 10...those are for us to say).

Her favorite place in the world is the park...she asks about it almost everyday. She loves her kitchen, Minnie Mouse smoothie maker, and pots and pans. Her favorite TV show is a toss up between Sesame Street and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse and even though she has probably only seen it once, she walks around the house saying "Go Diego Go!" (Mommy's not a huge fan of Dora or Diego, so I don't put it on a lot). :)

She is such a happy, lovable little girl. She runs up to you randomly to throw her arms around you for a hug. If she see's you kiss someone, she must be the next one to receive one ("Kiss?"). We love her to pieces and can't believe she is almost 2!

Superstition Hike

One morning during the holidays, we decided to head out to the Superstition Mountains to try out our new hiking backpack that we got for Christmas. The scenery was beautiful and Rylie seemed to enjoy riding in the pack. She really loved drinking out of the Camelback and the snacks she got along the way! :)

Character Breakfast

While we were in California, Mimi made a character breakfast reservation at Disneyland. We got to go in before the park opened and had a fabulous buffet breakfast for as long as we wanted. A bunch of characters stop by your table throughout the morning and you can take pictures with them. It was the Minnie and Friends breakfast so of course Minnie Mouse was there. I was really hoping that the Winnie the Pooh characters would show up since Rylie loves them right now, and much to my surprise, Pooh, Eeyore, and Tigger were all there! Rylie didn't mind the characters as long as she didn't have to be super close to them by herself. :) She loved Minnie Mouse and Chip and Dale...not a fan of Eeyore (even though he kept trying to make friends with her...it was so cute!) and Pooh made it to the table next to us, but never came to ours. It was so cute and something we definitely will do again in the future!

Waving at all of the characters :)

Blowing Tigger kisses

Showing Minnie where her nose was :)

Minnie was trying really hard to help Rylie and Eeyore become friends...yeah, not so much!

Our little Minnie Mouse :)

Christmas #2

We headed out to California bright and early the day after Christmas to celebrate with the Juarez clan. We arrived mid-morning and headed to Helen's house to have Christmas. Needless to say, Rylie was once again very spoiled! We all had a blast opening gifts and relaxing that afternoon before heading to, where else, but Disneyland! It was pretty crowded so we stayed in California Adventure, but it was fun to be there all together!

Christmas Day 2011

This was the first Christmas morning that we started off in our own house since we got married, so it was different and so fun! Rylie slept in a little bit due to the festivities the night before, but we eventually woke up, read the Christmas story, and finally started the gifts with her stocking. I probably could have stopped shopping after her stocking was filled since she loved everything in her stocking and spent quite a lot of time playing with those items. :) My parents and Grandma came over about 9 for more gifts and breakfast. Jeff and Laura joined us later and then we all headed over to my Great Aunt Mary's house for lunch. That night, we went to my parents house for the Perkins family Christmas. Whew! It was a full, but very fun day.

Modeling her princess shoes!

She loved her kitchen!

Playing with cousins.

The chaotic and super fun Perkins family Christmas!

She loved her baby stroller. She spent most of the evening pushing it all over my parents house.