Quack Quack...

Yeah you guessed it... I'm blogging about ducks. There just really isn't anything going on right now. I'm not holding out on you or anything. We'll have lots of posting when the holidays roll around, but right now the highlight of our day literally is visiting the ducks! We have a community behind us that Ryder and I like to go walk through a few times a week. Sometimes we just need to get out of the house and get some fresh air. We always end our walk at a little pond at the end of the 18th hole of a golf course. Derrik happened to be golfing on this course today so Ryder and I headed down to feed the ducks and wait for him to finish up. I swear these are the best fed ducks in the world! Every time we go down there there are multiple people always feeding them. We usually head down with a slice or two, but these people come down to loaves full! It's crazy!!!

The Pond

Ryder giving the ducks some bread

(he likes to sneak some of the bread for himself most of the time)
Watching them eat up their treat

These three always get the most out of us.

They stand out because there are only two of these darker ones and two of the white ones (i think the other one is hurt... breaks my heart! It won't get out of the water anymore)

They are always standing up front and center. Even when we are out of bread they always hang out a little longer then the rest and entertain Ryder :)

Splish Splash

One nice advantage of not living back home is we still get to go swimming! We haven't taken advantage of it much since we've been here, but realized we need to because Ryder just l-o-v-e-s it! I squished him into his bathing suit and forced his swim hat onto his head and headed to the pool.

Mommy and Ryder

So strong he can hang on all by himself!

Teaching Ryder to blow bubbles

Derrik leaves one week from tomorrow!

We leave in twelve days!

Can't wait :)

We're Boring... Sorry

Sorry for the lack of writing material this week. Sometimes I feel like I need to write three blogs in one day and other times a week goes by with nothing. We really haven't done anything exciting at all this week... not worth blogging about anyhow.

Derrik finished up his basketball referring certification this week (if he passes his take home/open book test). He also had his second baseball lesson with a local kid in the area and is starting up with another group of brothers sometime this week. Derrik is doing great as far as rehab goes. He feels great and thinks it is so crazy that he shouldn't be pitching in a game until May. It has been proven though that a twelve month rehab is the best in the long run with the type of surgery he had and not to push it. So we're waiting it out of course!

Ryder is just getting cuter and cuter! Gosh I could eat him up! He got his eighth tooth this week. At this point they are coming in like crazy. He has two molars, but still only two top front teeth. He is a walking... running... machine. Everyone kept telling me life was over once he started walking, but we love it! Now when we are in public or outside, and he wants down he can walk...not crawling on yucky, dirty, germy floors and he doesn't get his clothes dirty :)

Speaking of germs... Ryder and I both got our flu and swine flu shots this past week. I just don't want to even think about the flu with all of this travel we have coming up! Derrik didn't get it because "he never gets sick"... he said it not me! So when Derrik is puking on our time with our family everyone please remind him that his wife told him to get the shots!

Me... well... i'm just me. Same old here. Working, cooking, cleaning... loving on my boys :)

So I did manage to find a few pictures. Ryder lately has been pushing the dog cage all the way from the laundry room into the living room. He also realized he can still crawl into it (he hasn't done this since Sarasota). He literally crawls into it, cries like crazy, I get him out, calm him down, and he crawls back in! I'll try to get some pictures of him truly stuck in it... I didn't realize all the picture I had were with the top of the cage opened up. AND.... his smile is still Oh So Lovely!

Today Derrik spent the day at the horse track. He claimed this race today was like "the world series of baseball" for horse racing. I could care less and did not want to go. To me it's a bunch of horses running in a circle. He tells me the fun part is picking the winner... unfortunately i'm good at picking last place! Ryder and I drove about a half hour to Scottsdale to check out an amazing mall! What i'd give for an unlimited bank account and a day to myself in that mall!!! When Ryder had enough we got back in the car and drove to the horse track for the last race of the day. Ryder was freaking out pointing at the horses from inside the building so I knew when they came running by in the race his face would be priceless... and it was! Enjoy this video of Ryder watching the horses of the final stretch of the race...

P.S. - 13 Days until Derrik leaves for Pa. and 17 days until Ryder and I fly out!!!

Praying for Stellan

I have posted before about a little boy named Stellan. He just turned one last week and spent his first birthday and his first halloween in the hospital extremely sick last week... actually he's spent a lot of his first year in the hospital sick. I am not even going to try to pretend I understand what is going on exactly with him, but basically he has an awful heart condition. He is being flown to Boston Children's Hospital on Friday to undergo an extremely rare surgery that would very well take him up to heaven. I can't help but look at my perfectly healthy little boy just about this age and not hug him a little closer. They are home right now trying to spend some very special family time with their other three children (all under 5) before a life changing week next week. Poor Stellan's momma seems to be falling apart with all that is coming up in such a short time for her family. This family has been on my mind all week and could really use the prayers of our readers. Please check out her blog for more info on Stellan's story:

http://www.mycharmingkids.net/

PRAY FOR STELLAN!!!

Great Grammies

Today was Ryder's lucky day... He got mail times two! Two halloween cards both from his great grammies. Thank you so much MiMi and NiNi for giving your great-grandson something to occupy his whole afternoon. He didn't even rip them yet!!! He loves pointing to the pumpkins since he knows what they are now after a month of drilling it into his head!

"These are for ME?!"

Looking at the pumpkins on his cards

Does the fact that they were selling these in the $1 section at our favorite store, Target, mean our trip home and the holidays are getting REALLY close?!? I think so!

No Time Change Here Folks

This is just a friendly reminder to all you East Coast folks back home that we did not change our clocks back an hour last night out here in Arizona. As I said when we moved out here, Arizona does not observe daylight savings time so since we were never "pushed forward" in the spring there was no need to "push back" last night. So instead of being three hours behind everyone back home like we have been, we are now only two hours behind!

We thought it was fun how the time change wouldn't affect us at all, but now instead of Sunday football games being at 10 and 1 they are at 11 and 2. I'd rather deal with a fluctuating sports schedule then a fluctuating baby sleep schedule any day of the week! I couldn't help but chuckle to see all the mommy updates on my facebook today talking about how their children didn't realize the time changed last night! I'm sure i'll get big time payback when we head back home for a month... oh well we'll take it!

Halloween

I hope everyone had a fun, happy, and safe halloween. We had a great time today with our little man. We were so clueless as what to do with for Halloween. We knew we wanted to celebrate with Ryder since he has been in love with his monkey costume for well over a month now, has learned what a pumpkin is and can point to it when asked, and just seems ready to participate in all the fun. However... we don't know anybody, where to go, and have no older children to show him the ropes. PLUS... The Phillies were starting at 5 here so it would have been hard to convince Derrik that we had to miss the game for something Ryder truly doesn't even get (He said he would have... but I just felt plain guilty)! We found a little festival in a development around here called Estrella. That really pretty mountain range I put pictures up of when we first moved here... It's an upscale developement in those mountains. It is gorgeous out there, but kind of in the middle of no where. We decided to make the trip out, but made it a little late due to Derrik's basketball schedule today... AND... forgot the stroller! I think we missed the fun part, but Ryder didn't notice. We got him some strawberry ice cream and sat in the shade while we ate it. Ryder then proceeded to walk all around the festival (which was luckily pretty much cleared out) showing off his charm to the few people still hanging around. It wasn't what I imagined we would do today, but Ryder had a blast and that is all that matters!!!

Walking towards the festival

Eating some ice cream with his Da

(we are working so hard to turn Da into Dad or Daddy!)

Cooling our little monkey off
Off he goes...

Having a blast running up and down this hill

Me chasing him all the way down the hill....

Me smiling... Ryder wasn't participating

And that's all folks... Da given Ryder a lift back to the car

Da using all his energy to run just to get some gigles out of Ryder :)

Denoves.... Took these for you guys since you'll be calling this home for two months

The background building is the clubhouse with an amazing pool and water park.

Ryder and I have already invited ourselves for many days of fun in the sun during spring training :) Hope you don't mind!

Gorgeous view of the lake!

When we got home, I contemplated taking Ryder out to a neighborhood to go trick-or-treating, but I realized he was having a blast doing this....

Cheering on the Phillies!!!

(he's clapping in this one)

I hope they can come back in the next few innings so Ryder isn't disappointed when he wakes up in the morning!

Happy Halloween

We want to wish all of our friends and family a very safe and happy Halloween. We will be attempting a short trick-or-treating trip with Ryder tonight. We are hoping for a good time, but aren't setting our expectations too high.... I will definitely get some pictures!

Happy Halloween

***Prayers Needed***

I am going to keep this anonymous because I am not sure this person has shared this with everyone yet, but we have a family member who is in need of some prayers for their health. They could surely use an extra prayer or two through this hard time.

Our Holiday Travel Schedule

After weeks of going back and forth on what we were going to do over the holidays we have finally settled on a plan that works for us and our wallet! The time off has been confirmed by the Reds and the plane tickets have been puchased... so I guess I can say our plans are pretty official at this point. With that said... I'll try to lay it all out for you! If it sounds confusing... it is... imagine trying to do all of this with our extremely active little man tagging along!



Ready for it?!?



Friday - November 20th: After rehab this day, Derrik will be packing up our car (not sure which one yet) with our belongings we will need for our trip and our three pets. He will set out on his way to Pennsylvania. This trip is extremly long and will probably take him about three days.



Tuesday - November 24th: Ryder and I are flying into Harrisburg to meet up with Derrik.



We will be spending the Thanksgiving holiday with Derrik's side of the family. We can not wait to spend almost a week there and spend some time with family! Ryder and I have not made it back to Pennsylvania since Thanksgiving last year!!!



Monday - November 30th: Derrik, Ryder, the pets, and I will all make the six hour trek to Boston to take Derrik to the airport (Derrik is flying out of Boston so I don't have to drive through N.Y.C. by myself... sweet hubby huh?!). Derrik is flying back to Arizona for the three weeks of rehab he has to do between Thanksgiving and Christmas. Once we drop Derrik off at the airport, I will drive the next hour and half back home to The Cape.



** It was a really hard decision to be away from Derrik for these three weeks over the holidays. I will miss my 25th birthday with him :( I tear up just thinking about it, but we decided this is something we had to do so we could get as much time as we could with both families. Doing it this way meant our animals would travel with us which saved us probably almost $1,000 in kennel fees... I hope our pets know how much we love them**



Friday - December 18th: Derrik flies back into Boston!!!



Derrik is planning on coming to The Cape to get the car (and spend some time with us after being back in AZ for soo long!)and then he will drive to Pennsylvania for a couple days to celebrate Christmas with his family. Ryder and I won't be making this trip since Ryder would have been there three weeks earlier for Thanksgiving and will be there again in January. We contemplated it, but it's an extra 12 hours round-trip with Ryder in the car! Not Fun! Anyhow... Derrik will be back in The Cape in time to celebrate Christmas with us. I can not begin to explain to you how happy I am that we will be celebrating Christmas with our tree, our ornaments, our stockings, our bed! I literally fall asleep as night with a huge smile on my face knowing we will get to do this :)



We are hoping to get a ski trip in between Christmas and New Years! No firm plans yet, but we're going to make an effort :)



Sometime around New Years we will pack up the car and pets and head back out to Pennsylvania to see everyone before we head back out West for the rest of Derrik's rehab and another baseball season.



The only two official dates we have for the end of our trip is my ticket back to Arizona from Harrisburg for Wednesday January 6th and Derrik has to report back to rehab Monday January 11th.



We are so excited that we figured out a way to maximize our time home with all of our family and are literally counting down the days until we get there!!! Less then a month!!!

Pumpkin Carving

Ahh it's finally the week of Halloween!!! The holidays are FINALLY here!!! I am SO excited :)

So with the week of Halloween finally approaching we decided to carve our pumpkin. Actually... Derrik did the carving, and I did the photo taking. I was shocked at what a great job Derrik did with the pumpkins and told him he set our standards pretty high for the years to come! He is definitely the official "pumpkin carver" of the family now! Thanks babe :)

Cutting the lid

Time to get the guts out
Ryder checking out the inside of these things he's been playing with all week

All clean :)

Chloe needs her couple seconds of fame...

Poor girl use to get all the attention!

Our monster stencil....

Finished Product!
Pretty impressive huh?!

Peanut Butter Jelly Time

Ok I know i've been on Ryder over load the past couple of days, but he is just SO goofy lately! He constantly has us running for the camera. Not to mention we don't even tell him to smile anymore and still get this terribly awful smile! Ok... I think it's cute, but it doesn't make for great photos to share with family! Today he was watching some football with dad while eating his PB&J like usual... and made a mess!

Want a Kiss?!?!

Playing Catch with Dad

"You want me to throw this?!"

"But you always tell me not to throw them when were at home?!"

"Am I standing right Da?"

"Just like this?"

My little boy is getting it :)

Got It! Man he learns quick :)

And back to the ground it goes...

Running the bases

I think he liked playing in the dugout the best though!