A Harry Halloween, and a blast from the past (Ryan's first Halloween)!

 (Drawing by Venessa http://www.mudblood428.com/index.html)

(Click on the above slide show to view as a web album.)

This year, Menwith Hill Station had its Halloween festivities on Friday, the 26th. There was all sorts of stuff for kids to do, but it was mainly for older kids. Around 6:30pm, we met up at Carissa's house to go trick or treating with her and her boys. (Carissa's friends Dana and Ken were there, too.)

Ryan was Harry Potter for Halloween. My mom made his robe, and did an excellent job! The rest of his costume was simply British school clothes.

The last couple of years, Ryan was too young to really know what was going on. This year he seemed to really enjoy himself! He loved yelling, "Trick or treat!" at the top of his lungs, usually after getting his candy, not before! We all had the best time taking Ryan trick or treating around the base. It was a lot of fun!

Interestingly, I didn't see any other Harry's (Larry said he saw one), only a Ron. I would have thought with the book and movie coming out this summer, there'd be a lot more.

When we were done, Ryan kept saying, "Want more trick or treat!"

Here is a blast from the past:

Halloween 2006

A very Harry happy Father's Day!

http://www.the-leaky-cauldron.org/2007/6/17/hapy-father-s-day

Ryan at Valley Gardens

Hello! I am finally back (knock on wood)! I did the PC restore last night, and now all seems right with my system. Now it's just an issue of free time...

(Click on the above thumbnail to see my album of Ryan's photo session at Valley Gardens.)

Mother's Day morning, Ryan and I walked to Valley Gardens for a photo session. The forecast had been for rain, but we got lucky. It wasn't sunny, but at least it wasn't raining, either.

Since I had just gotten my photos done, I wanted this session to be Ryan's. (The photo shoot was part of an army fundraiser by Sarah Moore photography.)

Luckily, Sarah's familiar with photographing Ryan, and knew he wouldn't stay put. We tried anyway, though. We put him in a picturesque corner, but of course he didn't stay there. We pretty much just followed him around the Gardens. He ended up at the playground, which is his natural habitat anyway. As usual, Sarah somehow got some amazing photos of Ryan. (I don't know how she does it, since he never is still!) I went ahead and posted the whole session, even though it's a lot of pictures, because they're pretty much all good! (Well, it IS Ryan, after all!)

Now about that Thomas the Tank Engine shirt... For Christmas my Aunt Jean gave Ryan this really cute cowboy/farmer outfit. By May it fit perfectly. I thought it would be nice to have Ryan wear it for these pictures. Unfortunately, Ryan is currently obsessed with this one particular shirt. It's all he wants to wear, no matter how dirty it gets. He wants to wear it to bed. He wants to wear it all day. He wants to wear it to bed again. Ugh! Well, the night before I got lucky and was able to sneak it away and wash it. I thought things were going extremely well when I actually managed to put the whole cute outfit on him the morning of the photo shoot. Things stopped going well at that point. Ryan just laid down on the ground and became a dead weight. When I tried to pick him up, he turned to liquid. It was obvious he wasn't going to cooperate AT ALL. He kept moaning, "Thomas! Thomas!" So with the clock ticking, I went ahead and put him in his (thankfully) clean Thomas shirt. Oh well! Aunt Jean, I tried! When we look back at these pictures, I can tell Ryan, "Honey, that shirt is the only thing you would wear!"

In the evening we went over to Susan's house for dinner. It was really nice to have another mom to celebrate Mother's Day with!

The following week was quite busy, with a spouse coffee at Natasha's, lots of babysitting, and a dental appointment for me. Also, that Wednesday Sarah came over after Ryan went to bed, and we had a late night of snack food and girl talk. That was fun!

(More to come soon!) 

PS - I'm using Mozilla Firefox now, and apparently I don't have a spell check utility to use with my blog builder. So if you see an increase in typos, etc., that would be why!

Happy Mother's Day, to all my family and friends who are moms, not only in blood but also in heart! Much love,

~Holly and Ryan