My Baby is One!

Here is the BIRTHDAY BOY!! He is a gift from heaven that has filled our lives with joy and happiness. This baby has brought tremendous healing to our family over the past year. We were not able to truly understand the meaning of joy until he was here. Several years ago before Rylee was even born Bill had a dream that we would have a little brown hair boy, that would fill our lives with joy. He also felt in his dream that he would come after a period of hardship and that he would be such a joy to us that words could not describe. After five years that has happened, we got our little brown hair blessing. I am looking forward to another year of more love and joy. He is my little buddy we get to hang out just the two of us most of the time. I have loved evry stage of the first year of his life. I didn't mind the late nights, the feedings, diapers, spit up, crawling, etc. I cherish every moment with him and I always will. I know how percious each mile stone is in a baby's life and when they can reach each mile stone it is a true miracle.

He is such a good easy baby. He loves playing with his siblings. He doesn't mind when they tie him to the car. They absolutely adore him and they think everything he can do is so amazing. Their hearts have healed so much and they love him so intensely. I worried that it would be hard for them to open their hearts because they had been so hurt and I thought they would be very guarded, but they weren't. They loved him deeply the moment they laid eyes on him.

His puffy hair is the cutest thing. I always have people stop and tell me how cute his little puff is. I really should get it cut, but it is just too cute.

He loves to smile and laugh. He has the best laugh and of course Hailey and Megan can get him to laugh anytime. They always put on quite a show for him and he lives every minute of it.

He is a good sleeper. It is so weird for me to have a baby sleep in his crib for his naps. When my other kids were little I had to drag them all over the place while I worked. They were all very good at car sleeping and Rylee was very good at never sleeping.

He has always had his tongue sticking out and he still does. I of course think it is so cute, slobbery but cute. However, not as slobbery as Rylee.
I couldn't and still can't get enough of taking pictures of this cute little baby. Good thing everything is digital now because I would be going through film way too fast and having to wait to get the pictures developed would have been killer. I love technology!!

After 6 weeks on bed rest little Jacob Ryan was born 4 weeks early. He was so cute and perfect. I loved every second that I got to spend with him in the hospital, even though I had a c-section, it was such a joy to feel so happy and peaceful after having a baby. There is nothing like the pure joy of having a healthy perfect baby. Jake is our tender mercy from a loving Heavenly Father. We love you so much Jakey Boy!!

Home At Last

We have made it home safe and sound from our trip to Australia. It was such a great experience to go to another country. My only experiences with other countries have all been to Latin America. It was so great to see a country where people are thriving. I would say that most people owned a car, much different from other countries I have been to. I also think that most people have a job and that education is a number one priority for their children. It is evident that the couples love each other and they are happy to spend time together and spend time as a family. It was so amazing for me to see the fathers playing and caring for their children in Australia, not that I don’t think that happens in other countries, I just have not seen it happen myself. It was so fun to see another culture, with that being said, I still feel that we are blessed beyond belief to live in the country we live in. It is so amazing to me the variety of choices that we have as Americans. I am so grateful to live in this country. I am grateful for the freedoms that we have. I am grateful to live in a community where family and religion are important. I love that we know our neighbors and that we help each other in times of need. I am grateful that I can ask any of my neighbors to watch my kids for me when I need help. I am grateful that they feel comfortable asking me to watch their children. I love that we take meals to each other when our friends are having a hard time. I love that my children can play with friends that live next door, down the street or in another neighborhood close by. At times I have felt that maybe we know too much about each other, but I really do believe that I live in a neighborhood where people love me and my family and want to help in anyway possible and I in turn would do anything I could for them. That is what I have always wanted for myself and my family. We are very blessed!

Australia

This trip has been very fun and very educational. I thought I would share a few things that I thought were interesting. It has been fun to learn the different words that they use for words. Some of my favorites are:

Bathroom or restroom: Toilet
Car trunk: The boot
Mosquito's: Muzzy
Garbage: Rubbish
How are you?: How you going?
Thank you: No worries
McDonalds: Mackers
Breakfast: Brekky
Sunglasses: Sunnies
Thank you: Ta

This is a picture of a little store a few houses down the street from where Michelle lives. There are these little stores in all of the neighborhoods. They have milk, eggs, butter, ice cream, and candy, anything you would need to borrow from your neighbor. These little stores remind me so much of South America.

The school system is very interesting. The kids start going to school in here when they are 3, of course it is like preschool, it is called 3 year kinder and 4 year kinder. Then when they go to kindergarten it is called prep. They can go to any school in the city they want to go to. Every school has a uniform, each uniform is different for each school. Some of the uniforms are cute and some are pretty hideous. Here is a picture of my cute nephew Brady with his friend Bella in their uniforms. All of the schools here start at 9:00 am and go to 3:30 pm. There are no school buses taking the kids to and from school. The parents have to take their kids to school or when the kids are old enough they use public transportation. When the kids are in seventh grade they then go to Secondary collage. They will go to the secondary collage until they graduate. The secondary collages specialize in certain areas so the kids can chose where they want to go. Most kids in middle income and up families go to private schools which cost anywhere from $8,000.00 to $11,000.00 a year for the privilege to attend the schools. Because the sun is very hot here each child has to wear a hat anytime they go outside when they are school. The school year starts the last week of January and goes until mid December. They have a two week break after the end of each quarter and a month break for summer vacation.

I have always loved going to cemeteries and reading the headstones. I really love to go to cemeteries in different countries. It was very interesting to see how they have their dead buried. Most of the graves look like these but there are a few that look like the graves in the US. A lot of the graves that looked like they were Italian or Greek, had pictures of the deceased.

Brighton Beach

Today we went to Brighton Beach. You can see the cute houses that
people own and use to store their beach stuff and for changing their clothes when at the beach.
These beaches houses are icons here in Melbourne.
They originated in the early 1940’s for people to change on the beach. I read online
that they sell for over $200,000.00 for each house. As we were walking along the
beach I noticed that there were a ton of sea shells all over the place. I have never seen
so many shells on the beach ever before at any of the other beaches that I have ever been to.
My kids would be in seventh heaven on this beach.

The Otway Fly

As we traveled this weekend we also went to an area called the Otway Ranges. This is an area that is a rain forest. The foliage was absolutely breath taking. We drove over a little hill and the whole drive was in the same kind of foliage as you can see in the pictures. The pictures really don't do the area justice. We went to an area called The Otway Fly, a rain forest with amazing plants and trees. There was a walk way that took us up into the trees. We got to the tower and went up as high as the eucalyptus trees. It reminded me a lot of the redwood forest that we saw a couple of years ago, minus the redwood trees. I read a sign at the Otway fly that talked about the Koori an aboriginal tribe that lived in the area. They lived in these beautiful forests. If I was an Aborigine I would defiantly chose this area to live instead of the outback. This area is close to the ocean just a few miles away from The Great Ocean Road, which is what the road on the coast is called. This is such a beautiful place it is hard to imagine that just on the other side of the hill is the ocean on one side and on the other side of the hill there is a draught with very dry died land.

The Twelve Apostles

On our little excursion this weekend we went down to the bay and drove along the coast line. It was so beautiful!! The weather was perfect and it wasn't too windy. We stayed in a cute little beach town called Port Campbell in a great beach house. The coastline where we were was made of limestone. The waves come from Antarctica and the Australian coast line is the first land that the waves hit. Because the waves are so strong it erodes the limestone and it leaves these many different formations. The Twelve apostles were so beautiful. There used to be twelve but because of erosion there were only eight pillars left. We also saw several arches made by erosion and another place called The Bay of Islands. We learned that there were several ships the wrecked in this area about a hundred and fifty years ago. A ship named the Loch Ard sunk in June of 1878, there were 54 people on board but only two survived. We think that were must some kind of a reef around that part of the coast because of all the ships that sunk.

Look Dad a Koala!!

We had a wonderful road trip this weekend to the bay. We drove through some fun countryside. As we drove I was hoping to see a kangaroo and a koala as we drove. We would pass Kangaroo and koala crossing sings and I would getso excited thinking we would come across them as we drove. Travis told me that the kangaroos come out at night and during the morning. Unfortunately when we went through these areas it was not during those times. I felt like I was in Yellowstone looking for a bear the whole time we were in kangaroo country. We did however come across a bunch of koalas hanging out in the eucalyptus trees as we drove along the coast. They were so cute and much smaller than I thought they would be. Unfortunately we didn't get the greatest shot of the koala but it was very cool to see them in their natural habitat.