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Look Ma! No Trainin' Wheels!

Friday afternoon, while Rachael was at work, Rylee and I were bored. So I said, "Hey Rylee, wanna take the training wheels off your bike!" Rylee was thrilled. I had promised her a couple of months ago that she would be "livin to ride and ridin to live," by the end of the summer. She was a natural, she took off right away, going about thirty or forty feet at first. The next day, she was going the length of the garage under our building. Now she can even stop by herself and sometimes turn around. We are still working on turning and starting, but she is awesome. Congrats to Rylee!

CRL?

So Rylan and I couldn't figure out what CRL meant on our baby ticker; as in the baby is 4 inches "CRL". But we finally figured it out...CRL = "crown to rump length" (since the fetus is curled up it's measured from the top of the head to the "rump"). I thought this was totally adorable! I thought I would clarify this for anyone else with the same confusion. Perhaps this is common knowledge and one would be surprised that we didn't already know this, seeing as how this is not our first baby. However, five years ago when I was pregnant they didn't have fancy baby tickers and blogs or anything!
Also, it has come to our attention that our blog will be undergoing an inevitable name change in the near future. For those who are wondering, no, it will NOT be "R to the 4th"! We could possibly find out if we are having a boy or a girl on August 12th at our ultrasound. We have a few baby names floating around, but one thing is for certain..."R" names are OUT!

Playing Catch-up for the Summer

In May, Rachael and Rylee went to Myrtle Beach (without ME). I know, I know, I couldn't believe it either. But despite not having me there, they still managed to have a great time. Here is a picture of Rylee meeting an alligator. It's too bad they didn't get a video, because at one point the alligator came up behind her just as she turned to look at it and scared her to death. When she called me that night and told me about her day, the first thing she said was that an "alligator attacked me, but I got away, so you don't need to worry".

Later in May, Rachael's family went to Topsail Beach. I joined them at the end of the week and spent some time chasing Ghost Crabs. After a few tries, I had my technique down and could catch them pretty easy. Well, at least the big ones, the little ones are almost impossible to catch.


Here are some sunrise pictures I took at Topsail. I had never seen the sunrise on the East Coast, mainly because I'm too lazy to get up that early in the morning. I had to get up at 5:45 a.m. to get these shots. It was pretty awesome, but I probably won't be able to do it again.

And finally, we're all caught up. The 4th of July. We went to Hillary and Mike's house for a great potluck party earlier in the day. Then we went to Rams Head near Kenan Stadium to watch the fireworks with a bunch of friends from church.

Watch carefully kids, this is how you start a fire. Just kidding. We were passing out sparklers which got a little crazy when about 15 kids wanted me to light their sparklers at the same time.

Here is Rylee with two of her friends, Kaylee and Matilda. This is also a good picture of the beginning of the end of our firework experience. See how dark the sky looks behind the girls. Well, about ten minutes after this picture was taken we experienced a lightning and rain storm that put an end to our 4th of July fun. We didn't get to see the fireworks from the stadium and Rylee was really bummed. She kept saying our holiday was ruined, but it wasn't, we had a great day celebrating our freedom with all of our friends. Plus later that night, around 11 pm, they launched the fireworks anyway, and we were able to watch them from our apartment windows at Baity Hill.

Well, there you have it, I'm all caught up and plan on posting a little more frequently. At least until school starts in the fall. At that point I might just disappear and leave you all wondering if I still exist. Hopefully by then Rach will feel more like herself and more up to posting again.

The anticipation of the "Comment"

So, as you might know, I (Rylan), have taken over the blogging details of our family. I was excited a few days ago to finally post a story I thought was funny. It wasn't until I received NO COMMENTS that I started to question my own sense of humor. Well, turns out that I'm just not very "blogger savvy" if you know what I mean. I had changed the settings in my attempt to make the blog more fun and messed up the commenting section. Thanks to Adam and Karen for letting me know they weren't able to comment and that my story was actually funny, I was able to fix the problem. Once again I anxiously anticipate your comments .

Dinner Etiquette Rule Number 1: No yelling at flies in the restaurant !!

For the last few weeks, Rachael has not quite been herself. She is having a bit of a rough first trimester and has established some basic ground rules for me. One of which is not talking about food of any kind in her presence. So last night, because Rachael wasn't up for going to dinner with me and because she doesn't like the smell of anything cooking in the house, I decided it would be a good opportunity to spend some quality time with Rylee on a little daddy-daughter date. We went to Brixx Pizza because it's low key and Rylee loves pizza. When our food arrived Rylee was very polite and thanked the waitress for bringing her food. I was so proud of her for her outstanding manners and how well dinner was going. But it was too good to be true...halfway through our meal a fly started buzzing Rylee while she was eating. If you've ever been to Brixx than you know that the tables are extremely close together and it was really busy that night. All of a sudden, Rylee turns and faces a little family sitting next to us and shouts at the top of her lungs, "STOP TOUCHING ME, GO AWAY!" Of course she was yelling at the fly and not to the table next to us, but the look on their faces made it clear that they did not understand her perspective. After she did this two or three times, I told her to stop yelling at the fly or people would think she was crazy. But she reassured me that the fly understood her perfectly and she needed to tell it to go away. When we left dinner, it felt like everyone in the restaurant was staring at us. I decided to make this Rule number one for our family dinner etiquette: No yelling at flies during dinner, even if you think they can understand you. Note to Brixx: get some fly traps.

Priorities

Today at church there was a talk on priorities which obviously included a discussion on families. Steve talked about how often it is the smaller activities in which we give our full attention that mean the most to our children, rather than the larger (more expensive) activities. He told the story of a boy who spent the summer touring enriching museums and historical landmarks with his father. When the boy was asked about his favorite part of the trip, he replied that the times he spent just talking with his dad meant the most to him. In an effort to test this out in our own family, when we got home from church Rylan asked Rylee what her favorite part of the last year was. She replied: 1) Making silly faces, 2) playing with mom, and 3) wrestling with dad. No mention was made about our trips to the life and science museum, going to the ballet, going to the beach, etc. Okay so maybe our student budget doesn't allow for many expensive activities. But I was happy to realize that for Rylee, those things aren't what mean the most anyways. Hey, when making silly faces is #1, the fact that Disneyland has to wait just doesn't seem tragic.
Here's Rylee at Texas Roadhouse in Myrtle Beach. The first time we went a waitress taught her a line dance. Rylee went back to the hotel and practiced and practiced. Then we went back (we LOVE Texas Roadhouse) and she dressed up in her boots and tried to dance with the waitresses to "These Boots are Made for Walking." She got a little nervous because she couldn't do it quite as fast as them, but she sure looked the part!