Feasting on the Word

Reading is a Thing in our household. It's been a Thing ever since the instant I married Trevlove and we even formed  a household, because I love to read. Nowadays, I have to temper my voracious and sometimes obsessive reading so that we can have a functioning home, but seven year old Rylan is happy for me to pass the torch of Addictive Reader on to him.
I really love it that he is a reader, but what makes me even happier is when he reads the scriptures. Lately he's been really caught up in the plot line of the Book of Mormon during the King Noah/Abinadi/Alma section of Mosiah. I love to see him so absorbed in a book that I know will bring him so much happiness in his life.

I'm so proud of Evie for jumping into the scriptures with both feet. She's only in Kindergarten, but she reads with me everyday. She reads all the sight words and all the words she can sound out, and I fill in the rest. That girl has such a fabulous can-do spirit, and I'm so grateful to see her applying that to setting patterns that will bring her closer to God. I love these two learners!

Previously unpublished: From May of 2009

I've been severely reprimanded for being so negligent on the Silver Lining Lookout. The first to reprimand me was my mother-- but I talk to her everyday, so I have to confess, I didn't feel especially obligated to keep her virtually updated as well.
But then the number of accusers increased, and I finally decided that yes, my blog has some function beyond my own entertainment. There are those out-of-towners that like to know the goings-on of the Ray household.
Since my last post (on the 29th of January I believe), there have been two new additions in our home.
The first resides in my womb and is expected to make a more public appearance at the beginning of October.
The second resides in our guest bedroom and is here to help mitigate the effects of the first.

In other words, I've had some trouble with my back since becoming pregnant and my wonderful little sister Tiffany is living with us to help me take care of the Ry Guy.


As I believe I've mentioned before, I organize my life through lists. In the throes of first trimesterhood, the non-essentials on my list were the first thing to go. I included this blog in that category (sorry!)

Jar of Treasures

For a long time, I've been thinking about implementing a positive incentive program to encourage Rylan to behave well. That sounds really formal, but what it boils down to is this: \

We have a leftover present that we didn't give him on his birthday because we realized we'd overdone it, so it's been waiting in the top of his closet for an appropriate occasion to be gifted. Our scheme was this: Every time Rylan exhibited a positive behavior, we would give him one of those Little Flattened Marble Thingies to put in a jar (Ry calls LFMTs "treasures". He found a few buried in our backyard and was SO excited. He carried them around for a few days, and then they disappeared. Evie probably swallowed them.). When the jar is full, he gets the toy. After that, we'll come up with another incentive.

So today we went to the dollar store to pick up some LFMTs. While there, he kept gathering merchandise which I made him put back as we left each aisle. He was DYING to buy something, but today the answer was no. He finally settled on blue and green LFMTs and then we checked out. When we got home, I was explaining the program to him. To illustrate, I was enthusiastically

Ways Ry tried to beat the system:

And then you take me back to the store to get that bucket. Oh, look!! You get a treasure!
Do you have treasures in your shirt?
Trying to find the treasures to dump in the jar
Trying to award me treasures to go in his jar
Trying to negotiate the number of treasures something is worth.

Bye, my two year old

I never published this, but I'm going to now along with some other old stuff stuck in the drafts. Some of it's not even done (it was in the drafts folder because it was a draft, fancy that) but because my purpose here is to keep a record and not achieve perfection, published it will be.


The last day before Rylan turned three, I was overcome by a fit of nostalgia. Two was so wonderful-- would it really just be gone? I would never see Rylan at two again. Cheesy I may be, but I had to
have a record of this last day of two.

.

Blowing off the dust

So I came to dust off my blog and take a peek after a long hiatus. I haven't even looked at in years, haven't thought of it in ages.
So reading those posts and remembering that time was so very, very fun. My little Rylan and Evie are not so little anymore!! They're old and in school and growing up, and remembering them this way was such a bit of sweet nostalgia. To top it off, they've been joined by two stupendous little brothers and I want Anders and Aiden to have a record like this when they are older, of  their marvelous beginnings in the world and their mother's deep love for them.
Why don't I post here anymore? There is no reason good enough. It needs to happen. But where does one even start after being away so long? One little glimpse at a time, I suppose.

A few years older and hopefully wiser, too

Rylan, Anders, and Evie with newborn Aiden

Can you believe they're mine?

The end of an era

We are delighted that Christmas is here! Our little at-home threesome thrills for the new joys this season brings (Christmas lights, snowmen and nativities, oh my!) but it is with a measure of sadness that I contemplate my task for tomorrow: taking down our porch pumpkin display.Pumpkins have been the cool thing around our house these last few months. If ever I ask Rylan what he would like to do in the day, his response invariably includes making pumpkin bread. Evie has expressed her love of pumpkins by arranging and rearranging (and rearranging, and rearranging, and rearranging......) the massive cascade of gorgeous gourds that I slowly began collecting once October hit. They now number somewhere between 10 and 15 and range in size from a dinker the size of my fist and a whopper the size of my bootie (Well, it is and I didn't know what else to say. It's bigger than my head and smaller than Evie. So there [Is my bootie smaller than Evie? Evie standing up or Evie curled into a ball? I'll have to check that out tomorrow]) Anyway...they are white, orange, green, striped, and in general just lovely. And I'll think of them all year until next October.These pictures are from one of our family forays into pumpkin land. Most of the pumpkins I just bought on sale at the grocery store, but I wanted to take the kiddos at least once to a pumpkin lot, seeing as we have no pumpkin patches around here. We let them both pick a 50 cent pumpkin. It was great. And I will never get over how beautiful my children are and how I never get tired of looking them. I'm so glad I don't have to wait until October to see those two again! Anyway, I'm off to bed. You know it must be late, even without the benefit of a time stamp, because I wrote about my bootie and I'm not erasing it. Over and out.

Rylanisms

Rylanisms

I wrote this post back in May, and I have no idea why I didn't post it then. Just imagine-- he's only gotten funnier in the last 5 months!





After he dumped all of the contents out of the fridge (one of a long series of misdemeanors that morning) and was watching me while I silently fumed and tried to keep my mouth shut so I wouldn't go completely and irrationally ballistic on him:

How you doing back there Mom?

After I had asked him to do something:

Rylan: No!
Mom: Rylan, we don't say no. Say "yes, Mom!"
Rylan: I don't want to say yes mom! I said yes mom yesterday.


When I gave him a piece of apple:

Mom, this is Mr. Sluppy Apple.

Just now while I was writing this post:

"Mom, it's okay! You have the power!"

(Not only was I not talking to him right then, but we don't watch TV and I've never said anything like that to him in my life).

This child amuses me to no end.