Rebekah is Two – Yay & Sniff, Sniff

It’s so cliche but I seriously cannot believe that Rebekah is two!! It’s so exciting and at the same time makes me sad because I don’t want her to be growing up so fast. We had a fun time at her birthday party this past weekend. Rebekah had so much fun playing until about half way through the party when she went into her room and closed the door. She was over it. But the lure of presents eventually brought her back out.

She loves Oso.

The foyer with party favors. I’m a perfectionist and it’s driving me bonkers that I didn’t take a photo with the updated picture of her on the left. That one is from her 6 month photos, and I replaced with a new one but didn’t get a picture of the table with it. It also drove me bonkers that the wreath was so high…but Jeremy would have not been happy with another nail hole! The blocks say “Thanks for Coming”

Party favors. The theme was A-B-C so I decided to make letter crayons for each kiddo that was able to come. It was a fun project!

The Grub. I recently went to a craft show and they had these cupcake sundaes that I thought were cute and delicious. I practiced and made them myself. That was a fun and yummy thing to practice!

ABC Banner

The Bounce House!

Caroline

Reese is very camera shy!

Cake time! This was Rebekah’s face when everyone was singing to her. She was so confused!

Grandpa helping her out

Tess, Kerrie, Laura & Blakely. I kinda want to steal both these little girls. They are too adorable!

The birthday girl

Gaga & Rebekah

The tricycle was a hit with the kiddos. They all took turns pushing each other around and it was too cute.

Rebekah was so over me and wanted to see Gaga for the family photo

Vancouver

Hello blogosphere! My computer crashed about two weeks ago and I feel so behind and out of the loop! It’s been a fun and busy July and one of the highlights was a trip to Vancouver with my best friends from high school.

Heather, Megan, Angela & I have been friends since we were 15/16 years old. One night we were having dinner at Chili’s when we were around 16 and we each wrote part of our name on a coaster. We shuffled them up, and created the word, Canangeran (Can-Ang-Er-An) and we call ourselves that to this day. We have been through A LOT together and wish we could get together more often. These girls are a rock for me, and I love them each so much.

Since we all live in different cities, five years ago we decided to do an annual trip. We’ve done Vegas, Austin, Houston (where it all began!) Tulsa and went big for our five year trip and decided on Vancouver. Here are some pics of our fun trip!

I am proud of this picture! We all got up around 3am to catch our various flights (two from Austin, one from Boston and one Tulsa) and this is around midnight Vancouver time. Our plan the first day was to get settled and rent bikes to take through Stanley Park and the city. After getting settled we went to lunch, drank wine and chatted. Instead of going to get the bikes, we found a restaurant with outdoor seating, proceeded to order a bottle bottles of wine and talk each others ears off for hours. We continued on our exploration of the city’s best places to get drinks.

This picture jumps all the way to the last day of the trip. When you travel with Heather, you designate her as the trip photographer because she’s amazing so I don’t have a ton of pics from my camera. We did end up renting bikes, going to Kitslano beach, eating at fun restaurants and of course talking. Lots and lots of talking. These pictures are at Grouse Mountain where Megan and I went zip lining. It was SO FUN and beautiful!! A person in our group took the top pic and it’s both of us going across one of the taller lines.

The Help

The jist of this post is if you haven’t read The Help, read it. Seriously, buy it, download it, borrow it right now.

There are some books or movies that strike a cord with you on many levels. This book did this for me. I want to know the women in this book. I want them to be a part of my life. They are amazing and complex.

As if the plot and characters weren’t enough, the story of race relations in the south is what really made me think. I was brought up in a very accepting home. I was taught that all people, no matter their race, religion, sex, or any other factor, are no better or worse than me. I am grateful for this. Beyond grateful.

This book opened my eyes to the hardship all minorities face. In this book, the minority was African American women. It’s taken me a while to be able to articulate the impact this book had on me, and, well, here it is.

My ancestry has had the upper hand for generations. Why? Not because we are smart, or better, but simply because we are white. That’s it. That’s the only trait you needed to posses to be able to go to a better school, or get a better job or attend a better college. You had the upper hand simply because you were born white. Can you fathom knowing that your grandparents or great grandparents were slaves? That means that they started with nothing. Nothing. And your parents and grandparents were brought up just prior to or in the civil rights era fighting for what seems to be the simplest rights. Using a bathroom. Renting a home. Sitting where they choose on a bus or in a restaurant. YOUR parents had to FIGHT to sit with white people at a restaurant. It seems unfathomable, but it’s a fact. That means your generation is the first to have the capacity to follow your dreams. Where would you be if that was your history? Most likely, you wouldn’t be where you are today.

Around the Rice House

It’s summer and things have been busy. Good busy. When people ask, so, what you have you guys been up to? I’m not really sure exactly what, but I know we have been doing stuff. You know that feeling? Here are some pics from our recent shinanigans.

The Bixby Green Corn Festival. Rebekah had a blast eaten’ Cheetos and watching the parade. Jeremy and I had a blast eating fair food including: Indian Taco, Corn Dog, Fresh Lemonade, Pineapple Whip & of course, roasted corn.

Rebekah was a fan of the pineapple whip.

LOTS of pool time. Most of it is spent with Rebekah taking her cups (which are the cups I kept from the Easter Egg Dye kit we never used) and filling one up with water and then pouring the water into another cup. Who would have guessed they would be so multifunctional!?

We had an impromptu holiday cookout with some friends and I didn’t get my camera out until the end, but I captured Rebekah and Caroline playing ball outside. They are just too adorable!

Not the best photo, but it’s from my phone. Rebekah on her first day of summer school. She was NOT happy about it when I dropped her off, but I’m sure she had fun playing all.

Meet Fred. He’s our new family addition. He comes out every night and eats all the bugs on our patio. We’ve actually become pretty attached to him and worry when we don’t see him. We usually leave the light on for him overnight so he gets plenty of grub.

Chicago, Part 2

As I said before, we had a lot of fun in Chicago. Naperville, the suburb where J’s dad and Mary live, is full of fun kid activities! I wish we had a kids musuem like the one Rebekah had so much fun at while we were there. Here are some pics, she had a blast!

I love how you can see all angles of her cuteness!:)

My fave pic from the trip!

At the zoo

Trip to Chicago, Part 1

We recently spent a week in Chicago with Jeremy’s family and had a great time. We drove and planned to stop in St. Louis because we thought Rebekah would need it. Thanks to the DVD player, we were able to cancel the stop and drive straight through. It’s usually a ten hour drive and we made it in twelve. Not too shabby for traveling with a toddler!

We loved spending time with the fam, as well as catching up with some adorable cousins. About 90% of my friends have little girls, so Rebekah was finally outnumbered by little guys.

The cousins – Kalen & Madden. I want to gobble them up!

Rebekah interfering with a very serious game. Jason really wants his blue bean bag back.

He’s distracting her.

She thinks she has a very important job.

Trying to keep her from interrupting the game again.

Looking at the flowers, or flowe-flowes as Rebekah would say.

What Happens in a Year

I recently turned on the sprinklers because I was too lazy to take Rebekah up to the neighborhood pool and snapped a gazillion few pics of her. I remembered I had gone crazy with pictures last June of her running around in the sprinklers and I had to show the difference a year makes.

Baby Girl – June 2010

Big Girl – June 2011

What doesn’t change? How much she LOVES the water!

The Angry Tree

As mentioned before I feel like The Angry Tree deserves a post to itself. So, here is the story of the painting you love or hate, or have grown to love.

In 2007, I decided I wanted to start painting. I cannot draw. I know nothing about paint. But, it sounded idyllic and I was interested. I also would see abstract art that I liked and think, “I could totally do that!” Well, that’s not really the case.

I have a thing for trees in the winter. I LOVE how leafless trees look on the horizon. I don’t know if it’s the lines or what, but I think they are beautiful. So I decided my first painting would be simple. A thin tree off centered with lots of limbs and a plain white background.

I started with the trunk and being the perfectionist (not compatible with artist, btw!) I am, I painted the line and it wasn’t straight. So, I painted over it and it got thicker. This process repeated itself until the trunk was, well, fat.

I moved onto the branches. I don’t know why I thought the branches needed to be curvy, but that’s what I painted. I realized it looked really terrible, and decided to just continue on adding branches. After all branches were added, it looked even more terrible. Really bad. Awful. I hated it. It made me mad, er, angry.

So, where the simple white background would be, I dipped my paint brush in red paint and filled in the ugly background around the ugly tree. Ugh, I thought. I hate this. Worst painting ever.

Jeremy was in the living room watching TV, and I knew there was an empty nail on a wall just behind our front door. I decided to hang it up there as a joke to show him my masterpiece. After laughing his ass off at me being supportive, we continued with our evening forgetting about the painting.

As I said, the painting was hung behind our front door, so it was easily overlooked. It stayed there, not on purpose, but because we simply forgot about it. I’m not sure if it was a week or a month later but when our friends the Launchbaugh’s came over, they spotted the painting and we all laughed. I told them my 0riginal vision and the reason behind the red painted background. It was bad. It was really, really bad. Agreed.We decided upon the name “Angry Tree” and it stuck.

Again, time passed with the painting still up because we just forgot about it. As more and more friends saw it and we told the story behind it we all became weirdly attached to this ugly painting. And, it stayed up on purpose. Simply because it was funny.

Fast forward again, two years later to us moving in our brand new house. When friend’s came to see the new casa, one of the first questions was, “Where is Angry Tree going?!?!” So, angry tree now has prime real estate in our entry way. I have grown to love this painting because it makes me happy thinking about laughing about it with our friends. So, here it is folks. My masterpiece:

This is what happens when…

You show up at a park and the “splash pad” is on unexpectedly.

You leave your glasses on your bedside table

You PLAN on the splash pad being turned on

P.S. lots of posts to follow over the next few days to catch up! Happy Monday!

May – In Review

Rebekah & Reese after dinner. Could they be any cuter??

Rebekah has a thing for glasses. She found mine and decided to give them a try.

A pony tail!

She’s really trying to dress herself these days.

The glasses obsession again. She stole these from me.

We had a fun weekend at the zoo and pool. She’s climbing the rock wall at the zoo – don’t let the cute face fool you. There were several temper-tantrums at the zoo!

First swim of the summer!

Rebekah & Reese at our friend, Candice’s, cookout.

Going on a walk with mommy, bear, pluto, goofy, water and snack. She looks mad, but she got over it!

At a photo shoot for a friend of a friend’s store. I can’t wait to see the professional pics.