U.S. Citizen!!!

Last Wednesday was a pretty special day at our house. Riley was sworn in as a U.S. citizen!! It has been a stressful, expensive, demanding, and tedious process. It started 4 years ago and we are finally finished. (That is a relatively short time I hear.) We plan on living here in the US so we both thought it would be a good thing for him to do. It was a little sad for him to swear in the oath to declare allegiance to the US and none other (Canada). But I am grateful for his sacrifice and know he did it for our family. Just because on paper he is American now, doesn't mean that his Canadian heritage is gone!! We are excited to share that part of him with our family! Congratulations Riley!!--and Thanks.

Here are some pictures of his "Oath and Ceremony"

Here he is waiting out side for the Ceremony to start.

He is right in the middle smiling!--Again waiting for it to start--I had to stand in the back.

There were people from 19 different countries there, 1 from Canada. Here he is stating his name and country.

Taking the Oath.

Listening to a welcome speech from Pres. Obama (video)

Big Moment!

It is official now!

1 month old

Wow one month! Gracin now weighs 11 pounds 14 ounces.

He still has all his rolls and then some.

He is learning to make sounds and coos.

Loves to be snuggled. Mommy and me time is his favorite.

What a handsome baby!

To the ZOO

One day we went to the Memphis Zoo. It wasn't too hot for Gracin, so he hung out in the stroller in the shade most of the time. Here he is all decked out un his gorilla out fit--and a little spit up, oh well.

Rhylan, Tiffany, Me

Rhylan peeking at the sheep...she backed away once they came too close.

CHEESE!

A week with "Tiffy"

While Tiffany was here, we went on a trolley ride around down town Memphis. All 4 of us really enjoined it. She got to see the Mississippi river, Peabody ducks, and tons of crazy people.

Rhylan really loves her aunt Tiffy.

4 years

So Riley and I just celebrated our four year anniversary yesterday! My sister is in town so she was able to watch Rhylan for us and we took along Gracin on our date. I wanted to do a progressive dinner. But to make it a little more fun and exciting...I chose the restaurants with out telling Riley. I chose a cheap one, a med price one and a fancier one! Then it was Riley's job to randomly draw the places we would go in order.

Once in the car he drew a note card at random for our appetizer! He drew McDonalds. We had french fries and 6 piece chicken nuggets! We forgot our camera so these are all from my phone, some are a little blurry but we had to document!

Next he drew a restaurant for our main course...
Riley got the boneless bbq chicken wings and I got a Pazone. Yummy!

Then lastly he drew Olive Garden for Dessert. That was so delicious. I had the chocolate gelato and he had the raspberry cheesecake.


We really had a lot of fun. It is fun to change up your regular date routine. We loved spending those hours together. Thanks Tiffany for watching Rhylan. Here is a picture of what they did.

I got it!!!!

Tiffany, my sister, is visiting. This morning she was talking to Gracin and she got him to smile again!! I grabbed my camera and I actually caught it! Here is a video too of him smiling at her.

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Finger painting

Here is our first attempt at finger painting.

She was so careful at first. Only using one finger, not mixing colors...

I turned my head for a min to go get Gracin and she discovered something else to paint...

Good thing I thought to take her shirt off first!

The painting did really turn out resembling any known color or shape, but she had fun and got a little mommy time...hard to come by lately!

SMILE

Gracin smiled last night for the first time for real! I was really trying to make him smile for about 10-15 min and he finally did...3 times!!! We were so excited. He is 4 weeks old tomorrow. Rhylan didn't smile until she as 6 weeks old. Then this morning I caught him on video camera smiling at a mobile above his bed!!! I wish I had a pic but there is no way I could catch it now, maybe in a week or so when he is smiling more often.

Rhylan knows colors and shapes

Today we were coloring and Rhylan surprised me!! See the last picture.


I colored in the key on the bottom and told her what it meant. Then she grabbed a red crayon and started coloring in the circles! She was so focused and was really trying to fill in each shape as completely as she could before moving on to the next! Most of the time she just scribbles and then turns and page and does it again. I couldn't believe her focus. I am pretty proud right now!

Church

So today we made to sacrament meeting as a family! Gracin has the cutest little church vests. He did pretty well, I had to hold him most of the time and he had a diaper explosion during sacrament (it all stayed inside the diaper!) but other than that he was a great baby. Here are some pics of us.



Oh and during the before church chaos Rhylan wanted to help. She saw me feeding him a bottle and said "I do it." So I showed her how, it didn't last long. She even wiped his face with a burp rag every now and then.