Happy Birthday Oma!

 We love you!!

Friday Favorite {Spring Adventures}

 

 Spring has arrived.

The weather is perfect - warm, sunny days with a cool breeze. The air smells fresh and clean, and little bits of the new season are popping up in tiny buds, bringing the earth back to life!

Oh, give us pleasure in the flowers to-day;
And give us not to think so far away
As the uncertain harvest; keep us here
All simply in the springing of the year.

Oh, give us pleasure in the orchard white,
Like nothing else by day, like ghosts by night;
And make us happy in the happy bees,
The swarm dilating round the perfect trees.

And make us happy in the darting bird
That suddenly above the bees is heard,
The meteor that thrusts in with needle bill,
And off a blossom in mid air stands still.

For this is love and nothing else is love,
The which it is reserved for God above
To sanctify to what far ends He will,
But which it only needs that we fulfill.

{A Prayer in Spring - Robert Frost}

 

I have always had a love for photography. I love capturing the perfect moment as a keepsake of our past and memories. Since Dylan was born, my hands have been full of baby and empty of my camera. Over the Christmas holiday, Ryan started falling in love with Photography. Sarah came to town from California with her fancy new SLR and Ryan was hooked. Three cameras and six lenses later, he has found his match. His new hobby has peeled us from our home and taken us on all kinds of adventures! He is learning more and more each day, and I am so impressed with his work.

I was always the one begging to go somewhere new, but now he is on the search for new scenery! 

This afternoon we packed up and went for a small hiking trip to the

Redbud Valley Nature Preserve.

It is owned by Oxley Nature Center! It is a lush, rugged trail, full of beautiful native flora and fauna. They invite you to visit and suggest partaking in the following: Hike, daydream, bird watch, visit with a naturalist, sketch, photograph butterflies, relax, study the wildflowers, forget things, look for fossils, remember things, sit, stare, listen... do all these things and more. There are a multitude of possibilities - invent some of your own.

I Love Fridays

Friday is one of the best days of the week. Dylan and I wake up and play all morning together, take a snuggly nap and then before we know it, Daddy is home!! He gets off at noon on Fridays - I wish everyday was like this! We had big plans for the afternoon, but it looks like my boys were tuckered out. They are just too cute to wake...

a tree called life

I can not believe how the time has flown by Dylan. In the blink of an eye you have gone from a tiny, quiet little baby to a rough and tumble, hilarious little boy. Nine Months. You have been with us as long as it took to create you!!

Your Daddy and I look back to the beginning of you, the day we found out we were having a little baby, and we are in awe that so much time has passed. I remember day dreaming about what our lives would be like as a family, as parents.

We had talked endlessly about our excitement for our future together, but there was one night on a trip to Dallas that we sat outside on the patio of the Old Monk and mapped out our future. Ryan told me how excited he was to be a father, to create a tangible form of the love we share with each other. I will never forget that feeling that washed over me as I looked at his face and knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that he devotedly meant it. We laughed, cried, and hugged, and it was that night that we decided we were ready - really ready to be parents.

Our journey began September 25th when we found out we were having you!! Being pregnant with you was one of the neatest experiences of my life. Carrying you with me, always being able to look down and know you were there with me - your heart beating with mine.

i carry your heart with me

i carry it in my heart

i am never without it

anywhere i go you go, my dear

Your Daddy and I loved so much to watch my belly grow. It meant you were growing big and strong, and that the time for us to meet you was coming closer! He and I prepared a nest just for you, we sang songs and read books to you. We took pictures each week, always in awe of how different I looked from the last. We watched you grow and we heard your healthy heart. We felt your tiny hiccups and your powerful kicks. After nine months of having you with me, even though we had no idea if you were a little boy or a little girl, I felt like I knew you. But it wasn't until June 11th that the story of our family truly began.

I know love. With a loving family and amazing friends, I have never second guessed love.
I love your Daddy so much. He is my rock, my strength and my soul mate. When I was a teenager in high school, even when our relationship was so fresh and new, I knew that I would marry him. He is an amazing husband, and an equally amazing father, and my best friend. He has shown me what true love feels like. But 9 months and 22 hours of labor later, when we saw your face, a love so foreign to what we knew flooded our hearts. Each month as you sprout an inch, gain a pound, grow a tooth, find your voice, learn your hands and feet or test the boundaries of your new body, you leave us in awe.

Thinking back to June of last year, it seems like an eternity ago. But then I look at you and how much you've changed, and I realize how fleeting each moment really is. We love you so much Dylan. Thank you for the most amazing eighteen months of our lives!

Happy 9 Month Birthday!

i carry your heart with me

i carry it in my heart

i am never without it

anywhere i go you go, my dear;

and whatever is done

by only me is your doing, my darling

i fear no fate

for you are my fate, my sweet

i want no world

for beautiful you are my world, my true

and it’s you are whatever a moon has always meant

and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows

here is the root of the root

and the bud of the bud

and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;

which grows higher than soul can hope or mind can hide

and this is the wonder that’s keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart

i carry it in my heart

—-E. E. Cummings

{Wordless Wednesday}

There are nights like tonight when, aside from being sleepy, I secretly love being woken up by Dylan. Spring Thunderstorm making soothing music at the window, lightning flashes creeping in through the curtains. Dylan is curled up in my lap with his soft cheek against my chest & his sweet milk breath, warm on my neck. Every now and again a small hum quietly escapes through his lips and he coos, "bwa bwa bwa" his favorite new sound to make. A moment so sweet. A moment that reminds me how blessed I truly am.

February was the hardest month we have had together as a family. Sickness, tears, exhaustion & isolation weighed us down; but with support, love,and prayer we made it through still smiling.

Every day that passes, love for my baby boy trickles in to what I thought was my full to capacity heart. Just when I think i can not love him more than I already do, he reaches for me, waves for the first time, giggles at his Daddy or caresses my face and there it is...the good kind of ache in your chest. The kind of ache you get when you love someone so much it hurts.

I know this rough patch is the first of many, but I feel that God puts little moments like these in our lives to simply say, "everything will be okay."


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

{Wordless Wednesday}

Cousin Jaeden!

Ryan's sister, Jennifer and her husband, Eddie, welcomed a beautiful baby girl on 1.11.11
She was 7 pounds 2 ounces. Throughout Jennifer's pregnancy they nicknamed her "JJ". It stood for Jehovah jireh, which means The Lord will provide! After she was born, they took their time to carefully pick a name that fit her perfectly. On the last day in the hospital they named her Jaeden Jennifer!
She is so tiny and sweet and we just adore her! Bob, Sherry, Ryan, Dylan and I waited excitedly for the news of her birth, and we all hopped in the car and headed to Norman to meet her! With sweet chubby cheeks, long petite fingers & darling little curls, she is just perfect.

Happy Birthday (Me!)

Toni Marie Pfleeger

March 7th, 1985

2:07 p.m.

6 pounds 6 ounces 19.5"

Whatever with the past has gone, The best is always yet to come.

Pablo Picasso

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Ryan W Smith

March 4th, 1982

7:42 a.m.

8 pounds 15 ounces 21 1/2"

Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You

Dr. Seuss 

Happy Birthday Ryan

We love you SO much!!

Let Life Flow

{via}

It has been a rough few weeks. I am reminding myself to step back, breathe & "let life be as it will be"

Thank you for those of you that have helped me make it through this rough patch. You mean so much to me!

{Wordless Wednesday}