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I don’t recall going apple picking when I was a kid, but I very well may have. We had lots of fruit trees in our yard, so to drive an hour and a half to pick what was growing in our backyard wouldn’t have been particularly exciting to me. Amy had mentioned last year that she really wanted to go, but we had missed the season. So, this year it was high on our list to get there before the season ended.

We finally found a weekend where we could, so we did. I wasn’t expecting a bad time, but I wasn’t expecting an amazing time either. I have to say though, I was pleasantly surprised. Ryken was excited about the trip, and kept saying ‘apple picking!’ on our drive there.

We pulled into the parking lot after lunch and had a nice view of all the apple trees:

I also wanted to play with the panorama feature of my camera.

One thing I was very excited about was that many of the apples were Ryken’s height so he could pull them off the trees with no problem at all:

After the first few apples, he seemed to pick out the apple he had in mind, and went for it:

Some apples gave him a bit of a fight, so he had to use two hands:

Other apples, and their branches, simply stood no chance:

Apart from a few stray apples falling, and that one broken branch, Ryken did great picking apples on his own:

After the apples, we moved on to the raspberries. I can’t ever recall picking raspberries, so this was a fun new thing for all of us:

There were tons of raspberries, so it wasn’t hard to find good ones to fill our basket. Ryken did very well being gentle with the raspberries and putting them in the basket:

Except for a few:

Ryken also took time to practice his vocabulary as he worked in the raspberry field:

All in all, we had a great time getting away as a family. Definitely need to do this kind of stuff more often:

We try to keep Ryken pretty stimulated when it comes to his development. He is always eager to learn so much, so the least we can do is satisfy his quest for deep thoughts. Here is a typical evening of such high level intellectual stimulation.

First, we practice our hand-top-of-head coordination:

Followed by the ‘can you make a pot holder look like a french hat’ challenge:

Which leads up to the ‘pointy hat out of found objects’ test:

Which leads up to the ‘realization moment’, where Ryken becomes satisfied with his accomplishments:

After that, we assess our post meal ‘bean-face’, and play for a while:

which eventually sets us up for a little rest:

Finally, in order to be more socially aware, we listen to some German music, dance, and familiarize ourselves with gravity and balance:

I love how much fun the ordinary can be.

A few days ago, Amy made some lemon ice for dessert. It has been warm again here (around 100º), so it has been a very nice treat after dinner. Ryken tends to be like Amy in his affection for things that are sour, so the lemon ice has been a big hit with him.

After he finishes the ice chunks, Amy pours the melted lemon juice, which is basically a tart lemonade, into a cup for him to drink. Tonight, however, he realized that his bowl still had some drops of juice in it:

It seems as though he has been watching me eat cereal lately, because he deftly executed my finishing routine:

Generally good form, but the teeth will likely pose a problem for him when he tries a large quantity of liquid. It is so funny how kids imitate their parents – for better or for worse.

After dinner, we discovered a new game called ‘no touch the lens on daddy’s new camera’. While he has a blast with it, its slightly scary for me.

As he was playing, I figured I’d test out the new camera to see if it was able to respond to fairly high action as Ryken was diving in and out trying to poke the camera lens. He started with a degree of focus:

Then began some subtle maneuvering:

Then, he began to lose his composure:

and a little more:

a little more:

a little more:

aaaaaaand forget about it. His motor skills were now destroyed by his hysterical laughter:

If I remember right, he collapsed to the floor laughing.

Nothing beats after dinner entertainment.

Our days are usually filled with a mixture of inside and outside time in the warmer months of the year. Sometimes we bundle up in the winter and venture outside, and sometimes we brave the heat to get some sun in the summer, but spring and fall are really the best outdoor months in the desert. Fortunately for me, the heat of the day has usually passed when I get home from work. When that is the case, I often find Ryken and Amy hanging out in the garden:

In the case of this day, Ryken was tending to the garden after Amy had pulled out a bunch of onions that didn’t really do what they were supposed to. Grow. Ryken tends to be an optimist and saw this whole thing not as losing onions, but gaining work space:

He lovingly covered up one of the leaves of our pumpkin vine for most of the video, but ended up picking it off at the end. After some hard work gardening, he decided it would be appropriate to lounge in the garden and admire his handiwork:

And before heading in, he made sure to stop and smell the roses. Well, they aren’t exactly roses, but you know what I mean.

Once inside the house, there really isn’t much better than dreaming of being outside again. I asked Ryken what he wanted to watch online, and he said, ‘horses’ repeatedly. I finally found an appropriate horse video on youtube, and he had a blast watching it over and over:

Never to busy for a photo:

And still young enough to tolerate a picture with daddy:

One of the things I love about Ryken is his humor. He always has fun exploring the world. And, on top of that, he always shows interest in our hobbies. As I’ve been playing around with a new camera I got recently, he has shown a particularly high level of interest in it:

But its all in good fun:

After some time playing around with the camera, its time for…you guessed it:

Headstands? It wasn’t my guess, but what do I know. The evening ends with a thrilling game of ‘dump out the pennies then put them back in the bank’:

The game is made much more exciting by mommy setting a deadline as to when things need to be picked up:

Just another typical day of exploration, hard work, and plenty of play.

Ryken and I had a chat today about how to share with those non-boy what being a boy is like. Specifically, what an evening as a boy is like. Is it exciting? Is it boring? Does it involve cake? Those kinds of things. Ryken is a pretty good example of what it looks like to be a boy, so from our conversation, he decided he would play the part tonight so we could share this reality with you. All it took was a little water from Mommy, and the project was underway.

First, we start with some mud flinging:

Followed by more mud flinging:

Then we mix things up with a dramatic pose up against the house to show the angst that all young children face when they have to go in after playing outside:

Followed by an action shot of the dirty hand:

This leads to the 4 step hose down. Phase 1:

Phase 2:

Phase 3:

Phase 4:

All ‘clean’:

Now after a hose down, we move to the bath to relax…

or, rather, hang from the bar in the tub then drop to create giant waves. Pretty much the same thing as relaxing, right? After the bath, there is still time to play gently with some toys:

Perhaps that should have been ‘gently carry heavy objects around the house’. No matter how you phrase it, being a boy is fun!

Very sorry for the gap in posts. Things have been quite busy around here, so I’ve been focusing on keeping up rather than documenting life. There is such a delicate balance between spending one’s time documenting the life that is flying by and actually enjoying the life you are blessed to have. I seem to waffle back and forth. Over the last two months or so, I’ve done an OK job documenting things, but a poor job sharing them with you all. Apologies for that. But, that changes now!

Ryken has been growing like crazy over the last few months. This first shot is a bit of a mixed bag of emotion for me. I see the little baby that we’ve enjoyed for the last two years, but I also see a glimpse of the young boy he is growing up to be. Time is flying:

I find it so interesting how photos can capture different parts of someone’s personality. We saw a good deal of that with the World Cup this year. For those who don’t know, I consider the Netherlands a bit like a second home because of the time I spent there over various times of my childhood. Though I didn’t live there for years at a time, I spent a month or two over several age ranges, so it had more of an impact on me than just a trip. That being said, the Netherlands had a great World Cup team this year. That may seem unrelated, except for two facts: Ryken loves soccer (which I’m pumped about), AND he loves orange. In fact, it is his favorite color. So, we got into the spirit of things while watching one of the Netherland games this year:

The uniform was brought back from Holland by my parents, so he was authentic. It was a lot of fun seeing him walk around in uniform:

He had a blast rooting on Oranje while wearing orange! He enjoyed it so much that we decided to have an orange themed party for his second birthday. The Netherlands happened to make it to the World Cup final, which happened to be on his second birthday. We couldn’t have planned it much better.

We even had a soccer cake to go with the World Cup theme:

We all had a good time:

And Ryken enjoyed being the birthday boy. He picked out these beads at the party store and has had a TON of fun wearing them around the house:

If you followed the World Cup at all, you already know that despite our best effort wearing orange, the Netherlands ended up losing to Spain in the final. I guess it is fitting that Ryken is wearing red in the next few pictures.

Our family has a little tradition that Amy and I started when we first got married, and it may have showed up even before that. It is a pretty meaningful and special tradition that we hold dear. It is this: we give gifts before the actual holidays. We used to get grief for it when we were younger, but now we are in charge so we can do whatever we want! So, in order to maintain the tradition in our family, we gave Ryken a few gifts each day before his party. It was a bit of a celebration week for him. The gift we were most excited to give him was his new bike!

He seemed to have a good time ‘riding’ it on the patio. It mostly consisted of him sitting on the bike as we pushed him around, but he seemed to get it after a little time on it. Beyond ‘getting it’, he seemed to enjoy having his own ‘cycle’, as he calls it:

It was a lot of fun seeing him play around on his bike. It just seemed to be the ideal representation of what childhood is about:

So now that you’ve been brought up to speed, I’ll share a few of the funny faces of Ryken. He tends to be a thoughtful kid, and slips into deep thought often:

And just because he is a little thinker doesn’t mean he can’t have a good time. He is quite the good natured kid as well:

He also gets very excited. For example, when I told him I was FINALLY going to start blogging again, he got very excited:

Apologies again for the delay. Life sure seems to move fast these days, but it sure is a fun ride.

It has been quite a while since my last post. We’ve not been particularly swamped with things, but we haven’t been board either. Spring is here, and we’ve spend many of our weekends battling the high weeds and tending to our various gardens. It has been nice to enjoy warmer temperatures outside. I’ve also had an unexpected increase (as in, more than zero) in freelance which has been nice. It has also kept me busy.

A few days ago, I discovered that you can sell photography on Etsy. I’m not really sure why I didn’t connect that until now, but it just clicked. Amy has had her shop for a while now, and I’ve considered a few ways to start something of my own, but each idea had enough hurdles to prevent me from moving forward. Selling photos, however, makes a ton of sense, and because I love it, there really aren’t any hurdles. With my mind being focused on freelance and business, I decided to open what I’m calling ‘Curtis Gallery Photography’:

Though I’d love for it to do well, I’m more excited by the fact that it even exists. Actually doing something with the photos I’ve taken over the last 10 or so years that I’ve been focused on photography is a big step for me.

I find it so interesting how, even when we are adults, there are still areas in our lives that we need to grow in, and fears that often prevent us from moving towards goals we have, or exploring gifts that we have been given. It is a fairly obvious that those fears and insecurities exist in each of us, but as I look at Ryken’s growth and development, I’m reminded at how my age shouldn’t prevent me from growing. One area where we are growing, of sorts, is diapers. Amy crunched some numbers and did a lot of research to find that cloth diapers would be quite friendly on our budget long term. So, Ryken now has cloth diapers:

I like how much he enjoys picking them out. He passionately voices which color he wants from time to time, and enjoys picking between the options that we give him. Something else that has been a lot of fun for he and I is ‘man nights’ at Sonic. There is a drive in near us, and on nights when Amy is leading Bible Study, we sometimes sneak out to sonic to get a burger and watch trucks drive by:

Not the most flattering photo of him with a full mouth of burger, but he sure has a blast. I let him run around in the truck, stand on the seats, and point out the window as we identify the colors of all the trucks zooming by. I love how excited he gets when a big truck comes by in a color that he loves. It reminds me of all the things in life that I’m investing in, and how I should express that level of passion and excitement.

Though Ryken didn’t tell me to start this little photo venture, he is a big reason for it. As he continues to get older, I’m excited to encourage his exploration of the things he is passionate about. At this point its animals and just about anything mechanical. I don’t know what the future holds for him and his passions, but I hope he chooses to jump into them wholeheartedly, and not let his fears prevent him from enjoying life.

The weather is warming up a bit in our neck of the woods. It has been nice to see that most of our plants made it through the winter with no problems. This was really our first winter with a yard of plants, so there were some nerves every time we looked out back and saw our fruit trees look like dead branches sticking out of the ground. But, they all made it. We are now planting new plants, and making sure everything gets an appropriate amount of water. Ryken, of course, is happy to help:

The weather in the spring is fairly random. We’ve had one day where it was in the upper 70′s followed by a day in the mid 50′s and rain. Easter fell on one of cool temperatures and strong wind days. Because of that, Nana put together a little indoor easter egg hunt for Ryken. Ryken and Pop Pop make a game of putting pennies in a piggy bank pretty much every time we go down to visit. Nana had found a piggy bank on sale, and figured it would be a great game for him to play while Mom Mom and Pop Pop are away. So, she ‘hid’ eggs around the house filled with pennies, and held the bank. At first, Ryken was a bit unsure as to the point of all of it, so he handed Nana the eggs:

After one or two, he realized there was something inside:

And he remembered what to do with the pennies:

Though at times, he was more focused on finding the next egg than dropping the pennies in:

Overall, it was a fun easter. Its amazing what a little boy he has become. We’ve enjoyed watching him grow every step of the way.

I have really enjoyed posting daily snapshots in this space, and I hope you have enjoyed them too. I plan on continuing to post pictures and tidbits about our daily life (though probably less frequently) but I will be doing so on my blog, Knit Me Pieces. I have been feeling just a little bit too diversified in my virtual endeavors, so I am consolidating all of my blogging/posting/updating/etc. there. (Past daily snapshot posts will remain here, on curtisgallery, but in the future they can be found at knitmepieces.blogspot.com).

Hope to see you there!