Our First Christmas Party!

Ugly Christmas Sweater Party!!!!!

Well here we are, the cute couple! We were invited to a new type of Christmas party, an Ugly Christmas Sweater Party, hence the name!



We weren't quite sure of it but it was a really big hit, apparently a lot of people have started doing this because we had a heck of a time trying to find an ugly Christmas sweater at the goodwill.

Here is Ryan is his awesome shirt, I could believe we found it, it was so hideous, and he actually won 3rd prize. Wahooo! Oh and someone made his shirt, it was so ugly you couldn't even go and buy another one. I think it was a winner!

We really couldn't find another really ugly one so I just found a plan Christmas sweater, nothing special.

Here I am with some of my good girlfriends and there ugly Christmas sweaters. Me, Andrea, and Melissa!

And here is my very good friend Alicia, she is due at the beginning of January and she could find a sweater that would fit her big belly. It was really ugly too so we have to keep that one around and pass it on to the next prego to wear.

Halloween 2007! (click on the pictures)

Dallas's costume, he was really proud he was the good red spiderman. As you can see as he shows off his muscles.




And here he is in the full costume, he didn't really wear the mask and gloves all night long because they got in the way. But he though it looked cool enough to wear for pictures.



Ok Dallas is not flipping off the camera. His gloves make his fingers really long, so when he is making a fist his thumb is poking up. This picture was just such a cute pose by our decorations :)



We went to a trick or trunk party at the high school for all the kids and Dallas was missing Daddy so he was telling me "I love Daddy A LOT!"



We found another spiderman at the party that just lives kiddy corner to our neighborhood, and guess what his name is..................................... Dallas and guess what is middle name is........ Ryan. Can you believe it. A Red and Black spiderman with the same name and oh so we wish that was Dallas's middle name too, even Dallas wants to change his name. That's a hard one to explain. But when the two boys met and found out each others name they really didn't know what to say, they had very confused looks on the face.

Here is Dallas in his hunting gear with his newly carved pumpkin. He designed it all by himself, we are very proud of him.
He changed his mind about his costume at the last min. and wanted to go as a hunter. But since we did invest in the spiderman costume we talked him into wearing it. I guess he just wants to be like his Daddy.

Here is Dallas posing for his picture at his school Halloween party!

here is Dallas with his para Mrs. Neilson as they are walking in the school parade. There were a lot of cute costumes in the parade but of course Dallas was the cutest!

This is Saylor, one of Dallas's friends. Dallas and Saylor went trick-or-treating together that night and had a blast. ShaRee was a room mother so she got to help out with the Halloween party and had a lot of fun getting to know all the kids.
The Super Heroes! Dallas and his friend Lucy waiting in line for one of the Halloween games are showing off there muscles.
Here is Dallas's Class. They are quite the bunch.

And here they are with there teacher Mr. Greve.
Mommy and Dallas right before trick-or-treating. We also had to show off our cool pumpkins. Daddy's pumpkin is throwing up pumpkin seeds, Mommy's pumpkin is saying "ooooweee" and Dallas's pumpkin is laughing. Also this is the first year that carved his own pumpkin. It was his design, he came up with it all by himself. We are very proud of him.

Trick-or-Treating with Saylor, they got a lot of candy. And when they all the sudden needed to go to the bathroom, they both got to ride on the 4-wheeler to get home. Thank goodness for the 4-wheeler.


"Trick-or-Treat"
We got to meet our new neighbors that night. They have twin boys that are 4 years old. Well after we met them Dallas was done trick-or-treating. He just wanted to play, until it was way passed his bed time and had to go home to bed. It was quite the night, and a lot of fun!!!

Dallas lost his tooth!!!

Well Dallas lost a tooth and he didn't even cry. He was very brave when daddy pulled it out. Then we put his tooth in his special ring box. It was the box that ShaRee's wedding ring came in and because Dallas was the one that gave it to me and was our Ring bearer it is his special box now. Well then we put it under his pillow and the tooth fairly gave him 6 bucks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Well I guess the tooth fairly is doing much better these days, compared to when we were little. :)

October Bonfire!

On Saturday, October 27th, my friend Alicia and her husband Mark had their annual Bonfire. For everyone that couldn't make it you missed out. The bonfire was about 20-30 feet high but don't worry Mark is a firefighter so everything was safe. Well maybe, the shed and the neighbors tree might have been a little to close. The shed was metal so it just got really hot and well I guess we will see how the tree is doing this coming spring. Ha ha!

Alicia is 7 months pregnant, she looks so cute. And Mom your wassil was a huge hit. I cut the recipe in half but I really shouldn't of done that. It was all gone in an hour. I was kind of bummed, I only got one cup but next year we are making a full batch. But everyone loved it, it smelt so good and kept your hands warm. It sure made it feel like the holidays were coming :)
Yes, I am feeling Alicia's baby belly, and no Ryan isn't pregnant. I just like to feel his belly too! j/k
We had such a good time, but we really missed our little guy, it's just not the same without him.
There were so many kids there, we know he would of had a blast, so next year for sure he is coming.



We all had a great time riding the 4-wheelers through out the night. Alicia and Mark have quite a bit of land and they are out in the middle of no where so we used them a lot that night. It was a blast!

Our First Anniversary! (click on the pictures)

Ryan & ShaRee at Sutton Bay in South Dakota for their first anniversary!

Our anniversary was great we got a lot of birds, fish, and one on one time with each other.

ShaRee achieved her goal, she wanted to beat her score from last year which was one bird that she knows she got all by herself. But this year she got a lot more, because there were just so many more birds. Ryan of course the skilled hunter took the winning count. But we both decided a lot more birds got away this year too.

So we went hunting that morning and then in the afternoon we went fishing for Walleye and caught 13 keepers on the 13th we thought that was kind of cool ;) ShaRee got the biggest one!!! but just barely Ryan was less than a half an inch behind me. The biggest ones where just under 21 inch and the smaller ones where 17 inch. We caught more but they where just babies and threw them back. We went out with a guide, and this guy is very skilled, He had six lines going at once and had a nice fish finder. He could pick out what the different shapes on the fish finder were (either Salmon, walleye, bate fish, crap fish, etc) and what size. Then when we found a big group of fish our guide would wait a little bit then tell us "you should have a bite about...NOW" and right then we would get a couple of poles jerking. Our guide would also tell us the size of the fish before we even brought them up. He was really good. Without him we probably wouldn't of found any fish. It was a lot of fun just watching him work and looking for the fish. We sure did learn a lot.

Then we got all cleaned up and had a wonderful dinner. Then we went hunting Sunday morning and felt really sore from hunting and then fishing. The guns get really heavy after you've been walking for 5 hours and then you go fishing and your reeling in 180ft of line with a huge fish on the end. Oh ShaRee thought her arm was going to fall off!!! Then we flew home some where around 12 or 1. The private plane was really fun, once in a life time kind of thing. The only thing that sucks is how early we had to get up for hunting but that part of the game. We got to bring home lots of Fish and birds so our freezer is getting full. Yum! Yum! So if anyone would like to come visit and have some you are more that welcome!

Dallas' Surgery

Just to let everyone know Dallas's Surgery went great. At 9:00am they gave him some "magic sleeping juice" that made him feel very relaxed. But he didn't like the taste at all.

Then at 9:30am he was wheeled back to surgery they gave him some gas to knock him out and then put an I.V. (spelling) in. Everything went well, the doctor (Dr. Legge) came back at 11:00am and told Ryan and Me that eveything went fine and he was in the recovery room then they brought him back to us at 11:30am.

We had to stay there a little over an hour just so they could monitor him. When they rolled him back he was curled up in a ball, hiding from the light. His eye is very sensitive. His tummy was a little upset from the meds and they told us he would probably throw-up in the car because of motion sickness. And yes he did but we were prepared with a little baggy. But after that all he wanted was to eat. He didn't get to have anything to eat that morning so he was starving.

This morning he said his eye hurt and there was some goop in his eye but we have some drops that we put in, I am just hoping he doen't get any infection. His eye is still really red but that is normal and it could take up to two weeks to go away. You can already see a difference but we have to wait two weeks to know the final result, by then all the swelling should be gone. He has an 2 week check up appointment with Dr. Legge on Nov. 5th (HAPPY BIRTHDAY Mandi) If his lid doesn't come up more by then he will see another doctor on Nov. 6th to evaluate him for another surgery.

Hopfuly he would have that surgery by the end of November. But the way this surgery was delaided by "you know who" it will probably happen during Christmas. Both of this surgeries should of been done before summer was over. Well here are some picture of him at the hospital and at home, scroll down to see them. Enjoy and thank you everyone for your thoughts and prays. They almost canceled the surgery because he had some congestion the day before but it cleared up. So thank you to everyone.

Ryan, ShaRee, & Dallas

P.S. sorry it took so long to get this posted but we have been trying to catch up on sleep :)

Dallas' Surgery

We just wanted to let everyone know that on Thursday, October 18 Dallas is going to have surgery on his left eye again. We are just asking everyone to have him in your prayers.
Thanks

First Year of Marriage

Well we can't believe its been a year already! A lot has happened but it all went pretty quickly. We love married life, it has been wonderful. We are so thankful for meeting each other, I just can't imagine life without Ryan, and he says it too! Thanks to everyone that kept telling me that I would meet my prince charming and just to be patient, you were right.

There have been a lot of ups and a few downs in this last year but it has only helped us become even closer to each other and has shown us what we really want for our new family and how much we appreciate our son, Dallas, and any future children to join our family.

We Moved into our first new Home in February. We were so excited to finally get out of that small cramped apartment. Dallas now has his own fenced in backyard where he can run and play and we don't have to worry about him running into the parking lot. Our cats got pregnant while we were moving. We were really busy and didn't realize they were old enough to do that, ha ha jokes on us.

We gave most of the kittens away to good homes including Dallas's cousins (Rachel, Eric, Cooper, and Alex) But after we lost the mother Shadow (we hope she has found a wonderful family in Missouri that is taking care of her) we decided to keep two kittens instead of just one. So we have three cats, the dad (Rocky), and his two sons Spidy, and Jag. Dallas picked out spidy because he is all black and reminded him of the black spiderman in spiderman 3. (Dallas wanted to make sure I wrote all of that in there :)

Ryan is still going to school for his apprenticeship in become a pip fitter. He has about 2 years left and can't wait to be done. He has been working really hard trying to finish the program a little earlier.

The program was through Penn State but just recently moved to Washtenaw College. That has kind of slowed his progress, (a lot of new paper work) but he does all of his work on line and is making up for lost time.

ShaRee got to go hunting for the first time about a month after our wedding. And she shot her first pheasant all by herself. Now she wants a big buck. We think she needs a little more practice time with the pheasants or maybe some ducks or geese. Well she is going to get more practice the weekend of our first anniversary. We are going to take a trip up to Sutton Bay for the weekend and ShaRee is hoping to get two birds this time all by herself. ShaRee had a harder time this year in May. She has been recouping this summer in hopes that her back will be 100% better after she had a herniated disk. It is much better but still has a ways to go. She has also applied for a sub para position in Millard Public School. Dallas has a Para that is with him all day, that helps him in areas that he needs more assistance with. She wants to be able to help other kids and also learn more ways to help Dallas as well. It would be perfect hours too. get off of work when Dallas doesn't have school, so she can still be a full time Mom.

Dallas on the other hand is doing wonder. He is the most amazing little boy (he isn't so little anymore) He started Kindergarten in August and well he is the most popular kid in his grade. When his mom goes to visit him at school or eat lunch with him she watches as kids from all the other classes yell "Hi Dallas", or they come up and tell you that they played with Dallas today at recess. You can always find Dallas at recess because he has a harem of girls surrounding him. They all want to play with him and help him with everything. All the kids are so nice and want to include Dallas in everything. They stand up for him and make sure Dallas is getting what he wants. His classmates really try to be his voice for him.
Also Dallas has two loose teeth. One is scheduled to come out any day. He is going to start soccer and t-ball this spring and hopefully swimming lessons soon too.
Dallas has Physical Therapy, Occupational Therapy, and Speech Therapy every week. We have all started to take a sign Language Class as well (Signing Exact English). The Class is every Tuesday and they have a class for kids to take at the same time the parents are in their class. The Class is wonderful and we have been learning a lot. So Mom, Dad, Grandma Cassels, and Dallas' Para, Susan Neilson are all learning sign language with Dallas. Its a lot of work but so wonderful for Dallas and our Family. Dallas is such a smart young man, and so loving and caring. We are so blessed to have him as our son.