2015: Year in Review and Massive Photo Dump (Part I)

I love year-in-review posts. Well, let me clarify. I love reading other people's posts, but I find them incredibly difficult to write. They take such a long time and I find myself wondering "Wow, what did we do that month? Anything? Apparently not..." But I'll try anyway--especially since I was so horrible about blogging in 2015 AND I didn't do a Christmas newsletter.

January
We started the year out by choosing a patron saint for our family with Jennifer Fulwiler's Saint's Name Generator. Our patron for 2015 was St. Godehard of Hildesheim, feast day May 4th, patron of traveling merchants (not really applicable), and against childhood sickness (hooray!) danger at sea (not planning any transoceanic trips, but good to know), fever (hooray!), hailstorms (well, we'd love a new roof but better not to have to deal with it), Oh, and against birth pains. Well, I guess that one's wasted because we're planning on waiting a while to try for #4 and won't be delivering a baby in 2015. Ha. Hahahaha. (This, friends, is what we call foreshadowing...)

Michael turned 4.

Alex and I celebrated our 5th wedding anniversary.

Alex helped sponsor the high school's trip to March for Life in DC for the second year, and my wonderful parents came out to spend the long weekend with me and the boys.

February
Lots of time spent writing, *finally* got a second crib and moved JP from his little bassinet to a real crib in his own room, and, um... it was cold? See? These posts are so hard!

March

We found out we would, in fact, be having a baby this year. We took the pregnancy test on March 6th, the feast day of St. Colette--the name we'd had picked out for a girl for several years. So right from the beginning I was 99.99% sure we were having a girl.

John Paul turned 1 and took his first couple of steps.

We acquired a hand-me-down piano from my parents.

April

We spent Easter in Lincoln with my family and 7 out of 10 people in the house came down with the stomach flu. But it was a great visit anyway!

John Paul got his first hair cut and started walking in earnest.

May
We enjoyed a visit from my sister and her family.

At the end of May we went camping for the first time as a family. It was... quite the adventure. I loved camping growing up, and I hope we get to do a lot more as the kiddos get older. Camping with none of our own gear and three kids four and under was a little stressful. But it was still a beautiful weekend and some good memories.

And at the end of May we were privileged and blessed to attend the ordination of our dear friend and Liam's godfather. And somehow I didn't get any pictures except for a rather lame attempt at a family selfie on our way to the Mass. Sadness.

ignore the nose-picking going on in the backseat, please...

June

We had a gorgeous late spring/early summer and spent as much time in the yard as we could.

I turned 30, and my gut feeling was confirmed at our 20 week ultrasound when we learned that yes, we were adding a girl to the crazy mix of wild little boys.

a perfect birthday celebration at home with my boys

John Paul did not approve of the Otter Pops

We spent the last part of June visiting family in North and South Dakota. As always sleep was the hardest part of the trip, but we had a blast and the boys were such patient and fun travelling buddies.

meeting second cousins

we had a lovely visit with Alex's grandma--and despite his best attempts, John Paul did not manage to completely destroy her home OR throw himself down any crazy steep staircases

at the lovely cabin we rented with my parents and sister--it was so special to spend a week all together in the Black Hills

fishing

success!

we Rappanas are serious about our popcorn

we loved all the time with cousin James

And with that I think I'll have to make this into two parts so I don't break the internet with the number of photos in one blog post... Part II here.

When life is just kind of a pain...

I had such good intentions of blogging more regularly this summer. I have a whole series of posts brewing in which I plan to share the deep insights and life lessons I've been mulling over as I read the boys their favorite books over and over and over again. Liam's vocabulary is growing by leaps and bounds. John Paul is already four months old. Michael is becoming such a big little boy. I have sooooo many pictures I've been meaning to post.

Shortly after Easter my SI joint alignment issue reared its ugly head again, and I saw the physical therapist for it in early June (I didn't mean to wait so long--I gave it a couple weeks to resolve with stretching, then when it didn't it took another 3 weeks before I could get an appointment. sigh.). And then two weeks ago I went back to my PT for some intense back pain. I was hoping it was just my alignment again, but the PT checked me over and informed me that I was perfectly aligned. This time the problem is an acute herniated disc. Well, rats.

This situation has been all-consuming for me. I already felt overwhelmed and frustrated with the residual sciatic pain and limited range of motion from my alignment issue. Now, of course, I wish it were only that. I thought I had a high tolerance for pain (I confess my natural labors are often more a source of pride for me than they should be!) but this experience has been totally humbling. A big part of why I haven't blogged much recently is that I can't think of anything to say that isn't chock-full of self pity (the other part is that I can't sit at the computer for more than a few minutes, and the kitchen counters are rarely clean/clear enough to to serve as a standing desk). I started this post with the title of "photo dump" and the intention of simply mentioning my back and then posting a bunch of pictures from the last month or so. And then when the explanation started to just flow out in more detail than I had planned, I spent the rest of the evening feeling sorry for myself all over again. There may be future reflections on what I've been learning about myself during this ordeal, and then again there may not. Maybe once I'm back to "normal" (whatever that is; my PT did promise she'd get me there) I'll have a little more perspective and can write something that isn't just whining.

ANYways, here are a couple pictures from our trip to South Dakota for church camp in June. More pictures coming very soon, I promise :)

John Paul Charles and Great Grandpa Chuck

really great Great Grandparents

it was not a particularly photogenic week for Liam...
this was his happiest face from all the family pictures we tried to take

these boys lover their grandparents!

There Be Giants

This little boy has quite the imagination, and I absolutely love it.  You know what I love even more?  That his blossoming language skills are giving us a priceless window into that active little mind of his!

While we were in the Black Hills last month we were the privileged recipients of multiple stories about giants.  Driving through mile after mile of national forest certainly provided rich fodder for Michael's imagination.  Nearly every car ride involved at least one conversation along these lines:

M (after watching out the window): Mama! Daddy! A monster!

Mama/Daddy: A monster?  Where?!

M: In trees.  Monster!

Mama/Daddy: What kind of monster is it, Michael?

M: Giant monster!

Mama/Daddy: A giant?  Is he friendly?

M: No. Cross.

Mama/Daddy: Oh dear.  What does he want?

M: A giant hungry.

Mama/Daddy: Oh, he's hungry.  What does he like to eat?

M: Fruit 'nacks.  Yeyyow fruit 'nacks.

Mama/Daddy: But we don't have any yellow fruit snacks in the car.

M: Hide! A hide in trees!

And so on, and so forth.

Is it a giant?  No, just a happy Michael playing in the creek.

From the giant's perspective... let's hope he only likes to eat fruit 'nacks.

The giant's tower, or just Mt. Roosevelt outside of Deadwood?  It doesn't much matter--M was thrilled with the "hastle."

Storybook Island

We didn't do a whole lot of touristy stuff during our lovely ten days in the Black Hills.  Having spent the first 12 years of my life there I'll never really consider myself a tourist.  It may not be exactly home any more, but I'm still at least partly a native.  That being said, there are some really great touristy things to do (even for the natives).  One of our newly discovered old favorites is Storybook Island in Rapid City.

I've been waiting and waiting (okay, only for 2 1/2 years) for Michael to be old enough to enjoy Storybook Island.  It's a free park themed around--you guessed it--stories.  Nursery rhymes, fairy tales, and a little bit of Disney thrown in for good (or not so good) measure, etc.

Most of the pictures from the day (all photo credits to my dad) look like this... 

...and this...

...and this...

not as angry as I look, promise

...as I tried to get a very busy and energetic M to stop and pose for a picture so I could relive my childhood (and get a great blog post out of it).  He was too busy running everywhere and enjoying the park in his own way, imagine that.  But despite the lack of total cooperation Dad did get some great shots.

okay, he didn't take this one--obviously someone else did... but it was his camera so he still gets credit

my handsome pirate men

Michael's second cousins, Katie and Emily, came with us.  We all enjoyed their company, and my goodness was it nice to have someone a little smaller to chase after Michael through the child-sized spaces!

Here is Emily going down the slide in the house that Jack built...

And here I am going down the same slide about a quarter of a century earlier.  The house has had a couple coats of paint since then, and obviously safety standards have changed a bit.

When Michael saw this picture he was convinced it was a picture of him, and we had quite the conversation before he acknowledged it wasn't Mitenal, it was Yittle Mama (we'll go with it).

I tried desperately to get Michael to give Pooh a kiss so I could post these pictures together.  I guess he wanted to be more like Aunt Dene'...

I finally decided to take whatever I could get, and it wasn't worth ruining Michael's fun at the park just to get my perfect little blog pictures.

He did end up cooperating for the picture I wanted most of all...

Two and a half year old Michael...

Three year old Mama...

It doesn't get much sweeter than this :)

The park was definitely smaller than I remembered... Alex took great pleasure in reminding me that I was the one who had gotten bigger.  Yes, thank you dear.  Michael was just the right size to enjoy a lot of it, although I think he may have ended up feeling rather like Gimli at Helm's Deep:

By the by... does any else think it extremely cruel to name a bear who lost his home and family in a fire "Smokey"?  That never occurred to me as a child... but seriously folks.

The highlight of the morning for Michael was undoubtedly the train ride.

we even wore our Thomas shirt... how appropriate

That was our Storybook Island adventure.  Liam cooperated by sleeping pretty much the entire time while Grandma graciously did laps around the park with the stroller.  Coming next summer: pictures of both of them playing :)