I don't think I can quite explain how much I love Christmas time! I love the season, the weather, spending time with friends and family, Christmas music...I love it all! This Christmas has been the most exciting and special yet! Our family has had three very exciting Christmas' together. During our first Christmas as a married couple, Justin and I were on our honeymoon in Australia, our second was last year and I was 5 months pregnant, and this year we have Reagan! She has done exceptionally well with the tree, ornaments, and presents. For the first few days, she just explored around the presents. Then she discovered how to push some of the lighter boxes around so she could pull herself up. She would then reach for all the ornaments at the bottom of the tree. Thank goodness we didn't put any breakable where she could reach. We spent Christmas morning with Justin's family at his brother and sister-in-law's house. We had a great time together and exchanged lots of great presents. Nancy cooked an amazing Christmas dinner and we couldn't have had a better time. Then we went to my friend Gentry's house to see her and her parents on Sunday afternoon. We usually go and visit them once a week. We love them! They are pretty much family, too! :) Because my dad was flying to South Africa over Christmas we are going over to their house tomorrow night to celebrate with them. We have had an awesome year and look forward to starting this new year with our sweet little girl, family, and friends! :) We'll have more soon...
We had so much fun on Thursday night at the Denton Tree Lighting Festival! For about twenty years now my parents have put on a living nativity scene in Denton. In the beginning we had it at TWU, then we moved to the mall, and now for the past 5+ years we've been at the Denton Courthouse for the Lighting Festival. Justin and I were so excited to be able to be Mary, Joseph, and have Reagan be baby Jesus this year. I love seeing all the little kids come up and say hi to baby Jesus! It was also fun to hear them say, "See ya next year!" I love that they know to look for the nativity. What an amazing witness to those who came out! Reagan did very well throughout our hour long time slot. Even though the temperature was in the l0w 40's or so, we were actually quite warm in our layers and costumes. My dad has put extra bails of hay stacked on the sides of the stable to help block the wind. It was actually much warmer in the little area we were than out where the people were walking by and standing! Reagan loved watching all the people taking pictures, come up close to her and talk to her. It was great to see friends from church and school there too. We even ran in to some friends we hadn't seen in over ten years! All in all, it was a wonderful evening!
We are currently here in Deming, New Mexico, visiting with Justin's grandparents. We've had a great time with his grandma and grandpa. Thom and June, Brandon, Nancy, Kristian and Noah also all came out to spend the holiday together! Justin and I will be heading back to Denton this weekend. Reagan's first Thanksgiving was a success! :)
Halloween has come and gone and I'm just now putting up Reagan's pictures! I can't get over how cute she looks in her costume! She was such a trooper on Halloween night. With Justin out of town, we started our evening off at the church for their fall carnival. We had some pictures taken of Reagan with two of her other little friends. The girls were so cute in their costumes! One was a little bumble bee and one was a pirate! How precious is that!?!?! We then went over to Justin's brother and sister-in-law's (Brandon and Nancy) to go trick or treating with Kristian and Noah. Kristian was dressed as a ladybug as well so we were able to get some very sweet pictures of the two of them together. My friend Anna, also lives in the same neighborhood as Brandon and Nancy was also out with her husband and niece. We stopped by there and her little dog was also dressed up as a ladybug! Reagan loves dogs so we put some pictures of her with little Pepper in their matching costumes. We concluded the night by stopping by Justin's parents house to show her off to them. My parents were also out of town so they missed seeing her. We just went over to their house this past week to show them her costume. :)
Tomorrow is Justin's 29th birthday! We are super excited to celebrate by going to the Mav's/Spurs game tomorrow night. It's so crazy to think about the fact that Justin and I have been together for 10 years! We have had up and downs but we are in a really good place right now! Reagan has been such a blessing and continues to teach Justin and I things about ourselves and each other. We are working on becoming a stronger family unit each day.
Hello friends and family! I can't believe that I'm just now updating our blog for the first time since the end of October! Really?...two months?...I guess that's a testament to how busy our lives have been. My goal is to update at least once a week...so we'll see how it goes. Reagan is doing so many new things that I feel like I need to update everyone that often just to keep our family in the loop.
Reagan just turned six months this past Monday. She is such a precious little girl and really has begun to develop her own little personality. She has learned how to growl wand does it most often when she's frustrated! The first few times she did it, I thought "where in the world is that coming from..." Then last night when I was fighting with the vacuum cleaner cord, I growled in frustration! I stopped my self and said "OH NO!!!" she gets that from me! YIKES! Mommy will have to work on harnessing her frustration especially in front of Reagan! She is rolling all over the place...from front to back, back to front, she's even really good and balancing herself on her side, now! She has just begun to push herself up on her hands and knees. We still have seen her crawl although she is a master scooter! I don't know how she does it, but she can scoot herself anywhere she wants to go. We have been eating rice cereal and oatmeal for about a month now. She still thrusts her tongue forward to push the food out, but sooner or later we get to the bottom of the bowl, so we know she's swallowing it at some point. We also started Squash and Sweet Potatoes this past week. Now that she's doing well with those, we will begin some green veggies. I think that green beans and peas are next on our list. We added a video of her eating her squash for the first time. She's super funny with all her crazy faces. It's sure to give you a little laugh! We'll add more about Reagan next weekend. She has her little costume all ready to go. You'll have to wait to see what little critter she will be... :)
Hello everyone! Well it has been over a month since we last updated our blog and pictures! So much has happened in the last few weeks, but we will update you slowly so you don't have to read through a novel just to catch up. We went on our first family vacation at the beginning of August with Thom, June, Brandon, Nancy, Kristian and Noah to Sedona, Arizona. We had a blast and everything went very well. Reagan was such a trooper and did amazing while we toted her around everywhere. We hiked the Grand Canyon, did the Pink Jeep Tour, Krissy and I rode in the Bi-plane, among various other activities. We'll hopefully have pictures up soon. :)
Starting school this week was very exciting but super exhausting! I have been so busy at school and during my conference times that I haven't even really had time to worry about Reagan. Justin has been doing an amazing job of getting Reagan up and going in the morning. She is still sleeping when I leave, so I don't see her until I get home around 4:30-5:00. I have a very sweet class and am looking forward to the year! We did lose one of our Kindergarten sections, so that means that they had to split up a class amongst the five remaining kinder classes. I went from having 19 students to now having 21! We are all a little stressed about having such big classes, but we've come together and are ready to bite the bullet and start fresh on Monday! :)
The Rana household as been quite crazy since last Saturday morning. Justin has been so wonderful watching Reagan when he's home so I can have a little "me" time. However, last weekend our sweet little Reagan decided she no longer wanted a bottle...only ME! Not good! Justin had to call me home from running errands all over town because she totally refused taking bottle! This continued all week. We tried different bottle brands, different nipples, different nipple flows...and so on. I was a bit relieved when Justin found a blog with tons of posts from other moms also stating their child had gone on "bottle strike"! As of Friday afternoon she has been taking bottles off and on so I think we're at least making progress in that area.
For the past two weeks now I've been taking cake decorating classes at Hobby Lobby. I love it! It's so much fun and gives me a little break from life on the home front with the baby. Here is a picture of the first cake I've decorated for class. We had to make the icing from scratch and frost the cake. Then in class we learned several techniques for filling in shapes, designs, writing messages, and we learned about the different types of decorating tips. Because the All-Star game was on Tuesday night I was inspired to create my hubby his very own baseball cake. :)Thursday night Justin called and told me that he and his friend Chad wanted to completely revamp the sound booth at our church. I think this was going to be a very tedious project, but encouraged to do it. Needless to say, they pulled an all-nighter working from about 8:30 Thursday night until 9:00 Friday morning. Justin slept for three hours and went back up to finish everything before our conference started at 6:00 Friday night. Everything in the sound booth looks amazing! It's super clean, organized, and getting to all the equipment is so much easier now! Good job boys! To complete our crazy weekend, Justin started having these horrible pains in his lower back on Saturday night. Justin has a very high pain tolerance so when saw how much he was hurting I was kinda freaked out! We have a doctor friend that recommended we go to the ER to have him checked out. We were pretty sure he might have kidney stones but wanted to know. So after 5 hours at Denton Regional and a CatScan, the results showed a small stone in his left side. He's been drinking lots of water and taking it easy. The meds they gave him totally wipe him out, so he's been pretty out of it the last 24 hours. We are praying that it passes quickly! I can't imagine having to push something like that out of a small hole in the body....oh wait...yes I can! I just had a 7 pound baby! I can't really compare though seeing as how I had an epidural. I'm totally kidding and know that kidney stones are way different than having a baby :)
So that's been our past 5 days...above is a pic of the cake I made. I know it's not super detailed or anything, but I must say, I'm very proud of myself! :) Reagan also turned three months today! We didn't get to take any pics since Justin was asleep most of the day, but we'll work on it this week and have those soon! :)
