I just realized we never posted these nice pictures from when Anna’s Aunt Carrie and uncle Eric. Here’s an album from that week, plus a few other random ones.

Aunt Carrie & Uncle Eric

Last weekend we visited Iowa and took lots of pictures. Unfortunately these are all from my phone, but there are some good ones in there. Google also automatically made some animated gifs from the pictures, which is pretty neat.

Easter Weekend Album

Anna turned two today! We had a great birthday party with all of Anna’s grandparents and our friends Claire, Joost and Soren. Here are some pictures.

Anna’s Second Birthday

It took me a long time to finally get these posted, but better late then never. Here are some pictures of Anna from the 2013 Ryan Family Reunion!

Also, here’s a small album of Summer Pictures from around home. There are a couple of shots in here of Anna coloring – she is absolutely wild about drawing right now. Maria setup a little desk for her with crayons and different kinds of paper, and Anna will spend most of the day scribbling.

Anna looked to nice in her dress this morning that I wanted to share a couple of pictures. And then since I was getting pictures off of the camera, I included a couple of other good ones as well. Check them out here: Summer Dress Album

Anna is getting super old, huh? Here are a few new pictures of Anna: 13 Months Album

That album includes my favorite picture of Anna and I, which Maria just took a couple of hours ago. You can really see how grown up Anna is looking there, and she’s even paying attention to a book.

She’s developing several talents that have proven almost impossible to capture on camera. She’s quite adept at mimicking elephants, monkeys, gorillas, giraffes, dogs, and birds. Well, she doesn’t really mimic birds so much as get excited and make ‘b’ noises when she hears them. I did get her doing “shhhh” like Grover does in the book that Maria is reading here.

I threw together a few pictures here for an album of Anna at One Year Old. It features such wonderful moments as:

• Learning to sit on a stool
• Running around with a cool hairdo
• Ugly faces made when a camera flashes right in your face
• Embarrassing bath time pictures to be used when Anna is a teenager

Anna and Calvin

Anna celebrated her first birthday yesterday with all four of her grandparents. It was a great day – lots of big smiles and visitors and fun new toys. You can see a few pictures of the big day in this birthday album. You’ll also find a couple of pictures from when we went up to look at bald eagles on the Wisconsin River.

Anna’s Birthday Album

The day started with Anna’s first birthday pancake – my Mom always made Carrie and I a pancake shaped like our new age on our birthday. Anna gobbled up her “1” before we could even put syrup on it.

After a good nap, Anna’s grandparents arrived with a bunch of fun new toys, and we also opened gifts sent in by Aunt Carrie and Uncle Eric, Helen and Claire, and Anna’s great grand parents. Anna seems to be getting the idea that a big bag full of tissue paper probably contains something good.

Of course Anna got her first taste of cake & ice cream. The cake actually wasn’t all that exciting to her, but the ice cream was a big hit. After a couple of tastes she buried her face in the bowl and licked it clean.

We even got a visit from our friends the Schuks, whose daughter Melina showed Anna how to use her lady bug scooter.

It was a really fun day; we were so happy to have all that love in the house. We’re lucky to have all of you great people around! Now on to year two!