Phil's Birthday

It is Phil's birthday and we celebrated with a dinner at Charlie Brown's Steakhouse and dessert back at home.  And the best part... I got a picture of everyone smiling, on just the second try!

Happy birthday to a wonderful father and husband.  We love you!

The Autism Speaks walk is just around the corner.  If you are planning to walk with us, or would like a shirt, please let us know.  You can sign up to join our team or make a donation here:
The Ryan Express Team

The walk is on Sunday, June 1st. We hope to see you there!

DC

Happy 8th Birthday Ryan!

Another birthday has passed and I can't believe my "baby" is 8 years old already!  Where has the time gone?

With our new shirts on May 12th, the morning of Ryan's birthday!

Mahopac Middle School

Take notice of Ryan's hand.  He was very possessive of his cake this year.  He didn't want Julia anywhere near it when it was time to blow out the candle.  By the way, the cake on our left is a GF chocolate chip cookie cake made by Carol, and the cake with the Darth Vader candle is a GF cake from The Pastry Garden.  Both were extremely tasty! 

717 pieces!

Before bed Ryan studied the box of his new Lego set.  He eagerly asked if he could head to bed to start his drawings now that he has lots of details in his mind.

This is where I found Ryan at 5:30 a.m. this morning. Determined to build his new Lego set without our help.  

He spent about 4 hours on it today (2 hours before school and 2 hours after school) and he is a little over half way done.
It is coming out great!

Some old pictures to look at.  No, this isn't Jack, it is Ryan!  He was 18 months in this picture.

And he was three and a half years old in this picture:

And how about this video of Ryan receiving one of his B12 injections.  It feels like a lifetime ago that we needed to do this.  It brought me to tears watching this video and reliving flashbacks of the months and months of struggling we went through to get Ryan to this point getting his injection. Ryan has come so far!

Since I didn't post for Mother's Day I want to share one of the gifts Ryan made me.  It is a letter that I will treasure forever!

My four beauties!  How did I get so lucky???

Last, but not least, thank you to everyone who reached out to Ryan for his birthday.  I passed along all of the messages and showed him the pictures of people wearing their Ryan Express shirt.  The Autism Speaks walk is coming up on June 1st.  We hope you can join us!  If you would like to join our team or make a donation, please follow the link below.
The Ryan Express team page

DC

Ryan's Special Day

Ryan made his First Holy Communion today.  He did a wonderful job!  Only two boys and one girl remembered to make the sign of the cross after receiving and Ryan was one of them.  We're so proud of how well he did preparing for this special day.  We went to brunch afterwards with our family and he was glowing from the excitement of having so many people fuss over him.

In the evening he had the opportunity to participate in the crowning of the Blessed Mother ceremony and again he did a great job.  It was a very beautiful moment!

Our neighbor and dear friend, Carol, took video of the ceremony.  It was a proud and moving moment.  And Ryan was so serious completing his "job" and making sure the other kids did what they were supposed to do too! Click here to see it:  Crowning of the Blessed Mother

And then the presenting of the gifts: Presenting the Gifts at Mass

DC