Well, I think this is it, my friends. The end of my blog at Xanga.

I am moving my musings and thoughts on life to the apparently-more-popular blogspot. Please come visit me at www.joyandryan.blogspot.com and adjust your bookmarks and favorites accordingly.  

We're lucky the weather has been so beautiful in Colorado this past week... because Ryley lost her coat. It made me sick to think about it; coats are so expensive.

And the worst thing about it was that we couldn't for the life of us figure out where she left it. The last time we saw it was last Saturday morning when we unsuccessfully attempted to use it as a barricade to keep Juliet from climbing the stairs. After that, it was gone. It was missing on Monday morning, and though we knew she had had it over the weekend, we checked Lost and Found at school. I thought back and remembered that every place we went on Saturday and Sunday, Ryley just wore her sweatshirt with no coat. We looked in both cars. We looked again and again in the coat closet and in her clothes closet, thinking that perhaps we were just overlooking it.  We started looking under beds.  But our house is fairly clean, and how can you misplace a big, purple winter coat?  All week long, Ryley wore her uniform sweater to school and was fine, but we knew that the warm weather couldn't last forever. Sooner or later, she would need her coat.

Mystified, I began making plans to bite the bullet and go buy her a new one. Until today. Ryan stood in the doorway of Ryley's room as I searched one last time under her bed and in her closet.

"Ryley? Do you think it could be in your suitcase?" he asked, looking down at the play Strawberry Shortcake suitcase Ryley had carefully placed in her doorway to keep Juliet from entering her room.

"Maybe," she answered. "Wait, I remember!  It is!"

Ryley unzipped her suitcase, and there, stuffed in tightly, was her purple coat. She freed it from its week-long prison, and we all three cheered.

"Why did you put it in there?" I asked.

"Because I was pretending to take a trip to Antarctica," she answered.

Other item stuffed in the suitcase? Her little sleeping bag.

The other night, as we drove home from school, we had Ryley's friend Amirah with us again.  We haven't known whether Amirah comes from a Christian family, but we assumed not. So, as we drove, the girls were singing and making up songs together. Suddenly Amirah started making up songs about Jesus....how He was born, He was born, and He grew up, He grew up, and it was so, so sad because He died on the cross and his mom was so, so sad.  All this at the top of her lungs.  She spent so much time singing about Him dying that finally Ryley interrupted her, ever so sweetly:

"But Amirah, wait!  There's something so great -- Jesus rose again!"

My eyes welled with tears at Ryley's joy and gentleness in telling her friend the best part of the story. 

Amirah answered, "Yeah, I know.  I'll sing about that in a minute."  And she did.

Here are some scenes from our house....A checklist Ryley wrote up to make sure we're caring for the puppy (pupe) properly, and a couple of pics of her new haircut.

Excuse the pinkish tones....  Apparently the high levels of estrogen in this household are overwhelming to our camera.