Goodbye, Home

Last Saturday we officially said goodbye to our first home. I took the above pic as I was driving away for the last time (crying, of course). It was an eventful weekend!

On Friday, Kyle graduated with his Master's degree in Counseling and Student Development.

We were so proud of our graduate! (And it's over, finally!! Kyle's been slowly working on this degree a couple classes at a time for the past 3 years).

Both Kyle's family and my family came to town for the graduation on Friday, which was perfect since we were moving out of our house on Saturday! Kyle's mom and sister took Landon & Layla back with them to KC Friday night so that we could finish packing and moving without them running around under foot. It was a late night Friday but we got everything boxed up and Saturday some guys came to help us load the truck. The family of one of the guys on our staff team (Kyle, the one who takes all of our pictures and lived with us last semester) owns a warehouse in Topeka that they store extra equipment at for all of the Wendy's restaurants that they own, and have a big box truck that they let us use to move everything to the warehouse. It was an amazing set up. It also helped that two of the guys on our staff team who came to help us move were former KSU football players. Big bonus since we had a piano, and my grandpa makes very nice, heavy furniture.

The beginning...this thing was packed to the brim by the end!

All of our stuff was loaded onto pallets, wrapped up, and forklifted to a corner of the warehouse to be out of the way. Talk about an amazing set up!

I left straight from Topeka to drive up to KC, but Kyle went back and stayed at our house one final night because he had to be at church on Sunday.

Let me tell you, walking through our empty house alone one last time was very, very sad. I stood for a long time crying in Layla's nursery, formerly Landon's room, just thinking about all the hours I had spent in that room feeding and rocking my babies when we brought them home from the hospital. I'll be excited about getting a new house when we get back from India, but this was our first home, where we brought our first two babies home, and it will always be special. It was hard to leave. And of course it made the reality of soon saying goodbye to family and friends to move to India for a year feel much more real. So bittersweet.

 Goodbye, Home. We will miss you.

Layla - 14 Months

Yes, this post is 8 days late. Oops. I do have a garage filling up with packed boxes and two children who are still alive as my excuses though.

You can see how excited Layla was to take 14 month pictures. She's so on the go these days that being told to stand still for a picture doesn't go over well. I have to be quick in the moment to get good pics of her anymore!

Layla's walking like a champ now and tries to almost run but she's not quite sturdy enough for that yet so she usually falls when she tries.

Words to describe Layla at 14 months:

Busy, smiley, diva, goofy, dramatic, sweet, adorable, high maintenance.

Layla loves to talk, giggle, and squeal. She loves to be chased and tickled. She likes to read books, especially her mini Pride and Prejudice book :) She likes to hug stuffed animals & babies, push cars around, and play with Landon's Zoo Talker animals. She gives big open mouthed kisses and high fives.

She of course still loves to follow Landon around and wants to play with his toys, which means she usually winds up crying after he rips it back out of her hand or pushes her down. She also is a dramatic diva though, so it's starting to get harder to know when Landon has actually done something wrong and when Layla is just being dramatic and wailing. They do have their moments of sweetly playing together though, which is so fun.

Layla's sleep habits are improving. She's sleeping at night for usually around 12 hours, and she's taking two solid naps these days, usually for around 2 hours each. Hooray for Layla! Yesterday Layla slept until 11 a.m. even though she went to bed at 7:50 the night before!! Growth spurt? I peeked in to make sure she was still breathing a couple times, but apparently she was just tired! Here she was when she woke up, looking so cute!

Technically that picture is from after 14 months, so I shouldn't have included it in this post, but oh well.

Here are pictures of the sweet girl!

First forward facing ride in the car!

Layla's One Year Portraits

I know, I know. It's been a record long length of time since my last post. I won't even try to make excuses. Or promise to post a lot over the next couple of weeks, because it's probably just not reality. 

Anyway, several weeks ago the weather was finally nice enough to get Layla's one year portraits taken! (You'd never know it by the snow Manhattan got today...luckily we're in Wichita right now which just got rain. Yes!)

Our official family photographer, Kyle (not my husband), once again took the pictures and edited them for us. I was sooooo excited to get them from him and he definitely didn't disappoint. I was melting looking through the pictures for the first time (and every time!) Here's a sampling of her cuteness, although I must emphasize how incredibly difficult it is to not just post all fifty or so that he gave us.

Layla, put that skirt down! Showing too much leg :)

Football pose. Ready to take the hike

Ornery girl. This is her Daddy's influence in her life

Isn't the editing on this picture just beautiful?

Aren't you just dying after looking at all that cuteness?