Welcome

Thanks for checking out my blog....hopefully it will give you a little window into my world as Jonah's mommy. I have now been living in Tyler for 2 months and 10 days. It has been a whirlwind. I cannot believe how time has flown. We're settling in rather nicely, and I'm loving this place where we are. Here are some recent pics of Jonah. As you can tell, he is growing ridiculously fast, and he is so much fun. He is obsessed with little cars and trucks and could play with them all day. He is also very into books and farm animals. He's pretty much mastered all of the sounds that farm animals make. He's saying a lot of words.....please, thank you, stinky, more, up, puppy, down, help, outside, and lots of names of people he loves. He's always making us laugh with his funny faces he makes and how enthusiastic he is about the tiniest little things. While I'm getting ready every morning, he opens up a drawer in the bathroom that holds my hair bands and clips, and he carries them all over the place, playing with them. I don't know what is so fun about hair ties, but he sure keeps himself busy with stuff like that. He's started having a little bit of separation anxiety stuff the last few weeks....crying when we leave him in the nursery at church and stuff, but he recovers quickly when he is given a toy, or better yet, food. So it's not too bad. All in all, he is still the same sweet, easy-going kid....just getting more and more active by the day. Joel and I have started reading Shepherding a Child's Heart.....can't believe that we are already at the stage where we have to start thinking about discipline strategies and stuff like that. Time is flying by crazy fast. I think I already said that though. You'll probably hear it a lot more.
We just returned from our first visit back to Bartlesville since we moved. We had a blast!! The visit with family was so nice, and Jonah was having so much fun playing at his Nanny's (Joel's mom) new condo there.....she now has stairs, so that was quite exciting for him. I was able to see some girlfriends, and we were able to visit our former church there which is very dear to us. My good friend Courtney also just had her second child last week, so we were able to meet her little girl, sweet Creighton. So it was a full trip, we loved it and are excited to get back there for another visit at New Years.
The things I love most about being in Tyler again, besides loving being close to my parents again, are the church where we are (it's an incredible one), the journey of meeting new people and building friendships, and of course the fact that my husband loves his job and is definitely in the right place. That brings so much joy to this girl's heart.
And I'm very thankful for our house. Still working on it....lots more to do. Tonight we will be painting some more and hopefully getting started on texturing walls in another room. We'll be having lots of company in the next few weeks, so I'm in a mad rush to get more done really quickly. I've been busy with trying to take down some horrific wallpaper in our hall bath, and I finally had some success this week by spraying a bottle of half water, half fabric softener on the walls, a trick learned from our niece, who at age 13 knows more about home improvement that I could ever know in a lifetime, I'm sure (thanks, Ciera!). Just in case you ever face the battle of having to take down stubborn wallpaper, know that that works well!
Jonah is waking up from his nap now, so the noise and action is about to begin again. As much as I enjoy these quiet moments during afternoon naptime, I'm ready for him to bring his energy into the house. I just can't figure out what I did before Jonah was here....was I bored? I don't know, but he sure keeps everything fun and exciting. Time to go play. These won't always be this long.