We're not in Kansas anymore...

But this past weekend, we were!

We visited some good friends from our Gateway days near Kansas City.  It was such a fun and good weekend of catching up with Diane and her son Nick, along with the rest of the family.  We also had a great time celebrating Layla's birthday, and meeting and connecting with some awesome believers at our church in Kansas City on Sunday.

Our kids were soooo excited to go on a "long" drive!  (The drive was about 3.5 hours.  Tomorrow, they will be traveling 9.5 hours to our hometown.  I hope they will still like long drives tomorrow!)

Daisy is enjoying her snacks--double fisting her snack bag and a slim jim :)

Trying to pass time in the restroom at Wendy's, while our sweet little Daisy was taking FOREVER on the potty.  Ha!  When we came out of the stall there was a line of at least 7 women waiting for us to be done.  Oops!

(doesn't Layla look so short in this picture??)

When we got there, we saw that our hostess (Diane) has a ginormous house!  We stepped into the huge finished basement, and our kids looked around in awe.  My favorite quote, from Halle:  "This is the best day of my life!!"

(insert, another quote from Halle this weekend--not so much my favorite:  "Hey mom!  Guess what I did?  I brushed the urinal with my toothbrush and then I brushed my teeth!"  Gag. Me.)


Our kids loved playing with the toys in Diane's house...

And Diane has a wood-burning furnace, which is so awesome!  She taught Kaine how to put wood in the fire.

Layla's birthday was on Saturday, and that was so fun.  Four is such a fun birthday age :) She loved helping me decorate some cupcakes...

(love that Dorito smile)

On Saturday night, Diane invited the church over to her house for some great fellowship.  We were so thankful she did that, because we got to meet and talk to a lot of people.  We also were thankful that many of them were interested in what were are doing with missions...thanks, Diane!!

Our kids met some great new friends.  We are so thankful, and we know it is God's grace, that our kids make friends so easily wherever we go.  So far, for the past few years, they have been super laid back and so amazingly flexible.  Thanks for anyone who prays for them--God is definitely answering them!

Layla and a little girl named Alice.  They were so cute together!  And I love her name...I don't know any little girls named Alice!  So cute :)

The whole group joined us in singing Happy Birthday to Layla.  She was pretty embarrassed :)

Thank you, Diane and Nick, for a great weekend!  We really had a good time and we hope we can do it again sometime before we move away :)

So last night, we arrived back here at the MTC, and unpacked from our weekend.  I did our laundry...and promptly began re-packing our stuff for Thanksgiving in Indiana!  Whew.  But we are so excited--tomorrow we will be back in our hometown for the first time since moving to Missouri.  Can't wait to see you all!

Layla is four!

Happy Birthday to my very sweet Layla Raine!  God has gifted Layla with a very fun, sweet, cuddly and crazy personality.  And as you will see in the pictures, He gave her some crazy (but beautiful) hair to match her craziness :)  She brings so much joy to our family!

Happy birthday, Layla, our Lay-love, our little Peanut!  We love you and we are so thankful for you.

everyday life.

Get ready for some incredibly random pictures...some peeks into our everyday life.

This is my girls' favorite way to ride to class across campus every morning.  It is kind of a funny sight to see me walk around the back of our van to unload my daughters from our trunk :)

Kaine had a "crazy hair day" at his school.  With girls, this would be so fun and easy to make "crazy hair" for a day!  But for Kaine, I wasn't sure how we could make his short hair crazy.  So Nathan cut his hair into a mohawk!  It was so incredibly cute.  He had also just lost his front tooth, and he looked like the cutest little punk kid for awhile.  Love that boy!

My lifelong best friend, Sarah (and her hubby) visited us!  I realized I never blogged about this.  We felt blessed and very privileged that Klint and Sarah took 2 precious days out of their anniversary trip to come and visit us!  What amazing friends we have :)

We received this in the mail from Kaine's sweet friend, Brendan.  Melt my heart!  What a thoughtful kid, and well taught by his parents!  Good job, Brandon and Heather.  We miss you guys, by the way!!

I taught my kiddos a fun thing that I used to do as a kid!  Remember this, Jill?  Ha!  Our kids thought it was so hilarious :)

We have been enjoying hot chocolate season!

Sweet Daisy...she brings so much joy to our lives.  She is getting to be little Miss Independant--look at her, putting on her own pants!  What a sweetie :)

Speaking of Daisy...HA!!  I love her "mean face".  Thanks Ivy, for teaching her this funny face!

I realized I forgot to post this on my last blogpost.  I LOVE LOVE LOVE this picture of Layla and Grandpa Dave!  Too funny.

Halle is so proud of the scorpion that she helped Nathan to catch :)  She is growing up into a brave girl!  (believe me when I say that she has changed a LOT over the years!)

And I gave Halle a tatoo on her neck a few weeks ago.  What a little beauty our Halle is turning into!

I was able to go to Kaine's classroom for his Halloween party.  It was really fun to interact with his classmates!

And here are our trick-or-treating girls.  Two princesses and a batgirl :)

Happy Weekend!!

yay for grandparents!!

We were so excited to have Nathan's mom and dad come to visit this past weekend!  Yay for grandparents, that's what I say :)

Our kiddos had a great time reuniting with their Grandpa Dave and Grandma Terri...

We had fun playing games...

Dave and Terri blessed us by buying all of our groceries for the weekend--thanks, mom and dad!  And of course, Terri helped me a ton :)

On Saturday morning, Kaine had his last soccer practice/game that he has been involved in here on campus.  It has been fun to see him have so much fun out there on the soccer field!  And since Nathan played soccer a lot growing up and in high school, he loved helping out Kaine's coach.  And we know that soccer is a skill that all of our kids should develop, since pretty much all countries in the world play soccer :)

It was a pretty cold morning, so our girls cuddled under their grandparents' blanket.

And of course, Nathan helped to warm them up by throwing them around and stuff :)

Then, we headed over to the auditorium where Halle started a gymnastics class!  (and we had also signed Layla up for it too, but she was too scared or something...she did NOT want to participate).  So here is our beautiful gymnast:

Dave and Terri were very gracious in offering to watch our kids so Nathan and I could go on a date!  We GLADLY took them up on it!  As you can see from this picture, the kids are waving us goodbye...they didn't miss us at all :)

And we had fun on our date :)

We celebrated Nathan's dad's birthday on Sunday night, complete with german chocolate cupcakes.

And then we went out to have a fire with smores.  It was so fun but a little bit chilly!  Aaron and Jill's family joined us out at the fire, too.

Once again, our kids wanted to snuggle under their grandparents' blanket...they are so smart, to always bring a blanket!

Ha, I love this picture....like mother, like daughter :)

And we did another "ring of fire", for the 2 scorpions that we have caught recently!  It doesn't take much to entertain us :)

What a great weekend!  And how blessed we are, to have our parents close enough that they can still visit us.  Thanks so much for coming, Dad and Mom!  And Kyle, we missed you--you will have to come another time :)