Happy Fall!

We are enjoying every last minute of this nice weather! Today we went to one of our new favorite Sunday afternoon spots- The Dog Park in Sioux Falls. It is a large fenced-in area with benches where people can let their dogs run with each other. Mason and Kyla love it! There's usually 20ish dogs there and lotsa people. Mason is a little bit of an outcast, sniffing around and wandering, but he does wear himself out with the other dogs. Kyla gets overwhelmed, but loves chasing all the little dogs. She pretty much ignores the big ones. Except for the huge Great Dane that is always there whom she calls "Horsh!" (aka horse) Haha
Greg started a new venture this weekend- the night shift. I think it is going well. We'll wait and see if it catches up to him.
Otherwise, we are waiting for our next vacation- a Thanksgiving/Christmas/Baptism trip to Burlington, Washington with Greg's family. We are leaving on Thanksgiving day for 5 days. It will be very interesting to see how Kyla does on the plane...

Happy Halloween!

It's been quite a while since I've had the chance to blog! We just finally got cable and Internet in our new house, so I have some catching up to do!
We've gotten pretty well settled into our new house, we got everything done just in time to celebrate me and my friend, Katy's, 25th birthdays! We had a bunch of people over on October 16 to celebrate!
Since then, Greg, Kyla, and I also took off to Pella for a weekend to see old friends and a new daughter to our friends, Luke and Jean. It was great seeing everyone after being gone for 6 months, but different not being able to go to our old house! Thanks to Greg's aunt and uncle for hosting us!
Tonight Kyla and I went to Inwood to do some trick-or-treating and visit "Mamma." Kyla is pictured above in front of Mamma's giant pumpkin. Kyla was even on the front page of the West Lyon Herald a couple weeks ago sitting atop of the 440-pound pumpkin! It's quite the talk in the small town of Inwood.
It was a nice night to walk around tonight and Kyla and Mason were both a big hit in their costumes. Sioux Falls celebrates Halloween and trick-or-treating tomorrow night, so should be a good time again!
Greg has been working this weekend... next weekend he switches to night shift, which will be yet another adventure for us. Kyla has been going to an in-home daycare on our side of town. Andrea is the babysitter's name, and Kyla loves it there! She gets to play with four other one-year old girls who all appear to have tons of fun together. Kyla will continue to go there two days a week when Greg switches to nights. This way he will get some sleep and Kyla will get out and socialize with other kids.
We are loving Sioux Falls. I think it's the perfect sized small city with everything we need. There are lots of things to do and places to go. But yet, our neighborhood is on the very edge of town with cornfields in sight, so it seems nice and quaint.

Home, Sweet New Home

Closing went well on our house, just signed our names 500 times, then got handed the keys! We took Kyla and Mason along to check out our new home together for the first time. Kyla and Mason both love the yard and all the "puppies" in the neighborhood!
The previous owner left us some muffins on the kitchen counter along with a diagram of the yard which shows all the names of the plants in the yard and included a letter about who the neighbors were, how nice they are, etc. She also explained some of her plants in detail including when they bloom and how to fertilize them. (She apparently knows I will probably kill them all within the first year-- I do NOT have a green thumb!) But anyway, this was so sweet and I will probably cherish that letter for a long time, and hopefully I do all those beautiful plants justice!
We painted all day yesterday and my mom, sister, and I painted this evening. We still don't have the bedrooms complete, but tomorrow we will work some more and also move some of the big furniture. We have suckered a few guys into helping!
Kyla is having fun exploring new things and new places and playing on the nice carpet stairs, which she is doing well with. She has checked out all the kitchen cupboards and has even climbed in a few! (When they have stuff in them, they will be child-proofed!)
It's an exciting process and I'm having fun envisioning how this will all go!

Moving Day!

The time has come! Tomorrow morning we will sign the final papers for our house in Sioux Falls. We did a final walk through last night and everything is looking good, it's clean and the lady almost had all her stuff out of there.
Greg and I both have the day off work tomorrow, so we plan on heading over there right away and getting started on painting. I would like to get the bedrooms and the basement painted this weekend before we start moving all the big furniture. Right now all the walls are pretty much white, so it's fun picking out some colors!
I'm actually excited to clean and organize and unpack everything. It'll be exciting to find our routine back and also have our own place again.
It'll probably be a process over the next week or more before we get totally settled. I think I will still be staying in Inwood some of the time to finish out Kyla's last week at daycare in Larchwood.
I'm still in the process of picking a daycare in Sioux Falls, but I have one that does have an opening.
I'll be sure to take some before and after pictures of the house and post them!

Our address is now:
6005 S Dublin Ave
Sioux Falls, SD 57106

For now, our cell phone numbers are the same, but we are probably going to change them in the near future here.

A girl and her little dog

These two are meant for eachother. Kyla even has several outfits from Gymboree now featuring Boston Terriers! Although Kyla has started to beat up Mason on occasion, he tolerates it well!
Fun fact: Kyla and Mason weigh the exact same right now... 23 pounds each.
AND Kyla's hair is finally long enough for pigtails! (barely)

Happy! Happy!

It was Greg's 30th birthday on Tuesday! He's getting to be an old man ;) But we still love him.
Every single morning the first thing Kyla says is "puppee!" (She pronounces the "E" so particularly.) But, the morning of Greg's birthday, Kyla happen to be in bed with me (she woke up at 7:00 and I wasn't ready to be up early on my day off.) Anyway, Kyla rolls over and says "Daddy!" in her cutest little girl voice ever. I say, "Kyla, can you say Happy Birthday?" She says, "happy, happy!" and repeats it several times that day.
Kyla is quite the vocalist. We've decided the only time she is quiet is if she is stuffing her mouth with food or if she is deeply sleeping. Her newest words are "glasses" and "teeth." Who knew that these words could be so cute! Her pronunciation of names are cute too. She calls my sister (Krista) "Tista" and says her own name whenever she sees herself in the mirror- "Lyla". The letter K is apparently a difficult one.

The countdown continues until we get possession of our house... 3 weeks!
I am getting excited about organizing, decorating, and having a "home" for everything. I'm not a fan out of living out of boxes as we have been doing for 4 months!

Rocking Chair

Greg took this video on his cell phone, so I dunno how clear it is. But, Kyla has a new love- this white chair that she found at Grandma's house. She's very good at climbing up in it and rockin' away!