Let's start out with the best news of all! We sold our House at the end of September! Praise the Lord! The closing went really smooth, and the only bump in the road was when we blew a tire on the way up to Michigan! Ha! But, we can't complain, because our car was due for new tires anyways. God kept us safe, and we were able to make it over half of the trip on the little spare tire - and yes, we know that isn't recommended, but sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do! We said our final goodbyes to the house after cleaning out for the last time. It was a bitter sweet moment for me since we had a lot of 'firsts' in that home: It was our first home together, we brought both of our babies home from the hospital there, and we raised our first puppy there too! We have lots of great memories of our first home in Grand Rapids, but we are very grateful for God providing a buyer, and the relief of having that extra expense off of our shoulders is incredible!
Joelle is now 9 months old! She is crawling all around and getting into everything. She loves to follow big Brother Jonas around, and her favorite toys lately are whatever can fit in her mouth! Joelle loves to squeal and scream and make lots of baby noises. She is saying 'mamma' and 'babba', which I think is how she is trying to say dada. She is a very happy little girl and she is very curious about everything. She likes to copy what big brother does - last week I saw her trying to play cars with him by pushing one around his little car track! She always has a smile for mommy and daddy, and is not as nervous around friends anymore. Her newest favorite game is the "I'm gonna get you" game. She crawls with all she has and squeals as daddy chases her around!
Jonas has changed so much in the past few months, that I can hardly keep up with it! He likes to call me "mom" now, but still calls me momma or mommy too. His favorite toys lately are cars and trains and trucks, well, pretty much anything that goes VROOM! He is counting to 20 and singing his ABC's and learning lots of new words and phrases. His newest phrase is "Be Right Back, Mom, Right Back...". I think I could listen to his little voice all day long, and just smile! His gentle, yet playful spirit warms my heart. Jonas loves to give hugs and kisses, and lately since baby sister gives kisses with her mouth wide open, he likes to chase me around with his mouth open trying to give me kisses! Like any other boy, he enjoys running, jumping, and basically anything else active!
I have been enjoying learning about photography, just by trial and error. I always chuckle when I try to sit the kids down to get a few pictures of them because usually I end up taking close to 300 pictures and maybe 10 or so of them are good photos! Now that Joelle is on the move, my pictures of her aren't as good! She is too quick and doesn't want to sit still! I am pretty happy with this next picture, though! I love it when I can get a nice picture of the two of them together!
Jonas and Joelle are really starting to look a lot alike! The biggest difference that I can see in them right now is that Jonas has my eye shape and Joelle has Steve's. I love that they both have blue eyes, but we aren't completely sure who's eye color they have since Steve's eyes are hazel and change between blue and green, and mine are most definitely dark brown. I know that my grandpa and I think my grandma both have blue eyes, and Steve thought that somewhere on his mom's side of the family there were blue-eyed grandparents as well, so we are guessing that they get their blue eyes from their great-grandparents!
Well, I think that is all for now! Thanks for checking in with us! God bless you all!
-Tara
