Catch Up {Long Post Ahead!}

Well, hello! I'm playing a lot of catch-up here since I've taken a little hiatus! We've had so much going on and the more time that passed, the harder it seemed it would be to get back on track with blogging. But I want to capture some of these memories because I know this time in our life is a big, important chapter! We left Arkansas and moved to the Kansas City area the last week of June. Joe finished up his fellowship at Arkansas Children's and started his new job at Children's Mercy in early July. We had about a week to get situated. We moved in with my parents with only a few suitcases, on their farm, and decided to actively start looking for a house.. or decide to rent and build something. Well here we are more than four months later and we are still living with my parents (hah!) -- but we do have a big update in that area I'll tell you about later! :)

Emory turned six months old in June and right before we left Arkansas we had our photographer take her 6 month portraits so we had them done. I'm glad we did because we've been living in limbo for so long and I've been so unorganized with pictures of our sweet girl! Here were some of my favorite shots, which we took in Arkadelphia, AR at a pretty little lake!

Of course, Landon has loved being on the farm with his grandparents and has been a little shadow to his PaPa. I typically have to drag him in the house after hours of "helping" with farm chores. :)

I just love this picture I took of him, his sweet timid (slightly ornery!) smile and big blue eyes. This is exactly him, captured in one single frame. :)

One of the benefits to Joe being a full-fledged Attending is that he gets much more time off now! As a resident/fellow he did not have the luxury of many weekends off, but with his new job he gets six weeks of vacation a year and most weekends off too! What a huge blessing we won't take for granted!!!! We have taken several small trips to Silver Dollar City in the past few months. I love SDC - good old fashioned fun and an awesome place for little ones!! And please tell me my child is not the only one obsessed with the frog ride??

99% of the time I wear Emory in the Ergo carrier!!

One of the biggest changes in the last couple of months has been that Landon has started "official" pre-school! We've had him in great church Mother's Day Out programs the last two years but we decided to move forward with a more solid preschool. This one in particular follows a Reggio Emilia philosophy and the director has SUCH a neat story about starting the school, involving moving to Italy for a couple years to immerse herself with this schooling approach. We are strongly considering homeschooling the kids, but for now I think he's doing so great with his new school two days a week! Here he is on the first day..

The school did a cute little garden party in September. Each family brought foods/herbs to plant in the fall garden beds. We got to meet several of his friends and spend some time chatting with the teachers and staff.

Let me also share with you a few pictures of our pumpkin patch adventure this year! Landon took his first ever horseback ride and I was SO proud of him! I hope he shows more interest in riding as he gets older :)

Let me wrap up with a few sweet shots I took of Miss Emory last month. I hadn't set anyone up to take her 9-month pictures and I sort of had a panic attack one night and decided to do them myself. I know they're not perfect (and definitely not perfectly edited!), but I'm happy I captured her. We are so crazy about her. :)

Whew! I think I'm caught up now.. on the big stuff! Except the house! I'll share about our hew house next time! :))