Thank you, Lesley, for reminding me that now would be a great time to show everybody pics of the new house! I’m over here this morning waiting on our washer/dryer and fridge to be delivered and I don’t have Miss Priss with me, so I can sit down and blog! She makes computer time much more difficult! Anyway, here we go… tour of our new house, built by Best Homes! I must throw in a few comments on our builder. They were FANTASTIC! They went above and beyond to make sure that we were happy with our house. Especially our foreman, Kent, who was very patient with us and our mind-changing. But most of all, they build a QUALITY product. They don’t cut corners.. we are so thankful and so blessed!!

First stop, the exterior! LOVE it! No, there is not a mysterious rectangular shaped UFO above our house, that’s my creeper-proofing.

The shutters are courtesy my very talented grandpa, Bill Mahanay! He made them, and we stained them to match the front door. Here is a pic of Grandpa and I installing the shutters!!

Close up of the front door! It turned out beautiful!

Now, from this point, you have to excuse my picture taking… All of them turned out crooked!

Here is what you see standing in the entryway, looking into the living room, and the kitchen is on your right. One of my many favorites is our three giant windows looking into the backyard!! Sorry, forgot to turn on the lights before I took some of these!!

This is the bar area… We loved this floor plan because of this… open into the kitchen and living room.

The dining area is at the back of the kitchen, this is looking in from the back corner of the dining area. The door to the covered porch and backyard is on your right, then you can see the sink and bar that looks into the living room.

This is the view from the other corner of the dining room..

This is looking into the dining area from the fridge space! Which will be installed shortly!! Yahoo!!

PANTRY!!! We have never had a real pantry before… we used the hall linen cabinet as a pantry in our Lubbock house! Yahoo!!!

This is a view of the entryway from the inside… I LOVE the light fixture there!

This is the room off of the entryway.. It will be an office/playroom with a fold out couch for now… Eventually we can make this into a bedroom..

Laynee’s bedroom..

Guest bedroom…

Guest bathroom..

Guest bathroom shower and tub…

YAY! While I was waiting, my washer dryer arrived… in my bona-fide LAUNDRY ROOM!!! So excited about this, too… in Lubbock, our washer/dryer was in the garage… so I was always either freezing or sweating when I went out to do laundry!

Master bedroom..

Talin’s favorite.. Master shower!! It turned out BEAUTIFUL!!! There is a big window way up high to give us some natural light in there!

Inside the Master shower, through the glass, you can see the doorway into our bedroom

You can see me standing in the shower, looking out of the glass to our vanities… There is not a window above that mirror, just a reflection.

And here is the view from the other corner of the shower..

CLOSET!!!! This is SO exciting for us… We shared the tiniest closet known to man in our Lubbock house, so this is major progress! There are also 2 shelving units in there that go floor-ceiling for shoes and whatever else!

Here are a couple views of our attic!! I wanted to show them so you could see our foam insulation!!!! This stuff is amazing, it is going to save us a TON of money on HVAC cost.. other homes of the same size with this foam have had their HVAC electric bill costing around $50 a month! Guaranteed!! And we’ve got plenty of room to store things up here!!!

And that’s all, folks!! I’ll post a few more pics once I get it all decorated, but I make no promises as to how soon that will be. I am so indecisive when it comes to decorating… I’m going to have to stare at it for hopefully many years to come, so I better like whatever I put on the walls! You are welcome to come visit and see it for yourself!!!!! Thanks for coming on my virtual tour!!!

At one year old, Laynee is:

• Saying a few words including Mama, Dada, baby, and uh-oh. Her favorite word is “baby”, she says that several times a day when she’s loving on her baby dolls
• So smart!! She can do a few animal sounds.. including “Ssssss” like a snake and “Roar” like a lion, and also blow like the wind, and she can show you how a bunny hops! (Those two are credited to Bible Class!)
• Signing “more” and “all done”.. which has been very helpful!
• Taking a few steps, but not really walking yet! She LOVES to hold your hand and walk around though. She can do that holding just one grown-up hand in the left, and preferably a baby doll in the right!
• Eating all kinds of things… She isn’t too picky yet! She even ate swiss cheese, which I think smells pretty bad, but she didn’t mind!
• Meddling! We like to say she gets this from her Aunt Nicole.. She will get into a purse and have it emptied out faster than you can say “Bob’s your uncle”. What a weird saying!
• Getting a temper… She will let you know if you are doing something she doesn’t like.. which includes, but is no limited to: changing her diaper, wiping her face, and picking her up if she wants to be walking.
• Pointing at things all the time.. she loves to find noses on Mommy and Daddy, babies in books, any dog, as long as it keeps it’s distance.
• Playing Peek-a-boo with a blanket or scarf
• Talking on the phone… this is SO cute, something it seems all kids do, she puts the phone on her shoulder and leans her face over on it. She’ll use anything for a phone, and pretend to talk on it!
• A “BRIGHT LIGHT” IN OUR LIVES!!!! She has really lived up to her name so far, and Lord willing, for many years to come!

It’s Bball time! We are so excited that we get to watch Jacob play in his Senior Year! Laynee LOVES to go to the games!

Here is Laynee with Uncle Danny at Thanksgiving… If you will notice, she is all geared up for her other favorite sporting event… Cowboys football! Although, she needs to do a better job of cheering so we can get some “Ws” on our record!

We went to Lubbock and got to meet the newest Pepper, Torrey Reann! She was born on October 30 to Lee and Ashley.. She is beautiful, and Laynee loved her!

She loved Torrey so much, she wanted to get as close as possible!

Napping with Mimi…

Here is Laynee opening her first birthday present from Lee, Ashley and Torrey… though I wouldn’t say “opening” so much as “climbing on top of”.

And that brings us to toddlerhood! Sad day for Mommy!!! I’m not ready for her to grow up yet! It goes by too fast!

She ate some cake, but wasn’t too excited about the icing! She doesn’t have too much of a sweet tooth.

And here is a picture of Laynee on her birthday.. standing at the open drawer, emptying it out completely! What a good helper!

1 year birthday pic! These pictures are getting increasingly more difficult to acquire!!!!!

Our next stop in the month of December was to Lubbock for our cousin’s wedding! While we were there, we got to see Mimi!

Then we were off to Carlsbad, NM for a river boat ride on the Pecos river. All of the people who live on the river decorate their homes all fancy like for Christmas. We had to bundle up, and it was COLD but so fun! Laynee really enjoyed her nap during the trip!

With Co-Woah, getting ready to board the boat…

We are moving into our house THIS WEEKEND!!!!!!!! I am so excited, I can’t sleep… so that is why I am up at 1:06am finishing this blog post! I’m like a kid the night before you go to Six Flags…. will update after we get settled!

• standing unsupported quite often
• walking with her rolling walker
• taking a step here and there!
• smiling and laughing a lot, with 7 teeth now! (4 on top, 3 on bottom)
• eating all kinds of foods.. her favorites being chicken, grapes, bananas, ham, cheerios, mexican rice!
• still sleeping great!
• STILL hating to get dressed. This girls HATES to get her clothes changed. It’s a fight everytime
• giving big, wet, wide open-mouth kisses!
• waving “bye-bye”, only when she wants to though!
• loving baby dolls.. she has about 4 of them that she gets really excited over!
• able to concentrate on one activity for a really long time! I was amazed yesterday, she sat and played with only a little toy boat for about 15 minutes!
• Loving Bible Class!! She always gets really excited to go, and has a great time every week!
• Getting into everything.. and I know it will only get worse once she starts walking!
• scared of dogs! mainly only if they bark and lick.. she doesn’t appreciate that! But she is happy to look at them from a distance!

Now for some pictures:

Our little Ladybug…

With Mom and Dad when they were on their way to World Series, Game 5!!

Whoa, Nelly!!  This is a funny story… Dad had brought home a Nelson Cruz bobble head statue… for some strange reason, Laynee LOVED it. She carried it around and played with it, and it was kind of heavy – duty, so we too it away from her and put it on the mantle above the TV. But she would hold her hands out to Nelly and cry for him until we gave it back to her. So, she had him while she was sitting in her high chair, and she dropped him on the tile… he now has a broken leg and head, and turns out, he’s ceramic! So, now he’s dangerous with his pointy, jagged edges, so we put him behind a picture frame on the mantle. She still found him and cries for him! So I moved him to the garage on the work bench so she couldn’t see him… Well, she saw him one day coming in from the car!!! And she started crying for him again!! Whoa, Nelly! Now he’s hidden much better and we won’t bring him out until next October when the Rangers hopefully have attempt #3 at a World Series title!

Bath time!

I like to splash!

We got to go and meet Laynee’s future BFF, Annabelle Leigh Cousatte!! We flew to Denver and stayed with Cason and Caitlin for a few days, and had a BLAST! Here we are supervising Annabelle’s spa time:

We got there on Tuesday, and that night they got several inches of snow!

Is she not the most adorable snow bunny you’ve seen??

I took off her mitten and let her feel the snow… you can tell by her face the way she felt about it. She’s a true Texan and truly her mother’s daughter because she doesn’t like being cold!

Field Trip! We took the babies to the Aquarium for some good ole indoor fun!

Laynee loved it! She had that pointer finger out the entire time!

This is a blurry pic, but I had to share it.. Laynee wanted so badly to touch Annabelle the whole time we were there, but she isn’t concerned about being gentle, so I usually made her keep a safe distance… so Caitlin held Annabelle so Laynee could get close to her… Laynee put her arms around the baby and got really close in her face to hug on her, and then Annabelle got upset… Then Laynee was offended that Annabelle was offended… so here we go:

They also liked to start crying matches when we were in the car going places… It’s a tough life!

This picture I liked because of her Vampire eyes, in honor of the soon-to-be-released Breaking Dawn, the 4th movie of the Twilight Saga!!! YAY!

Actually, you can see her teeth really well in this pic, and the giant Pittman gap she has between her top two!

Relaxin in our jammies…

Eleven months old!!!!!

House Update:  It’s getting close! We now have brick, stone, and walls! The texture people were supposed to be starting today, and they said that they typically close 30 days from texture! So, hopefully we will be in before Christmas!!!!! It has been SO fun watching the house go up. We can’t wait for it to be finished! If you want to see pics, let me know… I’ll be emailing some later to people who are interested!

That’s about it for now! We are getting adjusted to our new life here in Burleson. It is different, and we miss our Lubbock people, but we are finding our place here! Thanks for looking at pics of our sweet baby! Have a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday!