I know everyone is dying for an update on what’s going on with our little family, so the wait is over!

Before I start though, I want to make a note on how hard it is to type on my laptop now that Lyla has destroyed my “x” key and rendered my left shift button semi-workable. It would be nice if she just wanted to push the keys, but instead she’d rather curl her fingers and just rip them up!

So as I wrote last time, Jina and I are picking up and moving to downtown Phoenix to help startup a new church called Day Twelve.  At that time we were in the process of listing our house and seeing what might happen.

Well, fast-forward to this week and we actually had an offer after only SIX days on the market. We of course accepted it and now the waiting begins. We have around 2-3 months to wait for the short sale process to get done…and hopefully not much longer than that.

So that is really good news. We’re sort of anxious to look for a rental now, but we know with 2-3 months to go, we should just sit back and wait awhile. Many rentals we’ve sort of found online in the last few weeks have already been rented out, so it’s kind of pointless even looking right now.

Otherwise, things are good, if not busy. Jina heads out to Memphis this week to see her sister, who is pregnant and finds out the sex of the baby on Thursday morning. Jina is soooo excited to be there when they find out. After that they are going to start some work on the baby’s room depending on the gender verdict!

I’ll be playing single dad for about four days and I’m really looking forward to it. I’m super-busy at work, but I’m hoping to get all 40+ hours in before Friday so Lyla and I can spend the day together and maybe go somewhere fun. Who knows where, but we’ll find something.

So that’s the story of us right now. Lyla is crazy as always, learning things all the time. In fact, she just learned how to open the doors in our house (see picture to the right), which has opened up a whole other set of issues. She’s pretty good about closing them when we tell her, so it’s not awful…but just one more thing to add to the things to watch out for pile.

She also is in the habit of answering”No” to any question you ask her. It’s always in a very happy tone too.

“Are you hungry Lyla?”

“No.”

“Are you full Lyla?”

“No.”

We had some fun in the car the other day.

Me: “Lyla, do you love mommy more than me?”

“No.”

A nice retort from Jina:

“Lyla, do you love daddy more than Riley?”

“No.”

LOL

For those interested…she’s still sleeping about 12 hours at night (6:30pm to 6:30am) and then a 2-3 hour nap during the day (naptime is around 11:30). She turns 17 months on Thursday! She’s getting the speed-walking-running thing down, she can climb on furniture way better and she’s more adept at going down slides at various parks.

Below is a video of her from last weekend playing in the fountains by Liberty Market in downtown Gilbert. She was mesmerized by the water spouts for awhile then got the courage to get closer.

Such a huge hit, the questioning in her eyes when it finally disappeared was super adorable.

The weekend itself was awesome…the church we’re helping startup in downtown Phoenix (Day 12) had its first preview kind of service on Sunday afternoon and it was so amazing to be a part of it.

So here are a few pictures of Lyla from Easter Sunday, in her cute little dress. Also one of her and Jina, they looked so great!

I was in Utah four days last week, got home on Friday night and left again Sunday evening and shall return on Friday. After that, the travel should end and become very spotty at best for awhile.

Jina was sick late last week and over the weekend, so mostly I took care of Lyla and Jina got to rest both days I was home. I was so glad to do it…she’s been taking care of everything at home and that can get old, tiresome and boring. Plus when you are sick…it’s brutal.

Lyla is so independent now, so stubborn…she’s a handful when she’s not feeling good or needs extra attention. Sometimes she’ll be on her own for hours, othertimes she demands so much from you. Been loving her temper tantrums of late where she dances for a few seconds before sucking in a ton of air and letting it out in a major crying fit of rage *grin*

But she’s also amazing right now too, this phase of her life is so great. A few weeks ago I taught her how to say “Rain” and now she pretty much knows WHEN to say it too. She brought Jina one of Jina’s slippers from the closet the other day, so Jina asked her to go get the other one. Off she went and returned with the matching slipper! Amazing right?

She can also reach the doorknobs in the house now…and is about an inch away from being able to open them on her own. Yikes.

There is so much more, but no time to write much else. Just a quick update while I’m on break up here in Salt Lake City. Hope you enjoy the pictures below!

This above one was shot on Sunday afternoon a little before I left for the airport. This photo actually made Approver’s Choice on Wunderground.com! Was a fun shot…set the tripod, had 10 seconds to run ahead and pose…also was a bit tricky to get the clouds right. Had to actually combine two layers to get the foreground lit up and the clouds dark and ominous!

This is Lyla’s first time out in the rain on her own. She loves it…she just stood there and laughed a few times. I had to drag her inside from the cold.

Jina bought this tricycle quite a few years before Lyla was even conceived…as something just in case we had a kid someday. A few weekends ago, our friend’s daughter found it and rode around. We put Lyla on it and she loved it. On Sunday, she went out the frontdoor, into the garage and stood right next to it. Hint hint daddy!

As you can see, her feet are nowhere near the pedals…but she likes being pushed around on the thing. It’s amazing to me how old she looks here…growing up so fast.

But family stuff is obviously still going on and so much has changed in the last few months.

Most of that is Lyla of course…she just learns and grows everyday. The amount of stuff she knows right now is amazing to me. And to Jina. We both at times find our jaws on the floor because of something she’s done.

Let’s see…what she’s doing now:

• If you hand her a thing of baby food, a bib and spoon, she’ll carry it to the high chair and put it up on the tray
• When she gets REALLY hungry, she knows where to point for food. Last night she pointed at the fridge because that’s where her milk comes from now.
• You ask her if she’s “ready for a bath???” and she walks to the bathroom and points at the door.
• She knows that the remote control does something to the TV, but she doesn’t know what. She just holds it and looks at the TV.
• She’s gone down the slide at the mall all on her own. Wow.
• Can get down off the couch all on her own.
• Finally she’s holding her own bottle and feeding herself, if still on our laps.
• She takes one nap a day now, usually around 2 hours. At night she’s in bed between 6:30-7 and sleeps until 7-7:30. Amazing…we’re so in love with that nighttime sleeping!
• She absolutely LOVES being outside. I sit on the patio and read a book while she just wanders around, looking at airplanes (and pointing at them), laughing at the dogs and just exploring.

It’s just amazing to see her personality coming through. She does have her issues though. Right now she’s teething big time, so the past few days have been more of a challenge. She’s also very impatient at times and when something doesn’t work right, she can start crying in a second out of frustration.

She’s also great at learning things she shouldn’t be doing. We assigned her one special cabinet all to herself, and the others were off limits. Even without latches, she rarely goes into them. When she does, it’s more than she’s looking for attention we think. Otherwise, she never opens them.

I just love seeing her grow up. She’s getting so big now…grabbing stuff off the table, climbing, practically running at times and who knows what else.

In other news, my job is going great, but it’s going to be a busy first quarter for me, which will include trips to Oregon, Utah and Las Vegas more than likely. My annual review took place at the end of the year and I’m going to be moving forward with more project management training and practice.

Outside of the office, my obvious newfound love for photography is leading to new things and new opportunities. I’ve just completed my third photoshoot, this time for a little bit of compensation. I’ve never thought I could be a guy doing that type of photography, but I’m getting better and better at it and it would definitely be a nice side job to earn some extra cash.

Jina is doing great too. Work has been a little busier for her so far this year, so she’s been a bit stressed, and who can blame her. What a tough time she has working in the office two days a week, then changing gears to take care of Lyla at home for the next three. With Lyla only taking one nap a day now too, it’s less time to get things done during the day and I know it can be overwhelming.

As always, she supports me big time on whatever I do. We were talking the other night and I realized how it must look from her side to see me change hobbies/interests so much. Web design, sports writing, entertainment blogging, photography…who knows what might come next?

But we’re doing great otherwise. God is always good to us. We’re still in sort of a limbo state since we stopped going to Lifechurch, but we know God has a plan for where he wants us.

Here is a little video of Lyla and her friend Tatum, playing around in a wagon my mom got Lyla for Christmas.

She’s right (of course)…I’ve been preoccupied lately with this new hobby of photography and I haven’t been finding the time to just write.

So here I am.

What has been going on with us? Soooo much.

Lyla is turning a year old in just  19 days. It’s seriously incredible all the changes happening to her every week. She’s walking now and it’s the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. She picks up stuff, carries it with her and just talks to herself as she walks around the house.

One of the funnier moments (for me) was us sitting on the couch, and Lyla goes walking down the hallway to her bedroom. You hear her talking all the way…then she comes back and looks at us around the corner, smiling.

Heart melting.

She’s gotten very good at feeding herself finger foods. From barely being able to grab a piece of bread to very coordinated efforts, the growth has been great to witness.

There have been so many changes that it’s hard to remember them all. New sounds…new “words”…she also reaches for each of us like she never did before. Jina holds her and she leans over reaching for me and vice versa. She’s waving at people and clapping.

She’s also been a bit bratty lately…she likes to explore and touch things, so when we take stuff away…man the tears flow.

OHHHH, congrats to my brother and his wife Jennifer on the birth of their baby girl, Ava Carly. You can see her pictured to the right yawning a bit, newborn baby yawn. She’s so cute and perfect, it was great to hold her for the first time on Monday.

Ava is my first niece (Jina’s too) and we’re so thrilled to have her in our lives.

Jina has been busy with baby showers and going-away parties the last month or so. She’s also (and she’ll hate me for saying this) gotten WAY into the Twilight book series and has been doing a TON of reading. I’m so glad she’s been doing that, because she used to read a lot and Lyla arriving kind of threw a kink in all that.

She had to put up with me being gone all last week for work, not to mention a 10-day trip coming up in Nov-Dec for me.

For myself…I’ve been busy working and shooting photos. I’m actually going to try and take a break this week from doingany photography, because it’s taken hold of me and become a bit of an obsession, albeit it a good one in my opinion. I feel like my eyes have been opened and I’m starting to get better and better at this hobby.

But I need the break I think. I have been working on a DVD for Lyla’s first birthday for quite awhile now, and with November 22nd only a few weeks away, I REALLY need to finish it. The DVD is a compilation of pictures and videos from the first year of her life. I can’t wait to see it all done.

This Saturday is my official graduation ceremony at the University of Phoenix Stadium @ 10am. Most of my family will be there and it’s going to be a great time. My diploma came in the mail last week, so it feels official now, but I’m looking forward to doing the “walk” and truly making it real.

November/December is going to be busy. I have a project that needs to reach a certain point by November 19th. Lots to do. Then on the 20th, we fly to Texas for Thanksgiving to see Jina’s family and stay at The Hale House Inn for almost a week. We return on the 26th, which leaves me only about 3 days at home before I head off to Toronto for the afore mentioned work trip.

I’m definitely going to be looking forward to a long break around Christmas. I usually line up vacation days so that I end up with a week and a half off during that time, and this year should be the same thing. Can’t wait!

Well, that’s about it for now. I have a little Lyla video for you below, which really shows off her new walking skills. Enjoy!

(By the way, sorry about the lower quality video…Facebook is really compressing photos and videos lately, so I may have to find a different place to host them)

We trekked out to Schnepf Farms on Friday night for our annual outing to that wonderful place southeast of town. They do a great job of putting on a Fall Harvest Festival type thing, with hay rides, train rides, pie, food, rides, corn mazes and most importantly this year: a pumpkin patch.

Jina and I had been really looking forward to letting Lyla hang out in the pumpkins and taking some great photos of her. I think we snapped a few good ones, check them out below.

Here are a few of them below.

Jina is an amazing woman and always supports me in everything I do. So of course when I invited her and Lyla along last night to take some sunset pictures, she was right there.

Just having them with me was such a blast. It’s always better for us to be together than apart.

We trekked out to Queen Creek Rd. just west of Price Rd. and pulled into a dirt road that opened up into this giant field with a great view of South Mountain.

While I got some decent photos, my favorite is the first one below. Jina and Lyla wandered into the picture by standing on that dirt road, and I noticed that the sun was lighting up the “edges” of Jina and Lyla, especially their hair. So I turned the camera to face them and snapped one of my favorite photos ever.

And if you want to see the best of the rest, here you go:

At the bottom of this post you’ll find a video of Lyla making crazy voices, followed by a bunch of new pictures, most of which you can see as always in the Photos section of this blog. Find the link up top.

So what’s been going on?

Well, Lyla has been changing a lot. She took her first step last week, even though she hasn’t repeated that feat. It was still exciting to see, I’m just  bummed there was no video camera around!

We’re starting to see her understand things. When the dogs get excited in the afternoon and I tell her “mommy’s home!”, she instantly looks towards the hallway and waits for her to round that corner. It’s so cute.

And she also knows what “doggies” means now. I can say “where’s the doggies Lyla?” and she’ll start looking around until she finds one. It’s so amazing.

She’s also just picking up on things we do and copying them. When I was sick a few weeks back, she starting fake “coughing” because I had been doing so much of it. Now she’s doing fake “laughs” whenever we laugh. It’s so funny.

We also think she’s saying “Mum”  and meaning mommy now. Sometimes before she’d say it, but it just seemed like random baby babble. Now it feels a bit more targeted.

She’s been a bit up and down lately too. We think it’s teething, but have yet to see anything new pop out of her gums. She’s just been randomly whiny and having a runny nose.

As for Jina and I, we’ve been busy with travels, vacations and work. We also had some friends over last weekend to celebrate my graduation, which was a great time. If you come to our house for a party in the near future, you may get to taste these amazing little smokies, wrapped in bacon, sprinkled with brown sugar and cooked in the over for 20 minutes.

They were to “die” for…

My brother Jason and his wife Jennifer are expecting little Ava in just over a month and a half and the excitement is growing. Jina is throwing her a baby shower in two weeks.

As for work, it looks like my fall is going to be fairly busy. I’ll be going to Missouri next month for about 3 days for a factory acceptance test (FAT), and then from around November 30th to December 11th, I’ll be in Toronto, Canada, which is crazy. Never been to Canada, so it might be fun.

It’s still a very long time to be away from my girls, so I’m not exactly looking forward to it.

In the middle of that will be our annual trek to Jefferson, Texas to stay with Jina’s parents at their bed and breakfast, The Hale House Inn.

That’s about all I can think of right now…oh yeah, my graduation is November 7th, 10am at University of Phoenix Stadium.

Enjoy the video and pics!

Here are the photos:

Lyla is too big for the Bumbo now:

Lyla and her Great Uncle Dennis:

Sleeping…

…and then awake!

The upside? Only TWO days of work this week AND the first NFL Football game Thursday night!

This past week was a big one for us as we packed up with some friends and headed to Mission Beach in San Diego on Saturday morning. Our biggest concern with the whole trip was how Lyla would do after our wonderful adventure in Flagstaff where we only got a few hours of sleep.

San Diego is much further than Flagstaff and we were there for three nights.

Needless to say, Lyla was fantastic. The first night was rough, but I think it was mainly because we slept in the same room as her and she knew we were there. Normally now and then she’ll wake up, cry a bit, then fall asleep…but this time, she saw me and really couldn’t calm down.

The next two nights, she slept all night and even slept IN to 7:30am on Tuesday. We spent both nights on the couches in the living room which were fairly comfortable and it was much cooler in there. There was no A/C in the condo and our room just didn’t circulate very well.

Now I have to say, Lyla just completely enjoyed the beach. We took her there twice and she was so excited each time. Yeah, she doesn’t know what’s going on, but she seemed to sense it was something very cool.

I held her up in the surf with just a few inches of water…and she’d get all excited whenever she saw a wave coming. She kicked in the water, flailed around…and just had a great time. She’s always loved the water.

The next day on the beach, we pretty much let her loose in the sand and she LOVED it. Crawled, got some on her face, dug around, played…she was just enjoying life. It was also kind of fun taking her back to the condo, getting her naked and spraying her with the hose to get all the sand off. She loved that too *grin*

She’s been doing new things lately. I think she’s saying “mum” now when she sees Jina, although it’s not always an exact science. There’s also a “bwa!” or something when she gets excited about anything. When she saw the waves coming in, she’d go “bwa! bwa!”

And she’s also doing this head shake thing for random reasons. Seems to be when she’s excited or having fun. This morning she was playing and saw me for the first time and started doing it. No idea why. I can get her to do it now though as I’ve been trying to get her to NOD her head YES instead of shaking it NO *grin*

Here’s a video of her doing it:

She also has TWO teeth now, both in the two front bottom locations.

The vacation was a blast for us, we had a great, relaxing time, read some books, ate good food, played games, saw friends…all in all, a nice way to spend 4 days.

In other news, WHILE I was on vacation (Saturday night), I turned in my final assignment for school and am COMPLETELY done!

Graduation will be on November 7th at the UoP Stadium. It’s so exciting to be done, but almost has an anticlimactic feel to it.

What will I now do with my spare time? I’m hoping more weather photography, but I think that will calm down once the monsoon leaves us for good in a week or two. I’m putting together a movie of Lyla’s first year complete with pictures and little clips of our videos of her over that time.

So that’s it for now. You can see all the photos from our San Diego trip right here, or check out a few of my favorites below.