Happy 1st Birthday, Kayla

While raising a child is challenging in many ways, neither one of us would trade parenthood because Kayla has ultimately been a great blessing in our lives. She's changed so much in just one year, but each day we're more amazed with how she's developing.

We were fortunate to have a few family and friends over to celebrate Kayla's birthday on November 4th. It was clear that she is loved very much, and I wanted to share some pictures from the day.

Kayla and her cousin Mari had a great time playing that day.

Kayla got a new toy box that makes cleaning up much easier, and she loves to dig through her toys.

Fun with a Slinky

Aaron and I are always in need of good sources of entertainment for Kayla when we are trying to work in the office. One day we noticed the "Wallace" (Aaron's old company) slinky sitting on our desk. We instantly began marketing this as the best toy ever, and we successfully caught her attention. With this distraction in place, we thought we'd get more work done...well, then we just had to take some pictures.

Kayla's been making this big fish face lately, and we were also able to catch that while she played.

Happy Halloween!

Continuing on in Kayla's year of firsts, we just celebrated her first Halloween. Thanks to a great find at the children's resale shop, Kayla was the cutest zebra ever! We went over to Beth and Joe's house, along with Kent and Amber, and Beth's sister. Since Kayla was new to this whole experience, we went trick-or-treating with some old pros Nate, Josh, Rylan, and Jarah (Jillian was still too young to brave the chilly weather).

Not only did Kayla get to trick-or-treat for the first time, but this was Aaron's first experience too. I enjoyed watching him walk up to the door holding Kayla and saying "trick-or-treat!" It was such a fun time, and we of course got some good pictures. This first one is of Joe and Jillian with Aaron and Kayla. I loved Jillian's IU cheerleading outfit, and was quite jealous! Though, as you can see, Kayla looked great as a zebra. While we were trick-or-treating, we saw a little boy that had a tiger costume on, and we were ready to start our own little zoo!

Here's Kayla attacking our Halloween Pooh Bear and his candy.

Don't worry, Kayla didn't really eat the Jolly Rancher!

I liked this next one because our gate almost looked like bars of a cage.