It was one year ago today, December 16th, that our lives were forever blessed with the gift of our darling Siena Noelle.  I can’t believe how quickly one year has flown by.  It seems like just yesterday that I held our tiny girl for the first time and wondered if my heart could handle the explosion of love I was feeling at that moment.  The funny thing is…I still feel that way.  I never knew my heart could love so much and so powerfully.  What a blessing Siena has been in our lives and I’m so grateful I get the privilege of being her mama.

How precious those first moments were…

She’s come such a long way in just one year and has enjoyed discovering the world around her and all the new things to be experienced!

We had a small party for her on Saturday and she had a wonderful time!  We made sure Ryan could come home for the festivities!  What a lucky baby to have so many people wanting to love her, pray over her, and support her all her life!  Thank you for coming to her party and for all of the fun presents!  One spoiled girl!  :o)

She was quite the ham when we sang “Happy Birthday” to her!  Click HERE to see the video!  :o)

Enjoy the many fun photos from the party!

Siena thoroughly enjoyed her cake and frosting!

Quite a bit of it ended up in her hair…

We did everything in a snowman theme…

She loved all of the balloons!  PopPop (Hirst) helps her reach one…

Siena & Gram (Roper)…

Getting a kiss from Gg (Hirst) …

Playing with Papa (Roper) & McKenna…

Aunt Ramie & Great-Grammy…

Even Coleen Marin, the leader for my nursing mom’s bible study, was able to come!

Chad & Sydney Stoltzfus…our good friends from college!

Brett, Hillary, and McKenna Lane came up from Florissant, CO!

Ryan’s sister, Ramie, her husband, Don, Ryan, & myself…

Great-Aunt Sue & Cousin Becca…Becca was just home from college!

Aunt Michelle Crosby gives up her water bottle!  :o)

Siena always loves playing with her best friend, McKenna!

What a FUN and full day!  Just before bed, Daddy and Siena say ‘goodnight’ to Squirrel Nutkin that Daddy painted in Siena’s nursery just for her!  We will miss this nursery we created for our girl…

Happy FIRST Birthday, our sweet angel sent from Heaven!  We love you and thank God for the gift of your precious life each day!

The last couple of weeks have been quite the whirlwind, but exciting days too!

It’s been such a treat having Ryan home for the past 3 weekends!  We will be joining him officially in Kansas City this coming Friday (12/18) and are looking forward to having our family back together again!  Siena loves to play with Dada…

Click HERE to see a pretty funny video of Siena and Ryan!

We spent Thanksgiving Day with the Ropers - Siena’s FIRST Thanksgiving!  She thoroughly enjoyed the turkey and she had many people to play with and adore her!  Thank you for such a good day!

Siena with PaPa & Gram…

Ryan and his sister, Ramie…

Many adoring fans! Aunt Barb, Cousin Becca, & Cousin Nick…

Crawling with Great-Aunt Sue!…

McKenna Lane, Siena’s best friend, turned ONE the day before Thanksgiving!  Wasn’t it just the other day that we were pregnant and had swollen feet, Hillary?  :o)  We had a wonderful time celebrating the girls’ first birthdays together after Thanksgiving.  What a blessing your friendship has been to us!

The Ropers & The Lanes…

Best of Friends!…

With our Glo Worms…

We had the privilege of having Hayden Kent and his mom, Amanda, come over for a final playdate before we move too!  Thanks for spending the afternoon with us!  We will miss you!

I’m not sure Siena wanted a kiss, but Hayden sure wanted to give her one!…

My mom and Dad continue to help me pack up the house and I just can’t thank you both enough for all of your help!  They snuck in a quick storytime in-between boxes…

Our girl got her first boo boo this week…broke my heart!  She did a face plant on our tile floor and got a pretty big bruise on her forehead and the next morning she fell into the antique ice box we have in our living room and got a pretty nasty cut right above her eye.  My poor boo boo bear!

I haven’t been able to be much apart of my bible study this year, but we have gone a handful of times.  We went for the last time this last week and took a picture of Siena eating Cheerios with her bible study friends…This table just CRACKS me up!

Our lives may be unpredictable and overwhelming right now, but they are full of people we love and who love us - we are truly blessed!  God is still in control and He knows each of the days ahead of us - this gives me such great peace during these uncertain times.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I have not blogged in far too long…meaning this will be a longer post…and I’ve genuinely missed it.  Since Siena was born, I’ve tried to keep the blog current and keep you posted on the ongoings of our lives.  However, I also think of this blog as Siena’s baby book that not only includes the milestones in her life and photos along the way, but the adventures we’ve experienced and how God has worked and moved in our lives - including hers!  I will print it into an actual book for her someday soon!  I can’t believe we’re at almost a year of blogging!  Where did the time go?  When did my little angel grow so big?  I’m so proud of her accomplishments, but admitedly I am sad at how my tiny baby is turning into a toddler right before my eyes.  She’s pulling herself to standing, cruising, and has five teeth already!  Plus so many other little things that she has picked up!  And from toddler she’ll just keep growing up faster and faster…I just am so grateful to have the blessing of our little girl in my life!  What a precious gift from God!

We’ve been super busy, but what’s new?  That seems to be the pace of life right now!  Yet, God has been good and proven so faithful!  Our house has not sold yet (we came really close, but alas, no sale…), but we still see God’s hand at work in our lives and we are more convinced than ever that He is truly moving us to Kansas City.  There have been so many confirmations as we’ve traveled this unknown road.  So…we keep praying and trusting and knowing that God knows our buyer and will provide in HIS time!  He is FAITHFUL!

This being separate thing is for the birds, though, so Siena and I are getting ready to join Ryan permanently in KC around the holidays.  I know I will need to make a couple of trips back to Colorado to keep check on the house and finalizing any leftover packing, but we need to be together as a family.  We have enjoyed several times together since I last blogged.  Siena and I went out to KC for a week in October and for 10 days in November.  Ryan also came out here and is getting ready to come out for Thanksgiving!

Ryan is really loving his job at AdKnowledge!  He says everyday is challenging and that it’s like “drinking from a fire hose”, but that it’s fascinating too!  I thought you would enjoy seeing a few photos from the Hamilton’s, where Ryan is staying (in Olathe, Kansas) right now.  (Olathe is about 45 minutes from Kansas City.)  They have offered their basement to Ryan and we are so blessed by their generosity!  Truly a God-send and answer to MUCH prayer!

The Hamilton’s!  Mark & Roxie with their son, Taylor, and daughter, Courtney.  They have two other daughters who are out-of-state as well.

Ryan’s room…I like the model on the bed, myself…

The basement kitchen they let Ry use…(and me, when I’m there visiting!)

We went to the Deanna Rose Farmstead & Petting Zoo while in Olathe in October.  It was a bitterly cold day, but Siena loved the critters!  She liked the goats too - until they started nibbling on her coat!  :o)

Siena and I met up with Jerri Sapp and her granddaughter, Claire, while in Olathe!  Jerri also offered to have Ryan live with them during our transition to KC.  It was so fun meeting up with them!  Siena has a new friend to play with in KC!

The next photos are from our recent trip to Olathe to see Ryan just over a week ago…

Siena just loves playing with Dada!  Here she’s getting his nose!

Mama and Siena at the Ernie Miller Nature Center where the three of us went for a beautiful, warm, Fall walk!

Siena will NEVER forgive me for this someday, but I just had to share this photo we took of her getting her bath! CAN’T HELP MYSELF!  SOOO CUTE!  :o)

We don’t typically celebrate Halloween, but I couldn’t help myself this year…is she not the cutest ladybug?

My Bo (my mom’s mom) had hip replacement surgery and we had no initial plans of traveling out to Utah to help her, but decided in the end that we needed to.  We (my parents, Siena, & myself) drove out of Denver in a blizzard (3-4 feet of snow!) and had to drive through the mountains since Wyoming roads were closed - a total of a 13 hour drive - ugh - but, Siena did AWESOME!)  It was a good trip and I’m glad we were able to help Bo clean her house, make meals, and recuperate a bit.

Siena helping PopPop drive!  (Thankfully the car was parked!)

Siena playing with her Gg and Great Granny Bo as well as her Great PawPaw…

We also squeezed in a couple of other visits this past month!  Ryan’s parents babysat one night for us while he was in town so we could have a date night.  Siena and I enjoyed dinner with Michelle Crosby (my roommate before I married Ryan and still good friend!) and a playdate with McKenna Lane (and her mom, my good friend, Hillary!)  Always fun to catch up with you both!

Siena is becoming quite the good little traveler!  We did catch nasty colds this last time, which has been absolutely no fun, but for the most part, it has been a good experience.  Tiring, but good!  Now that we are home, we are packing up the house and getting ready to celebrate the holidays and our little angel’s FIRST birthday!  I can’t believe how fast it is sneaking up on us!  I’m so grateful for her life and continue to pray God’s protection and blessing over her.

Siena helping pack!

We like to use Google Video Chat with Dada while we’re apart..Siena loves it and even tries to hand him toys to play with!  Cracks me up!

Many of you have written or called us and have assured us of your prayers and I can’t tell you how much that means to us as we hang out here in “God’s Waiting Room”!  Thank you, thank you!  We need those prayers!  God has good things planned for us and we are praising Him for His faithfulness to us!  He is GOOD!

Happy THANKSGIVING!  We are BLESSED!

Time to play a little catch-up on the blog - and I have tons of photos for ya!  It’s been so busy around here that I’ve barely packed.  Yikes.  Gotta do that.

Siena turned 9 mos. on the 16th of September - and I’m just now writing about it!!  She weighed in at 18lbs, 8 oz (50th percentile) and was 29 inches long (95th percentile).  Our growing girl!  She is doing so many fun things now…and keeping me HOPPING!  She’s definitely on the MOVE…doing the army crawl all over the house, pulling herself to standing (just this last week!), and going from laying down to sitting up all on her own.  She sprouted her top front two teeth this last week too, not to mention all the hair that is coming in!  She is gradually eating more table food, but still has a tendency to gag on things, so we’re taking it slow.  She likes beans, small pieces of bread, grapes, and yogurt.  One of our favorite games is touching our pointer fingers to one another when I tell her “I Love YOU”, clapping her hands, doing high-fives, waving bye-bye, saying Mama (sometimes) and Dada (a lot!), and “rubbing noses.”  (Gg (my mom) taught her that last one!)  She also loves to stick her finger up her nose and just sit there for awhile.  Seriously?!  It’s making me CRAZY!  Whenever she sucks her thumb, she sticks her pointer finger up one nostril.  So convenient to have that “hole” there to rest her finger!  :o)  It seems like she can do something new every day!  So many changes…where did my tiny newborn go?

Ryan took Siena’s 9 month photos while he was home…I love this photo…

Of course, Ryan just looked at the blog and wanted me to add this:  ”Of course, neither of the flower photos tells the true story: the subsequent and complete destruction of the flower by Four-tooth-fussers. Yup. Oh the petals.”  It’s true…we had the hardest time keeping her from eating the flowers and there were orange petals EVERYWHERE!

Two weekends ago, Ryan came for a visit.  We took Siena on her FIRST hike in the mountains!  We hiked Maxwell Falls in Evergreen, CO and Siena loved every minute of it.  She sang (loudly!) most of the way and tried to touch every tree we passed!  Cracked us up!  She’s truly a Colorado girl!

Hamming it up with Dad…

Hiking with our girl…

Siena touching the trees as we passed…

My family was in town this last week - my sister, her husband, and my niece, Mady, as well as my grandparents from Utah.  We had such fun together and Siena just adored Mady, who is now 8 years old!  Siena had to touch her, be near her, and squeal at her!  I’m not sure Mady was quite as thrilled at the little baby who kept pulling at her nose or touching the toys she was playing with.  Mady definitely didn’t like it when Siena cried - kept telling her to Shhhh!  :o)  Thanks for coming for a visit everyone!  It was so fun seeing you!

Four Generations! - My Bo (mom’s mom), my mom, me, and Siena

Look who’s standing!…

Getting kisses from Mady and Auntie Heather…

Bo, Paw, & Mady…

Gg and her girls…

PopPop and his girls!  Siena loved to touch her cousin Mady non-stop!  Mady was such a good sport!

Auntie Heather & Siena…

Siena and I are off to Kansas City tomorrow to go visit Ryan.  We are looking forward to it and should have some fun photos to share with you when we get back!

Siena has been quite the world traveler these past few weeks!  When Siena and I came back from KC (and had to leave Daddy there…oh so hard…), we drove to Salt Lake City with my parents to visit with my grandparents (mom’s parents) who live there.  My grandpa used to pastor a Nazarene church in Utah and they have since retired there.  Siena was such a good girl on the roadtrip and barely cried at all!  She had never met my grandparents before, so this was extra special for me.  We had so much fun and ate waaaaay too much.  My Bo is an excellent cook and she knows all of my favorite foods, so I was sunk before I even stepped foot in the door.  Ginger cookies, lemon bars, homemade biscuits and bread, licorice…oh boy!  I know I gained weight!  When we came back to Colorado this week, I think Siena was disappointed that she only had me to hang with everyday.  She enjoyed all of the doting attention she received there everyday and had so many people to play with and read stories to her!  Enjoy the photos!

We got back into town late on Tuesday night, and on Wednesday afternoon, I heard a funny noise coming from the basement.  I went down to check it out and discovered our water heater was leaking water at a rapid rate and had filled one corner of our basement already.  Thankfully, it was a corner that we didn’t have any boxes and I caught it just in time!!  Thank you, Lord!!  I called my Dad and we turned the water off, but I was pretty stressed at this point.  Within the same 10 minutes that I discovered the leak, my phone rang and it was our Home Showing Service saying there was a realtor and her client outside my house and could they come view our home - right now.  NOW?!?  It was 3:30 in the afternoon and I had pretty much decided we weren’t going to have a showing that day, so I had luggage and laundry out around the house, my bed wasn’t made, I had dirty dishes on the kitchen counters, and now our basement had water everywhere!  I had just plopped Siena down in the living room and threw toys all around her to keep her occupied while I dealt with the water heater.  And they wanted to view the house NOW?  I cried.  They came in, but they were greeted with one stressed out, crying home owner.  The only thing I could think to tell them was that we were about to add a new selling feature to the home - a new water heater!!  Brother me.  In the end, they said they weren’t interested in the home.  REALLY?!  I’m shocked!!  :o)  At the time, I was about to come unglued, but now I can look back at it and laugh.  God has a sense of humor, doesn’t He?  My dad was able to come over and replace our water heater and all is calm on the home front again.

In other news…Ry comes home for a visit this weekend!!  YEAH!!!  Siena and I are READY!!!  It’s time!

PopPop keeping Siena warm during a stop on our drive to Utah!

Playing with Granny Bo…

Snuggling with Gg…

Loving story time with PopPop and Gg!

I love this photo…just out of the bathtub!  Cute and squeaky clean!

Lunch with Aunt Ramie this past Thursday!

(<— MAJOR bedhead this morning!)

We’ve been having fun in Kansas City!  Siena has loved all the things you can do in a hotel - such freedom!  :o) Ryan is really enjoying his new job so far and keeps saying what a “cool” company they are!  Siena and I have driven around a lot and explored the areas where we will be living and got together with Keith and Jeron Gibbons and Jeron’s mom, Janet Stout, as the Gibbons will be our neighbors!  Jeron and I grew up at Denver First Church together, so it was fun to reconnect with them!  Siena was mesmerized by their 3 little girls - 2 year old Addy and 2 week old twins Avery and Ainsley!  New friends for our girl!  Tomorrow we will move Ryan into the Hamilton’s house and then Siena and I will fly back to Colorado on Monday.  Without Ry…  :o(  Pray for a quick sale on our house!!

Siena’s adventures in the Hampton Inn…

Breakfast in the lobby and watching Rachael Ray!  (She has made MANY friends down there each morning!)

LOVING the baby in the mirror - it’s covered in fingerprints now!

This was a GREAT new activity!

Helping Daddy…he’s loving it, obviously…  :o)

We are only 30 minutes from Kansas City now…almost there!  Siena finally conked out after yelling for the greater part of 2+ hours.  I told you in the last blog to tune in again later to see if the screaming had begun…it did.  :o)  We stopped for dinner at a frozen custard place called “Freddy’s” and Siena loved the time out of her car seat, and cried the second we tried to put her back in it.  Poor girl.  She had fun smiling at the little kid at the table next to us while we were there, though!

The car is filling with the smell of BBQ - I don’t know from where, but KC is known for their BBQ ribs, so we are looking forward to finding our favorite BBQ places in time!

Pray for Ry, if you think of it, as tomorrow is his first day at AdKnowledge.  We are still trusting that God is leading us here as there have been so many signs and nudges in this direction.  Sometimes it’s hard to do the difficult thing, like move away from all that is comfortable, our family, and our lives.   But, as Pastor Hufaker said on Sunday, going to the difficult places is often right in the center of God’s Will.  We are trusting and praising HIm for this job and the new life He is creating for us here!

Signing off for now…it’s been fun blogging from the car today!  Ry connected the laptop to his cell phone and we were set!  Gotta love technology!  :o)

Dada and his girl…

Making friends…

We are driving to Kansas City today.  When I asked Ryan how I should start our blog, this is what he came up with…

Dearly Beloved, We are gathered here today in the sight of God, to join this state (Kansas) with this family (the Ropers)…

Ahem.  Well then…I think I’ll proceed to write on my own - without his sarcasm!!  :o)  But, he is right.  Today we begin a new adventure in our lives and we embrace the immense amount of change that is to come our way.  We are driving Ryan and a bunch of his stuff to KC today and Ryan will start his new job tomorrow morning.  We will spend the week scouting out the surrounding towns that could potentially be our home and I will fly back with Siena next Monday to Colorado to pack up the house.  We will also be moving Ryan in with the Hamiltons this week.  The Hamiltons graciously offered their basement to Ryan to stay in while we go through the transition of selling our home in Colorado and move our lives out to KC.  Dr. Mark Hamilton is the Communications professor at MidAmerica and when he and his family learned about our need for a place for Ryan to stay, they graciously offered their home to us.   Such an answer to prayer!

So…today we are driving and while somewhat sad and sentimental as we leave beautiful Colorado where we both have lived most of our lives, we are enjoying the road trip to Kansas City.  Siena has been such a GOOD girl through it all!  She’s barely cried, which we are so thankful!  We’re also only halfway there, though.  Stay tuned…let’s see if she can hold up the whole way!  I think I’ve been a little off kilter today too…I accidentally threw the bottle of applejuice in the kitchen floor this morning before we could even leave - apple juice everywhere.  Ugh.  We stopped at Wendy’s for lunch today and took it on the road.  While holding Ryan’s Caesar salad for him, I accidentally dropped it and threw it all over the car.  It smells so nice in here now.  Not.  UGH again!  :o)

It’s raining cats and dogs on us right now…pray for safety!!

Had to share Ryan’s joke with you today though…maybe I’m delirious from the endless stretches of fields and sunflowers, but it cracked me up!  I was reading a book to Siena and it talked about baby owls being called “owlets”.  Had no idea!  Ryan asked me if I knew what a wet baby owl was called.  I didn’t.  The answer?  A moist owlet.  (Moist towellette…get it?)  HA!…well, made me laugh.  :o)

The Kansas Plain…

Our first stop…

Siena hamming it up in Wendy’s…

I just got Siena up from her afternoon nap and her hair was so crazy I just had to take her picture!  HA!  I promise I didn’t touch it - this was styled all on her own!  She seems pretty pleased with it!

There’s a new addition to our landscaping at our house now…a “For Sale” sign.  I never would have thought two months ago that we would be on this wild journey of not having a job, then having a job that is less than ideal, then having a great job offer, but having to move to Kansas City to accept it.  What a wild ride.  Yet, God has proven so faithful through it all and we truly feel like different people on the other side of this.  I was hoping for a whole lot of peace and tranquility after this storm, but now we are uprooting our lives and moving to Kansas City.  We feel strongly that this is where God is leading us.  He has given us so many signs that have pointed us in this direction.  This is one of the hardest things we’ve ever gone through, though.  I personally have lived in Colorado for just over 22 years now.  It is so, so painful to say goodbye to our families and friends.  We keep driving by places that we have sweet memories at - where we used to go as kids with our family, where we dated, the home improvement store we spent our life at once we became homeowners, the first place we took our new baby, Siena.  Such sweet memories - such a painful parting.  We will miss it here.  I already miss the mountains and the many get-aways we took there - as a couple and with my family as a kid.  I can’t help but compare us to Dorothy of the Wizard of Oz…even while in Kansas, we will be saying, “there’s no place like HOME.”

We have poured our guts into this, our first home.  When we first moved here in May of 2006, it had a mouse and spider infestation, wild paint colors, holes in the walls, lighting from the eighties, and so much more.  We have transformed it in so many ways and today, as we are touching up the paint, trimming the yard, and getting it ready to sell, we are sad and sentimental.  This was our first home, the first home we found out we were expecting and then later brought our newborn baby home to.  I will miss it…but God has big plans waiting for us.  We are going in faith and anticipating His direction.

Ry took these photos…enjoy…

The Entry

The Living Room

The Kitchen

The Office and Adjoining Bathroom

The Dining Room

Upstairs…

Our Master Bedroom

Siena’s Nursery (this just breaks my heart to leave this sweet room we made for her)

God has been so GOOD…we trust His calling…and we will go…