Welcome Porter Lea Bailes!!!

We are so excited to have a sweet nephew in our lives now! Porter was born May 1st at a whopping 6 lbs and 14 oz! My sister, Valerie, had the most amazing delivery and is doing wonderfully, so we are very thankful! Benjamin is 6 months older than Porter so I know they will be best buds! I'm so excited for my sister to experience the sweetness a little boy brings to his mamma!

Brandon and I with all four cousins age 2 and younger! Yikes!

Gigi and Papa with the boys!

Plaza, Pedis, and Pizza

Sounds like a good girls day out, and it was! My mom and I wanted to pamper Val before the baby comes in a few weeks so we headed out to the plaza and got pedicures, picked out cute coming home outfits for either a boy or a girl, ate pizza at Ingredient,and got dessert at Cupcake A La Mode! Yum! The rain couldn't even put a damper on this much needed day out for all of us! Now the count down gets closer until we get to finally hold and love on the sweet little nugget!

Zoo-Looking!

This week while going through our chidren's books I found one called "Zoo-Looking". It's a cute little picture book with beautiful water color pictures of a little girl and her daddy going to the zoo and naming all the animals they see. We've been reading this book this week to lead up to our first zoo trip of the year!

We met our good friends Emily and Samuel for a beautiful day at the zoo! This was Benjamin's first time of course too! We were so excited to receive our "Friends of the Zoo" pass from Gigi and Papa for Easter, I know we'll be going a lot!

We got to see the elephants up close!

Bella and Samuel had a lot of fun just climbing, running, and chasing each other! What a fun rock to sit on!

Of course we had to get Bella's picture with the giraffe. Too bad it was pretty far away. When Bella saw the giraffes she ran and grabbed Raffi, her giraffe, out of the stroller to show Samuel! Too cute!

One of the highlights for the kids and the moms (probably bc we didn't have to push the strollers up the steep long hill) was riding the tram or the "choo choo" in Bella's words. When we took off all three kids starting laughing and squealing!


Thanks Samuel for meeting us at the zoo! We had so much fun!

New things at the new house!

Well, we've only been here a week and already so many new things are going on! We had our first slumber party last week! My good friend Romy and her three girls Kaylen, Elayna, and Claire came over for dinner, play time, and of course a bubble bath! The girls were pushing their baby strollers, lawn mower, or wagon around the cul-de-sac in parade fashion. It was a great time together since our husbands we both out of town!

Benjamin is getting to be such a big boy eating his rice cereal already! He's still trying to learn what this spoon thing is all about and learning how to swallow, but he LOVES sitting in his high chair at the table with us!


We also went out to explore the Ernie Mills Nature Center that is literally around the block from our house. Bella loved getting her passport stamped, looking at the live owls and fish, following the animal tracks inside, and hiking the trail outside! Benjamin even enjoyed the beautiful fresh air!



This was our last day at our old house, but Benjamin's first time in the swing. Of course Bella wanted to push him and he loved it!

Moving Day!

Wow, so much has been going on lately! We've been really trying to discern what God has in store next for our family ever since we went to a missions conference in Waco at the end of January. One situation we prayed through was moving back to Waco to attend an Elevate discipleship school for a year and the other was moving to Olathe, KS and getting plugged in to a great church and community here and to continue to work and develop Builder's Stone. After a lot of prayer and discussions with those close to us we decided that it was best to move to Olathe for now and continue what we started with our company. We put our house on the market around Valentine's day and got an offer exactly one month later around St. Patrick's day! We were so blessed to sell the house so quickly! With the house on the market and our decision still up in the air at the time we were short on time to find a place to live. Once we had decided Olathe, the search began. We decided that it would be best to rent for a year or two so we could find an area out here like we liked best and save up for a house that we could see ourselves in for awhile. Finding a place to rent was a lot harder than we thought it was going to be. Every house or place we found was already taken, or cost too much, or was in a bad area. After dinner one night we were pretty discouraged and just started driving around and came upon a FOR RENT sign! The street looked like we definitely couldn't afford it, but I always say it doesn't hurt to ask! We called, got to look at it, negotiated our price, and got it! Last weekend we moved and now I feel like we're pretty settled in! We have a great street with lots of kids, our house is at the end of the cul-de-sac, lots of trees, and plenty of room for all the toys! We are SO blessed!

Goodbye 1111...

Hello 1072!

View from front door when you walk in...

Office area...

Master bedroom...

Bella's room...

Kitchen...


Playroom in basement...

Benjamin's room!

5 Months Old!

It seems like I was just doing Benjamin's 4 month update! I swear he gets cuter every day! :) He enjoyed his first Easter and all the Easter grass and his sport themed rubber ducks that were in his basket! He is still eating and sleeping great! He's not enjoying sleeping in his swing any more though. I've noticed that with eating too, he gets distracted if there's anything else going on. He's very aware of things now and he will not stand to be left lying on his blanket. He needs to be held during dinner time, read and shown the pictures during story time, and entertained by Bella if she's around! He will let out the saddest cry to be sure that he's included! The other big thing I've noticed this month is that he's really starting to feed off of Bella. She can make him laugh by doing ANYTHING! She will run around in circles and he will roll with laughter! It's the cutest thing! He also is starting to grab at her or Raffi to antagonize her already! It works! They laugh back and forth already. Today she had swaddled Benjamin completely up and was trying to pick him up to put him in her doll bed! He was just giggling hysterically! I finally convinced her that Elmo would be a better choice!

Happy Easter!

We celebrated Easter all day long on Sunday. We started with an early egg hunt and bunny pancakes at our house, followed by going to church and having an egg hunt there, napping, and having another egg hunt at Papa and Gigi's house. Bella is getting to be so fast and efficient at collecting eggs! Friday night, the kids and I dyed Easter eggs and read the Easter story again that night. It's been Bella's favorite book this week with Jesus popping up out of the grave! She says Jesus when I ask her to say it, but when I ask her who is in the picture, she says "Momma!" I think it's because he has long hair! LOL

Bella loved watching the colors dissolve and getting to stir and drop the eggs in!

I found this fun animal themed kit at Hobby Lobby. I thought she would like it because there were so many stickers, and I was right!

Bella got to eat her first Peep Sunday morning and she was doing her excited dance! The sugar went straight to the veins!

We had picture perfect weather! 80 degrees and sunny. Benjamin drooled through his cute blue striped button up so he and Papa were enjoying the nice shade and breeze!

My mom made these amazing confetti eggs. She blew out the yolks, dyed them, filled them with confetti and taped them closed. So after the egg hunt the girls got to smash the eggs and the confetti blew out. They were a huge hit! Bella continued to try to smash any egg after that just to be confused about why confetti didn't come out of all of them! haha

Bella and her cousin Sophie got quite a lot of lute!

Papa and Gigi and the grandkids! One more in about 6 weeks! We can't wait!

Another huge hit was blowing bubbles of course!

Aunt Val brought yummy cookies and icing for the girls to decorate cookies! Yummy! They loved this edible craft!