The twins turned 9 months... and then I turned 27 years old

The twins are 9 months old! Time is flying by. I want them to stay this little forever!

 Standing up is her thing now! When she first started standing up, Kyler freeeaked out and would always run to her and hold her saying "whoa whoa Lyla, I got you!" (BTW he pronounces the letter "L" when he says her name now :( the first 8 months of her life he called her "Yeye Yuh") Kyler can make Lyla laugh very easily, while most other people (non family) can't even get her to smile!

 She has the standing thing down now, and sometimes will let go with both hands for a few seconds!

Lyla loves attention and loves to be held. She is crawling everywhere and likes to get into things. She is also getting very attached to Ryan. At the gym, they say whenever they take her out of her carseat to play on the floor, she will cry until they put Ryan down on the floor next to her. So cute!

Ryan loves to snuggle. He is really chill and will be content playing on the floor by himself. Ryan crawls and does this bear crawl thing sometimes too that I think is so cute! He is starting to pull himself up to standing too (did so 2 weeks after Lyla). Ryan's blue eyes are stunning! Lyla's are too, but Ryan's are a little rounder and when they catch the light just right they are so incredibly blue... Pretty much the bluest eyes I've ever seen in my life. I didn't edit the color in any of these pictures. He was just looking right out the window so the light was perfect, and I think the blue in his shirt makes them pop more than normal too.

He was tired when I took these pictures, so I didn't get any smiles out of him, but he finds humor in everyday life things, and normally laughs SO much. 

Neither of the babies have teeth, and both of the babies are sleeping about 12 hours at night and then two 1-2 hour naps a day! Love this schedule!

I tried phasing out Kyler's nap a while back to just "quiet time" but that didn't last long. He still needs a nap. He typically takes a solid 1.5 hour nap everyday. I guess my kids just like to sleep! My mom said needing a lot of sleep runs in the family. Not going to lie, I usually take a 20 min nap everyday too when all 3 kids are sleeping ;P they wear me out!

Jared made this giant cookie cake for my Bday. It was sooo good! 

We also had my wonderful nieces babysit and Jared and I went out on a date in Salt Lake City. We went shopping at City Creek, and then went out to dinner! 

6th anniversary and moving in

Soon after we arrived here in Utah, Jared and I celebrated our 6th anniversary!

To celebrate, we went raspberry picking with the fam, shopping, and then Jared and I went out on a date, while Ben and Mere watched the kids!

Unpacking was really hard. The twins just wanted to be held all day everyday that first week, and Kyler would get jealous of me holding the twins and would come sit on me as well. This is what those first few days  looked like...

Jared and I got most of our unpacking done at night when the kids were asleep! This is the first house we've lived in (since we've been married) that has had a fenced in back yard. It's wonderful! Bauer stays outside pretty much all day everyday, and has play dates with Uncle Mark's dog Ruger; he's in doggy heaven. Kyler loves playing out there too!

I had to find a way to keep the babies contained though, because they kept trying to eat all the grass/rocks/sticks in the yard. This is working for now:

Notice the random avocado in there haha. I don't have to puree it anymore, they just eat it by the spoonful!

Jared likes his new job here so far! He took me on a tour of where he works, I love the view from his office!

 We've been doing Sunday dinners with Grandma and Grandpa. All three kids crashed on their bed the other week.

We couldn't find the crib pieces for several days after moving in- I was scared we were going to have to buy new cribs! ...but we finally found the pieces...in Kyler's toy box haha.

We're finally settling in and it's finally starting to feel like home here! 

The 36+ hour road trip (one way)

Wow, it's been nearly a month since I have last posted! It would take me way too long to say all I want to say in one post, so I'm going to split it up into several posts!

Saying goodbye to Charlotte, friends, and family was hard. Really hard. The last few weeks we were there we soaked up so good time with them.

I miss all of those ^^^ people so much. SO much.

Moving day went smoothly. We had plenty of friends from church come and help load up the truck. Everything fit in nicely!

We enjoyed our last day in Charlotte at my parents house- and said goodbye to all of the green outside.

We had one last family dinner, and we hit the road. The professional movers quoted us (not joking or exaggerating) $10,000 to move us across the country and tow 1 of our cars. Sooo, we decided to just do it ourselves for about 7 grand cheaper, but that meant I would have to drive by myself in one car with the twins. Jared took the Uhaul and Kyler and towed our Camry behind it.

Not going to lie, I bawled my eyes the first 15 minutes of the drive. It was hard leaving Charlotte. We loved it there! We decided to take a slightly longer route to Utah, so that we could visit family along the way. Our first destination was Dallas, which is a 16 hour drive straight through, but we had to stop every 3 hours to change diapers and feed babies, so it ended up taking about 20 hours. 

This country we live in is beautiful! Every bit of it.

We drove through the night. It's been a loooong time since I've pulled an all-nighter. And I didn't drink any energy drinks because I'm still breastfeeding. It was hard, but I never once felt tired while driving! The babies slept most of the night, and we arrived at Melanie's house in once piece!

We got a good nap in while she babysat, and then we hung out at her pool!

We got a good nights sleep, hung out at the pool again the next day, and then hit the road!

Our next destination was Albuqueque, NM to visit Jared's sister, Staci, and her kids--- about a 10 hour drive straight through, but again, with all of our stops it took us about 13 hours. Most of the drive was during the day- that was harder with the babies. But we survived. We ended up staying in NM for 2 days to recover from that leg of the trip. 

the cashier lady wanted to take our picture at Target when she found out we had just drove from NC. LOL so random.

The babies slept together in the PackNplay the whole trip. It was hard for them to fall asleep most of the time because Lyla just kept wanting to play...like this:

...but then almost every night they somehow ended up snuggling next to each other. I have so many pics like this now:

Our last leg of the trip was from Albuqueque to Salt Lake City (again, about a 10 hour drive, but it took us 14 hours). The babies did pretty good! And Jared put up with me wanting to take pictures and  we stopped an extra time just to take this pic haha

So there you have it- how we survived our 36+ road trip :D