Sticker Man

This is what happens when you tell Joey to go play by himself.

Happy (50th) Birthday Grandpa!

Joe's mom bought Joey a suit. The dedication of the new Elm Grove church building (the church Joe grew up in) seemed like a good occasion to wear it. Can you tell that the little man was excited to be wearing it?!

Look at that smile!

My two handsome men.

Do you think he will always give his momma kisses? I sure hope so!

And this was our attempt at a family picture...maybe we should have tried it before the church service...

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The main reason we went to Kansas this weekend was to celebrate Joe's dad's 50th birthday. How many times did Joey sing "Happy birthday to my grandpa"???? If anyone knows Jody they know he doesn't like all the attention on himself. Well Joey was not about to let anyone forget that it was his grandpa's birthday! :) Along with singing happy birthday a million times, as people came in the door he would (loudly) ask if they were there for his grandpa's birthday party. I thought it was hilarious!

Joey and Bella got to help blow out the candles.

Kylah didn't care about the candles; she just wanted the cake.

A tea party organized by Joey (since Mackenzie wasn't there.)

Joey and Bella are quite the pair.

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We got a nice little treat tonight and got to see my dad! He was in town to sign a baseball player (and to do some hunting) :) Joey was so excited to see his Papa, and Kylah warmed right up to him too! Here they are cuddled up reading a book.

Trick-or-treat

This is for you Val! I got these up as quick as I could so you see your cute little kids!

Here is the group picture...it was the best we could do! :)
Kylah, Joey, Bella, Hannah, Deacon.

Here are my little bumblebee and fireman.

Bella was a cute little Dorothy. I loved her sparkly red shoes!

We stopped at Grammy's house to trick-or-treat. Kylah loved Grammy (and not just because Grammy was feeding her marshmallows!) :)


Joe loved his sweet little bee.


Josh and little Superman.


These two have been quite the pals this weekend. I love watching them play together so well.

I thought it was so cute to watch Kylah walking around holding her basket, getting candy, and then saying 'thank-you'.

We are in Kansas this weekend celebrating Halloween with Joe's family. We had a great day, and we've had a blast dressing the kids up. The kids have consumed quite a bit of sugar, but now they are all tucked into bed. They had a great time at the church, where they had candy, a bounce house, slides and basketball. We are so enjoying having Josh, Bella and Deacon here too!

Playing outside and some yoga

Today was another nice fall day. Breezy, but not too cold to play outside for a little bit. We had some friends over today to play. Their mom just had her third baby yesterday!
I was actually able to snap a picture of all of them at one time!

Hey, mom, I can't see with this hat on!

That's alright...I'm still having fun!

Joey brought out the yoga mats. I taught them a few yoga poses.
Here's downward facing dog...

And Warrior One...
I think it's hilarious that Kylah got up and tried to do the pose too! :)

We're going on a leaf hunt

Yesterday was the perfect afternoon for a long walk to pick up all sorts of different leaves. Joey was so excited. Many times after I would hand him a leaf to put in his basket he would say, 'thank you very much, mommy!'
When we got home we taped them all on paper and tried to name them all. Seems like I have forgotten everything I learned in my college botany class...

I forgot to bring my camera with us on our actual leaf hunt, so this picture is the completed project. :)

The one where the Manthe's are going to move to Arkansas

Yep, you read that right. The news is officially out, so we are free to talk about it. The Nebraska Manthe's will be becoming the Arkansas Manthe's at the end of December!

It all happened fairly quickly, but things just fell into place.

As most of you know, we went to college at JBU in Northwest Arkansas. This is where Joe and I met (and fell in love....blah, blah, blah...) :) When we moved to Omaha for grad school we thought we would always move back to Arkansas someday. Well, during school we found a great church, met a lot of cool people, found good jobs, and got involved here in Omaha, so the time wasn't right to move back to Arkansas.

Well, this summer God started whispering to me (more like a silent urging in my heart) about being open to moving. Joe and I talked about it quite a bit. Joe was not convinced at first---he loves his job here. But God seemed to work on Joe too, and before we knew it we both felt we should be open to it.

We had been planning a trip to Arkansas at the end of September to see Dave and Mere. We figured we could use that weekend to just talk with a few people and see what kind of opportunities Arkansas held for us (and for a PT and PA).

While we were in Arkansas that weekend, we both met with different companies, and by the end of that day we both had job offers. Seriously. We didn't quite know what to do with that. God not only opened doors for us, He swung them wide open! Did I mention that I will still be able to work part-time?! Awesome!

We did A LOT of praying over the next few days, and we both felt complete peace that we should move to Arkansas. So, we are. We feel like this is where God wants us to raise our family.
It is bittersweet to move. We are so looking forward to being close to our best friends and raising our kids in Arkansas, but we have made some awesome friends here in Omaha too. But, we are good at staying in touch! :)

We will be living in the Bentonville area.

Luckily, we will still be about the same distance from both of our parents, so that is awesome!
Joe will start his job in early December, but the official moving weekend will be New Years' Weekend. So, the kids and I will be here for a few weeks without Joe---I will definitely need your prayers during that time!

We have put our house up for sale...so if you know anyone who wants a really good family house, let us know! :) We have been busy de-cluttering and keeping our house crazy clean. (No small feat with two little ones around!)

It has really been amazing for us to see how God is working in our family right now. We feel undeserving of it. We will continue to trust Him over the coming months.

We'll keep you updated!

Growing up (too fast)

Since Kylah has become a professional walker, I have decided that dresses are oh-so-much cuter when a baby is standing up with them on (opposed to sitting and scooting.)

Here she is ready for church!

Can a milk-beard smile be any cuter?!

I feel like all of a sudden I have lost my little baby girl. Not literally, of course. What I mean is, she is a toddler now! She is becoming her own little person, and we are loving it. For the most part she is easy-going and doesn't have to be entertained by us every second (unlike her big brother at this age!) But she does have a little attitude at times that we see emerging when she doesn't get her way...or when her brother is sitting on her. :)
She is really starting to talk. There is so much difference in the way she is talking than the way Joey talked at her age. Maybe it's the gender; maybe it's their personalities. Joey talked all the time and talked fast, so you couldn't really understand a lot of what he was saying. Kylah, on the other hand, is very deliberate when she talks, and she really enunciates her words. Her vocabulary now includes: Daddy, Mommy, Simba, Bye-bye, Hi, Thank you, Cheese, Where are you?, Belly, Icky, Book, Papa, Gramma (Gaga!), Nana, (Joey and Grandpa must be too hard, because I haven't heard her say those yet.) She will also try to repeat a lot of things you ask her to say.
Well, there's a good update on Kylah. Joey's update coming soon!