Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

Not quite sure where all the time went, but wow Christmas is over! The new year has begun.  So better late than never.  We truly hope that you all had a wonderful Christmas and a blessed 2012!

Dear Friends and Family,

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!! This year has been a different one for the Laughter family!  We’ve been busy adjusting to living in another part of the country, away from all our family.

My year has been very busy with dealing with lots and lots of change!  Not only have I been chasing around a toddler and a preschooler, but I’ve been growing a new baby in my body too.  Yes, we are expecting another little one!  As of right now, we have a scheduled C-section for March 2, 2012.  So that afternoon, we will welcome our sweet baby girl into the world.  Also with that craziness, in August we moved across the country to Maryland.  Layne took a new job so that meant leaving everything we knew as normal and trusting God’s plan for our life.  So needless to say, life has been changing a bunch for us.  We have joined a new church, which has helped us connect with other families and make new friends. We are excited with what God has challenged us with and look forward to what He has in store for us in the next few years while we are living in Maryland.  

Layne took a new job with a new company.  He’s now working with Lockheed Martin as a flight photographer and really enjoying it.  He gets to fly in F-18’s chasing F-35’s in the air and taking video and pictures of the F-35.  When he’s not flying in planes he gets to keep up with his creative side and makes a few videos for his company.  He’s also enjoying the slower pace of life and being able to do lots of new things.  We’ve gone to several festivals around the area and also have been enjoying the outdoors here! We’ve also gone into DC a couple of times and while he was on travel for work, we did some things up in New Jersey.  We went into Philadelphia and saw the Liberty Bell as well as some other historic sites.  We also ventured into New York and went to Carlos’s Bakery from Cake Boss on TLC. Layne has really tried to make an effort for our family to do as much as we can while we are up here in the North.  We don’t want to go back down South and say, oh I wish we would have done that while we lived there.   

Jayce is currently 3 ½ and will be four in February! He is a great little helper and always wanting to be where Daddy is.  His favorite part of living up here is when Daddy has three-day weekends!  He has started his first year of preschool and loves it.  He goes three days a week and is doing great.  He’s going to a Christian preschool and has a wonderful teacher.  He has come home singing so many different songs about Jesus and even tells me about stories that he’s learned from the bible.  Jayce also loves that there are so many parks here for him to play at.  He asks me pretty much on a daily basis if we can go to the park to play.  And as long as it’s not raining, we pretty much go daily. 

Ryleigh is now 2 1/2 years old.  She’s a little diva and still a Mommy’s girl.  I think that she really likes having a couple days a week where it’s just Mommy and her!  We have also discovered that she’s probably going to be the academic one of the family.  She was a little upset that she wasn’t going to get to go to school this year.  But at home her and I work on lots of things.  She knows the alphabet, can count to 20, can count in Spanish to 10, knows all her colors and lots more.  She can hear a song once or twice and have the whole thing pretty much memorized.  She surprises us every single day.  She has a very extensive vocabulary and when we are in public we get comments about how well she speaks.  Ryleigh is very excited to be having a baby sister.  She said the sweetest thing when we told her she was going to have a little sister.  Ryleigh told us all, “yay, I’m going to have a sister, a friend!”  And I’m sure that’s so true! Her and Jayce are best buds and she’s going to be a great friend to her baby sister as well!

God sure has blessed us beyond imagination!  We don’t deserve anything that we have, but we are so thankful for all of it!  We truly hope that you all have a very blessed 2012! Please remember to keep in touch with us by checking out our family blog:  http://thelaughterfamily.blogspot.com

We are closing on our new house here in Maryland on December 14, so please add our new address to your address books.   44188 Beaver Creek Dr, California, MD 20619                   

The plan is for us to be here in Maryland for about the next five years.  So that address should be good for a while.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

The Laughter Family