Early Christmas in Florida!

So when we showed up in Florida, at 5 am Friday morning, Santa had already made a visit to Gram Mac & Gramp's house. It took Mackenzie about three days to open all the presents. She wanted to play with everything once she opened it. She really liked the bike and rode it often while we were there. She is still trying to get the steering thing down, but we know it will come together for her soon. She got a present from her Great grandmother, or Great Goog as she is affectionately known. She opened the present and exclaimed "Barbie"! We really did have a great visit with Gram Mac, Gramps, Great Goog, Uncle Len, & Aunt Joy! Kari

New Smyrna Beach, Florida

Hello, once again, these pictures are of Florida. More specifically, New Smyrna Beach, Florida. Since we have moved to Texas I, in partciaular, have been missing the beach. So my one request was to see the beach with Mackenzie before we went home. Of course it was the coldest day of all the days we were there at 59 degrees. Gram Mac was frozen through in five minutes. But in the five minutes we were there, we saw Sand pipers, Sea gulls, water that came to the steps that go down to the beach (high tide) and surfers. The surfers were trying so hard to swim outward, but were pretty moving side ways by the time we left.

Tractor, Tractor, and more Tractors!!!

Ok, so we went to Florida for a visit with Gram Mac, Gramps & family! The visit has so many pictures and we did so much that it will be broken up into segments. So this is the "Tractor" segment. Gramps has a John Deer ride on lawn mower or a "tractor". Mackenzie loves tractors. Every time we go to Home Depot or Lowe's Mackenzie has to sit on all the tractors that are out. Lord help us if they are having a sale and they are all lined up!!! So when she saw that Gramps had a tractor, she got so excited. Of course Gramps was more than willing to indulge Mackenzie and take her for a few rides. She also saw vintage tractors such as a 1934 John Deer tractor, which I believe is the one that Carter and Mackenzie crossed the ropes to take a picture. Needless to say, Mackenzie loved riding the tractor. She even climbed up on Gramps' tractor when he wasn't looking and proceeded to try and turn the key in the ignition. She evens sets it in gear to go. Thankfully she is not strong enough to turn the key yet! At the very least she is curteous enough to put the levers back before jumping off. Kari

Sad News...

First and Foremost, I would like to express my gratitude to my Heavenly Father for the strength that he gives me to endure my trials. He is the reason that I am able to have an eternal perspective and have hope where I might not otherwise. Given that I have bad news. We lost our baby. We saw the heart beat a couple of weeks ago and I started spotting last week. After having blood work done the sonorgram revealed that the baby had developed to 9 weeks and six days but there was no heartbeat. Of course, I had to get it removed yesterday and I am feeling a lot better today. We of course are very sad for our loss, as we were all excited to have this baby. We know that we will be ok and that we will try again when the time is right. We appreciate your love and prayers. Thank you for being so supportive to our family and we love you! Kari

Happy Halloween from West Virginia!

Ok, So I got these pictures from Aunt Karen in Wheeling, West Virginia. I was cleaning out my email and thought there is no way I could just file this email away without sharing the pictures. I think that this is pretty amazing. Here are the details...

"Every Halloween season, this house in West Virginia is transformed into the Great Pumpkin House. The owner and hundreds of other volunteers carve thousands of pumpkins for display at his home every Halloween. This year there are 3,063 pumpkins on display. The pumpkins will be on display between October 28th - November 4th. "

Happy Halloween 2007

Ok, so there is so much to talk about. I first thought to make more than one post, but then I got lazy. So there are a few pictures in this montage. Last night we carved our pumpkin. Kenzie was into for the first ten minutes and then let Daddy finish it. We went to our ward trunk-or-treat tonight and met up with some friends. Thomas the tank engine is Kenzie's friend, Ben. The fairy is Kenzie's friend, Ella and the Goat is Baby Sophie. It totally brings to mind the Cake song, Sheep go to Heaven, but Goats go to .... But I have to say we loved this little Goat and she will not going to ... if her parents have anything to say about it. Honestly, the beard is what sent me into a laughing frenzy. We then went trick-or-treating around our neighborhood after trunk-or-treat. We were able to meet some of our neighbors which is good. And everyone thought that Kenzie made an adorable Super Girl. We hope that everyone had a GREAT Halloween! Thanks for the response to my posts I love hearing from people and you are so sweet!

Happy Halloween! Kari

Trunk-or-Treat with the Allen 5th Ward

We were invited to go to the Allen 5th Ward Trunk-or-Treat. It was so great to see so many of our friends. Mackenzie as you can tell was adorable and there were many of her super hero friends friends! Superman is her friend Braden. Batman is her friend Eli. Batgirl is one of her babysitters, Shannette, and the Wheaties box is Mackenzie's other babysitter, Morgan. Kenzi is standing in a line with her Daddy for the costume contest. She got a Halloween pencil! She had a lot of fun running around and of course LOVED getting the candy. Carter had been practicing with Kenzi on "What do we say when we want candy?" "Trick-or-Treat" (Which of course came out more like "TREAT".) "And what do we say when we get the candy" "Thank you" She did pretty good and got quite a bit of candy which we limit to two pieces after dinner and one after her nap. We have our ward trunk-or-treat on wednesday, which we will be attending after we trick-or-treat around the neightborhood. Halloween is so much fun when you have children!! Enjoy!

Uncle Alex

Alex is wearing his first Tuxedo. He sings in the High School Choir. See the attached jpg files. What's interesting with the pictures is that Alex is so much taller (bigger) than his mother now, and she's 5'9". Alex is now 6'2", and just turned 14 last month. I think he is going to surpass Carter in height.

Oh yeah...the choir sounded fine.

Grandpa G

So far so good...

So, I took this picture to see if I could get a picture on the blog. And what do you know?!?!?!?! Isn't Kenzie adorable? Sometimes I really can't believe that she is my kid and so dang cute! At this point her favorite thing to do is hang out on Mommy and Daddy's bed. She is really content there. And she was very concerned about the dog being outside this morning, that she had to let her in. I really don't have much to talk about, I am just learning more about this website. I tried to put a picture up top and it was HUGE. So hopefully I can get it down soon. Otherwise, enjoy. And feel free to write if you want. Kari P.S. Happy Birthday Mom!!!

First Post...

Ok, So I tried another Blog, but the pictures were not happening, so after some consideration and viewing my friends pages, I decided to try this site. Sorry for the switch, but hey I was not posting to that other site anyway. I am not sure if anyone will view it or if anyone cares, but in case someone does, I figure that I will give a valiant effort.

Now where to start... Mackenzie has gotten older and bigger. She is talking with regularity, though sometimes I still need her to "Show" me what she is trying to convey. She loves watching Little Einsteins, The Doddle Bops, and of course, Curious George is still a high priority! She still dances when Carter gets home snd competes with Dax (the dog) for attention when actually gets in the door. She is more than happy to tell me that she does not like naps and still fights the whole sleeping thing. She has been know to scream for an hour, and yes you can hear it on the street in front of our house.

As you might have noticed from the title of our page or just below, there is a question mark. That means that I am pregnant. I am due in June next year and we are very excited. It will be very interesting to see how Mackenzie intereacts with the baby. She is really great with our friends daughter, Sophie, but as someone so lovingly put it, Sophie goes home! So we will see. I ask Mackenzie where is the baby and she pats her tummy and says "Baby?!?!" Then I correct her by taking her hand and putting it on her tummy and say "No baby" and then put her hand on my tummy and say "Baby!" Eventually she will get it. Probably when I get huge and mommy is missing a lap.

Well, I am going to close for now. I am going to try and figure out the whole picture thing. So keeps your fingers crossed!

Kari