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. "