WhatFoxKnows' 1 Year Anniversary

One year ago today, I created this blog to show off my beautiful wife because everyone else in the whole world was doing one and I didn't want to be left out. Haha! I really had no idea of how much it would come to mean to me and those who read it often. Check out my first post when you get a chance. It is right after we found out we were going to have the beautiful little girl you see on the left there. Our lives have changed so much in this year that I'm glad I was able to detail it here on this blog, otherwise we might have forgotten from whence we came. Seriously, when you get an opportunity, click on the "View Our Previous Posts" link and read all of the highlights of the things that have happened to us in just one year. It'll rival Grey's Anatomy.

Can you guess what Miss Makenna is doing now? Just this past week or so, she has started to crawl! She can make it across the room (albeit at a snail's pace) without even going down on her tummy! This prompted her mother and I to rush to Babies'R'Us and buy baby-proofing things to put up around the house. Also now that she is moving across our carpet so often, we decided to use our tax return money to buy laminate flooring for the living room and hallways. Our theory is that it'll be much easier to clean up for dog hair and food/drink spills and it would help the value of our home as well. We're doing the installation with the generous help of our family so hopefully it'll look great after we are through. We'll see...

One more thing that's new this week: Makenna is starting to pull up on her own! Last night, she was asleep in her Pack-n-play and during the night we heard these brutal screams so we rushed over to check it out. She had figured out how to pull herself all the way up to a standing position holding onto the top but once she got there, she couldn't let go without falling down and it scared her to death! You would have thought after that she wouldn't try it again but no, she takes after her mom and dad in that she quite determined, if not a bit stubborn... she did it again two more times last night, all ending with the same result. You know, if it wasn't in the middle of the night, it would have been quite funny. :)

Quick Story Before The Good Part: My Dad is known for his championship chili. His legend is talked about around the local cooking contests and many fine eating establishments as "El Hombre Que Hace El Buen Chile Loco" (The Man Who Makes Crazy Good Chili). After many failed experiments and years of effort, he finally mastered the perfect chili recipe a few years back. He has shared his secret only with a handful of people we'll call the Lucky Ones. (So far I'm not one of them...) It has brought near fame and fortune to those who have obtained the secret recipe. Any contest it is entered into is almost unfair; think 'easy as taking candy from a baby'. My mom is one of the Lucky Ones. Recently at her work, she entered this recipe into a contest in anonymity (so her employees wouldn't vote for her since she's da boss). The prize? Four tickets to OKC Hornets VS Boston Celtics basketball game. As expected, the chili recipe did it's magic and she went to claim her prize. She looked at the tickets and realized they were on a Monday night and she couldn't make it. So, out of the goodness of her heart, she stopped off at my office and gave them to me! How cool is that? My wife and I, along with Kevon and his girlfriend Ashley, went and enjoyed the splendor of an NBA game. And it all happened because of my Dad's diligence in his kitchen experiments. Thanks Dad... the game was fun.

Okay, so that story turned out a little bit longer than I anticipated. I promise this next part is going to be much shorter. On Sunday March 18th, we took Makenna on her first zoo trip! She was much more interested in the people walking around than the animals but all in all it was a fun trip. You can see the whole set here on our Flickr site. I've included several pics below for your viewing pleasure. Enjoy!

"Makenna Checking Out A Monkey Statue"


"Cue the 'Rocky' Theme Music"


"Makenna liked the tiger!"


"My brother's new part time job... Gorilla Poser!"


"Somehow this guy got ahold of a bag of chicken feed. Pretty funny."


I hope you liked the pictures! Speaking of pictures, my next post will be VERY soon and will have a lot of pics from the Arberitum in Dallas, Tx. I know you all will be waiting with bated breath. Haha.

God Bless,
Jason

Hospitals, Doctors, and Colds, Oh My!

Sorry it's been so long since I've written but this past month or so has been rough for our family. Actually, the past several months have been rough but we're making it. :) Kimi, Makenna, AND I were all sick with the crud. Miss Mak had it the worst of all of us because the medicine she could take was limited due to her small size. She came down with bronchitis and had an ear infection. She had such a hard time breathing and sleeping, it was just heartbreaking. Sleeping at night was so hard because she couldn't breathe sleeping on her back or on her stomach because her nasal passages were just stopped up. She figured out that she needed to sleep sitting up so it would drain properly which was SO sad. She's all better now but it was rough on her for a couple of weeks. I know it's left us drained too trying to take care of Miss Mak while we both were very sick ourselves. Special thanks to our family that watched Makenna for us so we could get getter ourselves.

Just wait, it gets better... a couple of weeks ago Kimi and I were on our way to work when we got a phone call from Kimi's mom saying that her dad was having a heart attack and was being medi-flighted to Denton and that we needed to get down there asap! OH MY GOSH, we made a mad rush to get down there. I grabbed Makenna from my Grandma's house and rushed home to pack clothes because we knew we'd be down there for the weekend at this point. If Kimi's car had wings, I think I would have taken off in flight, that's how fast I was going. The good news is that everything was fine. He was actually at the hospital with chest pains when he had the heart attack so they were able to monitor him the whole time. He had a successful angioplasty done on one artery that was 100% blocked off. He was back at home in 2 days and now he's just taking it easy. I took the picture above using Jerry's camera he got this past Christmas. At the time I thought it was just a pretty picture of a tree outside their house but now I almost think it represents a new beginning for Jerry. The tree is beginning its spring bloom and the sun is shinning through in a star pattern. I would like to ask you all for prayers for Jerry's health. I pray that he would maintain his health and that this is the last heart attack he ever has. Thank you all in advance...

Last but not least, little Miss Mak had her 8 month old birthday a couple of weeks back. Kimi bought her this shirt that says "I'm too cute to be a Longhorn!" That was one of the coolest shirts I've ever seen! Too bad she's ALREADY outgrowing it but I digress. We made the jump from her car base/carrier to a big girl car seat that is much nicer and safer.I'm not even going to tell you how much we spent on two car seats but lets just say that Makenna is riding in the Lexus of car seats. But one bonus is that Kimi and I found an OU Sooners car seat and it is SOOOO cool! She loves being able to sit up and look out the window. You can hear her talking to the cars all the way to Grandma's house in the morning! Her Nonnie just hates the new car seat because she's a Texas Longhorn's fan but she's a good sport. :) The latest development for Miss Mak is the ability to hold her own bottles ONE HANDED (I'm just glad she wants to hold her own bottle in the first place!). There are more things that are going on but I'm going to wait until the next post to share those. I hope you all have a wonderful week and thank you for your patience on reading/checking this blog. I'll try more to update it often. God bless!

PS: Congratulations to BJ and Wendy on the announcement that they are going to have another little girl! We wish you both the best. :)