Add Another Candle

It's that time of year again, where I gain another number onto the years of my life, where my cake becomes a bigger fire hazard by adding on another candle and the fire dept makes their annual visit to keep the whole neighborhood from burning down! You know, I've always had a hard time eating my birthday cake. Just last year I went to the doctor's office with a birthday cake problem. "Doctor, I get heartburn every time I eat birthday cake." He simply said, "Next time, take off the candles." Makes sense I guess... Anyway, I was talking to my wife yesterday about my upcoming birthday and she said "I'm giving a 'surprised' birthday party for you." I was like, "A 'surprised' birthday party? What's that?" She replied, "That's where I invite a bunch of your friends, and if any of them come, I'll be surprised!" Oh man, isn't that just mean? Haha I knew she was totally kidding because I don't have any friends. Okay, sorry, I'm kidding about that too. But at least I'll remember to take off the candles this year!

All kidding aside, this birthday got here before I even realized it was coming. Kimi kept asking me what I wanted to do and I really had no ideas. So Saturday night we went to visit my Mom and Scotty for a while. We decided to go out for a little "Birthday Dinner" at Outback Steakhouse for a big ol' steak dinner. They let me get a 9oz center-cut filet which was soooo good. We decided we'd let Makenna spend the night at my mom's house (first night away from us since she was born!) so Kimi and I could go back home and head straight to bed to get some rest. Sleep was needed so bad that we slept for 10 hours; almost half the day! When we woke up, both of our backs were hurting and it took me a minute to realize why. We were both SO tired that we didn't even move during the night and our backs were stiff in the morning! Haha

We got up, went to eat breakfast/lunch at Abuelo's Mexican Restaraunt (YUM, Chicken Chimichanga with Queso sauce and mexican mashed potatoes!) and afterward went to see the movie "Cars". Very good movie, better than I expected. Right after the movie, I took Kimi to a dayspa so she could get her feet massaged and toenails painted nice and pretty. Easy on the wallet for such a joyful experience for her. We rushed off to Ann Taylor LOFT before they closed and was able to get Kimi two shirts and a pair of lined pants for about $50 (saved almost $100 with the sale!) right at closing time. She looks so good in her new clothes and I know she loves Ann Taylor because they look classy. Good stuff. :) Afterward, we grabbed Makenna, thanked my mom for watching her, and headed home to wrap up the wonderful weekend.

And when I woke up this morning, I received a card from my dear sweet Makenna before I left for work telling me what a wonderful daddy I am and wishing me a happy birthday. She's such a good daughter, isn't she? :) And when I did get to work, my office was decorated in birthday signs and one big balloon. How nice. And tonight, to wrap it all up (as far as I know, that 'surprised' birthday party thing Kimi was talking about isn't going to happen...), we're having a steak dinner at my dad's house! Man, I love steak on the grill. It's turning out to be a great birthday, even if I didn't realize it was happening so quickly. :)

Quick past birthday memory: I've been lucky to have had some great birthday's in the past. I've visited the White House in Washington DC, DisnyWorld in Orlando, and tanned on the beaches of Cancun. And just last year I was able to go to Hawaii with Kimi's family and it was such a blast! But this year, Makenna takes the prize for the best birthday present I've ever gotten. I know she came a little early but I couldn't have imagined anything better.

The last thing I want to share with you guys today is that Kimi and I are now going to be putting up videos on our YouTube.com account. Look to the right and click on the link "View Our Videos" to see what we have available publicly. I'll add some more but the ones of Makenna I am going to reserve to just showing on our blog here. As an example, I am including a video of the first time we had "Tummy Time" with Makenna to see if she could lift her head yet. You'll just have to watch the video to see!

We're so proud of Makenna! Hope you enjoyed the video!

God bless!
Jason

P.S. If you all want to, share with me what your favorite birthday was. Any absolutely crazy or hilarious stories? Please share! :)

One Month Old

Just to show you an example of how quickly time sails on by in life, Makenna is already over one month old! Pretty amazing. She's growing heavier by the day too. She's up to minimum 4 ounces of food every meal, which sometimes goes only 2 hours between feedings! I honestly don't know where she's putting it at because her little stomach can't be hardly that big. But I know she is gaining weight because we've come up with a way to guestimate how much she weighs. She's too little to even register on our scale at home. What I've been doing is jumping on the scale and seeing my weight. Then I will pick her up and step back on the scale and subtract the difference. Last time I weighed her, she was 7.5 lbs which, though it isn't exact, lets us reasonably ascertain how much she is gaining each week. It'd be more accurate if we could get hold of a gram weight scale but this'll do just fine for our conscience... until we hear otherwise. :)

So in celebration of Makenna's 1 month birthday (and the fact that I had the weekend off work!), we made our way down to Texas for some well needed R&R. We hit the pool for some temporary relief to the scorching Texas sun and 100+ degree temps that have been pounding us for weeks now. We invited my cousin Brent and his wife Elizabeth over for dinner on Saturday night. My mother-in-law Sherry cooked up spaghetti and italian sausage with a huge bowl of caesar salad and buttered texas toast. She made a frozen strawberry pie for desert too. Mmmm, good stuff. We all sat around the table laughing and telling stories and catching up on what's been going on. My cousin's baby boy is due on October 1st and his name is going to be Caden William (I always want to call him Caedmon after my favorite band). The most recent pics had him weighing around 3 1/2lbs so he's growing quickly too! If you get a moment, please lift them up in prayer because they are about to go through an incredibly miraculous and yet unnervingly stressful time when Caden is born. I hope their delivery will be a smooth process with no complications. I'll keep you guys updated as I find out more info.

This past Tuesday was Makenna's original due date. She was 5 weeks early but she's doing better than I could have imagined. So in theory, Makenna would have been between 7 and 8lbs if she had been full term. We held her up to Kimi's belly and she's so long, we couldn't understand how she could have fit inside of her being any bigger than she was already! And to think, I was 9lbs 4ozs when I was born! My poor mom... Kimi was just over 3lbs when she was born but us Fox kids grow big inside (and outside apparently) the womb. Our next kid will probably be a C-section if he or she is any bigger than Makenna was. My poor wife...

Speaking of my poor wife, we have a prayer request for her. She is still having a lot of pain and complications from giving birth and it's been 5 weeks already. She saw the girl doc yesterday and they said she would probably take another few weeks to heal properly. She compared the pain to having a thousand papercuts opening up every time you move. Yeah, Ouch. On another front, her Grandpa Miller went to the hospital very early this morning with chest pains but started feeling better right after he got there. They are monitoring him for the rest of today to make sure everything goes alright. But please say a prayer for him as well for his health to resume. We know God works miracles and that He is always making plans to prosper us and not to harm us. If you get time today or this weekend, please pray in faith for all these requests. Thank you all so much and I hope your week is an awesome one!

God bless,
Jason

ESP... Eat, Sleep & Poop

I'm sorry it's been so long since I've written a post here. I've been off work now for 3 weeks and yesterday was my first day back. It's amazing how fast those three weeks went by. It literally feels like Makenna was just born yesterday and yet this Saturday she will be 1 MONTH OLD already! Oh my goodness, time has flown by! And now I have to go back to work. I already feel like I'm missing out on her growing up just by not seeing her most of the day. I'm just blessed to be able to have spent so much time with her right after she was born. As you can see from all the pictures we've added to our flickr site, she's growing up more and more every day. Just look at those facial expressions! It seems like every time we grab the camera she's posing for us! Someone at work tells me that she probably has gas when she makes these faces but I choose to believe she's just developing her sense of humor early on. :) We'll keep trying to add new pictures to our flickr site as get them so check back often.

On July 15th, my Grandma Fox drove over an hour to come meet her great granddaughter for the first time. I haven't seen my grandma since Christmas, I believe, which has been WAY too long. We met up at my dad's house who cooked up some mean hamburgers on the grill. It is always a treat to be around my grandma because she's always so positive and such a wonderful person. She just loved the time she was there with Makenna. Just yesterday she emailed me and told me that she showed Makenna's pictures off to her sunday school class and they were all "ooohing" and "ahhhing". Made her proud. This Christmas is going to be a great one. My cousin and his wife, who live in Texas, are due to have their first child in October this year. So, as you can imagine, my grandma can't wait to have 2 little ones stealing the show this year.

The following week, on July 20th, my best friend BJ and his wife Wendy, along with my God-daughter Lilyanah, came to Okiehoma to visit friends and family. What a complete blessing it was to spend two whole evenings with them during their 4 day stay here! On Thursday night, Kimi and I opened up our house (and refrigerator to BJ... J/K!) and welcomed their company! It was so relaxing just being around them. We've been waiting for this for months so it was nice to finally have the day come! I had been marinating steaks for 24 hours prior to their arrival and had BJ help me cook them up. I also made some barbeque chicken for Kimi and Wendy as well. Topped off with fresh corn and bacon-ranch alfredo noodles (yum) and big glasses of sweet tea, it was delicious! Afterward, we put on some soothing music and just talked the rest of the night. The girls went to bed early and BJ and I stayed up talking until almost 3am! We had a lot to catch up on. It's not fair that they live so far away though, if God answers both of our prayers, they may be coming back to Okiehoma within 2 years. Now THAT would be good times! One of the best things from this trip was that Makenna got to meet Lilyanah! Though we didn't get any upclose pictures of the two (they were always sleeping!), we were able to shoot the one above that you see. I love where life has taken BJ and I since we first met in high school. We have so many great memories together. I just hope that we are able to someday be within driving distance again so we can make some more memories together, now especially with our kids being practically the same age!

On Sunday night, BJ, Wendy, Lily, and Wendy's parents came by to visit us one last time before they had to go home the next day. That night though was the live draft in the fantasy football league we are in and fortunately for BJ, I had an extra computer so he could participate! It was a blast! I think I drafted the best team but we'll see. Afterward, I showed BJ the tickets that I just bought for the Dallas Cowboys VS Indianapolis Colts game in November. Though he can't go with me, I know he will be with me in spirt, or at least watching me on TV as I cheer rabidly for the Colts! WOOO! If you click the picture you can see the big version of the view we will have from the section we got seats in. Oh so much fun! I can't wait!

That pretty much sums up the big events of the past two weeks. The last thing I want to share with you guys shows you proof that I'm a dork... but sometimes it pays off. I was dropping off two movies the other night and it was getting close to midnight which was the cutoff before being late. So I took out my camera phone and snapped a shot of the videos along with the movie store clock and dropped them off. About two weeks later, when I went into rent more videos, they said that I had two late fees for returning the movies after the cutoff time. I was mad at first because I knew I had returned them on time but I was fuzzy on the details. Then I laughed out loud when I remembered that I had the picture on my phone! I took out my phone, pulled up the picture and showed it to the clerk who promptly removed my late fees because there was no denying the proof! SO, lesson learned? It saved me $6 in late fees b/c I had the presence of mind to snap a quick picture before I returned the movies. I just thought you all would think this was pretty funny. And yes, I am still a big goob.

I hope you all have a great week!
Jason