Day of Reflection

Today marks the 5 year anniversary since the attacks on the US happened on that plain and normal morning of Sept 11th. I was at my dad's house sleeping in bed after staying up all night. I was between jobs, having just finished working at the Christian bookstore and as the Youth Minister at my old church. My best friend, BJ, called me and said "Jay, you've got to get up and turn on the tv! There's been something terrible that's happened!" With it being 5 years ago, I don't remember our exact conversation after that because of the sheer shock at seeing the first tower in flames. When the 2nd plane hit, I broke into tears of anger and sorrow. I didn't know what was happening, who was attacking us, where the next attack would happen at... then my heart sank when the first tower collapsed and I witnessed thousands of people lose their lives. The TV was saying there was up to 50,000 people in each of those towers, though we now know there weren't nearly that many. After the 2nd tower fell, it just broke my heart and I was furious and full of despair... all I could do was pray and keep watching. Kimi and I recently saw "Flight 93" on dvd. I would recommend it as a good movie to watch. Its long in some parts but the end leaves your heart in the pit of your stomach holding your breath. I guess I want to say that if I were in a situation like that, I would hope I would have the courage to do what they did to make sure the bad guys didn't succeed, even if it meant my own life was to be lost.

With it being such a somber day, it's hard to talk about anything else but we've got some news about Makenna! :) Our little daughter, at just over 10 weeks old, now weighs 11.2 lbs and is in the 60th percentile for her weight. She is also now 23 inches long which puts her at the 90th percentile for her height! Translation: She's tall and skinny! Haha! We went to the baby doc for Makenna's 2 month check up in hopes that we would find out that we can give her cereal now to help her sleep longer but alas, the advice given was that we wait until she's 4 months old so she doesn't develop allergies. :( So sad... Anyway, she had to get 5 shots in her legs and it was just terrible holding her down while she was screaming at the pain! She did good though right afterward until the evening time when her little legs got so sore and she couldn't fall asleep b/c they hurt. She eventually tuckered out from crying and slept for most of the night (a good side effect!). All in all, she's doing great and the doc confirmed that Kimi and I are still fit for parenthood!

Quick funny story: The night shifts for feeding times are terrible on getting a good nights sleep. By Friday, Kimi and I are basically zombies. A lot of times, we find we're holding Makenna in the rocking chair and we'll start to fall asleep and catch ourselves before we actually do. Last week, I was so tired I brought Makenna into our bed and put her on the "Magic Pillow" and was holding her bottle for her. Well, Makenna and I both fell asleep almost right away and I started to dream. I thought our dog, Sadie, was in my arms instead and was licking my arm pits! Sadie can't hold her licker in (ie: she's always licking something!) and I thought she was licking me now! It tickled and it made me mad that she would interrupt my sleep! I woke up with an angry start... and realized that it wasn't Sadie but instead it was Makenna's bottle in my hand dripping and running down my arm pit! I laughed out loud at myself because it was so funny. Oh the joys of being a parent. You sometimes feel like you are loosing your mind! ;)

Kimi's birthday was this past week on the 7th. You'd be proud of me if you were there that morning. The night before I volunteered to take the entire night shift by myself so she could get a good night of solid sleep. During the night, I hid 4 birthday cards throughout Kimi's morning routine so she would find them as she was getting ready for work. One card was from Makenna and was in the car seat. Another was by the coffee pot along with a brand new "spill proof" PINK coffee cup. :) Another was waiting for her in her car right as she was about to head off to work. And finally the last was hidden inside her new laptop for her to find when she got to work. Oh yeah, major brownie points! I even got a gold star for my efforts! Haha. That night we went out to eat a very nice dinner at Outback Steakhouse. Good stuff. Kimi's big presents were getting pretty pictures made with Makenna (as you can see above), lots of clothes shopping and a new special Tourmaline hair dryer (supposed to be as nice as the ones used by Hollywood hairstylists!). And LOTS OF CHOCOLATE, a must according to Kimi.

Kimi, I hope your birthday
was a special day for you!

To end this days post, I'd like to give a hand to OU for a great 2nd half on Saturday against Washington. They were clicking on all cylindars and more than made up for the previous 6 quarters of poor play spanning one and a half games. They made me proud! I got the picture above from Kimi's grandparents this past weekend. Their next door neighbor has hired a few OU players for his business and decided to have a celebration party after OU's first win. They called up Kimi's Grandma and Grandpa to come over to meet Rufus Alexander (WLB on defense for the Sooners). Kimi's grandparents are huge OU fans, having had season tickets longer than I have been alive, and this was a great experience for them. I just hope OU keeps getting better and better this year. :)

I hope this week is a great one for you all.

Jason

Look Who's Two Months Old

Our dear Makenna turned 2 months old on Tuesday! There has been so much that has happened over the last two months, it's just amazing how fast time has gone by. For example, over the last week she's was able to have a little more control over her smile. Just this morning, when we were getting her up to get ready to go, she was slow to wake up. No biggie, we had plenty of time. I held her in my arms for a bit and softly said her name a few times. She stretttcchhed and ever so slowly opened her beautiful blue eyes and looked at me... and gave me a great big open mouthed smile, as if to say, "Goodmorning to you too daddy!" And of course my heart melted. :) It seems she's amazing us daily with something new. Kimi and I wonder how such a precious and pure person could come from us... and our answer is that she's a miracle.

We love her so much. We are trying to catch all of her special moments and cherish every minute of them. Like last night, she was SO sweet. While Kimi had to do some work from home, Makenna and I had some time to ourselves. Earlier in the evening she had been pretty fussy from being so tired (lately she has been fighting her sleep so bad b/c she doesn't want to miss anything!). So I picked her up, laid on the couch and let her fall asleep on her daddy's chest. She was out like a light! She slept that way for two whole hours before getting hungry again! It was so precious. I could feel her warm little milk-breath on my face as she drooled all over my chest. Ha! It was great! Those are the moments that I treasure. There's a country song by Brad Paisley that is called "Little Moments"... it describes pretty much what I feel about my family sometimes. It's the little moments in life that steal my heart over and over again. That was one of them.

Another big thing happened this week. Since Kimi's mom and dad weren't able to make it up this week to watch Makenna, we were scrambling to find someone to watch her or else we had to start taking her to daycare a week earlier than we thought. Just when we thought we had run out of options, my mom suggested we call up my Grandma Gandy and see if she would be able to watch Makenna this week, to try it out, and if she were able to handle it, to possibly take it on permanently. My Grandma used to watch all of us cousins when we were growing up and is currently watching my cousin Hadley so she's pretty qualified for the job. My Grandma said she would give it a try this week and see how she can handle having two girls under 1 vying for her attention. It's not a done deal yet b/c the week isn't up but Makenna seems to be loving it over there and from what we can tell, My Grandma is doing just fine with the two girls. Cross your fingers and pray everything works out because we would much rather Makenna be watched by a family member who would love her and give her personal attention than send her to a daycare where her needs would have to wait in line.

WISH-WE-COULD'VE-BEEN-THERE-NOTE-OF-THE-WEEK: Our great friends, BJ & Wendy, were able to go to Oahu, Hawaii this past week! Wendy and BJ have been through SOOOOO much this year, it'd take days to list all the crazy changes that have happened to them. I am so glad they were able to get away and go to the beautiful island of Oahu. When you get a chance, make your way over to their site and read their latest blog about their trip. One cool side note: BJ and I are involved in a long running fantasy football league that drafted the Saturday night BJ was on vacation. BJ is so dedicated, he somehow found a computer over there and made the draft from Hawaii... and then went back out to Waikiki Beach afterward! Love the dedication bro!

To end this post, I'd like to show you an assortment of videos Kimi and I took last year when we went to Oahu as well. The videos should loop so I hope you enjoy! God bless!

Jason

Kimi's New Job

I'll let you guys know up front I'm going to jump around topics today so bear with me. :)

This past Monday, Kimi started her new job as a Speech & Language Pathologist at a school 35 minutes away from our home. It's SUCH a long drive out there but luckily she gets paid for mileage, which helps. It's been an interesting week so far for her, some of it pretty rough. She met her new boss on Monday and thus began the whirlwind of action that hasn't stopped for her. On Monday the air conditioner didn't come on until the end of the day. That left the building in scorching heat that Kimi had to work in for 6 hours, rearranging furniture, sorting through notes on each student, doing inventory on the entire supplies of the SLP dept. She got to leave a little early that day b/c of the heat but we turned around and drove back that night to work for a couple more hours after the building had cooled off. Very long day for her (and me too). But the rest of her week has been steadily getting better and well, today is Friday and she should be leaving at noon which is nice. Just keep her in your prayers as she keeps her stamina up. She starts hearing screenings next week on a hundred kids so it could be another stressful week.

How about a lighter note? And yes, I know this technically is in the past and we should move on because Kimi had our baby already but I've got to share how funny my wife was while she was pregnant. She had major pregnancy brain, which means she had a hard time getting the right words out and sometimes forgetting obvious things. Two scenarios: 1st, one time we were at Walmart getting groceries when Kimi yelled to me across the store not to forget the "hotdog patties". One of the walmart employees looked at me inquizically and I said, "She meant hamburger patties. She's got pregnant brain." The walmart employee just laughed and walked away. 2nd, one night we were watching TV when she heard the answer to a Wheel of Fortune question and said, "Where is Publa City at?" I look up at the TV and said, "No sweetheart, that's not a place, its a word...publicity." I couldn't stop laughing for the longest time. We really had such a fun time with Kimi during her pregnancy but she was a good sport about all of it too. :)

My beautiful daughter is showing her Sooner Pride by sporting her newest OU outfit! I just had to slip this in here. :)

Yesterday was nice for us, we got to see my Aunt Kay and her husband Ricky with his two girls, my Grandma Fox and my Aunt Debbie and Uncle Paul, along with my brother, dad and Brenda for some good grilled food. Kimi and I weren't expecting so many of our family members to be there but it was truly nice. We haven't seen my Aunt Kay and Ricky for at least a couple of years because they live in VEGAS (CSI TOWN). There has been so much that has been going on with them, it's so sad that we can't be around them more. Aunt Kay called up my cousins Sam and Brittany and handed over the phone to me. After talking to them for a while, they both sure seem so grown up now... which reflects on how much older I am now but that's another story. SAM AND BRITTANY, if you are reading this, send me an email sometime WITH PICTURES!

My last subject for today has to do with something amazing yet disgusting. You've got to hear the story first. Kimi got into a cleaning frenzy last weekend and when she got to the vacuuming portion, the vacuum cleaner flat out broke. Wouldn't suck anything up anymore. We had only had this for 3 years and now it had broken. It never really worked great anyway. But to continue, we needed a new vacuum cleaner. We had heard a lot of good things about a Dyson. You know, that british guy on TV who always does the Dyson vacuum cleaner commercials claiming it's the best and never looses suction and he thinks things should work properly and blah blah blah? Yeah, that guy. Anyway, we did a lot of searching on the net for info on Dyson's and there was a lot of people who reviewed and said it was great, best they'd ever had. So we were about to go out and spend almost $600 on "the world's best vacuum cleaner" when we ran into Kimi's mom and she suggested we check out the consumer reports website. We were like Okay. So I signed up for their online report and clicked my way to their "unbiased opinion but we'll accept advertising in our magazine from the product companies" reviews of about 25 different vacuum cleaners. They had the Dyson's listed about 2/3rds the way down the list, which was very surprising. At the top, they had the Kenmore (Sears) vacuum cleaners, both the bagged and bagless versions as #1 and #2 respectively. Very interesting indeed.

So Kimi and I went for a visit to the nearest Sears to check out these Kenmore's and to put them to the test. When we got there, they looked just like any of the others but had a few more gadgets than the rest. They also had the Dyson's we were looking at so I decided to have a small competition. Go figure. The sales guy didn't know a thing about vacuum cleaners and was from a different dept so it was up to me to run the show. They had a dust bin full of dirt and fibers and pieces of shredded carpet to "test" out the units. I dumped the whole bin on the floor of the store and ground it in with my foot! The guys eyes went wide-eyed and he rushed over to grab the Dyson and started running it across the carpet over and over and over again. He got the big pieces up but there was still a lot of the little stuff left that it couldn't pick up and he was beginning to panic. I said, well let's try the Kenmore one. So we grabbed the Kenmore and literally it grabbed all of it up in one swipe. I was amazed, sold, put it in the car honey and let's go. Just incredible. My little show even sold the sales guy on getting the Kenmore too! Haha. Anyway, when I got home, I put it together and started it up as a test down our hallway. Now let me tell you, our last vacuum cleaner prior to frying would only get about an inch worth of dirt/doghair up after cleaning the whole house. We thought things were clean. Boy were we wrong! After just a few rows down the hallway, well, just look at the picture above. LOOOOK! Look how much dirt and doghair it got up! FROM JUST THE HALLWAY! WOW! I'm going to wait until this weekend to do the rest of the house but I'm afraid I'll have to empty the canister 10 times! So gross. We just thought our floors were clean... Anyway, we made the right choice by buying this vacuum cleaner and it was only $300, half the price of the Dyson! :)

Now that I've literally written a ton about not much at all, I'll go ahead and end this post. I did want to leave you guys with a cool thing I just put up on the site. On the right side of the page, you'll see a link that says "View Our Photo Slideshow?". If you click on that, it will pop open a window and start playing a slideshow of the most recent pictures from our Flickr photo page! Try it out, it's awesome!

Until the Cows come home!

Jason