Funny Words

Mackay is such a sweetheart. She is so beautiful and so full of energy (although a lot of times it can be too much energy). I love being home with her all day. She can be quite the entertainer. She has been talking for a while now, but recently has started to say some pretty interesting things. It just hit me today that I better be writing these down before I forget them. I'm sure she will love to hear these some day when she is older:

Driving down the road in silence, just Mackay and I: "Dad's foot is dirty."

Walking into our room at a way too early time of 6:15am, getting right up to Nate's face and the first words out of her mouth being, "I want some chicken nuggets."

Trying to put on my shorts while I was folding the laundry, and when I told her that those were mine, she said, "No, my shorts, honey."

Again folding laundry, Mackay found one of her mis-matched socks. I helped her put it on, but then she wanted the other one. When I told her I couldn't find the other one she said, "I need to buy some new socks."

Standing in the kitchen with me, and when I looked down at her she was stripping down completely naked. I must have had a concerned look on my face, because she reassured me with, "I'm being funny."

During Family Home Evening last night, we were talking about family and how you can show your love for your family by doing nice things for them. I had cut out little pictures of general family members, and one by one we were talking about who they were and how we could serve them. She pulled out a little boy, and when Nate asked her who it was she paused for a moment, thinking really hard and then said questioningly, "Gordon B. Hinckley?"

See what I mean? Entertaining.

And here is a random picture to hold you over to my next picture-filled post. Mackay loves playing with her babies. It makes it difficult when she had to be playing with all of them at the same time. This is an all too common scene in our house.

Too Much Time On Our Hands

First off, this was a random picture that was left out of a previous post. Welcome to Mackay's time out area: in the corner in the little nook by the front door. This particular day Nate had put a piece of play food in his mouth to show Mackay, thinking that the banana was too big for her to stick in her mouth. Well, the tomato wasn't too big, and Mackay started putting food in her mouth and gagging herself. So Nate had to go in time out. It is the funniest thing because Mackay knows the routine very well. She walks Nate to the door, points in the corner, and says, "Time Out." After Nate sits down, Mackay, walking off, says "Two minutes." I then had to set the timer on the microwave for two minutes. The funny thing is Nate kept turning around saying, "How long did you set the timer for?" He couldn't believe how bored he got and how long it felt! Mackay has more compassion than we do, though. She eventually went and sat in the corner with him.

This next part is a little embarrassing on my part, but I am willing to sacrifice. (It was a very humid day, I didn't have any makeup on, and I am pregnant.) Last week we had a tornado warning. It was so fun watching the wind and rain that we just sat with the lights off watching out the window (maybe we should have been in a closet, but oh well). Nate got the camera out and told Mackay that we were going to take pictures of ourselves.
It then turned into funny faces:


Nate was controlling the camera, and he took this one without Mackay or I being ready.


Good times.

Life

Here is a conglomeration of random photos taken throughout our entertaining days.

I had a weekday photoshoot, and Nate had downtown meetings all day, so we met at the park to switch Mackay off. We had a few minutes to sit and relax together, and Nate found a lizard. He rummaged through the bushes and caught him!
He was a little guy (or her, I don't really know), but he had a very big mouth. When he finally closed it, Nate said, "Get a picture of Mackay kissing it." "What?" He made sure not to get her too close.
We bought Baby Brother a car seat last month, and Mackay had a grand time sitting in it while she watched tv. This specific day she wanted me to get a picture. So I did. And then she was wanting something, I'm not really sure what. I was just getting a few more pictures before helping her, but she would have none of it. I love the next few pictures. It shows the stages of a tantrum:

Whine, whine whine. And when you are apparently not being heard...
...the frustration inside builds to the point that limbs stiffen:
And then it is full blown red faced bawling. How quickly a mood can change.
Here Mackay wanted tights on--and then she wanted her arms in. (Random note: Right now it is 7:00pm on Wednesday night and the tornado sirens have started going off.)
Mackay in the pool with her babies.
This one day Mackay and I went out by the pool, and immediately I began to get eaten alive by mosquitoes. So after 10 minutes we came inside and played in the tub in our swimming suits (or soup-soups as Mackay would say). When we got out Mackay refused to take her swimming suit off and get dressed. So while she was sitting on the couch and I was in my room getting ready she found the sun screen that I had left out and took the liberty of rubbing it all over her face, arms, swimming suit, legs, and couch. There is a tad of a learning curve associated with having a toddler. Never be in too much of a hurry not to put the sunscreen or lotion away.

Family Home Evening

For the past few weeks Mackay has been wanting to go to the temple. She knows mom goes there, and "gamma" goes there, and "pappa" goes there. And then she always asks if she can go there. I always say, "Not yet, but someday you will be able to!" And if she is ever walking away, I will ask her where she is going and she will say, "To the temple." She has tried to walk out of the house by saying this, or out of the chapel at church, or just going from one room to another. What a silly girl. So then I got the great idea of going to visit the temple for family home evening. I documented our travels:

Here is Mackay ready to go. She has her backpack on and her keys. She was so excited the entire day to be going to the temple. Finally!
In the car we gave her a printout of a temple to hold. We also sang songs like, "I Love to See the Temple" and "Families Can Be Together Forever."
Of course the gates to the temple were closed because it was Monday, so we weren't able to get very close. Mackay was extremely disappointed by this. She was under the assumption that she was going to get to go inside the temple (I didn't emphasize that fact enough!).
As soon as we got there Mackay said, "Different one." Wow. You just can't make this girl happy. Our temple is a little more simple than a lot of other ones. It is only one story and is gray, so Mackay was not impressed. We tried to explain to her that we couldn't just go to a different one. But when we go to Utah we will be able to see more of what she had in mind.
When we got home we had a lesson on the purpose of temples, specifically that the temple is where we can be sealed with our families for time and all eternity. We made little finger puppets of our family. There were five of them, so we had Dad, Mom, Andy, Mackay, and Baby Brother.
If you want to learn more about the purpose of temples, and the idea that families can be together forever, click here or here. To learn more about The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in general, click here.

Oops

Nate and Mackay were having a great time last night in her room while I sat on the couch in complete misery with my debilitating cold.

I promise, this first video was not staged:


And how do I know the first video was not staged? Because this next video was:

Oh, and pardon the no shirt and bad hair. I was sick and we had spaghetti for dinner.

100 Days!

Only 100 days left! (if the calculations on the side of my blog are correct.) I made a mental note a while back that when there were only 100 days left until Baby Brother's due date that I would document it. So...here is my documentation.

100 days to get Mackay potty trained.
100 days to buy Mackay a bed, sew both the baby and Mackay's bedding, and buy the plethora
of things that I feel I want/need before the baby arrives.
100 days to find a house, buy it, get it the way we want, move out of our tiny apartment and
move in to our new place.
100 days to figure out the perfect name for our little child.
100 days left of dealing with the putrid Texas heat while pregnant.
100 days of having a perfect life (or relatively so) before a newborn turns our world upside down.
100 days of just Mackay and I, spending our days hanging out together and being best buddies.
100 days left until my "vacation". (Spending two days in a hospital bed with no responsibilities, not chasing a toddler around, and help being a button away.)

I can't wait to meet you, Little Buddy! (But at the same time I totally can.)

The Lexington

Kalli is away from home this morning doing a photo shoot. It's been a long time since I have made a post, but since Kalli is busy bringing home the bacon I thought I'd make a post that she's all together forgotten.

One of the greatest benefits of working for Southwest Airlines is flying for free. Not only do we get to fly for free but my parents fly free as well. Despite their new found freedom to travel the majority of their trips have been to Utah or here to Dallas to take care of grandchildren. Hardly a vacation, at least we would think. I'm sure they love every minute of grandchildren time. From our vantage point, however, we assume that with the freedom to fly, the discretionary income, and no children at home, that they would be zipping across the country sending post cards from all the major cities of the U.S. As such, we took it upon ourselves to gently coerce my folks into enjoying their flight benefits by joining us in a vacation to Corpus Christi, Texas. I'm going to admit, its tough to get two empty-nesters who are heavily involved in church duties to get away for a few days; especially when it involves a beach and sunscreen. I pretty much had to swear on a bible that there would be no chicken-leg jokes to convince them to come down.


In the end, they hesitantly conceded and found themselves on the beach with us and Mackay which is one of the principal reasons why we wanted to them to join us. Other than a deeper checkbook than ours to pay for a sunset seafood dinner, we needed someone to tend Mackay on the beach while we enjoyed jumping in the surf. I've never seen my dad have so much child-like fun than digging through the sand looking for crabs (like when he was a kid in California) or when he finally gave into our peer-pressure and joined us in jumping through the waves. And kudos to my mom who we knew wouldn't like going for seafood, but dared to edge beyond her comfort zone and thoroughly enjoyed some talapia, mahimahi and tuna. Here I also need to give some credit to Kalli who ordered the tuna. If you don't know, tuna is cooked medium rare. Just enough to sear off the bacteria and leave a pink center. Despite here hesitation she pretty much ate the whole thing which is a major accomplishment for someone who only eats bean burritos.

Permit me now to describe my experience of the USS Lexington which I believe was the highlight of my trip as well as my dads. The USS Lexington is a aircraft carrier commissioned in 1943 and retired in the 1990s. It now sits on the Corpus Christ beach as a museum It served our country in almost every region of the world and protected thousand of service men and women who served our country. In spite of satisfying childhood curiosity the Lexington provided me with a deeper sense of pride for our country. As we explored the narrow corridors you could a get a real sense of a generation now past. A stronger generation in my mind.
I sometimes wish I could experience life in the 1950's when values and morals were highly regarded. Sure there was dishonesty, murder, theft and immorality; but no so prevalent as it is in our day. I find myself coveting the society of our grandfathers who believed in the value of handshake and morality was closely guarded by women. A time when the constitution defined us instead of special interest groups seeking to redefine it. Sure we've come a long way in providing equality to women and even men of all races, but we've also reverted in aspects of our society. The values of our country are rapidly disintegrating and a new wave of tolerance for the intolerable is plaguing the future of our children. Many of the men who served on Lexington fought to preserve freedom and were greeted with cheering crowds upon their return. Today our servicemen return to protesters and troubled VA benefits. I recognize that my post has converted into a commentary, but these are the thoughts I had as I observed the multiple decks of this magnificent ship.


Hands down--this was the coolest museum I have ever been to. We could touch fighter plans from every decade of the last century. We explored the bowels of the ship including the engine room, torpedo storage, the infirmary, and even a chapel. We sat where great captains and perhaps admiral sat and shifted the gears of the massive .50 caliber anti-aircraft guns that protected the ship. It was, in a word, spectacular. Even walking the labyrinth of corridors to the 50's style men's room was a sweet experience. The only downside--carrying Mackay up and down 70 degree staircases and keeping her from wandering into the closed off sections of the ship. After at least 3 hours observing the ship we only took 3 of the 5 self guided tours, not to mention we didn't watch the special feature film or fly any of the flight simulators. It was cool.

To see more, visit: www.usslexington.com