First Trip to Amarillo

Hey folks, this will be a pretty quick one.

This week, we took Kennedy on her first trip to Amarillo.  This trip was packed with lots of firsts.  This was the first time to visit Grandma (at least for now, more on that later) and Grandpa's house, Puma and Pops' house, and Meme and Grandpa's house.  As usual, this trip to Amarillo was packed with visiting all sorts of folks.

We were on the road by 6:00 AM on Friday and Kennedy did very well during the ride.  When we got to Amarillo, we picked up some lunch and headed over to Meme and Grandpa's house.  When we got there, Grandpa let us in, but it wasn't any time before Meme had rushed to the front entrance and swooped up Kennedy in her arms.  We were able to spend a couple of hours there before we had to take off to our next stop.  On our way out, Meme smiled and told us that she could mark this off her bucket list.  Before we had announced the pregnancy, we asked Meme if she had anything on her bucket list.  She responded that she'd like to live long enough to see our baby.  That's when we revealed to Meme and Grandpa that we were expecting.

After that, we made it up to Puma's work to show Kennedy to her fellow employees.  Shortly thereafter, we made it by Grandma and Grandpa's.  We were brainstorming some name ideas for LuAnn.  Rachel had mentioned that LuLu would be a good choice, but Carol said that reminded her of some character off of the TV show, He Haw.  We brainstormed some more, but nothing really stuck.  That evening, Puma had lots of family over to visit and celebrate Kennedy's first trip to Amarillo.  While we were there, Pops gave us a very special gift.  He wrote and illustrated a book, titled "Fly Little Goose Fly."  Obviously, the story is very touching and this book will be a treasure for years to come.  The illustrations were painted by water color.  There is a sampling of some of the images below.  By the end of the evening, Kennedy was getting a little fussy.  She must have been worn out from the car ride and getting passed around at the party.

On Saturday, Rachel and LuAnn hosted a baby shower for Rachel's friend, Tiffany.  She's expecting a little boy, Riley, in October.  They were expecting lots of ladies to be there, so Jason took Kennedy over to Puma's for a couple of hours.  That evening, LuAnn prepared dinner for the family and a couple of friends.  Since we'd be leaving out the next morning, we made a quick trip back by Meme and Grandpa's.  It was getting a little late and Kennedy was getting fussy again, but she slept great that night.

We started off doing a good job of taking pictures, but we wish we would have taken a few more from our trip.  Take a look below to see a couple of the photos we did snap.

On Her Own and Visits From Family

Hey there everyone.  Another week is in the books.  Rachel spent her first week home alone with Kennedy.  Up until now, she's either had Jason or Whitney with her to help in the daytime.  Everything went pretty smoothly.  Two times this week, Kennedy has gone a full six hours between feedings.  This is good news to Mom and Dad, especially for Mom.  We also had a couple of nights where she'd wake up, but just wouldn't go back to sleep after nursing.  She seems to get so tired that she just works herself up and can't sleep.  When this happens, she only seems to want her Mamma.  We think that she's growing.  On Sunday, she wore one of her 0-3 month outfits for the first time.  She has also worn one of her newborn outfits for the last time.  We weighed her and she is now 9 pounds, 7 ounces.

On Friday, Tyler and Lynsey came to town to meet Kennedy for the first time.  They drove a whopping 10 hours from Nebraska.  As always, we had a nice time getting to visit with them.  Kennedy even let us got our for dinner on Friday and and Saturday evening.  We think that Lynsey also enjoyed getting to see Sammy.  He hissed at her a time or two, but he must have enjoyed it because he kept hanging around her.  They left pretty early on Sunday morning because they had a long drive ahead of them.

On Sunday afternoon, Roger and Barb came by the house for a couple of hours to visit.  This was also their first time to see Kennedy. It sure was nice getting to see so much family this week.

Oh and since we've been spending so much time around the house, we've grown pretty tired of watching TV. We've started to read more.  Rachel has started a new series called the Hunger Games.  She has already completed the first book and is working on the second.  Her friend Courtney loaned them to her.  Jason picked up a copy of Mike Leach's autobiography.  It's pretty fitting with the football season quickly approaching.

Story Time, Teeth Pulling, and a Trek to Fort Worth

Hey Folks, checking in for another week.

Whitney was still in town and continued to help us.  She had to leave to go back on Sunday.  It was sure nice having her around and it's already pretty quiet around here without her.

On Monday, we started to have story time.  We started by reading the series of children's books that Rachel's second cousin, Dawn and her family got us.  The series uses reverse psychology to teach your kids good habits.  Whitney got to talking about some of her favorite children's books and we got to talking about one called "Don't let the pigeon drive the bus."  It sounded hilarious so Whitney ended up buying it later on in the week.  It'll be fun to continue to share story time with Kennedy in the future.

On Wednesday, we had to take the cat to get his teeth cleaned.  While they were getting prepared for the cleaning, they discovered that several of his teeth were severely infected.  They had to recommend pulling five of his teeth because they were infected so badly.  When we picked him up later that day, he was sure in a bad way.  We also had to give him an antibiotic orally through a syringe.  As you can imagine, he didn't enjoy it too much.  It was pretty sticky so he naturally made quite a mess of his beard.  We had to give him a shower on Saturday.  He didn't like it as usual, but he seemed to feel better once he dried off. It was a pretty rough week for him.

On Friday, the girls went on a trek to Rachel's office in Fort Worth. It was really good for the girls to get out of the house and go on an adventure. Kennedy did really good on the outting. She only woke up once to eat and then went right back to sleep so everyone could pass her around. It seemed that the consensus was that Kennedy was absolutely precious, but we already knew that :). The trip seemed to wear out the girls pretty good, but all in all it was a really good time. 

On Saturday, Jason's parents and Nate came though town to pick up Whitney and take her back to Amarillo.  It was nice getting to see them and sure does make us wish that we had family a little closer.

Mallory had a chance to finish editing the photos she took of Kennedy.  They sure do look good.  It's almost overwhelming trying to pick out your favorites.  To check out the photos that she's posted, click here.

Last, but not least, we have several photos from the week.

Monday

Jason had to go back to work while the girls stayed back to take care of Kennedy.  That morning, Kennedy's cord detached during her sponge bath.  Rachel saved it for Jason to look at when he got home from work, but we got rid of it as soon as Jason had a chance to look at it.  That afternoon, Mallory came by the house to take newborn photos of Kennedy.  She brought all kinds of props and tools from Midland.  When Jason got home, he was surprised to see how the house had transformed into a photo studio.  Kennedy behaved herself pretty well too.  She didn't fuss much as we molded her into several poses, changed bows and snapped all kinds of photos.  There was one point, though, where she pooped on the blanket she was on.  It made quite a mess, but don't worry, we got at all cleaned up.  The props and poses were very adorable so we're excited to  see how they all turned out.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, Whitney and Rachel took Kennedy to the hospital for her PKU test.  That's the one where they have to prick her heel for genetic testing.  She was a real trooper though, only a little fussing and she quickly settled down.

Wednesday

At lunch time, Nina came by to see Kennedy.  Nina is Matt's mom and the HR director at Rachel's office.  She also brought lunch by, which was a real treat.  Mallory came back by for a few minutes to pick up her blanket that we cleaned up.  That evening, we gave Kennedy her first submerged bath.  Since her cord had fallen off, we had the green light to give her a submerged bath.  At first, she didn't seem to like it too much, but then we remembered about a bath time frog that we had gotten at one of our showers from Whitney.  That seemed to calm her down.

Thursday

Thursday was a pretty lazy, uneventful day, but we have a couple of photos of Kennedy wearing her ladybug outfit.  You can tell that she prefers to lay down on her side.

Friday
Friday was a good day.  We went out to dinner with Kennedy for the first time.  We didn't want to wait for a long time and expose her to too many people so we went to a little pizza place in Coppell.  After dinner, we went to the mall to pick up some hand soap.  On our way out, we realized that it was the first in what will surely be a life filled with trips to the mall.  That evening, we all had a nice time just visiting with each other.

Saturday
We realized that we'll get to dress Kennedy up for Halloween so we spent some time brainstorming different ideas for her costume.  We thought of several ideas, but we're not quite ready to commit to anything yet.  We'll keep you posted.  We also spent some time cleaning the house that afternoon.  We have several photos from just lounging around on Saturday morning.