Christmas

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Wow, we have quite a bit to write about over the past two weeks.  Last week, we were eagerly awaiting our forthcoming trip to Amarillo.  We spent some time wrapping up our duties at the office.  We also had a brief Christmas celebration at the house before we left for Amarillo.  Rachel's Aunt Susan and Uncle John got Kennedy a pink fleece jacket.  She liked it so much that she had to put it on right away.  It was in the seventies in the house and we were worried that she'd get too hot, but she insisted on wearing it.  Afterward, we went to look at Christmas lights.  Kennedy seemed to enjoy it.

Last Saturday, we headed to Amarillo.  Kennedy seems to get progressively less patient with the car ride from DFW.  We left around 7:00 am and she did well for the first couple of hours, but we were in for a real treat after that.  Kennedy started with typical fussing, but she eventually exploded.  She was screaming so hard and so loud that it started to hurt our ears.  We eventually got to where we just ignored it, but we were sure happy to get out of the car.

Once we made it to town, we went by Rachel's parents house to visit with the family.  Tyler, Lynsey and Brody had also arrived in town around the same time as us.  They won the prize for longest car ride since they had to drive all the way from Nebraska.  Rachel's Aunt Carol, Uncle Roger, and Aunt Barb were passing through town on their way to Santa Fe.  Brody was a real trooper.  Everyone was playing "pass the baby" and he didn't didn't seem to mind a bit.

Kennedy also enjoyed sitting in Pops' lap and browsing the web in the mornings.  She also enjoyed tinkering with the keyboard.  It is a good thing that Pops has an extra keyboard that were were able to unplug.  Later that day, we all headed over to Meme and Grandpa's house to celebrate.  The Duhon family also made it up from Austin to join us.  Kennedy spent a few moments with Pops looking through the photographs from Whitney and Nate's wedding.  Whitney spent some time chasing Kennedy throughout the house.  We probably took 40 pictures of her, but we only got one that was in focus since she was running around so much.  Kennedy also had a great time playing with Bella!  They had a game called Elefun.  It is a game where a toy elephant blows tow butterflies through its trunk and the kids get to catch them with their nets.

You'll also see a Christmas train that spells out "leon" instead of "noel."  The story goes that once upon a time, Meme put out the Christmas decorations and then Grandpa gave her a hard time when he saw that the train spelled out "leon."  It seems that every year, the train winds up spelling out "leon."  We're not sure who changed it this year, but we had to snap a photo once we saw it.

On Christmas Eve, we headed to the 4:30 pm service.  Unfortunately, the kids didn't make it through the entire service.  Kennedy was the first to go, so Jason took her out into the hallway.  Fortunately, they had the audio and video of the service running in the hallway.  Tyler had to take Brody out shortly thereafter.  Once the service let out, we headed back to the Kime household where we had beef barley soup and some of Tyler's chili.  Kennedy didn't much care for the beef barley soup, but she sure enjoyed the chili.  After the main course, we had some chocolate cheesecake.  Kennedy absolutely enjoyed eating the cheesecake.  After dinner, we exchanged gifts.

On Christmas morning, we were greeted with a white Christmas for the second year in a row.  We exchanged gifts after breakfast with Jason's family.  We had a nice time and after the gift exchange, we played the Nintendo Wii.  Nate and Whitney brought their Wii over and we got to play some.  Keith even joined in on the action.  After lunch, the Kime's came by and we got to visit.  LuAnn brought an old antique rocking toy.  Kennedy was a bit apprehensive about it at first, but she eventually warmed up to it and started having a great time.  We even got the Wii back out and played some Mario that evening.

The day after Christmas, Nate took some pictures of the Kime side of the family.  We gathered around a bridge over in their neighborhood and they turned out pretty good.

On the 27th, we had a bit of a surprise in store for Dennis.  He celebrated his 60th birthday earlier this month and we weren't able to be in Amarillo, but wanted to do something special for him.  Rachel, Tyler, Lynsey and LuAnn started planning a surprise party a couple of months back.  They invited all of his friends and we ended up having a pretty good sized crowd for dinner.  He was pretty surprised and seemed to have a good time.

In general, Kennedy has been doing some fun new things.  When prompted, she will point to different people.  This was especially fun when we were back in Amarillo.  We could say "Where is your Auntie Whitney?" and she would point to Whitney.  We'd just go around the room and she'd point at all the different family members.  Even though she can't speak their names, it sure is fun to see that she knows all of our family members.

We also had a bit of an experience at the Amarillo mall.  Nate was looking for a new coat and we were browsing around at the Gap.  As usual, Kennedy was getting pretty impatient with the experience so we were walking up and down the dressing room hallway.  We'd also go look in the three-way mirror.  This helped to keep her under control while we browsed around.  At one point, she got away from her dad and she squirted under the doorway of an occupied dressing room.  Needless to say, we were pretty embarrassed.

She is also learning her animal sounds.  She does a fantastic "moo" when asked "What does a cow say?"  She has gotten a little mixed up along the way.  Roger and Barb got Kennedy a stuffed giraffe and we were keeping it in the backseat with her while we were in Amarillo.  When we would get in and out of the car, we tried to teach her what a giraffe says.  Unfortunately, she seems to have gotten her giraffe crossed with a lion because she would say "Rahr" when prompted about what a giraffe says.  We've been trying to get her corrected, but no luck yet.

There is surely more that has happened, but these were the highlights. We really enjoyed getting to spend so much time back in Amarillo. It is also nice being back and still having a few days off.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas and will have a tremendous New Year!

Getting Ready for Christmas

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On Thursday, Jason's office had a Christmas party at the Ranger's Ballpark in Arlington.  They were serving dinner and Santa even made a visit to the party.  We were hopeful to get Kennedy's photo with Santa.  She surprised us last year by sitting patiently in his lap.  This year, we weren't so lucky.  We weren't even able to get Kennedy in his lap before she started to scream and let the tears flow.  So no picture with Santa this year.  The best we were able to get is this photo of Santa and a portion of Kennedy.

On Friday evening, Kennedy had some fun with some of Sammy's toys.  We have a toy that is essentially a stick with a string and a fuzzy tail.  Kennedy has traditionally been scared of it, but she got brave and started to play with it.  She figured out that if she slung it around, she could get Sammy to play with her.  She was having a pretty good time, but accidentally slung the tail at herself and she didn't care for that much.

Kennedy's been so active lately that we've been having a hard time trimming her toenails.  She's so wiggly and elusive that we may need to start getting more creative.  The photo in the slideshow give just one example of her fighting the toenail trimming.  She's also been pretty funny with her shoes.  She's like her mom in the regards that she likes shoes.  She also doesn't like it when others touch her shoes.  Her teachers have made comments on more than one occasion that Kennedy doesn't like the other kiddos or the teachers touching her shoes.  She's also silly because she always takes her shoes off when she goes for a ride in the car.

On Sunday, we headed over to Matt and Courtney's house.  They made breakfast and we gave the girls and opportunity to play and exchange presents.  As always, the food was good and the girls had a great time.  That evening, Kennedy took an interest in Rachel painting her nails so we painted Kennedy's nails red.

Catching up yet again!

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Sorry folks, we didn't get a post in last week.  Kennedy had given us a little scare and we didn't have much time to dedicate to the blog.  She had woken up last Sunday with pretty labored breathing and she was breathing pretty rapidly.  We had given her a breathing treatment and she had some temporary relief, but we decided to have her looked at after a couple of treatments without much improvement.  We took her to a pediatric minor emergency center.  They kept a pretty close eye on her for a while and gave her several more breathing treatments.  After a couple of hours, they discharged her.  They had advises us to see her normal pediatrician.  After getting her looked at again, there is some speculation that she may be developing some asthma.

That wasn't too surprising.  We had spent quite a bit of time outside the day before.  We met the Jalberts at the park and that evening we went with our neighbors to a Christmas parade. Being outside that much seemed to trigger her breathing problems. So, until the weather decides to be more consistent, we will be spending most of our time indoors.

Last week, we also put up our Christmas tree.  When Kennedy woke up on Saturday morning and went downstairs, she was pretty fascinated with the tree and all the ornaments.

This week, we were lucky to have Jason's parents come in for the weekend.  They gave us a couple of date nights.  On Friday, we went to see a movie while Puma and Pops took Kennedy to go eat some pizza.  It was pretty funny when we left.  We were both waving to Kennedy and she was waving back with a puzzled, yet excited, look on her face.  On Saturday evening, we went to an art studio.  They had a special class for couples to paint a his an hers painting of cardinals in a winter forest.  We certainly enjoyed getting to spend a couple of evening focused on each other.