The first Christmas Tree

I was meaning to post these a long time ago but now is better than never. After Thanksgiving, we went with Grandma and Grandpa Tilson on the annual Christmas tree pilgrimage to Elgin. I'm not sure how long this has been a tradition, but it's been a number of years. Every year, the Tilson's, Biel's, and Bookout's head to Elgin to chop down a Christmas tree. It starts with a stop at the Dollar Store for the women while the men sit out in the parking lot and drink a beer. After that, it's off to the Christmas tree farm to cut down trees. So far, the McKinney's haven't actually cut down a tree because I'm a picky and like the Carolina Fraiser Fir trees, so Kathy lets me buy one of those since we can't drive to the mountains and cut one down ourselves like we use to do in NC. I digress, back to the story. So we hit the choose and cut Christmas tree farm in Elgin and rode around on the hay trailer till they dropped us off at the designated cut spot. It was chilly that day and Grandma just wanted to find a tree quick and get out, so the Tilson's pretty much cut down the first tree they saw, with Kara's help of course. After the tree cutting, we went to the Elgin sausage and bbq place and had some bbq. The rules state that you have to bring a pocket knife with you to cut your brisket and sausage, otherwise you will be ridiculed by Walter, so we all go our pocket knives out and had some bbq. We headed home after that because Kathy and I were exhausted from not sleeping much the night before (due to a little poker party at Uncle Doug's house in San Antonio that was a little loud and didn't stop till 4am). It was fun to take her to get her first tree though, we had a good time. Can't want for Christmas to be here next week! It'll be a lot of fun.

A Kara Christmas

Kara's first Christmas is just around the corner and we can't wait. Here's some shots of our little girl from this past weekend that I think you'll enjoy.

Historic moments in the life of Kara

This past weekend marked one of the most anticipated and history moments in Kara's extensive 6.5 month childhood. To those of you without kids, this may be a "so what" but for those with kids, you'll know what I'm talking about.... Kara slept through the night! She almost did it 2 nights in a row too so we're hoping that means it wasn't a fluke! She slept for 10 hours on Saturday night and then Sunday night, she slept from about 8 till 5, was up for 15 minutes because she was hungry and then went back to sleep till 9. 13 hours - WooHoo!! Kathy is still waking up in the middle of the night wondering if Kara is alive, but I think she could get use to more than 4 hours of sleep in a row. A week ago, things had been going down hill - she was waking up almost every hour all night long - so we're excited for this change of events.

Thanksgiving is coming up this week so maybe we'll get some good pictures of Kara rubbing some mashed potatoes all over her face for the blog next week :-).

Have a Happy Thanksgiving!!

The Floors

As some of you may know, we decided to redo the floors in our house. Kathy was tired of the carpet and it was starting to look pretty nasty from the cats (Squirt has a stomach problem and likes to puke on the carpet). We decided that hardwood was the way to go and went out and bought some wood back in August. This was going to be a self installation job because the cost of installing would have been at least $2k and we spent our budget on the flooring. With my work schedule, it was tough to find time to install the floors (Kathy didn't want the house to be destroyed for months on end while I was traveling), but we finally made time. My dad helped me get started a few weekends ago and Kathy and I finished it up last night in the main living area. We've still got trim work to do and the hallway and office are yet to be complete, but the main living area is down and it looks great!

♠

New blogger

Hello! This is Kathy and Steve is teaching me how to blog. YIKES! Kara met her cousin Rex this weekend and they were so cute together. We will get a picture of them up soon! We also went to my cousin David's outdoor wedding...brrr! Kara was not a huge supporter of her coat:) Well this has been scary for me to do my first blog but I made it!

Kara's first trip

Last week, Kara took her first (of probably many) flights. She and Kathy flew out to San Jose to meet up with me while I was there for a business trip. She did really well according to Kathy and was flirting with everyone within a 2 row distance of her. There was minimal crying and she managed to sleep a little and play most of the time. Luckily Kathy had a whole row to herself, so it made it a much easier flight.

We stayed over the weekend in San Francisco and did a little sight seeing and Kara was a trooper! She just chilled in her *short* stroller all weekend. I'd say there are 2 things to note about the stroller. 1) Kara was rolling gangster style in the stroller all weekend. She would not side up straight, she was always leaned over on her side with her leg up in the air. 2) The non-umbrella stroller that Kathy bought was about 6 inches too short. We had to walk around San Fran pushing it from the side because neither one of us could walk behind the thing and push it without walking on the wheels. You'd think they would make the handle height adjustable...but they don't. The only place it was at the right height was when we were pushing Kara up one of those big hills, but who wants to walk up those all day!?

She really only had one major breakdown and that was at Alcatraz. It had been a long day and we took the night tour of Alcatraz and she was ready to eat and go to bed. She apparently didn't want to be in prison, even if only for a few hours. Maybe she'll remember that when she gets older! :-)

The trip was fun though. We enjoyed the city and having a first little family vacation. Pics of the weekend are below....as you can see, we had some good weather and some San Francisco ambiance weather.

Happy Halloween!

For those of you that don't know, I've been gallivanting around the world for the last few weeks, thus the reason there haven't been any updates. Kathy still isn't a blogger yet, so you'll just have to wait for me :-).

This past weekend was Kara's first Halloween party. We went to Houston to "Aunt Bobby and Uncle Rhonda's" house for their engagement/Halloween party. Kara was dressed as an angel and was obviously cute :-). She was originally going to be a pea pod, but turns out that she needed a toddler outfit because the 6 month outfit we got her wasn't long enough for her. I didn't see it, but I hear that it came up to her waist and that was as far as it would go.

Kara of course was a party animal and hitting the bottle hard. She managed to stay up till about 8 or 8:30 before passing out. I think her costume was on for a whole 45 minutes before she called it a night.

The rest of us had a good time as well. Check out to slide show for more footage of the Halloween bash and cute pictures of Kara (thanks Aunt Bobby!).

So you might ask, what else is new with the McKinney's (and by this you really mean, so is Kara doing anything cool these days)? In the 2 weeks that I was in Europe, Kara learned how to sit up by herself without any help. She had also started the first attempts at crawling, but for the most part was still fairly immobile. However, since I've been back, she's now started to crawl around a good bit - I wouldn't say an advanced crawl, but she can get out of sight if you aren't paying attention - and she is pulling up. She'll crawl to your leg and start pulling on your pants and lift herself right up off the ground and start standing. She likes to do this with her toy bins and dig around through them making messes as well. It's pretty amazing to watch how fast she is changing. Before we know it, she'll be walking and talking.....

Making up for lost time

As most of you know, it's been a month since I've updated the blog. Not that I haven't been meaning to do it, but work has been hectic, been sick this week, and we had some refugee's from Ike at the house :-). Hopefully today's post makes up a little bit for lost time.

I need to train Kathy on how to blog so she can keep it going :-). For those of you that know Kathy, that's going to be quite a feat. I love the story she tells me about her freshman year of college, were she didn't know she had an email address, and didn't check it till sophomore year because she didn't know how.....and she didn't really care. Anyway, she doesn't really have any interest in being technically savvy yet somehow she ended up with an electrical engineer!? Life's strange like that :-).

Anyway, now to the fun. The battery in the camera has been dead for awhile and it won't hold a charge, but I've got some videos.

Video number 1 - Kara just learned how to use her hands. She thought it was hilarious that she could grab her shirt and pull it away from Mommy.




Video number 2 - Kara has started eating a little more than breast milk. We've been trying to get her to eat rice cereal. This is the video of the first time we tried to feed her with a spoon and you can tell she doesn't really know what to do with it, but as you'll see in video number 3, she's starting to figure it out.



And video number 3 - Kara's starting to figure out how this works. She's actually improved quite a bit since this video. She knows that when she gets in her high chair, it's time to eat. She likes trying to hold the spoon - I'm constantly hearing Kathy tell her "I'm more experienced at this than you, why don't you let me hold the spoon." This has obviously been effective, as you may have guessed. :-)

Kara got baptized

Well, I'm behind again, but honestly, who's surprised? I went 2 weeks without a post. It's been pretty busy though between my work travel, the family reunion / birthday extravaganza, and Kara's baptism, so maybe you can cut me some slack.

The San Antonio weekend went pretty well. Kara and Kathy didn't get to stick around very long because they had to head up to Waco for Aunt Rachel's graduation from Baylor (Congrats Rachel!!) but she did get to meet the other half of her family which was good

The baptism was good....Kara didn't cry at all during the whole thing and was very inquisitive about what was going on after being presented to the church. She did manage to drop a couple of big poops during the service after being up front. It was pretty funny because I think people could hear it 5 rows back, it was so loud!

After the service, we took a couple of big group photos of the whole family...always a lot of work, but we managed :-)






I wanted to post a lot more pictures, but my camera wasn't used for any picture taking that weekend, so I'm relying on others to provide the graphical content....once I get the other pics, I'll get them up here.


Other Kara related news...she's figured out that she has fingers and that she can grab stuff with them this past week. She's grabbing everything in sight and putting everything in her mouth. She's also started to laugh a lot lately too. She was playing tug of war with Kathy the other day and she thought it was just the greatest thing in the world - laughing and giggling like there was nothing funnier. I've got a video of it so maybe I can get it uploaded sometime this weekend.

Olympic distraction

Sorry I haven't posted in over a week. I've been caught up in watching the Olympics...lots of good action going on. Have you seen the badminton tournaments, it doesn't get any better than that! :-) Actually, it was pretty interesting to watch, that little bird shuttle can fly over 140 mph...I had no idea.

If you haven't been keeping up with the Olympics, the swimming has been pretty amazing, world records being broken almost every race, the USA winning gold in a majority of the races, and Michael Phelps winning 9 career gold medals with more races to come. If you missed the Men's 400 meter relay, you missed an awesome race. USA won gold, just beating out France...who by the way was doing some trash talking saying they were going to "Smash the USA."

I also just watched the men's gymnastic team win bronze which was unexpected and quite a feat for them, and a myriad of other events over the last few days. We tried to enter Kara into the frog jumping competition, but apparently it didn't make the Olympic ballot...she would have been awesome at it, or at least cute

Now that you've had your Olympic highlights, what's going on with the family? Well last weekend we went to San Antonio to visit with the family. Kara got to meet her Prichard kin for the first time and also hung out with Bobby, Rhonda, and Grandma Rita. This past weekend, Grandpa Steve had an office party at his house and we did some boat riding, boat towing (old blue wasn't so faithful this weekend), attempted boat sinking (I tried to sink the Malibu by forgetting to put a drain plug in), and some cruising (on Sunday once we were done with the other shananigans). Everyone made it to work in one piece on Monday so I'd say all-in-all, it was a successful lake weekend :-).

This week will be a big event as well. My dad's 50th birthday is coming up, as well as my grandpa's birthday, and there's going to be a big party in San Antonio for my dad when he flies in from Phoenix to see my mom. It should be a fun weekend and an opportunity for the rest of my family to meet Kara. But the fun doesn't stop there...nope, this apparently has to be the busiest weekend of the year, because in addition to this party, Kathy's sister Rachel graduates from Baylor on Saturday in Waco. So Kathy and Kara can't stay for the Saturday party unfortunately and will be going to Waco for the graduation. Congrat's to Rachel!!!

But wait, there's more! We'll throw in the Awesome Augger, the extendo reach bit, and 2 knee pads for just $19.99. You'd think you were listening to a Billy Maze commercial, right? :-) But wait, there *is* more. To top the weekend off, we're also having Kara's baptism at our church that Sunday. I'm not sure how many folks are going to come up for that, but I think a lot of the family is planning on it.

So we'll be all over the map this coming weekend, but I'll try to get pictures posted of the whole thing so you know how it went. Wish us luck, cause I have a feeling it's going to be a long week! Hopefully naps in the clean cloths will help get us through it :-).

"Tiggers are wonderful things!"

Aunt Rhonda and Uncle Bobby are to thank for this one....she is adorable though! For those that don't know, they're trying to turn her into this tiger baby doll which was one of the catalysts for the beginning of their relationship. They thought it was freaky and thought it would be hilarious if Kara were to look like the tiger baby.

It wasn't too dissimilar from this thing, but orange like Tigger. They stole it from Rachel's room at the Tilson's and ended up mailing it to each other....it was random, but then again, so are Bobby and Rhonda.

The sleep situation is about the same for us...waking up every hour or two during the night. I have to admit though, I haven't been waking up. Kara sleeps in the pack 'n play in our room and when she wakes up, I don't even hear her. Kathy will get up and calm her down and I just keep on snoozing. I guess I don't have the motherly instinct :-)

2 Steps Forward, 1 Step back....or maybe even 2

Just when you think things are getting better...they're not. I'm mainly talking about the sleep department here. Right before Kara got her shots last week, she had started to sleep 6 or 7 hours at a time during the night. She was going to bed at around 10pm (much improved over the 1am bed time she had started with) and wouldn't wake up till about 5am.

After the shots, it's been a different story. Last week was pretty tough, she was having a hard time sleeping and you could tell she was just generally uncomfortable, but as that wore off, we were hoping the sleep schedule would go back to normal....not so much. Last night, we tried to put her in bed at about 8pm, she stayed there for about 30 minutes, and then was wide awake. She'd pass back out occasionally, but only while we were holding her - she refused to sleep without being held. It was 12:30am before she finally got back to sleep for good and then she was up again by 5am, ready to eat. So we went from 4 hour sleeping blocks to 7 hours and now back to 4 hours again. We're trying to force the routine on her, but I tell you what, she isn't interested and has her our agenda and wants us to follow it.....some might say "it's only the beginning" and I have no doubt that it is. She's so cute though and we love her to death, so we'll just have to let her run the show for a little while I guess :-)

Here's a quick video of the good times that make us love her so much!

Bad Blogger, Bad!

It's been quite some time since I've updated the blog. I guess I've just been a bit lazy and I apologize. It has been a fairly busy couple of weeks though. Kara went on her first trip, which was down to Port Aranasas beach for a week. While the drive is normally about 3 hours, it took 4 to get there because of necessary Kara stops (I think it took us almost 5 hours getting back). Kara did pretty well but after the 3 hour mark in the car seat, she had enough and let us know about it. We'd have to get her out for 30 minutes or so and let her stretch out, and then we could continue on. I don't think we'll be taking her much further than the 3 to 4 hour car ride for a little while...at least till she's on a bottle and can hadle the seat a little better.

Here's Kara chilling out at the pool. She did a little swimming and then slept on a beach towel for a little while. She's decked out in the pink and looking pretty cute :-)

Kara and Mommy hanging out at the pool down in Port Aransas looking cool in their shades.

Kara's down on the beach with Mommy and the grandparents while Daddy is up in the condo working....at least I got a picture :-)

Grandma Tilson out on the beach with Kara - trying to stay out of the sun

It's been pretty amazing to see how much she's changed in the last few weeks. She has started to "talk" to Kathy - she'll make a cooing noise at her and wants her to respond back. If Kathy doesn't do it back, she tries again and then will start to cry, but if Kathy makes the noise back at her, she smiles and start laughing...it's pretty cute. She's definitely figured out at this point that if she cries, she gets what she wants :-)

Other news, Kara had her 2 month check up this month. The doctor said she's in the 50th to 70th percentile for weight at 11 lbs 8 oz., 75th to 90th percentile in length at 24 inches, and 90th percentile in head size (I'm not sure what that was). This was also the doctor visit where she got 4 immunization shots. It wasn't a fun visit for Kathy, but overall I'd say she's handling the immunizations pretty well. She was fussy last night and didn't sleep that well but today she seems to be doing OK. She goes back to the doc again in 2 more months for another round of shots, so I'll let you know how she's doing then.

So without further ado, here are some more pictures from the last few weeks.

Kathy took Kara up to see Great Grandpa Chuck in Georgetown

My friend Trevor with Kara after a bachelor party weekend in South Padre....is he ready to be a dad yet?? I dunno but he did a pretty good job holding Kara for a good 30 minutes.

Kara likes to pass out in her swing. I'm not sure why her face is so contorted but it's amazing the girl don't need a neck massage every time she wakes up.

Put yo hands in da air, like you's a true playa.....it amazes me the positions she can sleep in :-)

Yet again, passed out. This time she was in her Bumbo chair and her head was cocked back and out like a light. She could have been like Grandpa in his recliner :-)

Kara went swimming at Aunt Lynn and Uncle Walter's house in her Little Mermaid floaty....she does pretty good for only being 2 months old.

A cute smiley girl in her swing. She loves her some swing time.

Unfortunately for Kara, she's got her Daddy's feet. We've inherited those from Grandma McKinney. Kathy likes to make fun of my toes....we'll see if she makes fun of Kara's too.

Here's Kara with Holly and Isabel, having a laugh.

Smiles

There hasn't been a lot of excitement in the last week but there are always new pictures for everyone to enjoy. Here to the left, we've got grandpa and Kathy torturing Kara. If you'll notice, she's got some kind of pig feet mittens on her hands and guess what...she didn't like it. Who wants pigs on their hands, come on people! We can thank Aunt Carolyn for that one...it reminds me of the bunny suit from A Christmas Story.




















We've also got Kara looking super cute right after her bath in her little Pooh hat that Aunt Rhonda and Uncle Bobbie gave her. How could you not love a cute girl like this!?

And last, we kind of caught a picture of Kara smiling. Kathy was trying to tickle her and she was smiling but it's always tough to catch it because it just pops up and then it's gone! She is definitely starting to smile and laugh, we'll just have to keep taking pictures till we get a good shot of it :-)