Okay, TOTALLY need this dog!

Oh man.. I love this. I can't stop laughing.

New Baby!

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Welp, we're a family of FOUR now! I've been too sleep-deprived to post.. sorry. Here's a link to the place where I plan to keep putting pictures:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/23107309@N07/

To complicate matters, my computer died (don't worry, we expected it to happen) so I'm not on my normal computer with my normal programs. This makes me WAY worse about posting things. Sorry!

Hopefully this little video of the baby will appease you:

Vacation!

Disneyland and California Adventure were fabulous! I took lots of pictures as usual, and will try to get more detailed soon. In the meantime, check out this little slide-show of Mackenzie getting her face painted:

All she wants for Christmas is a new front tooth?

Yep.. goodbye, baby tooth #4! She's growing up WAY too fast. Jane, get me off this crazy thing!

She has been playing with the new gap.. breathing through it, whistling, etc. I showed her how she could close her teeth with a straw going through the hole.. she thought that was pretty cool.

She has another loose one, too. She decided to save her Tooth Fairy dollar until she gets her next one and then she plans to buy the Barbie dress in the "store" (the 'Mommy subsidized' box of goodies).

I can't believe she's almost six!

Finally, the long anticipated Halloween Picture!

Mackenzie was Cinderella again for Halloween this year. She even wore the same costume! That's three years in a row (not counting modifications to make it fit).. how economical!! I don't know if it'll work next year. Maybe she'll get a new Cinderella costume or maybe she'll actually decide on something completely different!

Either way, she'll be adorable as always.

MIT, here she comes!

The 4th was the first day of Kindergarten. Mackenzie was very excited and had a wonderful time.

She's doing great, enjoying herself and staying out of trouble.. or she hasn't been "found out" yet. She likes her teacher and has a couple friends from Preschool in the class with her.

Not too much homework yet. They say it'll average about 10 minutes a night, but I think some of that is class work that kids don't get done in class and so far she usually finishes hers up.. unless she decides that instead of coloring the graph squares with one color, she's going to make each one a fantastical array of rainbow stripes. Gee, don't know anyone else like that. ;)

What is it and how do I defeat it if it comes for me??

Oh my.. Mackenzie has been drawing lots of pictures lately and having me help her sound out the words she wants to write on them. She's adding so much more detail lately! Here is my current favorite. It's a picture of "Scary Daddy." Everything is done by Mackenzie. I especially love the staring eyes and the jagged mouth.

Click here to have Mackenzie explain her picture: http://youtube.com/watch?v=X-yRttYUKnU

They're mostly of happy things, but I (of course) like this bizarre one best.

Hi Valerie!!

I hear Valerie is wondering why there aren't any pictures of her on here.. well I'll just have to fix that!

Here are a couple pictures of Mackenzie and Valerie from March in the grassy area. It was fun having Valerie and Maggie over a lot during the Spring months!

Doesn't this picture make you wonder what's on the ground in front of them? It does me, and I was taking the picture!

I really love the one below.. they're so fabulously goofy, aren't they? It was so great to watch them wander around exploring nature.

Come play again soon, Valerie!

Shameless Self-Promotion?

For those of you who haven't seen this yet, this is Mackenzie's 2006 music video.. made for the grandparents because we have more time than money:



We're going to start on the 2007 video soon. The song has been chosen!

Fun in the Park

With reluctance she stops playing to pose for a picture

This last Saturday (the 2nd) we had a fun day in the park at an SCA event. The event was on the local (province) level so there weren't a huge amount of people there, which was nice.

Mackenzie had fun running around all day with the kids. Someone brought boffers for the kids, which Mackenzie enjoyed quite a bit. I can't say the same for her victims, though. When she got a little bored, Mongo nicely took her for a walk.

Congratulations on being chosen as the new Bard of Golden Rivers, Emma!

Current Youtube Addiction

I've got a new favorite thing.. well person on Youtube. Isto. He's absolutely dreamy. Check him out:



Thank you, daixy!!

Falling Down on the Job (No Pun Intended)

Okay everybody, I'm sorry - I know I've been neglecting my bloggy duties and you are all update-deprived. I will try to update more frequently.

Let's see.. Mackenzie is really enjoying gymnastics. She had her "show day" last week, which was fun! This is the first show day since she moved up to the first "big kid" level. It was an hour and a half long!

We haven't developed the pictures or edited the video yet but we did take a few digital photos. This one is from the balance beam.

She occasionally got a little shy with everybody staring at her when she did her thing solo. Before this, show day pretty much consisted of all the kids doing the same things they usually do, just with family on the floor taking pictures, etc. This time it was one at a time for pretty much everything.

It's fun to see her skills grow.. she's learning how to do cartwheels and use a springboard to jump up high, then land on her feet on the vault/platform. She's growing up so fast!

Liquid Amber "Bombs"

22Sept06

Oh it was a beautiful day. Cool and windy.. a shame to stay inside! Mackenzie and I headed out to the grassy area in the middle of the townhouses. We were walking around and playing with the Aerobie and then Mackenzie spotted something. "Mommy, what is *THAT*?!?"














I explained to her that they were the seed pods from the liquid ambers and how we had three of those trees in the front yard when I was growing up and always called the green seed pod "bombs." I left out the part about how we used to throw them at each other.. hard.

Anyway, since the wind had been really strong the night before (and it was still pretty gusty) there were LOTS of the green kind on the ground and for some reason we decided to gather as many as we could (or wanted to) and make a big pile.

We spent hours outside wandering around picking things up and playing outside. Mackenzie rode her scooter and we looked for liquid amber trees all over the grassy area and down paths, filling our basket and Mackenzie's scooter pack over and over. It was a great day!

Along the way, Mackenzie grabbed some other interesting things, which were used to decorate the pile of bombs. Hooray for nature!!

Playing With Hair

I'm having fun playing with Mackenzie's hair. I've been doing different things to it and then taking pictures to see what I like best.

Yesterday was an attempt at "the Fern Gully Fairy" except not the half naked part. EEK.

Lee wasn't too happy about this one. He said he thinks she doesn't need me to "volumize" her hair.. I'm just having fun while also trying to figure out how her hair works and stuff.

It was cute, but definitely a bit wild. Still, when I showed the picture to Kacie she said that Mackenzie looked kinda like the Fern Gully fairy and I realized that had been the exact thing I was going for. I'm just happy to have achieved it!!

An DEN...

Today we went with a little gel (mostly to keep the long "camouflage" bangs in place so you don't see the little spiky extra short ones) and then I just put it on the rest of her hair to see how things would work.

I'm pretty sure this is my favorite look so far. Doesn't she look completely ADORABLE?!?

This style was also really easy.. pretty much a "spray, gel, clip, go!" five minute thing.

I think I might actually be getting the hang of this!

Ew.. the Flu

Last night at about 11:00 Mackenzie came stumbling out of her room with dark brown colored throw-up in her hair and all over the left shoulder of her fuzzy pink feet-ins. It really was a freaky sight. Oh, and it smelled of chocolate.

Lee changed her bedding while I cleaned her up. Lee said they'd had oreos together earlier and that she'd eaten about six, so we really thought she'd found some stash of chocolate and gone to town and gotten sick on them. I was sure we'd find a pile of wrappers somewhere.

Unfortunately, as the episodes didn't end there and she developed a fever it became apparent she has the flu. She threw up about every half an hour until around 7am.

I stayed up with her, dozing in the rocking chair next to her bed. Lee came to get me at 8:00 and took the morning shift so I could sleep. What a sweetie!

Ze Haircut, She Ees Feenish

Okay. If I have my way we're done with hair cutting for MONTHS please. Please?

This morning at about 9:30 we went and saw Denise, who evened things up and did a really good job making Mackenzie's bangs look as normal as possible.

I thought she might've chosen to do a pixie-type cut instead, but I think she caught the vibe from me that I was going to immediately begin growing Mack's hair out again.

Having long curly hair myself, it's going to be an interesting challenge to figure out how to style this new haircut. I'm sure we'll work things out eventually.

Here's Mackenzie's new hairdo, fresh from the bath with just a couple "towel drying" attacks from the Mama.

Lee says I need to embrace her new haircut and stop trippin'. I'm trying!!

Here's an homage to Mackenzie's new look. This is with some gel and scrunching. It is awfully cute but honestly, she'd be adorable bald so it's not much of a stretch. ;)

What she found in the sink

Oh, and I just realized I typed "beautiful" twice on the first slide.. oh well. It's 3:30am and I can't believe I'm still up. Goodnight! :)

The Beginning

...thus begins my blog.

I'll try to avoid the long beginner's spiel. Let me sum up.

Never blogged before.
Lame at journaling.
Find myself entertaining, and hope you will too.

That said, here goes. :)