McKenzie's First Disney Trip Feb. 2009

McKenzie and I went to Disney World this past February with my mom & dad for Holly's cheerleading Nationals. We left early Thursday morning and prepared ourselves for a 10 hour drive. McKenzie did wonderful, as she is use to making long trips in the car! Once we arrived, I was pumped, it had been 20 years(yes I am dating myself) since I had been to Disney World! We got up early on Friday and went to watch the cheerleaders practice (Holly had ACL surgery and was unable to compete), after that we headed to Epcot. We did not have long at Epcot since we were on "cheerleader" time. We ate lunch and walked around. Mimi found McKenzie some ducks and she LOVES ducks(or any animal ) so they played with the ducks through the fence for a while. We rode the Nascar ride and went shopping!!! That was about all we had time to do. We met back and took the monorail to The Magic Kingdom! McKenzie LOVED this ride. It was so funny watching her. At The Magic Kingdom we rode several rides and went to the candy shop! We all got huge matching suckers which McKenzie started to eat through the plastic and started sucking on it. She also got a minnie mouse hat made with her name on it! We watched the fireworks over Cinderella's Castle and then it was time for bed!

The next morning we had to be up super early for the first round of competition. The girls competed at Disney's Hollywood Studios....formerly MGM as I knew it! We watched the girls compete and then we were off!!! We rode the Tower of Terror & The Rockin' Rollercoaster. omg, these are two amazing rides, that we ended up riding several times. During one time McKenzie and PawPaw where waiting on us to finish riding the ride so he decided to get her an ice cream sandwich, needless to say she enjoyed it, because when we got back it was all over her face. McKenzie got to see Donald Duck & Daisey. She wanted to see them from a distance but did not want to have ANYTHING to do with them up close! We waited in line and got our picture made with them. I have to say though McKenzie most favorite thing was sitting on a carousal horse (it was not working, it just was sat out) she has so much fun riding on the horses that we sat her on it. She had a FIT when we took her off it. The next day when we came back the horse was gone... I guess they moved him to somewhere else in the park!

The next day was extremely busy. We went to The Animal Kingdom, back to Hollywood Studio's and then finished the night off in Downtown Disney & Pleasure Island. Wow...talk about a lot crammed in one day... we ate at The Rainforest Cafe and Planet Hollywood. We went into tons of shops at Downtown Disney. At The Animal Kingdom McKenzie & Holly got their face painted. I could not believe that McKenzie sat still long enough for the girl to pant a Minnie Bow on her head! She looked adorable!

For our final day... all exhausted as ever... we went to The Magic Kingdom. This was McKenzie's day, the Magic Kingdom offers a lot more rides for children than the other places. McKenzie rode the carousal, dumbo and lots of other... she had a blast!!! We went through Cinderella's castle and did more shopping. By this time it was time to get back and get some much needed rest! We had a wonderul time, but wished every minute that Daddy could have went with us. He enjoyed our 500 phone calls every day updating him on what McKenzie was doing!

We had a blast and look forward to going back next year... grove girls get to work...lol we want to go back to nationals again!!!

McKenzie & the Easter bunny

I called around EVERYWHERE looking for the Easter bunny so McKenzie could see him and possibly try and get a picture with him (plus we had bought two Easter dresses and I could not decided which one I wanted her to actually wear to church, so we had to wear one on Saturday & then the other on Sunday). After almost giving up, I found out that he was going to be at Bruster's Ice Cream. So on Saturday we got up and got ready and took McKenzie to get some ice cream. She got her favorite kind, cotton candy... it is BLUE, that is why her lips look blue in most of the pictures. After we ate our ice cream the Easter bunny came out! McKenzie was very interested in him, but she did not want to get too close. She stayed right by Jacob's side the whole time... she finally touched him, but she would not dare go to him. I tried, I wanted a picture of her and the Easter bunny so bad, but it just was not going to work! She just wanted to look!

McKenzie's First Easter!

For McKenzie's first Easter, we woke up early Easter Sunday and let McKenzie see what the Easter bunny brought her. It was so cute, she came walking around the corner and saw her basket and immediately knew it was hers. She started going through it finding all her goodies! After that we ate breakfast and got ready for church...and a photo shoot (as always)! After church we came back and hunted Easter eggs. McKenzie LOVED caring her huge basket around... which was nearly as big as she is. Then it was time for daddy to go back to the hotel :( , so we took him back, but on our way home we took a detour and went to The Marina at Port Royal. We walked down the Pier and watched the boats go by. It was beautiful! Then McKenzie and I came back home and played with the eggs some more... it has been a week since Easter and I am still playing with eggs!

Our New House!!!

When we decided that Jacob would go to DI school, we started searching for a house. We knew with this decision it would give us at least 3 more years here. However, we love it here and plan on staying much longer...maybe forever! After a lot of thought we decided to get a house and move out of base housing! We moved a little bit closer to Parris Island, where Jacob is going to spend 99% of his time... the other 1% will be at home with us!!! We absolutely fell in LOVE with this house. The tree swing in the front won me over... but the hammock on the side isn't half bad either!!! We have a back yard finally that is fenced in for Bob. Which he LOVES!!! I have a few projects that I am going to be working on while Jacob is out at the Drill Field. I am going to be fixing McKenzie's room, along with the spare bedroom & the bathrooms. We will be adding some paint to the walls...we were soooo tired of the white walls in base housing and are ready for some color. The living room, dinning room, kitchen and master bedroom all where painted and the colors have matched perfectly with everything that we have! It was just meant to be, what can I say. I will be updating more pictures of everything as I get it all set the way I want it!

I find myself taking McKenzie and going out on the hammock in the afternoons, it is so surreal. We live on a very quite cul-de-sac and can just lay there and listen to the birds, it is amazing!!! I called Jacob just today and told him it was perfect... the only thing that was missing was him!

more birthday!

Ok... so here are some more birthday pictures, these are from her party at our new house.

McKenzie's First Birthday!

Ok....so I have been horrible about updating this site! However, now that Jacob is in DI School, I have LOTS of time on my hands and thought that I would start back doing this blog. Also, I think it will be a great way to keep up with what is going on with Jacob, how he is doing in school and how we are making it without our daddy at home all the time. So far so good, we are finishing up week two of school and counting down the days until June 24th (his graduation)! We get to visit Jacob every night, we go and take him something to eat and let McKenzie play with him for a few minutes. Our time is very limited since he has so much studying and meetings, uniforms to fix and we can't forget at some point during all this he must sleep. On the weekends he has been able to come home and hang out with us, it gives us all some time to get an actual "good" night sleep. Since our move it is taking me some time to get use to sleeping by ourselves. I have Bob...the MAN of the house while daddy is away to take care of us!!!

So, I have chosen to start with McKenzie's First Birthday. McKenzie had two birthday parties, she had one in Alabama on March 28th and then she had one on her actual birthday April 3rd at our new house. It was crazy trying to get everything ready for the party, we literally moved in on that Tuesday and had her party on that Friday! But even with all the stress it turned out perfect!

McKenzie's party in Alabama was in Helena at my cousin Kim's house. We had some bad weather come through on Friday and I was stressing soooo bad that it would rain on Saturday, however it turned out to be a BEAUTIFUL day!!! McKenzie did not tear in to her cake as we expected from practice runs with cupcakes. I think she is just so girly that she did not want to get dirty!