Jackie's New Love

Jackie has officially become a feet person. She loves to grab her feet. When I'm changing her the first thing she does is stick her toes in her mouth. Man, to have that flexibility...

Sarah and Roy's Wedding

Here are a few pics from the wedding. Unfortunately we didn't get a good pic of the bride and groom...I'll have to borrow one to post later! It was a beautiful wedding weekend and a good time was had by all. Congrats Sarah and Roy!

Dad giving away the Bride

Diane, John and Brennan

Just hanging out during picture time
Diane, Teresa and Katie

Those Crazy Kennedy's

This weekend John's sister, Sarah, is getting married! The festivities have already begun and the wedding hasn't even taken place. A few of the siblings decided to make a mini vacation out of the weekend and came down a few days early to hit Oceans of Fun and hang out with family. Last night we had an impromptu grill out at our place and a few of the out of towners came over to eat, and to meet Jackie for the first time. Tomorrow will be yet another fun filled day with rehearsal and rehearsal dinner, then Saturday is the BIG EVENT! We are all looking forward to a good time.

Grandpa Kennedy meets Jackie..here they are checking each other out

The Groom, Roy. I caught a quick pic of him actually holding Jackie!

Cousin RJ, gives Jackie a little kiss on the cheek.

Maddy gets her turn of holding the Jackster

Maddy, Cara, and Jackie..."The Girls" hanging out

Field Trip

This morning we took a little field trip to the Overland Park Arboretum and Botanical Gardens. It was actually pretty impressive. We thought since we have lived here for numerous years, we needed to start going to little tourist attractions like this and see what they were all about. There are a bunch of trails and we only touched about a quarter of them. It ended up getting pretty warm out today and the mosquitoes were preying on John and Jackie. I guess I wasn't sweet enough for them :) Below are a few pictures from our trip.



As you can see the Gardens were so exciting that Jackie fell asleep during the field trip!

Grandpa Makes Jackie Laugh

Road Trippin'

We hit the road this weekend and went on our first trip with Jackie. We headed to Iowa to see my family and get some R&R on the farm. Jackie did great for her first trip and we survived as well. Thank goodness I'm limber enough to crawl from the front to the back seat of the 4 Runner...I did this a lot on both the trip up and back!
We arrived Friday afternoon and just hung out. The weather was great and my parents just put in a new deck that we sat on quite a bit. It was very relaxing. My cousin, Kyle and his wife Kerri, stopped over on Friday evening. They have a little girl, Alison, who is just 6 days younger than Jackie. It was funny seeing the two react to each other. At one point they were on the floor together, hanging on to hands and kicking like crazy. I think Jackie is going to have a good friend to play with every time we go home to visit my parents.
Here is my mom holding the two girls. They were looking pretty cozy in this picture and my mom hated every moment of it as you can tell...haha :)
On Saturday some of my other family members came to visit. We headed down to the creek on my parent's farm and tried some fishing. The kids had a blast...but I think the adults probably had more fun. At the end the kids were in the truck ready to go back and the adults were still trying to get a few more casts in.
We didn't get skunked on our fishing excursion. Here is Jake and Austin posing with the fish "they" caught. Austin is sporting a shiner as you can see...he had a run in with an older boy and a swing the night before. He was feeling pretty tough on Saturday.
Here is Emma holding Jackie. Emma loves her babies and she told us that when she grows up, she wants to be a mommy and a princess. She looks like she's going to be a great mommy someday.
Jackie loved sitting out on grandma and grandpa's deck. I think grandma was enjoying herself as well.

I would say our first road trip with Jackie was a success! She slept great and she enjoyed the extra attention. I think she was ready to be out of her car seat though...when we arrived home last night she laid on the floor and kicked her legs for about 30 minutes straight!

Outta Here

Tomorrow John starts his vacation for a week or so and we are heading to Iowa for the weekend. This will be the first time I've been out of town since Christmas...so needless to say I'm looking forward to a change of scenery. We will be going to my parents and spending the weekend on the farm. I'm sure Jackie will get lots of spoiling and this will also give us a little break as well. Often when we to travel to Iowa there seems to be some sort of natural disaster or occurrence. One Easter we had bad wind storms, one time we traveled when there was a huge ice storm and blizzard like conditions...so we thought this weekend shouldn't be any different considering there are floods in the state. I think the waters are receding a bit now, so we might have missed most of the excitement. Hopefully everyone is safely cleaning up and getting their lives back together as much as they can. I know from the pictures I've seen it has been devastating.

I'm sure I'll have some pictures to post when we return. Until then....so long!

Jackie Wins a Million Dollars!

Or at least you would have thought she did....we picked her up an excersaucer/jumper the other day and she was the happiest baby on the block! She loves to "stand", so the new toy has become her favorite place to play. It also gives us a break from constantly holding her in this position to keep her happy and entertained.

Wake up Daddy, It's Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day!

Happy Father's Day to all the Dads in our lives. We hope you have a fun filled day of watching the U.S. Open and relaxing!

Fun Pics

Jackie enjoyed the front carrier and her new view
Little Chubbers
Jackie got a kick out of her chair

Happy 43rd Anniversary Mom & Dad!!

Big Girl Chair

Yesterday Jackie got to try out her high chair for the first time. I have to say I'm a big fan of the strap-on/space saving high chair. It even reclines to three different positions. Here she is looking very proud.
She really did love the chair. She probably would have sat in it all afternoon. I think she liked being up closer to everyone else's level.
I've never really put a bib on her before...so when I did, she was a little confused by it. Here she is checking out her new bib. I'm pretty sure she stuck it in her mouth, as she does everything else. I also tried some rice cereal for the first time yesterday...she loved it. She got the hang of the spoon after about two bites.

Mowing

On Saturday, John and I decided to do a little role reversal. I went outside and mowed the yard, while he stayed inside and took care of Jackie. This was actually the first time I've mowed the yard in about 4 years. I used to all the time growing up on the farm. There we had a riding lawn mower...we also had a lot more lawn to mow! It was typically a half day ordeal. I also mowed the yard when I lived in a house on 99th and Nall with some friends about 6 years ago. The last time I mowed, I was living in KC, MO. My landlord typically took care of the lawn...but one night I needed to blow off some steam so I decided to mow. Well, the grass was really thick and the mower was really old and it kept killing on me. By the time I finished I had blisters all over my hands and I was completely shot from having to start the mower every 5 minutes. Sunday was quite a bit better experience...plus, I got in a pretty good workout after it was all said and done. I even got a little sun...which by the looks of the picture I could use!

New House Pics

SOLD!

We were on the market for about a week, had 5 showings, two offers and we officially sold our place last night. It has been a crazy couple of sleepless nights...so we were definitely ready to get this over with. We ended up taking an entirely different offer than the first one...luckily on the first offer, the couple for some reason didn't get their paperwork into us by the deadline and we were able to take the second offer, which was better anyway. On top of this...we put in an offer on the house we wanted last night about 10pm and had come to an agreement within the hour! I will post pictures of the new house in the next couple of days.

Visitors, Thunderstorms and Showings...OH MY!

It has kind of been a whirlwind of a week. To start out the house situation is blowing up like crazy. We've had several showings this week and also an offer. We've counter-offered so we'll see how things end up today. We aren't feeling too confident about this one, but the good news is there has been plenty of activity. It started out by us leaving our house at 9pm on Tuesday night in the middle of a thunderstorm for a showing. Jackie had been sleeping for about an hour and we had to wake her up to put her in the car seat and go drive around in the rain for 45 min. This showing ended up with the offer on the table...problem is, the offer isn't that great and it's a young couple with no cash. So we'll see.

Last night we had visitors who were in town from St Louis. Scott and Lisa G. and kids, Ashleigh and Braeden stopped over for pizza and conversation. Beth S. joined in the fun as well! Funny thing is we timed it so our visitors would be here right after a 5-6pm showing and just when everyone arrived the realtor and buyer showed up at 615pm, late for the showing. So it was a bit awkward and we had to all hang out on the back porch in the 90 degree heat while some stranger walked through our house. We had pizza sitting out on the counter tops, so they probably didn't even get a good look at them!

This morning my brother and sister in law were in town because they had flown out to Tahoe from KC. A few missed turns and a couple of phone calls later, they made it down from the airport to meet Jackie. Jackie had all sorts of smiles for them and I think she even tried to make them believe she never cries or fusses. I know better though and reassured them she is not the "perfect" baby.

The rest of the day we are just kind of chillin' out here, until 330pm...then Jackie and I are out of the house for another showing. We might have to hit up the mall this time. I'm running out of errands to run. ....plus, I can only go to Target so many times a week before the workers start to greet me by first name.

Pics below of our visitors:

The kids...Jackie looks a little out of it

Jackie loved sitting with Ashleigh...she has her most prized possession, the paci

Jackie cuddling up with Aunt Brooke

Jackie looking pretty comfy with Uncle Brent

4 Month Checkup

Jackie had her 4-month checkup yesterday. This time she even gave the nurses and doctor a couple of huge smiles...the previous times she just showed off her lung capacity by screaming. She weighs 13lbs 11oz and is 25 inches tall. That is 50th and 75th percentile respectively for all you statistic people out there. The doctor said she looks great and we can start her on rice cereal anytime. We don't even own a baby spoon, so looks like we might have to make a trip to the store sometime soon. She got another round of shots yesterday too...she took them like a champ and sported three snoopy band-aids when she was all done.

Beginning of a Commando Crawl....

Here's our determined little girl doing what I think is the beginning of a commando crawl. You'll have to excuse the screaching as I think it helps her get her little bottom in the air better. She actually made halfway past the fireplace, although I didn't video her long enough to show that. We might need to think about "babyproofing" a little sooner than what we expected.