Christmas Surprises Unveiled

For Christmas 5 years ago, my siblings and my family snuck off to Target to take a family picture for my parents and grandparents. Landrie was just 6 weeks old. Before that, we had not taken pictures since my wedding in 2001. We decided to do the same this year since we didn't have a group shot with Karsyn included. Instead of going to a studio, we asked Missy to take our pictures in her parents backyard. We surprised Pops & Lolly and Gigi & Grandpa with some new pictures.

Now that all of the surprises have been delivered I can post some of my favorites here.

I thought Karsyn would let me hold her on the bridge - WRONG! My normally brave child was scared out of her mind!

The whole fam - even Justin is smiling!

Landrie and Snoopy - She LOVES her dog!

The Kirk Fam - against my wishes Snoopy did in fact make the Christmas card.

7 Years

I started this post for our Anniversary yesterday, but we got a spur of the moment call to go to Six Flags with 3 other families. We postponed our celebration for that fun opportunity. Now - back to the anniversary post.

Today Lamar and I are celebrating our 7 year anniversary! I had a harebrained idea that it would be fun to get married 2 weeks after graduating from college and 3 days after Christmas. It was a crazy 2 weeks for sure, but I wouldn't change a thing.

In honor of our anniversary - here are 7 things from our 7 years together.

1. Lamar always makes me laugh. Our relationship started on laughter. We've always enjoyed eachother's company and cracking up together. He has a very dry sense of humor and keeps us laughing often.
   
2. We have lived in 5 different houses. I was also part of several moves while we were in college too!
   
3. We were in the planning stages of a June wedding - dresses picked out, church reserved, flowers bought and changed it to 6 months earlier and scratched all of our plans.
   
4. I didn't know that you had to get a marriage license in Texas 72 hours in advance. Because of Christmas, we didn't get ours until the 26th. Our legal wedding date is Dec. 29.
   
5. We didn't go on a honeymoon until the following May. Being a coach's wife impacts so much. 3 days after our wedding, Lamar had to coach a basketball tournament, so we postponed a trip to the Caymans until May.
   
6. I had originally thought I wanted to wait 5 years before we had kids. We were pregnant the January after our first anniversary. God had bigger plans and boy are we so thankful that we have Landrie and Karsyn.
   
7. These 7 years have taught me so much about being less selfish (I'm still working on that), accepting change, compromise and a greater love than I could have imagined 10 years ago when we met.
   

Happy Anniversary Lamar! I am so thankful for the ride we've shared for the last 7 years. I can't wait to see where the next 7 will take us! I Love You!

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year - Christmas Wrap-Up Part 1

We have had such a great week! It's hard to know where to begin. After 8 different gift exchanges, it begins to run together.


Our first Christmases started on Sunday in Salado. We headed there to celebrate with the extended Kirk Krew. We had a White Elephant Gift exchange on Tuesday night that was pretty funny. Everyone tried to make their gift the most desirable. We had an 80s Rock CD, a dog puppet, a raunchy board game, Spanish Christmas cards, an African-American angel and more.


Here's the sign that I got:


Anyone that knows me and my feelings about having a dog will understand the irony of this sign. Pretty funny!!!


Grandpa opened the puppet and it was a definite hit with the girls. Gigi named him Fido and it "talked" the girls into singing Jingle Bells. It was really sweet to see them sing it all the way through and not be the least bit embarrassed.

And here's Gigi with her Bill Clinton Celebriduck. It was one of the more fought over gifts!


Round 1 - Complete! I'll post more later today. For now - It's time for a pedicure with my sisters and cousins!

I am finally finished my Christmas shopping! Yeah! This is the first year that I have started buying as early as October, so the shopping has gone on and on. The good news is that I feel like everyone got a really thought out gift and not gift cards. I'm not opposed to gift cards - I love to receive them, but I was really excited that I found creative gifts for my family.

Our Christmas festivities start tonight, and it should be interesting. We're going to have a white elephant gift exchange and with this side of the family - it's guaranteed to be interesting.

I'll post pictures soon!

Blogging live

from our new laptop! Thank you Gigi and Grandpa!!! Having this laptop will help Lamar with his masters and will be more reliable than our older computer. We are thrilled to have it!

Thanks for supporting us all the time - especially as Lamar goes back to school!

Recovered

I found the pictures in my Kodak!! I'm so relieved. Once I updated my Kodak software, the new default for pictures was not the same, so I didn't know where to look. It's fixed now though. Enjoy!!

The girls on the North Pole Express

Landrie and her favorite cousin Kade

Karsyn & Landrie at La Ha



Crazy cousins on Thanksgiving night



Karsyn doing cheer stunts with the cousins

Landrie & Snoopy in Salado - Love at first sight!

The only new Christmas decoration this year - a tree for the girls' playroom.

Daddy and his girls at the last football game.

Karsyn at Mommy's school for her first pep rally

Silly Landrie in the closet with all of her animals. She insisted on having the picture made.

Hustle & Bustle

I'm nearing my 200th post here at the Kirk Krew and was hoping to reach that milestone by the end of 2008, but with all of our running around, I'm not sure that will ever happen.

I finally downloaded 200+ pictures to my computer the other day that included Halloween, Thanksgiving, meeting Snoopy, Landrie's Christmas program and about 15 random pictures that my future photographer Landrie took.

I'll try to post the highlights here:

Scratch that...I cannot locate the pictures on my computer right now AND I deleted them off of my camera. I'm hoping that they are there and my computer is just not cooperating right now.

I'll keep you posted.