Don’t be fooled by the blue and brown pajamas- that cutie is McKinsey. The other night I was at my sister’s and I forgot pajamas for Kinsey so I borrowed an old pair of Brayden’s. When she woke up the next morning, she looked so adorable. Don’t you love how babies don’t know the difference or care what color, brand or price things are that we get for them? It makes you think- is a lot of the stuff that we do/get for our babies really for them or us? 
Food for thought…
Here’s some pics of McKinsey eating for the first time. I was pretty impressed with her eating skills (or maybe it’s more accurate to say drinking skills since the rice cereal is more of a liquid consistency). She ate the whole bowl (except the stuff that dribbled down her chin of course) and was still reaching for more after it was all gone. She loves to eat! It was special that her Uncle Dan got to be there to witness the fun. It was nearly impossible to keep Bruiser out of her face; although, he helped make cleaning up easy since he licked up anything she dribbled or I dropped.
Darren had the day off on Friday for his birthday so we met Darren’s parents down at the beach. It was a fun and relaxing day. Darren and I even got a romantic walk down the beach thanks to Lolo and Lola (Darren’s parents). McKinsey loves being outside so she loved every minute of it- except when I stuck her feet in the cold ocean water. That made her mad.
Then on Saturday we headed down to Hemet to celebrate Darren’s birthday with our families. Birthdays in our family tend to get celebrated over the span of a week or even more sometimes:) We had a typical Darren style meal- flank steak, garlic mashed potatoes, corn on the cob, cheese bread, and to top it off marvelous mocha pie for dessert. Darren’s mom makes the most amazing marvelous mocha pie.
We are so blessed that we have family that lives so close. Darren’s cousin Leah and her husband Travis just recently moved to the area from Washington. We were so glad that Leah (Travis had to work) was able to join us and meet McKinsey for the first time. We hope to see more of them since they are so close.
Here’s a picture of Brayden and McKinsey playing in the ball pit that Brayden got for his 1st birthday. 
There are more than 100,000 Burmese Karen refugees in Thailand along the border. About 5,000 of these are "new arrivals" having fled their homes during Summer 2009 because of the brutal genocide imposed by the Burmese military junta ruling against the wishes of the voting majority of Burmese for he past decades. The recent refugees are not in camps authorized by the Thai government, under the monitoring of the U.N. Higher Commission on Refugees, but have been granted "unofficial"asylum because of the humanitarian concern of the Thai government, at least temporarily. The area where the refugees are presently settling is mountainous, and although very warm during Summer and monsoon season can be quite cold and windy in winter. We have observed refugees sleeping exposed to near-freezing temperatures with bare feet and only a T-shirt and trousers for warmth. Please consider helping us provide blankets for these Burmese Karen refugees by Christmas 2009. One warm wool blanket can be purchased in Mae Sot or Chiangmai and delivered where needed for slightly less than $3. Thus ten blankets are $30, and a bundle of forty as they come from the factory would be $120. Contributions marked for "Blankets for Burmese" will be 100% invested in those blankets if sent to: INCOR, P.O. Box 531, Kent, WA, 98035-0531. If you would like to visit the INCOR website it is www.incor.org.
Due to the overwhelming amount of requests that I have received, I have decided to re-post the picture of “Carrotus Goliath”, this time zoomed in for the full affect. Here it is again in all of it’s glory…
 | amy on 2 out of 3 |
 | Jen Hagen on 2 out of 3 |
 | Jamie on 2 out of 3 |
 | tygnewlife on 2 out of 3 |
 | Keri Sheckler on 2 out of 3 |
