The Home of The KCPokes

I know its been a while, but you know how things go.

Brief update. There are new pictures available. Rather then link each album that is updated, I’ve gone to the process of reordering the albums such that the updated albums are always the first in the list. That should make it pretty easy to determine what you’ve seen and what you haven’t.

In regards to the site, I’m preparing to do a complete overhaul of the site. I hate the current site and its limitations, thus I want to move to something that is easier to use and opens up things a bit more for you all. Essentially, rather then it being our site, about us and maintained by us, we’re considering going to a site that is about all of our family and friends. Thus I’m leaning more toward a community driven site, or social network if you will. This would provide photos, blogs, and activity for everyone rather then just us. Of course any input and ideas regarding this are always welcome.

Based on the title I’m sure you can guess what Neill’s big change is; Neill and Celeste got married today, 12/27. It was a small ceremony, with only immediate family. They do plan to have a formal ceremony once Neill returns from Afghanistan (he gets deployed in April), thus there will be more information in the coming year regarding the details.

We couldn’t be happier with his decision and welcome her to our family with open arms. Of course, it does raise the question as to whether she is actually prepared for our family! To be fair, we did warn her beforehand!

Click here to see all pictures from the ceremony

The holidays are upon us once again. I apologize for there not being more updates. It has been a busy couple of months, although not sure where the time has gone.

To summarize what has been going on lately…

• Neill is home. He was able to make it home for Christmas. He is currently stationed at Ft Bragg, North Carolina. He is also going through a big event, but there will be more of that in the coming weeks. For now I’ll just leave it at the fact that we are happy to have him home, and even happier to have him home for the holidays.
• Delaney is all about Christmas. She has about wore out the Christmas movies, but luckily for her I keep getting more. Trust me, its more of our sanity then hers as she’ll watch Shrek the Halls twenty times a day. Luckily she is so busy with Christmas that she forgets that she is unable to go outside and play. Winter is a killer for her as she’d just assume be outside every waking moment.
• Kayla is working at US Bank, where she’ll happily tell you that she now hates the sight of money. I’m sure, like all of us, she is ready for some well deserved time off.
• Theresa continues to work at Embarq, as a requirements manager. They are currently going through a merger, after being acquired by CenturyTel, thus never a dull moment.
• And me? Well I left Sprint back in March and am now working for a startup called Zave Networks. We are looking to revolutionalize the coupon market. It is an uphill battle, working with large legacy grocers, but we’re making good progress.

I know there is far more to detail, so I do hope to be more proactive in updating the site in the future. But to tide you over, we did attend Delaney’s Christmas Concert tonight. This is her very first concert, so you can only imagine how excited she was to go. It had been rescheduled from last week, which turned out great as Neill was able to attend as well. I do apologize for the video quality; our camcorder quit in May and we’ve never taken the time to get it fixed, thus all the videos are shot with my little Sony digital camera.

As a little bonus, and just because everyone loves when the little ones get up there, here are the 2 year olds.

Once again, another year has gone by and I still did not find the time to rewrite the entire gift registry application. No loss though, since everyone is already a member and I’ve left it as is. What that means is that it is now time to start thinking about firing that puppy back up and getting your lists made. There was an issue, recently, with email being sent from that box, which is correct now, so everything should be pretty much ready to go.

Best approach is to go through your list and remove everything. If you have something on your list that you still want to keep there, I’d remove and add it again, just to ensure that no one had it reserved still.

Being proactive now makes it easier for those shopping, such as me! Please drop me a line or shoot me a message should you have any issues regarding the registry. Same as last year, thus should be pretty straightforward.

This past weekend the three of us, Delaney, Theresa, and I, made the trip to Columbus, GA, for Neill’s ‘Turning Blue’ and Graduation ceremonies. It was an adventure, for sure, with limited sleep, to start, but was great to spend some quality time. Neill’s girlfriend, Celeste, and her family, made the trip as well. Was great for us to have someone to talk to when the two wanted to spend some time with their friends (Lester and Stephen, two of Neill’s friends from Liberty, were there as well with Lester graduating the week before, and Stephen making the trip from South Carolina) or were shopping. Funny how much shopping a bunch of “boys” do, given the opportunity.

I’ll recap a few highlights from the trip:

• Our flight from KC to Atlanta was delayed by two hours, because of weather conditions in Atlanta.
• Delaney’s booster seat didn’t come down with the regular luggage, thus meant we had to try to track it down. Luckily we happened upon it pretty quickly.
• Everything into Atlanta was delayed, thus it is probably best to have ONE person working the rental car desk. Good times.
• By the time we got to Columbus, checked into the hotel, and get ready for bed, it was 2AM. Wake up time for the next day? 5:30AM!
• Ceremonies were great. Short and sweet, with enough activities to keep everyone interested, including a 4 year old. Only complaint is why they didn’t combine the two events to be on the same day. Each was an hour at the most, thus seems we could have been with both and had another day to do whatever.
• For whatever reason we could not find a thing, even with the GPS. Mainly this is due to the use of generic terms, but we did take a tour of the main post trying to find something that apparently wasn’t even on the main post! But we found our way; no harm, no foul, although I will say my wife is a far better driver then navigator.
• I love food. There is no secret to that. Not even so much eating it as preparing it, although eating is very HIGH on my list. So trying food from different areas of the country is something I love. I enjoyed Portland, in May, because I was able to fill myself with fresh seafood. So when in Georgia, eat like Georgians. We tried a BBQ joint in Columbus. I wanted to like it. Smelt good, had a great look, and they had fried pickles. Who wouldn’t like that? One problem, the food was awful. Meat was dry, sides had no taste, and fries reminded me of the substance that Lane’s mom made on Better off Dead. I could make a killing down there by opening a BBQ restaurant.
• People from the South really are polite. Now they may not be in a hurry, when driving, but dang they are friendly and polite.
• We spent a lot of time with Rudy and Shelly, Celeste’s mom and dad, which really made the trip more enjoyable then it would have had we made it alone.

Ok, well now that you know most of the highpoints, how about the really good stuff? PICTURES!

I have a few more pictures, of general activities in Columbus, but I still need to get them uploaded to the site. Check back for updates.

We spent this past weekend playing at the lake, like most weekends during the summer. It differed from some of our other weekends in that we ended up not hanging out on our dock, rather we headed down the lake to hang with new friends. What I love about today’s technologies is that they are compact and convenient, thus when everyone decided to take their turn on the water trampoline you have the opportunity to capture it all on film.

No one wants to hear all the smack talking taking place, hence the music in the background. It was thrown together pretty hastily, so please excuse the editing; I’ll clean it up tonight and repost it.

That’s all folks!

Most already know the story of the stair diving incident, but I’ve finally found the time to go ahead and get the pictures uploaded. For those that do not, here is a brief recap. The day before her 4th birthday, Delaney had a misstep on the stairs while going from upstairs to the main floor. She ended up falling down about four stairs, which given that she is a daredevil and falls all the time didn’t seem like it would have been a big deal, other then scaring her. Theresa was right there, scooped her up and tried to comfort her. We figured she was probably bruised and scared, but nothing major. Boy were we wrong. Theresa asked her if she was alright, which she responded that her arm hurt. Upon pulling her away to get a better look, tied with a collective gasp from Theresa, it didn’t take but a second to realize that everything wasn’t alright. She had clearly broken her arm, which was now doing its best attempt at imitating the letter S! We were dressed and to the hospital in 15 minutes.

She was an incredible trooper throughout the entire process, not even flinching when the nurse hooked up the IV. She was in a softcast, with splint, for two weeks, followed by a bright pink fiberglass cast for 3 weeks. Because she broke both bones in her left forearm, she had to have a full arm cast. Didn’t slow her down a bit. She was riding her four wheeler within a week, with her softcast, and took everything in stride. Amazing that she turned such an event into nothing more then a small inconvenience to her.

Time has past and her cast is now off. She still has a small area of one of the bones that hasn’t healed completely, thus she is still in a brace for another four weeks, but it is removable and not full arm. We were at the lake and swimming, in the “deep water”, within a day of getting it removed. Having a cast during the summer may be one of the cruelest punishments for a child that loves the water. Not that you’d wish for it to ever happen, but the day before her birthday, in the middle of the summer, is just bad timing.

You can view the set of pictures that we took during the span of her cast experience.

I also took a video of her getting the cast removed, just so she has something to remember the whole ordeal. We are still scared of the steps, but I suppose we can’t be there for every step she is going to take. We just hope that she slows down and uses more caution in the future.

I know it has been a while since we provided any updates or news, and for that I do apologize. Things have been incredibly busy, with my new job, Neill graduating, and life just happening. I hope to get things back on track soon. I’m looking to simplify the site, again, as the current site just doesn’t provide the necessary interaction I’m looking to accomplish. It probably will not be anything soon, but you’ve been warned.

Neill did graduate from High School this past weekend, for those that were not aware. We are extremely proud of the effort he put into it and are now anxiously awaiting his next journey, which will be boot camp in June. We hate to see him go so soon, but also know that it will be huge in getting the next phase of his life started. We have a ton of pictures from the graduation to post, which I will try to get to tonight. I’ll post an update to this post once that is complete.