Thanksgiving at Siesta Key Beach

This year we spent Thanksgiving week at my favorite spot: Siesta Key Beach. We stayed at a condo that was only a short walk to the beach. Check out their webcam: http://www.sarasotasurf.com/accommodations/webcam.cfm.

We had a great week with 4 out of 6 days of great weather (one day of rain and one day a little chilly bit sunny). Thanksgiving day was spent walking the beach then dinner at Grandpa's with Grandpa, Margaret, one of Margaret's children and her husband and my mother in law, who came with us for the week.

Here are a few of my favorite pics of the week:

Marissa and Mason in front of the condo.

Marissa and her brother hanging out on the beach. Mason had to stay in his stroller most of the time we were on the beach because when we put him down he tried putting the sand in his mouth.

The sand castle Marissa and Daddy built.

Rough day on the beach for the little guy:)

Marissa and Mason outside the condo. They had Christmas decorations everywhere.

Marissa and Mason with great Grandpa on Thanksgiving day.

The family in front of our favorite restaurant in Venice: Sharky's on the Pier. Timmy has been going there since he was a kid.

One of my favorite Christmas decorations.

weekend at the lake

We recently went to the Ozarks for the weekend with some of our good friends. There were three families and a total of 6 kids: Mason (2 months), Ayla and Chloe (3 years old), Gavin (4), and Marissa and Loralie (6). So we had 6 kids ages 6 and under. The men got ahold of a fishing boat for the weekend although I don't think they caught many fish. Mr. Mason decided he wasn't going to nap on Saturday so I didn't much chance to get in the lake.

It was still a great time and I got some good pics of the kiddos.

Miss Ayla enjoying a popsicle

Marissa and her best friend, Loralie. They have known each other since birth. Marissa is only a month older than Loralie even though she stands atleast a head taller.

The girls partying on the deck

Mason is already a party animal:)

My husband worries me.....

My friend Alexis bought Mason a Build a Bear with a Blues Hockey outfit to match his nursery:

My husband had a bright idea to take the outfit off of the bear and put it on our son to use for his announcement picture. Yes, he wanted our son to wear an outfit made for a teddy bear. The result didn't actually turn out though because Mason's head is too big for the jersey. The paints worked out but we had to lay the jersey on him. We definitely will not be using this picture for our announcements. Had the jersey fit, I probably wouldn't have minded....

The poor baby is not even 2 weeks old and he is already being subjected to his father's wonderful ideas. I guess it is better for him to get used to it at an early age so that maybe he thinks our family is normal:)

Mason Elijah Kempf

Mason with Marissa

Mason Elijah Kempf

Born at 3:42 p.m. on May 1st. 8lbs 0 oz. 21 inches

The enthgrader

The other night my family was hanging out in the family room when Marissa announced that she knew where the enth grader was. Tim said, "the 8th grader? what are you talking about?"
"no Daddy, the enthgrader, you know on a map?"
Oh! The equator...............
Its so cute when she says things like this but she hasn't been mispronouncing it since we corrected her. When we laughed she thought we were making fun of her but Tim explained that we just think she's too cute!

Shower for Baby Kempf

Anyone who reads my blogs knows that my husband and I are Saint Louis Blues fans. I also wrote a blog about our son's Blues themed nursery. Well my friend, Alexis, wanted to throw me a baby shower and called to ask me what our nursery "theme" was so she could plan the shower to match the nursery. I told her we tried to use a Blues theme but to do whatever she wanted because I didn't want her to have to go through too much trouble. She decided to stick to the Blues theme anyway even though after she starting the planning she realized it would have been much easier if we had been Cardinals or Rams fans (they don't sell alot of Blues items in the stores). I told Tim he had to come and atleast see everything after she had it decorated. Of course he couldn't stay long because he was going to a Blues game that evening!

My friend and her husband made the diaper cake. It took 215 diapers! It is sitting in our nursery because we don't want to undo it yet.

Marissa with her "big sister" shirt on.

mommy and Marissa with the cake

Party favor cookies

She even had blue and yellow balloons, plates and napkins.

My favorite, the Blues piggy bank. There is also a really cool picture frame that says "future Blues fan" but I need to get a better pic of it.

Awesom cake!

Special thanks to Alexis for the shower and thank you to everyone that came! Hopefully we will get to meet the little guy soon. My due date is next Friday! Also, special thanks to my ever patient husband for being so loving and understanding the last 8 months:)

Happy Birthday Marissa!

My little girl is 6 today. She has been my baby for six years and yes, I still call her the baby. I have been told that she will not be my baby any more when my son arrives but I just tell everyone that I will have two babies. Your kids are always your babies no matter how old they are. They just get to a certain age where you can't say that in front of them.
This morning I tried to remember exactly what I was doing at this time 6 years ago. Well, obviously I was having a baby but what where our thoughts and actions at 8am? I had Marissa at 1am (an hour past April Fools Day). I was probably asleep at 8am. If not I was looking at my new daughter wondering what in the world had we gotten ourselves into! Just kidding.... (kinda)
Anyway, Happy Birthday to My Marissa! You are a wonderful child and bring way to much joy to my heart and your fathers. We love you!

Marissa's first Halloween. My mother bought this lovely costume.

Fall of 2003

I think this was late August of 2003

The little monster now

The tooth fairy visits the Kempf House

If you read any of my earlier blogs you might remember that Marissa had her 1st loose tooth. Well Friday afternoon Tim left the office to pick Marissa up from school and once again they called me on the way back. Marissa wanted to tell me she finally lost her loose tooth. When they got back to the office she showed me her tooth in the treasure box her teacher gave her then she showed me the spot where it had been. She also mentioned that some of the kids in her class got $5 or even $10 for their first tooth!!! I told her that the tooth fairy in our area usually leaves pennies but she just rolled her eyes at me.

Most of the time I try to stick to my own parenting principles but this time Tim and I gave into the parenting peer pressure. The tooth fairy left Marissa $5! Since my baby shower was the next day Marissa managed to collect another $9 from Grandparents and other realitives when she showed them her missing tooth. All together she got $14 for her 1st lost tooth. I made sure that she understood that was only going to happen with the 1st tooth.

Wow, a $14 tooth. I think my 1st tooth was worth about $1.

To Gregg and Tim:

I have been as nice as I can about the whole Nintendo thing even though I don't understand the obsession. As Gregg mentioned in his blog I even initiated you guys playing online together. But as I mentioned to Dianne (whose side is she on anyway?) the Mario Kart Madness is starting to effect my TV time and my time with my husband. I don't even watch TV that much. In fact, the only show I really want to watch is American Idol and maybe Greta or Bill O'Reilly and of course Blues hockey but that we agree on. Since American Idol is usually on during the Blues game Tuesday I have even given up watching that. Mainly because I can completely understand the Blues obsession (sorry Gregg. I guess that says something about my character, too). But little did I know when I called Gregg to race Tim online what this would lead to. Tim has even gone as far as suggesting other things to occupy me. The other night he said, "why don't you go take a bath, honey?". He was trying to act like a nice husband who wanted his wife to relax but I read right through it. He was really trying to buy more nintendo time! Then there was the night that he said "Just one more game babe and then we can watch a movie together." Well one more game turned into 10 more games and he didn't even realize I had given up and just gone to bed (or he realized it and was secretly pleased). What makes it even worst is that Marissa is into the whole Mario Kart thing. So now its 2 against 1 in our house. On weekends she can stay up as late as she wants and join in on the whole madness.
As Tim mentioned, there is a solution to the whole disagreement and that would be to move the Wii downstairs. Of course that only solves one part of the problem which is me being able to watch TV in my living room. It doesn't solve the problem of me not getting to spend time with my husband. I can get over that though. After all, we do work together all day.
And for the record, I didn't even buy that darn game. My cousin let him borrow it, along with both remotes. So if I really wanted to solve the problem I could just pack it up and send it back to her. But I am way to nice to do that, right?

Blues Nursery

As soon as my husband found out were we having a boy he was determined that the nursery would be a Saint Louis Blues theme. No teddy bears or cute little animals for our son. Tim was determined it would be hockey from the beginning. Well of course this caused a stir among the other family members. Both of our parents thought it was silly to do a nursery in a hockey theme. They argued, "what if he doesn't even like hockey?." My husbands reply was always, "what if he doesn't like teddy bears?" or any of that other "baby" stuff parents choose as a nursery theme. So any way we were set out to find a way to tactfully do our Blues themed nursery. After looking at different sports stores we determined that it would have been alot easier if we would have been Cardinal fans. We finally decided to just stick with the Blues color scheme and maybe we would be able to find a few Blues items to put in the room along the way. So then we decided we had to paint the walls blue and yellow. Here is the end result, which I am very pleased with:

It took my husband a very long time to paint these stripes. It was even more dfficult due to our textured walls. But I think it turned out great. And our family said it they even liked it. Now we just need some hockey decor to hang on the walls.

To ankes and beyond!

Anyone who has kids has those moments when your kid either sings the words to a song wrong or pronounces a word wrong and the results is something very funny.
Yesterday on the way to church Marissa was in the car counting. This is something she has been doing since she started Kindergarden. First she had to learn to count to 100. After she mastered that she realized she could easily figure out how to keep going to 200, 300 etc. It can actually be really annoying unless you can learn to ignore it because she never stops. Well we were almost to church when I realized she was at 190 or something. Thankfully my husband and I had managed to have our own conversation while she was busy counting. We all started talking about really big numbers, like a million and a trillion and a billion, etc. Marissa said, "mommy, I know what the biggest number in the world is."
me: "what's that?"
Marissa: "ankes!"
hmmm, I was quiet for a moment while I tried to figure out what in the world ankes was.
me: "oh!!!! You mean INFINITY!"
Marissa: "yeah! Thats it!"
by then we were laughing so hard that I could barely talk.
I explained to her that infinity wasn't really a number (or is it?) it just meant never ending. And the only thing I could think of to describe this to her was Heaven.
I am going to try to blog about all these funny mispronunciations so I can remember them myself. It's an easy way to lift your mood. Now that I will have another little one, I'm sure when he starts talking I will have many more to document.

Dolphin Picture

Here is a better copy of my previous dolphin picutre.

This was right off the coast and not too far from where we walk out in the ocean.

I was very excited when I took this picture because while I was trying to take the shot Tim told me to give up, there was no way I could actually get the dolphin in the picture with as slow as our camera is. but I did and here is my best shot.

Marissa's Blonde Moment #2

I was getting ready for work today when, "Mommy, could you please come in my room? I need you!"
So I stopped ironing my clothes and went in her room. She is sitting on her bed with her VTech, which is a hand held v smile. she says, "I keep turning up the volume but I can't hear anything at all. It's broken."
Great. Her favorite Christmas toy is broken. So I grab the head phones that are attached to the VTech and put them in my head.
"Marissa the sound is working just fine"
"oh, I forgot you had to put the headphones on"
She had been turning the volume up and no sound was coming out because she didn't have the head phones on her ears.
DUH!
I just looked at her funny and we both laughed.
Seriously, my child is smart, but her blonde moments are reminding me of myself.

But I'm not Ready for This!

If you read any of my earlier posts you know how hard it was for me to let my baby go to Kindergarten. I just wasn't ready when the time came. I could no longer hold on to the toddler years at that point. When your kid goes to Kindergarten they are no longer a toddler but a regular school aged kid! That was part of what made me want another kid. The other reason it was hard was because for 5 years I had been working part time and hanging out with her the rest of the time. Now I had no excuse not to work because she would be in school all day. Well there are some things I can't control and her going to Kindergarten was one of them.

Today I was sitting at work waiting for my husband to pick Marissa up from girl scouts. As soon as he picked her up he called me so she could share some news with me. "Guess what, Mommy! I have a loose tooth!" Well being pregnant and really emotional, tears instantly formed in my eyes. Of course I didn't let her know this. What kind of crazy mom would cry over a loose tooth? me, of course. It was just another reminder of how my child is growing up so quickly. Just like I couldn't control her going to Kindergarten I can't control her loose tooth either. So now my baby is going to be a toothless Kindergartner.

What's next?

Christmas Vacation

I haven't blogged much lately due to being gone for a week after Christmas. My family had a great Christmas which consisted of visiting lots of family and Marissa opening lots of presents and of course, celebrating the birth of our Savior.

The Saturday after Christmas we left for a family vacation. In the last four years all of our vacations have been company promotions. While I am truly grateful for the opportunity, company events mean that I either have to leave my daughter with her grandparents or take one of them with us so Tim and I can go to dinners and misc. functions. This trip was our first totally non-Farmers related trip. 7 days of just the 4 of us. We left Saturday morning and arrived in Atlanta in the evening. This was the first time we didn't drive straight through but my doctor advised me to stop often since I am pregnant so we stopped halfway. The next day we left early to head to Venice, Fl which is where we were staying since Tim's Grandpa lives there. The drive should have taken about 9 hours but we hit really bad traffic and didn't arrive to Grandpa's house till after it was too late to get a glimpse of the beach. So we went to bed eager to wake up and set out for my favorite beach, Siesta Key which is about 20 miles from Granpa's house. Grandpa only lives about 2 miles away from Venice beach but Siesta Key is my favorite and worth the 20 minute drive. Monday-Thursday we spent four days doing nothing but walking the beach, swimming in the ocean (yes, in December) and site seeing Florida. We also got a chance to see Grandpa and go to dinner with him. Overall the trip was great. Probably the best vacation I have ever had. It is so hard to come back to cold St. Louis (which apparently wasn't that cold while we were gone).

Here are a few of my favorite pics. I took mostly pics of the beach because I don't really like my overall appearance at this stage in my pregnancy:) Of course I took lots of Marissa pics too.

Siesta Key Beach and a sailboat out in the ocean. I really like this pic and I am thinking about inlarging it and hanging it in my family room.

my 2 favorite people. This is at the end of Siesta Key beach where you can look out and see Long Boat Key.

A picture of Long Boat Key from Siesta Key.

Long Boat Key Beach

See the Dolphin in the distance. This is actually not very far off the shore. I am going to try to zoom in and edit the photo.