Happy Birthday Makinley!

Can you believe Makinley is already a year old?
She had her first birthday party on Saturday at Laura and Scott's house in Austin. She got a ridiculous amount of presents, of course. I think she got an entire closet worth of clothes. Clothes is what we were told Makinley needed. But of course, we didn't follow directions. We got a large, fun, noisy toy instead. That's how we roll.

Laura, of course, went overboard for the party. Placecards in front of each appetizer and dessert describing what it was, way too much of said food, and approximatley 114 people in attendance.

It was fun to see Makinley, since we don't get to see her very often. Even though she screams every time either one of us hold her. That's where the gifts come in. We are confident that, once she is old enough, she will respond favorably to our bribes...err, gifts, just like the other four have.

On that note, we had to bring Logan and Brynna a small gift as well. You will see him holding his little green RC car in some of the pics below. He loved it! And Brynna got a cell phone just like we got Brooke last weekend. Hey, I said we brought them gifts...I didn't say we were creative.

After we left the party, we headed north to The Melting Pot. We had 8 o'clock reservations. Two and a half hours later, we were miserably full. But it was great. We followed the advice of some of the party attendees, who apparently go to The Melting Pot at least weekly. Their menu picks turned out pretty good.

Here are some pics from last weekend that I forgot to post, and some from this weekend.

LAST WEEKEND:

Nancy and Brookie

Brookie

Brandl tossing Brooke in the air

Brooke and her Grandpa

Brandl tossing Tyler in the air

Tyler just chillin'

THIS WEEKEND:

Laura and Baby Mak

Nancy and Brynna

Me and Lo

Me, Nancy, and Logan

Me and Logan

Me and Brynna

Makinley and her tutu

Makinley can crawl now

Brynna and Makinley in Mak's new wagon

Brynna and her cell phone and Logan and his car

Makinley opening presents

Second Anniversary and a visit with the Groom Fam

We made the trek up to Magnolia to visit Nancy's brother and sister-in-law and the twins. Nancy's parents were there also, so we decided it would be a great weekend to go up there. You would think living in the same "city" we would get to see them more often than we do, but it takes over an hour to get there.

Whenever we visit nieces and nephews, we always like to bring presents. It is, of course, for purely selfish reasons: we don't get to see them very often, and we want them to like us. Tyler is easy to buy for. He likes anything that has wheels and goes fast. So we bought him a race car, Or as he described it...a Big, big, BIG, Big race car. He liked it. Brooke is more of a crap shoot when it comes to gifts. Most of the gifts we have bought her she has been wholly disinterested in after 1 minute. She then spends the rest of the time trying to steal whatever it is we bought Tyler. This time, we got her a talking pink flip cell phone. She actually played with this one, so score one for Aunt Yitzy and Uncle Randy!

I think our evil plan worked, too, because both Ty and Brooke played with us and let us hold them. Who says you can't buy love?

This weekend, we will be making the (similar distance) trek to Austin for Makinley's Birthday party. Can you believe she is already a year old? We will of course, come bearing gifts. But so will everyone else, so I don't think we get any extra points with the kid on this one. We will just make sure we get something very loud and obnoxious, without an off switch, just to annoy her mom. Maybe something maroon.

We are also going to make a weekend of it and stay in Austin on Saturday night for our anniversary. Dinner will be at The Melting Pot. For those of you who have never been there, it is a really fun place to eat for a special occasion.

Tomorrow will be two years since that sucker, er, I mean Nancy, said "I do". What was she thinking? Seriously.

It has really flown by. It seems like just yesterday I was watching Sportscenter in our honeymoon suite while my blushing bride hurled her guts out in the honeymoon toilet. Seems like only yesterday we had our memorable flight to Miami. And it seems like only yesterday I moved all my junk out of my third floor apartment and into Nancy's house. A LOT has happened in these two years: we've gained two nieces, a vet clinic, a house, and five fish. We've lost a house, a stable job at a vet clinic, a grandfather, and three fish. We've lived through a hurricane, Nancy's ankle surgery, and a mouse invasion. Oh, and after two years, I am still head-over-heels in love with my wife.

Drum Roll, Please....

I know you have all been on the edge of your seats waiting for the results of the DNA test we sent out on Shelby. Well, your wait is finally over. The results are in: Shelby is mostly German Shepherd. There are traces of a few other breeds, but German Shepherd is the dominant breed. So, based on these results, I can feel comfortable recommending The Wisdom Panel MX to my clients. That also means that the Canine Heritage Breed Test, that I sent out last year, was a waste of money. Beagle and Husky were not even present in trace amounts. Now that we know her true heritage, we will now be signing her up as either a Seeing Eye Dog or a K9 Drug Dog. We haven't decided yet.

It was a fun weekend. Nancy was driving to Arlington to visit her college roommate, so I decided to go to Corpus Christi and visit Scott. I even took Saturday off. Jeff drove down Friday night and we got to Corpus around midnight. We got up bright and early to hit the bay for some fishing in Scott's new boat. The only problem was the 45 degree temperature coupled with a North wind at 30 Knots. Miserable doesn't begin to describe it. We actually put the boat in the water, despite the weather, and lasted about an hour. Once we were all soaked, freezing, and unable to get the anchor to hold long enough for us to even cast our lines, we decided to head back. We cooked out, watched some basketball, and hit up the local watering hole instead.

Nancy had fun, too. Although for some reason she decided to do step aerobics while in Arlington, and now she can barely walk.

We had our best month yet at the clinic. I hired another technician today, who I think is going to work out well. She showed up on time for her interview, and has all her teeth, no unusual body parts pierced, and speaks English, so hiring her was a no-brainer.

That's all the excitement I can stand to write about for now.