Feb. 14th - Mar. 13th, 2015

Hi Everyone, 

Hope you all are doing well! Some of the highlights of the past month were Valentine's Day, Owen's Birthday and a big snow storm...

 One of the first nice days in February was Valentine's Day, so we took some time to get out in the sunshine even though it was a bit (or a lot) chilly. 

I had the chance to take an overnight trip with the Fox ladies and some friends to the Biltmore House in Asheville, NC. They had a special exhibit featuring costumes from the popular TV show, Downton Abbey. It was fun to see the costumes in person and to have the chance to spend some "girl time" away. 

Owen turned two in February! Can you believe it? He had fun opening his birthday cards. 

 For part of his birthday we all went out to dinner together (something that's usually reserved only for Mommy and Daddy's date nights so it was a big treat for them). 

 Ice cream at Chick-fil-a! Funny story...as we were entering the kid's play area at the restaurant there was a very cute little girl holding the door open for us. She looked like she was about three. Without missing a beat, instead of walking past her, Owen stopped and threw his arms around her and was going in for a big kiss on the lips before I was able to grab him just in time. Where does he get these ideas?!? Luckily, her parents weren't watching. :)

 We had a family birthday party for Owen and it was like Christmas morning all over again. We always have a good time when we get together with our family. 

 Uncle Jesse freeing Owie's new toy, or trying to...

 Seth used his own money and bought Owen a gift of a star trooper outfit. Seth had to try it out for him of course. Here's Seth with Judah, Susannah and Hannah. 

 One of the few times a year he gets a cupcake...he enjoyed it!

Owen is REALLY into Superman right now. Everyday he asks for his Superman capes to be put on him. Of course, he has to wear all three capes at the same. More powers that way I suppose. :)

This is his "bad guy" hat and outfit. We are really enjoying him lately. He's talking a mile a minute and has full throttle energy. He loves to go outside and play super heros inside. 

A little over three weeks ago, we got a huge amount of snow overnight! It was the most I've seen at one time in NC since living here- about 6 1/2 ". It was so beautiful!

 Our backyard was completely transformed into a winter wonderland!

 The cedar trees were so pretty weighted down with the snow. 

 My Honey  :)

Hot cocoa and snow-cream!


Since the snow, the winter weather has been easing up a bit and fluctuating to some pretty warm days. We've even had a few days in the 70's and then back to the 40's. Spring is definitely on it's way though and the boys can hardly wait. 

Yesterday the boys were playing in the garage and all of the sudden I heard them all yelling for me in a slightly panicked tone. When I came out, I discovered them stuck in the recycling bin together. Once they calmed down and realized they wouldn't be stuck there forever, we were able to snap a quick picture. Sillies!  

In other news...

I'm 28 weeks along now and 12 (or so) to go! Other than suffering from "pregnant brain" (my current excuse for any typos you may find) I'm feeling pretty good. We are getting more and more excited about meeting the newest member of our family. I had two people yesterdat tell me they thought it was going to be a boy and another friend who said it was going to be a girl...we'll see! Can't wait!!

We have some rather sad news. Oscar has gone missing for several weeks now and it's looking like he may be gone for good. We've been checking the local animal shelter and went there once when they had a gray and white cat come in, but it wasn't Oscar. So sad! I was keeping it together pretty well, until we were about to leave the animal shelter and Owen said, "Where my kitty?". :( Who knows, maybe he's just hanging out at a neighbors and will come home some day. 

Our guys in the military are doing well. We get to talk to Scott once in a while and he's starting to get into the core of the program. Jonathan is doing well and recently got an apartment off base, which he's really enjoying. Will is doing well and working at Chick-fil-a and at other construction work. He has a new girlfriend that we are looking forward to meeting sometime soon. 

Seth and Micah have both came down with another round of stomach flu in the past few days. So pray for a quick recovery if you think of it. Twice in one flu season is no fun! We are hoping it stops at them and doesn't go through another several-week phase of cycling through everyone. :-/ Minor discomforts compared to that of many. 

Seth read his first book yesterday! It only consisted of the words, "Sam", "Mat", "on", and "sat", but he was really proud of himself and I was too. Big progress from not knowing his letter names or sounds at the beginning of this school year. 


Hope you all are doing well! God bless you!

Love, 

Kari, Micah, Blake, Seth, Owen and Baby

Dec. 25th, 2014 - Feb. 13th, 2015

Hi Everyone!


Christmas seems like a distant memory by now, but for the sake of consistency, here's a quick re-cap...

 We spent Christmas day this with the three Shoemaker brothers as the rest of the Shoe Fam was out of town. Scott, Blake and Will here. It's funny, but it doesn't seem all that long ago that Scott and Will were Blake's size. Now look at them, all grown up!

 Being that there were seven guys and only one girl, we had a very "Manly" Christmas. Complete with steak, potatoes, and a shooting contest.

 Me and Owen watching from a safe distance. Owen is rather worried about these earplug things in his ears.

 Owen even had his own gun. :)

We got to have Scott around for over two whole weeks during the holidays. The boys gave him a good roughing up.

 We spent the next few days after Christmas at the Fox's opening presents, staying up late, and eating way too much. Overall, had a great Christmas and are so thankful for a loving family.



Since Christmas, we have said good bye to Scott again as he headed back to the Great Lakes and Will as he went back to Virginia. We've been getting back into the school routine and started out a new year with new goals and things to look forward to.

Seth loves to draw monsters, superheros and dinosaurs. In one of his school assignments, he was studying the letter U and had to draw a picture of "us", as in, our family. Here's his depiction of our happy clan. Oh, that's him on the left. The one with only one leg. :)

Owen testing out the new baby bassinet. Hopefully, he won't be too distraught when he learns that someone else will actually be the real baby in the house come June.

Owen and I got the opportunity to go give Aunt Kate, Uncle Noah, Cousin Roger and the new baby, Cousin Bryce in Kansas.

 Owen thought he was pretty big stuff getting to go on a real airplane with Mommy.

 Baby Bryce! He's soooo sweet!

 Roger, Kate and Owen

 Aren't they sweet?

Kate and I thought it would be SUCH a good idea for me to bring Owen so that he and Roger could occupy themselves playing happily while she and I talked uninterrupted for hours on end.   Well, what do you get when you mix a sweet, mild mannered, newly-not-only-child-anymore two year old with a rambunctious, youngest-of-three-boys two year old? Poor Roger didn't know what to think of Owen! And I got to see a new side of Owen when he was no longer the littlest one in the house. It was kind of like the Precious Moments child meets Dennis the Menace on steroids. Here is a picture of Owen giving Roger a goodbye "hug" which was more like a kiss-hug-tackle. Sigh.... Most of their interactions had to be followed up with "Careful Owen!" or "Owen, don't grab Roger's toys". Lol, the poor things didn't have the most harmonious of times together like Kate and I had envisioned, but at least we can laugh about it now. Right, Kate? :-P

I had a great time visiting Kate and her family and seeing their new home located outside of Kansas City. They have done an "extreme makeover" to their house and it looks so nice!

Jonathan's four month post at Fort Bragg came to an end last week so our weekend tradition of having him visit came to an end. We spent our last weekend together before he headed back to Fort Meade in Maryland. The boys have loved having Uncle Jonathan around to play with!

My Little Stinker is turning two years old in a few weeks. Can you believe it?! He has been starting to talk in sentences much more lately. We can understand most of what he says. 

In other news...

Scott is no longer pursuing the BUDS training and has transferred to a military linguistics school in California to study Arabic. It's a fairly difficult school to get into, but he did well on the entrance exam and was accepted in. We're really proud of him! He will be there for the next year or shorter depending on how quickly he picks up the language.

Owen will be turning two in a few weeks!

I'm now 24 weeks pregnant and things are looking great so far. We had a routine ultrasound a few weeks ago, but decided we want to wait and let the gender be a surprise. The boys, however, say that it's going to be a boy because "the baby in the picture didn't have any hair". :) We'll see. I have a strange feeling that this one is not going to be a boy though. :) We are getting more and more excited as the weeks are counting down!

Funnies...

While Scott was still in pre-BUDS training, the boys were praying for him every morning after breakfast that God would help him avoid getting injured. Somehow it got translated into Seth praying. "God, please help Scott not to have any energy today. Amen." :)

We got to go on a field trip with other homeschoolers in our county to the local police and fire station. You can imagine how elated the boys were! They were completely mesmerized. On the way home I was asking the boys whether or not they would be scared of a fireman if he ever had to come to our house. Apparently, the fire station sometimes has trouble with children being afraid of the firefighter in all his gear and tend to try and hide from them. Seth said, "No. Maybe if we had a lot of fires at our house, the fireman could stay a while and babysit us."   :) I'm sure they wouldn't mind babysitting in their spare time. 

Seth is learning the letter D this week and we are studying about dinosaurs. They boys have been learning their names and how big they were and are quite fascinated by them. Well, the other day Blake states matter-of-factly, "Mom, you are like a brontosaurus. Look how much the bed sinks down when you sit on it!"  :)  Great. 



Hope you all are doing well! I'm hoping my next update won't be so long from now. We have been recuperating this week from a two-week stent of the stomach flu and then the cold. Fun times! But, it looks like we are finally turning the corner and on the mend! 

Love to you all!

Kari, Micah, Blake, Seth, Owen, and Baby

Nov. 21st - Dec. 24rd, 2014

Merry Christmas!

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas this year! The Lord has given us many blessings this year including a new house, time with family at the beach and the biggest of the year...a new baby on the way! Yes, Fox baby number four is expected to arrive sometime in early June of next year and we are very excited. The boys have already started collecting baby names for consideration. So far, "Lassie" and "Amos" are at the top of their list. :)

Since last post we have been busy with school and getting ready for Christmas.

Had the Fox family over for Thanksgiving. A lively bunch!

We are really enjoying having Uncle Jonathan being stationed only an hour and a half away. He is able to come up and stay most weekends, which the boys love! 

School is going better each week. It took us a few weeks to really get into it, but it's going well. Seth is learning his letters and how to write them. The math section of Blake's curriculum was not quite challenging enough for him, so we started a new math curriculum and it seems to be a much better fit. Something I really like about homeschooling is being able to tailor their curriculum for their specific needs. He is such a fast learner! 

Owen is doing a little more sitting and playing lately, which has been nice! Once in a while he will sit and play with his trains-yay!

Part of our daily routine is a special reading time with Owen in his room while the other boys are getting ready for the day. He is enjoying our book time together and I'm hoping starting to get a taste for the awesome world of books. He has his favorite books that get read at least four times a week. Mostly books about trucks or trains. :)

The boys are still big into books. I think Blake's love of learning and reading has been a motivation for Seth to learn his letters and how to read.

Another rare moment of sitting and playing!

A little laundry gnome I found.

A venture out to "the woods" in our backyard. The boys have been working on a fort for a while and it's starting to take shape. On this particular day, Owen was tired so he sat in the stroller and Oscar decided he needed a ride too. :)

An almost daily scene at our house... eating is not Owen's favorite thing to do as you can tell by the lack of baby fat on his body. :)  There's so many other things he'd rather be doing!

Christmas 2014

We decided to have some fun with our Christmas tree this year. Micah and I went to the store and got a Christmas tree and Micah staked it to the ground in the woods in our backyard to make it look like it had grown there. The next morning, we told the boys we were going to go to the woods to look for a Christmas tree. They were super excited, although they were a little skeptical as to whether or not we could find a good one.

Well, what do you know there is a perfect tree right there!    It was so funny, Micah and I didn't get quite the reaction we were expecting. We thought they would just flip out in excitement over the magical appearance of the perfect tree in our very own backyard. But, all along the the way into the woods the boys had been looking at all these huge trees towering over their heads and trying to decide which one to pick. So the first thing they said when the saw the purchased tree, was "Oh no, that one is way too small!" :)

Blake was especially disappointed that it wasn't as big as the other trees....it took a few minutes to get over....

But after talking about it, we finally decided it the little one would work. :) So Daddy, "cut" it down with the chainsaw.

Taking home the perfect tree...by this point they were excited again. Watching Daddy use a chainsaw always helps. :)

We went to Nana and GanGan's for the annual Fox family cookie decorating contest. The boys with Uncle Judah, one of their favorite uncles. Whoever has an electronic with game is usually the favorite at that moment. :)

Here is the whole Fox family. It was fun to spend time with all of Micah's siblings there. 

In other news...

Scott graduated Navy Boot Camp the day before Thanksgiving. Dad, Jonathan and Will attended the graduation in Illinois and we were able to watch it live online. We are really proud of him. He has started the 8 weeks Pre-BUDs training at the same base, and if all goes well, he will ship out to Coronado the first week in February. We are super spoiled to get to have him around for two weeks leave over Christmas! It might be a while until we see him after this visit. When I asked him if Boot Camp was different than he expected, he said it was easier in some ways than he thought and whole lot more standing around.  :) 

A few funnies...

Seth- "Mom, do you know why I have to pop my knuckles all the time?" "Because I have a pop allergy."  :)

I was cracking some eggs in the kitchen when Blake came in and said, "Mom, can I help you hatch the eggs?"

We were putting together a craft, and Blake told Seth "I already know how to do it, because I read the constructions on the back." 

Blake and I were watching a video about the lifespan of turtles and one scene was filmed in Nevada at a wind farm in the desert. Blake says, "Oh wow, that's SO nice that they have those fans in the desert!"



God has been really gracious to us this year and we want to give Him the glory for anything that is good in our lives. We are unworthy to be called His, but He's grace is beyond our thinking. He is good!

We hope you have a wonderful Christmas season! We are planning to spend Christmas day with Jonathan, Scott, and Will and then go to the Foxes on Friday. Dad was able to go to Kansas and spend Christmas with Kate, Noah, Joy and James. I'm a little jealous I'm not there to hold my new nephew, Bryce. :)

Love to you all!

Kari, Micah, Blake, Seth, Owen and Baby :)