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 :)

Oct. 14th - Nov. 20th, 2014

Hi Y'all!

Hope you all are having a wonderful fall season so far. We are looking forward to celebrating Thanksgiving next week and are blessed to have many things to be thankful for.

Here's little of what we have been up to since our last post in October.

 We celebrated Micah's BIG birthday in October. :) We had a corn hole tournament, which I'm sad to say didn't turn out in favor of the birthday guy, but nonetheless, we had fun. Micah wears 30 well and is still my hero and the love of my life. He is one of the best parts of my life and is such a blessing to everyone he is around. 

What a man! 

On to other things....It's been a dream of mine for a while now to go camping as a family. We got to go for the first time for two nights during the peak season for color in the trees. It was so pretty out there. The trees were brilliant with color. Overall, our first camping experience went better than we expected even though the first night was a bit on the frigid side, the boys handled it well and we all had a good time. The enjoyment outweighed the work. :) 

 Ready at a moment's notice with the lighter. Owen carried that thing around for hours. 

 Becoming a real man. 

 Got a visit from Pappy the second day we were there. The boys always enjoy having their Pappy around. :)

 Something about watching a fire blaze is so mesmerizing....

Found a friend along the way. 

 Headed out for a hike up the "hill" which turned into a two-mile excursion to the top of the mountain! Thankfully, we had some uncles around to help haul the boys up the trail when they ran out of steam. 

 Quite the view!

Made it! Whew!

 The past few days the highs have been in the 40's so we've spent a lot more time indoors lately. Good preparation for the coming months of winter...gulp!

 Owen has learned how to put together a board puzzle. He is very very busy on an average day. I'll explain more below...

 Outing with Daddy to a work meeting. Every once in a while Micah will have an evening meeting and he will take one of the boys with him. This particular evening he decided to take both boys. You know that old saying "Two boys is half a boy, and three boys is no boy at all"? Well, we learned that the boys do better when it's just one of them at a time when it comes to meetings with Daddy. :) The temptation to make the other one laugh during the session is just too great. 

 So more on Owen's "busyness". Now that we are doing school for a few hours during the weekdays, I've noticed just how busy Owen is. I'll usually do school with Seth in the morning while Blake occupies Owen and then I'll do Blake's school in the afternoon while the other two are sleeping. Working out well so far. We also do reading time with Blake and Seth in the morning and that is Owen's golden hour to wreak havoc on the house. The little cutie. While reading to Blake and Seth I will see him out of the corner of my eye darting here and there while I read and I try not to imagine what he is getting into or doing. Normally, he does pretty well at not getting into things he shouldn't and usually happily occupies himself by going from one toy or activity to the next and the next. He is so funny, he'll just keeps going and going and going. 

The other day I decided to just write down some of the things he did during his average morning "busy time". Here goes... looked at books, colored in coloring book, got out toy cars, played with tower stacking activity, went through house flushing toilets, got out train set and played train, pushed laundry basket around house like it was a car, got out coffee server and hot pot and played "coffee" in living room, took clothes off, dumped out and played with blocks, played with toy guitar, got out and put on Seth's tennis shoes, etc... You may think I'm exaggerating, but this was over the course of maybe an hour or so. It's fun times! He almost never sits down. :) He is hilarious though, makes us laugh, and we love him to pieces!

I just keep thinking that I'm so thankful God gave me three younger brother who I used to think were SO weird and annoying when they were little. But, I think growing up with them has really helped prepare me for life with three boys of my own! So, thanks bros for being just the way you were. :)

 Learning tower stacking! 

That's all for now folks. :)

Funnies: 

Seth- "I put it on the coughing table in the living room"

Blake - "Seth, guess which hand I put my vitamin in. You can pick two."

Seth- "I wish I could ride a bonking bronco someday"

Other News:

Scott graduates from bootcamp on Nov. 26th. He is doing great up there. We have gotten a few letters from him and it sounds like he really enjoying the structure and the environment. We are proud of him and I know his recruiter is confident that he will do really well. He begins his next phase of training around the first of December. 

We are enjoying weekends with Jonathan for the past month or so. He is stationed close enough so that he can come up and stay with us Saturday afternoon through Sunday evenings. He is doing well in his "spook" job. :)

Hope you all are doing well and are ready to celebrate the holidays. 

Love to you all!

Kari, Micah, Blake, Seth and Owen