long catch up...

Well, I know it has been forever since I have blogged but a lot has been going on. The last time I was on here was for Drew's birthday. We had a great time with family and we enjoyed pizza, cake & ice cream. Here he is loving his cake!
After the birthday, we had to start planning for Christmas. This year we spent Christmas in Alabama. We went over on a Friday, spent a few days in Nashville. We went to ICE and saw the Rockettes! We had such a great time, I had never been before and the Opryland Hotel is beautiful. Here are a few pictures from ICE. If you don't already know - everything is made of... ICE! It was 9 degrees throughout the building and let me tell you - that is COLD! It was really neat.



We had a great time in Alabama and we came home the day after Christmas. I don't have a single "family" photo of us in Alabama - sorry!

Here is where we get busy! We came home on that Friday, closed on a house that Tuesday, packed all day Wednesday and moved EVERYTHING on Thursday! We had lots of help from family and it all went pretty smooth! thanks for all the help :) Oh yeah, on Wednesday night we had Christmas with my family at our "new" house!

So here we are almost two months later and we are settled in! We still have some boxes to go through and there is not one picutre hung on the wall, but none the less - it is OUR first home! I really do love it! I was always afraid me and Kevin were not going to agree on a house when we found one. We both love it and the location! Well I will leave you with some pictures of my favorite little man! He is 14 months old and walking or should I say running everywhere!
Hope life is treating everyone great!

Just wanted everyone one to know we are ok! I am working on a post with pictures from Drew's birthday party. So hang tight and I will try to get it posted as soon as possible!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY to my little man who is ONE today! I love you so much.

This is my mom's Christmas card picture!

My Little....

PUMPKIN!!!

This is going to be a quick blog with mostly pictures! Drew was/is a pumpkin for Halloween! He got to dress up first for our fall festival at church. Tomorrow we are going to dress up again and go visit our friends at 4-County. Tomorrow night I don't know that we are going to do too much trick or treating - we will visit our close neighbors and maybe a few other friends!

Oh yeah, here are a few pictures of us carving our pumpkins last week! We had a really good time - our cousins Davis and Madison came over and carved pumpkins with us! I must say... I have never carved a pumpkin before - it is not as easy as it looks! It was really gross, Aunt Jeka made me clean the inside out!

Well I hope everyone has a safe and Happy Halloween! Be careful!! :)

Pumpkin Patch

We finally made it to the pumpkin patch in Caledonia. We went to Cherokee Pumpkins! Thank you Gilmer's for letting us take pictures! Here a are few of them. Hope you all have a great week. We are going to carve our pumpkin tonight - so I will post pictures of that as soon as I can.

Happy Birthday Kevin!

Today is a very special day - it is Kevin's birthday!! We hope you have a great day and we love you very much! Thanks for always being there for me & Drew - even though he can't exactly "talk", Drew told me that you are the world's greatest DAD!!

My two favorite men!

Nice Weekend!

Friday night Kevin's brother and his family (Mark, Bridget, Kyle & Kaitlyn) came into town. Bridget's mom and dad drove up from Bogue Chitto and spent the weekend here too! We had a wedding to go to on Saturday. Congrats to Jason and Leigh Ann Ross on their wedding! It was a short and sweet ceremony - but I forgot my camera and did not get a picture of them! :( Anyway, after the wedding we all had different things to do. Drew and I stayed at the house, he took a MUCH needed nap. Bridget, her mom and Kaitlyn did their own thing, Kevin went to split fire wood and Mark, Kyle and Bridget's dad went to West Point to the Mossy Oak retail store! We all met back up late that afternoon and ate at The Little Dooey. They have the best BBQ around here! here is a picture of us at Dooey. We had a really good time visiting with them. Let us know when you want to come back! We have plenty of room.
Well before I left for The Little Dooey, some friends stopped by on their way home to south MS. Mark, Mandy and Reed Burleson. We have not really seen them since the first of August, so I was glad they got to visit for a little while. They too ate at The Little Dooey so we got to see them twice! Reed has gotten so big since we saw him last. here is a picture of them with Drew.

Sunday morning we got up and went to church. We ate lunch and then, M, B, K & K packed and on their way home we all stopped on the campus of MSU. Kyle and Kaitlyn wanted to ride their bikes around for a little while with Uncle Kevin.

The weather was perfect and we could not have asked for a more beautiful weekend. Hope everyone has a great week.

Changing the subject - we got to turn Drew's car seat around. He can see everything now! He loves to ride and does not fuss! here is a picture of him facing forward.

He got a new swing and he loves it! (Thanks Lini and Dave!!!)

he got a baseball hat from Kyle and I finally took a picture of him wearing it!

The Dreaded Political Blog

Before you read any further, understand that at this point and time, I (Kevin) am not endorsing any Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate. Whoa - Kevin - yep, that's right - this is my first ever blog post or whatever you call it.

In Luke 12: 35-48, Jesus is telling his disciples about managing the masters posessions. This is where the famous quote comes from..."From everyone who has been given much, much will be demanded; and from the one who has been entrusted with much, much more will be asked." This kind of sets the tone for this particular blog post.

Yesterday, after my help called in sick, i decided that i wanted to do some research on our future President and VP. So, against my better judgement, i spent about 3 hrs on the computer searching through a plethora of political material - from the most liberal sites (Huffington Post... Daily Kos) to the more conservative side (very few from a media standpoint). It was hard to find much about the actual issues ( immigration, fight against terrorism, economy, health care) that i list as a high priority. However, one issue that kept popping up really caught my attention - and these were at sights such as CBS, NBC, USAToday... - regarding the tax returns of the Pres and VP candidates. This may seem rather useless to many, but to me, i believe that ones interests and priorities can be shown by where and how one "gives." I know that Jesus wanted us to give of ourselves and not just our money, but we're all given the same amount of time in a day - but not all given the same resources. Actually, i think Satan loves to give people money because it is the easiest distraction he can use and it seems so rewarding!! Anyways.... i don't want to turn this into a sermon, so here is a compilation of the facts that i came upon yesterday.......and a link to one of the sights that kind of summed up these facts.

Charitable Contributions

sorry about the messy spreadsheet - i couldn't make it stay orderly when i posted

Year ....Income ....Charity ......% of Inc.
Barack Obama
2000.... $240,726... ...$2,350 *******1%
2001 .....$272,759 ...... $1,470 ******.05%
2002 ....$259,394 ...... $1,050 ****** .04%
2003 ....$238,327 .......$3,400 *******1.4%
2004 .....$207,647 ...... $2,500 *******1.2%
2005 ....$1,655,106 .... $77,000 ******4.6%
2006 .....$983,826 ..... $60,000 ******6.1%
2007 .....$4,139,965 ...$240,370 *****5.8%

Joe Biden
2000***$219,953*****$360 ****** .16%
2001***$220,712 *****$360 ****** .16%
2002***$227,811 *****$260 ****** .11%
2003*** $231,375**** $260****** Approx
2004*** $234,271**** $380 **** one-tenth
2005 ***$321,379 ****$380******* of a
2006 ***$248,459 ****$380****** percent
2007 ***$319,853 *****$995

John McCain
2006 ***$338,809 *** $96,758 *****28.6%
2007 ***$386,527 ***$105,467 *****27.3%

(John and his wife file separately, so i'm sure some people will view this as totally inaccurate, but they supposedly keep their finances completely separate, so i would say this is somewhat accurate)

Sarah Palin has not released her tax returns so nothing is available on her.

The purpose of this chart is not to say that John McCain is a much better person than the other two because he gives more. I just found these facts to be very interesting and thought some of you may too. I won't lie - i do think it's interesting that Joe Biden really cares about the working class, but can't dig down deep and find more than $1,000 out of a $300,000 income to give to a good cause.

As i said before, we're all given 24 hrs in a day, but some of us are given many more resources (money and posessions) .... either from God or Satan!!! How we use these resources, i believe, is a major reflection of our heart within!! It really takes very little to live (even comfortably) -how great would it be if we could "decide what it takes our family to live -purely relative i realize" and give the rest away (even if our income tripled)!!!

Well, that's it - my first and probably my last blog post. This wasn't aimed at any person or party - just some factual info that i thought was interesting! Please feel free to leave a comment - even if you think i'm out of line for posting these stats.