Spring Planting with Grand-Dad

After McKinley was born either Grammy, Grand-Dad, or both were here for the first 8 weeks (only having left yesterday). What a blessing they have been! With their help we were able to keep our classes and projects rolling like normal and the house is probably cleaner now than ever! Thank you so so much for all your help over the last 8 weeks and helping to get Miss McKinley's life off to such a great start!

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Last week some beautiful spring weather arrived and with it Grand-Dad helped the three big kids plant some flowers and peas. We're keeping things pretty basic this year. Between the lack of success we had with everything except tomatos and peas last year and the new family member we figured we should probably keep things simple. Here's my happy crew ready to get started. :)

 Love all those busy and dirty little hands!

 Mixing the dirt and distributing it to the pots

 Reagan beginning to plant some tiny seeds (left) while Grand-Dad helps Kennedy (right) pour seeds out of her packet

 Jackson was so excited when he saw the pea seeds. He LOVED planting them! The only problem was he wanted all the seeds in one pot and he did NOT want them covered with any dirt.

One happy little boy enjoying the outdoors!

 The girls kept busy planting everything else while Jackson hoarded the pea seeds

Finishing up the planting

Onto the watering

Meanwhile the littlest Lueker Munchkin was fast asleep inside :)

Once McKinley woke up she came outside to enjoy the beautiful weather too

Thank you Grand-Dad for helping us get some things planted. If we're lucky, we'll get some tomatoes planted this week! Wish us luck!!! :)



McKinley Grace's Baptism - 7 April 2013

McKinley Grace was baptized at our church, St. John's Lutheran Church, here in Lexington, Kentucky, on Sunday, April 7, 2013. It was a beautiful day and we were blessed to celebrate this special event with family and friends!

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 Here is our precious girl in her beautiful dress which Grammy and Grand-Dad gave her and a bracelet her Godparents, Uncle Andrew and Aunt Jen, gave her to wear for her Baptism and someday place in her wedding bouquet. Uncle Andrew and Aunt Jen also sent McKinley a beautiful photograph of Mt. McKinley which they took and personalized it with the meaning of the name McKinley which is as follows:

 

Inspirational

Uplifitng

Extremely Bright

Highly Intuitive

Truth-seeker

 

 Anna and Tim with McKinley at church

 Charlie and Kelly Stiriz; McKinley's Godparents. They also gave McKinley a very special and thoughtful Baptism gift. They gave her a Pandora bracelet which they can add charms to as she grows. They began with an inspirational Bible charm which has a cross on it to mark this first significant day and event in her life.

 Grammy and Grand-Dad with McKinley and the flowers they and Uncle Andrew and Aunt Jen gave to celebrate McKinley's Baptism. 

 Grandma and Grandpa with McKinley

 Uncle Chuck and Aunt Julie with their fan club :)

 Chaz and McKinley - Chaz is so good and sweet with all the little guys!

 The LaBar Family photo with a happy and oh so cooperative Jackson

 A LaBar family picture minus Jackson

 Grammy and Grand-Dad with their three sweet girls

 The Lueker Family

 Three Generations of Luekers

 Missy K with her Godparents, Uncle Chuck and Aunt Julie

 Kennedy with both sets of her Godparents, Aunt Annette and Uncle Barry and Aunt Julie and Uncle Chuck - she is so blessed to have such wonderful people in her life and praying for her!

 Miss McKinley with the Hamlin Family; Barry, Katie, Lauren Annette and Michael (I remember when both Lauren and Michael were born - can't believe they're holding my babies now!)

 Hamlin and Lueker Family Photo

 The entire crew minus Grammy who had run back to the house to get McKinley's Baptism dinner going after church.

 The Stiriz Family with McKinley; Kelly, Charlie, Anna and Chaz

 Kelly and I have known each other since kindergarten. We were best friends in junior high (thanks NKOTB!) and became best friends again when we both got jobs in St. Louis after college. Kelly is just like a sister to me and I feel so blessed to have such a close and life long friendship with someone as special her! McKinley is very blessed to have her as a Godmother!

 Lauren is McKinley's birthday buddy and they also share the same middle name! I know McKinley will adore Lauren as much as her big siblings do! :)

 McKinley with Katie, who is another one of our very favorite people! We're so thankful and lucky Katie has decided to stay in Lexington to go to college so we know we'll have at least another 4 years with her! :) 

 I love this super sweet picture of Aunt Annette with McKinley and Reagan :)

 Kelly made this beautiful lamb cake for McKinley's Baptism. Thank you to Aunt Dorothy for letting us borrow everything to make it! Sorry we didn't have better timing so you all could share the day with us, but you were with us in spirit!

Thank you to everyone who made this day so special for us! Thank you especially to everyone who traveled to support McKinley on her special day! Thank you also to everyone who has given McKinley gifts. I know I'm not the best at getting thank you notes out, but we truly appreciate everything everyone has done for her and us!

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Thank you to Uncle Andrew and Aunt Jennifer and Kelly and Charlie for agreeing to be McKinley's Godparents. Thank you for such thoughtful and beautiful gifts to our precious girl and thank you for playing such a special role in her life!

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God has blessed us with another healthy and beautiful child as well as wonderful family and friends. We pray McKinely grows up knowing His love. We know all these people, and many others in our lives, will help demonstrate His love to and for her throughout her life. Thank you all for sharing in this joyous day! 

Easter 2013

I was pretty happy with our quick photo session after church Easter morning. The kids all cooperated extremely well and we managed to get a pretty good first family holiday picture. 

 I really love this picture of the kids with Grammy and Grand-Dad! :)

 They (especially Jackson - little, no BIG stinker) were pretty much done by the time I tried to take a kids picture so I was pretty pleased with how this one turned out. :)

 My three beautiful girls

 There aren't many opportunities to feed McKinley a bottle so the girls love it when they get a chance

 Reagan (1 month away from being 6 years old)

 Kennedy (4 years old)

 Jackson (2 1/2 years old)

 McKinley (6 weeks old)

 After changing out of church clothes I couldn't resist this picture of Daddy with his three sweet girls playing together in Jackson's room (Jackson was playing too but refused to have anything to do with the picture).

 Backing up for a moment, this picture was taken the day before Easter at our church's annual Easter Egg hung. Heidi and Holden joined us for the fun again this year. :)

 Back to Easter Sunday, Jackson loved colleting eggs both from the Easter bunny and during our family egg hunt with Heidi and Holden Easter Sunday afternoon. He cracked us up by only being interested in the money. He couldn't have cared less about the candy. Tim compared him to Scrooge McDuck as he actually attempted to swim thru the coins he colleted. lol :) I thought this picture was cute because intially he wanted to try and hold all his eggs and didn't understand how useful an Easter basket can be. lol :) Once he figured it out, however, he did a pretty good job of filling his basket right up!

 Super cute Holden heading to the basement to hunt for eggs

 Beautiful Miss Heidi with a basket full of eggs

 Jackson with Aunt Dorothy (his Godmother) and the beautiful lamb cake she made us for dessert after Easter Sunday dinner.

Thank you to Uncle Dan, Aunt Dorothy, Heidi, Holden, Grammy and Grand-Dad for making our Easter holdiay extra special! We hope you all enjoyed celebrating this blessed holiday with family and friends while remembering the tremendous gift and sacrifice God made for us so many years ago. May He continue to bless you in the coming year! 

McKinley's First Duck Post

The theme of this blog will have to be doing my best to catch up for a while. In that vein, let me post some semi recent pictures of McKinley's first two Duck pictures. Maybe some things like this will help me get back into the swing of things. Since I did this for the other three I can't justify not doing it for poor Miss McKinley! :) Besides, it's not that I haven't been taking pictures it's just a matter of getting them sorted and posted... On that note and with no further adieu, here are McKinley's first two Duck pictures. :)

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26 February 2013 - 9 days old

17 March 2013 - 1 month old

 McKinley is a little fussier than her big siblings were and she hasn't spoiled us quite as much with consistently sleeping thru the night, but she is still a honey bear and is certainly adored! Her big sisters especially can not get enough of holding her and loving on her. Given that she loves to be held all the time she's definitely in the right family! We all love her and we all love holding her and giving her lots of hugs and kisses too! :)