I need to mention how proud McKenzie and I are of Cyle. He has already fulfilled a full tour in Iraq leading a platoon of soldiers and he has had a tremendous impact on lots of lives over there and here in the states. He is gearing up for a second deployment and he is pouring his whole being into helping his troops and the people in Iraq. He tells me that while he is over there he works to fight terrorism every day and it makes me proud to know him. He is exactly the type of person who should be leading our troops and it is really an honor to know him. That being said, he is in the artillery....and one time I called him on the cell phone while he was calling in coordinates for a practice shelling. Not safe. So we figured we better visit him before he blows himself up.
It started out with a very long plane ride and we landed in Austin pretty late with a very tired baby. I had called Cyle (my old roomate serving at Fort Hood) if he had any friends with a pack and play so that I wouldn't have to bring one out for my baby. He replied back to me "Dude, you are my only friend with a kid". So luckily I used one of my uber-bags from my lacrosse days to pack up the pack and play, dog pillow, wrinkles pound puppy, under blanket, pink soft blanket, pooh bear, crazy singing seahorse, and the two silkeys. Can you tell this is an only child?
Friday morning we headed over to see Sommer and her clan. Luckily, we caught her parents on their last day of a week-long vacation. Sommer grew up with Kenzie and her parents were kind of like the Slaughs of Kentucky. It was great to catch up with them and to see Sommer's two little kiddos. Kenna had fun playing with Jack (Sommer's 2 year old) and we had fun eating Texas BBQ. Man that stuff was good. I abandoned my wife once the baby went down and Cyle came to pick me up for a man day the following day.Saturday was the game! Tyler flew in from New Mexico and his wife was nice enough to let him spend his birthday watching TCU slaughter BYU. It was a nice day and we were surrounded by very funny Mormon fans. A clone of JD was there cheering rather loudly and with too much energy, but the rest of the crowd was jaded, hopeless, and just there on the off chance that a miracle happened. It didn't, we lost. But we had a great time losing. We got to see another BYU roomate Jimmy Shaha and I even managed to see Glen from my lacrosse days.
Kenz drove up to Cyles house and so we all got back together on Saturday night and spent the weekend together. Cyle took us on base and showed us lots of tanks and artillery things. It was very cool to see all of the things that our tax dollars go toward. We had a great day of church, food, tanks, and football and Cyle's bachelor pad was very comfortable. I think Kenna's favorite part of the trip was jumping up and down on Cyle's leather couches. Or maybe it was blowing raspberries on the couches. Or maybe it was pretending to sleep on them. Anyway, she loved his couches.
Monday morning came and we were on a plane yet again. We had to wake Kenna up at 5AM to get to the airport on time. She managed to stay awake and stay in a good mood all the way to Detroit. Then we let her run in circles on the moving walkways during our hour layover and she got on to the plane from Detroit to Richmond completely worn out. She grabbed her binkie out of my hand and said "nigh night". She layed down, closed her eyes, and was dead asleep in less than 10 seconds. Kenz and I were confused and thought she was joking around or playing night night with us. Nope. She ran out of batteries just like that. We managed to get a pretty cute picture of it. We got home safely and had a great time.
Our Baby - All Texased Out
PS. Whenever Kenna is eating chicken nuggets, strips, or whatever form of chicken presents itself, she starts clucking like a chicken. It is a little morbid but it is really hard not to laugh.
