Standing

Look who pulled up all on his own! He wanted to come towards me, and his upper body was moving forward, but his feet wouldn't budge, and he toppled over. He'll figure out those feet move soon, I'm guessing!

Party week!

Brian and I had his work Christmas party on Wednesday night. We went to a Japanese Steakhouse, and it was yummy! We dropped the kids off at church and then friends brought them back to their house until we were done. I told them to pack their back with things they wanted to bring. I didn't realize what Brooks had packed, until I unpacked him on Thursday. Three essential items.

I always wonder what kids are thinking with their eclectic choice of play things

Last night I attended a work Christmas party with a friend, whose husband is on deployment with the navy. I set the gingerbread house up earlier in the day, and left it for Brian to decorate with the kids. They did a great job! Kenna is very perfectionistic and wanted it to be exactly like the picture (it was a from a kit). They had lots of fun with Daddy!

When I got home I added some "snow" to the edges of the roof, and it looked done!

They can't wait to eat it!

Snow Day!

Well, when you grow up in Canada, there is almost no circumstance which should require schools to close. I remember VERY few snow days. I should have grown up here! A snow day was called, so we got an unexpected day off (both Sonny & Jack have 1 parent that is a teacher). I was able to finish off the last of the Christmas shopping, yay! At least it actually DID snow...sometimes they worry too much and cancel school and nothing happens!

In the morning...no snow yet, but still a little left from last week. Global warming? I think not.

And it started to come down around 10am or so! Good coverage everywhere.

Then it started raining, and so it's all heavy, wet, icy snow. But there was a bit of accumulation, as you can see. It's melting very rapidly today!

Guitars and Stockings

Brooks has an unparalleled zest for life! We love it. He is very obsessed with sports, music, hats, and a new one...dinosaurs. He's all about them. Crazy ones like a dromi-a-saurus and a stigi-mullosk. I have no idea how to spell those. He loves to discuss which ones were 'herba-voys' or 'carni-voys'. When eating lettuce last week, he declared himself to be a herba-voy, because he eats only plants:-) His enthusiasm is quite catching too. He makes an instrument out of anything that makes noise. Here's another rock star moment, with his bandmate, Jack. If Brooks likes music, you can bet everyone around him will too!

This is a fuzzy one, but you can see Brooks' tongue. He sticks it out in serious concentration when he is "playing" his guitar

Rock Stars!

 It's a Rein-dolph, as Kenna said in the store. We decided this rein-dolph was the cutest one of all. Perfect for little LG.

Grey's stocking!

Snowmen, Gingerbread men, and a reindeer!

Kennedy Family Music

I'm finally doing this...because I just now took the time to figure out how. It's amazing what you can learn when you try (and when it's a snow day = day off!). Here's the backstory:

My family sings/plays music together. Always. My Dad was in a rockin' rock band when I was a baby, Orion. My mom has their 8-tracks. Yikes. It's doubtful I'll ever figure out how to get those online, haha!

We really have no recordings of ourselves, other than homemade videos. Cause we never did anything professionally, like paid a studio. After I got married, in the summer of 2003, we coerced a friend and sound guy at our church to record us from the mics. It worked! Never done it before or since, I'm sure our friend put some effort into making that work for us. It was a 'shotgun' type session. I was in town for the weekend, and we did 26 songs in only a few hours. No retakes, no practicing. Just what we've done a thousand times over the years.

The results were great! But not without their mistakes. I will post a few of my faves from the Kennedy Family recording session. If you beg me, I'll post more. I just don't want to force you to hear stuff you don't like. Instrumentation throughout is done by my Dad, and brothers, Brent & Jared.

This is the Doxology, by Lauryn and Darla. I need my sister, she makes me sound better. Sound balance is a little off, sorry. You get the idea. Lauryn does the harmony, I do the melody. It's gospel/regular church music.

Infamous Brian-foot-in-mouth incident. He comes home from work (we still lived in NY, so the CD was still new), this song is playing on my mp3 player. He walks in the door and immediately says, "What is this crap?, Shut it off". He's not the biggest country music fan ever to roam the planet, that's for sure. "uhh, honey, that's me" - ooooh was he ever sorry. His excuse was, it sounded SO GOOD, that he thought it was Faith Hill or some other *horrible* singer. A feeble attempt at redemption. I don't let him forget that one. (I really thought it was funny actually).

This is Thanks to You, originally by Emmylou Harris I believe. It's more blue-sy, or something. Darla, melody, Dave (Dad), and Lauryn on harmonies

This is He Stopped Loving Her Today, originally by George Jones. It's arguably the greatest country love song of all time, and my Dad does a great job with it. Lauryn and I were being silly with the ooo's and aaaa's in the background.

This is Through It All. Gospel/church sound to it I guess. Lauryn does the first verse, me the second, my Dad the third. It is sort of a testimony song - the words have a lot of meaning to them in light of my mom's brain aneurysm in 2001. We sang it a lot after that.

This is Traveling Soldier. Likely my fave we did that day, only because...we had NEVER done it before, ever. And it turned out. My bros, sis and I loved it (a Dixie Chicks song), my dad didn't know it, so we just said, "it goes like this" and we did it, and it worked. Me on melody, Lauryn with harmony. She is so good at harmonies y'all. Incredible, really.

Brian & Darla

Brian and Darla were both born in 1979.
Darla is 3 months and 8 days older than Brian.

Brian is 10 inches taller than Darla.
{these facts are very important to Kenna - Boys can be younger, but still taller, than girls}

Brian met Darla in 1998, in Indianapolis, Indiana, during a Christmas Conference for the Institute in Basic Life Principles (and the Advanced Training Institute).
{Darla doesn't remember this *incredible encounter*}

Darla met Brian in 1999, in Oak Brook, Illinois, at the IBLP/ATI headquarters.
{Brian reminds Darla of their previous introduction = blank stares}

 

Dating

Brian and Darla began dating in October 2002, and were engaged on December 28th, 2002.
Brian moved from Balston Spa, NY to Fairport, NY (Rochester area) in January 2003.

Engaged! In Central Park, NYC

Brian and Darla were married in June 2003 in the Toronto area, and lived in Fairport, NY where Brian worked as an inside salesman for Promark Electronics. Darla had to give up her job in accounting (in Toronto), when she moved to the USA.

Married!

In June 2004, Brian and Darla moved from NY to Virginia, and Brian traded in his white collar job for a blue collar one. There have been lots of jobs since then. {Details are boring}. In the end, the bills get paid and everyone loves what they currently do.

Brian has always had better hair and taken longer showers than Darla.

Lots of people say that Brian and Darla look alike.{Darla thinks she's just a liiiiiiiittle bit better looking though}

Brian is very sarcastic. Darla is very gullible. Darla is not sure how great this really is. Brian is not sure how smart Darla really is.

Brian and Darla will argue about music radio stations forever.

But they will love each other longer than that.

Brian and Darla are living their fairytale. Minus a few pesky details like a castle and a pizza restaurant {again, details are always so boring}.

Goodbye Indy!

All pictures are from the article in the Indy Star, HERE. 

Memories! It's amazing how one picture can bring in such a flood of them! Someone posted a link to the above article on facebook, all I noticed was the picture. It's Indy, informally. Or the Indianapolis Training Center. Brian and I met here in 1998. He lived there for over a year while going through a counselling program and working with juvenile delinquents, (I was just up from Chicago for a conference). We still love to tell the stories!

Red carpet. For some people, this would trigger a thought about the Oscars perhaps, or some other Hollywood event. Not me. The first thing that springs to mind is "Mr. Gothard". He has such a penchant for nice red carpet. It works for him. He even has it in his house (I used to take turns watching over his mother when she was in ill health. Seeing the red carpet in his childhood home made me laugh). It also reminds me of cleaning that red carpet. There were NO spots allowed. At one point that job was part of my secretarial duties, to be done just before 5pm. Hands, knees, a cleaning solution and a metal spoon was discovered to be the fastest way of getting those dark spots out!

The main hallway, just off the lobby

Everyone has something to say about IBLP or ATI or Mr Gothard. It seems to be quite polarizing, really. Most of it is negative, if you are doing an internet search. Even though not all our (Brian & I) collective experiences were perfect or perfectly handled, we have emerged better people, and therefore, have generally positive things to share. Most of the things that "people" pick on aren't what we would anyway. Once you are involved with an organization very closely, you see the flaws, because you see the people. But you can always see Jesus in it too, if you are willing to grow.

The main conference room. I didn't even live here or go to school here, and I've spent countless hours in this room. I can't imagine how many seminars Brian sat through in there!

Through the Basic Seminar, Advanced Training Institute and further work and education with this organization (along with good level headed parents/parenting) has had us come out on the other side "ahead". We were young children/teens, and learning things that many adults have never heard (as I'm an adult now, and coming to find out). So we entered our adult lives with deeper walks with the Lord, deeper understanding of how to search out Truth. Our emotional state, marriage, parenting/children...almost every aspect of life has been touched by something we learned, and so that makes it a positive experience, and one that I would do again (with minor changes:-).

On the 13th floor. Used to be a nice restaurant, when it was a hotel. I only ever used it as a hangout spot during the Christmas conference:-)

More 13th floor! - Beauty. Elvis stayed here, after he performed his very last live concert.

The pictures never do it justice. But this lobby definitely had a wow effect, the first time you saw it. Funny lobby story - circa 1998. I was in town for a Christmas conference, Brian lived there and was on security duty that night. Since I (and my friends) didn't live/belong there, the rules for us were somewhat lax (meaning, if we broke them, no one would notice). So we left the Training Center, and went out to eat at Steak & Shake, and played mafia...and we were out until 3am. We, not living there, never considered something...Indy was home to some serious juvenile delinquents (undergoing rehabilitation). They lock that place down like a jail. We couldn't even drive into the parking lot, it was all chained off. Then the horrible thought occured...what if Mr. Gothard was in his office? He was always up that late. Darn. We snuck up to the building, and tried the side door into the back of the lobby. Locked. So we went up to the front. Locked. But security (aka Brian) was at the front desk, and he let us in with a glare. Mr Gothard was not in his office, and we never suffered any consequence for our evening excursion and exceeding lights out by 5 hours or something...Whew!

The main lobby.

A year later, Brian came to work in Chicago. I remember being re-introduced in the dining area. Where he loudly announced, "I remember you two, aren't you the ones that went out at Indy and didn't come back until 3?" Infamy. Well, needless to say, there is no statute of limitation at places like that, and my friend Audra declared Brian to be bad news. What was he thinking even bringing that up (so loudly)? "He is going to be trouble", she said. How prophetic. He was!

Goodbye Indy. Thanks for the memories!