Kids DO the Darndest Things...

When I was a kid it was a common thing for the children's choir to sing in "big church." We did Sunday morning specials, holiday programs, etc. There was always a kid doing something to get the attention of the congregation - I was the kid who pulled her dress over her head. Now, at first it was out of embarrassment. I somehow thought that by hiding my face from the crowd, I was somehow saving myself from humiliation by showing everyone what color underwear I had on. Then my mom started coming up to the front before we sang each time, shaking her finger and telling me not to pull my dress over my head. Then - it became out of spite ;)

Sunday morning during church the kids sang. Zeke was somewhere in the back - he isn't much for singing in front of a crowd, like many 5-year old boys. Yana, however, stood right out in the front. I'd like to tell you what song they sang. I'd like to tell you that I noticed not only how cute Zeke and Yana were, but how cute ALL of the kids on stage were. I'd even like to tell you that I laughed at the little girl just like me who pulled her dress over her head (there's one in every crowd!) BUT - me (and the rest of the congregation) can only remember this face:

Once she saw the reaction and laughter that it got, it continued through the remainder of her time on stage. Instantly, Jeff and I became those parents that shake their finger and mouth erratically for their child to stop doing whatever it is their doing to solicit laughter. She saw us, grinned as big as she could and resumed the face.

And for the rest of the afternoon, on through the Easter party and egg hunt, this face is the one that everybody saw - every time you asked, every time you took her picture, every time it was mentioned. It's famous.

While at the time, all we wanted was for her to stop, we look back now and laugh at the silly things kids do.

Frosty's Anatomy

For Christmas this year, my cousin got Zeke and Yana a snowman kit. It came complete with a corncob pipe, a button nose and two eyes made out of coal. (Yes, I had to sing the song in my head...) It also came with 3 buttons, a scar and a top hat.

Saturday afternoon, we bundled the kids up in layers of socks, pants, shirts, coats, gloves - the whole shebang. I got my camera ready, opened the side door and off they went! All of the fear and dread of wading knee deep through snow immediately disappeared as I watched our two little munchkins throw themselves down in the powdery white and laugh as hard as they could. It was quite something to see!

For the next 45 minutes or so, Jeff and the kids tried to make ball-resembling formations out of the very powdery snow.

We did the best we could for his body, but his head ended looking more like a large potato. It was pretty flat on the front. We secured it as best we could.

While Jeff got all of the necessitites to make a snowman look more "Frosty"-like, I went in search of arms for our little guy. I found two tree branches and inserted one in each side. Jeff weighed down the top hat so it wouldn't blow away and placed it on our snowman's head.

Zeke and Yana put his eyes, nose, pipe, and buttons in the appropriate places. I finished him off by wrapping the scarf around his neck.

We finished up our day in the snow with a snowball fight, some snow angels in the backyard and cleaning off Jeff's car, which we finally found under several inches of snow.

Car Show

Last night we took the kids to the Auto Show at the Fair and Expo Center - the newly combined New Car Show and Carl Casper Show. The kids and my Dad had a blast checking out all of the cars - me, Jeff and my mom had even more fun checking out the crowd.

On the way in, Dad dropped us off at the door. We realized that he had taken a child's ticket and had to wait for him at the door.

Zeke was beyond thrilled when the owners of this race car let him try out the drivers seat for a picture.

Yana did not want her picture made until we found this pink race car.

On our way back to meet mom, we wandered into the new car section and happened upon Spiderman about to leave.

And then Scooby-Doo, who was about to leave but stopped at the bottom of the stage to have a picture made with two of his fans.

Yana took a spot behind the driver's seat...

...and Jeff found his dream car.

At the end of the night, Zeke and Yana got to take a different kind of ride out of the car show.

Student of the Month

Every month at Zeke's school, each class picks a student of the month. On Friday when he came home from school we opened his folder to find that his teacher had selected him as the student of the month for December. We knew it wouldn't be long before this happened, due to the fact that everytime we've talked to his teacher she has bragged about what a wonderful, adorable amd pleasant student he is.

This morning in the cafeteria they had an assembly for them. They got a snack, certificate, door prize and a handshake from the principal. Jeff had to be at school for a test, but I was able to attend. I was very glad to be there. His teacher said that he smiles all the time and he was doing just that when he got his certificate.

I will try and repost this picture later so it will be clearer. I uploaded it from my cell phone, so I think it compressed it. Anyway - we are very proud of Zeke and how well he is doing in school!

For Christmas, my dad got Zeke a radio control Spiderman helicopter. I'm sure that in the world of technology we live in today it's probably not that big of a deal, but I thought it was one of the coolest things I'd ever seen.

The day after Christmas we dropped Zeke and Yana off at their mom's for a few days and decided that we would make sure the helicopter was in proper working order ;) We found out after a few test runs and some online reviews on the Radio Shack website that this helicopter was not the most well made piece of equipment.

Don't worry - Zeke was able to enjoy the helicopter for a few test runs before it bit the dust.

It was, however, shortly after this picture that a blade on the helicopter broke. We've not yet been able to fix it :(

This Is Becoming a Frequent Thing

We're not happy about it. AND - they're using OUR driveway to get in and out.

Bed Head and Big Shoes

Yana went to bed with a head of wet hair. I found her this morning wrapped up in her blankets like a burrito. She woke up with a Diana Ross hairstyle.

Zeke tried Jeff's nursey-man shoes on for size. They might be a little big ;)
(I think I surprised him with the camera!)

It's Happening Again

I don't think I need to further explain. BUT - incase you've missed my recent blogs, go a few and you'll understand what this is about.

Wedding Album

Several people have been asking me about my wedding pictures. Since I seem to keep leaving the big album at work, I am posting a link to the online album. I uploaded all of my pictures to walmart.com so that people could view them. If you have any trouble with the link, just let me know and I will e-mail it to you. Enjoy!

http://photos.walmart.com/share/p=69311199204856464/l=12920316/g=7002878/cobrandOid=1011/otsc=SYE/otsi=SALB

My, How They Grow

I was getting some pictures off my camera yesterday when I found a few on the internal memory from over the summer. We had the kids every other week and for some of that Jeff was on third shift. It was a pretty rough summer as far as coordinating schedules and finding time to spend with the kiddos went, but we made it happen. Here a few of my favorite images that I found.

Yana wearing Jeff's tennis shoes - always fascinated with the big shoes.

Sometimes the toy box can be like a treasure chest of fun stuff you haven't seen in a long time.

Those were the days....

My Worst Fear

Recently, Jeff and I acquired some new neighbors. We were rather excited at this prospect, as our formers neighbors were a little older, a little weird and not so friendly. They arrived a week or so ago. I guess I should say they moved in. It's not long we mail-ordered them or something. They seemed to be a nice Asian family. There also seemed to be A LOT of them. Jeff thought immediately that we would get along well because I'd be able to translate (ha ha...).

For the first several days, all seemed quiet. A few times we saw some children playing in the backyard; Jeff mentioned that he noticed the strong smell of Chinese take-out in the driveway. But - yesterday, my worst fear became real as I had feared when I saw so many of them living next door.

We pulled in from church and they were PARKING THEIR CARS IN THE FRONT YARD.

As we pulled farther back there was a rather creepy individual hanging over their deck staring in to our backyard smoking, who stared at us as wel walked into the house. Later that afternoon, we came back out and there had been a cupcake thrown onto our back patio. I was livid.

Either we're going to be moving, or I'm putting a loveseat and a refrigerator on the back porch ;)

We Got Elfed

We also copied off the Sirles. But who cares....we're way funnier.

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=1230263459

FYI

I have in my hand a CD of wedding proofs. YEA! As soon as I have a chance I will upload some of my faves. SO exciting!!

Thanks again to Renee Lewis for doing a fantabulous job - she ROCKS!

Big Eaters

At the ripe ages of 3 and 5, Yana and Zeke ate for dinner tonight (between the two of them) 5 hot dogs, 4 servings of mac n' cheese, 3 servings of fruit, 1 serving of jello, two cucumber slices, two banana popsicles and two cups of milk.

Yana is now reading a story with Miss Carole, Zeke is laying miserably on the couch, quite aware of the fact that he has eaten WAY too much.

Oh, to be young again ;)

Honeymoon: Part 1

For those of you who haven't yet seen photos from the wedding, you can check out a sampling here: reneelewisphotography.typepad.com/photos/mccarty

After the reception, we stayed the night at the Executive Inn. On the way to finding our room, several people commented at how dressed up we were and wondered where "they were going." Duh.

We went back to our house to get our luggage and drop off some items from the wedding and reception that we wanted to keep. We picked up Jeff's luggage and then went to my house to get my luggage and drop off my wedding dress. Mom and Dad were going to drop us back off at the hotel since we planned to take the complimentary shuttle to the airport the next morning. When we pulled into the parking lot, Jeff realized that he had left our room keys on the table at the house. He ran in and had some more made for us.

In the room, we had taken 3 boxes of leftover reception food (yum) for dinner. One problem - no microwave. We headed to the hotel restaurant to find that it was closed. No microwave, no restaurant - no car. Back to the room and we ordered pizza.

The next morning we headed to the airport about 5:30 am. We had no problems checking in, went through security, got to the gate and boarded our plane. Our first stop was Atlanta. In Atlanta we switched planes for Miami. In front of us sat a couple who were obviously honeymooners as well. The woman still had her hair in a disheveled updo from the night before, and she and her husband were wearing matching Corona t-shirts, tapered leg jeans and identical K-Swiss tennis shoes. We later found out that we would be enjoying the wonderful privelege of cruising for the next 7 days with them.

Upon arriving in Miami, we immediately decided that it was a place we probably never wanted to be again. Between finding few people who spoke English, almost not having all of our baggage and seeing a woman riding a very large tricycle I soon realized that I was in the largest circus freak show ever. We stood in line for what seemed like 3 hours to take a Greyhound transfer to the pier and had our tickets taken by a very unhappy woman with very bad hair. Frightening.

At the pier, we made it through security, felt like that was smooth sailing (no pun intended), only to come into a very large room with about 3000 other people who were trying to do the same thing that we were. At that point, I had begun to feel very sick with a fever coming on.

From that point on, it took us about 2.5 hours to get on the ship, into our room, only to be called down for an insanely disorganized drill 15 minutes later. It was very long. Jeff refused to participate and put his life vest on and a woman in front of us had a major throw down with one of the Carnival crew members. The remainder of the evening consisted of a lot of eating, a lot of tylenol and a lot of sleep. This would continue through Tuesday morning when my fever finally broke and we arrived in Cozumel.

Here a couple of photos of the in between when I actually felt like walking around amongst the public:

Jeff on the top deck of the boat, after he figured out where the door was.

The cabin steward left a little "sculpture" for us after he found out that we were honeymooners.

Operation Christmas Child 2007

We're in Atlanta serving for Operation Christmas Child. We arrived last night and today was our first actual day to work in the warehouse. I will post some pictures of that in the near future, but more of the fun began AFTER the work day was done.

We left the warehouse and went to Long Horn Steakhouse. Shannon managed to freak out most of the restaurant employees and a small child by having Feipe at the table with us.


As we were leaving, Jeff mentioned that his face was itching. When we got in the car, he turned the light on and had hives on his face. We headed back to the hotel for Benadryl.

In the girls room, Jess cut Cynthia's hair. Katrina decided that she wanted hers cut as well. Fortunately enough, she had enough for Locks for Love. (Cynthia mentioned that she would never send it, because her own had been sitting in a closet in a ponytail holder for the past several months.)

Before:

Meanwhile, Jeff was highly effected by the drowsy side effects of his Benadryl.

After:

And the ponytail:

"How Quirky..." Jeff's Results

Your Quirk Factor: 64%

You're so quirky, it's hard for you to tell the difference between quirky and normal. No doubt about it, there's little about you that's "normal" or "average."

How Quirky Are You?

Turkey Day

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

How Quirky Are You?

Your Quirk Factor: 49%

You're a pretty quirky person, but you're just normal enough to hide it. Congratulations - you've fooled other people into thinking you're just like them!

How Quirky Are You?

This is Jess' quirk factor. I have a feeling that Jeff's will be much higher. Check back for his results later. Just for fun, take the quiz and leave us your results in the comment field!

The McQuirkys

Welcome to our blog! We are the McQuirkys. For those of you who know is, I don't believe that name needs any further explanation. For those of you who don't, continue checking our blog and you will begin to understand ;)

Hopefully we can use this to update our friends and family about all our latest news and well, quirks!