Family...THEN and NOW

The McKaskey's

1992....ish

2009

(This was so fun to have recreated, I'm sad that we were missing my cousins Christopher and Matthew in the picture though. I love all my family and am so thankful for each of them, it is sad to not be able to see each other but every few years. Thank you Uncle Stephen for the great idea and for providing to each of us all the wonderful pictures from the Rapid City trip)

Zoo, Friends, and Fall

The first week in November some friends and I took advantage of one of the last nice days left in Fall and headed out to the Omaha Zoo (I think it was the last day we saw the 50's on the thermometer). We had a lot of fun, there were so many HUGE leaves that had fallen from the trees. There was a baby sea lion swimming with his parents that was making some extremly strange sounds....kind of sounded like a pig dying. And we learned that elephants like giant pumpkins. This was so cute- Tyler and his best bud Jackson holding hands

Family Fun

We are blessed to live in the same city as Jack's brothers family so that our kids can grow up together! Here are a few random pictures from recently.

Having a little Wii Band Hero fun, Jack does a mean "ABC" by the Jackson 5....oh yeah, you know you wanna hear it
Cutie Allison, running away with the drum stick

Bekah and I decided to have a little "scheduled" fun for the kids, since they seem to fight less that way. They baked sugar cookies and then got to decorate them. Allison could've decorated them for hours if Bekah would have let her, she didn't even seem to mind she couldn't eat them because of food allergies. We also made trees with sponge paints.

Jacob didn't do too much but play in Allison's play kitchen the whole time, but this is him saying "Mmmmmm!" to me after enjoying a sugar cookie.

Denver Trip

A couple weeks after my brother's wedding we headed down to Denver, CO for the wedding of one of Jack's friends from BYU. As we started the 8 hour drive we quickly realized it was TOO close to the last 8 hour drive we took to Rapid City.... bad idea, realized a little too late. We finally made it there, all alive, and much relieved to be out of the car.

We had a great time seeing old friends and also took advantage of all the great shopping and food destinations we don't have available here in Omaha (examples being Deseret Book, REI, Costa Vida and the beloved Chick-Fil-A)

Denver, Colorado LDS Temple Our friend Abbie

The lovely Bride Megan- we're so happy for you, thanks for inviting us, Congrats!

On Saturday it started snowing, and snowed all day and night. When we woke up and started getting packed and ready to leave Jack had to go dig the car out. As of then, it seemed like a ton of snow to me, 3-5" I think....until the recent snow we just received(...more on that on a later blog post.) Anyhow, I love the way snow looks on trees, pure beauty!

On the way back from both trips the boys started getting really mad at us the last 30 minutes, so I decided to entertain them by us all taking silly pictures. It worked like magic, they were quite entertained and made it home. Here's a collage of some of them,

I'm going to call it "Mission: Survive"

Sunset

I still love to collect Sunrise and Sunset pictures, they truly amaze me and remind me to be thankful for each new day I have to be on this earth. This was the sunset on our drive home from Rapid City in October.

Busy Times Part III

While in Rapid City we were able to have some Halloween fun with all the cousins. We went to the civic center for trick-or-treating where they had a huge carnival set up...basically a bunch of random games that after you play you get a handful of candy. I'm not sure what all those teenagers were thinking but they would have a handful of good candy (ie. chocolate) to hand to Jacob and then when they saw him they would dump out their handful and reach in and grab taffy. Taffy??? Really? Does he look like an age of someone who can eat taffy? Sheesh, needless to say Jack and I had a pretty stinky stash of candy this year...better luck next year ;) Tyler was dressed as Batman and Jacob as a ninja.

Here's a few of his cousins dressed up too!

While in Rapid City we also did a little sightseeing at Crazy Horse Monument. It'll be cool one day...when it's finished...but probably not in my lifetime...or my kids' lifetime either. (If you don't know what it is go to that link and read up.) We had some yummy Buffalo Burgers and Buffalo stew at the restaurant there though, delicious!

My sister Valeriane, and her daughter Montana hiding.

Blessings

Happy Thanksgiving to all our family and friends!

We have been so blessed and thank our Heavenly Father

everyday for everything we have,

including all of you who love and support us!

Busy Times- Part II

Here are some family pictures of each of my siblings that my Uncle took, and some other family pictures! (In order from Oldest to Youngest)

(sister) Melinda and Darren

(sister) Valeriane, Sean, Denali, Elias, and Montana

(sister) Nicole, Mark, and Anna

(sister) Jennifer-Lee, Daniel, Anakha-Marie, Olea, and Kailani (and baby Sophie on the way)

Us!

(brother) Jonathan and Christie

and the best for last, little bro Dennis-Michael (he's a handsome fellow huh? well guess what?! He's single!)

All the McKaskey grandkids, this picture will already be outdated in January!

I apparently didn't take a picture of my parents together, so this is the closest I could find

My dad's whole family

Tyler's thoughts...

Every week Tyler's preschool class concentrates on a different letter of the alphabet, on Thursdays they can bring something for the "sound box" that starts with the letter for the week. This morning Jack was talking to Tyler about what he could bring and they were talking about different "H" words.
Jack : "How about, Hot, like Hot mama, like your hot mama!"
Tyler: "No, daddy, mommy is not hot"
Jack : " She's not hot? Is she cold?"
Tyler: "No, mommy is not hot, and she is not cold, Daddy, she is just right!"

Thanks Tyler!

Busy Times- Part I

We've had a busy last few weeks and there are just too many pictures that I'd like to share....so hopefully I can narrow them down to just a "few"...through out a few posts probably.

First off, at the end of October my parents came through Omaha with Jenn-Lee's girls, Anakha-Marie, Olea, and Kailani, on their way up to Rapid City for the wedding. It was fun to play with them for few days.

Next, my brother Jonathan got married to a wonderful girl, Christie, (Welcome to the family Christie!!!!), on October 29 in Rapid City.

Her dress was absolutely beautiful, it was perfect for her

That day also happened to be my grandparents 59th wedding anniversary, Happy Anniversary G-ma and G-pa!!! (I LOVE this picture, they always loved to dance...at least that's what I remember, and the look they were giving each other while dancing was just love in its purest form, I love them so much, and wish I could see them more often.)

It was so nice to see all my family together, it was been WAY too long. I haven't seen some siblings for 4 years, many of us met each other's children for the first time this week. Jack and I always talk about how interesting it is how we are all so different now and how we each married someone SO different. We all live in different states now, its hard to get together. Here are some pictures ....MANY more to come!

Me, Baby Anna, Nicole and Valeriane (two of my sisters)

Me and Uncle Robert

Me and Uncle Stephen

Me and Aunt Kathy (Stephen's lovely wife)

Jacob got tired (literally) of sitting around waiting for all the pictures to be taken for the wedding and decided the stairs were the perfect place to park his caboose :)

At the wedding reception/dinner they had a bunch of disposable cameras and a photo scavenger hunt for all the kids to do, it had things like "a pretty girl in a white dress, a kiss, a cake, etc." Pretty nifty idea huh? Tyler loved having a camera to call his own.

This is Tyler and his cousin Montana trying to entertain themselves during the picture taking

Is this too gross to post? Oh well, its funny- Jacob somehow got a hold of my iPod while we were waiting for the ceremony to begin and somehow managed to a get to a sports scores app. (I really have no idea how he got there, since I obviously don't look at that stuff, and Jack doesn't use my iPod...he just must be a typical boy, bored so he was just checking the scores while pickin' his)

Snow?!

Last week we saw snow in the forecast, but didn't really believe it'd snow...well this is what we woke up to! Close to 4" of snow from late Friday night to midmorning Saturday. It was beautiful! How often do you see such lush, green grass underneath that much snow? Not very often that's for sure. So, since it was so early to have snow we decided to dress up our snowman in halloween attire. Tyler's only memory of last winter was throwing snowballs at me, so that's what he spent most of his time doing, this snow was PERFECT snowball/snowman snow! Jacob spent most of his time outside trying to decided if he wanted to walk into the mysterious white stuff.

This picture was just too darn cute to not include! He finally decided to venture into the snow and fell down, he wasn't too happy about the cold bum and wet freezing hands.