Big News: Penelope is 2!

Penny is two years-old. I cannot believe my eyes when I look at her. It is hard to believe that two years ago was the very first time that I saw my precious baby girl. I remember being so nervous throughout the whole day...in the delivery room I was as pale as a white sheet but I tried to play it off like I was doing alright, for Brittany. But honestly, I was petrified.

Of what, I'm not certain. Maybe I wouldn't be the father she deserved, maybe she wouldn't like me, maybe something horrible could have gone wrong in the delivery...

But so far, I think all my fears have been for nothing. Both Brittany and Penny came out of the delivery room (thank God for that), and I can't judge myself of how good of a father I am but I know that she loves me because of the way she greets me when I get home from work. It never gets old, as soon as I open the door I hear "DAAYYYDDDEEEE!" and she runs up and gives me multiple hugs. It's one of the best parts of my day.

I'm trying to cherish every second I can get with her while she is this tiny. Because as soon as I know it, I'll be watching her drive off to prom, watching her meet our future son-in-law, walking her down the aisle...meeting my grandbabies...

Okaaay, sorry, jumping a little ahead of myself! Penny is two and I'm cherishing her while I can!

Her party was a blast, we had tons of family and friends come over and hangout in the backyard. The backyard was stacked with a trampoline, bounce house, bird house painting and an outdoor movie! I almost think that some of the adults had more fun than the kids, haha! It was great to see everyone and to see Penny have such a wonderful time as a toddler.

These moments are the ones that we need to cherish.

Happy Birthday Baby Girl!

Christmas 2011 at the Burkey's

2011 Holiday Christmas List for Geeky Dads

Are you wondering what to get me for Christmas or my birthday? Yeah, that’s right, you’ve probably forgotten that my birthday is coming up as well since it is between Xmas and New Years, it’s ok I’m used to it ;). Or are you just wondering what to get your husband, son, boy friend? This is the best gifts to get a man like me on that special day in December.

Get ready to get your mind blown with great ideas.

Amazon’s Kindle Fire - $199.99

Tablets are like the new black aren’t they? Well, this one is the real deal for an amazing price. Especially if your dude uses Amazon services already for music and movies, this will allow him to access all his files already on his Amazon account, plus FREE CLOUD STORAGE. If you don’t know what cloud storage is, just know that it is AWESOME and your man probably knows what it is. For the price (less than half the price of an iPad), this thing will be a REALLY popular gift this year. Especially paired with some Amazon Gift Cards.

Flat Screen HD TV - $300-$4,000

Quite a large price difference here eh? Well, it all depends how big of a TV your man is wanting to watch football on. An acceptable size around 32" could be around $300 while the new 80" can be in your living room for a whooping $4,000. Actually the 80" would be more like your living room is in your TV. Any who, there can never be too many televisions in the house, right guys?

Video Games - $30-$60

You know you hate Video Games, but men love them. There are TONS of games out right now that I’m sure you can find something just right. Games from Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield 3, Elder Scrolls Skyrim, Madden 2012, Legend of Zelda Skyward Sword, Uncharted 3…I can go on and on here. If you aren’t sure what game to get him, just grab a gift card to Gamestop or Best Buy and let him go nuts!

Manly Movies - Die Hard or Rambo - $10-$20 each

What guy doesn't love the classic action flicks where things blow up and guys rule all? The Die Hard series is amazing, the first one being the best and should be in every guy's collection. Sylvester Stallone takes everyone to guy heaven in the Rambo movies. Either one of these series is a given for every guy to own or to have at least seen.


Manly Shows - The Walking Dead or The Game of Thrones - $35-$50 each

The Walking Dead and The Game of Thrones cater to two different types of guys, or the same guy in my case ;). A zombie Apocalypse or a medieval political war drama? Both filled with amazing characters and storylines, both filled with tons of blood, sex and survival. What more could a guy ask for? If your dude owns these the Game of Thrones book series or the Walking Dead graphic novel might be a great addition!

Star Wars Ultimate FX Lightsaber - $30

Ignore the kids in this video. Raleigh and I are buying each other these for Christmas so we can flip around like a Jedi. These have to be the coolest toy lightsabers made and at a wonderful price. Don’t  lie, your dude is a kid at heart and when he picks this up he will feel the force coursing through his veins.

Weekend Grade: Micah's Birthday Weekend!

How would you grade your weekend? I would have to grade mine a big fat A+. This was one of the best weekends I’ve had in a long time and it was mostly lived through my little man’s excitement. Micah is now 7 (almost – his real bday is Wednesday). SEVEN freaking years old! Where has the time gone? I can’t believe he is that old.

I remember the first time I met the little guy, he was only 2 and was really shy to come down the steps at Kim and Randy’s house to say hi. Little did I know that he was so full of personality!! Hah. I love this little guy and I was so glad to hear him say things as “This is the best day of my life!” or “I wish this day would never end!” It made Brittany and my weekend to hear the little dude say those things. So glad he had a blast!

Now, you might be wondering what we did? WELLLLLLLL. It started on Saturday, we went to Chuck E. Cheese and had a blast with all of his friends and family. Then, came back home and opened all of his wonderful presents and within an hour we had a houseful of kids! We played Beyblades, video games and had an epic nerf sword and gun battle.

The next morning the kids woke up and played more video games and beyblades, we cooked them a feast of a breakfast and tried to recover some of our strength. Then, we took Micah and Penny to see the Christmas lights at Opryland Hotel and went out to eat at the Old Spaghetti Factory. We finally got home around 9 and gleefully fell back into our beds in excitement that the kids had such a great weekend.

So glad Micah had such a great birthday weekend before heading off to his Dad’s for a week and ½, next time we see him more excitement will ensue on Christmas Eve!

Weekend Grade: A+ with no hesitation.

Dance Central Video Remix

I'm Back!

It has been a while hasn’t it?

Well, that is because I ran out of time to post anything on this blog in November and early December. As many of you know I ended up having to pick up a second job to help with Britt’s slow photography season known as “winter.”

Things have been slowing down for the most part, getting used to handling two jobs at a time and having time with my family. For a little while I was working back at Best Buy, thanks again to Wil and Terrance for helping me get back in there. However after a few weeks of being there I got a part-time job offer at HCA for the group I used to intern with. I said my goodbyes to Best Buy and started work with Aaron Clifford, who is awesome!

This new part-time job allows me to work from home, which has been incredible for my family. I missed being home when I worked at Best Buy, so even if I’m working being at home is so much better than being in Rivergate.

Any who, we have had a busy holiday season with tons of family parties and events, on Thanksgiving we went over to Kim and Randy’s house for dinner. We celebrated Brittany and Micah’s birthday parties since I last posted. Micah’s birthday party was Mario themed and really seemed to be a huge hit, I hope that all the kids had a blast!

One thing I would like to mention though, is how many birthdays we have in the month of December just in our immediate family, here is the list:

• Brooke (Dec 6)
  
• Micah (Dec 14)
  
• Kim (Dec 21)
  
• Mom (Dec 24)
  
• Raleigh (Dec 29)
  
• Me (Dec 30)

So just about every week in December we were celebrating somebody’s birthday, it is pretty insane. Add on Brittany’s bday which is November 19th and Thanksgiving and that is almost a whole month and ½ of celebrating at least one thing each week! INSANE.

Christmas however was not as fun as any of us would like to admit. All of the details about that will come in another post because it is so long. But if you know me you should know what happened. Let’s just say the sick bug hit our house hard.

Now we are all recovering, getting back into our normal routines and playing with our new presents from Santa.

Tomorrow is my birthday! I’m excited to be 25 and I’m excited to see what my little dude got me – supposedly he is really excited to give it to me, so we shall see! I plan on getting back into the swing of things and posting again, so keep a look out for new posts!

WHCoC Fall Festival

Sunday was the real Halloween, even though we went trick or treating on Saturday. Which, by the way, I’m still not sure how I feel about that, but it seemed to work out well I suppose. So Sunday, after watching my Redskins get beat by the Lions…what?...Britt, Penny and I went to White House Church of Christ’s Fall Festival, and man it was fun! (Micah was at his Dad's)

They had the first annual Cornhole tournament, which lasted just about the whole time (from 3 to 6). Randy and I (Shake n Bake) came into the tournament with high expectations, but got knocked out in the third round by the newlyweds, Wade and Christy. Randy had never played before and I’ve only played twice, but we got a pretty good rhythm going on in the first two rounds. Wade and Christy were just too much to handle though after we were beating them 15-6, they came back as we couldn’t put them away and sunk a lot of three pointers.

After we got knocked out of the tourney I decided to just hang out and eat some chili, play with Penny, talk football and walk around with Britt as she took pictures (which you can see some below).

As the daylight started to fade the tournament came to an end, which led to the devotional and then trunk-or-treating for the kids. Penny fell asleep on me as we were handing out candy, and soon after that we decided to head home.

I was pretty upset we didn’t take the gold in the tournament, I think Randy even flipped a car in rage for loosing…but next year we will take the medal and we will be the greatest corn holers ever on the face on the planet. That’s what shake n bake does to you. Oh yes. Watch out.

……Sorry, a little Ricky Bobby just came out of me there.

Anyways, after the festival we relaxed at home, Brittany edited some pictures while I watched Big Ben loose two of my fantasy games for me when the Steelers lost to the Saints. Then, we watched a killer (literally) new show on AMC called The Walking Dead. I absolutely loved it, and will review it soon on this blog because I think everyone should check it out!

So with that, the Halloween weekend ends and I’m back to work…let’s hope this week goes by as fast as last week!

Halloween Weekend!

Trick or Treat! YEAH!

Well, another busy weekend for the Burkey household. It was filled with hockey games, photoshoots, fall festivals and not to mention Halloween!

Work ended on Friday and I went to Micah’s hockey practice with little Pen-Pen, which was kind of funny because both Brittany and Derek had to work, leaving the step-parents (or “two-parents”) there cheering Micah on. He is getting so great at skating it isn’t even funny, such a huge improvement from about a month ago.

The rest of the night was spent eating at TGI Fridays and watching a scary movie to celebrate the Halloween weekend, The Crazies. Honestly, I liked the movie even though there were a lot of negative reviews on it.

Saturday was the busiest day of the weekend. Micah had a pre-game show where his team ran drills before a high school hockey game, then he came back home with us to go trick-or-treating! Jason got there early and helped me finish up the Halloween decorations as company started to arrive for our chili night.

We had a lot of people come over and enjoy the chili and trick or treating festivities, Meredith, Ryan and their baby Haley came, Mark brought his son Carson and Beatlejuice (Matt), and Randy and Kim. All of us went trick or treating while Jason stayed behind and gave out the candy (thanks man!)

Micah’s bowser costume was the talk of the street among the kids while all of the parents couldn’t get over Matt’s Beatlejuice costume, actually Matt took about seven to ten pictures with random people as we were walking around.

Honestly, it felt like New York City in our neighborhood. This year was probably the most kids I’ve seen trick or treating in a long time, which was awesome! I’ve seen the hype of Halloween fall over the years, so it was great to see as many people as we did on Saturday night.

Micah got a ton of candy, and as usual let me have all of the chocolate (he doesn’t like chocolate surprisingly). So, Halloween is always a good night for me as well, lol. The night ended with Brittany, Micah and I camping out in the play room, snacking out on some candy while watching Back to the Future and Cloudy with the Chance of Meatballs.

Halloween 2010 was a success in my book, I really think Micah, Carson, Penny and Haley all had a wonderful time. Isn’t that what it’s all about?

Next post will consist of the Sunday happenings, pictures of us trick or treating will be up soon!

Halloween Party 2010

Halloween 2010 started early at our house and it was awesome.

We decided to have a kid-centric celebration for all of Micah’s friends filled with costumes, piñatas, candy, pumpkins and a great hay ride. Not to mention some great games played on the Wii.

Everyone showed up, from Mario from Super Mario Bros. to Raven from Teen Titans. Even the adults dressed up with Zohan, Mongo, cowboys and girls, Jason and a Werewolf all coming to hang at the Burkey house.

Micah dressed up as Bowser, though it barely stayed on as he ran around the backyard and house with his friends. It is a great costume though, made by his two-mom (awesome job Amanda!) and was the hit among the kids.

Brittany planned on going as about three different things, even buying a couple costumes but she was so busy that she never had the chance to change into any of them. She had a blast though, and didn’t mind not getting a chance to change.

I went as a werewolf, it was a last second attempt of some sort of costume. I just threw on some overalls, a plaid shirt and a werewolf mask and I seemed to fit the part. However, the mask is a bit scary so I took it off for most of the party for the kid’s sake. So for most of the party I just looked like a hillbilly since the overalls didn’t fit well.

Jason and I had fun scaring everyone that went on the hayride. Our conversations as we were waiting for the truck to come down the road were very entertaining. I’m surprised the police weren’t called on us a few times, as we were hiding from cars driving by on the road, but maybe we are just that good at hiding.

The kids loved it when we started chasing the trailer and laughed even harder at me when I chased after the trailer for a second time. Long story short: I thought Jason got left behind so I went back for him, only to realize he was riding on the back of the trailer. Good times lol.

All in all Micah had a blast, and I’m pretty sure all of his friends loved it. I’m glad that we were able to throw such a big kids party. Nobody got hurt, nothing really got broken, Mongo wrecked havoc on the kids and we all slept like a rock after the party.

Happy Halloween! Thanks to my wonderful wife for putting most of this together and thanks to my parents, Britt's parents, Anita and Raleigh and Brooke for helping in the kitchen and setting up decorations!

Pictures below!