Merry Christmas!

Greetings Everyone,

It is so hard to believe that Christmas it almost upon us once again. I am always reminded as we enter into the season of how truly blessed we are as a family. I am so thankful that we worship a God that sent his son into the world to save us all and I pause to always remember that is why we celebrate the Christmas season. I am so blessed to have the loving, beautiful, and kind wife that I have in Cheryl and I rejoice daily that we have our wonderful son Cody who brings such joy to our lives.

You will find a great assortment of pictures in this blog thanks to Cheryl keeping things up through most of the year. We are even toying with the idea for next year eliminating sending out Christmas cards and just have everyone visit our blog site, especially considering how difficult it is going to be for the mail system in the coming years.

As we enter the New Year we are excited because Cheryl is going back to work. I am thrilled that we will once again have 2 incomes. For the remainder of this year, she has been hired to be the permanent substitute working full time on areas of need that the school has and then next year she will become a full time 5th grade teacher. She will be teaching at the school in our neighborhood which is also the school that Cody goes to.

I am still with PetSmart and thrilled to be working for such an outstanding company. It still may be retail but I don’t work the insane hours that so many of my other friends that are still in retail have to work, particularly during the holidays. I did switch stores back in March and have to drive a little farther but it allowed me to learn my job in a less stressful store and cultivate a tremendous management team that makes my job so much easier.

Cody continues to grow and keep us busy. He broke his arm back in the spring which ended his baseball season, but he has continued to be active in sports the rest of the year. He totally loves football, and has also still been on soccer and basketball teams. The most fun that I had this past year was watching my boy learn how to water ski. You can only imagine how proud that made me as a dad since I love being on the water. If you look at some of Cody's pictures you will notice he has a snaggle tooth smile as he has lost several teeth this past year.

We hope you enjoy looking around at the pictures we have posted and read about some of our adventures this past year. We will try to continue to keep the blog posted throughout the upcoming year or you can also follow us with the things we post on Facebook. I am so happy to have re-connected with a lot of friends from my past things to Facebook and hope that we will always be able to stay in touch.
From our Family to yours we wish you:

A very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!

Sky, Cheryl and Cody

A Year in Pictures

Family Photos by Jessica Karlinski
My favorite shot

Growing Up

TCU Football Weekend and there was a Longhorn!

Cowboys are Super Bowl Champs!

Started Cub Scouts and Loves it

Walking to First Grade with Friends - yes they are all girls - I know!

Sea World San Antonio

Learning to Water Ski at the Farm

Summer VBS at First Baptist Allen

A visit to the Gaylord Texan

End of Kindergarten

Baseball Season

Baseball Season has offically started. Cody is playing on the Rangers this year. This is our first year to play in Allen and he is on a team with only a couple of boys that he already knows. We asked him what his favorite sports were and this was his ordering ... 1 - Football, 2- Soccer, 3 - Baseball. We will see how the season goes. Taking a practice swing.

Getting positioned to bat.

Fun Afternoons

Recently Cody decided he wanted to go outside and play "Musik for Mone". After thirty minutes of trying to put him off, I finally relented and we went outside. He actually ended up making four quarters from a sweet passer by who happened to contribute. We celebrated Allen ISD 100th Anniversary with one of our friends. The petting zoo was a big hit. The chicks were the first things they each wanted to hold.

This was one of the fluffiest rabbits we ever saw.

Camping at the Farm

We finished out Spring Break with a trip to the farm. Sky's Cousin Chris and his family joined us. The Boys all decided to camp by the lake, Carole and I decided we would stay up at the house. You know where you will find me if there is a bed that close. This is a picture of the "rolli pollis" the boys found and thought they needed to put in a container of dirt to carry down to the tent. The continued to check on them the rest of the evening. Sky and Chris were thrilled with their fishing results.

Cody enjoyed making a few casts into the lake too.

Our Sunny Boat Ride.

Bowling Over The Break

During Spring Break, Cody wanted to go bowling. He was very proud of his first 100 score!

Spring Break - Blue Bell Creamery

As Spring Break began, we took a quick trip down to Brenham to the Blue Bell Creamery. It was something we have always wanted to do seeing how much we love ice cream in our family. After the tour we got to choose our favorite flavor to try.

We had a wonderful time learning all about how they make and package the ice cream. We hope to go back again some day.