1 week old!

Charlie will be two weeks old tomorrow. It's amazing how much time a newborn uses. There's always a list of things to do and so few of them get done. It is so wonderful to have a beautiful son to feed, watch sleep and change countless diapers. We have been so blessed!

Here's pictures from his 1 week photo shoot:

And a couple random shots:

First Bath- 5/22

Scrub-a-dub-dub there's a Charlie in the tub...

And he's not sure if it likes it.


Dad just watching the first one, Mom has done a couple of these in the past year and a half.
He did a great job drying him though!

Grandma Theresa

Grandma Theresa was here for almost a week before we realized we had not taken any pictures of the two of them together.

It was very nice having her around to help with the morning feeding so Thomas could go to work and I could sleep a little. She also helped with countless other things. Thanks Mom/Grandma Tesa!!!

My mother has been known for her rubber face tricks and being a little silly around kids. Here's a great example of this:

Charlie, don't be embarrassed, Uncle Tom and I survived and had fun doing it.

Mom also exhausted Charlie's library, I think she read to him every morning. We went to Kohl's and picked up more books and one of Dad's friends sent more books, so she read those to him too.

You're a good sport, Charlie!

Even your mother (who subjects you photo shoots several times a day) kind of feels bad about making you pose for pictures in this outfit, but it is so cute!

note the quilt in the background, that's Charlie's bedding and it should be done tomorrow. I'm excited!

We then had to try on this A&M stuff before he gets too big for it...
The past 5 days have really been wonderful. There hasn't been much sleep and we've changed a lot of diapers but Charlie is so much fun to be around. I'm healing well and enjoying being a mom and not being pregnant anymore.
My mom has been staying with us and has been so helpful. We'll be taking reservations for the guest room, come visit anytime!

A couple of firsts!

Well Charlie has had a couple of firsts here the last two days.

Yesterday he watched his first basketball game. Not only was it his first game, it was his first Spurs game. He got to see the best team in the NBA play (Laura does not agree with this). To commemorate the event he decided he wanted to get a picture made in his Tony Parker jersey.

If you look closely you can see that Charlie thinks the Spurs are Number 1.

Charlie also decided that he wanted to go for a walk. Here are a couple of pics of him on his first ride in his stroller.


Almost another one eyed pirate picture.



Well it has been a long couple of days and Charlie is sleeping now. Hopefully we will see and talk to ya'll soon.

He's Here!!!

Friday, May 16th at 4:32 pm, Charles Jackson Winkler came out and said "HI". He weighed in at a healthy 8 pounds and 15.4 ounces. Just a shade under 9 pounds and well under the 10-11 pound range that we had all been forecasting.

We thought that now would be a good time to share a couple of Pics of Charlie with the world.


Here is the little guy and his mommy. Quite the cute couple if I do say so myself.














Check out this guy's face.







The proud pappa and his new son. Even though he looks small remember he was still almost 9 pounds.









One last good picture to end on for now. I think the shirt says it all ("Instructions not included").

Getting ready for Charlie

I know that we said that we would be updating this more often but this time we mean it. Right now we are in the hospital waiting for Charlie to go ahead and make his first appearance. Here are a couple of pictures for ya'll to take a look at. There will be more here when Charlie gets here.
We both would like to thank all of ya'll for all your thoughts and prayers(and calls and texts). It's nice to know we have such great family and friends.

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

We want to wish all of our family and friends a very Merry Christmas and a New Year filled with happy times. Our Christmas season began Thanksgiving Day with a couple hours of snow. Nothing stuck but it was very exciting for all of us (except, maybe, Cheryl who was in town from Madison, Wisconsin looking for some warmer weather). I am excited to have a house that can accommodate my love of Christmas and all the decorations that come with it. I was able to put three trees in the living room, one in the kitchen and there is even one in the guest bathroom! Thomas isn't usually real thrilled about decorations but once they were all up and lit, he said it really looks like Christmas in the house. We look forward to the holidays and time spent with our family and friends.

Now for the annual holiday update that usually goes in the Christmas card...

This year has been quite an exciting year for us, filled with new opportunities: new job, new house and city, and big news. The most exciting news is that we are expecting our first baby in May 2008. Thomas and I are anxiously awaiting the arrival of our little baby boy. All the grandparents, aunts, uncles and great aunts and uncles are very excited as well. The pregnancy is going well, the baby looks good and is already growing like a weed. Thomas has been a great husband from day one helping me through all of the nausea and happy times. We will keep everyone updated on the coming of Baby Winkler.

I've heard all modesty goes out the door when you have a baby so I decided to go ahead and start that early and post my funny looking belly pictures. The picture on the left is the morning of the home pregnancy test (my belly has always had the bulge above my belly button) The picture on the right is at 15 weeks 4 days. More to come.

Thomas is coaching basketball and track for Weatherford High School. He is the JV head coach and Varsity assistant for basketball. This fall we had a nice break from football and were able to enjoy football from the stands. I think Thomas has decided that not coaching football is his prefernce. I second that! Coach Ferguson, the head basketball coach, and everyone here in Weatherford have been so welcoming, making us feel at home. I will let Thomas update you on how basketball is going:

This season has been pretty good so far. The JV is 8-3 right now and 3-1 in district play. We lost our first two and then won the next 8 in-a-row. The kids are playing hard and we are having a lot of fun. The varsity kinda struggled a little bit but we think they are on the right track now. They are 7-7 and 2-2 in district. I don't know if you could ask for a better group of kids to work with. They do everything we ask them to do and they are a lot of fun to be around.

If you want to stay current on how our season is progressing you can check out our basketball team's website: http://www.weatherfordkangaroobasketball.com/

Thomas on the bench before a game

The Varsity team at a tournament in Joshua

I am still enjoying my job as a special care nursery/admissions nursery nurse. I will become a newborn nursery nurse at the beginning of the year when we restructure the nurseries. I will continue to do admit the new babies and help those that need a little extra TLC during the first few hours of life as well as take care of the new babies while mom and baby are in the hospital. I continue to be amazed every day I work of the miracle of life and how there are so many healthy babies born. And I sometimes pinch myself because I get paid to "play" with babies.

The new house is still good and it is really feeling like home now. We still only have one neighbor on our street but are enjoying the quiet. I'm sure they will start to build soon and we will miss the quiet. The guest bedroom has been broken in and is open for guests anytime, especially this summer, babysitters welcome.

Best wishes to all during this holiday season!

A New Season

Well it is basketball season again. This year is off to a rocky start. We went to Justin Northwest and the JV got beat by 20 and the Varsity won by 13. The JV was up by one about two minutes into the third quarter and then the wheels fell off. Saturday Arlington Bowie came to Weatherford and the JV again lost. This time we got beat by 37. We were only down 12 at halftime and then it slowly started to slip away. The Varsity also got beat by Bowie. It was a close game and there were some mistakes made that we all need to work on. Tomorrow we get Kennedale. They are ranked #6 in 3A right now. Should be a pretty good Varsity game. Hopefully the JV can get it going and get our first "W".

Thomas' Birthday

Star in Your Own JibJab! It's Free!Thomas will probably disown me for posting this, but I will take that chance. Happy Birthday, Dear!

Good Ol' Texas Summer

I just got back in from mowing our yard and I was thinking it was a little warm out there. I went to check our little weather station that tells us how hot it is outside and this is what I saw.

The top line is the barometric pressure. The second line is the humidity and temperature outside. The third line is the humidity and temperature inside. It is good to see that some things never change. Even though we got a little spoiled here with all the rain keeping the temperature down, this is still August in Texas.

3 months later....

We are now a proud fightin' Roo household. Yes, Weatherford's mascot is the kangaroos, the mean kind (picture 1) not the cute, little, adorable ones (picture 2).

We've been in Weatherford for 3 weeks now and everyone has been so nice and welcoming. The basketball team helped unload the Penske truck and the 15 foot trailer (a guy who sells trailers loaned us). We feel very fortunate to be here.

Since there are still no Winkler offsprung, we have pictures of the house. Yes, I know Michele, it is a brand new house in a cute little subdivision.

Here is the front of the house, there is a house next door but no one lives there yet. We are the only ones on our little street so far.

Peace and quiet, for now....

This is the view out the back. We are at the edge of Phase 1, more to come when Phase 2 comes.

This is the habitat of the snake that I happened to run across and then ran far, far away from. It was five feet of creepy soon-to-be dead snake.

The great living room was the selling point of the house, we love it!

The kitchen is pretty nice as well except for the cabinet drawers. They are 3 inches tall and you can't put anything in them. Just another thing to add to the dream house list of what not to do.

These are the two doorways to the bedrooms, office and exercise room.

I know everyone is asking where all of our valuable stuff (crap) is. It was magically hidden for these pictures and has now exploded all over the house and has multiplied. I'm not really sure how it does it yet.

We did get new living room furniture and Thomas got a new gadget, one of those 400 disc DVD players. It took a while but he managed to get it over half full and enter all the info to catalog the DVDs.

So, if you are ever in the Weatherford area, drop in, we'll be behind the boxes of stuff.

Easter Weekend

This might be the last post for a while so enjoy(and yes I know that we just started putting stuff back up here after a long break)

This past Easter weekend I witnessed something in Temple that I haven't seen in a long time and never this far into Spring in Texas. We had a pretty good little snow storm. AND it stuck to the ground. I have never seen it snow as hard as it did that night. My guess is that we got some where between 4 and 6 inches of snow.

It started off as just a little snow....

And then it grew into a lot of snow.

It really wasn't even snow flakes that were falling. Instead it seemed like it was actually chunks of snow that were coming down. And it just kept coming.

I went out to get something for dinner and on my way back I was thinking that I would try to make a little snowman. I was thinking something in the 1 to 1.5 foot tall range. Well as I was pulling up to the house I see that some of our neighbors are make a pretty good sized snowman and I took that as a bit of a challenge. So I went out and I started to make my own snowman. This would be the first snowman that I have ever made by the way.

After I made him I started looking around for the accessories that you need to complete a snowman. I actually had some charcoal for the eyes. I found a hat that I deemed appropriate. I couldn't find any carrots for the nose though. However, I used a little Aggie ingenuity and found a suitable replacement...an orange can of OFF.

Not bad for my first snowman!

AH-64 Apache

This Christmas Laura gave me one of the coolest gifts ever. For quite some time now I have wanted to take a ride in an Apache. I don't really know how or why this started but it has now become a goal of mine. Anyway, one of Laura's classmates in nursing school just happens to be married to and Apache pilot. Her present to me was that when he got back from Iraq hes was going to take us out to Fort Hood and show us around the Apache hangar. This was awesome. It made it even better because I had no idea about it unlike the surprise party she threw for me in college(thanks Walt). Anyway, she told me that she had a surprise for me and one morning over the Christmas break we just started driving into Belton. I had absolutely no idea where we were going. We pull up in front of this house. She tells me that this is Susan's house and she askes me if I remember what her husband does. It didn't take me too long to figure out that he was the Apache pilot. Anyway, we headed out to Fort Hood and got to look at the Apaches.

Flying the Apache would have to be like playing the ultimate video game. There are some many screens and buttons and switchs that I don't think I would ever figure them all out. The guy showing me around said that you have to know what each button and switch does by the feel of it so that you can use it at night without having to turn a light on and let the enemy see where you are.

And now a picture of me and my Apache. Hopefully next time I am this close to one it is as I am getting ready to go for a flight. By the way, there are some better pictures of this but they are actual photos and therefore not on the computer. And lets be honest, it took me four months to get the digital pictures on the website-can you image how long it will take me to put up pictures that I have to scan!