Christmas 2009

Well, I'm a little embarrassed to say that I did not take one single picture on Christmas morning! Neal was a good boy and took video, but we have no still pictures! I think I was just so excited to watch Cami open her presents that I wasn't even thinking about pictures. Either way, I did finally remember to take some at Grammy and Papaw's house later on in the day. Cami loves her baby dolls! She got three of them for Christmas. She is very loving to them as she rocks them and gives them their bottle.

I know this is a bad picture, but I wanted to show what we deal with when we try to take a family picture.

We got matching aprons and oven mitts. Now we can bake together. Not a word on how I don't cook...

Cami and daddy having a tea party

on Cami's new big girl table.

Papaw playing doctor.

She is so cute with this doctor kit. She will take the thermometer and put it in her ear because that is how we take her temperature. She will also put the stethoscope to your heart and say "bu bu" for bump bump like the heart goes.

This is Cami's idea of a hug.

She leans her head into you :)

Chad and Troy

I want to apologize, once again, for being such a procrastinator with the blog. I have heard from several people how they are waiting on pictures-all I can say is sorry! Being a working mommy is not suiting me so well, so finding free time is hard! I am working on getting some video uploaded, so please be patient with me. That will be my next task!

Rudolph!

Cami made the cutest Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer. Her teachers at school made antlers for each child in the class using their hands. Then the whole class went on a "parade" around the school. I got tears in my eyes when I saw this cute reindeer at my classroom door! I am making a collection of cute artwork to go in Cami's baby book and this tiny little hand trace will definitely make it. I don't want her little hands to ever get any bigger!

Christmas Fun!

We had an absolutely wonderful Christmas holiday and hope that you did, too! It was so much fun to watch Cami get excited about seeing a Christmas tree, lights, and Santa. She made it through her first Santa visit without a single tear shed. I will try to scan the overpriced, poor quality picture and post it soon. Trying to take a picture of our whole family for the Christmas card was quite difficult. We tried on several different occasions, but saying Cami is not photogenic is a huge understatement. She actually gets mad if you put a camera in her face! Ok, well maybe she doesn't always get mad, because these are a few cute pictures of her happy (or atleast okay) to have a camera around.

Cami loves wearing hats. Any kind will do. This particular hat is pretty cheesy but Grammy just had to buy it for her! Here she is actually saying "Cheese."

We made it through the whole Christmas season without any broken ornaments or opened presents. I was impressed! I thought for sure we were going to have to put all the ornaments up high and have wrapping paper pulled off everywhere we looked. But, not so. Cami was a very well-behaved toddler :) Cami loves to help, so I had her place the newly wrapped presents under the tree for me.

Nini came in town in early December so Neal and I could go Christmas shopping (without the Cam) and go on a much needed date night! We also took her along for Cami's first Santa experience. Here we are waiting outside to see Santa. The wait was over an hour...why so much hype for Santa? I can't figure it out!

Thanksgiving, etc

I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving! This was Cami's first year to actually be able to eat a Thanksgiving meal and she ate NONE of it! She refused turkey, mashed potatoes, rolls, all of it...except the chocolate torte that Neal made. Cami has become quite the sweet tooth! I made the mistake of introducing her to Hershey's kisses last week and she now knows the sound they make when anyone tries to sneak one out of the bowl. She comes running, asking for one! The above picture is of Cami and Troy at the kids table on Thanksgiving. In the picture below, Cami is eating Nutella! Like I said she loves all sweets. She will lick and suck all the Nutella off of a cracker.

Neal and I decorated the house for Christmas Thanksgiving night after Cami went to bed. When she woke up the next morning she was very excited to see the tree!

Poor Cami got Bronchiolitis right before Thanksgiving and had to do breathing treatments several times a day to help clear up her cough. Luckily, she is feeling much better now!

Cami Pie

I am trying my best to keep up with the blog, but there are just not enough hours in the day to get everything done, so blogging has been at the bottom of the list. Cami is now 15 months old and already acting like a 2 year old! She loves school and is talking up a storm. She continues to be very independent and determined. She loves to be silly and get tickled. She is also very into taking care of her baby...

Climbing has also become a favorite activity for Cami. She knows how to get down, but getting up is a little more tricky.

Dress up...her favorite!!! She usually puts on 20 necklaces and bracelets and prances around the house, but this time she decided to put on daddy's boots :)

Our poor Molly injured her back and had to have surgery to ensure she could walk again. Cami likes to give love and kisses to her Molly May. Thankfully, Molly has made an almost complete recovery and is walking fine.

Halloween!

Cami had an excellent Halloween. This was her first year to go trick-or-treating and she loved every minute of it! She dressed up as an adorable ladybug and took her job as candy bucket holder very seriously! She wouldn't let that thing go!!! The cutest ladybug EVER!!

Carving pumpkins on Halloween Eve! Cami and her cousin Troy, the UPS man :)

Yay for pictures!!

Trick-or-Treat!!!

What did I get???

The Pumpkin Patch

Here are a few pictures from the pumpkin patch we went to a few weeks ago. They had a small petting zoo with sheep, goats, cows,and donkeys. Cami loved seeing all the animals and wasn't afraid to feed them either.

We bought a couple of mini pumpkins to take home with us. She now will call them "pumpins" instead of "bubbas." :)

So brave! Feeding the sheep.

Cami loves to say "tracker."

So many pumpkins to pose with!

Pumpkins!

It's Fall and I love it! The weather is getting cooler and pumpkins and scarecrows are all around. This is my favorite season. Nini came in town for the weekend and we went to the Dallas Arboretum for some fun fall activities. Cami LOVED it. There were thousands of pumpkins all over the place and she couldn't get enough of them. She had to touch each "bubba" as she called them. I don't think I have ever seen her more excited over anything before. It was really cute :) Even though I promised Neal I wouldn't go crazy over the pictures, I was a little bit of a picture Nazi. I couldn't help it and so I have added lots of pictures to this post because I simply couldn't just pick a few. The pumpkin house. It was amazing

how many pumpkins they had! Cami has been trained to back up to things so we can get her picture :)

BIG pumpkins!

Nini!!!

This view was awesome. The path was lined

with pumpkins and Crete Mertiles.

Cami's laughing :)

We had so much fun and have decided it

will be our family tradition to go every year.

Kisses!

Such a sweet picture that I had to share...

Updates!

It's been quite a while since I last posted and a lot has happened since then. Our lives have gotten very busy and hectic recently. First off, I went back to work and Cami started school for the first time. I am fortunate enough to be able to work at the same school I did before I had Cami and she goes with me to work each day to the toddler class. The first day was very rough on both of us.

The school is very new and enrollment is low. Therefor we had all the children in the same class on the first day, so I was Cami's teacher on her first day of school. This did not go well. She didn't understand why I wasn't holding/playing/giving her all the attention. She cried all day long because of it! The next day we split the kids up and she was with her own teacher. She did better but still cried a lot for a couple more weeks. She has now been at school for 1.5 months and is well adjusted. She doesn't cry at drop-off and is very happy to be at school. As you can see by the pictures, she is very busy and seems to love school.

In the picture below, Cami is pulling the sticky-tac (used to fasten posters to the walls) OFF the wall. I'm sure her teachers love her :)

Another big change for our family is Neal's new job. He has changed courses and is now at a 36 hole course in Carrollton. This course is beautiful and very big! The change has been an adjustment, but overall a very good change for him! We are so happy for him and his promotion!!!

Okay, on to Cami and what she is up to these days. She is officially walking! She started about two weeks after her first birthday and hasn't looked back. Luckily she's getting better at keeping her balance and the falls are becoming fewer and fewer. She loves to walk by herself and refuses to hold any one's hand-that's for sissy's! Cami is talking up a storm now and loves to repeat what we say to her. She is also learning more baby signs and can communicate that way as well. She recently learned the sign for help (both hands patting the tummy/chest) and requests help from us quite often-it's very cute!! Cami just learned this trick of bending over and looking through her legs at you. She is so talented :)

Cami will finally let us put sunglasses on her and KEEP THEM ON! Yay!

Her first boo-boo. She was a little unsure of the band-aid but loved to say "boo-boo" as she pointed to her knee.

She is trying to feed herself with a spoon. This is extremely messy and I have to remind myself over and over that it is okay, we can clean it up. Learning is a messy process!

Cami could play outside in her sandbox all day if we let her. Cami is such an amazing little girl. We love watching her grow and learn each day. Her little personality is adorable. She is so funny and happy-always putting a smile on our face. She is very interested in how things work and loves to learn new things and words. She is very independent and knows what she wants. We are so happy to have this little girl in our life-the world is a much better place with Cami in it!!