My new hobby

Lately I seem to enjoy

taking pictures
of a sweet,
funny,
chubby,
baby girl
in swimming suits.
Although, I have been finding it fun to take pictures of her without swimming suits, too!

Camille turns 5!

We celebrated Camille's birthday on Father's Day while we were still in the Houston area. The day started with a bright and early trip to Shipley's donuts before church. Yes...very bright...and very early for us in the summer.
I know Camille enjoyed getting to go into a donut shop since we usually just do drive through on the days they talk me into it. It was really a treat for me, though, since I fell in love with Shipley's when I was in college. There are not any in the Lubbock area.

Oliver just likes chocolate iced with sprinkles no matter where we are.

She was sufficiently spoiled at Grammy's house. There were cupcakes and candles
and presents
and family! (That is Brad's dad, "PawPaw" holding Genevieve in case anyone couldn't guess!)
She got to open more presents when we got back to Lubbock. This is one girly girl. She wanted and received jewelry, more jewelry, kits to make jewelry and a real jewelry box and some pretty new clothes/shoes.
5 things I love about Camille

* her sweet, high-pitched {helium-like} voice

* how she is always willing to unload the dishwasher

* how she and I share a big glass of chocolate milk with two straws almost every night

* how much she loves to color - she entertains herself for hours!

* her fabulous poses for pictures

and a bonus #6...I love her patience since this was supposed to be her first birthday to have a party with friends and I have still not organized anything! I need to do the detective work to get contact info for her school friends. Shame on me!

Oliver turns 2!

In the middle of the May end-of-the-school-year craziness, we celebrated Oliver's second birthday with some cool number "2" and truck shaped sugar cookies. Sadly, I am still looking for where I saved the pictures from that evening. The cute thing about that was that for several weeks when someone would ask how old he is, he said "aahver 2! num num num" and pretend like he was gobbling up his 2 shaped cookies like Cookie Monster.

A couple of things I want to remember about 2 year old Oliver:

After months and months of riding on a pink and purple Barbie tricycle, he got his own blue one.

And ride it he does! In the day, at night, outside, inside, fully dressed, diaper only, both hands on the handles, or sometimes with one hand holding on to various trucks and cars. It is way too hot most of the time for me go out to the front yard with him, so I just let him ride in the house. I've only seen him standing on the seat in order to reach the gum a couple of times. Oh, and he can chew gum for up to 30 minutes before spitting it in the trash.

He sleeps with cars and trucks and with books about cars and trucks, after reading books about cars and trucks to his cars and trucks.





He is a ham. He finds what he can do to make his brother and sisters laugh, and will milk it for as long as possible. Side note: Camille can carry on an impressive fake laugh for quite some time.



Finally, we are starting to work on using the potty. Of course, we like to say that big boys use the potty. After going once, he told me "I big boy", I said that yes, he was and he followed up with "I cute".

You've come a long way in two years, Ollie-bear...

and as your mother, I agree with you on both counts!

Sugar Land/Beach Trip 2011

We enjoyed our 5th annual summer vacation with Brad's family in June. The official destination was a beach near Galveston, but first we spent some days in Sugar Land at Brad's parents' house. Their neighbors across the water always let us use their pool when we are in town.

In order to get to the neighbor's pool, we step down off of the edge of Grammy & Pawpaw's back yard into a kayak,
and ride "Brad's Shuttle Service" across the lake

to get to this pool. This alone is always a super fun vacation!

This was our first swim of the year, and Oliver was not so sure about it.

Kilian was of course comfortable on the slide

Camille and her "puddle jumper" life jacket didn't work up the courage to try the slide until after we returned to Sugar Land a week later, on the day she turned 5.

Oliver warmed up to the water after we blew up a "Cars" float for him.

Lucy mastered the slide...

as well as the map

possibly helping us make it to the beach. Let the counting begin.

1,2,3,4,5,6,7.....1,2,3,4,5,6,7.

All I did was count kids' heads. I can't believe I got a picture with this many cousins at once. They were usually spread out pretty far since we had quite a bit of room to ourselves.

The bigger kids spent tons of time looking in tide pools for things

like these crabs.

My kids were less than thrilled that I made them join me for a quick picture (ok I probably took about 20), but they survived and will thank me one day! See the new header pic at the top of the page??

We had fun inside, too, with games

cooking

and pretending to surf with Barbie.

Yep, this is the life.

I think the highlight for Oliver was getting to "pray" on the deck, but not necessarily the good kind of "praying".

Xavier, Camille and Max fit in the little pool in the shade. I'm guessing that may not be the case next year.

Genevieve preferred to get spoiled on the deck by everyone, but I only got pictures of her with her Grammy

her Aunt Angela

and her cousin Max who could not believe how tiny her feet are!

Group shot with all 9 cousins. Oliver not cooperating.

Another group shot with all 9 cousins. Xavier not cooperating, but these guys are both 2 so we'll give them a break.

I'm so glad these guys have an opportunity to make memories like this each year!

Out of Order

So I've been dragging my feet when it comes to a new post because I feel like I should go in order - as in starting with Easter events. I have decided to blog about more recent stuff first and maybe catch up later.

Either way, it's nice to be here again. We're having a great summer, and growing nicely, as you can see below. Genevieve is now 8 months old and a "delicate little snowflake" of a baby girl as my Uncle David calls her. In case anyone happens to still check on this neglected little blog, I hope you have a great weekend!!

We're goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo

How about you, you, you?
You can come too, too, too
We're goin' to the zoo, zoo, zoo

Any other Raffi fans out there?

Over spring break we made a quick overnight trip to Abilene and did all sorts of fun things. The length of the drive (2 1/2 hours) seemed really short compared to our usual destinations of Dallas or Houston. I think it was a good practice run with Genevieve - although she was the easiest one in the car. The pleas from the middle seat of "Aahver [Oliver] get out" were very sad during that last stretch.

Our itinerary included:

- Grace children's museum
- Awesome percussion demonstration at ACU by my very musical uncle, aunt and cousins
- Zoo
- Picnic
- Park

I only remembered my camera for the second day - the zoo and park. I don't know why we waited so long to take the kids to this zoo. It was great!

We got to meet my long-time friend Wes and his family there. Wes had to run back to work, so it was just a very quick "hi" with him, but Erin and their two precious girls met up with us both days and helped give us a tour since they are zoo regulars there. Erin's account of the morning can be found here. She gives a fun summary of some college rivalry pranks. Their family will be moving further away soon, so I am so thankful it worked out for us to catch up in person. Blogs work very well when meeting in person isn't possible though.

my cousin Emily and Camille soon after we arrived
Oliver looking at "the ducks" - you know...the big pink ducks that stand on one leg.

Julia and Lucy in the bird room
the highlight...GIRAFFES!
how often do you get to see the top of a giraffe?
we got to feed them cracker-like things...impressive tongue, huh?
I managed to miss a family picture of all 7 of us at both Christmas and Easter, but now we have one in front of the giraffes!
zebra
tiger playing with a ball
back of a lion - made me thankful I only have to deal with Lucy's tangles and not his

A big chubby frog...

or maybe that was from our house.

does this kid below even have hair? how similar can hair and skin color be?

how we get around these days

our kids were also amused by the hill.

yes, we are from a very flat place a group picture of the older kids (Wes and Erin's daughter Abby is on the left) just before it was time to go

the two little girls during a nap time picnic - Wes and Erin's Mackenzie is almost exactly one year older than Genevieve. AND they both have 9 letters in their names.

I wish I could bring Emily & Julia with us everywhere we go! I might have a little bit too much confidence about how manageable going somewhere crowded and taking pictures with 5 kids under age 10 is now.

I think these guys were inspired when they saw Wes in uniform and learned that he is an Air Force pilot :)

It was a perfect spring break get away for us! Thanks so, so much for hosting us Allen & Susan!