Camryn Turns ONE!!!

 the passage of time sometimes astounds me. i literally feel like the weeks are minutes sometimes, they seem to pass so quickly. sometimes that is a good thing, if we are going through a rough patch, but mostly i look back and think, slow down, slow down!

looking through some pictures tonight of Camryn when she was new, made me feel that even more. her first year has FLOWN by at top speed, and i was there through the whole thing, but man, it felt fast!!! 

 there have been definite hard times and hard days, but i have loved every minute of it.  i think that Camryn has blessed our lives in ways we are only beginning to understand; the same could be said of all of our children, but with Cam it's a little different since she is the "rainbow baby." this is a term i learned a few months ago, it is applied to the child who is born after a child has passed away in a family.  Rainbows are symbols of hope...and Camryn has definitely been that for us all.

 everyone in our home adores her, and wants her to be happy and smiley, to the nth degree.  Her older siblings love to play with her and make her laugh and smile and we all can't stop kissing her, like for real, someone seems to be always kissing her!! she bears it well:) 

 i have a firm belief that Heavenly Father sends children to specific families for a reason, and also that the order of the children in the family is also part of His plan. i have seen that in my family of origin and i see it now in our family.  Camryn coming after Christian's passing was no fluke, that's for sure.

Cam has 4 teeth, weighs about 18.8 pounds, wears size 12 month clothes and size 3 diapers. she nurses 3-4 times a day, but not for a huge amount of time and she likes cow's milk in her cup.

she loves baths, her siblings, music, swinging, yogurt, applesauce and is warming up to meat of all kinds.

she still doesn't love her carseat, we will probably turn her around in the next couple of months.  she also is super wiggly and protests a lot during diaper changes and clothes changes, but such is her age:)

she tried to touch her candle tonight, i think all of our kids have, fire is alluring:) she didn't really know what to do about the cupcake, she kind of squished it and threw a lot of it on the ground. she tried some, spit some out (her favorite trick with food she's not sure about), and i think swallowed a little:)

she's super mobile, crawling and cruising furniture. we love her so much and are so very blessed and grateful to have her sweet little self in our home.  we love you Camryn Elaine!!!

Box it up!

I honestly don't know how time is passing so quickly. It is already November, our baby will be 1 this month and Thanksgiving and Christmas are right around the corner! Amazing!

well, first things first, I suppose...


WE BOUGHT A HOUSE!


AND BOXED UP ALLLLLLLLL OUR STUFF AND MOVED IT!

enough said right?

crazy town.

here's the house....

we really like it, and are getting settled. before we moved in, we (and by we I mean mostly Kendall and some awesome friends/family) repainted the entire inside. It was a lovely tan color before (which turned peach in the afternoon...NOOOOO!) and now it is a light gray. Much better!

Camryn has found a new love of climbing...onto boxes, in cabinets, up stairs, but thankfully not out of her crib.  yet.

we had Halloween! barely! we'd been in the house for maybe 5 days and of course I hadn't done shopping/making costumes before because I was PACKING OUR WHOLE EXISTENCE INTO A BOX, so it was a Halloween miracle that we found the ONLY black pants and shirt at Walmart that would fit Camryn the day before Halloween.  she was a cat if you couldn't tell, she was absolutely opposed to any form of whiskers/nose being painted on her face, so you know, imagine it.

2 zombies, a witch and her cat

Halloween means it was Blake's birthday, which is ON Halloween, yeah, that's right:)  nice slow, nothing-going-on-time of the year to move right? (better now than later with Thanksgiving and Christmas though I say!)

 

Blake is so awesome though! Very high energy but very loving, sweet and kind, most of the time:) he is 4 though so no one is perfect:)  he is such a blessing in our lives, he was the calm after the storm of ethan and avery who were more high maintenance babies than was Blake.  He is a hugger and loves Monsters University and Inc, anything that Ethan and Avery like and he is obsessed with Playdoh! 

I thought this was funny, Blake bit the candle after he blew it out, he tells us that he thought it was candy! hilarious!

one of the first things I tackled in this house was switching out the cabinet and drawer knobs/pulls.  it is easy to do, so that was a plus, the kitchen is small so there's not a million, also a plus, and there were approximately 5 different finishes of knobs going on...so for my sanity this little project had to be done!!! above you can see a knob and pull, old style.

this is what I replaced them with....ahhhh...much better!

left side: old, right side: new.

I had ambitions of painting the cabinets since they are such a light color but after I spent one Saturday doing the projects below, I decided I would change the knobs and live with them light for a while.  because the actual cabinets are in good shape, really.  new knobs help...new countertop would help too:)

last Saturday I painted this old metal teacher's desk, this is before.  pretty standard brownish/grayish, every teacher you ever had in elementary school had one...

 

 

this is the after: coral!  I like it a lot!! I also like all the storage it has.

this was also painted the same day, this is the bottom of a hutch I bought on craigslist, not sure where the before picture of the top is.... it was a hasty paint job that was done on it before I got it. red inside, white outside.

we made it dark gray:)  it has tons of storage which is great for our smaller amount of cupboards we have in this house.  I have shelves for the upper cabinets, not pictured here, and there are also doors...we are debating on the door issue, they may make an appearance or not, they are chippy and red and not in super great shape right now. so i'll see if I tackle them or just make some awesome curtains to cover the holes on top.  the awesome curtains will probably get made as an interim measure in any event because, you know, you don't want to see all that stuff hanging out on the shelves all the time:) this house has no blinds and no curtains...on any of the windows, so we are slowly buying blinds and are going to have a blind put up party this weekend I hope.

 

avery lost her first tooth on sunday 3rd, she was super excited!!!

 

we have a really great park near us, with tire swings (which is a big draw for the kids!) cam had her first experience with eating sand...no Bueno! it totally grosses me out, I have to give the kids a bath after they have been to any park, so having the sand in her mouth was not making me happy.

 

apparently they all like the sand:)

 

so we are still here, still alive, just trying to adjust and get settled in our new surroundings:)  as I complete more projects for the house, I will definitely show them here:)

This Month is Such a Special One...

It's Birthday Time for You!

well, at least it is for some very special people in our family:)

On the 7th it was kendall's birthday.  i don't have a picture of him, but he is extremely good looking, even at the ripe "old" age of 32.  I like to tease him because he is just about 9 months older than me:)  i just couldn't ask for a better husband or father for our children! happy birthday sweetheart!

this little lady turned 6 (SIX!!!) on the 12th! craziness i tell you! we love our avery girl, she is sweet and sassy.  she is loving kindergarten but is, truthfully, having a hard time with the transition to no naps at all, because of of the timing of school, but we are working through it:)  i remember ethan having a similar experience.  she loves to draw, paint, take pictures, she likes to be read to, she likes to play with her growing zooble collection and she loves her brothers and sister fiercely.  

Today Christian is 2.  Man, 2 years seems to go really fast!  it has been a hard two years but also good.  I remember the time he was in our home as very happy and loving and that is what i am focusing on right now for this milestone.  of course, i also think of what he would be like, what his little personality is like.  who does he look like?  does he like peanut butter and honey like avery and blake or peanut butter and jelly like ethan?  we miss him so much.  we love him with all we've got.

all decorated for his birthday

blake was somewhere pulling out butterflies and pinwheels from vases saying, "look mom, this one is awesome" or something like that:)

when we go to visit Christian the kids like to take off and look at the other graves too.  they are especially interested in ones with flags (most probably meaning they were soldiers) and ones with interesting things in the vases.  ethan reads the names for them i think:)  this picture is from my spot by Christian.

after we had cupcakes; cam looks a little ticked we didn't give her one!  This little mama is 9 months old today! officially on the outside as long as she was inside! awesome but it seems to have gone so fast!  don't worry, we'll give her a cupcake on her birthday:)

and the girl is fast!!!  she was sitting with me next to Christian's memorial marker after cupcakes and singing and she reached over and started grabbing things out of his vase like crazy! she wanted the balloon i think!  crazy girl! camryn is army crawling like a pro and she is actually really fast at it. we are at that stage where we have to make sure we have cleaned up the floor pretty well and keep a weather eye out for scorpions because she just goes!  Cam is a sweetheart, and she has the best giggle! it is so sweet!  we just want to kiss her cute cheeks all day!

on a different note: after camryn was born last november kendall and i were watching a food network show or something that had a little blurb about a sandwich called a "Bobbie" from Capriotti's. it is the most amazing "thanksgiving" sandwich ever! shredded turkey, homemade cranberry sauce and awesome stuffing.  we are kind of hooked on them...they make great lunch the next day too, since they are rather large:)  yum-o!

and hey if you made it this far great job!!!  i am putting things in my etsy shop lately! i have a mini etsy on the sidebar, check it out:)

crafty crafts...

i mentioned before that i made some shirts for Father's Day this year...these are 3 of them...

a la Jim Gaffigan...if you haven't listened to the Hot Pocket bit by Jim Gaffigan, do yourself a favor and listen to it now!!!so funny!

this is an inside family joke....

this was for Kendall's Grandpa, he does indeed own his own golf cart, in case you were wondering

i made some new Fourth of July decorations this year...this topiary was inspired by these

this was a Pick Your Plum deal, as was the "summer" below...lots of fun!

i made the kids shirts for the 4th again this year...i wanted to try out this technique i had seen, where you paint the design on and then dye over it. our shirts started out white, i painted the white and red on, and then dyed them. i like how they turned out, this picture above is before it was washed, the blue lightened up quite a bit, and next time i need to wait some days in between the painting and the dyeing...it was making the paint come off a bit when i had it in the hot hot dye bath but i think it adds to the rustic/worn shirt look. we'll pretend i was going for that, instead of doing it last-ish minute which is my M.O. (modus operandis)

i had a custom order from a friend of my SIL who wanted a few binky leashes, and i thought, "well if i'm going to make some i might as well make lots" so i made 70+! once i started pulling out fabric and cutting it, it got kind of addictive since they don't take much fabric and are a fun way to accessorize a baby:)  Just need to sell them now huh?:) pretty eye candy though.

my SIL's friend also wanted a carseat cover...

some burp cloths...(nice photo bomb by Cam above) (i started making these with a curve to fit your shoulder, i love them!)

and a diaper/wipe clutch....

all of which took me far longer than it normally would have...hmmmm....i wonder why??

oh yeah, i have a baby!

how did she go from this

(on her blessing day, she was 2 weeks old)

to this amazing, funny, hot mess of a girl who will be 8 months old on thursday the 18th and who got her first 2 teeth within the same week last week, and now can army crawl!!!

watch out! she is a fast roller and now with the army crawl thrown in, no small toy/stray thread/whatever-you-left-on-the-floor is safe!

i was taking a shower yesterday and she found a friend in the mirror! i love it when they start discovering mirror friends!!! (and i love it when i get to take a shower! ha!! moms will understand that huh?)