Thanksgiving

We were so blessed this year to have two Thanksgivings. My parents hosted Thanksgiving a week early so that we would all be able to come. I am so grateful for my parents doing this. They sacrifice so much for us, but we all love being together so much that we would rather celebrate holidays not on the real day and be able to be together for as much time as possible.

Kevin was able to come down with us this time. That doesn't happen very often. We went down on Friday so that we would be able to help with the cooking on Saturday before everyone got there. Saturday came around and we made dinner and had such a wonderful time.  

After dinner we started playing games. We ended up making it into a big tournament. It was really fun. We played dance dance, and wii bowling and other things. It was so so fun. I remembered how much I love dance dance. In fact, this is one of the reasons I am excited to go back home for Christmas. Don't get me wrong, family is what I am most excited about, but dance dance comes next. 

We also celebrated my mom's birthday. My mom is the most amazing lady ever.I wish everyone could know her. My mom wanted something cherry for her birthday dessert, so my sister made the most delicious chocolate cherry bunt cake. It was beautiful. We got her a big picture of the family to hang in the living room. Shantel actually did all the work on getting the gift all together, so when my mom opened it, Kevin decided he really wanted one as well.

After celebrating my mom's birthday we set up some Christmas decorations. I love Christmas. We put the tree up and set out some nice decorations.

It was such a wonderful couple of days. Family is what life is about. I am so grateful that our family is so close and all gets along. I know there are so many families out there that have drama and hate, but ours is not one of them, and I am so so grateful for that. 

The next week we went to Kevin's parent's house for Thanksgiving again. We headed over early in the morning so we could spend as much time with family as possible.

Shannon and Collen were already there and making Thanksgiving dinner. We came in and started helping with getting everything ready. We just chatted and watched Camille run around. That is probably one of my favorite things to do.

All of the family showed up and we had a delicious dinner. I really love thanksgiving dinner. Kevin and I are very much down home, meat and potatoes kind of people. So Thanksgiving dinner is right up our ally.

After dinner we played some games and talked and enjoyed being with the family.  

Camille- 10 months

Wow, I feel like I just wrote one of these. Camille is growing too fast. She really is the sweetest thing. She will melt anyone's heart that she meets. She is just a busy busy baby. The biggest change from last month is that she is totally walking now. Sometimes she will fall down and crawl for a minute, but she is walking way more than she is crawling.  It is the cutest walk. It is like she is keeping her legs straight and waddling. It is really cute.

She has been so happy recently. It has been so fun for me. When she wakes up in the morning, I will walk into her room and she laughs and gets so excited. It makes me so happy. 

Camille is sleeping through the night. She sometimes wakes up at 6, and I make her lay in bed until at least 6:45. I wonder if I just need to keep her up later or something. We don't feed at 10 PM anymore, and that is when she started waking up earlier. She used to sleep until 7 or 7:30. Oh well, it is just really nice to get a full night sleep. I love it. Kevin and I eventually want to have another baby, but I am still remembering the first couple months too well to jump into that. I love my sleep.

Camille can wave hello and goodbye. It has been really fun. It is almost like reflex. I will say hello, and she automatically waves. That happens probably 80% of the time. It is really cute when she waves. When she is really really excited she will wave both hands like crazy. It just melts my heart. 

It is really nice because she is content most of the time. We went to Texas Roadhouse last night, and she was just happy to eat bread and talk with us and hang out. Last time we went to Texas Roadhouse she screamed the whole time, and I had to go out and not eat while kevin and his family was eating. It was so lame. So we were so happy that she was happy. She is the best.

Camille started sticking her tongue out. It was so funny. One day she just started sticking it out, but it didn't come out straight. It came out the side of her mouth. It was so so cute. When I would stick my tongue out, she would have to think really hard. it was like she was telling her brain to stick her tongue out, then it would slowly come out. It is so cute.

She also has started scrunching her nose and blowing air through it. It is the most adorable thing ever. Kevin and I love it when she does it.

We really love her so much. She bring so much joy to our lives. We love you Camille! 

Harry Potter Party

I love Harry Potter. I think the books are amazing. Right before Camille was born, and a little after she was born, I had Kevin listen to all of the books while he was driving semi truck and I was reading the books at home. When we both finished a book, we would watch the movie. It was really fun. Then on Pinterest I saw an awesome blog that someone made where they had an awesome Harry Potter Party. At that moment I knew I wanted to have a Harry Potter Party as well. So I told Kevin I wanted to do this, and he said, "that sounds like fun. Just know I don't want to make any decorations. If you need help putting something up, I will help." And ya know what? I didn't even need any help!! It was really fun for me. I read a million blogs (no exaggeration), and made a plan. After the plan was made, I started making the decorations. I had a lot of fun with this. When Camille was asleep, and Kevin was out driving truck, I would sit and make things.

I will walk you through each decoration as you saw it when entering the wonderful world of Harry Potter.

I sent out acceptance letters for invitations and put in platform 9 3/4 train tickets. They looked so great. I should have sent myself one.

When you entered the house I made a brick wall for platform 9 3/4. So you could run through the wall to enter the great hall.

Once you entered the great hall the first thing you saw was the floating candles. They looked really awesome, especially at night.

Next you were sorted by the sorting hat. I wanted to make a real looking sorting hat, but I didn't have the time or motivation, so we just had a little witch hat. I made house badges, so after you put the sorting hat on then you could reach in the cauldron and pick a badge to decide what house you were in.

After being sorted you went to Ollivanders where they could pick their wand, or should I say so that wand could pick the wizard.  Here are the wands I made. I used some chopsticks that I had bought several years ago because I wanted to be cool, but we used them once, then never again. They were too slippery for us to use. I took the chopsticks then covered the bottom with glue and I put one bead on the end of it. After the glue had dried, I spray painted them brown. They actually turned out awesome. My little sister Melissa would say, "They just feel good in your hand." Which they do.

 As you entered the kitchen there was a sign for the three broomstick. So we had dinner in the three broomsticks. I made soup (way way way too much soup) and bread wands (sticks) and Herbology house salad.

In the kitchen I had put up Education Decrees that Professor Umbridge put in place at Hogwarts.

After dinner we ventured over to Honeydukes for some delicious treats. There was so much candy, as you can see in the pictures.

After dessert we turned on Harry Potter and the Chamber of  Secrets for the little kids to watch, and we played some fun games.

Here are some of the other really fun decorations that were up around the house.

This says, "The Chamber of Secrets has been opened. Enemies of the Heir beware."

This says, "This ways to the Ministry of Magic."

It is always so fun to play with family, and I was so happy that so many people dressed up and were able to come. It was really fun, and I am glad it all went well. Now that it is over I have nothing to do, so I might need to be planning something else soon.

Dr. Who graced us with his presence 

Hedwig even came! 

Fun Four

1. We got a washer and dryer. I have been wanting one since we moved in, and we finally got some. I am so grateful I am not going to have to go to the laundry mat in the middle of winter with Camille. That really would be miserable for me. This summer has not been too bad because we put the luandry in, and we go walk around outside or inside Walmart which is across the parking lot. In winter it would be a pain. When we went to pick up the washer and dryer, we found this street. Isn't it awesome? We are kind of sad that we have already bought a house, or else we would build on this street. But it is okay because we really love our house.

2. This year we were blessed to recieve some tomatoes (when I say some, I mean a ton of tomatoes) from Kevin's mom and from some neighbors. They were delicious. I ate some for snacks with just salt,but we had too many. We decided to make some homemade salsa. We have tried several times to make homemade salsa through our marriage, but it has never turned out very well. This time was no exception. It is always fun to make things with Kevin, but hopefully someday we can put our tomatoes to good use and not just make diced tomatoes with peppers and onions.

3. Kevin was able to go motorbiking recently. I am always so happy when he can go. This year he has been working like a crazy man. He is such a good provider for our family. He had a day off though so he and his brother Michael went on a ride. He said it was one of the most fun rides they had done for a while. I saw some pictures and the mountain they were on was practically straight up and down. It was a very hard and technical ride, but it looked beautiful.

4. Shaylee came down to play. I love when she does. We went out to lunch at Rusios. It was actually really delicious. It is a soup, sandwich and salad place. It was fun to just talk and enjoy lunch with her and Camille. It is always nice to have a friend to just talk to and not be worried what they think about you. I now just need to figure out a way to convince her to stay up in Idaho when she is finished with school instead of moving back to Utah.

Camille 9 months

*None of these pictures correspond to the paragraphs written, but these are the pictures we have at 9 months so enjoy!*

Yes, Camille has officially been out in this world as long as she was in my tummy. I feel like these 9 months with her out here went a lot faster than when I was pregnant. She has been learning and growing like crazy this month. I have some little notes of what I wanted to write about Camille this month, and I feel like they are all outdated. I must have put them down at the start of the month. We started out with her crawling. She has been crawling for a little while, but sometimes she will be crawling and then see something she wants and she will start to super crawl. It is so funny and cute. She just speeds up to get where she wants.

She has been creeping along the couches and on the walls. She just loves to walk. She will walk if she is holding our hands, and if we get tired (because lets be honest, it hurts your back to bend down that long) and try to have her sit down she will just cry. She just wants to be walking so badly. She has a little walker type toy that she loves. She will walk with it until it hits a wall, and then she will try and turn it around to get unstuck. Usually I just change her position so she will walk some more until she hits a wall. On her 9 month birthday she started taking her first real steps.By next month she will be a professional walker. She is just one crazy girl wanting to learn and be grow.

She has been sleeping pretty good. Usually she wakes up once at like 5 AM, and I think she would go back to sleep without eating, but I give in and go feed her usually because if I feed her at 5, then she will sleep until 8. I am going to start trying to be better at having her practice actually sleeping through the night. I think this Mommy is ready for some more sleep.

Camille is just the cutest girl. She loves to hold things in her mouth and crawl around with them. She has a little lotion tube that she will just stick in there and hold it in her mouth.

She is really good at eating. We have been sort of doing some baby led weaning, so she eats what is on our plates. I want her to have a balanced food group though, so I will feed her some baby puree along with pieces of our food. She like grown up food better, but I want to make sure she is getting enough vegetables and fruit.I guess she is getting enough though. At her 9 month check up she was in the 50th percentile for weight, 75th percentile for height, and 90th percentile for head circumference.

We just love our little Camille so much. She is so special and brings such a joy into our house. Love you Camille!

Walker Annual Pumpkin Carving

Halloween is one of my most favorite holidays. This year Camille and I ended up at Shantel and David's house .We had to pick up pumpkins from Walmart earlier that day. I am excited for next year when we have a garden. It will be so nice not to have to buy pumpkins. Anyway, we picked up some pumpkins and headed to Shantel's house. Every year we eat soup and carve our pumpkins. This year was no exception. One new thing did happen this year. My dad got an awesome pumpkin gutter. You hook it up to a drill and just scrape it all out. It was so nice because that is sometimes the worst part about carving pumpkins. It was really fun.

I carved one for Camille and one for me. Camille's had one tooth, because at that time Camille only had one tooth.

After carving Camille's I started on mine. I tried to do an awesome Spiderman pumpkin. I just looked at it and tried to carve it but it really didn't work. In fact it was probably the worst pumpkin I have ever made. In the end, it just turned out to be a big frowning face. I didn't even take a picture of it. I am so lame. Next year will be better.

It was such a nice night. I love spending time with family. Happy Halloween.