Recent Events

We've had a very "exciting" Thanksgiving holiday.  I'd normally be sharing it in detail, along with pictures, except we lost our camera!

Hopefully we will track it down and more explanation will follow, but in short:

* Thanksgiving in Illinois at Great-grandma Beasley's
* Black Friday adventures with Aunt Carole, Uncle Ric, Grandma Pat, and Grandpa Jim
* Emergency Room visit for Kevin
* Gallbladder surgery and 2 day hospital stay.  Thankfully Aunt Carole and a very sick Uncle Ric were able to keep Camden during this stay.
* Kevin to stay at home/off work for 2 weeks...Camden develops Croup...Gina has extended, extended holiday weekend taking care of her two sickies.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I sent these treats to Camden's school yesterday.  They were better in theory than how they turned out in reality (yes, they are supposed to have eyes, but the sprinkles I had were too small)...but they still eat good!

Gobble, Gobble!

Evening Activities

Evenings in our home are quite relaxed.  After dinner we basically hang out with each other.  Often the TV or a movie is going, someone is surfing the web, toys and books are being brought out and played with, etc.  A few nights ago, coloring was the activity of choice.

Camden is showing such improvement in her skills.  She concentrates and tries to stay in the lines.  She chooses multiple colors and doesn't just scribble.

She is growing up in so many ways - big and small!

Grandma's House

I had to travel last week to Louisville, KY for work.  I wasn't sure how to make this long day work with Camden/daycare/Kevin's schedule.  Then realized that Grandma Pat lived only an hour from Louisville!  Camden and I could travel down the night before (making my morning drive that much shorter), sleep at Grandma's house, and Camden could enjoy a day with her while I did site visits.  We drove through a terrible rain storm (tornado warning and all), but Camden was so excited to see Grandma Pat and Grandpa Jim.  She chanted, "Grandma Pat, Grandma Pat" from the start of the journey and didn't want to stop for dinner, but "get to Grandma's house."  Unfortunately because of the weather, we did have to stop and wait out the storm for a bit in Indy.

Camden had a great day taking walks, making cupcakes, and riding the exercise bike.  I think she wore everyone out -including herself!  We left for home just after a yummy dinner and Camden didn't even make it to the highway before she konked out.  She slept the 2 hours home, awoke long enough to be carried inside, whine/cry for about 5 minutes, and fall back asleep on the living room floor.  I had to wake her up 11 hours later to get ready for school.  That was a total of 13+ hours for my girl who normally gets about slightly less than 10!
 

We didn't have pictures of all the fun they had, but I snapped these while riding the horse at Meijer on Saturday...and her shirt reminded us of the day with Grandma!

We can't wait for more Grandma time later this week...

Family Time

We are making the most of our weekends together.  Simply running errands is so much more fun since Daddy gets to come too.

Saturday we went to Avon for some shopping, stopping at McAllister's for lunch.

Camden also got a promised afternoon break at Chuck E. Cheese's. 

Kevin likes it too!

I was pretty impressed with Camden's skills at the air hockey table.  She actually had good hand-eye coordination hitting the puck back and forth to me.

(Sorry about the red-eye...I wasn't able to edit before uploading).

We got a handful of tickets and redeemed them for a crazy straw and a pencil topper...at least she didn't select candy!

Caboodle Cupcakes

Camden and I enjoyed Saturday in Terre Haute.  A stop at the "Dinosaur Museum" (aka TH Children's Museum), some shopping, and discovering a cupcake shop were on the agenda.

We got there about 2 hours after they had opened and they were already sold out of a few flavors.  I thought that was a good sign.  I selected four flavors to take home and share with Kevin.  I also let Camden select one to enjoy at the store.  She choose Vanilla/Vanilla (since the icing was slightly pink...and it had sprinkles).

She was slightly excited!

She told me I could have a little bite!

Then made faces at me the rest of our visit eating the yummy treat.

Turns out the Vanilla/Vanilla was the best of the flavor choices.  The other cupcakes were a little dry or a little too sweet.  Kevin's favorite was the Chocolate Fudge filled (neither of us are huge chocolate fans, so it says more about the other flavors than this one).  I prefered the Chocolate Carmel Mocha slightly over that one.

I found a great cupcakery in Carmel (on a recent work-related trip to Indy) that I will go out of my way for again...this one, while a nice treat, probably not.  

Fall Weather

We've had some mild temperatures the last few days.  Camden, of course, wanted to play outside.

So we got out the riding toys, again.



I love how she kinda tilts her head up as she looks at me when I call her name.  That cute little nose!

We also spent some time being silly on her "park."

Up and down the slide a gazillion times.

Beverly's Baby Shower

My dear friend, Beverly, is pregnant...with twins!  Her shower was Saturday afternoon.  It had a fun circus theme and they really went all out!  Very fun food and decorations...everything in red and blue.

I made cake pops for the celebration.  They were chocolate/chocolate and carrot cake/cream cheese.  I had never made these two flavors and feared the chocolate would be too overwhelming. They were actually delicious...and the carrot cake were good, just very obviously a cake mix recipe.

Kier made the most delicious cupcakes I've had in a while.  She has some secret frosting recipe that involves buttermilk...best.frosting.ever!

Lindsay also traveled in from Iowa; so good to see her!  Amy hosted the event and was a fabulous ringmaster.

Monday Morning Pick-Me-Up

Halloween

I love Camden's octopus costume.  The best part is the purple sweatshirt (minus the eyes & mouth) can be worn for a few more years!  She received many comments about being the "cutest costume" people saw this year.

Since we were traveling over the weekend, I had some mother's guilt.  She was going to miss her school party and our town trick-or-treating.  She was very excited about trick-or-treating this year and I was not sure about my decision to go East.  Then I remembered that she is 3 years old and will not care in the long-term.  So we packed her costume and I decided whereever we were, we would do something.

On Sunday afternoon we would be in Pittsburgh and Elizabeth's church was having their "Truck or Treat" event.  The weather was very cold and we arrived back in town just for the last hour of the event.  Only about 10 cars were out...and they only had the bottom of the barrel candy left. 

Camden loved it regardless and got a bag full of dum-dums and tootsie rolls.  I decided we would go to another town near us when we got home on Monday and get some real trick-or-treating done.

Later that night, however, I called Kevin and learned that his Uncle Art had passed away.  The viewing would be Monday night in Illinois.  Camden and I had to drive the rest of the way home on Monday morning, then pick up Kevin and drive 2 more hours to the funeral home.  Poor Camden.  It's so good that she travels so well...another long day in the car seat.  I decided to pack her costume and, regardless of where we were at 7pm on Monday night, we would stop and knock on a few doors.

Turns out that the small town of Paxton (and specifically the neighborhood where the funeral home was) is BIG TIME into trick-or-treating.  We pulled up and the neighbor was setting up his kettle korn tent to pass out bagfuls to the kids.  He stopped us and told us to come by after the viewing for a bag and a full-size candy bar.  He said last year he handed out over 650 bars!

We went inside for a while and then Camden and I stepped out.  The neighbor said we could use his playset for a bit to give Camden some play time.

We made plans with Kevin's cousins to meet back up and walk the neighborhood with their kids.  When Camden and I got back to the funeral home after grabbing some dinner for the three of us, the neighborhood was in full swing.  It was already getting a little late, so Kevin told us to go ahead and trick-or-treat while he went back to the viewing.  It was a perfect plan!  We were done trick-or-treating by the time the cousins arrived...and Kevin got good visit time with his family.

She scored so much candy!  I think we only went to 20 or so houses and she had 2 buckets of goodies...many full-sized treats.  A wonderful blessing around a sad circumstance.

Of course, on Tuesday night, we made one final stop at GaGa's (who saved some extra treats for baby girl).

We literally will be eating candy until Easter, at least...