Strawberries

There is a new strawberry patch about 5 minutes from our house that we like to go pick at. I took the boys this afternoon and handed Parker the bucket to hold (he likes to hold things or me :) Anyways, I put some strawberries in the bucket, and went to pick some more, and when I turned back, Parker had grabbed a handful and stuffed them in his mouth! He made a sour face, and then grabbed more. It was so funny to watch him eat them, and he seemed like such a normal little boy, I just couldn't bear to take them out of his hands-I mean, the shirt was already ruined, so why not, right? These picture do not do junstice of the aftermath....



Thank goodness for my new iphone! Now I always have a camera on hand for those random moments :)

Camden's lucky day

Well, this was one Cinco de Mayo that Camden will remember for a while! First of all, he was star of the day at school! He got to go to to the treasure chest and pick a prize and he gets his name posted in a star on the wall. I then took him to Wal-Mart after school today and he got to spend some of that birthday money burning a hole in his pocket (OK, well really he stores it in a glass jar...) My savvy little shopper bought 2 items that he wanted that were on sale and one item he's wanted since Halloween that was on clearance. So my little guy made out with $55 worth of stuff for $30 :) I couldn't be prouder :D He was excited because I'm making him put half of his birthday money in the bank since he got so much stuff for his birthday and from his party, so he's excited that he was able to stretch his money so far.

And then...HE LOST HIS FIRST TOOTH!!! He was trying to open the packaging with his teeth, and out popped his little loose tooth! Funny enough, it actually freaked him out, he was almost crying! I don't think he was expecting blood with the tooth ;) Look at the cutie:



So we came home, and it was just pouring rain-like torrential rain! And we looked out our back and the stream had flooded! It came up probably 10 feet onto our property (usually the stream is behind the line of trees and the big tree in the upper right corner of the photo.) Craziness. But Camden thought it was just the coolest thing ever. Check out our lakefront property:

Camden's 7th birthday

Camden got to celebrate his birthday twice! Once on his actual birthday, then the next Friday for his birthday party...oh wait...and a 3rd time when he got his grandmommy's birthday card! hee hee...Anyways, he was VERY excited this year, expecially for his party! For his actual birthday, I got him a cookie cake (cuz it's what he really really wanted) and some chicken nuggets from Mickey D's.

Then he opened a few presents from us. He especially liked his new pokemon action figures.



Now on Friday, the real fun began. He really wanted a webkinz themed birthday party and wanted each guest to go home with a webkin as his party favor-so he was only allowed to invite 3 friends. He ended up picking his best friend from church, his best friend from school, and his best friend from he neighborhood. They all got along really well...except at the dinner table when they all declared that they were sitting next to or across from their best friend ;) His cousin, Clark, also came up from Winston-Salem to join in the fun. This was actually a really fun theme because there is so much to do with it! If your child has a webkinz, this party will totally make sense to you. If not, well, you can just pretend :)

We started with each child spinning the wheel of wow (echo echo echo) upon their arrival. They then grabbed their bag and went to the game room to play games.

Unfortunately, the game room didn't work that well because the kids would totally lose focus when the next guest arrived, so I don't think anyone actually finished a game! I had blown up a bunch of balloons, and they went to the family room for zingoz pop. Whoever popped all of their colored balloons first won. Now, I worked hard to blow up the balloons, but apparently I didn't blow them up quite enough for the little guys, they were super hard to pop! It was funny to watch the kids bouncing around on them. They then went outside for a gem hunt (gems wrapped loosely in aluminum foil "rocks." ) They went to the "Dead man playground" mine and the "spooky under deck" mine to find their gems. They then opened the rocks and used their gems to create their very own crown of wonder.

We came in for som webkinz bingo, had dinner, and then went out to play candy bash (a pinata.) I've actually never seen a pinata actually work correctly-it always breaks, or crashes to the floor or all the candy comes out at once...but this one was perfect! Everyone got several turns and the candy and prizes came out a little bit at a time.


After that, we then went in for cake and presents.

They then traded in their kinz cash that they won playing games for little prizes and they headed home! The cake was a wishing well cake, that actually turned out pretty cute (except when the roof of the well caught on fire while I was carrying the cake over to Camden!)

The party actually went really well and I know that Camden had a great time. The presents were even varied and all of them were really cool!


So one more party down! I'm voting for a theme park like Disney World for next year-I actually think it requires less work ;)

My photobook

Sorry for my lack of posting! I will get Camden's birthday and birthday party pics up ASAP! I have a SEVEN year old running around here!!! I've been working on a photo book from my mom's 50th birthday party and was trying to finish it in time for mother's day, and that has been eating up my spare computer time! I was so proud when I was done, only to discover that you need to leave a .25 inch edge with no important do-dads, writing or pics or it may get cut off in the binding/printing process! So I had to go back and edit most of my pages. Here is the link to my second try!

mom's 50th birthday party photobook

Anyone who wants to order one can sign up on artscow and you get one for $6.99 with free shipping on your first book. Tiff, I have one more layout that I can add that has you guys in it as well, but you'd have to pay for the extra pages...

Anyways, I'll let ya'll know how it turns out when it is actually printed! It was a fun foray into digi-scrapping. I do enjoy it, but I also still enjoy real scrapbooking, so I think I will do both, depending on the project!

more digi scrapping

Here are a couple more pages I made. Since I am new to this, leave input! (Especially anyone from my family who's going to want a copy!)

Happy Easter-time to catch up!

I know, I know, blogging has just not been my strong suit lately...and we've had time off to do things!

OK, we'll go in chronological order. for those of you not on facebook, here's the skinny on our fun April Fools dinner: I told Camden and Paul that since it was April fools, we got to eat cupcakes first for dinner. Little did they know that the cupcakes were in fact meatloaf covered with colored mashed potatoes. The "punch" was actually jello with fruit in it, and then the "sushi" was made with rice crispy treats and gummy worms and wrapped in fruit roll ups :) It was fun, and wasn't nearly as mean as when I told Camden that allowance was being cancelled due to the economy...I actually almost made him cry ;) But he thought it was funny when he knew it was a joke!



Camden has been tracked out for two weeks, and Parker had Wed, Thurs and Fri off for Spring break (Mon and Tues were snow makeup days.) So we've had fun going to the movies-"Race to Witch Mountain" with "the Rock" (yummy), we colored Easter eggs, did the Bond Park Easter Egg hunt, went to a AAA baseball game last night, went to the zoo with friends, and even went bowling (one of Paker's favorite activities.) Want to see all my pics? Oh yeah, I didn't really take any! Bad mommy...

And here is an Easter pic of my cute boys today with all their webkinz (they got 2 more from the Easter bunny.) Camden was all frustrated this morning when he couldn't find his Easter basket, but was happy to get another webkinz, a couple bakugan and candy.



I also started my foray into digital scrapbooking (wait, but I didn't take any pictures of spring break...hmmm....maybe deep down I don't really want to scrapbook the pictures?) So, here are some of my first pages that I have played with. I really enjoy the "handicraft" aspect of making paper scrapbook pages, and I think it takes just as long to digiscrap as normal scrapping, but there is a lot less mess! I want to send a big shout-out to my sister Shana who walked me through using photoshop-I could not even figure out where to start!!! Thank goodness for smart sisters! I am starting my pages with my mom's 50th birthday celebration last summer because other people may want the same pages, and this way I can make a copy for everyone!

My so-called suburban life :)

Well, I am now just about as much of a suburban mom as I can think of. I drive a minivan (which I was NEVER going to do...), and I have even totally "mommed" my ride with an awesome dent on one side of the bumper and a scrape on the other from exiting my garage. (If you haven't seen this clip yet, it's pretty funny: click here)

I even helped out for the PTA a couple of weeks ago and collected items for and put together this awesome silent auction basket from Camden's class for the big pizza/bingo/fundraiser night at the school.


But why the post today? Well, this weekend I officially became a soccer mom as Camden played in his first soccer game. Now, luckily, there are so many kids around here, that he is playing in a league that practices and plays at the same field each week (and the field is literally 3 minutes from our house) So lest you think I would be driving said child around in said minivan to multiple soccer fields, well, I'm just not that dedicated yet ;)

Camden was quite a good little soccer player! He isn't really aggressive, instead hanging back a bit and trying to go where he thinks the ball is going to be, and then grabbing it as it pops out from the pack or stealing it from the other team as they advance. He'll make a good striker or defender as he gets older (if he wants to keep playing soccer.) The best part for him is that he gets to run fast, which is his favorite thing to do. His team was much better and more organized then the other team and they won 7-1 (although, really, there's no one keeping score :) He has a great coach-his youngest daughter is on the team and he has been coaching for years. He does a great job of keeping the kids spread out and really encouraging them. I'm really glad that Camden is on this team :)
Here are some fun pictures from Saturday as he played his first game as a Renegade:

Brothers and webkinz

For Christmas, both boys got Webkinz in their stockings. For those of you without school age children, these are little stuffed animals with web codes, that let them into Webkinz world. Online, they can feed and clothe their pet, build and decorate their rooms, play games and other fun stuff. Camden really enjoys going online to do this and therefore loves his little stuffed animal, who he considers part of the family (which is how he convinced us he should be allowed to be on Webkinz on Sunday) Parker loves anything that has anything to do with Camden. On Sunday mornings, Camden will being the laptop into Parkers room and show Parker how his webkinz is doing (Camden "takes care" of both of their animals online). This allows Paul and I some extra sleep as Parker is entertained in his room.

Here they are on webkinz on the couch after I got Parker out of bed:


What was so cute about this was that their webkinz were "fighting" Parker would take his tiger and kind of push the lion, and then Camden would growl and "fight" back. They were having so much fun playing together and it was so cute that I had to grab the camera! Camden is such an awesome big brother, I don't know what I would do without him!

Our bipolar almost Spring weather

The weather has been a little crazy out here! On Monday, school was cancelled due to a snow day-again!!!! Camden got to go sledding for the first time (Thank you Rebers for letting us borrow your sled!) We didn't get out till the afternoon and the snow was already starting to melt, but he got some fun runs in before he got too cold :) Parker even got in on the action. He and I went down a couple of times, although climbing up the hill holding him and the sled probably wasn't the safest thing I've done lately...



Then, on Thursday, the kids had an early release from school and Camden's class had a park playdate-the weather was really nice-in the mid 60's. They all had fun playing together, although I noticed a particular little girl was in almost all the pics I took of Camden...hmmm...



Yesterday, the high was 77 degrees and we were out in our shorts getting the garden ready, washing the car and just enjoying the welcome warmth. Cmaden had to go to school-because in year round school, you make up your days on Saturday. Poor kid :(
And today the high is 80 degrees!!! So we've gone from a low of 16 degrees to a high of 80 in less then a week. It's very hard to plan ahead when the weather is like this :) But I will take this beautiful weather any day!

Valentines Day-The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

The Good:
Camden really liked Valentines day-mainly because it is another holiday that you get candy. He made Paul and I the cutest Valentine-it's the quintessential 1st grade looking valentine-see for yourself:

I especially like the Rainbow-I'm sure my mom could find a card that I made her with the same one :)

We also made Valentine cookies, because who doesn't like sweets!

Then there was a great deal at CVS on Madagascar 2, so with my coupons, ECB's and the sale, I got $20 of Proctor and Gamble products and the movie for $13. So I think I did pretty well ;) On Friday night, we all watched the movie together while we ate pink frosted cookies.

The Bad

So, Paul and I find ourselves amusing, and thought that instead of doing your typical Valentines night out, we would go out, have some fun and make a bit of a mockery of the "Hallmark Valentine date." So, the plan was to head to Sonic, where Paul was going to splurge and let me pick anything off the .99 menu I wanted, then head to Garner for some Go-Kart racing, And then after watching my hunky lovebunny race cars, go cool down at the DQ. We were calling it our "redneck" Valentines date. The fun of it was to see what kind of people actually took their dates to these activities on a Valentines Day. But....

The Ugly:

Our babysitter never showed up!!! Later on we learned that her daughter had gotten sick, so she and her husband headed to Greensboro and ended up taking her to the hospital as the pneumonia worsened and she'd been kept overnight. Unfortunately, she did not bring our phone number and apparently didn't know about 411. So, we waited, and waited. I thought "Maybe I told her the wrong time? Maybe there's a wreck?" She was supposed to come at 6:00, so by 7:15, we were pretty sure she wasn't going to show. So....I ran and picked up some food for us, and we ended up watching "Mama Mia" on pay per view. I didn't even try to find another sitter cuz I thought it would be pointless. The movie was alright, but I think it would be much more enjoyable on stage. Luckily, we go on date nights regularly, so while disappointing that we didn't go out on our 10th anniversary/Valentines weekend-it's all right. Besides, we have the awesome cruise to look forward to!!! And that's better then any date night :D

Anniversary Mystery

Last night I hear Paul printing and cutting and playing on the computer in his office. "Don't come in!" he tells me. "I'm working on your anniversary present." I'm thinking, really?? What is he doing? Well, this morning I found out. He leaves for work, telling me, "Have fun playing with your present!" So I get out of bed and come downstairs to find:
Oh my. I had to solve the clues to get the combination to open the box.

So, here was the first clue:
Camden was very excited to help me, and the first task was just up his alley. In fact, he actually did it or me ;) "Banker" is one of his favorite games. He likes to trade money, asking if he can have 4 quarters for his dollar or a $1 bill for his.

Well, we got this one pretty easy and were ready for clue #2:
The URL is: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yuHfql-d0MM
Haha very funny. Paul got Wrestlemania I-V over the summer and this is his and Camdens favorite match. And the number is pretty obvious :)

So, now we were ready for clue #3:
This one threw me. I totally forgot how to play this-in fact, I had to google for directions. And then I redid it several ways (in the game do you include the M.A.S.H. in the count? and on the spirals, do you count 3? or all 5? Anyway, since there were only 4 numbers, I figured if one didn't work I could try another one :)

So, after a walk down memory lane (who didn't play this on the playground in 3rd grade?) I was ready for clue #4:
Again, had to use google. Without the internet, I would have been hopeless. But the answer didn't seem right! Whose jersey number is 00? So I took some time to make sure that was true, and what do you know, that was his number!

So, clue #5:
I do like sudoku, but it took me a few minutes to get this one. It's still pretty early ;) Camden was hovering around me looking over my shoulder while I did it...which made it hard to concentrate :) He must have picked a medium one because it wasn't easy, but I was able to figure it all out.

So, now the final clue, clue #6:
So I put this in my CD player and the player stopped at song #7...what was I to do? Then I thought, well, I've used my computer so far for most of the answers, so I'll use that (thinking that the songs would show up and I could cheat...) But, since he had compiled the CD, there were no titles. I listened to them all long enough to figure out the title and finally, at track 18, there was the song (well, he kept saying "One..." so I assumed this was the title:D I'm sure I was supposed to listen to the hour and a half CD throughout the day, but I don't have that much patience!

And there it was! All 6 numbers! So I opened it up...and there was a piece of paper?!?!
Paul has planned a cruise for us for our 10th anniversary to the Eastern Caribbean. We'll be sailing out on June 1st. And the best part? I think that this will be the first vacation that we have ever gone on that I haven't planned! Not that I don't enjoy planning, I just have never been "taken" on a vacation :) I am so excited to take a week long vacation with my husband! (although Camden immediately asked when he would get to go on a cruise...) So, time to renew those passports and Bon Voyage! And Paul, love ya babe!!! It's been a great 10 years!!!

I was doing so well...

I was blogging so well at the beginning of the year, but it was easier because we had Christmas and Camden was tracked out. Well, Camden is back in school, and I'm back to my routine!
Camden had a bit of a rough transition after 6 weeks with his awesome mom, but is doing much better now that they are doing an earth science unit :) Camden now wants to be a geologist when he grows up. He spends his recess time collecting rocks and is amassing quite a collection! He has made a "museum" in his room-I'll have to get a picture of that to post! I also might have to find a rock tumbler for him to use since he has some cool rocks from doing gem mining a couple of times. He also wants to be in the science fair, so we are busy thinking of cool ideas. he wants to race his cars and see which one goes farther ;) So any ideas for a first grader, let us know!
Parker also had a rough transition back to school after Christmas break, and hopefully this week will be better. I think he might have had a bit of a cold, but he has just been very uncooperative lately! It's challenging when there is really no way to reward or punish him for his behavior...if he could just tell us what he wanted, life would be much easier!
Paul is still loving his job, and still has one, thank goodness! Things are getting scary out there! He really enjoys the work he does and the feeling that each day he is genuinely helping people. He had a fun 33rd birthday going to the Miami/Duke game that went into overtime. We went to Ginza, a japanese hibachi steakhouse for dinner, which was a lot of fun. Camden loved all of the fire :)
I am back to going to the gym, working every once in a while (like tomorrow) and getting this house back in shape (seems like I'm always doing that!) I've also been on facebook, getting slowly sucked in :) I often update my status, so you can see what I am up to ;) I'm enjoying the warmer weather, it seems to make people want to do social things :)
Well, I promise to post pictures too, just thought I'd give a little update for everyone!

Bestest buds

Camden's friend came over to play the other day, and I cracked up when I saw the shirt he was wearing. Camden and Michael always have so much fun together, and they are hilarious to listen to! To hear how they negotiate what to play makes me so proud. I love to hear them work out their different ideas to come up with what to play-they are just getting so grown up-but they are still so cute! I didn't have any real childhood friends that I "grew up" with as I was constantly changing schools, I hope these 2 will stay friends from preschool to their missions and beyond :)

Star Wars viewing

There's nothing better then curling up and watching "Star Wars!"


This is from Clark's visit. They were so excited to watch the movie. When the opening music came on and "Star Wars" flashed on the screen, this was their reaction.

What Parker thinks is funny...

I've been slowly transferring my pics and videos over to my new computer and came across this cute video of the boys about 3 years ago. This is when we discovered that Parker loves when things fall down-including us! We think that if one of us collapsed from a heart attack, it would be to the sound of Parker giggling up a storm...what a way to go :)

SNOW FUN!!!

Camden has been waiting and waiting for snow...so he was ESTATIC to wake up to 4 inches of snow this morning! It has been 2 years since snow stuck to the ground here. Although, when it did happen, he asked, "Why didn't it snow on Christmas Eve or Christmas? That would have made a lot more sense!" Of course, I was scheduled to work today (and I only work TWO days this month!), so Paul got to stay home with the kids for their snow day. It worked out well because the bank ended up having a delayed opening, and all of his appointments cancelled on him (the snow was really coming down hard!) I opened the pharamacy for the 10 people who braved the weather to come pick up their prescriptions.

Paul and the boys ended up having a lot of fun outside, and also had lots of fun eating tons of snacks and drinking hot cocoa by the fire inside. Camden learned to shovel the driveway, and Parker had fun out in the stroller in the snow and loved seeing the snow falling from the sky. So, while it would have been easier on a day I wasn't working, Paul got to enjoy a day off that he would have never taken! Here are some fun pics:
Paul playing with the boys in our back yard

Camden out enjoying the snow and learning how to shovel the driveway (never to young to learn!)
Parker and I enjoying the picturesque scenery!