Kamping with the Kiddos

WARNING: IF ANYONE IS NOT WISHING TO HAVE CHILDREN ANY TIME SOON, DO NOT LISTEN TO, LOOK AT, OR EVEN THINK ABOUT MY BEAUTIFUL AND WONDERFULLY PERFECT CHARLIE. CONTINUE AT YOUR OWN RISK.

And our camping trip was.......a SUCCESS!!! Two years ago we took Mabel camping. She refused to go to sleep until 10:30-11pm and she woke up at 6am, not including waking up twice in the middle of the night to eat. Last year we took Mabel camping. We thought she was car sick. She barfed when we arrived at the campground. She barfed again. She barfed again. (You'd think we would figure it out.) She got a fever and we decided it was time to pack everything up and go home.

This camping trip went rather smoothly. After eating dinner (Mabel ate her hot dog raw, yummm!), we broke out the marshmallows. Mabel offered one to Charlie and I couldn't resist. He thoroughly enjoyed it.

Everyone loves playtime wth Daddy, but the consequences are inevitable.

Here is Charlie after playtime with Daddy.

Charlie is what I like to call a "Pretend Baby." He just isn't really a baby. We don't really have to plan anything around him. He is totally chill. Whateva'. He took to camping like a deliciously warm bottle of formula. Mmmmmm...formula.

So after Charlie went to bed the party really started. We stoked up the fire and ate almost an entire bag of marshmallows. We being Mabel and I. Randy doesn't like marshmallows, a travesty. We caught lightening bugs and played with flashlights. We also kept our eyes on two snails crawling up and down a log we were burning, don't worry animal and snail lovers, the snails were perfectly safe and out of harms way. They were on the end that was hanging out of the fire. The children actually slept-in until 7am. Mabel seemed to enjoy herself and we felt like it was an overall success.

Concert

This is my sister-in-law, Samantha, and I right before the Taylor Swift / Keith Urban concert. It literally rocked my socks off! Taylor Swift was pretty good, I really like her songs. But Keith Urban was totally rockin! He knows how to do a concert. He was all over the place, running through the crowd. I am not even joking, I TOUCHED HIS ARM!!! That is right. I wiped some sweat right off of it. It was so amazing, thanks for the awesome floor seats Randy! Randy was not able to attend due to starting his new job and lack of vacation time. Thanks Sam for taking his place.

My Very First Post Ever

So this is it. Can the beginning of a blog make or break it, like a book? I certainly hope not. This is really strange. It's like talking to an audience but without being able to hear or see their reaction to know if I'm keeping everyone's attention or not. Hmmm...you'll have to let me know how I'm doing. You must know that it took me over 10 hours of work to get this stupid thing the way I wanted it and just figure it out. Soooooo, somebody BETTER read it! It seems to have a good blog you just need lots of cute pictures and an occasional funny line. So here's my cute kids.

Here it is. Our new house. We just moved to Tennessee 6 weeks ago. We are anxiously awaiting the loan to go through so we can move into this awesome abode.

Since moving to Tennesse we have learned such lingo as "maama," translated that's grandma. And Randy distinctly heard someone refer to a shopping cart as a "buggy." We have been working on Mabel trying to get her to say maama, but she refuses. Can't wait for her to get a cute little Tennessee accent.

We are very excited to get settled in and on a normal routine. It will also be nice to try and start making friends. We will be changing wards, so everyone in our ward now just smiles and walks right by us.

We had a great reunion back in Illinios. I have some pics of the cousins. It was exhausting but very worth it. I am excited for Mabel and Charlie to get to know their grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins. Fun stuff. Well, I won't bore you with the details. I'll just put up the good stuff, the pictures. Mabel is just cute and Charlie is enormous, the size of a 1 year-old at 5 months. Randy insists that I put up his stats. He is 18lbs. and 28 inches. That's right, he is already wearing 9-12 month clothes. Big boy. Enjoy the pics and enjoy our brand new blog.