Additional Pictures

Adam has uploaded pictures from Cami's birthday and Myrtle Beach to:

http://picasaweb.google.com/acedog2475

Enjoy!!

Busy May and June!

May was a fun month, leading into a crazy month of June! Adam ran in his 3rd Mini-Marathon. Alaina had her Spring Recital for ballet. And Cami, well, Cami enjoyed the last month of being two, with GREAT anticipation of turning three! Here are some pictures from the month of May:

Adam near the finish line!

Sisters playing in the playset

Alaina before her recital (as a caterpillar)

Cami dancing and waiting for Alaina's parade during Spring Fling at The Oaks Academy

June brought some big events: Alaina's last day of 1st grade, Cami's 3rd birthday, and our annual trip to Myrtle Beach. Here are some pics to enjoy:

Cami's party and hippo cake!

Cami on her birthday

Myrtle Beach pictures!

We are looking forward to the remainder of the summer. We have our annual trip to the farm to see our friends the Hern's and some weekend trips to Michigan and Chicago that we are truly looking forward to. I'll have Adam upload more Myrtle Beach pictures to his picture sharing website and will update you when that's completed.

the last two weeks

we've had an interesting last 2 weeks. cami spent a morning in the emergency room for falling and cutting her eyebrow. (not a great pic, but you get the jist.)

they decided against stitches and used "dermabond" instead. basically they superglued her eyebrow back together. it is amazing what they can do these days!

this week, we've spent the last 2 days at home from school because we got over a FOOT of snow tuesday night! the girls were excited to go play. though a foot of snow is a LOT for a 2-year old and cami had a really hard time moving! needless to say, she didn't enjoy the first time out, even with my path through the grass for her. when we went out in the afternoon, she enjoyed it much more and used a sand shovel to help mommy. (adam was in washington dc for work this whole time. not the best timing for a winter storm! shovelling is definitely a man's job!) here are some pics and a video of our morning jaunt in the snow.

(cami, on our enclosed porch - rather than outside!)

(and alaina attempting a snow angel - pretty hard in a foot of snow!)

i did work on digging my car out yesterday afternoon - it took me almost an hour, and i still couldn't get my car into the street because of all the snow plowed around the car. adam ended up being rerouted through HOUSTON to get home from dc, so he got home around 11:45 last night. then spent about 15-20 minutes this morning trying to shovel the street enough that i could get my car out of my parking spot.

i'm hoping for school tomorrow - i'm not sure what i'll do with the girls for a third day stuck in the house!!! and it's super cold today - so cold that even alaina doesn't want to go outside to play in the snow! that's NEVER happened! it's just so windy.

i'm counting the days until spring. only 50 more days!!! it can't come soon enough...

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year and a lost tooth!

we had a wonderful christmas this year - the girls started the week of christmas off spending some alone time with their grandparents in ft. wayne. this was intended to be a fun time for the girls and a nice break for their parents. :)

instead, adam and i decided to switch around all of our bedrooms as a surprise for the girls for christmas. it was so much more work than we anticipated! when they were brought home on christmas eve by my parents and kev, they found this: (their doors are really not this close together - i just combined the pics)
we told alaina she couldn't wake us up until 7am on christmas morning, and of course, at 7:01 alaina woke us up with cami in tow. here are a couple pics from christmas morning:

(cami just LOVES moons - she always yells "there's my friend the moon!" every time she sees it)

(need i say anything?)

for new year's eve, we spent the evening (and early morning hours!) with some friends - there were 4 couples and 8 kiddos - you'd think it was crazy, but the kids played in the playroom until 11pm and the adults hung out catching up and playing games. here's a picture of alaina, cami and emily in our lame attempt to get the kids to calm down earlier in the night.

alaina started school again on tuesday after more than 2 weeks off. when i picked her up she was telling me that her tooth was getting really loose! so she ate an apple as a snack when we got home - only she took just 3 bites before her tooth starting lodging itself loose and bleeding. after both of us freaked out for about 5 minutes, we composed ourselves and alaina decided she'd just try to pull it out. bam! it popped right out!

and of course cami wanted to show me her teeth too. :)

we're ready for 2009. adam's training again for the mini marathon in may, i've already given up, and the girls are fighting like teenage sisters already. is it 2010 yet?

Stuffed Jesus

Tonight, Alaina was making her Christmas list. She ran into the dining room and said "I want a stuffed Jesus!" My response of course was that they don't make stuffed Jesuses (which of course Adam said we could probably find one.)

She said "I want Jesus!"

So of course my response was "Alaina, you have Jesus - in your heart all the time."

Her response: "But I want Jesus in my bed!"

Adam and I laughed until we cried.

almost traumatic

today i saw cami's short little life flash before me.

i'm still weak and shaking.

we were leaving the hair salon from alaina getting her hair cut. cami was the first out the door - i stayed to hold the door for alaina and saw out of the corner of my eye cami start running.

i automatically yelled "cami! stop!" and started running after her. she was running - no, sprinting - out onto delaware st. delaware is the street we live on. it's also one of the main exits north out of downtown at rush hour. it was now 4pm.

i was able to grab cami about 1/2 way into the street, but lost my balance while trying to grab her and fell - making her hit her head on the cement street.

as i sat in the middle of the street staring south to make sure no cars were coming, the women ran from the salon to help as well as another who had JUST parked her car on the street to go to the salon. they helped me up with cami and ushered me to the sidewalk.

i still see her getting smacked by a car racing home at 4pm to beat rush hour. i see her laying in the street.

it's crazy how quickly life can be taken.

it will be a long time before i will forget this. seeing her run so quickly into the street and being totally unable to help her in time. it was a chilling site.

i'm so thankful god was protecting her.

Camping & Halloween!

Adam and I used to go camping before we had kids. Quite often actually, and we loved it. Then it was just too hard to figure out how to go with kids. So we didn't. Until a few weekends ago!

Adam's cousin Julie and her family were going to spend part of fall break at Brown County State Park camping. So we joined them for a day and night! It was a great time. It was cold, but good fun and exposure for the girls. It has definitely proven to me that it's possible - but would be better with a pop-up camper! :)
Halloween was once again a ton of fun! Alaina was a beautiful Snow Princess and Cami, well, Cami was supposed to be a purple dragon (that was Alaina's old costume). She loved it! Tried it on and was excited about being a dragon. And then one day in the car when we were talking about what Alaina was going to be, Cami said "Mommy, I be kitty cat." I said "No, Cami remember you're going to be a purple dragon!" She said "No, Mommy I be kitty cat." Well, she stuck with it, so guess what Cami was? :)
We have really been enjoying this beautiful weather! And are sad that it's finally coming to an end. We're looking forward to camping this spring though!