Ink's Lake

We (my parents, Russ, Campbell, and I, my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew, and brother, sister-in-law, nephew, and niece) spent a long weekend at the MOST awesome house on Ink's Lake this summer. A high school friend of my mom's owns this house (as well as the one we stayed at in Tahoe several years ago). My mom did not adequately prepare us for how awesome this house was. If you will notice, I listed all those people and even Campbell had her own room and bathroom!

View of house from lake

Bar/Kitchen

We rather enjoyed all of the items around the house, which of course we had been instructed not to touch. The man that owns the house is quite the hunter. There is a full-sized lion in the living room, standing over its prey (antelope?). Campbell barked at the lion all weekend.

Pole Vaulting with this very large pillow



Not only was the house amazing, but of course we had a great time. We spent a lot of time out on the boat.

Some people are more successful "tubers" than others.
I skied for the first time! I felt very accomplished.
Lots of pool time.

And fishing

And lounging

And Jake got his annual "vacation haircut" from MiMi (which he is never, ever happy about).

Somebody's looking a little white trash. Too much time on the lake, perhaps?

Thanks Mom and Dad! We LOVED our time at Ink's Lake!

Remembering a Vacation Past

I have officially decided to close down my MySpace account. Seeing as how I haven't logged on in about six months and MySpace is SO three years ago, I figure it's time.

My parents took us, my sister, brother-in-law, niece, and nephew to Tahoe in 2006. This slide show has made its home on my MySpace page since then. Enjoy, as I organize the insane amount of pictures for a post about our family vaca to Ink's Lake two weekends ago!

Campbell's First Birthday Party

Seriously, almost two months later I am writing this post.

It might have taken us that long to recover.

We had Campbell's party on Saturday, May 16th, two days after her actual birthday. We had planned on having our friends, family, and church family for an indoor/outdoor feast of hamburgers, hot dogs, and cupcakes. Pretty simple, right? I should have known that the details are just too important to me...I was kind of a wreck for a few weeks beforehand! I have to say I had fun though. Special thanks to my mom, Susan, Connie, and my sister for helping with food and preparations.

Russ and I were both amazed at how many came to celebrate our little girl's first year of life with us. It is a blessing to have people that love us and our child, and the experience of community we have started to live here in Houston has been an answer to many of our prayers.

It started raining about forty-five minutes into the party, so everything moved inside. Our house can hold some people...but 50-75 people is pushing it! At the end of the night, Russ and I felt like it had been our wedding again - I never sat down, I didn't eat anything, and I only had two minute conversations with all of the guests!

Campbell wore the most gorgeous dress, created by her GiGi. Susan and I had fun designing the dress and she looked so adorable in it. She partied so hard she tore the dress apart by the end of the night!

She was very tentative about the cupcake.

My sweet one year-old.

Father's Day, one year later, and a lap full of dinner

Happy Father's Day!

Campbell and I are blessed to have a lot of great fathers in our lives. Each of these men are oh-so valuable to us!

Her exceptional beyond words daddy and the love of my life.

Campbell has three wonderful grandfathers who absolutely adore her. It is a blessing that these men are involved in her life on an everyday kind of basis. Russ & I couldn't hope for anything more for our girl.

My daddy & Campbell's Geda.
Russ's dad & Campbell's Paw-Paw.
Russ's stepdad & Grandpa Bob.
We love you guys!

A year ago, on Father's Day, Campbell was dedicated at church. That morning I took these pictures of her all dressed up and sitting on the chair in Russ and my bedroom.
Wasn't she a precious little thing?

This morning Campbell and I were sitting in the bedroom talking to Russ while he got ready for worship practice before church. I thought about those pictures, taken last Father's Day.

Trying to recreate those pictures with my squirmy, wormy one year-old was a little more difficult!

I put Campbell's dinner on a cute little plastic tray (think miniature cafeteria style tray) tonight thinking she was ready for that. She has actually done pretty well with bowls lately and not totally dumping them out. I stopped paying a whole lot of attention a few minutes into her eating dinner and looked up just in time to see her dump her whole tray of pasta, banana, and pork chop pieces over her head and into her lap.

She even dumps her food cute.

So normally she would have totally gotten in trouble for that, but I realized later that I was too intent on taking pictures. Oops.

Famous Last Words

Life is becoming increasingly more interesting every day since Campbell turned one. It's like someone (someone? :) flipped a switched and amped up her personality. Today she kept Missy and I entertained on a shopping trip to Target and Old Navy with a bag of goldfish and just enough attitude to be cute.

Missy and Spencer came over tonight to check on the progress of our current house project (that is another story for another day!). Missy was telling me that Ellison had just pooped in the bathtub. I thought to myself...not smugly, mind you, just matter-of-factly...that Campbell has never done that, not even as a newborn.

Famous last words. (Thoughts?).

Literally five minutes later, Missy, Spence, and Ellison left and I put Cam in the bath. She was just starting to play with her toys and instructing me which toys to hand her, when I saw IT. It was huge. I yelled for Russ and pulled her out of the tub.

We both totally panicked and acted totally bewildered...like we haven't been dealing with her poop for over a year now.

She was, of course, so funny.

If you have a sensitive stomach, you should probably stop here. I promise it's tasteful at least!


She then instructed her daddy on washing the bathtub. If you know me, you are not the least bit surprised that my child is already demonstrating an overwhelming amount of bossiness. Seriously. How can you spend that much time bossing people around when you only know ten words at the most?



Bathtub's clean. Let's try again.


Second time around was definitely less eventful!

First Birthday!!

So it's about time I got around to posting first birthday party pics of our girl.

First up, her actual birthday. Some time ago, someone had given me the advice to spend time just the three of us on her actual birthday. We thought it sounded like a great idea. Looking back, with the chaos that was her party, we are so glad to have had that evening together to celebrate one year of life with Campbell Rose.

We started by turning her carseat around to face the FRONT.

She wasn't as excited as I thought she would be at first. She was pretty happy about it the next day though!

Then we went to Double Dave's. Cause you know, we trust the crust. Campbell had her first taste of pizza!

Next we went to get ice cream. I have been BEYOND neurotic about what Campbell can and cannot eat. So other than family members (yes, I know who you are!) sneaking her bites of things, she has not been allowed to have sweets at all. We didn't want to give her cake and ruin the birthday party cake effect, so we opted for ice cream instead. I think she actually enjoyed the ice cream much more.

Birthday party post coming soon!

Diapers are for babies

Campbell is officially on the mend. She hasn't had any fever since yesterday and is starting to eat and drink like normal again.

Today we saw the return of her personality. When I laid her down for her nap this afternoon, she was in her diaper and a shirt. When I went to get her up, this is how I found her....


Her daddy said I had to censor the pictures. She was just too proud of herself!