Cambry's 3rd Birthday Party

We celebrated this precious girl a little early this year. She doesn't turn 3 for a couple more weeks but we had her party in November. December just gets so busy with Christmas festivities and since we had her party at a park we were hoping for nicer weather in November. Well the weather turned out to be bad on Saturday. 100% chance of rain, severe thunderstorms, and even a tornado watch in nearby counties. So that was a bit stressful deciding what to do. We ended up moving the party to Sunday and the weather was beautiful. Super warm for November but just perfect for the party.

The park is really nice and has a cute little pond with ducks.

I wish I had thought to take a group picture of all the kids. She had so many sweet friends come out to her party. 

We all sang to the birthday girl in sunglasses :)

Greg's parents and Jill and Hollyn and Anderson came to stay with us for the weekend. Cambry could not get enough of her cousins. They were so cute together. Anderson and Lainey especially loved eachother. He was so sweet and interested in her. She would just love on him and pat him.

We are so thankful for our sweet almost-3-year-old! I will have to do a separate post in a couple weeks when she actually turns 3 of all her favorite things.

Things and Stuff

Here are some things that have been happening lately:

Lainey started crawling a couple weeks ago!!! We are so excited! She is now 13 months but since this started a couple weeks ago I am marking this down as she started crawling at 12 months. This has been a long time coming. Lots of hard work from Lainey, her therapists, and Greg and me. So proud of this little one. Now she can crawl over to Cambry and try to take her toys :) She can also pull up to high knees. Now we are working on teaching pulling to stand up.

We have all taken turns being sick around here. For a good couple of weeks we all had colds off and on that we seemed to keep passing back and forth. Then there were a couple days where my voice dissappeared. Then Lainey got pink eye, and then she got croup. Poor thing. Now she has had lingering congestion for a week and a half. Illness just seems to be abundant in the winterish months. 

We are starting a new study in our Bible study group called Experiencing God. I am excited about this.

Cambry is in love with Frozen. Last year when it swept the nation Cambry was still too young to want to sit and watch a whole movie and was more interested in Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. But now she pretty much watches the movie (parts of it) daily and requests Elsa braids and talks about Anna throughout the day.

We had family pictures taken a few weeks ago so I need to post those soon!

We also had Cambry's birthday party this past weekend so I need to write a post about that. I did not do a good job of taking pictures, so I really only have a few.

I can't believe Thanksgiving is tomorrow and Christmas is so close! I think I have only bought a couple Christmas gift so far. But I do have Christmas cards already so at least I am on top of something.

I am looking forward to December and all the fun parties and events that are coming up!

Before 8AM

A local photographer, Karen Jacot, came over recently to take photographs of our morning. She is doing a "Before AM"  series, where she shows the beauty of the every day details through pictures. Many of the Houston Mom Blog contributors participated in this. I jumped at the chance to have free pictures taken. I love how all of them turned out. I have written several day-in-the-life posts before on this blog because I want to look back and remember those little details. So of course I was excited to have my morning documented. I will denitiely treasure these pictures because it shows how precious this season of life is. I wrote a post for HMB with these pictures, but I had to limit how many pictures I put up. So here are some more pictures...

My alarm goes off around 5:30-5:45 am so I can do my quiet time before the girls wake up. That is always my goal, although sometimes it is SO hard to make myself get up. This past week I was so bad about hitting snooze and sleeping in. When I do get up, I make coffee first thing.

Sometimes if the girls are sleeping in late I have time to start getting ready. This particular morning they were sleeping in way later than usual so I did my make up and hair before they even got up. Most of the time I do my makeup in the play room while Cambry plays and Lainey tries to eat all of my makeup. We were getting ready to go to Divine Design this day. It is pretty much my one day of the week to do my hair nice and dress cute.

This was not just for show. I actually do try to make the bed every day :)

I love Lainey's bed head when she wakes up. This girl has some great volume.

Lainey cried when I tried to put her down in the playroom so I brought her with me to get Cambry out of bed. Sweet little thing still calls for me to come get her in the morning even though she could get right out herself.

Cambry loves for Lainey and I to go hide and she comes to find us. Lainey used to be the best hiding partner, but lately has been super curious and grabby and mobile so now she usually gives us away.

Usually the only way I can cook is to let Lainey unload all of the tupperware from the cabinet.

We usually eat eggs, "pancakes" (egg+banana+cinnamon), oatmeal, or a frozen waffle with jelly for breakfast. Bacon or sausage optional.

I read out of the One Year Devotions for Preschoolers book. Cambry usually asks for story after story. It is a sweet little book with short daily readings that are great for her age.

Cambry is the sweetest big sister to Lainey (most of the time). I love it when she wants to help take care of Lainey. Even if it does make a huge mess :)

The tip toes kill me. Too precious.

And there is our morning! I love seeing all the details in pictures. When I am in the midst of things, everything just feels so ordinary and routine. But I love that the pictures reveal how everything is special and fleeting. Karen was so sweet to come over and take these pictures of us!!

Family Reunion Pictures

I am finally getting around to blogging about our Mattern Family Reunion that happened almost a month ago. Greg's cousin Briana took all these great pictures and was so sweet to send them to us. If you are in the San Antonio area you should definitely check her out her website. (All photographs below were taken by Briana).

It is amazing to see how big this family is, and how it grows every year. And it is a miracle that everyone has a free weekend to all get together!

It is also a miracle that the kids are looking at the camera in this picture.