Harry Potter!!!!

The last Harry Potter book!! Can you believe it is over? I can't. It has officially become an era. People will look back on this decade and talk about and remember the years that Harry Potter was new and exciting! Talk about the craze of it all. They show old footage of people when the Star Wars movies were first coming out and the excitement people went through that time and I feel this is the same way.

Any who after that boring bit of babble I am blogging about the fact that Hannah and I went to the Harry Potter Midnight Party at Books-A-Million. I had bought my ticket for the book months ago. I had a countdown on my MySpace. I was ready!! We have never gone to a midnight party before. But this is the last Harry book.

I had mentioned this to Shay at the Bunco Bash ( see blog entry below ) her daughter MJ is a huge fan and she liked the idea of going. So we met there. Her friend Michaela had called her from Barnes and Noble and said it was a madhouse over there. BAM was relatively quiet. Just right for me!!! So Michaela ended up ditching B&N and came to be with us.

When you first arrived at BAM you had to choose your house. They were all out of Gryffindor's so we became Hufflepuffs. So they gave you a schedule on what time your house was at the particular events. First was Trivia. I swear BAM picked their most quiet, shy and meek employee to do this one! A bit boring but next was the costume contest. These were just the preliminaries. Pick the best one from each house and at the end of the night pick the best out of the four houses. The winner got ALL kinds of goodies. And of course the very first Harry book at 12:01 :) This is when Hannah decides she wishes she wore a costume and begins to tell me all of the stuff we have at home she could of wore. I told her she was a 'random student'. Worked for me!! MJ was Luna and Quinn was Cedric Diggory. Look at his sweet excited face when he found out he was one of our house's finalists :) MJ was a good Luna she just needed to hold that upside down newspaper a little higher ;)

Sad to say but Quinn didn't end up the Hufflepuff finalist. But check out the tiny creature that won!!

It's Dobby!!! Now I have to state up front she was the only Dobby I saw so she did have a unique outfit. But oh yeah her adorability factor helped ALOT!! :) She won 2nd place overall. I didn't get to see the first place winner from the whole night. I heard she rocked!! I also have to send a thanks out to this little girl's Mom because this is what Cameron Jace will be Halloween!! I think he can pull off a pretty cute Dobby. We will have to wait til October to see!!

I have to share this guy just for general fun. He was a BAM employee who played Snape. Even though his costume really wasn't much I still thought he looked the part!! :)

OK so here we go!! They were taking the boxes out and we were all lined up ready to go!! Yeah I pretty much just held the camera up as high as I could and clicked :) And a quick note to the BAM people!! Being told to get the Heck Out of your store kind of hurt my feelings. But I knew that my baby was in one of those boxes so I let it slide.





The really cool part about BAM is when you bought your ticket you paid in full for you book. So after the countdown ( loud and proud thank you very much!! ) all you had to do was show them your ticket and you got your book. The line was done so fast!!

5-4-3-2-1 YEAH!!!!!




And even though I had been waiting for months and Hannah, to be honest, just went along for the ride I let her get the book. Basically cause she takes better pictures then me ;) Little brown thing that she is!

Look at these happy kiddos!! Hannah, MJ, Quinn and Emily!

Forget the ones above!! Check out these cutie patooties!! We were actually the real ones who were excited. Michaela, Shay and Kara. Looking a little rough around the edges I am afraid. We were hot, sweaty, tired and in Michaela' case STARVING!! I have the nibble marks to prove it! I would wait in line for almost an hour with these ladies anyday!! It was fun! :)

Here is a picture of me with my baby!!! Oh yeah and Hannah, too! Lame joke but had to be said. You can tell I am sweaty because my bangs are doing their little wings.

I stayed up til 4 that night reading. I am almost done now actually. To be honest I am not sure why I am still sitting here typing to you all. I have a book to finish reading!!!

Bunco Babes!!!

Grandma Ann we are bringing Bunco BACK!!!!

That's right ladies and gentlemen we the women of South Carolina are bringing Bunco back!!!

Bunco?

Throw some dice write down a score it's pretty cool :)

I belong to a Yahoo group of Charleston Air Force Wives. I joined pretty much the day Jason came home and said he would be gone 8 months. I needed to make some friends!! They had thrown the word Bunco around numerous times but just couldn't get enough people interested. Well FINALLY we got enough nibblers and Miss Wanda had our first gathering!!!

Here she is our Hostess with the Mostess. The girl had tiaras and boas all waiting for us!!




Being our first gathering it actually took us quite awhile to set up our 'house rules'. Wanda had a notebook ready which will forever be known as the 'Bunco Bible' And of course there were quite a few of us who hadn't played so they had to settle on the rules and then teach us the game! It is a easy squeezy game so that wasn't to bad.

Here are our three women that got Buncos our first night!!! From L to R Wanda, Molly and Felisha!!! Doesn't Miss Felisha have a positively wonderous 'glow' about her ;)




L to R in this photo Kara, Kim, Shay, Felisha, Del and Wanda!!



Once we got our groove going it was so much fun!!!

We have it settled that we are meeting once a month. We are going all out!! We each take a turn when we can. There will be themes, food, prizes and of course a crazy hat!! Next month is my month. August will be 'State Fair' theme. You know me when it comes to organizing a gathering!! It is all I can think about now!! :) Don't worry Mom I am making plenty of lists.

I am so glad this Bunco group worked out. It is going to be so great knowing that I get to do this all the time!! So be prepared at least once a month to see us women look all kinds of goofy on my blog :)

Personally this time we look rather gorgeous in our tiaras and boas. Jas says I can't wear the tiara to bed anymore :P

Cameron ate a banana!!!

And I didn't take a picture!!

um, Kara, why would you take a picture of a 3 yr old eating a banana?

Most of you know that Cameron has Sensory Integration. Which I found a link if any of you want to take the time but it is a lot of reading.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sensory_Integration_Dysfunction

To sum up Cameron's mouth is overly sensitive when it comes to textures and tastes and his self imposed diet is severely limited. I mean severely. He also has issues with his hands not getting dirty. With allot of therapy on my part we have worked through allot of his hands issues. We finger paint we play in the sand but we still do NOT like touching food. If it is dry like crackers or bread he is fine after that he won't touch it. Our biggest obstacle is if he won't touch it then he won't eat it.

For a long time he was fine with bananas as long as someone else held it for him. Over a year ago he decided no more bananas which broke my heart cause it was the only fruit and/or vegetable that he would eat. A few times in the past Cam has brought me a banana and I would eagerly open it and he would always turn away and say 'no'! So last night he brought me another banana and I always open them just in case and this time he ate it!!!! Why oh why did I not bring out the camera!?!? Oh well even I have my lapses.

I did take these pictures a couple of days ago!

I took the pictures cause he looked so cute with his little scrunched up face eating ice cream. The next day when I looked at them I realized how much they really show one of Cameron's sensory problems. He won't use his lips when he eats. He eats that ice cream with his teeth only. Which hurts my teeth just thinking about it. The few times he even eats from a spoon or fork he drags the food off with his teeth. And he just recently let us kiss him. Normally if you ask for a kiss he would just give you his cheek. Well now he will let me kiss him but I had to giggle when I realized he sucks his lips in first. Oh another thing that makes me laugh is he very rarely lets me smooch on him so when he does I always said thank you. Now he thinks you say thank you after you kiss. His first girlfriend is going to think he is weird. Well heck we knew that anyway ;)

Last shot of that evening. Do you see how much ice cream Cam has around his lips? That is actually very messy for him. And yes Hannah is quite the little brown bear!!!

I am off to buy more bananas just in case :)

Redemption!

OK I am still trying to redeem myself for making you guys wait so long in between my last blogs so I am getting the next one out pretty fast :) Aren't I a good blogger? Who's the good blogger? Who's the good blogger? ME!! ME!!!

On with the show!! We go to Sullivan's Island were we spent one Sunday morning. The waves were much smaller here then they had been at our previous visit to Folly Beach and Josh was pouting!! There is really no delicate way of saying that he was quite the fussy one. Determined we should leave and go to Folly. Yet not once did he offer to carry everything back to the van so we could leave. We have quite the haul so there was no way we were just turning around 30 minutes later to go somewhere else. Sorry Josh!! I have no pictures of him either. We were there 3 hours and he never came in from the water. Patiently waiting for his dream wave to come!!

What I do have to share is Cameron finally having fun with the body boards. Jason put him on his back and rode the waves. Cameron LOVED it!!! And he stayed on there really well, too! His tiny little face way out there actually has a huge smile on it!

This next picture is for my Scrapbookers. And I wonder why I don't get anything created!!! I get my scrappin' mojo a flowin' and then I approach this table!!! Yeah it has definitely become the Crap Table as opposed to my Scrap Table. I think everyone out there understands how easy it is just to 'throw' it on the table. I will take care of it later theory! But rest assured the table has been cleaned. Well kind of. I was able to get on there and make something purdey. No scrap pages but I do feel the juices flowing again!!!

I can feel some of you out there asking 'Why is the chair on it's side?' to discourage Cameron from messing with my stuff. Oddly enough it works!!!

Alright here is my only shot that turned out from the badminton game. It was so humid outside that my camera immediately fogged up. It takes about 15 minutes for that to go away. And of course in that fifteen minutes is when all the action happened!!! Oh yeah badminton can get bloody!! And who knew that Josie would throw up an elbow if needed!!!! Once the camera was good to go the game turned very cordial! Since the sun was going down none of my action shots turned out. To bad Josh diving for the birdie was awesome ;) jk

My next blog entry is going to be all about Zoe's (our dog) funeral. She made it her personal vendetta to destroy this net!! How does one go about destroying a net? Take some tips from Zoe. First you get your lead all twisted around the poles and pull. After you bend one of the poles and the silly humans take net down get yourself all tangled up in it....twice! Now it was the second time she got herself all tangled up that we knew it was personal. The net had been wound up and put, what we thought, was out of her way. So imagine my shock when I was letting her in and she is dragging the net in behind her. Then get one of the stakes down from a table and chew on it.

She will be missed ;)

Now what does one do after a sweaty and bloody game of badminton!?!? Play Star Frontiers! What? You didn't know that? Star Frontiers is a role playing game. RPG for short. I love RPG's. When I met Jason he was really into AD&D. And to be honest I don't think I had ever heard of it before him. But for the past 15 yrs it has been a constant part of my life. My husband has a infinite imagination. It is one of the things about him that I have never lost my awe of. His mind never stops creating. We have numerous 3 ring binders filled with things he has created. In generic terms when you play a RPG you have a DM the one who tells the story. It can be a story already created or one that DM makes up. Jason always makes his up. The other players have characters that goes along in this story that confronts different situations and decides how to deal with them.

RPG's have had allot of bad press in the past and I am not sure why. It gets people sitting at a table creating, talking, laughing and socializing! I agree kids need to be outside getting exercise and fresh air but these games feeds the imaginations! I would rather have my kids sitting at a table laughing and interacting over video games any day :)

p.s. remember Cam's new obsession with the computer. I put him in the bath today then had to go answer the phone. Next thing I know I hear a cry from the kitchen. We had a naked wet baby sitting at our computer!! And man was he stealthy!! I couldn't even find any wet foot prints!!!

Blog Slacker!!

Here I was teasing my friend Shay for being a blog slacker and look at me!! I do have a small excuse!! My blog was completely full!! I couldn't add anymore pictures. Of course it is a bit silly of me not to blog just because I don't have pictures. But go ahead and admit it you all don't come on here to read what I have to say ;) You just flip through my pictures. So anywho Jason and I got on here and did some picture vacuuming and I can now entertain you with snippets of our life.

I decided to go back a bit. I was going to give you a beach filled blog from our morning at Sullivan's Island but to be honest even I am bored of beach pictures. Who'da thunk it! I love how my cousin Laurie has pictures of just their everyday life. And to be honest I take those quick pictures with the intention of blogging them and then I never do.

So I am going all the way back to May with a picture I took of Cameron playing with Play-Do. I would love to pretend little man came up with this all by himself and say he is pure genius but I can't :) Jason was sitting with him and rolling out letters to spell Cameron's name. Eventually Jason left the table but Cameron stayed there for actually quite some time. Finally I walked over to check out what he was doing and saw he had copied Daddy! It is still pretty impressive considering he sat there so patiently til he got it all done!

Our next installment is a picture for Aunt Darby! She had given Cameron a Doodle Dinosaur for his Birthday. And he just never played with it. The girls doodled on it all the time. But all of a sudden one day he decided it was the best toy ever!! Mainly because it listened so well. I was sitting here on the computer and I could hear Cameron say 'night night' and then I saw him walk down the hallway with his Dino. I followed him into his room and caught this cootie patootie moment!!

You know he has read to that dinosaur numerous times and it always goes to bed no problem afterwards! :) He still has no desire to draw on it!!

OK now we are back to more current times. Our first trip to the beach with Josh I had taken this little gem later that day. Now I am being a good wife. I have a much more unflattering angle of this shot. I was standing on the other side clicking away when I realized I was literally shooting up Jason's nose. ( insert joke here I am still being good ) Once again I go back and remind you all if he isn't dreamy I don't like sharing him ;)

Look at my men!! I also think Jas might of heard the camera clicking cause his mouth is now closed, too. Yeah nowhere near flattering. Cameron, of course, A-dorable!!

Now this picture is for Aunt Erin. I was talking to her about Cameron's love of painting and how I would like to get squeeze droppers for him to use. I am always trying to think outside the box for ways to paint with him. Well Miss E works in a lab and told me she could hook me up. So she gave them to me in Chicago. I took some pictures to share with her to let her know it worked fabulously!! You have to add water to the paint which means it takes a bit longer to dry. Cam never sticks around for that part anyway ;)

We were working on paper plate fish this day!!! I have them and need to hang them up! I will get a picture of that when his room is done!

Oh are we in trouble now!!!! This next picture was just taken because Cameron has gotten such a kick out playing Cookie Monster this day.

It has so evolved into something more serious!!! A couple days later it was him coming up to us and pretending he was eating a cookie!!! Cute Cookie Monster noise and hands up to his face and everything. Now seriously how can you say no? Well you don't!! Then he could find the website. Well Jason wanted to give him his own log in that he could just play his games and we didn't have to worry about him renaming any of our programs. Which yes he has done and he renamed it 'apple'. So Jas gave him a Blue's Clues icon and it had his name and he would click on it. Jason had all his websites set up so he just had to click. Well if we were in our log on he still had to wait for us to switch over. Of course with everything else with Cameron he watched us enough times and today he walked over to the computer went down to 'start' scrolled up to 'switch user' and got into his own log on and started his game!! Which by the way he was supposed to be in bed and next thing we know he is playing 'cwoos cwoos' aka Blue's Clues ;) Way to keep us on our toes little man!!!

WOW!! Alot of babbling :) I have pics of the older babies but I guess it would be smart of me to spread out the love!! I also have a blog of our nephews and niece in Illinois. No worries I won't go this long in between blogs again!!!

Water Park

So Kris and I were trying to plan a day with all of us together. We had originally thought of the Children's Museum in Indianapolis but a fundage shortage took away that idea. So Kris went on the Internet and found this water park in Champaign! Perfect!! For those of you in the area it was really cheap and you can take a cooler in!!
Cameron of course started off with the water slide. Since I am standing there with the camera he had to slide to to Krista. Which by the way by the end of our visit her was calling her 'Sista'. So sweet. Well here is the deal with my sequence obsessed son. Since he started going to 'Sista' it got to the point she was the only one he would slide down to! Heaven forbid she has to go use the restroom or anything. Which of course she had to and I tried my darndest to get him to go down. You know reminded him I am the one who gave him life!! But no he patiently waited for Krista to come back :)

Jason told the girls that they had to scream as they came down the big ole water slide. And Josie came through like a trooper!! Screaming and laughing the whole way down. And since it is a big ole tube you could hear her far away. Jason came through too I must admit. Yelling and screaming like a girl every time he came down ;) This is the only shot I got cause once again I am standing around with a camera trying to get pictures when I really wanted to get out there and have fun!! I went down the slide three times. Kris was proud of me. I was,once again, dying laughing. Kris said you could hear me laughing the whole way down. The second time I went down I laid out more flat and shot right out of that thing!! I am so glad no one had the camera cause I can tell you now it could not of been pretty ;) I hit the bottom of the pool hard and scrapped my back. My thumb hit may face and scratched it. But did I let something like that get me down!?!? Heck no!! Back up the steps I went!!!

No Cameron is not floating down the Lazy River by himself!! Jason is standing next to him but it was not a flattering picture. And you know I don't like sharing my man unless he looks all stunning and manly!! So anywho I photoshopped his bum right out!! This floatation device that Cam is straddling is supposed to be for two people. I am not sure what was lost in translation but Cameron took over the whole thing and Jason ended up walking beside him.

This place had a pretty nice size pool. When you first walk in they call it 'The Beach'. I love it cause the sides of the pool slope down. Makes it easier for smaller humans to walk in and out and not have to worry about anyone falling in.

So we have been here for a couple of hours now and getting close to leaving. I decide to get the camera back out to get some shots of my water babies!! Jas had been belly crawling around with Cam on his back. Made the little dude very happy!

Water Baby Josie B!!!

I added this cause I love the look on Josie and Cam's face. Josie wanted to crawl around with him like Daddy was doing.

The cutest Water Babies here!! Krista and Madelyn. Everyone in my family knows that Krista was a Water Baby as a kid. We thought for sure Maddie would have gills when she was born. It seems like Miss Maddy has definitely gotten her Mother's love for the water. I am impressed I got any shots of her. Normally she was just a orange and pink bikinied blur.

Sassy! Or Savannah Georgia Davis. Whichever nickname strikes our fancy at that moment!

Ya know I had to turn something B&W!! :)

It was a great day!! We all walked away water logged and of course tan and fabulous ;) Josie has informed that this is a good idea to do again next year! What do you think Sista?

Kelly's Boys

The last few shots of my nephews before they had to head back to Tennessee. I told you my Austin can come through for me when I need him to! Still a tweener not exactly excited about getting his picture taken and of course hates every single shot I take. We told him that these pictures last forever. I like how Kelly was teasing him telling him that every girl he brings into the house will see these. So if he wants better shots give me better shots ;)

Now Mr Gabriel. Forget it. Stubborn!! So painfully stubborn. Not gonna smile no matter what I do. But that is ok. I will take a simple face over a mad face. I got my happy boy that day at the park and if that is what I get I walk away a happy Aunt :)

Thank You George and Jenny!!!

Look at this ever so sweet and sleepy child!! Doesn't she look so comfy? And why does she look so comfy? Cause some fab friends of ours gave her a full sized bed. George and Jenny are making room for their new little Butterball. The baby is due end of November I have decided to nickname it Butterball!! :) So they had a full size bed to get rid of and they asked us if we wanted it. Josie said YES!! She had been sleeping on a twin on the bottom of a bunk bed forever now so I think she wanted to stretch. Hannah likes to point out that hers is still a Queen which is of course bigger then a Full :P

Why oh why does Josie's Mom keep taking pics of a sleeping kid? Because it is after 10 AM so get up Josie!!!

Cameron chillin' and watching Bugs Bunny while Josie is out playing ;) Don't tell Josie!!