A Visit From Brooklyn!

We had such a fun week with Brooklyn visiting us! We really miss her! Every time Camden sees a picture of Brooklyn, he says, Brooky! Thanks for coming to visit us :)

On Saturday, after the easter egg hunt, we headed over to the Durham Bulls baseball game. It was an exhibition game against the professional team they are associated with, the Tampa Bay Rays. Last year, the Durham Bulls won the championship for the 3A league. At the beginning of the game, they presented the team with their championship rings.


The weather was perfect! It was such an enjoyable day to watch a baseball game. Here is Camden relaxing with Dad with his arms behind his head and his legs crossed.






We enjoyed some ballpark food-hot dogs, fries, and a funnel cake! Yum!

Calvin and Brooklyn were testing their photography skills and kept trying to get the ball in the picture after the pitcher let go of it...here is one of their attempts. The ones with the ball were all pretty blurry.

On Sunday, we went for a drive and ended up at Jordan Lake.

On Monday, we went out to Wilmington to visit Wrightsville Beach. The sun was out, but there was a cold wind and the water was pretty cold. Camden went out to play in the water and got all wet, and with the combination of the wind, was shivering and cold. We didn't stay too long, but it was nice to see the ocean and spend a little time there and satisfy Brooklyn's beach need!

We had so much fun with Brooklyn! We went and bought a little pool to play with outside. Camden loved it!

We also took some time to walk the 3 mile loop through Duke Forest. It was nice to have Brooklyn there to switch off pushing the stroller on some of those hills! The leaves had all come out and made everything so green! Literally just a few days before this, everything was still brown.

Thank you Brooklyn for visiting us! We had so much fun! We can't wait to see you again! Stay tuned for a post with all the pictures we took on our visit to Duke Gardens.

Easter Egg Hunt

We had such a fun Easter weekend with Brooklyn visiting us! I have lots of pictures from her trip here, but this post is just going to be of our easter egg hunt!

On Saturday morning, we got together with some of our friends who live here in our complex for a little easter egg hunt! Camden had a lot of fun running around picking up eggs. Once he realized they had candy inside, all he wanted to do was open them up instead of looking for more. We sat all the kids down for a picture, but could hardly get them to look at the cameras because they were too excited about the treats in the eggs! After the hunt, we had a really good brunch with food that everyone had brought.

First Place!

Wow! Calvin and his team won first place in the North American WTO Moot Court competition he attended in Ottawa over the weekend! CLICK HERE for an article all about it! They're also going to put a picture and an article about it in the newspaper in Fallon (Calvin's hometown)! Awesome! Congratulations to Calvin and his team!

My kid is a genius!

Do all parents think this about their children? Or maybe just their firstborn (I can say that, I am the first born...haha)? Because I think Camden is a genius! Last night, he was taking blocks out of a container, and he started COUNTING! Well, maybe it was only, "one, two, free" and then some mumbling that sounded like "eight, ten" but I thought it was amazing! We've just been recently counting on his fingers, etc, and I was totally surprised when he started counting his blocks.

He does things every day that just amaze me! He is learning so many new words, how to understand things I am saying to him, and just growing so fast! I am so lucky to be his mother! He is so polite, saying "peas" and "ay-do" (it sounds like "ay" like "nay") all the time. If you don't say you're welcome, he keeps saying "ay-do, ay-do, ay-d0" louder and louder.

Anyway, he is definitely the cutest and smartest little boy that I know!

Philadelphia....A Lot of Pictures!

We had so much fun on our Spring Break vacation! It was so neat to see a place that had so much history. The trip started out early Tuesday morning. I drove to the Washington DC airport to pick up Calvin and Camden from their flight home from Nevada. They were supposed to have one more plane ride from DC to Raleigh, but we decided to save time, since DC was on our way to Philadelphia, and save them from one more plane ride. After I picked the boys up, we saw the Washington DC temple just off the freeway. I hurried and snapped a picture!

Camden got a good nap on the way to Philadelphia, and Calvin slept for about an hour. When we got there, we checked into our hotel, and then headed out to do one of the activities on our City Pass. We spent a couple hours at the Philadelphia Zoo, the first zoo in the United States. I was so excited to see flowers coming up! The weather was beautiful.

We saw a couple different bears. We helped feed the polar bears and watched them jump into the water.

We brought back a lion cub! Camden has been roaring ever since. He says, "roar!" then when we say, "ahhh!" he says, "I scared you." It's really cute.

After the zoo, we went back to the hotel to relax. We all took a nap and woke up at 9 o'clock! We were so tired! We decided to just eat some sandwiches and snacks I had packed and watched some TV until we could convince Camden to go back to sleep.

On Wednesday morning, we headed to Camden, NJ, just across the river from our hotel, to the aquarium. We had so much fun, touching sharks, sting rays, and jelly fish, seeing penguins, seals, hippos, lots of fish, turtles, and more. After the touching part, Camden would go up to a regular aquarium or tank and say, "touch 'em."

We then hopped on the Philadelphia trolley tour. It was really neat to learn about the history of the city, the buildings, etc. I think the tour was one of our favorite parts. We stopped off for an hour at the Please Touch Museum, a museum for kids. It was the location of the World's Fair in 1876.

They had a lot of fun exhibts. These pictures were in the Mother Goose/Fairy Tale area.

Camden liked the carousel.

We got back on the tour and stopped at the Benjamin Franklin museum. We saw an exhibit about the human heart and also an area with some trains. There was also an area about planes and flight. Pretty cool!

By the time we got back on the tour and over to the Liberty Bell center, Camden was out!

And here it is! The Liberty Bell.

We then walked over to Chinatown where we had a delicious Chinese meal. We also got some very good treats at a Chinese Bakery. I can't wait to have the real thing in Hong Kong! Yum!

On the way home, we took a detour so that we could tour Gettysburg. We bought an audio tour cd that you play while driving around to the different points on the battlefield. I am definitely glad we did this; it was such a large area and it would have been a totally different experience without the guide. We learned so much!

It was a great trip! We are so lucky to be here, within driving distance of so many neat places!

Weekend On My Own!

Wow! It has been so weird here without Calvin and Camden! It has been really nice to be able to get things done (uninterrupted) including some work projects, cleaning, getting my hair cut, going shopping by myself, etc. I also was able to spend some fun time with some friends, watching a movie and watching the Duke vs. UNC basketball game. While it's been nice, I'm excited to have my boys back! I am really excited because tomorrow I am picking them up and we're headed to Philadelphia for a little spring break trip!

This is our hotel:
Calvin was looking for places on Travelocity, and found this 4 star Hyatt. He thought it was $120 per night, but then realized when he put the dates in and we were staying two nights, it was actually $240 per night! I was on Hotwire, and saw a 4 star hotel in the same area, which also had a pool, for $99 per night. So we decided to go ahead and book it. When we got the confirmation, it turned out to be the same place! Yay for Hotwire! I am very excited to be going on the trip! The next post will be all about it.

Here are a couple pictures Katie sent me of Camden playing and having fun in Nevada!

March-ing Onward

Wow! Is it really March already! Time is just moving on so quickly! We have just been so busy lately; Calvin with school (competitions, papers, reading, etc), Ashton with work, cleaning, keeping track of Camden, and Camden, playing, being sick :( and keeping Ashton busy!

With all the busy-ness, we haven't taken many pictures or done anything too exciting! We are all looking forward to 24 hours from now when Calvin will have jumped one more hurdle-his paper! He has completed his mock trial competition, and after this paper, he'll just have his WTO moot court competition left-in Ottawa! Next week is Spring Break, so we are really looking forward to the time off!

Tomorrow, Camden and Calvin leave for Nevada for a few days, leaving me here, by myself!! I am so excited for a little break! I haven't been able to choose what time to wake up in the morning for a loooong time. They will be back on Tuesday morning next week and then we'll get to spend some time together as a FAMILY! Yay!

Camden is growing up and learning so many things! He now says "thank you" or "day doo" all the time, it is so cute. He also says "please" or "peas" and is getting good at folding his arms for prayers and saying "amen." He knows a lot of words and can identify so many things. He loves watching Dora the Explorer and Ni Hao Kai Lan. I'm pretty sure he's going to know Spanish, Chinese, and English in no time! He loves repeating the things Dora and Kai Lan say, it's really cute.

Well, not a really exciting post, but it's something! I need to take the time to figure out how to upload the videos from our new video camera, so I'll work on that and then we'll have some more videos on here!