MU vs. Illini game

(This is an old post, but one I had already written, but apparently didn't publish.)

Craig and I had the opportunity to go to the Mizzou game again this year with some of my college girlfriends and their significant others. Craig had football practice in the morning and the game started earlier this year so we only got to tailgate for about an hour before game time. But, it was fun. And the fact that MU kicked some Illini butt made for a perfect afternoon!

Emily, Maren and MeCraig and Me enjoying watching the Illini, who were 7 point

favorites in this game get whipped.

My wonderful college friends. Wish I could see them more often.

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On Sunday, we went to a BBQ at Craig's Aunt Judy's house. We thought it was going to pour down rain all afternoon, but it was perfect weather. Here is Grandma Collins, Carl & Judy.

Camryn and Maria were blowing bubbles together.

First Day of School

Camryn did fantastic on her first week of school. When we went to visit last week, their cubbies were a bit bigger and many kids had backpacks so we got her one last weekend to put her dolly and blanket in each day. It also makes it easier to keep track of her papers each day. Seems like she brings home more with this school. At least so far. I love it that they keep us in the know.

Here she is ready to go on her first day!Walking into her new classroom (the "Mouse Room").

We've put away her things. One last smile for mommy before I had to leave. :)

Go Wolves!

This past Friday was a big day for Camryn. It was her last day at Bright Start Academy and the first football game of the season.

Camryn handled our decision to move her to a different school pretty well. It must be a good age for this. She's so adaptable anyway. But, she LOVES her school friends, and taking any 3 year old out of their daily routine.

Rather than springing the news on her, I involved her in the touring of potential schools and ultimately choosing which one she liked the best. (Fortunately for us, Camryn liked the same school). Then we talked with her the weekend before her last week of school at Bright Start and talked about all of the new things she would learn and new friends she would meet. She said she was fine.

There was one day last week that the teacher at the former school told us she was tearing up all day. I think someone must have said something to her at school (maybe one of her friends that new or a teacher) and positioned it negatively because she didn't have that reaction with us. Craig picked her up that day and tried to talk to her about why she was so sad, but he said she didn't really say much. Only that she would tear up when Craig brought up the new school. That broke my heart.

And then to make it easier on her, I took her to the new school for a couple of hours last Thursday so she could meet her teachers and interact with some of the kids in her new classroom. She handled all of it like a champ.

But Thursday night we picked out some Dora cupcakes and SpongeBob plates at the store that we could take in for her teachers and friends for a big party the next day. She also wanted to get them something, so we bought a couple of packs of little bouncy balls that she could hand out.

On Friday, her first teacher at that daycare, Ms. Kim, and one of her current teachers, Ms. Kathy, gave her a little goody bag of gifts. They told me the school was going to miss her greatly and the four year old teachers were upset that they wouldn't have her in class. The class made Camryn a big card with all of their hand prints on it. (I'm so glad Camryn isn't one of those children where they're saying good riddance. Don't let the door hit you on your way out.)

I left our camera with them the whole day and they took a ton of pictures. Just posted a few here.

Here is her class. I think this is hilarious because none of them

could see from the glare of the sun. Here is the card they made (the big poster board) and they painted on the classroom window.
The tasty Dora cupcakes. Camryn was all about these when we found them at the store.
Here is Ms. Kathy. We have LOVED that she was Camryn's teacher. She has so much energy. She teaches a lot of lessons through music, which Camryn responds to quite well. And she's adamant about teaching kids manners. Camryn has even reminded Craig of some things not to do at the dinner table. (I love it!) When Kathy told me she was leaving in September, I viewed this as a window to go ahead and make the switch we had been contemplating for months.

Here we are in the car after picking her up. I'm SO happy to be gone from that school. I will definitely miss the convenience. Wow! You can't beat that. But that's all I will miss.

And then that night was Craig's first came of the season. They won 28-0! Camryn sat there and cheered a good portion of the game. The mascot didn't show up though and she was really worried where the Wolf was.Chris bought Camryn this football jersey (a late birthday present). That was a hit! "Good job Daddy!"


Just about the time you think she's going to drop from being so tired, she finds her second wind. She was running all over the place after the game.

Cam's a "hero"

On Saturday morning, Camryn and I volunteered in the running portion of the Lake St. Louis triathlon. I wanted her to see what I do when I go out running in events. We were assigned to a corner where we directed runners to make a turn and passed out water to them. The running portion is the last leg of the triathlon and we were positioned at the top of a hill about halfway through the running course, so the runners were quite ready for water when they saw us.

Camryn was standing there holding cups out saying "water if you need it" and the runners would come up and say things like "Oh! You're my hero!" or "Hey sweetie! You're the best!". She was getting the biggest kick out of the compliments. There were others that helped, and I was even passing out water a bit, but kept getting passed up so they could take the water from her. So I went back to cheering them on and directing them to stay on the course.

We were there for about 3 hours. I was worried that she wouldn't have the patience. There was a little 4 year old girl that lived at the house by where we were standing. She entertained Camryn quite a lot, but when the runners started coming by I told her she had a job to do and she rose to the challenge.

I'm glad we had a chance to do that together.

Here she is in her volunteer shirt that was way too big.

We had to improvise with a ponytail holder and a bow.

Heebie Jeebies

A couple of weekends ago we had a bulk trash drop off day, so I got rid of some things in our garage that have just been collecting dust, literally since we moved in. When I moved an old trash can, this disgusting thing (we think a lizard) scurried out of the corner. I screemed and ran inside and made Craig come out to catch it. Camryn asked what was going on and I told her I saw a lizard in our garage. She said "Again?" I asked her what she meant and apparently this little visitor has showed it's slimy self to Craig before. Craig chased it out of our garage once already with the lawn mower. I guess it found it's way back home.

It was so nasty. I didn't care if he just took a shovel and smashed it, but he was looking to capture it the humane way and let it go. And so, the lizard won. It got away from Craig and is somewhere still in our garage. Yuck! Craig's thinking it will jump out of his hockey bag one of these days in the locker room before a game since he leaves it laying on the garage floor.

FINALLY...a new haircut

It's taken me 2 years to get Camryn back in to get her haircut. She's flat out refused and the one time I did trick her into going in, she glued herself to the floor in the dusty corner between the waiting room chairs and the shelves full of hair products.

My neighbor said she was taking her three girls in this week so I asked her if she would make a 4th appt and we'd tag along. Cam was all for it then. Wish I would have thought of it sooner. We didn't do anything drastic. Just cleaned her up. But I was tired of looking at her frazzled end and butchered bangs (courtesy of me).

Here she is getting her hair washed. I thought this was so smart. It was this big mat stacked really high. That way it didn't hurt their little necks when they put their head in the sink. I knew she would be apprehensive about this, but she crawled right up. Beforehand, they let her pick out her flavor of shampoo. She picked all of the pink ones, combining strawberry, bubble gum and cotton candy flavors.

Here she is in her little train chair.This was a riot. They let her watch a movie. She chose Bambi. When the gal was cutting the back of her hair she need Camryn to look down so she asked her to hold the movie box and look down and describe what she saw. Well, Camryn told her but the gal wasn't done yet. So Camryn stayed looking down but was cutting her eyes up so she could see the movie.
All done! Like I said. Nothing drastic, but she looks so much better.

Picture free summer

I was looking back at my folders of pictures yesterday and realized I just don't have many pictures from this summer. Not that it was dull, by any stretch, but I seemed to have left the camera behind.

A couple of weekends ago, we went to one of Craig's & Chris' hockey games. They were playing a tournament that lasted 5 games over 3 days. Yikes! Remarkably, Craig wasn't as exhausted as you might think. Cam was having a really hard time finding Craig or Chris because they had so much equipment on. And then when she did see them, she couldn't figure out why they weren't waving back to her. We bundled up but we only lasted inside the rink area for 1/2 the game. We weren't prepared for just how cold it would be. So we stood in the very stinky hallway by the locker rooms and watched from there. That hockey equipment stinks so badly.

This past weekend, Camryn and I went and had mother/daughter pedicures over the weekend. It was impromptu so no camera. Just my camera phone. But we had a blast. We both had our nails painted blue with white daisies on our big toes. Cute toes until we got into the pool the next day. Was hoping it would have lasted a bit longer than that. Ah well.

At the pool she was practicing going under water. I was sitting there watching her before getting into the pool to play. She was just enjoying the water and would fall forward and go under and pop back up. Really neat stuff.

Other misc pictures I found from the last few weeks:

Camryn likes to help me wash her clothes. So she sits up on the

dryer and helps me treat the stains on her clothes before washing them. ;)

Fell asleep watching her "shows"

Sporting her juice mustache.

Practicing with my new camera

Just some shots that I thought turned out good from a great afternoon. I uploaded these from a different computer so I didn't get to mess with cropping or adjusting the color. Unfortunately they don't look as pretty as they do at full size. Click on them for the bigger pictures. I still have several classes to take before I can operate this new camera, but for now the "auto picture" will have to work it's magic. (Thanks to those that put up with me photographing everything.)

Colorado trip

In celebration of our 10th anniversary, Craig and I took a trip together this year, leaving Camryn behind for the first time. She was in good hands with all four grandparents keeping her entertained.

Anyway, we opted against our usual pick for a beach vacation and and decided since it was just us we'd try more of an adventure vacation. So we booked our flight to Colorado. I had been a couple of times to visit an girlfriend from college so had a basic understanding for where we could go. I couldn't wait to get back to the mountains. It's so beautiful there.

We started our trip by driving straight to the mountains once we landed in Denver. We stayed over in Buena Vista and went white water rafting on the Arkansas River in Browns Canyon for the full day.

Here's the view from our hotel that morning.

The guide talked us into spending an additional $20 each for wet suits. Turned out to be the best $40 we spend the entire trip. The water was 45 degrees and we were soaked almost the entire time. We felt like such goofballs in those outfits. But at least we weren't risking hypothermia. This was my favorite activity of the trip. Each of the rapids had names like "Widow Maker", "Raft Ripper", "Sidel's Sink hole". Our guide would prep us for what were about to encounter before each rapid. On one rapid we even pulled our raft to the bank, got out and hiked over to see the rapid we were coming upon. Our guide (named "Sunshine") said one in four rafts apparently flip over at that one We thought it was just something he said to add excitement to the rapid. But he wasn't joking. When we got to the spot above the rapid, one raft had already flipped over and we watched a guide fall of another raft. She went strait into the sink hole and it spit her right back out like a washing machine. The water was really high this year from all of the extra snow in the winter and apparently the rapids are different based on water levels.

This day was so much fun.

That night we drove up to Colorado Springs, stuffed our faces and a great steak house and then got up the next morning to drive up Pikes Peak and ride down on bikes. The complete bike ride was about 19 miles. We coasted for 97% of the ride. There were a few up hills but nothing major. On the way up Craig was sitting on the side of the van that followed the edge of the road. There weren't many guardrails. So his experience going up was slightly different. I really didn't pay much attention to the height. Craig said he kept hoping our driver wouldn't have a medical issue on the way up that would effect her driving. (Glad he didn't say that out loud going up the mountain.)

We stopped on our way up to drop some other mountain bikers off. They were going on this 16 mile trail off the road. The hill they were going down had no way for helicopter or any vehicles to get down if someone got hurt. Our guide told us they would have to hike themselves up back up with their bike. Here's a view of how much further we have to go. Pikes Peak is in the background.

Here we are at the top. We got about 15 minutes to walk around and explore. They had a gift shop at the top of the mountain and train tracks. It was pretty cold at the top.

I bet it's been a good 15 years since I've been on a bike. I was a little wobbly at first, but managed to completely let the breaks go a few places going down the mountain.

This was a fun time. Feeling the wind in your face on the ride down was great and the views were amazing. We actually started our journey down above the clouds (and treeline) and experienced different stages of vegetation as we went down. There were actually people that had hiked up the mountain. Our guide said you have to start super early in the morning. Not only to give yourself time to get up, but you need to be back below the treeline by 2:00 in case afternoon storms rolled in (which are apparently quite common in the summertime there).

And then on our last full day we headed toward Denver and stopped off at Red Rocks to see the incredible outdoor amphitheater there and hike a trail there.

We had such a great time. We're so appreciative to have family that could watch Camryn. We both missed her quite a bit. And she seemed to be doing just fine every time we called. Hope she missed us too.