The House...and so much more!

Well...now that I have time to breathe I thought I would update everyone on the current status of the Kahl's (I know its exciting!). We decided that planning as much as possible for the first weekend of November was a great plan so Colby kicked off his first major event (that he planned!) with the Scottsdale Air Fair, I went to our lovely friends Brandee and Tim's Wedding and we moved into the new house.

The Scottsdale Air Fair: With Camryn in tow the Scottsdale Air Fair was a family event with Colby planning and running, me volunteering and Camryn following along merrily in her stroller. The Kahl's took on Scottsdale and got to spend a lovely week at the luxurious Thunderbird Suites (I use the term luxurious loosely)! The Air Fair was great despite the cold and wind on Saturday- Colby was in charge of securing all the food vendors and although I am biased the food was the highlight of the event, ask Camryn she did a lot of snacking.

On the night before the Air Fair I attended Brandee and Tim's Wedding at the Tempe Performing Arts Center. The wedding was beautiful, the company was great and she sat me at the "cool kids" table next to the Sangria. I loved catching up with old friends and serenading Brandee with the ever classic "Sweet Caroline". The only thing that could have made it better was if Colby could have attended but alas the Air Fair took him away that night.

After way too long on an air mattress the Kahl's (including Camryn) are all in their proper beds and their new house. The house is great and Truman is loving the increased amount of carpeting!

Come back soon for pictures and video...I forgot my camera at home :)

The New Kahl Casa!

As many of you know Colby and I have been in the processing of building a new home, or I should really say Fulton Homes is building the house and we are signing papers and sharing more information than I ever thought necessary about my finances to a complete stranger. We are building in the Ironwood Crossing development in Queen Creek and I even got to use an ASU discount to add on some incentive money since the Fulton's are so connected with ASU. If anyone is keeping track- I graduated from a Fulton College, work for a Fulton College, and will soon be living in a Fulton home. If you are interested in seeing the floor plan you can check it out on the Fulton Homes website: http://www.fultonhomes.com/our-communities/ironwood-crossing/paradise/rorotonga

Here is our dear Lot#83

In the beginning there was no one else on our street except for one or two houses at the far ends, now the street is full and we have neighbors all around. Although you cannot tell from the picture we are the lot directly next to the corner lot with a park right on the other side.

Here is some of the progress: As of today October 13, 2011 they were pouring the driveway and walkway into the house, leaving only carpet, touch-up, appliances and some other minor things left to do!

 This is the view from the laundry room window (that is until the house next door is built!) but you can see the park and the corner lot.

 Kitchen island!

 We have paint and cabinets!

We have sinks and counter tops!

Camryn's First Birthday!

Once again I have been horrible at updating the Blog like I promised the online world I would be but alas I have returned to charm you with my winning typing skills and poor attempt at grammar.

We decided to celebrate Camryn's 1st Birthday at Chuck E. Cheese's and have a true Birthday experience- over stimulation and all! The party was a success and Camryn enjoyed all of her presents and cake...even though she preferred the "adult" cake which was chocolate with raspberry filling as opposed to her vanilla cake with vanilla frosting.

Camryn got lots of great gifts (I think her toy selection increased two fold in a matter of minutes!). Colby had a extra surprise for Camryn and got her her first Vera Bradley purse (if you are unfamiliar with the brand I highly recommend taking a look- they are my favorite!).  I even got one too as a gift for, as Colby put it, "not killing the baby in her first year of life".

This is a post Birthday picture of Camryn with her Vera Bradley purse...she stayed home sick the Monday after her party with a fever...must have been too much cake!


As you can see Camryn was a little overwhelmed by the increasing volume of Chuck E. Cheese and the ten other Birthday parties going on but she enjoyed opening all of her great gifts.

At the Beach!

Uh Oh!

Deep in the humidity (I mean heart) of Texas...

Don't get me wrong... I love Texas but that level of humidity is ridiculous! Camryn took her first plane ride to visit some of her family in Houston at the end of July and even got to venture to her Mommy's favorite childhood vacation spot to get some beach time!

The flight there was amazing! We took a later flight so Camryn could sleep and we lucked out with it only being 50% full allowing us to have our own row and allowing Camryn to bring her car seat onto the plane.

After a great trip to the beach where Camryn grew quite fond of Shaved Ice and eating sand we got to spend some time experiencing the Texas food I had missed, visited with family, and Miss Camryn discovered she can open cabinets and spread the contents all over the floor!

Check out Facebook for tons more pictures about our adventures.

I promised...

I promised myself that I would be better about updating the Blog but I have failed...I am sorry if I have let anyone in a significant need to know about our lives or if I have assumed that anyone cares and this entire message is pointless. Irregardless, I have returned and will try to sum up the events since the Fathers' Day post.

I tried my hand at entering Camryn into a Gerber baby competition, after getting her photo approved the photo was posted for people to vote via Facebook...if you are reading this I am guessing you voted one or more times. We did pretty well encouraging voting and I believe in the end Camryn had 150 or so votes...pretty competitive compared to the other babies. The online votes will determine 6 winners from different age groups (iPad 2 winners) and a panel of judges from Gerber will select an overall winner ($50,000 scholarship). The Gerber website claims that winners will be announced sometime in the month of August...I am still waiting to hear and Colby is still waiting for an iPad2 to show up on our doorstep.

Camryn's Alphabet Mat (as pictured above) has been a sound investment thus far until Camryn discovered that ripping it apart and throwing the pieces around the house is much more entertaining than actually playing with the toys on the mat. I find myself reassembling it every night and while its great practice for my letter and number skills it can wear a girl out!

The Kahl family has discovered the greatness that is the Phoenix Culture Passes which gives two free adult admissions to a variety of museums and attractions in the Phoenix area. I can stop by the library at work, pick one up and we have 7 days to stop by the attraction of our choice. With this new option we took Camryn to the Phoenix Zoo for the first time on one of the hottest days of the year! On the upside it was "Snow Day" at the Zoo so we got to see animals interact with snow and ice in their enclosures but the heat was a little much for the humans there.

Note: Yes, she is wearing shorts (curte little plaid ones at that) but, her chubby little thighs led to some shifting.

The Father's Day Photo Shoot

You know how some projects seem so easy until you are in the midst of them and realize it was a bigger undertaking then you imagined? My original plan for a Father's Day gift for Colby from Camryn was 4 simple pictures- with Camryn holding a different sign in each, "Happy", "Father's", "Day" and "love, Camryn". Approximately 75 pictures and 1 hour later I had a boatload of photos of Camryn eating signs, waving them above her head, dropping them, and shaking her head so fast from side to side that it looked like an optical illusion. Alas, after some picking and choosing I decided on the final four...but I wanted to show off some of the rest as well (more as a testament to the work that truly went into trying to keep a 8 month still).

Playing Wears a Girl Out!

Poolside Cutie!

Summer is officially here...I am sure I am not the first one to point it out but I figured I might as well make the official announcement.  June has been a busy and celebratory month thus far. I celebrated my 25th Birthday on June 8th and Colby and I marked our one year anniversary with a night out to dinner and a movie on June 11th. Camryn had a celebration all her own as I got to squeeze her little baby belly into her swimsuit and slather her in sunscreen for her first swimming experience...she has already gone twice. On Sunday Camryn and I headed over to Grandma and Grandpa Waldrop's for a BBQ and swimming...unfortunately Colby had to work and missed out on the festivities but he did get to go swimming with Camryn on Monday! After trying on her first pair of "swim diapers" adorned with Little Mermaid decorations (I think I was a little too excited for the Little Mermaid part but that was the movie and the soundtrack of my childhood) I sun screened Camryn up while she attempted to eat the bottle (as seen in the pictures). Looking like a miniature pink version of Gilligan or the Gorton's fisherman according to my Dad we hit up the pool. It looks like Camryn is going to me a little fish!

A Peachy Day!

Sunday was packed with family fun filled goodness as Colby, Camryn and I headed out to Schnepf Farms to go Peach Picking! As some of you may know I am an experiences peach picker starting at a young age picking peaches with my Grandparents in Texas so, this trip was nostalgic and fun. We started our journey off with a peach cinnamon roll at the Country Store (why have I not thought of this before!)...Camryn sampled some of the pureed peach but spent most of the time trying to lick the sugar off her lips or eat the paper napkin we were using to try to avoid a breakfast disaster. After finishing our breakfast we headed over to the hayride line to catch a tractor that would take us into the orchard to do the picking.

Camryn enjoyed her first hayride and then ventured into the trees with us to fill our box! After picking our fill, I thought we had a reasonable amount of peaches, we ended up with 15 lbs of peaches...in other words I am making peach baby food and cobbler this week.

(More pictures to come)

After packing up our peaches and heading home to get out of the heat we decided to explore some of the new home developments in our area and check out the model homes (a favorite pastime of both Colby and myself). Our first stop was the Anthem of the South- my parents live in the Anthem in North Phoenix so if you are familiar with that community- copy and paste and you can visualize where we were. The models there were a flop but the community park was the perfect opportunity for Camryn to try out a playground swing.

As you can imagine Camryn (and her parents) were pretty worn out by this time so we headed to the grocery store to pick up stuff to grill and made our way back home for dinner. We even had an dinner guest (uninvited...but a guest none the less) as Truman decided to play tag with a bird in the backyard breaking its wing leaving Colby and I trying to figure out how to get this disabled bird out of the backyard before Truman decided to "play" some more. Things eventually worked out and we enjoyed delicious homemade hamburgers courtesy of Colby.

A pretty great day to end the weekend!

Disneyland Excitement!

As many of you know Colby and I...and in turn Camryn are Annual Pass Holders to Disneyland! Being that we are pretty experienced Guests to the park there is not too much we have not experienced or known about...until now....Rider Switch Passes or Parent Passes are AMAZING! Parent Passes allow one parent to ride or in our case when we traveled with 4 adults (Colby, Myself, Victor and Alissa), 2 adults ride, pick up the pass, and the other 2 can ride after they are finished without waiting in line. It was spectacular and we were able to do all the "big kid" rides that Camryn cannot do- we waited max 25 minutes the entire trip!

The World of Color at California Adventure was pretty amazing...if only I were a little taller...or if Colby would have been willing to let me sit on his shoulders could it have been any better. When you hear water and light show you don't think of anything that great, at least I didn't but it was so much more. The height of the water alone was awe-inspiring but the projection of entire movie clips on walls of water plus pyrotechnics and screens that arose out of the lake was beyond compare. I think the coolest part however was standing in a crowd full of people of all ages, races, background, countries of origin etc... and listening to EVERYONE sing along to the music...it restores my faith in the world knowing that something as innocent as Disney can unite an entire amusement park of people in song. Camryn slept through it all...of course!

She was however quite excited to show off her Minnie Mouse outfit and her new and first set of "ears"

After so much excitement over simply sitting on a table at Disneyland you can imagine her experience the rest of the day :)

Colby took me and the rest of the gang to Goofy's Kitchen for a Mother's Day Breakfast Buffet and Camryn got to meet some of Goofy's Kitchen Helpers!

Camryn had the opportunity to ride her favorite ride again...Small World...try reading this without getting the song stuck in your head...I dare you! This is my favorite picture...she is so enthralled!

Bath time!

Camryn has been promoted to the "big girl" tub for bath time and Truman decided to join in! Don't worry both parties had their own separate baths following the joint water playtime.

Looking back at these photos it looks like we have a missing rubber duckie...I will have to check Truman for contraband!

We are headed to Disneyland for the second time with Camryn this weekend- this time we are also bringing along Alissa and Victor which will allow us to try out the "parent-pass" system and hopefully ride some more of the adult rides- I hope Disneyland can survive the four of us all at once! Saturday is the premiere of the newest installment of Pirates of the Caribbean at Disneyland...which means it will be closing earlier but I'm excited to see what the preparation is like before we head over to California Adventure to see the new "World of Color" show.

Colby and I are both very excited and ready for the break...we will post pictures and hopefully even some with all three of us since most of the pictures we have make Camryn look like she has no parents.

Camryn is becoming more and more vocal so I have been trying to capture more of her noises...hear is a sample. We are also working on waving which is coming along nicely despite the fact that Camryn can only wave at herself I think she is starting to get the concept.