Happy New Year!

Before 2012 arrives we wanted to take a moment to just reflect back on how great of another year 2011 has been to us. We feel so blessed to have such a great unit of family and friends that we have been able to share our time with. We have enjoyed seeing Camdyn's first year and are looking forward to many more as well as our new addition to the family.

I try not to make too many New Years resolutions but I think there are two that I am going to make and maybe writing them out here will help me keep them in mind. The first one is that I really want to get back to being better at updating this blog. I know that this is a good way for us to communicate on a more regular basis with family and friends and I want to keep it going. Additionally I think that this has become a great way to help chronical life events for not only us but Camdyn and baby #2. I guess this has almost become the new baby book? The 2nd resolution is to really start to put into gear the photography business. I spent a lot of the last portion of this year working on getting the business paperwork up and running and now it is time to work on the marketing and getting out there and started. I own a legit company so now its time to make it all real. So there it is all out there :)

Well it is past my bedtime and for the past several years Ben and I have barely caught the ball drop- so I think we will do that.

We wish everyone a Happy New Year!! Thank you all for being a part of our lives.

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Merry Christmas- Camdyn is going to be a big sister!

The Rivera family is expanding with our new addition expected around July 3rd 2012!! We really couldn't be any more excited than we are and are so glad to share the news with the rest of family and friends. We are 13 weeks along today and it has been a long 13 weeks for me this round. I truly realize how lucky I was with my pregnancy with Camdyn - for with this one I have been experiencing a good amount of morning sickness. For most of the time it was pretty much happening every day and just recently I am getting a little relief with experiencing it every other day or every two days The past two days have been good so I am hoping I can make 3 in a row tomorrow :) I am nearing the end of the first trimester and things SHOULD start to get a little easier but you never know.

The baby is doing really well. Our appointments have all gone smoothly and we seem to be on right on track. Next appointment is in 3 weeks and then our next ultrasound (and anatomy scan) will be in 6 weeks.

I am hoping to document things as well as I did with Camdyn, I know in general I need to just get back on board with better updates, consider that my New Years resolution!

Hope everyone is doing well and had a wonderful Holiday!!

Love,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Happy almost 2 months late Birthday Camdyn!

I can honestly say that I think that this is the longest I have gone without updating in here. There is no good reason except for time. We have been so busy between Camdyn's birthday (back on October 22), Thanksgiving, and now getting ready for Christmas. The time has truly flown by! Hopefully within in the next few days we can get caught up :) To start for tonight let's work on going back to Camdyn's First Birthday! We had her party (Minnie Mouse themed- her favorite) on her actual birthday at one of the local parks. The weather was beautiful and we were sounded by lots of family and friends (Ben's grandmother and aunt from NC even drove down for it). It was really a great day and Camdyn had a blast. I am including a variety of pictures for you to enjoy! I really can't believe that my little girl is already 1 now. It is just incredible...and not to mention not long after her birthday she began walking!! She really is a toddler now :)



Well I will have to come back to update more on the gap of time!

Love,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Well I have definitely let time go by without writing in a while. There has just been so much that has been going on, it is hard to keep up with it as it is.

Work is BEYOND crazy for me. I am just more tired than I have been in a long time when I get home...I am hoping that it starts to go back to "normal" again soon but right now I don't see that happening at all for a while.

It's been so long that we are now less than 3 weeks away from Camydn's first birthday! Can you believe it, because I surely can NOT. Getting everything together for her party has also taken up a little time, I think we are pretty close to having everything lined up- but it has definitely been a little more challenging than what we had originally thought, which would have made it nicer to start earlier. But we are moving along.

Camdyn is just turning into such a big girl. It's so amazing to see her grow up in front of our eyes. She is up to 8 full teeth and starting to make her way to walking. I think that for some reason she LOVES to crawl and is in no rush for walking, which to be honest is ok with us :) She is full of life and energy and can talk like crazy- mind you it's hard to understand 100% what she is saying but she says it like she knows so we go with it. She is truly a joy and a blessing.

Additionally, I have really started taking my love for photography seriously. It is something I have always enjoyed but never gave myself a chance to really dive into it. Ben has been such an amazing supporter of it and I am actually doing this. I have bought a couple new things for my camera including an awesome new lens and am even taking a class on child photography. I had my first "photo shoot" last weekend, and I think it went pretty well. It was for friends of ours and I really had a great time doing it. So my plan right now is to continue to practice and who knows?

We started another house project- the patio. We are pretty much tearing down what we have now and starting from scratch. We are getting a new patio roof, new screen with windows, built in dog door, new doors, and then new flooring (which we are also redoing the ones at the front of the house). I can't wait for it to be done- the weather is great and I would love to be able to sit out there with Camdyn which right now we can't.

So....that is a rough idea as to what has been going on here. We will definitely update soon with pictures from Camdyn's birthday. I hope that this finds you all well.

Love,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Picture error

So I forgot to unlock the album for the pictures from Savannah, but they should now be visible to everyone in the post right below. Sorry about that!

Just to let everyone know we posted two new videos to You Tube- one of Camdyn's new dance moves (she is building up quite many these days) and then one of her chasing the dogs in her walker.

I have placed the videos here for easier access. Enjoy!!

Love,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Pictures as promised

I had a chance to upload our pictures from our trip - Enjoy!

Love,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

9 month update with a little vacay

Oh vacation- How I have missed you!!! It feels like forever since we last took one. I think our last one was when we went up to North Carolina to visit Ben's family in December. Feels like forever ago. We took off of work this whole week and last Sunday headed up to Savannah for the 56th Annual Porsche Parade. It is a week long event but we decided that we would stay till Wednesday and then come home for Thursday, Friday, and the weekend so we still had some time to get some things taken care of and relax before heading back to work. We rented a home that was a Bed and Breakfast with my parents (who also went, but were going to stay the whole week) in the historic area. The heat was crazy but we still managed to try and walk around and see a little bit. I thought Florida was bad at times, but it was even worse there. The trip was great though. We had a wonderful time and Camdyn had a blast. She made lots of new friends from across the country and even more within our local affiliate group. We will definitely put up some pictures.

While we were gone, Ben's mom came up to stay with the dogs and to spend time with Camdyn before we left and when we got back. This has also allowed us to get some stuff done with an extra set of hands and eyes :) We plan on trying to enjoy our time as much as possible before Monday. Makes us already look forward to our next vacation. We are leaning on trying to take a cruise in May to the Mediterranean. It was something we have been wanting to do for a while now. So we will see, we have started to look into it and hopefully if all looks good with work and timing we can go ahead and just book it sooner than later. It is always nice to have things on the books to look forward to.

So a little update on Miss Camdyn. She now has 6 teeth in!! I can't believe it. A couple weeks ago she had 3 coming in at once and then not long after that another one came down. So 4 at once, our poor little girl. But Camdyn seems to be doing great with it now and is loving having more teeth :) Last week we also had Camdyn's 9 month appointment. Holy cow our baby is growing up so fast! She came in at 29 inches tall (90%), weighs 21 pounds (75%), and an 18 inch head (93%). Her next appointment is going to be at 12 months- can't even believe that she will be 1 year soon. While I know we still have 3 months till she is 1, we have started to think about her party. As of now we are thinking about doing a Minnie Mouse theme party (she loves her) with pink, black, and white (zebra like). We found some really cute ideas already so we will see. As of today at least that is the plan :)

So that is a brief update of what is going on here. We hope to post some pictures soon from our trip. We hope that this finds everyone well!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Three teeth and counting!

Camdyn's first top tooth decided to finally make its way down. Yesterday morning as I was getting her ready and brushed her two teeth with a facecloth I felt something on the top. Sure enough...the tip of one of her top teeth was poking through. Today when I saw her laughing you could see it. It is amazing how fast they can start to make their way down once they break through the gum. Her first two came in just at about the same time so hopefully her 4th one isn't too far behind.

We are trying to update the blog as much as possible. It has been a little hard lately as I am in another new role at work that is keeping me pretty busy and Ben is just as busy as he was...so when we get home at night we try and spend as much time together as a family before Camdyn's bed time and then before you know it is our time to go to bed. But we are really trying :)

Well I just wanted to report the news :) It is nice to have all of these memories on here for Camdyn when she gets older. But anyway, we hope you are all doing well!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Happy Fourth of July!!!

We hope that everyone is having a wonderful Holiday and is able to spend time with family and loved ones! It's hard to think that 3 years ago Ben asked me to be his wife and here we are with our own family.

Camdyn wanted to wish everyone a Happy 4th, so here she is in her red white and blue!

Camdyn has been extremely busy picking up her speed on her crawling though I am not sure that there was more speed that she could have gained but sure enough she is even faster than she was. She has become the Michael Schumacher of crawling and standing. She can stand on pretty much everything! It is quite impressive.

I have finished my time at my assignment at our Corporate office for work. I learned a great deal and am so very thankful for the opportunity that I had. With that being said I am looking forward to getting back to my normal division and a normal routine again. This new job is going to be a great opportunity in itself and I am looking forward to it. Ben has still be extremely busy work but at least had this weekend off. To celebrate having the time off, we decided to take Camdyn to the Magic Kingdom for the first time on Saturday. She had such an amazing time, and while we know it isn't something that she will remember when she is older she enjoyed it at the moment and that was important. She did so great!!! While we were there we also got our season passes for the year so we will be making more trips with her very soon!

We did take a couple vidoes from the Magic Kingdom and have posted them below as well!! We hope you enjoy!!

Hope this finds everyone well. We love you all!! Talk to you again soon!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Look at me!!

I have been attempting to try and get on here a lot sooner than I am, however, Miss Camdyn has recently changed up some things in our life that has required a little more attention and some later nights. We had been on a really good schedule with her for a while, she was sleeping great in her crib, and able to put herself to sleep when we put her down. Somehow, that all shifted. I believe part of it is due to teeth 3 and 4 starting to make their way in but for the rest not sure. I know she is learning how to do a a lot of new things now and I am sure that is probably playing its part as well.

Camdyn loves, absolutely loves to pull herself up on ANYTHING that she can. She has tried on just about everything she can as well. Tell you what, that girl is strong!! It is quite amazing that someone so little can pull herself up the way she does and on the smallest things. This also goes with in the crib. We usually wake up to hearing her talking and standing. She was getting so good at it and is so tall we had to take it from the 2nd level to the lowest level and she can still stand, however, she can't topple over and out, which was a huge concern.

She has also started to walk around the coffee tables, its slow but crazy to see! We actually were able to catch it on video the other day so I have put it below for everyone to see. The newest thing she has started to do though is clap! She just started it yesterday and it is the cutest thing. We were at church today and she just started clapping with everyone. I also have put in a video of her clapping below.

Camdyn has also earned the title of Professional Crawler. She is crazy with it and just goes goes goes. She is so freaking fast too!!

So as you can imagine that keeps us pretty busy! Her new activities have also found her fighting on a later bed time, which has definitely not left us with a lot of time at night to do anything but shower, get to bed, and get ready for work. We are in the process of trying to decide what our next house project is going to be. I think hurricane shutters are going to be taking the priority. Then I am not sure. Ben got a quote from a landscape company to come out and do the back yard, but they didn't quote the WHOLE yard, so there are still areas that he wants to get pricing on. Then we still need to re-do the patio outside. I could probably continue on with a list of things, but those are definitely are top ones.

Well it is late and I need to get sleep, especially if Camdyn is still going to be participating in a 8 month wakeful period. Hope this finds you all well.

Love,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Look at what I can do!

This is our little girl- who just turned 7 months yesterday! I can't believe she has found this as a new way to entertain herself. She started doing this a week or two ago but tonight she decided that she wanted to do it over and over again. Fortunately I was able to catch it on video for proof! She also took a step while holding my hands, but that was not recordable...yet. I tell you, they grow up way too fast!

We wanted to thank my cousin Jackie for coming down again to visit this past weekend. Camdyn had a blast and we loved getting to see her again.

Hope that everyone is doing well!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

We have a tooth....well we have two!

Where is my baby?? Seriously! Too much is happening too fast. Camdyn was a little cranky the past couple of days but we didn't really think too much of it, as we knew she had the onset of teething for some time now. At lunch time as I was feeding her I noticed two white marks in her gums. I felt around and it seemed like teeth were close but not through the gum. Then she woke up from an extra long nap around dinner time and was VERY cranky. We looked inside and felt a tip of a bottom left tooth that had broken through the gum. Then this morning we checked and there was not only a bottom left but now a right poking through. So they both still have a little ways to go but part of it has at least broken through. I will try and post some pictures but she makes it a little hard with her non stop moving :) So once we can we will definitely post them!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

First Mother's Day!

Happy late Mother's Day to everyone! We hope that everyone had a great one. I know I can say that I had a wonderful day and it is definitely one I will always remember. I have to pinch myself still with the fact that I am now a mom, and a mom to a 6 1/2 month old. It is the greatest job I have ever had. I just love it and everything that goes along with it. And Ben has been a great help in addition to being such a fantastic dad.

Camdyn is a moving fool these days. She is still a master of backwards crawling but has started to move forward if there is something that she wants. Her new favorite thing is pulling herself up, yes, pulling herself up!! The first time she did that I nearly had a heart attack. It was too sudden. She loves to be up on her feet, moving around, and will try and pull herself up whenever she can. Looks like baby proofing the house, phase 2, will be beginning immediately. Camdyn is also becoming a big talker. She doesn't say much yet, but what she does say, she says a lot. Her main word right now is BA or any variation of that :)

We have been having a lot of discussions about what we plan on doing to our house next. We have several projects we are trying to line up and get started on. The patio needs to be redone. The dogs ripped through the screen a while ago to make a doggy door and we need to get the door lock/handle placed higher so that Camdyn can't reach it when she begins walking. We want to have screen on the top half of the area and then the bottom would be aluminum with a built in doggy door :) We are planning on redoing the roof in the patio as well and changing the area that the patio is. Right now it extends out to the sliding doors at the Master bath, but we want that to no longer be screened in and instead put a pergola. Not sure that any of that came out properly and makes sense.
We are also planning on redoing the whole back yard. Ben has slowly started the process of removing everything out there, so we will then start from scratch. We will be soon purchasing a new grill and shed to start our new projects out. It will take a bit to get everything done but we are looking forward to it.

Well, Miss Rufflebutt, as Ben likes to call her, has been in bed for a while now and it is about that time for us as well. Hope everyone is doing well. Talk soon!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

6 months really!?!

It is so hard to believe that our little girl turned 6 months today!! She is going to be 1 before we even know it. We are definitely just working on soaking up everything that is happening now.

Camdyn celebrated with her 6 month check up today at the pediatrician's office. She had another great appointment. Camdyn is weighing 17 lbs 6 oz and is a whopping 27.5 inches LONG! Holy moly, she is growing like a weed. She had more vaccines as well and took them like a champion. They said she looked great and seems to be in good health.

We had an overall busy day and Camdyn was exhausted so unfortunately we don't have any 6 month pictures to post yet. We will take some this weekend and get them up as soon as we can.

Since our last post, Camdyn has moved up to level 2 food (2-3 weeks ago actually) and is LOVING it. The portions are much better for her and the variety of flavors keeps her enjoying each meal more and more. She has also mastered her ability to sit up on her own. She eats in her high chair at the table with us and is able to sit in them at restaurants and in the grocery carts. She feels like a big girl when she does that and loves being able to look around at everything going on. I tell you she is a nosy girl! Always has to know what is going on around her and loves to watch people.

I guess the newest thing she is doing is trying to crawl. She isn't quite there yet but definitely has started the rocking when she is on the ground. She wants to move forward so badly but still can only move backwards and in a circle...she is definitely close though.

So that is a quick update on us. Little short tonight but wanted to get something out before too much time passed. Hope to have another entry much sooner!

Hope you are all doing well. We wish you a Happy Easter!

Love,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Don't blink or you just might miss something!

While we were pregnant and soon after Camdyn's birth we were always being told that time would fly by and that kids just grow up so fast. It's not that we never believed it, but it is really hard to understand something until you see it first hand. I think that all those things people told us about time was an understatement. The past 4-5 weeks so far have felt like 2-3 days. So much has happened with Camdyn in such a short time. She is really growing up so fast and it does feel like if we blink we may just miss something!

Camdyn is now a fan and a pretty good pro at rolling over- front to back and back to front! This of course had made things quite interesting when trying to change her diaper and change her. She has to have constant monitoring as if she can find room to turn, she will.

I think we may have mentioned in our post after her 4 month check up that we were allowed to start her on solids. She is LOVING it! She is getting rice/oatmeal for breakfast, fruit for lunch and then veggies for dinner. Any feedings in between are still with milk. She is such a good eater and a little piggy- can't imagine where she gets her love for food :-) The problem now is that we can't feed her quite enough or fast enough. She is very close to changing to level 2 food, and that should help her out some. We are also starting to make her some of her food, hopefully that goes well :)

Another great change is that Camdyn is now 100% in her crib with no swaddle or anything. We put her down and she pretty much falls asleep. She was starting to wake up about once a night when we first tried and *knock on wood* the last 4 nights she has been sleeping 9+ hours.

The newest change with Camdyn is she is starting to sit up by herself. She hasn't quite mastered it yet but is very close. She can sit up alone now but has to be careful because she still kind of leans. She will be there soon....along with crawling! I told you, lots has been happening!! She can turn her body around on the floor and even go backwards but is still trying to get forward. I wouldn't be surprised if we have video of these events soon :)

Well that is the hustle and bustle of the Rivera household right now. We hope that everyone is doing well!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Say Cheese!

So I still find myself in the process of trying to finish updating the blog. I think the real last thing left to do is change the background style, though to what I am really not sure yet. Hopefully, I can get that taken care of soon. It looks like the You Tube feature on the side is kind of working. To the best of my knowledge, it puts the last 4 videos on there for you, however, we have a new one that for some reason isn't showing up there yet. I will have to remember to try and look into that too. In the meantime I will post the new video in this blog.



We had a coupon for some pictures at JC Penney's so we went ahead and took Camdyn in today to get some new ones. Was kind of due since our last real ones were back when she was 2 weeks old there. So yeah she has changed a bit. She did great today though and her pictures look great!! There is a way you can share the album with others so they can of course purchase copies if they want. It unfortunately won't let me post a link but rather I have to email out from the site, so if anybody really wants to see them just let us know and we can forward them on. Hopefully once we pick up our order we can try and get some to share on here. I would love to be able to take them myself and am really trying. My goal is to try and learn my camera so that by the time she is 1 I can attempt to do her pictures myself. Fingers crossed. I really love using my camera and enjoy taking pictures (yes I know 99.9% of them are of her- but seriously she is a pretty great subject :) ). So we will see.

Everything else here is pretty much the same. Not much new to report. Work is keeping Ben busier than I think either of us could have ever imagined. But we are doing what we need to and making the best of it. It could very well lead to some excellent things for Ben as he really has a promising career.

Well I think that is it for us for tonight.

Our hearts and prayers go out to the people and families in Japan. We hope this finds each of you well.

Till next time!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Camdyn's 4 Month Check Up

Camdyn had her 4 month wellness appointment with the pediatrician this morning. She had a great appointment. She is now weighing 14 lbs 7 oz (75%), head is at 42 cm (75%) and is 25.5 inches (95%) long. So she is still holding a strong height. Her weight % went down a bit but she is moving around a lot more but there is no concern, her numbers align all where they should be. The doctor was very happy with all of her growth marks and her development/milestones.

With the exam he also took a look at her mouth to see her gums and if there are any developments with potential teeth coming in. It appears as though one of her bottom teeth is starting to slowly make its way up. He doesn't think that it will be through in a couple days or anything but there is definitely something starting to come up.

Additionally, he feels we are at a good point to start trying to add some cereal to her diet to try and slowly introduce her to solids. He outlined a plan with gradual additions to it. We will go at her pace. The plan is to start the cereal this weekend and listen to her for guidance. If she doesn't seem ready then we are to wait several more days and then try again. She will let us know when she is ready if she isn't now.

The last part of the appointment was the ever so dreaded shots/vaccines. I must admit, Camdyn did an amazing job this round. She had a liquid vaccine which she took well again and then was near perfect for her first shot. It wasn't until the 2nd and last shot, where she started to cry and be unhappy. They say that that shot has a sting to it so it definitely makes sense. However, she didn't cry too badly and I nursed her and she was back to normal in no time.

So now we go back for our next appointment at the end of April for her 6 month wellness check up. Another great appointment. Our little girl is turning into a very tall yet quite healthy one!

I have also included some of Camdyn's 4 month pictures that we took of her on the 22nd.

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

You Tube Videos

As you may have noticed on the side of our blog, we have an area with our You Tube videos of Camdyn. the only problem is that I haven't quite figured out how to show more than just the four that are showing up there. We have about 7 videos out there. So until I can get the toolbar figured out, if you are interested your best bet is probably going to be just checking You Tube. You should be able to do a search and find all of our videos. The name is Benrielle (makes us feel like a famous couple- ok not really but we needed a name). You can also go on and subscribe to our channel and I THINK it will update you if we post (Amanda, do you know if does that since you are our 1 subscriber :)). We will also try and update on here every so often when we have new ones on.

I will put our newest one on here. It was pretty funny to film. Camdyn has been having a lot to say lately and yesterday after dinner she just kept talking and talking and talking so we tried to get some filmed. She is a little funny with the camera though as she seems to freeze as soon as we start to film her but it looks like we caught a little bit of her chatting. I am working from home today and she has been talking to me most of the morning as well. It is so great to hear her do that.

I am hoping to try and get her outside for the shuttle launch today. It will be her first one and sadly she won't have as many as I grew up with, so gotta have her see as many as she can. Hopefully I can get some pictures as well.

Well we will have more updates tomorrow sometime. Camdyn goes in for her 4 month appointment (and shots :( ).

Enjoy the video! Have a great day!!

Love always,
Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Camdyn's Play Date with Nolan

Yesterday, Camdyn had her first play date with Nolan, the son of our friends Ian and Alix. Nolan just turned 7 months but I think that they had enough in common to hang out with each other :) Ian, Alix, and Nolan are from Jacksonville so we met them about half way for lunch in Port Orange. We had a great time visiting with the Rairdens and it seemed as though the kids did too. Here are a couple pictures of the two young ones hanging out.

Last week and weekend, Camdyn also got to meet Uncle/Aunt Morey and Uncle/Aunt Doudt. Camdyn went to dinner with Uncle/Aunt Morey and Ben, as I stayed at home feeling rather sick. They had a great time. Then Uncle/Aunt Doudt came in on a Friday and spent the weekend with us. She tried to help Uncle Anthony with his insane burrito at Da Kines, but it was pretty big, almost the size of her :-) Then we spent the day at the Space Center. I will have to add some pictures from each visit soon on here. Please bare with me as I just figured out how to put slideshows up instead of the individual pictures. I think this new format will work quite nicely for everyone :)

Under Construction

After having the same blog format and layout for almost two years now, I think it is time to start to update it a bit.  There have been some things we have been wanting to do to it but have put it to the side.  So as you may have already started to see, we have started to make improvements and will continue to do so.  Please make note of the You Tube video section that we have put to the right side of the page.  This should allow you to have easier access to find the videos that we post.  We hope you all enjoy the changes and updating that we do.

We also have some more updating to do and hope to have a new entry or two to the blog soon!

Love always,

Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Time passed again, but we are trying :)

Some day we will get better at updating the blog like it used to be, I promise...just not sure when that day is going to be :) We Riveras like to keep ourselves quite busy it would seem.

Ben continues to be slammed at work. It is really crazy, but we take it to be a great thing for job security. He is actually on his way back from a week long trip to PA for work. Talk about cold! He is doing a really great job though and while the hours have been "hard" at times, he has done an amazing job and we are very proud of him.

I officially went back to work on January 5th. Hard to believe it has already been a month back at the office. When I went to work for two days in December I had a meeting about a job opportunity for me when I returned. Ben and I spoke about it and decided it was an amazing opportunity so I took it. It is a 6 month assignment at our Corporate office in Melbourne. It will be in a group under one of the VPs and will be such a learning experience. My first week was today and so far it has been an adventure. One of the great things is that it is an expansion of some of the work I was doing. It is a much welcomed change, while very nerve wrecking and slightly scary. I am looking forward to what it will do for me. My first trip for the new job will be in about a week up to Rochester. The only bad thing about it is going to be leaving Camdyn for that long. Work is the longest I have ever been away from her, but I know that Ben will take great care of her while I am gone :) In my other work news, I finally finished taking the exams for my professional certification and passed! I am now just working getting in all of my paperwork for it. It feels so good to finally have that behind us.

Camdyn is doing well! She is getting bigger and bigger every day. She is just so adorable and is doing a lot of smiling and laughing now. She is also starting to grab her toys and objects for play...her new favorite thing to play with is her feet. She loves to bend and grab them whether she is in her Bumbo chair or you are changing her diaper...she can even bring them up to her mouth! She goes back to the Pediatrician at the end of the month for her 4 month shots. We are very anxious to see how much she weighs and how tall she is. We continue to find ourselves in clothing issues because of her size. Her length is still fitting 6 month pants but some of them become too big in the waist for her but 3 months are usually too short and pushing tightness :)

Oh I almost forgot! We started a You Tube account so we can post videos of Camdyn for viewing. I think you can look up our name and find our videos: Benrielle and I know you can subscribe to it as well. However, I will post the links as well for the two we have up.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRRwDGnxyf8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoKulGu53EE

We are working on trying to take some more and will add them as soon as we have them so keep checking there as well :)

Next week we get to visit with some friends visiting. We have Matt and Tricia coming in from Texas on Wednesday for the night and then on Friday, Sara and Anthony will be flying in from Chicago! We are looking forward to seeing everyone and we know Camdyn is especially excited to meet them :)

We hope that this finds everyone well. Definitely will have an update after the 4 month appointment but will try and do another post sooner.

Love always,

Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

2 month Appoinment (a little late)

Happy New Year! We hope that you had a great Holiday and a wonderful New Year. Hard to believe that we are now in January once again.

We just got back into town on Friday from a trip up to NC (Waynesville) to visit Ben's grandmother, aunt, and cousin. We had a great time and enjoyed seeing everyone. We made it up there right during that great snow storm and barely made it up the driveway at Ben's grandmother's house. The ice was bad that we had to leave one car at the bottom of the driveway till it cleared up some. There was easily a foot of snow on the ground, it was beautiful all while being quite cold and reminded me why we live in Florida. This was Camdyn's first long distance car trip and she did amazingly well. She was almost too perfect in the drive up and back. It was also (obviously) her first time seeing snow :)

Upon our return from our trip we had Camdyn's 2 month appointment with her pediatrician yesterday. It is a little past her 2 month point but with the Holidays and then our trip we had to schedule the appointment a little later. She is a growing girl! Camdyn is now weighing in at 12 lbs 4 oz and is 24.5 inches long! Our doctor is very happy with her progress and says she is doing really well and looking very healthy. The bad part about the visit was that it was her first round of shots. Poor thing!! I guess people don't lie when they say it is hard to watch. She definitely didn't like them but at least didn't have any super bad reactions. The worse we had was that she was pretty much fussy all day long. She slept great last night though and woke up her happy normal self and has had a really good day today. So our next appointment is for her 4 month check up and that is scheduled for the end of February, which she will have more shots :(

So we are now starting to get back into a normal routine. Ben went back to work after the Holidays today and is super busy. He has been slammed for some time now and it doesn't look like it is going to be slowing down anytime soon. I am going back to work officially tomorrow. We did a trial run a couple weeks ago where I went back for two days but this will be the full deal. It shouldn't be too bad but I know I will miss seeing her all day everyday.

So things are going really well. We couldn't be any happier. We hope that the Holidays were good to you all and we will talk to you soon.

Love always,

Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

PS We will post some more pictures soon too!