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!

Camdyn's Baptism

This past weekend was Camdyn's Baptism. It was a beautiful ceremony surrounded by many family members and friends. We thank everyone who made it to the celebration (including Gabrielle's aunt from Portland and cousin from Seattle). Camdyn was the only girl in a group of 5 babies getting baptized at our church. She looked beautiful if we may say so ourselves. We have included some pictures from the ceremony.

We have been getting ready for the Holidays. The tree is up and we have started to put some of the presents for Camdyn under the tree. We are also starting to get things in order for our trip up to North Carolina. Hopefully the weather warms up a bit there for us...it has been quite cold in Florida lately and I can only imagine how it will be up there.

Ben gave me my Christmas present early- a wonder Digital SLR camera and I have been in full swing taking pictures of Miss Camdyn. She has been a great model for me! I have also included some pictures that I have recently taken of her. Hope you all enjoy them!

We hope that this finds you well. Stay warm and Happy Holidays if we don't talk soon.

Love always,

Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

One Month Check Up

So hard to believe that Camdyn is already 1 month old! She is really growing up so fast already. Today we went to her 1 month pediatrician appointment and she did amazing. The Dr said she is thriving. She has gained over a pound since her last visit and now is weighing 9 lbs 8 oz, putting her in the 75th percentile for weight. He was very pleased with this gain (again) and it looks like she is doing really well with breastmilk and feedings. She has also grown in her body length now measuring at 23 inches (2 more since birth). Her height is in the 94th percentile. We didn't get the measurement on her head but he said she is in the 50th percentile for that. So he was really pleased and we are directed to continue as we have. Her next appointment is for her 2 month check up and she will get her first round of shots. Due to the holidays and our trip up to NC we scheduled that appointment for January 3rd.

We can't even begin to say how much of a blessing she has been to us. And to boot what an incredibly good baby she has been. We have had several nights of 7 straight hours of sleep and last night she slept a nice solid 8 hours herself straight! Now mind you there have been some nights where we have had 4-5, but we know that is still pretty good and usually try not to complain much about sleep to others :)

She is changing so much already. She has just started to smile at us and is doing an incredible job at lifting her head and even keeping it up for a good time. We could go on and on about her, as we are truly just absolutely in love with her! We find that we pinch ourselves a lot.

Well its hard to believe that Thanksgiving and the Christmas Holiday are right around the corner. We are going to be hosting Thanksgiving again this year and it is looking like there will be about 10-12 people. Camdyn will have a lot of people excited to spend more time with her. We have her baptism also coming up on December 12. We are looking forward to that for her and with some of the family that will be in town during that weekend, we know Camdyn will have a lot of attention and extra love. Then on December 26th we are planning on heading out to a trip to NC to visit Ben's Grandmother and also visit with Aunt Susan. This will be Camdyn's first real road trip so it should be an interesting event. We are giving ourselves two days each way to travel. We think she will have a great time though! So there is definitely a busy several weeks approaching in the Rivera home.

So that is the jist of what has been going on here with us. We hope that everyone has a wonderful Holiday. Happy Thanksgiving to you all!!! We will definitely work on trying to update more, we know we have been slacking a bit with that, but as we continue to get into more of a routine that will get better. Enjoy the pictures we posted above, they aren't this week current but we will work on getting more uploaded soon.

Much love to you all.

Ben, Gabrielle, and Camdyn

Camdyn's Savings Account

SmartyPig Widget: "Help Camdyn get a jump on saving for college and beyond"

A very cool online savings website called "Smarty Pig," allows friends and family to contribute to Camdyn's savings account electronically. You don't need any special log-in, etc. Just click the link, find the button that says "Contribute," then fill out the form.

This link will also be permanently available on the front page of our blog directly under our picture on the right hand side. Look for "Click here to contribute to Camdyn's savings account!"

Love,

Camdyn