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