Holiday Fun, Part 4: Christmas at Great Grandma and Grandpa K's

On Christmas day, we went to over to Grandma and Grandpa's to spend time with everyone. We had a lot of fun, ate a lot of good food, and got some great gifts. Cameron loved playing with his cousins and especially liked helping Great Grandma (GG) clean up. He walked around the kitchen, pointing out and then collecting all of the empty cans. He would get as many as he could carry (usually two) and then walk with GG out to the garage to put them into the recycle bin. He did that a couple times, even spotting some cans that we had missed.

We had a buffet of turkey and appetizers to snack on all afternoon. Cam bypassed his usual go-to snacks of turkey and meatballs, and headed straight to the shrimp. He wanted them whole (none of those cut up baby pieces, apparently) and ate one after another. In total we think he ate around 20 shrimp, over the course of the day. Crazy baby! But we are glad he is such a good eater.

Opening gifts... clockwise from top left: Aunt Jill, Mom, Aunt Liz, Uncle Dan, Maddy, Maggie and Bridget's back.
Cameron handing me a minuscule piece of wrapping paper. He enjoyed unwrapping his gifts one square inch of paper at a time.
The only other thing Cameron ate all day was an apple. He only ate about half of it, but enjoyed carrying it around for most of the day.

He FINALLY took a nap in the afternoon, sleeping on Nana's lap.

Holiday Fun, Part 3: Christmas at Omi and Opa's

On Christmas Eve afternoon, we drove to Rochester to have Christmas there. Tim and I went to church, while Cameron stayed home with Omi and Opa, and Nana and Papa. When we all got home from church, we had a delicious dinner. Cam got to sit at the adults table, but I am sure it will just be a another year or two before he moves over to the fun and chaos of the kids table!

We opened gifts after dinner. Cameron did pretty well but got tired about half way through. He gave kisses and went to bed. The rest of us finished opening up gifts, ate tons of cookies and had a shot of Bailey's in a chocolate shot glass. It was a fun night!

One funny story about staying in Rochester - we were worried about how well Cam would sleep while we were there. Whenever we travel, Cameron always sleeps really poorly, waking up at night, crying a ton, etc. Our main thoughts on why he sleeps so badly are that 1) he is cold, 2) he can see us in the room and 3) he can hear us in the room. Since there were so many of us staying at Omi's, Tim, Cam and I had to sleep in the same room. Luckily, it is a warm room so #1 was taken care of. We couldn't do much about #3, other than be quiet, so we were left to work on #2. We used the stands that Tim built for photo shoots, hung a sheet over both of them, and cordoned off Cameron's own little corner of the room. Amazingly, it worked! Cameron slept through the night all four nights and only woke up for an extended time one morning. Even more amazing, he slept in til 8 or 8:30am every morning!! That means we will have to bring our photo stands (or something similar) every where we travel, but if that means a full night of sleep, we will take it!

Some photos from Christmas at Omi and Opa's....

One side of the room, while we were opening gifts. From L to R, Uncle Chris, Opa's back, Joe, Aunt Cathy, Omi, a little bit of Matt, a little bit of Aunt Linda, and Amanda's back.
Ben, Michael and Joe show off their nice new sweatpants.
Cameron hanging out on one of his new presents. He really liked putting bows on his head! Cameron climbing up the "mountain" (aka Uncle Randy's muscle)
The traditional photo of the grandkids sitting on the stairs (plus one great grandchild!)The funny version of the stairs photo. Notice how confused Cameron looks!!

Holiday Fun, Part 2: Christmas at Nana and Papa's

On December 23rd, we had Christmas at Mom and Dad K's house. We didn't have our traditional appetizer dinner that night, because Angela was not in town yet. Instead we went to dinner at Bangkok and then went over to their house to open gifts. Of course, Cam had a blast playing with Papa, Uncle Paul and Uncle Matt. He did really well opening his gifts and was cracking us all up by opening everything one square inch of wrapping paper at a time. And as he pulled each tiny piece of paper off the gift, he would hand it to someone, wait for a "Thank You" and pull off another piece. It was pretty funny!

The tree with all of our gifts

Cameron pausing from presents to jam Jack back into his Box

Cam inspecting his new picnic table. He also sat on it, laid on it, danced on it and opened several more presents on top of it.
Uncle Paul, can you help me open this present?
Once the gift was opened, Uncle Paul showed Cam how to pop bubble wrap by jumping on it. Cam can't really jump though, so he just kind of squated up and down on the bubble wrap.

Working on unwrapping another gift
Cam got pretty tired so he went to bed in the port-a-crib about half way through opening presents. Here he is giving Uncle Matt a hug good night.
After we were done opening everything, we had cookies. Here is Mom with all of the boxes of cookies she made. Yes, each one is full!!

Holiday Fun, Part 1: Christmas in Swansea

We started off our series of Christmases on the weekend of December 20-21. We went down to Swansea to celebrate Christmas with Tim's family. The weather was horrible - lots of snow and un-plowed roads made for difficult travel. We ended up skipping work on Friday and driving down early to beat the big storm that was coming in. We were sure glad we left early because just as we got there the weather turned really bad - white out conditions, tons of snow, etc.

We had a great day on Saturday with everyone. We all got lots of nice gifts and Cam had a blast playing with his cousins Jack and Ella. The ride home on Sunday was not so fun - it took 6.5 hours instead of the usual 4.5. The roads in MA were horrendous - the snow was coming down fast enough that the plows couldn't keep up and the roads were just covered. We saw lots of accidents and cars off the road. Needless to say, we were glad to get home.

Festive Cameron

Ella with Christmas ribbons in her hair
Bow-topped Jack (doesn't he look like he is up to something?)
Cameron LOVED Uncle Jeff because he gave Cam bites of a cookie!
After a long day of fun, Cam was one sleepy boy.

Cameron loves apples!

One of Cameron's favorite after school snacks is an apple. We give him a whole apple because he likes to carry it around and eat it. He will also eat apple slices but much prefers an entire apple. We take a small bite out of it to start him off, but he finishes up the rest. Today he ate an entire apple, save for the seeds and a small part of the core. It took him an hour and a half, but he did it all by himself. He is such a good eater and we are so glad that he will pick a snack like an apple over Crunchies (the baby version of cheetos) or cookies!

Taking a bite
This is so yummy
I love apples!!

Cam's New Tricks

Cam has three new tricks that he has figured out in the past week. We have been trying to get them on video but no luck yet - the second the video camera turns on, he wants to play with the camera and not show off his tricks!

1) Spinning - Cameron has learned to spin in slow circles. He does it randomly and also as part of his dancing routine.
2) Jumping - Well, not really jumping but the precursor to jumping. When you ask him to jump, he repeatedly squats down and stands up quickly. He doesn’t really clear any air, but he has the motion and idea right. I'm sure it will be soon enough when he is jumping on, over and off of everything!
3) Blowing his nose - For a couple weeks now, Cameron has stopped resisting when we try to wipe his boogers, as long as we ask first ("Cameron, can I wipe your nose?"). Over the weekend he has started actually blowing his nose when asked. He doesn't have it 100% down (sometimes he sniffs in, rather than blows the boogers out), but does it correctly most of the time. He is also much more interested in blowing his nose, now that he can sort of do it himself. It has been quite helpful because he has quite the runny nose right now.

Cameron turns ONE - Photo Shoot

As promised, here are the photos that we chose to print from Cameron's first birthday photo shoot. This was the first shoot that we used our new backdrop and stand that Tim made, and it worked wonderfully. We were very happy with the way the photos turned out, they look great!

These first three are the ones we ordered as 8x10s, 5x7s and wallet size.


The last one is a composite that Tim put together in Photoshop. We got a large-sized photo of this one and put it over our fireplace. If you click on the photo, you can see a larger size of the picture.

Photo Shoot Outtakes

We did a photo shoot about a month ago, for Cameron's first birthday and for our Christmas card. Soon enough, everyone will be seeing the final product when our Christmas card arrives in your mailbox, but for now here are some outtakes from the shoot.

First, we took pictures to use on this year's Christmas card. We used four different props and got some great shots. But here are some of the silly pictures that we took of our little (Christmas) ham!




These next pictures were taken after we were done with the Christmas card shoot, and before we started the first birthday shoot. Cameron took a break to play for a while!

After he played for a while, we got down to business on the first birthday photo shoot. Here are a few silly pictures that came out of the shoot. We will post the end results (a.k.a. the good pictures) in a few days.

Cam Cutes

Here are some random cute photos of Cam from the last couple weeks.

First, Cam going for a walk in the leaves.
Our little hockey player!
One day, Cam fell asleep in the car. Tim brought him in and put him down on the living room floor and he slept for another half hour. It was so cute!!
We had raviolis for dinner one night. Cameron LOVED them!! He did not want help eating them though, he wanted to do it all himself. It was a huge mess, but he thought it was great.

Gingerbread houses!

This year was the second year in the new Walker family tradition of make gingerbread houses sometime before Christmas. This year we spent Thanksgiving in Massachusetts with Tim's family, so on Saturday we went up to Kim's house and had our gingerbread-fest. It was a great time and everyone did an awesome job. We were all impressed with each other's creativity. And I think everyone was impressed with just how much candy Jack could put away without getting a tummy ache!! Here are pictures from the fun event.

Tom and Joan's house - they had a great yard!

Cathy did most of her house herself, with help from Ella at the end. Cathy had very realistic windows and doors, and super cute wreaths.

This house was technically Jeff and Ella's, but Ella really did most of it herself. Awesome job for her very first house! Jeff was the frosting mixer, and occasionally was allowed to touch the house (if Ella let him!).

Kristin's and Tim's house. Cam also helped a bit, but mainly by trying to eat things off the house. Our house's theme was rainbows.

Here is Kim and Jack's house. Jack's favorite part is the big blue "snake" across the roof. His other favorite part was trying to eat all of the beautiful touches Kim added to the house!

What a tasty looking neighborhood!!