Preschool Happenings

Camille loves going to school each morning. It is so reassuring to drop her off and see how excited she is to see her friends, her teacher, and especially ready to learn. Nick & I have been extremely impressed with the curriculum at this age and can already see so much advancement in Camille. At 3, she can count to twenty, do some minor addition (1+1 kind of thing), recite & identify all the letters of the alphabet, and say a few spanish words. She knows all her colors and shapes, even an octagon! She has developed a love for The Bible already and loves to recite bible stories that she knows from her books or from learning at school or in chapel. We truly love her school and are so blessed to have found it and blessed that Camille has had such wonderful teachers each step along the way. Mrs. Brenda is especially good at sending pictures throughout the week of what the kids are doing in the classroom, so here are a few I wanted to share.

Camille also has been pull-up free at night for two weeks!!! It didn't even occur to me to start trying to have her wear panties at night right now, but the doctor suggested it since she has been potty trained for so long now. Well, we have only had one accident over the two weeks at night. The key is usually to have her not drink anything after dinner and then she must go potty before bed, no if's and's or but's :)

Another funny picture I stumbled upon and wanted to share..... Camille and her buddy Mary playing dress up recently.... They had soo much fun together and even put on a dance recital for us between costume changes :) We get a kick out of the personality at this age! Very comical!

Our Little "Who"

 Camille's school had their annual Christmas program a couple of weeks ago. They decided to present "How Christmas Saved the Grinch." Camille was a "who." She loved dressing up for this part, as the only directions were to be mismatched and silly. While her class had a small part, Camille had so much fun. She sang all the words to her the song "We Wish You a Merry Christmas." We were so proud of her.

We have several upcoming family Christmas celebrations, so we look forward to sharing all those pictures soon!

Thanksgiving 2012

I'm a few weeks behind in my Thanksgiving post, but its because the past couple of weeks have been pure chaos. However, I think this Thanksgiving was the most relaxing and low stress holiday we've had since Camille was born. It was nice to not feel rushed and to have plenty of time to ourselves and with family.

Camille's school kicks off the holiday by hosting their annual Thanksgiving luncheon. It is fun to get to eat with Camille, though she is much more well behaved when her parents are NOT there. Her class was very excited to recite a song for us about a turkey, as well as show off their turkey hats. Too cute!

Each child has told Mrs. Brenda what they were thankful for prior to our lunch. Camille response: "my monkey" There is a monkey stuffed animal in the class that Brenda allows Camille to sleep with at nap time since she has fallen in love with it.

Our first stop on Thanksgiving was at Nick's family's farm. We try to go every year, especially now that Camille can enjoy the hay rides and animals.

Can you believe we managed to get a picture with the whole Cox family?!
Next stop was Sanford for the DesVergers Thanksgiving. We had a small group this year due to others traveling and sickness. We still managed to completely stuff ourselves :)

The following evening, we got tickets for the NCSU basketball game, so Abe, Emily, and Jacob were able to join us too! Camille was thrilled to have her cousin Emily come with her to the game.

Nick & I followed up the basketball game with a football game the following evening. We didn't dare take Camille, as the two of us could barely handle the cold temperatures!

Hope everyone had as relaxing of a holiday as we did! Now we're all back to the grind and trying to get ready for Christmas!

Birthday Questionnaire: Age 3

These are questions that I asked Camille on her 3rd birthday. She was very thoughtful in answering her questions and took her time on each one.

What is your favorite color? Pink


What is your favorite toy? Baby dolls

What is your favorite fruit? Apple dapple (apples)

What is your favorite tv show? Olivia

What is your favorite thing to eat for lunch? banana

What is your favorite outfit? Castle shirt (3yr old birthday shirt)

What is your favorite game? Kicking a ball

What is your favorite snack? Goldfish

What is your favorite animal? Snake

What is your favorite song? Jesus Loves Me and the Dora theme song

What is your favorite book? I Spy

Who is your best friend? Madelyn aka Maddie

What is your favorite thing to do outside? Play with a ball

What is your favorite drink? Milk

What is your favorite holiday? Easter

What do you like to take to bed with you at night? Monkey lovie

What is your favorite thing to eat for breakfast? Pancakes

What do you want to be when you grow up? A tiger

What is your favorite thing to do with Daddy? Read books

What is your favorite thing to do with Mommy? Chase leaves outside and pick them up when they fall off the trees

Camille turns 3!

As fun as it was to count down the days until Camille turned 3, it is so hard to believe that three years have passed already! My little baby just keeps getting bigger and bigger (and smarter and smarter) :)

Camille had quite the birthday celebration, considering she had 3 parties and tons of attention in between. Her first celebration was the week before her birthday. She called this her "kid party" because we invited a lot of her little friends from school, church, etc. This celebration took place at Gymboree to which I HIGHLY recommend. It was so nice to come in with a cake and some favors, and let the hired teacher do the rest.  The kids had such a great time playing with each other. There was a lot of free play, but the teacher also let the kids in different songs, games, and other activities. It was fun to see such happy faces. Here are some pictures from her "kid party."

After her "kid party," we had her "family dinner party." Camille wanted to continue her princess theme, so I had fun decorating the house for that.

Camille loved having the family that was close enough to come over and celebrate. Our dinner was even themed and included Pocahontas Pot Pie. Camille enjoyed showing off her new toys to her cousins.

As if that wasn't enough celebrating, Camille got to make the trip to Wilkesboro on her actual birthday weekend to have her "McNeill party." My dad and Marla went out of there way to make Camille's birthday extra special. She had a Barbie Princess cake and got to have her Gran and Poppy over to help in celebrating too.

Camille loved getting another round of presents. She got a Barbie makeup set from Dad & the gang and was quick to spot the nail polish portion... so we painted her fingers and toes.

They also gave her a princess helmet and padding!

To complete the look, Poppy had given Camille a ride on scooter that is motion activated. Camille didn't appreciate that she couldn't use her feet, so she made up her own method for riding. Mommy & Daddy however had a lot of fun using it the right way :)

Camille found her love for the ipad during our visit. Maybe we'll have to add that to the list next year ;)

Our fun day ended with a delicious dinner in downtown Wilkesboro. Believe it or not, Camille's favorite part of the meal was the mushroom bisque.

On our last day in Wilkesboro, we ate lunch with Gran. Leave it to Gran to arrange for yet another birthday celebration. The staff brought out a piece of cake and a candle and we all sang happy birthday (again).

After writing this, I'm starting to see why our birthday girl has been acting so rotten lately...... someone had a little too much celebrating and overindulging!!

I found a cute idea on Pinterest that I will include in my next post. It's called 20 Questions for Kids and has you make a list of questions for your child, starting at age 3, and continuing every birthday until they turn 18.... you then make a book out of all the years of questions to see how they grow and change in their responses. So stay tuned!

Halloween 2012

We sure hope everyone had as fun of a Halloween as we did! We seemed to pack as much activity & fun as possible into one day.

It started off with Camille's parade at school. All the kids were allowed to wear their costumes to school that morning where they paraded around the gym for the teachers, church staff, and parents. They were all so cute.... here is my sweet clown and some of the other kids in her class.

A few hours later, after her class party and nap, I picked Camille up early from school to head to a nearby park that was hosting their first annual trick or treat in the park. We went with Camille's best buddy Madelyn aka Minnie Mouse. The girls had so much fun, but got a bit tired walking the one mile loop for candy, so good thing we brought the wagon!

You'll notice Camille's clown makeup got a bit heavier as the afternoon went on. Well, she loved wearing the clown makeup so much, that she kept wanting me to add more shapes and colors and wanted her entire face covered. I figured, its her costume, so I obliged her requests.

After coming home to refresh our candy bucket, we got ready to head to the Fall Festival at Camille's school. We have attended this festival every year, but it is usually a few days prior to Halloween. I imagine more and more churches and groups are trying to get kids to come to festivals and "trunk or treats" instead of going door to door?

I have to admit, it certainly was easier to attend the festival than to stay at home and hand out candy all night ;) Especially since the festival had bounce houses, candy, music, and some delicious hotdogs, fries, and apple turnovers!!!

I can't believe its already November! Camille has been counting down to her birthday for several months now...... and we are running out of milestones to tell her she has to wait for before its time for her birthday. Guess we don't have much longer to countdown until our little princess is 3!!!

Surprise! We're heading to the Mountains!!

Well, I guess I've been whining a lot about wanting to go to the mountains because Laura surprised me for my birthday with a trip to the mountains. I actually knew we were going to the mountains, but I had no idea where we were staying or what we were doing. The biggest surprise was that we were going sans-Camille. Laura had worked hard on keeping everything a secret and even conspired with my parents and Camille to make it go off without a hitch. What a great and thoughtful wife I have to plan all this out for my birthday!! I've never had my own birthday weekend...

Apparently, I was going to remain on a need to know basis for the entirety of the trip. Laura kept the entire agenda a secret. She would only reveal the next event as we were finishing the current one. This is difficult as a Cox; a great emphasis is put on what planning the next meal.

Our first event of the trip was a hour long traffic jam. Once we made it through that, Laura informed me that we were going to enjoy lunch in Morganton. What's in Morganton, you're probably asking yourself... A few years back, Our State Magazine put out a list for 100 places you must go to eat in the 100 NC counties. This sandwhich/coffee shop was on the list and it didn't dissapoint. After lunch, we finished what was a very enjoyable 4.5 hour ride to Hendersonville, NC.

Since Hendersonville is known for Apples, our first stop was at an apple orchard to pick some apples. We are by no means apple pickin' experts, but we managed to get the hang of it and brought home some delicious treats that we're still enjoying.

From the orchard, we made our way to downtown Hendersonville. At this point, I still had no idea where we were staying. Didn't even know if it was a hotel, bed and breakfast, or tent... Well, Laura did not dissapoint. We stayed in a wonderful b&b in downtwon Hendersonville. It was the biggest b&b we've ever seen with 23 rooms. But, it was still charming and we really enjoyed our stay.

After check in, Laura and I went out to explore the dowtown Hendersonville scene before dinner. For those who've never been to Hendersonville, it actually has a very happening little downtown. It is only one street, but it's full of people, music, nice restaurants, and boutique stores. We were pleasantly impressed that it was like a mini-Asheville. For dinner Friday night, we went to a wood fire pizza place which had great food and even better cold beer. It was a great choice for my first birthday weekend dinner. After dinner, Laura took me to the Flat Rock Theatre which is the official theatre of NC. For lack of a better term, it's a neat old barn that has been used as a theatre for about 50 years. We enjoyed a musical called Zelda which is a love story about F Scott Fitzgerald and his wife Zelda. Laura was especially creative to include this in our trip as I definitely did not expect it, but really enjoyed it.

On Saturday, the real adventures begin. After our delicious breakfast at the b&b, Laura let me know that we were heading out to do a little warm up hike at Jump Off Rock. The old Indian legend goes that a maiden jumped off this rock when her Indian warrior boyfriend failed to return from war. Apparently, she still appears from time to time, but instead of a ghost we just saw some pretty views. My favorite is Laura on the rock staring off into the distance...

 

 

We enjoyed lunch in downtown Henderson at the old fashioned soda fountain. Laura had an egg salad sandwhich and soup and I had a grilled pimento cheese. Reminded me of old times at Jonesboro-Lee Drug store.

Our next adventure took us to Dupont State Park to do some serious hiking and enjoy some awesome views and waterfalls. Now, this is way up in the mountains and we had to take some curvy and narrow roads to get there. We hiked about 6-7 miles and got to see three of the four sets of falls; High Falls, Triple Falls, and Bridal Veil Falls. If any of these look familiar to you, it's probably because they appeared in the Hungar Games and Last of the Mohicans. I've been really fiending for some time with nature so this really hit the spot.

For dinner Saturday night, we went to a fancy little tapas style restaurant. Laura really enjoys to share plates and try a lot of different types of things. So, our dinner was random, but delicious. After dinner, we hit up the Appalachain Brewery to try some good brews and listen to some music. The beer was good and cold and the band was...one of a kind, I'll say. It was three of the dirtiest hippies you've ever seen. They must have known where to score the good drugs because they had no clue what planet they were on. But they could jam... The piano player was absolutely tearing up the keyboard. We are early to bed folks these days so we stayed as long as we could stay awake and as long as we could take their stinking B.O. They music was good, but they literally stunk...

On Sunday, we enjoyed one last breakfast at the b&b. We were both ready to get home and see our little Monkey so we took off right after breakfast. It's funny that when you finally get away, you find yourself missing your children and rush back home early to see them...

All in all, we were extremely impressed and pleased with our trip to Hendersonville. Again, I've been really longing for a mountain trip so this one was right on time for me. My wonderful wife put a lot of thought and effort into making my birthday weekend perfect. At least I've got 9 months to plan hers...