Easter 2015

Our Easter was somewhat non-traditional this year.... its was 3 generations of girls celebrating while Daddy (aka Nick) drove the church bus most of the morning and into the afternoon. Daddy's absence nor the chilly weather stopped us from a morning photo session prior to heading to church. How cute is my little Easter bunny?! (and I LOVE my new Easter flag that I found at a cute little shop in Blowing Rock)

Legends! Another fun circus experience

We've kept the tradition of attending the circus with our favorite family trios!

Back in February, we attended the Ringling Brothers: Legends show. This year was just as impressive as years past.... even the pre-show fun of being on the floor to watch some up close acts and trying on the stage clothes.... talk about up close and personal!

This year we even managed to all fit in one car! Yes, 9 of us in one car... that was almost as fun as the show! Fun with sweet friends.... hoping to keep the tradition going in 2016.

Happy New Years and Our Favorite Eastern NC Town

The Cox family had a wonderful time ringing in 2015 with some of our dear friends. The Starlings (who recently moved to DC) and the Gardners came over to our house for a NYE Party. The best part was that all of our girls are the same age and had a great time celebrating together with party hats, beads, horns, and sparkling juice! We didn't want the night to end so we continued our party into the night with a sleepover! The girls loved waking up together and eating a big breakfast. They didn't stop there.... crimped hair for all! Camille loved showing off her new crimper.... Yes, the 80s are back!

That wasn't the only fun to kick off the new year! Nick & I treated each other to a trip to our favorite eastern NC town... New Bern! Nick found a beautiful bed and breakfast for us to enjoy..... The Aerie. it was so quaint and the breakfast was delicious too. Our favorite part of the inn was the nightly happy hours where we could chat with the owners about their recent European adventures and their plans for life after their 2nd retirement.

We ate our way through town as always.... One of our favs, Persimmons, had had a flooding incident so we missed out on eating there, but found plenty of other gems like The Chelsea and 247 Craven. Always a treat! It was a cold weekend, but we had a great time in our little town.

We even got to see Rent at the community theater. Not the best acting, but was still a fun night on the town supporting local talent :) Our Seahawks & Panthers were playing each other that weekend, so we had to hunt for a bar to watch the game. The first attempt was a failure, as there was only one TV, not much sound, and too many people that didn't care enough about the game, yet continued to block our view. We finally stumbled upon a local dive, BTM (Bear Town Market), that had the biggest TV in town and a great bartender. The other patrons were interesting, but we had a good time toasting our Seahawks! (Sorry Panthers!)

Thanks for yet another great adventure New Bern! See you soon!

Christmas 2014

The Christmas season was so busy, but full of lots of fun memories!

Camille & I attended the annual Winter Choral Performance at Meredith College. We were invited to the tea party before which Camille just loved. Most of the attendees were 70+ so they sure enjoyed the entertainment and conversation that Camille brought to the table.

Camille had a great first semester of choir and finished her first half of the year with a sweet Christmas Program.

As if we hadn't had enough of Disney, we found time to go with our friends to Disney on Ice. The girls loved it!

Christmas if full of moments to perform... Camille's preschool put on their own Christmas program as well.... and cute doesn't even begin to describe it. Camille did such a great job and knew every word and motion. We were so proud of her!

Even though we don't celebrate Santa, Camille still found it quite funny that he came to her classroom at school, especially because he had gifts in hand!

Another fun tradition- going to look at Christmas lights with The Gardners. This year however, the girls wanted to dress up for the occasion! Despite the pouring rain, we did get to see some impressive ones!

We can't forget the DesVergers family Christmas in Sanford. Jeannine hosted us all and it was so much fun as usual.

 This year for our Family Christmas church service, we brought Allie, Jack, and Luke along, since John was working through the night. Each child gets to choose if they want to be an angel, shepherd, or wise man. Camille & Jack both chose to be shepherds at first since Nick was also a shepherd this year. How cute!?

Yet in true Camille form.... she decided that the angel look would be more fitting for her, so she switched! Ha!

 We also managed to head West to Wilkesboro over the holiday break to celebrate with the McNeill side of the family. Despite getting pink eye the night of our arrival, Camille enjoyed getting a Doc McStuffins costume and new suitcase! Not to mention the Santa fruit treat Marla put together. I think Gran & Poppy got a a kick out of our excited Christmas girl and didn't let the pink eye keep them away.

We had a Cox family celebration to, though unfortunately, Abe, Christy, and the kids weren't able to join us this year. With them moving back to NC, we should get back on the Cox Christmas trend :)

Merry Christmas from Nick, Laura, and Camille!

Cox Family Cruise 2014!

Our first cruise was MAGICAL!!
Not only was it our first cruise, it was our first experience with Disney, so our expectations are set high from now on!

We used a wonderful travel agent who talked me through the whole process and gave us such great advice. I did do a lot of my own research as well, but felt fairly prepared going into it. 

Since we told Camille a week in advance that we were going... we created a fun countdown for her to do each day, as well as a little gift that would prove useful on our trip. (glowsticks for pirate night, disney themed activities for the plane ride, a personalized shirt, etc)

We set sail on November 9th on the Disney Wonder to celebrate Camille turning 5 years old! What a memorable celebration it was. We did a 5 day cruise, sailing from Miami to Cozumel, to Castaway Cay, and back to Miami.

Camille got to fly on a plane... which may have been a bigger deal to her than actually being on a ship! She knows Mommy flies a lot for work, and so she was thrilled to get to experience it for herself. We flew from Raleigh to Miami the day before the cruise, so we could get settled in Florida and be ready to embark bright and early the following morning.

Camille was quite the ham at the airport! Can you tell she was excited?!

Since we spent the night in Miami, we were excited to wake up and head to port to catch our cruise! Camille stayed excited on the bus ride into port! It was an early start to a cloudy, rainy day, but that didn't keep our spirits down!

Disney has every process down to a fine art..... so organized and easy. My personal favorite was receiving our "key to the world" cards and personal navigator.... My type A self loved all the details and schedules!

This navigator was delivered daily and had every piece of information you could ever dream of!

Once we boarded the ship.... and yes, we were actually announced.... "Disney welcomes The Cox Family!" Exciting.... we couldn't use our cell phones. Sounded stressful at first, but ended up being such a great way to keep us relaxed and focused on each other. So all pictures were on my camera, not my phone. I'll do another post with other details of the on the cruise experience, but just take my word for it, it was GREAT!!!

Nick and I kept saying how this was the first time that we actually felt fully relaxed on a "family" vacation. We came back so recharged and ready to tackle our normal daily schedules after that week away. Thank you Disney!!

Camille had fun flying back to Raleigh, even though we were sad to leave. We were also disappointed in the weather headed back.... We came from a week of 80+ degree days to a cold Raleigh 40 degree day! She was excited to show off all of her new Disney gear and she even earned her "wings" from the flight crew! Does she look older? I can't believe our baby is five!!!

Halloween 2014

Camille decided that she needed to do a costume swap this Halloween. She had a costume parade at school where she chose to be a nice girl pirate. She seemed quite impressed with herself.

For trick or treating, Camille decided to wear her dance costume and be Cinderella. It was quite a chilly night, so we had to add tights and a sweater. Most people thought she was a fairy. She would correct them and then decided to start telling people she was Cinderella and her mommy was her Fairy Godmother :) I ended up carrying the wand around.

This was our first Halloween at the new house, so trick or treating was a great way to meet some of our neighbors that we hadn't yet seen. Of course, Camille stole the show. Since our neighborhood has a lot of older couples, Camille racked up on candy. They all were so impressed with her manners and cute smile that she was getting large candy bars by the fist full! She was so cold and her feet ached in her "glass slippers," but she was determined to visit as many houses as possible. I eventually had to beg her to let us go back home for the surprise we had in store.

Since Camille's 5th birthday was approaching, Nick & I had decided to book a Disney cruise week for her as a surprise. We knew we couldn't tell her as far in advance as we had planned it, so we decided to tell her on Halloween night, almost a week before we departed. We had arranged a call from Mickey and Minnie to share the big news. Camille was much too into her candy, so we had to beg her to answer the phone. At first, she had no idea what they were saying and she kept repeating "I don't understand mouse talk. Why are they calling me?" After we told her to keep listening to their special message.... she slowly started to put the pieces together. From there she started running around the house screaming and jumping. It certainly was the reaction that Nick and I were hoping for!

This Halloween was certainly one we won't soon forget! Disney cruise, here we come!

Our singing machine!

Camille LOVES to sing. In fact, when you ask her what she wants to be when she grows up, she usually will say a singer or a singer teacher (music teacher). She was finally old enough to participate in the children's choir at church this year. She really enjoys going to choir practice each week. Her favorite time however, is the performance. They do 4-5 performances throughout the year during different church services, including the evening Christmas program. She loves being up front and seeing all her family and friends in the audience! She especially likes the choir robes they get to wear. Of course she says they are red and white for NC State :) Here is our cutie in her robe before one of her performances.

Mimi's Milestone

Back in October, we celebrated Mimi's 60th Birthday with a trip to the mountains. We stayed in a very spacious cabin near Black Mountain, NC. It was the perfect fall weather in the mountains that weekend and we were able to see so much of the leaf colorings from the cabin. Here was our view.

We had so many acorns on the back deck, that Camille spent lots of time collecting ;) The front porch had rocking chairs, so we got to enjoy the views from both sides!

There was a cute little festival downtown that weekend that kept us browsing all day long. The shops and restaurants were so cute, and they even had a cupcake bakery! There were some kids that were painting faces to raise money and so Camille asked for a pumpkin on her cheek. It was cute to watch her sit so seriously for a few minutes. I loved toting Ellie around, as she was quite entertained from simply people watching, though she did want to get down and run around when we took her to Kilwin's. Can you blame her?

We also took time to treat Mimi to a special birthday dinner at Tupelo Honey. The meal was delicious and Camille loved getting to help Mimi blow out her candles! We even remembered to get some family photos taken and didn't even notice until afterward that some of us coordinated :)

Montreat College was also nearby. That campus is beautiful. The stone buildings are so impressive and the onsite church/chapel is so neat. Not to mention the awesome kid's playground area and all the neat trails. We had a great time exploring. 

Such a great weekend celebrating our great mother, mother in law, and grandmother!