Happy Birthday Cambree Anne

Happy Birthday to my little Miss Perfect, Cambree Anne. Why do we call her that, I'm not sure, it's name she adopted from her Aunt Stacey and has stuck ever since she was little. Cambree is humble about it though and every time you call her by that name, her response is, I am not little Miss Perfect, she is usually blushing though with her head turned in her usual bashful pose.

Some of the reasons we can call her Little Miss Perfect:
*She knows exactly what she likes and dislikes and is never afraid to tell you.
*She loves to love you and will never hide her feelings.
*She loves to have her hair a certain way, especially if she has decided it is the cutest hair-do ever.
*She has a great memory and loves to tell me all the details of her day (I love this!)

On with the day!! Cambree went to smart start in the morning, so I brought frozen gogurts to her class today. That is one of her favorite snacks. Later that afternoon we headed to local Aquatic Park for some swimming time. You gotta love July birthdays, and in true July fashion it was HOT!!! So this seemed like the perfect place to be. All the kids had a great time! Cambree has learned how to swim underwater and was so excited to practice and show anyone who was willing to watch.



Doesn't Chrystina make a cute model!! Actually don't you love that front pack that Brandon is in, it is actually designed for the water. A girl named Lisa Welling designed them I believe, some of you out there know who I am talking about.



Poor Auntie Stacey didn't bring her suit, she was hot, but such a trooper for hanging out in the heat with us. Mema brought up a bunch of cute strawberry shortcake decorations and yummy cupcakes! Cambree loved it all, especially her very own cake.

Happy Birthday to Cambree, I'm so glad she is my daughter, and so thankful for all the hugs she gives me all the time!!!

Brody...don't smash birds!

Oh this little boy sometimes. The other morning we were hanging out at the pool waiting for the girls to finish there swim practice, when all of a sudden I heard Emery say,"Mommy look what Brody did to the bird." I glanced over and there was a little bird struggling to get off the ground. Oh my goodness, I thought to myself, what did he do. Emery told me that Brody saw the bird land and he ran over and smashed it. At this point I'm picturing that game at Chuck E Cheese where you have to smack the animals that pop out of the holes. The poor little bird eventually flew away, barely. Why would he do that? So strange, I asked him why he did it, and he just looked stunned really and didn't really know what to say. I don't believe he will be smashing anymore birds anymore.

Slip-n-slide

Instead of a pool this summer, I decided a slip-n-slide would do the trick. The kids seem to be ok with it. It really comes in handy when you have to babysit as-well.

Here are a couple of our friends enjoying the slip-n-slide.

This little one is one of Brody's best buddies....but watch out these two can be trouble when they are together. At least she tolerates going on bug hunts with him.


Guess who talks all the time now, I couldn't get one picture of him without him having something to say to me. He is quite the handful these days, more than the others I think at this age (15months). He is constantly leaving little messes in every room he leaves. I find him always feeding the puppy something throughout the day.

T-Rex

I want to tell you about my dog Rex. Rex is such a cute dog. Also He is fun to play with.When you hold one of his toys in your hand he will chase you and start barking at you.Also if you are on my mom's bed and you look off the egde then back he start barking try to jump up.When he is tired sometimes cuddle with you. Like when I am going to bed I sometimes take Rex to bed with me. Its funny beacause he has little snores. Its also funny to see him chase his tail beacause he growls at his tail. And when we run Rex chases us and starts barking and playing with us. He enjoys playing top dog with his cousin doggie Bella. I think Rex is the dog ever. I am so happy Rex is in our family.


Written by Emery Rose Collins

Happy 4th of July

I don't remember telling everyone to hold there flags straight up? Haha What a fun day we had celebrating America's birthday! My favorite part though is just spending it with as much family as possible. We hung out, played, looked for stacey's car...that wasn't towed, just misplaced, bbq'ed, played some more and than ended with some great fireworks in Vacaville.

Projects!

It has been awhile since I have tried to take on any projects, but while shopping at the Goodwill the other day I spotted a hutch. I have been thinking about getting one for the kitchen for awhile, but of course would only do so if it were cheap and $35.00 is cheap to me. Of course being to anxious to start I didn't take any before pictures, only after.

This was an interesting experience for me, because I have not painted with red before. Originally I thought I would go black and play it safe, but for some reason safe sounded boring....I know not good right. So red popped into my head and I loved the idea of it.

What do you think? I still have to attach the doors...especially since a little mister around here spends his days opening and emptying all cupboards. I would also like to do something with the top part of the hutch....wall paper, contact paper, perhaps fabric, whatever looks good.


What is next...stay tuned!

Hello Summer!

Well we had one week this summer where we actually got to sleep in until 7:30am. This doesn't seem fair! The girls have swim practice in the mornings right now at 8:15am. This is what Brody does while we are waiting. He loves finding bugs, although after playing with this one for about 30 minutes, he threw it down on the ground and stomped on it...haven't seen that one before.


Cambree is attending a little smart start program at the school right now for the month of July. But before it started she took 2 weeks of swimming lessons in the morning and loved it. She really doesn't have a fear of the water, which is nice and something I'm not use too. Right now she loves going to school everyday from 8am-noon. She comes home singing all the songs and tells me what she had for lunch. It's still hard for me to believe she is old enough to now go to school.

Don't be fooled by this smile, this one has a hard time getting up in the morning for swimming. Usually she tried out a few excuses to try and get out of it. But I mean look at her when she is in the water, she is smiling like crazy, this is even towards the end of swim practice. I think I will just continue to keep encouraging her.

Both of the girls have been thriving more and more in swimming. At the last meet we actually saw Emery step it up in the pool and race another girl in the breast stroke. She ended up winning her heat and was very excited. She even shaved off 20 seconds off her freestyle and told me her legs felt like jello when she got out of the pool. It was nice to see her racing and actually enjoying it. Kelci also won a couple of heats and did really well. We probably won't be at another meet for awhile, so at least we were able to see all the practicing starting to pay off.

Seriously??

It's amazing my friend Lorie is still willing to watch this little guy after this happened one morning.

I was devastated when she told me, but luckily it actually came up pretty easy. I can tell by the look on his face that he felt badly for what he did and was sad to be in trouble of course.

On a cute note, the girls told me the other night while I was away at girls camp, they were playing restaurant. They asked Brody what he wanted, he told them that he wanted a soda with some rootbeer in it...he just makes everyone smile.

Collins Cousin Camp

Last year I promised Emery and Kelci that we would have a cousins camp out in our backyard this summer. It would be the first one of it's kind and we were so excited about doing it. My kids were so excited about it and kept talking about it all week. Jeannette came up and stayed the night with me and all the kids and all nine of us slept in this tent.

I surprised the kids Thursday night by asking Grandma and Grandpa to come and help out with the campfire. They did a great job, Grandma taught the kids a song (which they are still singing all the time). Grandpa took them on a treasure hunt looking for dollar bills....I'm still looking for the $100.00 bill he told me he left back there. Than of course we roasted marshmallows with fudge stripe cookies (a new tradition I think we should keep...thanks Jenna)


Some of the highlights included:

~Jeannette rolling around in her sleeping bag in the living room trying to make sure she wouldn't get tangled up in the night.
~Me doing the centipede out of the tent at 5:30 in the morning so that I wouldn't wake anybody up.
~Tyler falling asleep first.
~The kids resorting to just blasting eachother on the trampoline with water because the slip and slide broke and the water balloons wouldn't blow up.
~Jeannette and I screwing up the song that Grandma was trying to teach the kids, I was never any good at "rounds".
~Lastly the kids expressions while roasting marshmallows was priceless, it was the first time for a few of them.


The next day we hung out and played in the water, painted picture frames, and made some t-shirts. I'm so glad that we decided to do this, I'm already thinking of some ideas for next year.