Galveston Beach

We took our new car on its first adventure! Stuart beach at Galveston Island.  Even though we were all suffering from head colds, we decided to go be miserable at the beach instead of being miserable at home all day.

Checking out the sand.

The sea gull was not really about to eat Rylee, even though it looks like it.

 Rylee "helped" Ryan build a sand face.

+

*\

Rylee absolutely loved the ocean! She ran gleefully into the waves with no fear. It was a little windy and cool outside, so she got cold fast and her teeth started chattering. We forced her to stay out of the water for awhile to warm up. Needless to say, she threw a big fit!

Mother's Day Weekend 2014

We had one incredible weekend! Should I start off with our favorite part? Meet the newest member of the Campbell family!

Our brand new, 2015 Kia Sorento!

We are so in love with our car!

Friday Rylee and I picked Ryan up from work and headed to Austin in our very old Honda Civic. To quote Ryan, it was the "worst drive ever." No cruise control, radio broke a long time ago, and the baby was screaming for a good chunk of the time. We had stopped THREE times within fifty miles of Houston! We eventually got to Austin with the car all in one piece and with a sleeping baby.

Saturday, we took that little Civic to trade in and spent ALL day car shopping. It came down between the Kia and a 2014 Dodge Journey. Finally, after a gizzlion hours of deliberation (for the record I had come to a decision, but Ryan was still deciding), we ditched the dodge dealership and got the Kia. We got a great price for it and have loved every second driving it!

We left Rylee-roo with her Campbell grandparents and headed out to Lago Vista(in the new ride) to see my sister play Queen Susan in "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe." It was really cute and she did great!

Cassie is the taller girl. How is she old enough to play Susan over Lucy?!

My brother and I caught in the act of taking selfies on his phone.

I love this girl! That's Dad in the background with the white beard
playing Father Christmas.

"What does the fox say?"

On our way home we stopped and got Torchy's. My favorites are the fried avocado and the Crossover(brisket taco).

Sunday saw us at my family's ward. Rylee was pretty tired, but we had to take a last minute Mother's Day picture!

My brother is the King of photobombs.

So we took another. I was trying to distract her with a cupcake and at least get her to smile.

She's looking at the camera at least.

We had a yummy dinner that Dad made. Salmon with parley, sage, rosemary, and thyme. He called it his "Salmon and Garfunkel." Ha...ha...ha. Rylee and I took some better Mommy/daughter pictures.

She loved eating cheerios with Abuelita. Best seat in the house apparently.

Cassie came and spent the night with us in Georgetown. We watched some Captain America in 3D.

Monday came too quickly and we had to head back to Houston. But it was exciting to pack up our new car(which has so much storage space) and drive it home!

Happy Mother's Day!

Cloth Diapers...Then and Now...Mysteries Revealed

*Update June 20, 2014- IKEA no longer sells their burp cloths! So sad! I got some flour sack towels at Target instead.

I have just about every style of cloth diaper. We started with Cloth-Ez prefolds and covers. I tried two pocket diapers(Fuzzibunz and BumGenuis 4.0), and I couldn't resist two cute work-at-home-moms fitted diapers. I tried and returned an all-in-one BumGenius freetime. I have some Flip stay dry inserts that I'm planning on selling. I have bummis, flip, thirsties, and wool diaper covers that I made from upcycled sweaters.

Does it sound like I'm speaking another language? Why do we as moms have to make things so complicated when they could be so easy? Diapers do one thing...catch pee and poop until your child is potty trained.

Do you want to know what I've learned? Buy flats! They're $1.50 each at IKEA or $1 at Target(flour sack towels), or free if you use that ratty old T-shirt of your husband's that you really hate.

Although I love my fitted diapers, I find that no matter what I try, they get detergent buildup and baby girl gets a rash if she sits in them for too long. My two pocket diapers I hardly ever use because they seem to get buildup and repel and leak if I use them too much. 

My prefolds are great ($3 each for medium wide baby size) but take forever to dry.

I just started using my own diy t-shirt flats and wish I would have just done it from the start! They wash up so easily because they're thin and you don't have to have a crazy complicated wash routine. I'm thinking I'll get a couple from IKEA(burping cloths) and use them when we travel because I won't have to worry about detergent buildup, etc, and can even handwash them if I needed to.

So for a dozen flats at $1 each and three covers($14 each), you could have enough diapers from birth-potty training for under $60! That is incredible! Ask around for family members 100% XXL t-shirts and you have free spares. Although I have to admit, I felt a little trashy using cut up t-shirts to diaper my child, but I wanted to see how I liked the whole flats thing. Yes you have to do some folding, but it's nothing complicated. Can you watch a YouTube video? I bet you can!

What if you have a squirmy baby? Rylee is the squirmiest, and always has been. Whether it's a disposable, prefold, flat, or fitted diaper, we have just as hard of a time. You learn to get really fast at pinning that diaper!

We use disposables for night time because I could not figure out a system that kept our sheets dry and her bum rash free in the morning, so I gave up around 6 months and am not ashamed at all. I do die a little inside every time I shell over the cash for a box of Huggies, but it was better than troubleshooting diapers every single night and changing sheets and worrying about rashes.

If you're interested in cloth diapering, don't get caught up in the very complicated world of modern cloth diapering. Keep it simple. Go to IKEA, eat some Swedish meatballs and a slice of chocolate cake, get some cute printed "burp cloths" for $1.50 each, and then order a couple diaper covers(I love Thirsties and they come in two sizes) off Amazon, and don't go crazy with laundry detergent. Then treat yourself to something special because you just saved yourself hundreds of dollars on disposable diapers and lots on complicated pocket diapers.

And don't forget to get a swim diaper for your little waterbaby! I have a couple Bummis swim diapers that we've liked, but again, don't get caught up in the dozens of brands and kinds.

MIller Outdoor Theater Weekend Adventure

 Friday afternoon, Rylee and I headed downtown to meet Ryan at work when he got off. We warmed up dinner in his break room and then headed over to Herman Miller Park to see the Pearl of the Orient featuring Leyte Dance Theater at the Miller Outdoor Theater. We let Rylee wander around the park and play for about an hour and half before the show started at 8. Then we took some family selfies.

She loves seeing herself on the phone screen!

She danced to the music, wandered up to strangers on their blankets, ran up and down the hill, and ate her weight in cheerios. After the show we changed her into PJs and headed home.

Saturday, we attempted to go to the Fine Arts Museum for the first free weekend of the month for Bank of America card holders, but it didn't work out very well. Something about the fragile,expensive objects within a baby's reach and big echoey exhibit halls that magnified Rylee's screaming tantrums when we didn't allow her to touch, said priceless artifact. So we went to the Children's Museum and let her burn some energy. We thought about going to the zoo but decided it was way too hot. The ¡Ritmo Latino! featuring Pedrito Martinez Group was performing at the Miller Outdoor Theater, so we decided we wanted to see that. We grabbed some sliders from Little Big's off Montrose and headed back to Herman Miller Park(my favorite place in Houston). The band had an Afro-Cuban inspired sound and was really awesome! Rylee wandered around the hillside, trying to steal people's keys and knock over wine glasses. She got really good at walking up and down the inclined hill. This is what the theater looks like.

All performances are free and you bring blankets or chairs to sit on the lawn on the big hill.
Or if you're 16 years or older and stand in line for tickets the day of the show, they
have covered seating under the roof.

She had developed a really bad diaper rash earlier that afternoon, and halfway through the show, she started screaming inconsolably. She had pooped and it had really irritated her rash, poor baby! It was already 9pm at that point(normal bedtime), so in the middle of an awesome drum solo, we packed up all our stuff and took our screaming baby home. She clung to Ryan the entire walk back to the car and finally started to calm down. She was asleep as soon as we started driving.

We had a big weekend, but it was fun as always with my two Ry's!

Random family selfie from General Conference weekend(aka stay-in-pjs-all-day)

#BecauseofHim

Check out this awesome video that my church, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, put out today! Daily updates will be posted to this website, http://easter.mormon.org/, for the rest of the week leading up to Easter.

Perfect Saturday

Do you ever have one of those perfect days? Where the weather is great, children behave, and life is good?
We had one of those days yesterday. A visit to the Houston Kite Festival, the Children's Museum, and the Fifth Ward Renaissance Festival (celebrating jazz and other music, not knights and jousting).

The huge kites were way cool!

Rylee toddled about happily all afternoon.

There was a cool Chinese dragon.

The dragon!

Fifth Ward

First Daddy-Daughter Tea Party at the Children's Museum

Rylee loves to help "walk" the dog now.

I forgot to throw in this picture from our trip to Austin last weekend. My sister Delaney came for her Spring Break, so Rylee and I hopped on the bus to head over for some sister time.

First time at Barton Springs Pool. Swimming with her aunties and cousins.

Rain Rain Go Away So I Don't Spend Money On A Children's Museum Membership

We had grand plans for Saturday. It was the Bicentennial Celebration for the Battleship Texas and the Crosby Crawfish and Zydego Festival. Well, it poured rain. We went out to Crosby anyway to check out the festival to see if it was indoors and how much it was. It was coming down in buckets by the time we got there. The fair grounds were muddy, and tickets were $20 each. So we skipped it. We knew the Battleship Texas stuff was all outdoors too, so we decided to go to the Children's Museum because we couldn't think of any other rainy day activities with a baby in tow.

We could have gone on a free Thursday night, or the first Saturday of the month. But yesterday was neither, and it was raining. So what the heck, we got the membership so we can go as often as we want! Rylee loved the Tot Spot upstairs.

There's some more pictures on her blog.

There was a concert Friday night at the park near our apartment. We walked over to check it out after dinner. Rylee loved the music and the people dancing. She just wandered about with her little hands clasped soaking everything in. She did not want to go home!

I was totally dying from cuteness overload!

So despite the rain and less than desirable weather this weekend, we had lots of fun.