we had a baby

At full capacity.

Off to the hospital - TJ was much more excited at this point than I was.

And then there were three of us.

"Make it work!"

After last year's Thanksgiving Regatta, the Annual Campbell Family Thanksgiving Challenge was born. This year it was potato catapults and we relied heavily on Project Runway for the competition rules.

1. Split into teams where you have 30 minutes to sketch.

2. Go to Mood Home Depot where you have an hour and $30 to buy supplies.

3. Spend 3 hours constructing (the time limit went out the window pretty fast).

4. Runway!

Time Machine

We brought back a favorite from when I was in primary. I'm lucky TJ likes making things out of cardboard...

...and lets me dress him up.

(Even Moses gets distracted by his iPhone)

Birthday Time

.....almost. We're a little ahead of schedule, but I didn't want it getting lost in the Thanksgiving / baby busy-ness that is coming up. Besides, we don't really like to limit ourselves to birthday-days around here, its more about the birthday-month.

37 weeks

I'm full term, the nursery is done, my clients are wrapping up...let's get this show on the road.

(The crib will have a skirt..and a quilt...they're coming with mum and I didn't have the patience to wait for them before putting pics up).

anyone else?

I finally joined the iphone club and instagram is my new favorite thing. If you're on there let me know, or follow me @daniellecampbell.

If you have an iphone and don't know what instagram is you should go get it immediately - its like twitter but with pictures and much more fun.

Ok - end of techie post. I'll be back with photos of baby related things soon.

baby shower

These girls threw me the loveliest baby shower this weekend.

So fun to have all your friends and favorite people in one place. This little guy got all sorts of wonderful presents, and the tradition of not only opening them in front of everyone but also having someone document it means I get to see how all my reactions looked. Possible captions for this one?

Nicki: "let's put it down to hormone induced hysteria"

Sculptures in parking lots

Driving around Houston you can see large sculptures of different presidents on the side of some freeways. I did some research and apparently this guy has stuff all over the country too. The artist's studio is close to downtown and he uses the parking lot outside his studio as a storage space. If you stop by right now, there's giant president heads, the Beatles, and our personal favorite:

I never learn my lesson

Nursery makeover step 1:

I found a picture of a room with horizontal stripes that I wanted to copy and for some reason ignored all my previous painting experience and decided we could totally do that ourselves. It took far longer than I care to admit and was an absolute nightmare. But I do love how it turned out.

onesies

A very talented friend of mine started designing and printing onesies. You should probably check them out.

old friends

Some of TJ's friends from college came to Austin for the BYU game. These guys have been friends since the first day of freshman year. There's nothing quite like old friends.

They let me tag along and while they tailgated and watched the game, I shopped at the outlets and explored Austin with Angie (another football widow along for the ride). Best game I've ever been to.

out and about

So much churrasco.

Brazilian soccer game - boys only (and shell). 10pm start time was much too late for the rest of us. We missed out on forro dancing for the same reason.

Largest cashew tree in the world. It took up an entire block.

Morning trips to the fruit stand for breakfast.

Since no Americans actually go on holiday to Natal (only other Brazilians) we needed the help of this guy to find a few things. He just jumped in the car and traveled about with us for a few days.

around the house

a few from the dunes

a few from the beach

These two celebrated their 31st anniversary while we were there (we may have had to remind me them it was their anniversary...Saltzmans are the sentimental like that)

This one makes me laugh - for some reason Nicki was much less excited about TJ being in this pic than he was.