Retreat to Austin and other stuff

February has been a busy month for us. Mostly for JD though. He has had a lot on his plate with work and his calling. Cami and I have enjoyed some fun times with friends and activities this month included a trip to the aquarium, a preschool valentine party, which I neglected to take pictures of, a picnic in the park on one of the random really warm days, and a fun weekend trip to Austin.  JD had a work retreat there last weekend and we tagged along to explore. Also this past week I was able to go to the temple. It was an all day thing and I am very grateful for the opportunity I had to go, it has been since August since I was able to go. I loved the sweet spirit and a wonderful sister in the ward watched Cami all day. Cami also started soccer and I got asked to be the coach. For those of you who know me that is a bit of a joke since I have never played soccer, or really any organized sport. It is a volunteer based program and I am coaching 4-5 year old girls so I guess they figured a warm body would do :). Cami has been excited to play so I hope I can make it fun for the girls. Cami has shown more interest in words and sounding things out, as long as I don't push it and just take advantage of her occasional comment then we can learn a little something. If it isn't her idea, she will put up a fight. She may be small, but let me tell you from personal experience, she is a little firecracker. I love her and she definitely keeps me on my toes. She loves to laugh and tease and asks her grandparents to tell her jokes when we FaceTime on Sundays. I often get a laugh when I go check on her before going to bed. Sometimes she is camped out on the floor or dressed up in her princess dress, or surrounded by practically every book from her bookshelf. At least she stays in her room after we put her to bed right?

Pictures from the aquarium. We are so grateful for friends we have found here!

A couple weekends ago we discovered this park in Portland that has hard sand dunes, or mud dunes as JD called them. They were fun to climb all over and the weather was perfect!

I love this picture of JD. 

This is the only Valentine picture I took. We didn't really do much. Cami got this package from Nana and Grandpa Egbert and on Valentine's Day Dad worked all day so we babysat some friends for the afternoon and then had a nice dinner and rounded out the day watching Harry Potter- after Cami was in bed. Yes very romantic :)

Cami is constantly moving, rolling, jumping, running, or doing head stands everywhere!~

These are pictures from the Austin retreat. This was at a Nature and Science center. They had rehabilitating or injured animals there.

They also had a giant snadbox with "dinosaur" bones cemented to the bottom the kids could dig up. It was pretty awesome.

Nearby was a neat park that I wouldn't mind going back to on a warmer day, it had a natural springs pool and canoe rentals I would have liked to try, but we enjoyed the little train ride and the playground all the same.

This is Cami waiting for the train to come under the bridge. She was getting a little tired at this point, but wanted to stay to see the train come through the playground so she sat like that for 10 minutes waiting. Which if you know Cami, is pretty incredible.

View from the hotel.

While Daddy enjoyed steak, Cami and I explored a little pizza joint and got some frozen yogurt from a typical Austin joint, where all the options were low-fat, sugar free, or no-fat :)

Saturday we discovered the Thinkery, the children's museum in Austin. It was pretty awesome, made all the more so by the fact that is was Engineering Day and so Cami got in free and they had extra activities and Cami earned a shirt and goodie bag.

Some of the engineering projects Cami made.

exploring with microscopes.

Awesome jungle gym.

How awesome is this! It is like giant brite lites from my childhood!

Currents/ or water room. Cami loved it. Good thing I had been warned by an acquaintance we had made the previous day to bring an extra change of clothes...

Hard to see but she is wearing her shirt she earned by doing the engineering activities. 

I am pretty sure I have never seen so many plastic fruits and veggies in my life. It was pretty awesome. Cami spent a lot of time serving any one she could reach. She loved this part.

They even had story time.

It was a fun weekend and Cami fell asleep pretty much minutes after we left Austin. Another side note, I got to speak with JD in Rockport a couple weeks ago and I was surprised at the tiny size but strength of the members. I am not sure if it will be a habit for me to get asked to speak with JD, but I am not sure what I think about that. One one hand it means I get to see more of my husband, and it gives direction to my scripture study for the week preceding, but I must say, talking in church has never been one of my strong points... I guess we will have to see :)