Amanda Visits

On Easter Sunday, my friend from WA came to visit on her spring break.  Amanda and I taught Kindergarten together back in Washington.  Now, when she has a break she comes to visit me! :)  Last year she came to Arizona and this year she got to cross off two states on her list of states she hasn't been to during her visit.  It was wonderful to see Amanda again and spend some time with her even though her visit was much too short!  She got the "cooler" weather of all our visitors.  It stayed in the 70's this week which was rather nice.  While it seemed a little chilly to me in the mornings when there would be a breeze, I'm sure it felt kinda warm to her considering she had been in cold rain! Grayson had a great time with her and gave her lots of hugs and kisses while she was here. :)  Here are some of the things we did with Amanda while she was here.

Grayson decided it was fun to run through the sprinkler when Daddy set it up on Monday. :)

Strange caterpillars that keep popping up around the house and yard

Tuesday we went into Savannah to walk around and go to the park.  Grayson had a blast sticking his hands in the fountain and quickly figured out he could make his handprint on the sidewalk.

Eating some of his chocolate bunny "Mmmm!  It nummy mommy!"

Apparently Savannah is the most haunted city in America.  I mentioned to Amanda while we were downtown that I wanted to go on a ghost tour while we lived here.  She said she would go on one so I called up our babysitter to see if she was available for that night and she was!  We had wanted to go on one where we would have gone into the "Pirates House" rum cellar and into the Sorrell-Weed House.  The house is one that has been featured on a ghost hunters show on t.v. where they recorded a voice and other strange things happen in the house.  However, that tour was booked so we found a trolley ghost tour that stopped at the cemetery and a chandlery.  It was an interesting tour but nothing that scared us and no strange sightings. :)  I'd still like to go on the tour sometime that we initially tried to go to!  

This was the only strange photo we got of the night.  Amanda was trying to take a picture of the front of the chandlery.  Her flash was off and no one was behind her taking a picture either nor any cars passing by.  However, it still showed up with a bright light and her shadow in the picture.  No shadowy/foggy appearances in pictures though to make us think there was a ghost. :)

Wednesday we headed to the beach.  Since Amanda hadn't been to Georgia or South Carolina, I took her to Hilton Head Beach so she could cross South Carolina off her list. :)  Grayson fell asleep on the way there with his sunglasses on upside down.  Worked out well since he was in a good mood the whole time we were at the beach playing, yet the downside was that he stayed awake the entire way home!  

We found an abandoned hole someone dug so we set up next to it for Grayson to play with.  He promptly put all his sand toys inside the hole and jumped on in.  We may have a missing shovel buried in that hole since it had water in it and I found another shovel buried later on in the day.  

While at the beach a group of dolphins swam by the shore.  They just kept popping up one right after another!

 There was a fountain near the restrooms at the beach that Grayson wanted to play in so it was the perfect opportunity to get the sand off our legs!  He was having so much fun we had a little meltdown when I put him in the stroller to leave. 

Amanda had lots of snuggle time with Ryley too! :)

Thursday we had to head back to Jacksonville to take Amanda to the airport in the afternoon.  I decided to take the opportunity to check out the children's museum there.  We were pretty disappointed!  Grayson still had fun regardless, but it was a very run down, small place located in an industrial part of the city.  In some "exhibits" it seemed almost like they just found toys at a garage sale and set up a so called "exhibit".  The website had a great way of drawing you in by describing things like they would be very cool and new things.  However, when I got there and saw what they were describing, it was NOTHING like I pictured in my head!  Grayson had fun playing on the two slides most of the time and playing in the ball pit.  I'm looking forward to the children's museum here in Savannah opening their first phase at the beginning of June.  I just hope it's a lot nicer than what this place was!  Sounds like Savannah is putting a lot of money into their museum though so it should be more like the museums we have been to in Tacoma, Phoenix, and Tucson!  

Amanda's visit seemed to go by way too fast!  I sure wish we weren't on different coasts so I could see her and all our other friends in WA more often!  She was the last of our visitors lined up, but if anyone else feels the urge to come down south to visit, you're all welcome!  

Easter Weekend

Happy Easter!  We hope you all had a nice Easter with family and friends.  Here at the Campbell house, we had a short break from visitors and enjoyed the Easter weekend with the four of us.  Will had his typical four day holiday weekend from the Army so he was able to get a nice break from work before having to go out to the field Tuesday morning until the 26th.  We managed to fit A LOT of activities in during our weekend and then my friend, Amanda, flew in Easter evening.  Here are pictures from all we managed to do as a family during those 4 days of no visitors! :)

Grayson decided to make some Easter crafts for the Grandparents and Great-Grandpa's 

We practiced for the Easter Egg Hunt in our yard.  Grayson didn't quite understand the concept of putting the eggs in his basket.  Instead, he would pick one up, then go hide it in another spot. :)  Will helped him out by starting to pick them up and give them to him to put in his basket.  Of course, I made the mistake of doing his egg hunt shortly before bed, so there was quite the meltdown afterwards when we told him it was time to go take a bath!

Saturday morning we headed to the strawberry fields just down the road.  I was shocked to learn Will had never picked strawberries before!  Especially since he loves them so much he steals them off mine and his own sons plate! :)  Grayson picked a couple berries, but had a lot more fun running up and down each row.  We were surprised that he didn't start eating the strawberries when he saw them on the plants or in the bucket.  Glad he didn't though since they were pretty dirty!  This hasn't been the best year for the field due to the temp being about 10 degrees warmer than typical all winter, but freezing off and on at night.  There still managed to be plenty of berries for us to fill a bucket and make some strawberry jam!  I may need to go back out sometime in the next week or two and get more in order to freeze.  Grayson eventually got bored of going threw the rows so he and I headed back over the pond to look at the fountain and numerous turtles that kept popping up by the deck to say hello.  If you look close at the picture of the pond with the fountain, you'll see a tiny white speck out in the field.  That would be Will hard at work picking strawberries. :)

 After strawberry picking, a local church in town held a HUGE Easter Egg Hunt in the park.  There were THOUSANDS of plastic eggs filled with candy, coupons for various businesses, or gold dollar coins throughout the park.  The first picture of us standing amongst the eggs is just the section where the 1's and 2 year olds had their "egg hunt".  Not much "hunting" going on!  :)  Grayson saw all the eggs, managed to stay with us for a couple pictures, then went running through them picking them up.  Will had to chase after him to let him know we couldn't grab any eggs yet until the Easter Egg Hunt started.  He was a little upset, but did well once we got him away from the eggs and standing in the area designated for his age group to wait.  It amazed me at how "competitive" the parents were at this egg hunt!  First, there were WAY too many people allowed on the area with their kids.  There were a lot of families with both parents AND grandparents out there for just one kid picking up eggs!  Second, the parents were the ones darting after eggs that they thought would have the coupons or gold dollar coins.  Grayson went to pick up one egg that had a bank sticker on it, but another mom snatched it out from right in front of him as he bent down to pick it up.  Crazy how some parents get at these types of things!  After the hunt, there was free food and tables set up with activities for the kids to play.  A perk to having a 2 year old is that we were the first group to "hunt" which meant the first group to get in line for food as well.  Thank goodness we didn't have to wait in the long line that quickly formed after us!  :)  Grayson played the duck pond game to get some prizes and tried his hand at the can toss.  Of course he didn't have much luck knocking any cans down, but enjoyed it anyway!  He also got a baseball painted on his hand that quickly smeared across his face when he went to wipe his nose with the back of his hand!  After the park he was ready for a nap!

Waiting for the Egg Hunt to begin

And they're off!

Ryley looking sad that he didn't get any eggs :(

After nap that afternoon, we colored Easter Eggs.  Luckily, I found a paint one with rollers.  He wanted to try and dye them like Daddy and Mommy, but we quickly put an end to that idea when he kept dropping them into the cups from up high and having it splash out of the cups.  Maybe next year he'll be able to dye them!

If strawberry picking, Easter Egg Hunt, and dyeing eggs weren't enough to do on Saturday... we still managed to fit one more thing in and head the Sand Gnats baseball game!  It is a minor league team for the Mets here in Savannah.  Such a fitting name for a sports team here due to the pesky sand gnats that are around almost all year long!  Grayson was excited to go watch baseball, but we quickly learned that trying to sit in seats won't work well the next time.  There is another area with picnic tables that we will probably be sitting at the next game we go to so he can run around a little.  He lasted till the 6th inning then we headed home since it was past the boys bedtime.

Didn't even realize the name of the stadium till a friend commented on this photo on Facebook!

On Easter morning Grayson woke to see the Easter Bunny had come.  The bunny had left a trail of string throughout the house for him to find his basket.  He thought that was a pretty silly bunny! :)  He helped Daddy find where the string went to next as Daddy rolled it up and was amazed at the basket of goodies he found at the end.  It's so much fun to watch him at this age because he's now realizing things and expressive about it for holidays like with his stocking at Christmas and with his basket for Easter. 

We managed to hurry up and get out the door on time for church which was shocking!  After we got home, Mommy managed to get a few pictures of her little boys in their Easter clothes.  It is such a hard thing to find when you live in the south!  I don't quite understand why Easter dresses for little girls are sleeveless, yet Easter clothes for boys are long sleeves with sweater vests!  We live in GA!  I kept searching for short sleeve button up shirts, but had NO luck!  You'd think of all places, I'd at least be able to find weather appropriate Easter clothes for in the south when it's 80 degrees out!  

Grayson also got an ice cream shop set from the Easter Bunny 

We headed down to Jacksonville that afternoon.  My friend was flying into JAX so we decided to head to the zoo that afternoon before picking her up.  Grayson loved getting to pet the sting rays this time since we skipped it the last.  The weather was great with it in the 70's rather than 90 like it had been the week before!  It was the perfect end to our Easter Weekend!  

Hope you all had a fun Easter!  Keep checking back to the blog since I'll be posting more pictures from our visit with Amanda! :)