writing skills

Yesterday Rachel was playing around with her cheap-o magnadoodle she got for Easter and pretending to write different things. Then she decided to write "Annie." I was very impressed. I had her recreate it on a piece of paper so I could show Jake when he got home:

She wrote a lower-case A: a circle and a line coming off of it. Yeah, not exactly to the right bottom where it normally goes, but if you rotated it it would be right. She then sounded out Annie's name some more: aaaaaaa nnnnn... and proceeded to write an n. Oops. Her marker didn't stop when she meant to, so she wrote an m. Close enough. She then wrote a capital E. The 3 lines on the E were pretty close and the vertical line went far below the bottom line, so she said, "Oh, it looks like a flag!" And proceeded to add more lines to make it a bigger flag. Anyway, so amE=Annie. Pretty darn good for a 3-year-old. She then wanted to write her own name, but when I suggested she do it on her own since she was so good at it, she refused and told me to write it and she'd trace it.
I was pretty impressed with her writing. We occasionally have "school" where she practices reading a few words, or she does a worksheet from a little preschool workbook I found at Walmart a while back. She used to love it and ask to do school often (which was why we started in the first place). Lately, though she's not a fan of anything to do with school, except for the worksheets that require her to use scizzors, so we haven't done it much lately. But hey, who needs school when you can figure it out on your own? :)

Springtime fun

We just had our first harvest from our garden yesterday: 4 yummy strawberries. The whole garden prep and everything sometimes gets to me, but once we start getting food out of it, it's all worth it.
We're trying to enjoy springtime here while it lasts (it's been in the 90s lately, so summer is almost here--but 90s still count as springtime around here). Here's Annie flying in Grandpa Knight's flying machine (t-shirt):

She was having the time of her life, squealing like crazy. I looked at her yesterday sitting up all by herself and realized, this kid is almost 6 months old. That's half a year! She's no longer a floppy little baby, she's a sitting up, rolling over, scooting around little girl with teeth. Crazy how time flies!

Yesterday Rachel and I pulled out the sidewalk chalk and decorated our wall. Rachel made lots of really loooong twirly slides.

Here's the other half of our masterpiece:

Jake couldn't help himself, so had to join in the fun and add an airplane and some other drawings.

We had a hard time pulling Rachel inside for bed. We promised she'd be able to go out in the morning and do more. Unfortunately she has zero energy today with a sore throat and probably strep. :( We'll be going to the doctor real soon so hopefully soon she'll be back up to running around like her usual self.

One last picture of springtime:

Nothing says spring better than Robin Eggs. Hope our little girl is feeling better for Easter festivities this weekend.... Happy Easter, everyone!

Edit: We just got back from the doctor and Rachel has strep with a scarletina rash. Otherwise known as the scarlet fever. But they don't say that in the doctor's office so you don't freak out and think your kid is going to die. She got antibiotics, so she should be feeling better and not contagious within 24 hours. Yay for modern medicine!

Aunt Cari

Jacob's sister, Cari, graduated from BYU-Idaho a couple of weeks ago. (Congratulations!) We were supposed to be the parent stand-ins since her parents are in Alaska serving a mission, but instead of going up there, we flew her down here to soak up the sun after a long Rexburg winter. Rachel was SOOOOOOO excited to have Aunt Cari coming to visit. She asked every morning "Is Cari coming this day?" So we started a countdown on her calender and she would mark of each day every night and count how many more days until Cari came. Rachel used this dollar store wrapping paper and made a big sign for Cari. It says "HAPPY GRADUATION AUNT CARI!" though most of it is in pink, so you can't see it, except the parts that we also did glitter over.

When Cari got here we went straight to the Pima County Fair. Rachel had a ton of fun. We started on her trusty favorite from last year, the carousel:

Rachel only wanted to ride with Cari. :)

Though we managed to convince her that Dad could join in, too, as long as Cari was still on board.

For most of this roller coaster Rachel had a rather concerned look on her face. But I think she had a good time.
Then we headed over to the petting zoo. Here's the only proof I have that I was actually there:

Good picture, huh?

Rachel enjoyed herself with the animals. Here she's trying to feed the wallaby a little piece of hay.

Then it was home for me and Annie to get Annie to bed for the night, while the rest of the crew stuck around for a few more rides. Rachel's favorite this year was by far the spinning dragons, though she called them dinosaurs.

Unfortunately the camera didn't come out the rest of the weekend. Saturday Cari hung out with Rachel and Annie while Jacob went on a cycling activity with the teacher's quorum (he was recently called as an advisor), and after Jake got back I headed over to the institute to help decorate for prom. I made it home for dinner, then Cari headed off on a hot date her cousin set her up on with a former roomate of his, and I headed back to prom. Sunday I abandoned them again to go to our last ward conference of the year. I felt bad for abandoning everyone most of the weekend, but honestly, we all know Cari came to play with the kids, and the adults were just a side bonus, and Rachel probably didn't even notice that I was gone with all the showing off and playing she was doing.
Rachel was very sad to see Cari go, but we have high hopes that that date might go somewhere and if we're lucky we might have Cari living down here in Tucson (yes, I know we're getting a bit ahead of ourselves, but hey, we can hope, right?). Last night it was Rachel's turn to pray and after she said amen she realized she'd forgotten something. She said, "Oh, wait! And we're thankful that Cari can come back real soon." (Rachel mixes up the "please bless..." and the "we're thankful for..." often.)
Cari, we're glad you could come visit. Hope you come back to stay real soon. ;) Congrats, college grad!

Prom in Paris

This year our stake was in charge of the first ever LDS prom for Tucson, covering 8 stakes, and being in the stake young women I got to be involved in seeing all the planning and hard work that went into it all. It was on Saturday and turned out AWESOME. The theme was Prom in Paris and the people in charge of decorating it went way over the top. Here's the hallway on the way in, made to be like unto the Louvre:

And inside the cultural hall:

They had a nursery bring a bunch of live plants and trees, had park benches and fountains scattered around, and really transformed the cultural hall into Paris. There was even a 19 foot Eiffel tower:

For the food they made store fronts that looked really cool. And the food was to DIE for. YUM!

Our job was to take tickets and address any modesty issues (which is the absolute WORST part of this calling). We had little shrugs and jackets all ready in case of anyone who was not up to snuff, but luckily we didn't have to use any of them. :) (We did have to go ask a few girls in the dance "Did you come in with a jacket on? Could you put it back on?") The youth looked great and had a great time. We had a little over 375 kids show up, so it was really crowded, but most everyone had a pretty good time and we'll call that a success. Woohoo!

Teeeeeeth

I keep waiting for Jacob to get guilted in to posting again, but apparently waiting isn't enough. I've got to do some active guilt-ing to get him to do it. We've got a little bit of catch up to do (not too much, thankfully).

Anyway, last weekend Annie was not her usual happy self and Monday morning I woke up and found the culprit: her first tooth, almost breaking through. And on Tuesday the tooth was through the gums and she was back to her regular happy self.

Fuzzy tooth picture:

She's getting another one coming in right next to it, but I'm not sure that it's broken through yet, though it's real close. Luckily she's not really fussy with this one.

And one last quick picture of Annie's morning hair:

No complaints here

For all of Jake's attempts to exempt himself from future blog posting responsibilities, he failed miserably. I have to say, he did an excellent job, and maybe he should become the official Campbell family blogger. :) Especially since I am such a slacker in that department lately.

Most of the time pictures push me to post something on the blog. Since we hardly ever print out hard copies of our pictures, the blog book we do every year is the only printout of pictures we have, so if I want a hard copy of a picture, I have to post it on the blog, which will in time be printed in our blog book. Jake did a great job at getting caught up on the pictures. There is one last picture, then I'll feel completely caught up. Rachel, ready and excited for her dance class:
A couple of weeks ago Rachel started a dance class through the parks and rec department. She loves it. I took her to a dance recital a few weeks ago that her friend was in (we were planning on doing that dance class, but I forgot to sign up until it was too late) and since then she's been talking about going to her own dance class, so I signed her up. It's a ballet and creative dance class, and she has a ball. Her favorite thing so far is the rainbow scarf dance they do at the end of every class, which involves her holding a rainbow scarf and running around waving it.

Blog Catch Up

Colette told me that I needed to help out with keeping the blog up to date. Thus far, whenever I have posted, she has felt compelled (OCD style) to "revise" my posts. If you care to comment on how long you think it will take before she edits this one, feel free. As Bill Cosby would say "Fathers are the geniuses of the house because only a person as intelligent as we could fake such stupidity. Think about your father: He doesn't know where anything is. You ask him to do something, he messes it up and your mother sends you: 'Go down and see what your father's doing before he blows up the house.' He's a genius at work because he doesn't want to do it, and he knows someone will be coming soon to stop him."

Colette insists that I must post pictures when I am blogging. I was just going to make all y'all use yer imaginations. "If I must, I must." -- Mary Poppins

Annie has reached an important developmental milestone: she can suck on her toes!

Annie has also achieved another important milestone: mobility. This little girl can roll and roll and roll. She can also army scoot and rotate herself. In the picture below Annie started out at the head of the blanket, by the frogs.
We can't leave Annie unattended anymore. The little stinker usually does most of her rolling after you leave the room :) She'll do a token roll or two while you're around to entertain her, but once she decides she's on her own, she takes off rolling.

Colette left Annie on our bedroom floor to brush her teeth, do her make up and whatever. When she was done Annie had rolled as far South as she could, got stopped by the wall and fell asleep.
Rachel noticed Annie sleeping there and decided Annie needed a stuffed animal to help her sleep better (Rachel sleeps with 2-12 stuffed animals when she goes to bed at night). Rachel put the rabbit with the broken leg (known as "Femur") on top of Annie to help her sleep.

Rachel is very self motivated. Here she is making her own peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Mommy was not in the kitchen when this adventure in food preparation began, but she allowed it to continue when she discovered it.

Here are some cute pictures of Annie "peeking" out from behind different objects.



One night when Colette was putting Annie to bed, she started reading a story to her and Rachel decided to join in the fun. I discovered the three of them and I had to take a picture of the lovely ladies in my life. Looking at this picture makes me smile. Aren't they beautiful? I'm one lucky guy!

This weekend was General Conference. We spent some time with Colette's parents. Between sessions, Grandma showed Rachel a new toy for keeping cool. It's a sprinkler fountain of sorts that will spit out little balls and balance them on a steady stream of water. Rachel was enthralled.
Kudos to Colette for the cool action shot. Conference was a spiritual feast (as always). It always feels like a vacation weekend to me, because we spend so much time with family.

Tonight, I was singing a song from the movie Mary Poppins: "I Love to Laugh". Rachel asked what I was singing, so I looked for a clip of it on the web. Rachel and I watched it together.
Rachel is wearing a crocheted hat that actually belongs to Annie, but Annie was asleep at this point in the evening and so she wasn't around to take it back.