Guess Who's Here

Ryan Lee Campbell was born 11:26am. He's 19 in long and weighs in at 8 lbs 1 ounce. Both Colette and Ryan are doing great. Labor and delivery went very well. I'm sure Colette will add more details and pictures later, but I wanted to get a couple shots posted. He's a cute little baby.

Saturday with Grandma (and some other pictures)

Baby prep is in full swing here. We're ready and waiting for the little guy to make his appearance. The house is clean, the groceries are bought, the freezer is stocked with freezer meals. And the blog is almost up to date. And thus, here we are updating, so the baby can feel free to make his appearance.

Saturday the girls and I went with Grandma Knight to the book festival down at the U of A. There were tons of people there. I think they estimated 100,000 would come Saturday and Sunday. We didn't stay too long, but the girls had fun visiting a few booths, playing and getting some free stuff (books, balloons, popcorn and the like). They even got their faces painted. I was amazed that Annie sat still long enough to get a flower on her cheek.

Rachel wanted to be a cat.

 

 We headed back over to Grandma and Grandpa's house afterwards and I caught some fun pictures playing on the trampoline:

 

 

 

Love the hair!!

 

 

 

Sunday I made the mistake of holding the iPad while Annie was nearby. That automatically results in her climbing up to be able to see, while asking for "bir bir!" (birds, which all of her favorite apps have). 

Annie has also gotten really good at jumping on our backs to do a horsey ride anytime we're in anything close to an accesible position. I think this was after family prayer:

She could be a horseback rider, the way she holds herself on just by squeezing her legs. And of course, if Annie does it, Rachel has to do it.

And vice versa, if Rachel does something, Annie is such a copycat. We got these new beach towels today, so Rachel laid one out and laid down on it, and immediately Annie got to work laying the other one out right next to it, and once I had helped her lay it flat, she laid down just like Rachel.

And Rachel decided it was time to start posing for the camera:

 

Oh, I guess if I'm going to be up to date, I'd better throw in a quick recap of our excitement from last week. We were driving in to my parents house to drop off the girls before I went to my doctor's appointment, and were just past the first light, waiting in a line of traffic at the second light from our house, maybe a mile down the road. Traffic started moving, so I did, too, at which point Annie started crying for something, so I looked back to see what she wanted, during which time the traffic came to a stop again. I looked forward again to see the truck in front of me stopped, but without time to stop myself. And thus ended my 31 years accident-free. Luckily we weren't going fast at all, as we had just started to move, and the guy's truck looked undamaged to me, but our lovely minivan did what it's designed to do, and took the hit for us, absorbing all the shock of the impact, so it didn't feel like anything harder than a stomp on the brakes, if that. No airbags deployed or anything, thankfully, and we were all fine and dandy, no soreness or whiplash or anything. They did a non-stress test when I finally made it into the doctor's office a few hours later and the baby was doing fine, too. Thankfully Jake was still home, so he came and picked us up and took us back home until the tow truck could take care of our car, then we took him to work. The car will be fixed in a couple of weeks, and in the meantime, my dad is letting us use his car as much as we need to, since most days, unless he has a doctor's appointment, or something, he sticks around the house mostly. And if he needs the car, Jake works 5 minutes away, so he can just drive it over, get dropped off at work, and get picked up at the end of the day. Very convenient. And lots of blessings all over. If we had to have an accident, I would have planned it just this way. :) Well probably not, but I'm glad God's wisdom prevails, and things have worked out so easily for us.

Okay, I think that's about it. We're caught up. Bring on the baby!

Ballerina Rachel

Rachel's ballet class came to a close last week and they had a their performance on Friday night. Rachel did a great job and had lots of fun. Their first dance was A Whole New World from Aladdin.

 

 

Rachel is on the far left in the front row.

 

Annie loved the dances (at least for the first half-after intermission she was a little more distracted). Every time a new dance started, she got this look on her face and was entranced until the dance was over.

 

The second dance they did was a Hawaiian one that is on Lilo and Stitch.

 

 

Rachel was in the back row for this one, with a red flower in her hair.

I love how that girl in front of Rachel was totally distracted by her skirt for the last half of the dance. And I love Rachel's enthusiastic hula dancing. So awesome. :)

 In the fall we'll put Rachel in the 4-5 year-old class (she was in the 3-4 year-old one this time because the time worked best). It's amazing to see the difference between the 3-year-olds and the 4-year-olds. Attention spans really do make a difference. :)

Annie's animals

I've been meaning to get Annie on video with some of the words/animal sounds she says for a while, and on Saturday we finally got around to it. My favorite is the noise she makes for both frogs and pigs with her tongue.

More pictures

Baby prep is in full swing. We're pretty much ready. The freezer is stocked and we're ready for weeks of food without cooking more than sticking something in the crockpot or oven. And now the cameras are empty ready for more pictures (though we probably better make sure they're charged). So here are some of the pictures we downloaded:

After Cari left we left the blow-up mattress in the room for a couple of days as a fun trampoline/playground. The girls had fun jumping together, and climbing on each other.

Both Rachel and Annie LOVE the iPad. Rachel likes all sorts of apps, including Angry Birds, various coloring book-type apps, a couple book-reading apps, and other random games. Annie equates the iPad with birds (which is why she is signing bird in the picture below). Angry Birds, Early Bird, and her favorite, Who's Hiding, which is a great toddler game that you tap the screen to uncover various animals (including birds). We have had to discontinue family scripture reading on the iPad because Annie just spends the whole time in anger that we aren't letting her touch the iPad.

Annie being a cutie with her hat on:

Annie not only loves hats, she's also quite a fan of sunglasses. And goggles are apparently close enough to count.

We would always say, "Cool, dude!" whenever she would get sunglasses on. So now anytime anyone puts on sunglasses she says, "Dooo!" (as in dude) with her lips sticking out in a pouty face:

Here's a "dude" video:


Saturday Jake and the girls were having fun playing on the beanbag chair, having tickle fights, being eaten by the beanbag monster, and falling asleep. When they were pretending to go to sleep Jake and Rachel would fake snore, so Annie picked up on the snoring and would lay down and stick her lips out and go "shhhhooo" as if she were snoring, too. It was pretty funny.

Random Pictures

I thought I should add a few pictures to the blog, so here are some shots of the lovely ladies in my life.

One of the fringe benefits of pregnancy is that you have your own built-in snack tray.

Annie is a cutie, especially when she smiles.

Rachel knows what cameras are for.

Annie is eating (and wearing) some bread with Nutella on it - a favorite treat of both Annie and Rachel.

Aunt Cari's visit

Cari came to visit for a few days last week. It was fun having her here. Rachel and Annie had a blast, though Cari may have been grateful when it was time to head back home because the girls didn't let her have a moment's peace.

We started our adventures with a trip to the park to fly a kite. The kite flying was successful, but short-lived, as 4-year-olds don't have an incredibly long attention span. And the playground was beckoning, so we headed over and Rachel and Cari played on the slides and swings, while some vulture kids honed in on the kite and did their best to mangle fly it under my supervision.

Rachel found a stash of pine cones that she just had to bring back with us.

Rachel had a good time showing Cari Starfall and her mad reading skills. (And Annie loves anything that involves the computer or a screen, so she had to get in on the action, too.)

Before Cari came I asked Rachel what she wanted to do while Cari was here. Her response: "Go to the zoo! Since she showed us her zoo, we should show her ours!" So we did. One of the tigers was sleeping right in front of the glass window, and the other was pacing back and forth in front of the other window. Later Rachel told me, "The tiger was trying to figure out how he could eat all us kids!"

I wonder how many pictures I have of this elephant....

It was giraffe feeding time, so Grandma paid the $2 each for the girls to feed them a handful of carrots. Annie was a little intimidated. She wanted to feed them, but when the tongue started reaching out for the carrot she would freak out a little and drop the carrot, or retract her arm. But she thought they were really cool. We had a hard time pulling her away from the giraffes.

This is pretty representative of about half of the time Cari was here:

Rachel was on a coloring/painting kick, so they colored and painted, and colored and cut out, and colored some more. Cari was such a good sport doing whatever Rachel told her to.

We also got some games in, like Hi Ho Cherry-O and Uno Moo.

(You can also see my basketball belly and my new haircut that I got Saturday--it's a it-doesn't-matter-if-you-don't-have-time-to-shower-for-days kind of haircut, in preparation for the baby.)

We were going to go on a little hike, but a meltdown shut that idea down. Instead we had a picnic at the park and enjoyed the swings a bit more. Then for dinner we barbecued some chicken and hot dogs. And Rachel, Annie, and Cari made a lovely "cake" out of lawn trimmings, rocks, and whatever else they happened upon in the back yard.

We had a lot of fun and enjoyed having Cari visit, though we were pretty boring after the girls went to bed. Rachel was so distraught over the thought of Cari leaving that she had a hard time falling asleep, finally falling asleep in our bed, so as to not wake Annie while she cried herself to sleep. Then when Rachel woke up at 4am and Cari was already gone (she and Jake had to leave at 3am to get her to Mesa in time for her 6am flight) it took an hour of singing to her and telling her stories to distract her enough for her to fall asleep again (again in our bed).

I hope we didn't scare Cari away for too long what with the girls running her ragged, not leaving her alone for a minute while they were awake. :) We tried to provide some lovely weather at least, as a nice contrast to the Rexburg winter. Thanks for coming, Cari!

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