Campbell reunion-Tuesday

Tuesday the weather was beautiful, so the kids were happy to head to the park to play for a while.

 Baby cuteness:

Tuesday was also Beverly's birthday. Since Ryan and Bevy were born 8 days apart, we had a birthday party for both of them.

Cari and crew organized a few birthday games. The 2- and 3-year-olds took a little help to catch on, but the older kids did great.

There was a fire in the fire pit and we roasted hot dogs and marshmallows over the fire. We all enjoyed eating outside. Thankfully it was nice enough weather that even us Arizonans were okay outside without jackets.

Cupcakes!

and ice cream!

Messy face!

Of course everyone was eager to "help" the birthday kids unwrap their presents.

Ryan got a LeapReader, which was put to very good use on our drive home.

We brought all our LeapFrog books we had from years ago when Rachel got a TagReader, so there was plenty of material to read.

The theme for our reunion week was holidays. So we celebrated together the holidays we usually miss out on when we're apart from each other. We got a birthday party in on Tuesday, and as that wrapped up we celebrated Independence Day and lit some sparklers.

The Campbell brothers.

 Notice Ryan sneaking in down in the corner with the other Campbell men.

There was a lot of this going on all week long:

Campbell reunion-Monday

Most mornings at the Campbell house found Cari in the bathroom surrounded by a bunch of little girls ready to get their hair done.

 
The Texas Campbells arrived in the wee hours of Monday morning and when everyone woke up, cousin fun really started.

Ryan and Sophie sharing the bench while watching Shaun the Sheep with Annie:

Someone found this semi truck, then later found another one. Ryan spent all week playing with those two trucks and nothing else.

He would stuff his blankets in the trailer, and find other little things to put in there. Maybe we should have gotten him one for his birthday. But watch out if one of the other kids got close to one of the semis! There were many learning experiences about sharing and using your words instead of screaming. :)

We got in lots of aunt/uncle time, too.

Monday night we went to the Bean Museum on BYU campus. We missed out on getting pictures of some of the coolest stuff, but got a few good ones anyway.

Megan and Matthew meet again:

Megan's got a couple months on Matthew, but he's got a few pounds on her. He has awesome cheeks.

Megan liked the cave. So did Jacob and all the other kids.

After a fun adventure at the Bean Museum we headed to the Jolley's house in Orem. Even though Von and Patty are on a mission in New York, their kids still get together monthly to celebrate birthdays, so we were able to coordinate and have that happen while we were up there so I could see cousins I don't see often. The kids had fun in the back yard.

The adults hung out inside talking.

Rachel had fun with her 2nd cousin, Hannah, who just turned 7. They have matching smiles. :)

Family reunion-Getting there

The Campbell family was planning a family reunion around the 4th of July until we found out Ashley was having a baby around then. Fortunately Mark's spring break coincided with Rachel's spring break, so we all headed up to Utah for the second week of March. 

We left Friday early afternoon, planning on getting to Las Vegas to sleep at a hotel that night. Phoenix had other plans for us. We hit Phoenix at rush hour (apparently by 3pm in Phoenix rush hour is already in full swing). Traffic was at a standstill and it took about an hour to get through to the other side of Phoenix. Then we missed the turn off and when we got off the freeway to turn around everyone was hungry and had to use the bathroom, so we ate dinner and ended up leaving Phoenix at 5pm. Two hours in Phoenix was not conducive to us arriving in Las Vegas that night. 

We got to Wikieup around 7:30, which is normally the kids bedtime. Megan was SO tired of being in her carseat, and just tired in general. She (like all our other kids) will only stay asleep for a half hour in the car, so though she had already fallen asleep for what would have been the whole night at home, she was already awake again and cranky. We tried to find a hotel there in Wikieup, but there was only one hotel in the town which had 3 rooms, the only one left with just two twin beds. It was a no go. 

We continued on to Kingman and found a nice hotel we were all happy to find. So happy that all the kids that had complaining they were SOOO tired were all of a sudden wide awake and eager to explore the elevators and light switches. We eventually got everyone to sleep and had a much less eventful travel day the next day. I drove most of the time since Jacob wasn't feeling great and Megan did much better with me behind the wheel where she couldn't see me. 

An hour or two before Provo we stopped one last time for a pit stop and the rest stop we stopped at happened to have a petting zoo, which was closed. But we still went over to see the animals. There was a camel the kids liked to look at.

They also found some hay that the burros were happy to eat from their hands.

When we finally arrived in Provo the kids did what we always do when we get to Grandma and Grandpa Campbell's house: feed the ducks across the street.

 Ryan recruited a neighbor kid to come across the street next to the pond so he wouldn't be the only toddler near a large body of water without permission.

He would have stayed there all day if we let him.

Crawling around was a welcome change from the chair of cheer (that torturous car seat).

Cari had some dinner made for us, so we chowed down, and the girls began their week long effort to smother Cari in love.

Cousins meeting for the first time:

Matthew and Megan were intrigued by each other. They had several staring contests over the course of the week. Beverly was not too eager to see her cousins in person rather than on the computer, until they headed back to the toy basket, then the cousin bonding began.

Sunday morning we were all up bright and early to enjoy the change to daylight savings time. It actually worked out pretty well for us because our family is always the first to bed and the first to wake, so we kept our kids on Arizona time, and when they woke up at 6:30 Arizona time every morning, everyone else was starting to stir at 7:30 Utah time. And when they were going to bed at 7:30, it was actually 8:30 Utah time and closer to the other cousins' bedtimes.

After church, Grandpa got in some time with his youngest granddaughter.

And Cari had a picnic with the kids and one of the girls from her primary class.

We spent a nice afternoon playing together.

Dinner time:

Annie is always eager to help out in the kitchen, so she jumped at the chance to help Grandma Campbell make some cookies. They kept us well stocked with goodies all week long.

Rachel played some songs on the piano for Cari, and Cari played for Rachel.

Ryan and Bevy danced to the music.

Sunday night Rachel and Annie had a sleepover with Aunt Cari. Cari got suckered in to doing "the dribbles" for the girls for almost a half hour. Sometimes when the girls have a hard time falling asleep we'll lightly run our fingers across their forehead and face for a couple minutes to help them fall asleep. Rachel calls it the dribbles. And if she had her way we would do it for her every night for 20 minutes. Cari learned her lesson and in subsequent nights limited the dribbles to a couple of minutes before she retreated. :)

I'm not sure the sleepover was a great success as far as sleeping goes, but any extra time close to Cari is sure to make Rachel and Annie happy campers.

We read bedtime stories on the stairs one night and when Megan or Ryan called me away Rachel finished the story for Bevy and Annie.

It's always nice having a great reader around.

More fun to follow...

Field trips

The first week of March both Rachel and Annie had field trips. Rachel got to go to a play put at one of the high schools. After the play was over we were able to meet up with her class to eat lunch with her at the park. The kids loved the chance to join Rachel with a school activity.

The next day Annie's preschool class went to the fire department. We tagged along because I thought Ryan would get a kick out of seeing the fire trucks and such.

 I was wrong. The firefighters talked much too much for his liking and after a few minutes by the trucks he was complaining about being cold. We went to the car and got him a jacket. Within 3 more minutes he was asking if it was time to go home yet. Then he got down on the floor and started barking like a dog. Because he was being so disruptive I gave up and we left. We missed out on seeing the ambulance and actually getting to climb inside the fire truck, which is what Ryan really wanted to do.

But we got a picture in front of the fire truck before we left. Maybe when Ryan is in preschool he'll get to go again and actually enjoy himself. Annie had a fun time, at least.

Where did February go?

Here we are in March, I guess. We've been keeping busy doing who-knows-what and not blogging about it. Here's an attempt to remember what happened last month, for posterity.

February is La Fiesta de los Vaqueros here in Tucson. AKA the Rodeo. The kids even get two days off at the end of the month for Rodeo Break. Ryan got into the spirit early with my boots, which fit him more like fishing waders.

 A lot of this goes on around here:

 Tackling and wrestling and chasing and punching and kicking. Sometimes in fun, sometimes in anger. We're trying to let the kids work out their own problems a bit more because stepping in to break up their fights isn't solving anything. It works sometimes, and when it doesn't I've given up on time outs most of the time for fights between siblings (it's mostly reserved for disrespect aimed at Mom or Dad now). The new winner that seems to work a lot better is "Take a break! Everyone in their own rooms in 10-9-8..." They drop whatever they're fighting over and run to their own rooms and lock everyone else out while they play with their own toys. Of course it wouldn't work for Rachel and Annie, since they share a room, but since the two that fight all the time are Ryan and Annie, it works perfectly.

And in good news in that arena, we have actually had a break through this month with Ryan and Annie. There have been several days where they have played together in the same room with the same toys for over an hour without any yelling or fighting. That has not happened since before Ryan started crawling, I think. That must be one of the best things that has come out of February. The month of love, I guess. :)

Speaking of which...

 We celebrated Valentine's Day with a few little surprises for the kids, and a date night for Jacob and me. We planned to go to Outback Steakhouse for dinner, but didn't actually plan it out by calling or getting there early, and apparently on Valentine's Day a lot of people go out to dinner. Weird. Since we weren't willing to wait forever for dinner we ended up at 5 Guys for some tasty burgers instead. I got a milkshake, so it was a pretty decent Valentine's date anyway.

 Rachel keeps on excelling at school. We had parent/teacher conferences and the feedback from her teacher was very positive. She is already far exceeding expectations for the end of the year in all areas. She is reading at a 5th grade reading level (she's in 1st grade). She's a math whiz and the teacher said she is also patient in helping kids who don't get it, so she has started asking Rachel to help other kids sometimes when they're struggling. The only complaint is that Rachel has a hard time not being perfect. She sometimes will avoid harder books because when she takes the AR (accelerated reader) test on it to test comprehension she might miss one or two questions. And when they started new DMS (daily math skills--timed tests, like addition/subraction/etc.) sets she hates how her scores drop for the first few days.

 I say give her the hard stuff. It's good for her to miss problems and get used to not being perfect. :) In the meantime we are happy to have such a bright girl on our hands.

 Her big homework project last month was to make a timeline.

 Typically Rachel tries to get all her homework done on the first day of the week so she can have more free time after school the other days. So she was a little frustrated to realize that this project wasn't something she could whip out in 15 minutes. But after making a plan of what steps she needed to do she did a great job picking out events and pictures that were important from her life. And it was good for her to have something a little more challenging than her regular homework that she does whip through in 15 minutes for the whole week.

February was an incredibly warm month. With temperatures in the end of January hovering around 70-80 degrees it was hard to imagine that it would get cold again before spring officially arrived. And it hasn't gotten cold again. Unless you count a couple of days last week when the highs were barely in the 60s (we do count that as cold, actually). With no freezing temps in sight we spent a lot of time out in the back yard working in the garden. Most everything is planted now and some plants are beginning to peek out. The kids wavered between helping me plant seeds and this:

 They do love the play set. Even Megan loves her swing and will be pretty content sitting there watching the kids run around as long as they come give her a push or two when she yells out for attention (they happily comply).

For Rodeo break we headed to Reid Park to play on the big playground they have there. McKenzie and Peyton and Grandma met us there.

 I missed out on getting any pictures of the actual playground, but for the first 10-15 minutes that we were there Annie would randomly call out every few minutes, "Mom! This is AWESOME!" It was. We had a picnic near the cement turtles, then went off to find some live turtles.

 Some would come to the edge of the pond and sun on the rocks, while we could see many more out swimming in the water. There were ducks, too, and all the kids were very happy to watch the wildlife.

 (Grandma was there, too--I would not be brave enough to attempt that outing with 6 kids alone.)

After the park we headed to Little Anthony's for ice cream.

 After waiting and waiting and waiting we finally got our ice cream just before we were ready to give up and leave. We had ordered the Wipe Out, which is 14 scoops of ice cream on a brownie, with chocolate sauce, pineapple topping, whipped topping, Twinkies, and Nilla Wafers. It was delicious. With 4 kids (Ryan got his own gluten-free sundae) and 3 adults (Grandpa joined us) eating we almost were able to finish it off. But not quite.

 It was a fun way to wrap up the month.

As for Megan this month, she has become a crawling champ and an eating champ. She eats a lot of table foods now if they're soft enough to gum (cooked potatoes, peas, strawberries, bread, etc.) and prefers food that she can pick up to baby food we try to feed her on a spoon. And today she finally drank formula out of a bottle for a whole feeding! Woohoo! I can now run an errand without timing it perfectly around her feeding schedule. Or even, wonder of wonders, go to the temple in Mesa (a 6-7 hour round trip) and leave her in the care of my parents. A nursing baby who will take a bottle every once in a while is great!

She is also beginning to try to climb/pull up a bit. She doesn't really try to stand up, but likes to get to kneeling position. She'll be 8 months old in 3 days, and soon I'm sure she'll be pulling up to standing. Another month and a half and she'll probably be walking. Crazy baby.