Campbell Reunion-Friday

Friday's theme was Friday Fun Day. Aunt Cari and Aunt Sharon were going to start out the day by taking the older girls bowling. Then I took all the car seats with me to the temple that morning, so they had to wait until I got back. Oops. At least they had plenty of time to get all cute-ified.

The girls had a lot of fun bowling. Sophie even managed to break 100!

Rachel bowled a 97. Not bad for her first time ever.

After they got back and naps were done we headed to Pioneer Park for more park fun.

After the park we headed back home for ice cream cones. We all scream for ice cream.

We finished up Friday fun day with a movie night watching Big Hero 6. It held some of the kids' attention longer than others. Rachel and Annie were so engrossed in the movie that they barely registered when Lena came down so excited to tell them "Aunt Lisa is here!!"

We were glad Lisa managed to come down on Friday instead of Saturday morning so we could have longer than 2 hours with her. Once the kids were asleep we had some fun watching "Bad Lip Reading" videos on the smallest screen in the house. I thought it was funny that there were 7/8 people gathered around the tiny phone screen when a nice big computer monitor was 5 feet away.

We snapped a few photos of the original Campbell kids all grown up.

And of the whole family.

We saved the rest of the family pictures for Saturday morning.

Campbell Reunion-Thursday

Ryan learning to use his LeapReader while the girls look on:

 Many mornings Cari would get a fire going for us to enjoy. There are some benefits to it being freezing every morning (though thankfully the weather was pretty warm for us by mid-day most days).

Thursday morning Jake stayed with Megan while she napped, and I took the other 3 kids to see Ellie, one of my roommates from college who lives in Orem. Of course I forgot to take a picture with her. But it was fun to visit for a while. One of these days we'll have to plan an apartment reunion for the roomies of Crown 9er.

On our way back we took a small detour to visit the temple. Since we live 2 hours away from the temple we don't get to it as much as I would like, and the kids hardly ever get to see a temple though twice in the last year they got lucky and got to go through two temple open houses, first in Gilbert, then in Phoenix.

While we were in Provo I took advantage of having a temple so close and Jake and I went together once, I took the kids to the temple grounds, and I went by myself once.

The kids sure liked it.

Rachel kept telling me to take more pictures. "Take a picture with the temple water!"

"Take a picture with the temple flowers!"

Meanwhile, back at the house Miri and Megan were getting to be buddies.

Thursday we celebrated Christmas. Annie helped make cookies, and everyone helped cut out some, then decorated them with frosting and LOTS of sprinkles.

Grandma was so good all week at keeping us stocked yummy treats. She made sure to make plenty of gluten-free cookies, too, so Ryan wasn't left out. She's probably made more gluten-free cookies than I ever have even though I'm around the Celiac kids all the time and she only gets a few weeks out of the year. I've never been a big cookie maker, though.

A rare quiet moment brought to us by Cari and lovely books:

Outside Sophie, Lena, and Annie used a board and a big rock to have some teeter-totter fun.

For Christmas the ducks got more popcorn.

Megan was looking super cute.

Aunt Ashley was the family art director. She organized the kids to make stepping stones with plaster on Wednesday, and on Thursday she pulled out bandanas and stuff to tie-dye them.

They were super cool mementos of our reunion.

Ryan was not so interested in the tie-dye. He was happy to run back and forth on the sidewalk in front of the house with Cari chasing him on the scooter, and Sophie running after them.

After dinner we all got together for the Christmas party. We sang Christmas songs and the kids each got to open a present, then the adults had a white elephant gift exchange. I got patterned duct tape which has since been used to make Rachel her very own wallet.

Miri loves shoes. If Annie was looking for her shoes usually the first place to look would be on Miriam's feet. Such a cutie.

Campbell Reunion-Wednesday

With the birthday festivities complete, Lena moved the party to the room they were sleeping in. :)

Miriam was walking around holding a fistful of something. When Jesse investigated this is what he found:

 Brothers with their babies:

 Annie refused to cooperate in getting a picture with Jesse. The best one was her just closing her eyes.

 Wednesday we celebrated Halloween. We went to the Peppermint Place, which used to give factory tours of how they made all that candy, but they had relocated and no longer gave tours. We could see the workers through the windows, though. And there was supposed to be a video we could watch showing how the candy is made, but the TV was broken. So basically we just looked at all the candy and let the kids pick out a few pieces. It was really tasty.

 The kids also carved a pumpkin out back, but I didn't see any pictures of that adventure.

Meanwhile, Megan began antagonizing Ryan without even meaning to (I'm sure that'll change sometime in the next year). She found his semi trucks and wanted to play with them, too.

 Wednesday afternoon we headed over to the church building to play around for a while. The waffle blocks made for some fun ride on toys powered by Jake and Uncle Mark.

 Miriam especially loved it and was so cute kicking her feet whenever Mark was pushing her around.

 Jacob decided a blanket would be a lot less work to pull than pushing the waffle blocks. The kids had fun riding around on that, too.

 Then the adults got tired. Or lazy. ;)

 And made the kids do all the work.

 I don't know if Ryan ever managed to budge Miri, but he sure tried hard.

Grandpa Campbell has some wood carving skills.

 The kids especially liked when he was out in the garage working using tools that were loud. Nothing draws kids faster than noise.

When the kids were asleep that night we all took advantage of the kid free zone to play some pick up sticks and Take Two.