Last week review

Here's the picture of the dismantled bed that I found for $20 at a garage sale a couple weeks ago. It had writing on it with a sharpie, like tic-tac-toe and such, so I decided to paint it.

On the left here you can see the after. And on the right you can see how Rachel spent the last coat of spray paint, only with the back door closed. She LOVES to play in the back of our 4-runner (even when it's 100 outside she BEGS to play in the back--of course, I'm a mean mom and say no--or maybe that's being a good mom, keeping her from heat stroke).

Rachel's most recent favorite game is hide-and-seek. She will hide and wait for us to find her, then laugh really hard when we find her, and immediately say, "AGAIN!" Usually that means she goes back to the exact same hiding place while we watch, then waiting for us to come find her. She's got a few things to learn about the game, though.

She will do the seeking, too, sometimes. It's really cute: she covers her eyes, begins "one, two,.." uncovers her eyes and starts walking, "tee, fou, six, seven, nine, ten. Ready, not, come!" We usually have to whistle, or hide with half our body hanging out of the hiding place so she can find us.

Rachel is getting more into her stuffed animals. She'll read to them, or put them in time out, or put them down for a nap. The other night she made me read to her, and Curious George, and Pooh Bear for her bedtime story.

Gardening and yard sales

After some good cleaning on Saturday, and some more this morning in an effort to beat the visiting teacher deadline (to avoid the "Is there anything we can do for you?.... like maybe clean up this pig sty you're living in?" offer) my house finally feels nice and clean. It took over a week to recover from the Girls'-Camp- and week-before-girls'-camp-busy-with-other-stuff-so-I'm-not-going-to-clean mess, but it's done. And it feels good.
In other news, our garden is still giving us some tasty treats. I had eggplant parmesean last week for the first time ever (first time ever eating eggplant, period). It was pretty good, I thought. We have tons of tomatoes, even after the birds hunt down their own tasty treats.

And I finally decided it was time to pick this watermelon. I weighed it with the Brian Regan method and determined that it's about 11 1/2 pounds. So that watermelon is about how big my "little" brother was when he was born. Hmmm...

It's currently sitting on our counter waiting to become refreshments for FHE tonight.

Saturday on my way to pick up some milk I got sucked in by some yard sale signs and ended up buying this lovely train, which Rachel loves-especially the caboose which has a switch to turn on the ABC song so it plays again and again and again and again. And again.

I also got this Little People set for $4. That way beats $72. And all the pieces are even there, plus 2 or 3 extra animals from a different Little People set that got mixed in. Bonus!

So we've had a good time playing with our cheap finds. I also found a twin bed for $20, which I ended up buying. I'm a sucker for a good deal, I guess. I know we don't need it now, but one of these days Rachel will be out of her toddler bed, and then that $20 will be money well spent.

Girls camp

This last week I got to spend the week up at Girls Camp up Mt. Lemmon at Camp Zion. Except for the first 2 1/2 days, which I spent on Mt. Lemmon hiking many miles with the 4th year campers. I was one of the assistant hike leaders and we had a lot of fun. We ended up hiking somewhere between 15 and 20 miles, camping out two nights. The first day after hiking in and setting up our tents most of us headed off for a "short" hike to the Lemmon pools for a little swimming. It turned out to be a bit longer than we had planned, and by the end we were racing the setting sun, and a lot of the girls were so tired they had to stop often to rest.
The next morning they were all surprised by how much better they felt compared to the exhaustion from the night before. After breaking camp and eating breakfast we were off for day 2. The second day had a stretch of challenging uphill, but everyone made it. And at the end of the 2nd day we had a surprise waiting for us. Brother Clark had come to cook us a DELICIOUS dinner, and had set up a camping potty and a huge tarp and had 2 grills, 2 camp stoves, 3 dutch oven, and a huge chest freezer full of food and POPSICLES. The popsicles did a great job at helping everyone to relax after the challenging hike. When dinnertime came, we all ate too much good food, and even had apple turnovers with ice cream to top it all off. It started raining right when dinner was ready, so we huddled under the huge tarp Bro. Clark had set up, and by the time dessert was over, so was the rain.
The last day we got up, broke camp, ate a delicious breakfast burrito or two, then set off on the last leg of the hike. Everyone was energized knowing that there was only a couple of hours of hiking, then we'd be at camp and they'd get to take a shower. The girls all did really well with minimal complaints. It was a great experience that I'm glad I got to be a part of.


I also got to stay the rest of the week at camp and that was a lot of fun. I was a little worried ahead of time about leaving Rachel all week, since I'd never even left her overnight. But she did great and had lots of fun with Grandma and Grandpa Knight during the day (thanks!) and waking Daddy up bright and early each morning, and hanging out with him after work. And I had a lot of fun getting to know the girls and the leaders better. It was a good time all around. It was fun to see the testimonies grow, too, and see how the girls noticed each others' needs and struggles and gave hugs and love when needed.
Unfortunately I only got 3 or 4 pictures of actual girls camp because my camera was filled with the hike pictures (I took my smaller camera with less memory, so it doesn't fit 500+ pictures like our good camera does). So I'll have to get some camp pictures from other people.
So, overall it was a great week and I had a lot of fun. But I'm also glad to be home now.

Rachel pictures

Here are a few pics of Rachel from the last few weeks, and a little about what we've been up to:

Rachel is a true southwestern gal. We had nachos for dinner one night and all she really cared about was the salsa. She would lick it off the chips, then say "more sasa, pees" (more salsa, please), then lick it again, and again and again. She probably ate a quarter of a jar of medium salsa.

She's the same way with Salsa Verde Doritos--she licks the flavoring off (occasionally taking an actual bite), then when her tongue starts burning grabs a drink of milk, and is right back to the licking of chips. Wierdo.

Just a few minutes ago I went in to Rachel's room to see why everything was so quiet (usually a sign of trouble). This time I found Rachel laying on her pillow on the ground, telling me "nummy nap." I don't know where the nummy came from, but she always says it before nap. So I moved her mattress from her crib to her little toddler bed and she laid right down on it for her nap, an hour or two earlier than normal. I suppose I should be grateful to have a kid who LOVES taking naps. And I am. So far she'll take her naps in her bed, but demands her crib for nighttime sleeping.


A couple of weeks ago a friend invited me over because she got 100 hair clips, and was making some barrettes for her daughters, but didn't think she'd get through all 100, so she was sharing the wealth. Here are the barrettes I made for Rachel. So quick and easy.


Rachel has been getting really into pretending lately, and loves playing with her dolls and stuffed animals. Here she's reading a story to her rabbit. She does this with her dolls, too. It's great. It keeps her entertained for a good half hour, and it's pretty amazing sometimes to see how well she knows the stories as she repeats some of the words while she's "reading."

4th of July

Now that I'm back from Girls' Camp I am finally getting around to updating the blog. Here are some of our fun 4th of July pictures. Actually it was the 3rd of July-we went for a picnic with my parents up at Rose Canyon Lake and decided it would be less busy on Friday than Saturday, which was the actual 4th of July. We enjoyed ourselves and the cooler weather up on the mountain-about 20 degrees cooler.

On the actual 4th of July we mostly just hung out. I had a pack check with the girls going on the 4th year hike, but besides that we hung out at home, and went to the pool for a little fun, too. No fireworks this year--they didn't start until 9pm and we have 8 am church, so letting Rachel stay up that late would have made church into a torture session for all of us. Maybe next year....

June update

WARNING: long post

Since we got back from Utah for the wedding a few weeks ago we've just been chillin' out (inside in the AC, since outside the weather isn't real good for "chillin'").

We enjoy cool treats, like ice cream and popsicles often. This picture was taken when Rachel decided to name her body parts with her ice cream cone. She'd "point" to her nose and say "nose" then point to her cheek, then her ears, then her fingers, then her chin, ... you get the picture.

Two Saturday nights ago Rachel started barking while she was sleeping. Yes, our little seal had croup. The nurse told me to sleep in her room for a night or two because it can escalate quickly at night to respiratory distress. Needless to say, even with our air mattress, I didn't sleep well with all the coughing. But Rachel loved having the air mattress in her room. It was a wonderful trampoline. She's a lot better now, but still has a little lingering cough.

Saturday we decided to beat the heat and go up the mountain to the pine trees for a little hike. It was really nice--only like 85 degrees, and we enjoyed the hike, though Rachel's time limit was a little shorter than we would have liked.

She did love the backpack and was so excited to ride in it, but also loved getting down to run around a bit. She's a nature lover, I guess. She found this pinecone and picked it up and ran to me saying "Lookit, mamma. I found pinecone." (She's getting to be such a talker I am often amazed at the huge jumps in her language, like last week she started saying complete-ish sentances sometimes, like "I found pinecone" or "'ant two of 'em" (I want two of them) )

Since we've returned from Utah we've also been experimenting with potty training. Rachel has been really interested in the potty for a couple of months now and would sit on it and read, and even go potty sometimes, so we decided to see if she really was ready for it when we got back from Utah. The first week was a lot of peeing on the floor, and a little peeing in the potty, and I was thinking maybe we'd give up and try again later, but decided to give it one more week when I was really paying attention to her, instead of being distracted cleaning or working on something and not really noticing when she was needing to use the potty. The fact that she had croup and we couldn't really go anywhere because she was contagious also helped because we were forced to stay home.
She did MUCH better the second week, and last Thursday made it through the whole day with only one pee accident. Friday wasn't as good because she spent a lot of the day away from home, but this weekend she's done pretty good and she's peeing in the potty almost every time now. She won't pee in a regular toilet, even with an Elmo potty seat to go on it, but as long as it's less than 2 hours that we're away from home, she can usually hold it. YAY! We're working on number 2 still, but Saturday she actually went in the potty and got an ice cream cone for it (2 M&Ms for peeing, a whole ice cream cone for pooping--how's that for bribery?). Hopefully she keeps this up! Adios diapers!! :)

Rachel is becoming a computer nerd, just like her daddy. My visiting teacher told me about Starfall and how her daughter loved playing on that website, so I checked it out, and now any time anyone is on the computer she comes over and says "un ettuh" or "two ettuhs" (one letter/two letters). We'll open up the abc's on Starfall and she'll pick a letter or two (or more if Dad is the one she's suckered into it--he's a pushover) and watch the little cartoons/slides for the letters. She loves it.

Rachel has been getting her legs stuck in her crib rails lately, I think as she tries to climb them to get out. So I was thinking about finding a bed rail and taking off the side of the crib (it's a convertible crib) to make it a toddler bed. Unfortunately bed rails for convertible cribs are rare and more than $70 everywhere I've seen, so when my mom saw this bed at a garage sale for $25 she got it, figuring it's cheaper than the rail, and serves the same purpose. Rachel loves it, though I'm a little hesitant to let her sleep on it at night, fearing that she'll get up and play at 4 am just because she can. But right now she's in there napping on it--she went down right away when I put her in there for naptime, so maybe there's hope for nighttime. Besides sleeping, though, she LOVES it as a place to read books, bounce, and play.

Lastly, our garden continues to produce pretty well. Our peas died once it got too hot, but now we have yellow squash going strong, plenty of tomatoes, a few watermelon, cucumbers, and cantaloupe on their way, and too many green beans. Jake and I both decided we don't like green beans much, but Rachel will eat the little beans inside--I think she thinks they're peas--but not the whole string bean. I won't be planting those next year.

So there's our nice looooooong update. Maybe I should get on the computer more often and write about one or two things at a time, instead of one HUGE entry. We'll see how that goes....

Ylena Leanora Campbell

Saturday night my first niece ever was born! Meet Ylena Leanora Campbell.
Isn't she cute?!
And here are the proud parents, Ashley and Mark:
Grandma and Grandpa and Aunt Lisa saying hi to Lenalee (that's what they plan to call her, though I'm not sure how it should be spelled). Lenalee woke up to say hi for a minute before dozing off again.

Dad and Aunties fawning over the cute little girl.
Here's the happy mom. After more than a day of labor and a C-section with not enough pain meds, she's quite the trooper, and doing much better now. Good job, Ashley.
And here's the proud papa:And Aunt Colette with my new niece.
We're glad they timed it just right so we could be in Utah and see our new niece while we were up here for Andrew and Heidi's wedding. She's a cutie.