Back home

After our harrowing trip home we had some appointments the next day. Megan has been looking forward to an eye appointment for months. She always claims she can't see great. So we got her, Rachel and Ryan in to the eye doctor. Ryan is cleared and no longer needs glasses. Rachel is happy to have a new prescription so she can get new glasses. And Megan does need glasses, and can't wait to get them.

Because Arizona is one of the big Coronavirus hot spots in the world right now, the governor "paused the reopening" which included limiting groups at a pool to a max of 10 people, so swim team could no longer go on as normal. They selected 10 of the swim team kids to keep going on swim team (including Rachel and Annie) and the rest they made other accomodations for. Ryan, Eloise and Jared are in an hour long "strokes development class" which is pretty much the same as swim team, only at Sunshine Swim School instead of the full length pool they had been practicing at for swim team. So they go M/W/F now, and Rachel and Annie go T/Th/S (along with Megan having her swim lesson on Tuesdays and Saturdays). That first day back after our trip they had the trophies ready for the kids who had swum the fastest in their age group. Rachel earned 4 trophies (out of 6 races), and Ryan earned 2. Annie swam really great, but she's in the 9-11 age group, so while she won several of her races, there were a lot of older kids that got a little bit faster times. But I'm very proud of them all.

I'm not sure they'll be having more swim meets for the next little while which is a little sad because it was fun to watch them race. We've got a family of great swimmers.

Megan (and all the kids) really love playing with the blocks Jacob got for Father's Day. :)

Our neighbor, Joanne, read about our harrowing trip home on Facebook and came over on Wednesday to bring us a couple half gallons of ice cream and chocolate syrup and sprinkles. She said it sounded like we all deserved some ice cream after that trip.

We really have the best neighbors. Manny (next door) lets us swim in his pool anytime and bring the cousins along, too. Shannon remembers all the kids birthdays and special events and loves the kids so much. And Joanne and Eileen (besides the ice cream) recently gifted the kids some yo-yos, bubbles and a ball.

I've been trying to take the kids on a mother-child date every Friday on a rotating basis. This Friday was Annie's turn. She wanted to go out for lunch. So we grabbed some Carl's Jr. and sat in the car to eat together.

Family Reunion-Saturday and Sunday (and Monday)

With the tent up all day Saturday there were many games and pretend play that took place in the tent throughout the day. 

The kids went on a walk to the river path and to feed the horses before lunch. When they got back we send them downstairs for another movie so we would have time to get t-shirts and minute to win it games ready. When the movie was over we split the kids into two groups. One group worked on decorating their "Campbell Kid" shirt, and the other group was with Ashley doing minute to win it games which were a lot of fun.

We had a delicious meal of Hawaiian Haystacks, then the older kids gathered around Cari and the family history book she had made to cram real quick and learn as much as they could about their great-great-grandparents.

When Sharon had things set up inside we headed inside for a Family History Kahoot game she had prepared. We snapped a picture real quick of the kids in their finished t-shirts.

After learning a lot and having some fun with the Kahoot, the kids were excited to roast some marshmallows and eat s'mores to their hearts' content.

Friday night the kids were not allowed in the tent until they had been "tent certified" learning the correct way to zip and un-zip the doors so they wouldn't break them. Saturday night the tent certification was that they didn't smell like smoke, so we ran everyone through the shower to get ready for Sunday, and they were ready to go, sleeping like babies all night, even despite some rain that fell overnight.

Brayden was a popular little guy with lots of people eager to hold the cutie. Megan and Annie were both happy to get a chance to hold him.

Sunday we were able to get a picture of the whole Campbell clan all decked out looking good for church. We decided after church would be a disaster because they would be super ready to wiggle, so we got it all arranged and Skittles out and ready for bribes for smiles right before we had our home church. It just took a couple of tries and we got some pretty decent pictures.

After everyone got paid with their Skittles we headed inside for family church. It was really special to be able to have sacrament meeting with the whole family together.

All three of us happened to wear blue shirts, matchy-matchy. :)

All the Campbell guys:

After church many of the women got to work getting food ready so we could eat before Lisa and Breck had to head home, but we were able to snag a picture of all the adult Campbell ladies anyway.

And the original 7. (With Honest Abe looking over their shoulders.)

Two nights sleeping in a tent wore the kids out pretty good. Ryan hasn't napped in over 5 years, but he and Miri apparently sat down together on the chair downstairs listening to Sophie's music box and that was enough to put them both to sleep for 15 minutes or so.

More of the baby (you can tell he was quite popular):

Rachel was put in charge of the little ones in the back yard for dinner so we could have a peaceful and nice Sunday dinner inside with just the adults. We have reached parent nirvana with our youngest able to do most things on her own and our oldest able to babysit so we can run errands child-free, let bedtime happen mostly on their own (in theory), and at family reunions have all the adults gather in once place while the oldest grandkids keep an eye on the youngest ones. It's a happy place to be.

For much of the free play time there was a gaggle of little girls running around after Ryan. He's such a fun guy, people just want to hang out with him. Miri especially was smitten with him and for the second half of the week could almost always be found where ever Ryan was.

Jesse (I think) put together a slide show of pictures from the growing up years of the original 7. It was a lot of fun seeing "the beginnings." The kids liked to make comments about how dorky they looked, but it'll come back to bite them someday with some of the pictures we have of them and will make sure to show to their kids one day. :)

Mark spearheaded a family history unscramble game where the kids had the names of everyone from two generations before Grandma and Grandpa Campbell (and Knight), and two generations after (meaning the kids), and they had to figure out where each one went.

They did a pretty good job at figuring things out without having to refer to a family tree at all.

After the family history unscramble we pulled out the "Say it, Don't Spray It" mouthpieces that we got at the dollar store and the kids had fun with that for a good long while.

Monday morning Cari was able to come over to see us off as we headed home. The kids were bummed to leave their cousins and aunts and uncles and grandparents and continue to talk about how much fun they had up in Utah and how they wish we could go back soon. Megan said she is going to find Cari a man in Tucson she can marry so she can move down here. I hope she does.

We left Provo at 7am Tucson time, which should have put us back in Tucson around 7 or 8pm. We got home at midnight. It was kind of a nightmare of a trip home. We were already a little delayed because of road construction at a couple of places in Utah causing us to wait for, then follow pilot cars, but then we had to also stop to zip tie our undercarriage to the bumper, and by the time we got to Flagstaff we were on track to get home around 9pm. Still manageable. Around Camp Verde (I-17 between Flagstaff and Phoenix) there was a sign announcing that I-17 was closed ahead because of a brush fire.

 We pulled off, followed Google maps to a road that had a sheriff's deputy turning us around because the road Google was telling everyone to go on was a dirt road none of our cars would make it on. Which added an hour to our detour. We ended up having to go through Prescott (very pretty area) down towards Wickenburg, which is a very winding road. Rachel was already feeling a little car sick, but even with Dramamine the road made her feel super nauseous so much so that we had to pull over to try to help her feel better. By the time we hit Wickenburg around 9pm we were so ready to be home, but it was still 3 hours away. The kids (who have never been good at sleeping in the car) were all able to fall asleep, possibly because of the dose of Dramamine that they all had taken, and we finally pulled into our driveway at 12:05am. Never have we been so grateful to be home. It was a great week in Utah, but after that drive we don't want to drive anywhere more than an hour away for the foreseeable future.

Family Reunion-Thursday and Friday

Rachel loved Ylena's hoverboard and got pretty good at riding it pretty fast. She could even read and juggle while on the hoverboard. She was glad Lena was willing to share.

Thursday morning we went to Lion's Park. The kids had to cross a little creek to get to the playground and pavilion, so it took quite a while for them to make it anywhere near the playground or pavilion. They spent most of the time at the park wading in the creek and playing in the water.

Megan wasn't a big fan of the creek, so she and Joy did play on the playground together and had a lot of fun.

We did manage to pull the kids away from the water long enough to have some lunch and play some kickball.

After a while we headed back to Grandma's house to wait for Lisa and Breck and the new baby to arrive. Carrie took the kids out front to play one of Jacob's favorite games: gurgle name that tune.

There was some sputtering and choking on water, and a lot of laughing as the kids guessed what song their cousins were gurgling.
A little while later they went out back to play in the pool and with water balloons. There was some water balloon volleyball with towels until the game degenerated into chaos and a general water balloon fight. The kids had fun playing badminton, as well when the water got old.

When Lisa and Breck arrived everyone was excited to meet the new baby.

Heidi started reading to a couple of her kids and slowly acquired one kid after another wanting to listen to the story.

When asked after the reunion what their favorite parts of the reunion was, one of the top answers was playing with the babies. Between Brayden (3-4 weeks), David (11 months), and Anya (18 months), there were plenty of babies for the kids to play with and try to make smile at them. Rachel was particularly proud of teaching Anya to high five, fist bump and "clink" her cup.

Thursday night Cari prepared a getting to know each other quiz. There were starbursts for correct answers and the kids were all very excited when they knew which cousin or aunt or uncle she was talking about.

Cari had offered to chaperone any kids wanting to sleep in the tent that we brought during the reunion. Thursday night rain was threatening, as well as lightning and thunder so we opted to wait another day to put up the tent, much to the disappointment of some of the kids. They did manage to get in some games outside before the heavens let loose. (And then it only rained a little bit, but enough that we were glad to have waited.)

Friday morning we headed up Provo Canyon to Nunn's Park. The dads played lava monster with the kids on the playground equipment there to the tune of many excited screams.

Everyone enjoyed the delicious spread we had brought for brunch.

Some lovely ladies:

At some point the party migrated over to another field farther away from the river where it was safer to play kickball. Megan got upset after a short while, but she was happy to take on the role of photographer to make her feel better. We got lots of pictures of Megan, and multiple shots of each of her subjects, especially the babies.

She finally gave up the phone for me to take a picture of her climbing on the tree.

After a while we headed home where the kids played games and watched a movie for a little low key time.

It was pizza night, much to the delight of everyone.

Aunt Sybil came to spend the evening with us, too.

It also happened to be the night of the talent show. Everyone signed up (or was signed up) for some sort of talent they could share. We started inside for a couple of numbers on the piano, then moved outside for the remainder of the program. Breck Sparrow (Jack Sparrow minus the pirate garb) was the MC for the evening and kept us laughing as the evening moved along.

Megan and Miri combined forces to do an "M&M gymnastics showcase."

Annie did some magic tricks,

the girls and Sophie and Lena did the invisible bench skit,

 Rachel juggled and did her eyeball tricks,

  and Ryan did a karate demonstration.

After the talent show was over a dance party broke out. Some of those kids have some pretty good moves.

The happy couple watching the dance party:

The tent was finally erected on Friday, much to the excitement of the children. Out of 9 kids that wanted to sleep out there 2 changed their minds before we even laid out sleeping bags, then 3 more came inside at some point during the night, leaving just Cari, Miri, Megan, Ryan and Annie out there for the night.

Rachel didn't even try to sleep outside. She always prefers her own bed to sleep in, and the bed she slept in during the week, sharing a room with Lena was comfy enough that the fun in the tent didn't tempt her at all. Saturday night I think 6 kids attempted to sleep out there and I think 5 or maybe even all 6 of them made it through the night that time. The tent was definitely a highlight for many of the kids and mentioned over and over when asked what their favorite parts of the week were.