Introducing...

The newest member of the Class of 2023.

Make you feel old? Join the club. We've dreaded this day for a little over five years now. But it came anyhoo. And we tried to make the most of it. We started the day off with Darth Vader pancakes.

Who couldn't do great at school with that kind of sendoff? Grandpa and Grandma Campbell met us up at school to escort Noah to his new class. As Grandma pointed out, this was the second little boy she sent off to school there. (Noah is attending the same school his daddy went to - well the school in the same location anyway. They tore daddy's building down and built a new one in its place a few years ago.) Noah doesn't fully appreciate that little tidbit but Grandma and Mommy think it is pretty special. After dropping off his backpack and lunch bag, he made his way to his seat. His teacher directed them to start coloring the picture at their seat while they waited for the rest of the students to arrive. He was trying his best to follow instructions but his silly parents kept interrupting him to take more pictures. Mommy shed a few tears but Mrs. Nochlin assured us that he would be just fine. (As if I really had any doubt...) She also said we should consider it our "time off". Daddy planned his lunch break so he could join us to pick Noah up at the end of the day. He requested slurpies from Sonic and we couldn't deny him on his first day of school. He told us "It was just like Preschool. Same old stuff." He went to art class and made a firework. He went to music class and played the drum. He also went to gym but everybody had to go to the bathroom and "we wasted a lot of our playing time." He ate lunch with his friend Alex. They played together at recess also. They chased dragonflies. He watched Clifford during rest time while he sat on his purple towel. When we got home, the kids all went out to play on the Slip 'n Slide. And after dinner, we celebrated Noah's first day with a special treat.So, with dreams of being a paleontologist AND an astronaut, he is off. He will accomplish great things, we have no doubt. And we are so thankful to have this first day behind us. It should get easier from here, right? Happy schooling, Noah!

Classroom is Supplied

Before heading to Michigan, we headed to Target with Noah's classroom supply list in hand. (Thank you to all my fellow shoppers who allowed me to capture this Kodak moment without too many "crazy first time school mom" glances as I followed him around with camera glued to my face. I don't think I will do that every year, but who can really say for sure.) Why the sad face, Mr. Gloomypants?

I'm sorry you don't want to go to school, but let's look beyond that for a minute, shall we? Don't you understand you are going to get brand new, never-been-touched, pointy, sweet smelling crayons? That is one of your mother's favorite things!!!

That's better. Thank you. Now, MARCH!

Does it say 4oz? That's the one! Two, please.

A pink pencil box, thank you very much.

(Wanted purple but Target was no help with that one.) Must. have. red. folder. off. top. shelf.

(See? Now I have a reason to take my camera every year. To document when he can actually reach the top shelf. Or, when he decides to just take the yellow because it is easier to reach. Easy? This kid? Not a chance...) Markers, markers, and more markers.

Every thing (and I do mean everything - including each individual pencil and crayon - teacher's rules, not mine, people...) labeled and ready to load into his back pack for Back-to-School night.

Is now a good time to decide I can't send my little boy off to kindergarten???

In Michigan

Yesterday afternoon we left Kansas for our two week vacation in Michigan. 8 hours in the car on Sunday and another 8 today and we are here! (Not that much driving, really, but that includes all our potty and snack breaks.) I do believe I have the greatest traveling children in the entire world. Not even Benjamin complained about all the sitting this time around. (Could it be that his tushy is getting some more padding? Nope, that's not it. Have you seen his inability to keep up his 18MO swimming trunks in the pool?) Because Grandpa, Grandma, and Uncle Scott were visiting, we were in two cars. I thought it would be nice if I sent all the kids home with them and I flew out later. The grandparents didn't go for that. My next idea was for the grandkids to bond with the grandparents on the drive and I could ride with Uncle Scott. I didn't get any votes for that one either. (I'm dealing with a tough crew here, can you tell?) So, we set off with all three children in the car with Grandma and me. Benj napped for about an hour - the other two were chatty, giggleboxes the entire way. Only yet we still only got 7 hours of sleep in our hot

el room - thank you, Noah. So we had no problem getting around and back on the road. About an hour and a half away from Grandpa and Grandma's Noah said, "This sure is a fun trip!" And the funniest part was, I think he actually meant it. He loves just riding in the car and visiting - especially when we are headed to Michigan. We crossed the state line about 30 minutes later. Abby and Benjamin just couldn't hold on any longer and fell asleep just about 45 minutes from our destination. Their naps only lasted about 20 minutes though and neither was particularly happy when they woke up. Until, we reached our final destination, that is. The boys have been talking about "golfing at Grandma's" for a couple of months now so there was no question as to what they were going to do as soon as they got out of the car.

Abby, however, couldn't wait to take baby for a walk. (Her favorite birthday present.) And when mom was done taking pictures, she even gave the poor kid a new diap.

So glad to finally be here! And glad that my kids are willing to endure yet another roadtrip to come with me.

She's TWO!

Abby had big birthday #2 over the weekend. It's kind of sad to see our baby reach the "not-a-baby-anymore" age. Her speech is quickly picking up and her personality is shining through more each day. She is such a sweet girl and she loves to laugh. She is very content to play by herself chattering away the whole time. But she is happy to play with us as well. She loves music and dancing. She loves to read her books. She loves to eat and is pretty good about eating what we give her - let's hope that stays. She is just a joy and we are so thankful that she is part of family.

Here is a look at her party. We fit it in during the week because daddy had his 20th high school class reunion over the weekend. All our loved ones were able to join us and she had a great time. Although her picture-taking skills are deteriorating so I didn't necessarily get the perfect shots that I was hoping for - you can get the jist of it. Here is her pretty girl outfit that she wore to greet her guests. She would sit still while grandma and I tried to photograph her and I got her back every time.

But I just couldn't bring myself to let her eat RED cake in her pretty white clothes, so after a quick wardrobe change, we moved on to dinner and cake. Abby' two favorite things - birthday or not - balloons and candles. Easy enough to provide at a birthday party, right? We loaded the cake with candles and I even bought the kind that were supposed to relight so she could blow to her little heart's content but they didn't work. Bummer. And then I forgot to get a good picture of her with her balloons. (I have since decided that I will have to resort to making a list of pictures I want before an event because I always seem to forget something.) She was afraid of them at first because of the giant Minnie head but she eventually warmed up to them and carted them around the house. She loved eating her cake and ice cream then we moved on to the presents. Our boys have never been terribly excited about their gifts. They like tearing paper, don't get me wrong, but it doesn't go much further than that. Abby was such a different story, though. She squealed with delight for each gift and paraded it around the party showing it off to all her guests - especially her friend Mike.

All in all it was a perfect evening. And the prefect way to celebrate our little girl. Happy birthday, Abigail! We love you! Oh, and if you want to stay this age forever, your mom says that is perfectly alright with her...

John Hancock Campbell

Noah's penmanship has really taken off this summer. It could be due in part to the fact that we have started telling him that if he isn't going to eat dinner he has to work on his writing. He is more than happy to turn his fork in for a pen. But, that said. He is making GREAT strides. AND, he is even asking to work on writing (doing his homework, as he calls it) at random times during the day. Something he has never, ever done before. I think it is because he is actually improving and he can see that too so he wants to continue working on it. Here are some of the better examples:He usually uses a book where he traces the letters and hates when I make him actually write the letters himself. As you can see, these were all his own letters. This was especially exciting because he spelled all these names (save the cats at the end) all by himself.
Here is a space rocket - complete with 'USA' on the side. (I realize this is drawing, not necessarily writing BUT he is not one to just grab paper and sketch something, so this was a first too.)This one was fun because we didn't give him any direction. He came up with what he was writing all by himself. And, again, no tracing. He wrote all these letters without any help (well, except for the help he gave himself which you will see in the video below). I actually cried when he showed me what he had done.

So, just how many times through "The A-B-C's" does it take to write the alphabet? Well, 26 letters - twice is about 52. Plus the couple of times that he had to repeat himself because he forgot what he was supposed to write before he actually did it. This is what I listened to while making dinner.

So cute.

Move Over, Farrah!

Here is Abby doing her best "Charlie's Angels" impersonation.

The X-rated version, of course. Her daddy did make her promise that this would be her ONLY topless picture ever posted on the world wide web. Now, looking at these pictures again, I feel like maybe they didn't capture the 70's fly-away feathering that she had going on. I think it was because she was hiding under her "nite-nite" while we waited for daddy to return with the camera. So, let's just pretend she is Charlie's Angel on the [topless] beach on a really windy day.

Daddy's Little Helpers

We got a major pile of mulch delivered. We thought it was going to take us a while to get it all moved but we didn't take in to consideration all the help we would have. So, daddy suggested getting out the "Dumpster" - the construction hats and safety goggles were their own idea.

While we only have pictures of Noah driving, but daddy claims they did indeed switch jobs at some point. Perhaps Benjamin liked loading better because when he was waiting for the "Dumpster" to return, he could:
Now, if only the "Dumpster" were a little bigger, we would be done in no time!

VBS night

This post is for Grandma Bonnie. I have a lot of posts in between the last one published and this one so I will take this one off in a few days - until I get caught up. But I did want Grandma to be able to see it.

Tonight was our end of VBS celebration. The children all got to sing some songs and show off their classrooms for the week. ALL THREE of our children got to participate in the singing. (I thought Abby would just be in the nursery but was so excited to learn she would be singing too!) I didn't expect much from Abby but we thought it would be fun to see her up there with the 'big kids'. Now we had always assumed that Benjamin would be our little 'stage ham'. Turns out that was not the case. We were, however, pleasantly surprised with what we did see. Here take a look for yourself:

Definitely NOT what we were expecting, but HOW CUTE IS THAT!?! I mean, c'mon... Even if you (for some unknown reason) do not believe that she is the cutest little girl out there, you have to think she is just a good dancer. Am I right? Unfortunately, Noah was in the way back and I couldn't see him at all (although, daddy says he was more interested in the spaceshuttle behind him than singing). And, well, you can see what Benjamin was doing. So, thanks, Abby, for giving mommy and daddy something to tape and brag about. (PS. I guess in all fairness, after watching it another thousand times, Benjamin DID do something - it just wasn't really the dancing I thought he would do. So, good job, Benjamin!)