The Campbell family highlights (and lowlights) of 2008

• Our house in CO finally finished and we finally moved in!
• Went to Cancun, Mexico.
• Trevor gave his 1st talk in Primary.
• Our baby Kylie turned 1, started walking and started talking.
• Trevor got his first (minor) concussion.
• Mark got laid off (we actually now consider this a highlight).
• Mark got a new job in CA.
• Sold our house in CO.
• Moved to CA and bought another house.
• Alyssa lost her 1st (and 2nd) tooth, graduated preschool, and attended 3 Kindergartens.
• Trevor attended 4 different preschools.
• Alyssa gave her 1st talk in Primary (3rd time's a charm!)

Kind of a short list, but eventful enough for us! Can't wait to see what 2009 brings! Happy New Year!

Christmas

It was another fun Christmas this year. My parents and my sister Kelsi came over for Christmas Eve and spent the night, which was soo fun! We ate pizza, the kids opened 1 present, we read Luke 2, and watched the cartoon version of Christ's birth. Then...bedtime for the kids so Santa could come! Kylie and Trevor fell asleep right away, but Alyssa was SO SO SO excited this year. It took her quite a while to fall asleep. Morning came and the kids were soo happy. It was SO fun to see our kids SO happy. Well, Alyssa and Trevor. Kylie was not quite sure what was going on and never really got in to opening presents. She insisted on sitting on my lap for all the present opening.
Whenever we asked Trevor what he wanted for Christmas, he said a new gun. He's really in to these nerf guns and each time he gets one, it gets bigger and better. He's had so much fun shooting us...and these ones hurt!

Alyssa FINALLY got her American girl doll. She's been OBSESSED with the picture of this doll for the last 5 months and has waited patiently (well sort of) for Christmas to come. It was worth the wait. I've never seen a kid love something so much. I've never seen her so happy. Seriously, she would randomly burst into laughter throughout the day and hug her doll so tight. She just absolutely loves her.

Trevor also got this GIANT puzzle...


Merry Christmas!!!

A thank you to Grammy and Grandpa

18-month old Kylie

Kylie was playing with Mr. Potato Head and Mark and I were sitting on the couch not really paying attention, and she walked up to us like this, laughing at herself. We cracked up.

Also just for the record, since she is the 3rd child and sadly, I haven't kept a baby book for her, these are the words she says at 18 months...there aren't many but that's okay. :-)

Ma-ma,

Daddy,

uh-oh,

candy (nanny),

bye (bah!),

baby (bah-bee),

Cheese! (Dee! for the camera),

Alyssa (Ah-ah),

Ho ho ho! (When you ask her what Santa says),

Weeeee! (when sliding down Grandma's slide)

Okay those last 2 aren't really "words" but I'm counting them.

Alyssa lost another tooth...literally

Alyssa lost another tooth today! And then 2 seconds after this picture was taken, she dropped it in the carpet, and we can not find it!! This carpet is so long, it is like finding a needle in a haystack. Mark, Alyssa and I looked in the area she dropped it in for about 10 minutes. She's really worried that the tooth fairy won't come if there isn't a tooth under her pillow, but we told her we could write her a note and explain everything and put that under her pillow. :-)

Why is Kylie's picture so small?

Does anybody know? I inserted that picture the same way I always do and I can't get it to be regular size...???? Help me!

Our tile floor

For all the out-of-towners who don't get to see our tile...here are some pictures. I should have taken before pictures, but the tile was just in the kitchen and there was carpet everywhere else...under the kitchen table, in the entry hall, so we had tile put in. I'm really glad we did it...especially after last night when Trevor spilled his chocolate milk!

Ta-Da!!!

Okay so we're actually not finished because the bottom of the mirror still sticks out. But we have a plan to fix it and at least for now, it's not on our living room floor. (A million thanks to Brent! If he got this mirror up, he really can do anything).

I HATE our new mirror, Trevor's Christmas show, & the missing binkie

Okay so this is our new mirror, on the floor in our living room. Why? Because we have tried for 7 hours to get it on our wall, and NOTHING works...

This is where we want it. You can't see them, but there are 5 huge holes on this wall that have been lamely patched up...

These are what we were told to use. We've used them before to hang a shelf over our bed. They worked very well. You screw one on to the wall, and one on to the object you want to hang, in this case, the mirror, and then it's supposed to fit on top of the one on the wall and it holds a lot of weight, which is needed because this mirror weighs like 100 lbs. Well, so we screw the one on to the back of the mirror at the top where the frame is nice and thick and sturdy. We do all the measuring to make sure it's going to sit right where we want it on the wall, and then we go to hang it. It doesn't work because the back of the mirror towards the middle is more raised than the frame. I don't know if that makes sense, but trust me, it didn't work. So we tried to move it lower. Well the frame gets more shallow as you move lower, so yes that's right, we screwed 4 holes in to our BRAND NEW EXPENSIVE (actually we got a really good deal, but still) MIRROR. Like, the screws came out through the front. Yeah, we were DYING. No SERIOUSLY, DYING. After we cooled off a bit, we put our thinking caps on and I went to Home Depot and got some stuff to fix the holes and I am shocked at how good it looks. Perfection...good as new...NO. But totally usable. Oh and before Home Depot we also tried using some anchors to hang it and the anchors broke. MEANWHILE, Kylie is FREAKING OUT and we can't find her binkie ANYWHERE. We are frustrated cause we just want this mirror hung (we'd been working on it all afternoon). We looked EVERYWHERE for the ONE binkie that we have and couldn't find it anywhere so I decided to go to Home Depot to get some answers on the mirror, and to Target to get binkies. If it were any other night, I would have just taken this as an opportunity to get rid of the binkie but I was already so frustrated from the whole mirror thing and had NO patience left whatsoever. Anyways, so at Home Depot, I talked to a few guys and they told me exactly what to do. Use that wire stuff on the back and find studs in the wall to hang it on. So I'm 2 minutes from home and I get a call from Mark..."I thought I'd get the water boiling for the new binkies so I opened the cupboard to get the pot out and found her binkie and bunny in there." Yeah, Kylie's been hiding stuff lately. At this point, I just had to laugh.

So I'm back home and we find the studs, screw in the screws, hang the mirror. It sounds weird, like something is breaking, then SNAP, the wire on the back snaps. We catch the mirror but I almost broke my arm. We have given up for now.

On to a more positive note, Trevor had his preschool Christmas show this morning and it was so cute and hilarious. You could tell Trevor really enjoyed being up on stage. I didn't seem to capture any of those moments with my camera but here are a few pictures anyway. Trevor is in the middle in the red sweater.

Best buddies, Trevor and cousin Bryson

Alyssa lost her 1st tooth!

Alyssa has been waiting for about 2 years (seriously, no exaggeration) to lose a tooth. It's been really wiggly for a while now, and her permanent tooth had already started to grow in. Mark has been trying to pull it out for her for the last few nights and tonight we had success! It is sooo fun to see her excitement. She is so excited for her first visit from the tooth fairy tonight!

What we've been up to...

It's been a busy couple of weeks, but life is starting to calm down. We moved in to our new house 2 weeks ago so we've been busy trying to get our stuff unpacked and put away. I will try to post some pictures soon, if it ever looks decent enough. :-) My family was in town last week for Thanksgiving so we had lots of fun with them. Then Kylie got sick with an ear infection AND Roseola (high fever and a bad rash). Her fever is gone and the rash is looking better today and her spirits are up. Yay!

This picture was taken a few weeks ago at Grandma and Grandpa Campbell's house. They have a really fun HUGE bath tub that the kids had a blast in with bubbles. Kylie did not go in because

1) she would have drowned in there, and 2) she is afraid of bubbles. That night she was starting to come around though and would repeatedly run in the bathroom and say, "Bubble! Bubble!" and point at them. Alyssa got her to come close enough to let her touch the bubbles but Kylie did not like that. So funny that she is afraid of bubbles.

This is a picture of Kylie's rash on her tummy and back cause I couldn't believe how bad it was. It's kinda blurry but if you blow up the picture you can see it better.

Just a few fun pics

Kylie has pretty much mastered eating cereal all by herself (even with milk in it! Very exciting).

Trevor and Alyssa thought it would be fun to put Kylie in this doll stoller and take her for a ride. Kylie thought it was soo fun. :-)

Happy Halloween!

K, so I know these pictures are totally late, but better late than never, right? My little sister Kelsi came and carved pumpkins with us, and the kids had a blast.

The kids had so much fun trick-or-treating with their cousins this year. Here we have cousin Lucas(Pluto), cousin Bryson (Buzz), Alyssa (Alice from Alice in Wonderland), Trevor(skeleton pirate), and Kylie the flower.

We're back in California!

What a crazy rollercoaster year for the Campbell family! After living in Denver, CO for about 1 year, we are back in California where Mark took a really good job, and we get to be back with family! If all goes as planned (meaning our house closes escrow on time in CO) we will be moving in to this house in about a month!

Trevor's 4th Birthday!

We started off the day opening presents, even before breakfast!
Then he got to choose breakfast and he chose bacon and eggs. He seriously ate like 2 bites. Then we played around the house with his new presents and got ready for the day. He also got to choose lunch and he chose Burger King. Again, he ate like 2 bites. Then we went to Heritage Square in Golden where we went on the Alpine Slides. The kids were a little nervous about it but they had so much fun. Kylie and I went together and she hung on for dear life, but seemed to enjoy it, or at least not hate it.



The kids painted pumpkins...

and jumped in the bouncy house...




After Heritage Square we came home and rested for a few hours and then went to Chuck-E-Cheese for dinner and games. Again, we had to force Trevor to eat even one small piece of pizza! (Even when they get to choose exactly what they want to eat, they don't eat!) We brought some leftover cupcakes (leftover from taking them to Trevor's preschool class) but nobody wanted to eat them, so we just sang him happy birthday and he blew out candles...

On the way home we stopped at a grocery store to get a few items and Mark ran in to Baskin Robbins and got him a cake since nobody wanted the old cupcakes. So we sang happy birthday and blew out candles again!

It was a fun day!!! Happy Birthday Trevor!!!

Kylie loves to color

Kylie is getting to be such a big girl. She LOVES to color and write on paper with a pencil. She is borderline obsessed with it actually. Many many times a day she will find a piece of paper and bring it to me and say, "Uh uh uh uh." I know that means she wants something to write with. We have to watch her carefully though. She's actually pretty good about keeping it on the paper, but of course she is only 1 and I've found her art work on the floor and cupboards a few times.

:-)

Last Chance to Play in the Water!

Fall and Winter will be here before we know it, so we took advantage of today's heat and went to the fountains...

Alyssa was feeling really brave today and was really having fun getting wet...
I think Trevor was a little cautious because last time he slipped and got some pretty bad scrapes. He didn't get very wet here today...
Kylie had fun getting close to the water, but didn't get close enough to get wet. :-)

Trevor's bad day

This has been one of those days where you just can't WAIT to get one of your kids in bed at night. Trevor was told to clean his room this morning (like most mornings) but today he decided to be really stubborn about it. He was literally in there ALL morning until he came out to eat lunch and go to school. Then, after school, he cried himself to sleep in there. After dinner, he FINALLY came up with the will to get it done. It took him about 1 minute. ALL day of crying and being in his room...for 1 minute of cleaning up! I hope it was worth it! After that we needed to get out of the house so we took a trip to the sports store where he had a total meltdown about wanting a baseball outfit. Then we got home and right before his bath he ran into his dark room, and tripped over his rolled up rug and smacked his head on the bed post. (I guess while he was cleaning his room he decided to roll up his rug??). After he calmed down we had him look in the mirror at his goose-egg and he was shocked at what he saw. He said, "How did that get there?" ..in this kind of "awed" voice. It was funny.