Campbell Christmas...

The Campbell family has officially been babified! This Christmas was all about the kids, and it makes it so much more fun to have little ones involved at Christmas time. Kayla & Jason flew into Spokane the weekend before Christmas and Allen & Kelli could only come up to Spokane that weekend as well, so that is when we celebrated. We spent lots and lots of time just hanging out and playing with little ones.



Aunt Kayla made all of the kids these really cool quilts that have their names on them. They are SO SO SO cute, she is so talented!!!
Here is Tucker opening his on Christmas morning:

Keyton with his quilt:

Carter with his quilt:

And Cassidy's quilt:

She even made one for Grandma:

I made baby Carter a C for his nursery. I think he really liked it! :)

And here are the boys with their new babes...
Nathan & Carter:

And Allen & Cassidy:

Model shot of Carter in front of the tree. :)

Tucker got a fish from Angie & Nathan for Christmas. He thought it was pretty cool!!! :) When he first got it, we asked him what he wanted to name him and he said, 'hmmm.....what about fish friend!" I thought that was cute. Then we asked him again a little while later and he said, 'Peanut Butter and Jelly!' Tucker LOVES PB&J sandwiches. So that's what he named him and we call him Jelly or PB&J for short.



Yeah, we know we are HOT in this picture! :)
We had a great Christmas with my family! Lots of relaxing, lots of good food, and just enjoying everyone being together!

The month of babies...

December was the month of babies for our family. Not only because it's finally starting to sink in to us that we are going to have a baby of our own here in a few weeks, but because between the two of our families, 3 babies were born within the month to month and a half before Christmas. My brother, Allen and his family had a little baby girl right after Thanksgiving. So we headed down to Quincy for the day to visit little Cassidy. She is the first grand daughter on the Campbell side and is seriously the BEST baby. I'm hoping she will be a good example to this little girl of ours. :) I just know that I am not going to get lucky twice with good babies. I'm preparing for the worst here. :)
We, of course, had to have a little photo shoot with her:

And other than that, the rest of the day was just spent holding her and cooing over her.
Her and her mommy:

Her and her daddy:

Her and her big brother, Keyton:

Her and grandma:

Her and her favorite aunt:

And Tucker just loving on her:

I love this bath time face :
She will love me for this, one day! :)

Allen & Kelli just moved into a brand new house so while the men folk were hanging blinds and doing other manly things, we helped set up their Christmas tree.
Tucker also got in some time to do one of his favorite past times these days! :)

And of course, Tucker and Keyton got in some good playing time:



In other baby activities this month, my other brother Nathan and his wife, Angie had their little guy, Carter blessed. They did it at my dad's house because my other brother and his family couldn't come until Sunday night and so we did it on a Monday night when all men from both families could be present.
Angie, Nathan & baby Carter:



All the men:

Kayla & Jason had also just flown in from Wisconsin for the holiday's, so of course, Tucker got lots of loving in from his aunt Kayla:

And lots of playing in with his Uncle Jason:

Tucker loves to rock out with his new guitar. I think the glasses add just the right touch:

Me and my sissy:

And my mom always has to take a belly shot:
I am 31 weeks in this picture:

I love that the holidays give a perfect excuse to get together as family, and having two new little babies makes it even better. Ben's little sister also recently had a baby, but more about her and pictures of her to come in a later post. Now if only our little one would make her entrance into this world soon, that would be wonderful. :)

Three Christmases...

The BEST thing about having family clear across the country, is having 3 Christmases during the holidays!

We had Christmas at my dad's house the weekend before Christmas with my family.
All the Campbell cousins in their PJ's:

On Christmas morning, Santa made a stop to our house and we had Christmas with just our little family:

And then later that evening we flew into Alabama to celebrate Christmas with the Pypers the week after Christmas:


The WORST thing about having family clear across the country, is having 3 Christmases during the holidays!

We didn't get to spend nearly enough time with everyone together in the Campbell home:

We had to rush on Christmas morning to get all the 'Santa' stuff done as well as pack for 10 days and a flight across the country that night:

And we don't get to see these wonderful people as much as we would like throughout the rest of the year:

But we can't really complain because we had a great holiday season and got to spend it with everyone whom we love! We couldn't have asked for anything more!!!
I plan on posting more about each Christmas this up coming week! :) So, stay tuned. (but don't hold your breath!!!) :)
Hope everyone has as many wonderful holiday memories as we had this year!

Our December so far...

December has been good to us, so far! :) We started a tradition a few years ago and we always go on Thanksgiving weekend to get our Christmas tree. We love picking out our perfect tree. Ben is really in to Christmas, as am I, so we have to get a real tree and it has to be perfect. (For our little house, anyway) :) Our favorite still is going to cut it down ourselves, but we haven't done that for a few years. Anyway, we decorate our house and our tree on December 1st and start the advent calendar. This year we started a new tradition and read the story of the birth of baby Jesus with Tucker after all the decorating was done. The rest of the world (and us) hype up Santa so much, I thought it would be good to start out with the true meaning of Christmas. I also added a new thing to our advent. I have a little house that has doors that open and I usually just put candy in each drawer and call it good. Well, this year I put the candy in, but have included a Christmas time activity for each day, too. Tucker loves it. Some days it's reading a Christmas book, some days it's watching a Christmas movie, or doing a Christmas craft, or baking a Christmas treat. I just kind of randomly chose different activities to do all month long. Tucker and I have been having so much fun doing different things each day!
I love spending time like this with just our little family. And creating holiday memories and traditions with just the three of us.
Decorating the tree...

We ran into a few bumps along our path of decorating our house. Our chair broke and we (meaning, Ben) spent many hours, long after Tucker was in bed trying to fix the thing. This is what it looked like when we went to bed! :)

I made this JOY sign last year and when I went to put it up this year, the J was falling out of the frame. So I just grabbed my hot glue gun, and with only one little stick left quickly fixed it. I didn't realize until I had it on the wall that I 'fixed' it backwards! :) oops! But I had run out of hot glue sticks and so the J had to stay. It has been like that ever since! :)

But by the next day we had a beautifully decorated living room. I love just sitting in the peace and quietness of it at night after Tucker is asleep and it is lit by our Christmas tree lights! There is nothing like a warm and cozy Christmas living room in the winter! :)

In other news....it snowed today!! We've had a few skiffs so far, but this was the first major snowfall. I was in a go get 'em mood this morning (rare these days) and decided I would shovel our driveway. Ben usually takes care of that kind of thing, and being 7 months pregnant, I normally wouldn't have. But I got the bug. And Tucker wanted to play in the snow. So we went out to work! :) Tucker was so determined to help me shovel and after I saw his technique, I had to get a picture of it.
First, he would get the snow into the shovel...

Lift the shovel high above his head....

and dump the snow back on himself.

I don't know if he saw it in a movie or something, but no matter how many times I told him, he just kept on dumping the snow on himself! :) But he was determined to help me and we had a great time shoveling snow together! :)
We did do a pretty good job too, if I do say so myself. When Ben came home tonight he thought that my dad had come over with his snow blower! :) I should charge for these services! :) Granted, I couldn't feel my legs or walk for the rest of the day, but by golly we had a snow-free driveway! :)
I've also done a few photo shoots this month, out in the freezing temperatures. It was so beautiful up at Finch Arboretum last week, I had to snap this. I think it is beautiful up there no matter what season we are in! :)

Well, that is about it so far. We have family coming in all next weekend and the Holiday festivities will really begin!
I love this time of year!

Thanksgiving week continued...

Let me quickly sum up the rest of our Thanksgiving week because I seem to be finding more and more pictures that I had totally forgotten about... :) My mom stayed with us for a few days for Tuckers birthday and I took advantage of having someone in the house to take a snapshot of all three of us. They are very few and far between. :) I take so many cute pictures of other people's families, but don't have any cute one of own! :( Anyway, I thought maybe, just MAYBE I would send out Christmas cards this year, and if I did, I wanted at least one decent picture of the three of us, so we gave it a try.
I have since decided to nix the Christmas card idea, so here it is to you blogosphere, our best family shot from that Sunday. :)
Enjoy...

After that I had my mom take a picture of me for my weekly pregnancy photo. And I think Ben was a little jealous, so we had a little photo shoot with him...
(He is really going to love me for posting these.)

America's Next Top Model, I'd say!

He's really natural in front of the camera...

And this is why I married him, right here, folks...

Not really sure what's going on here:

And finally, one REALLY good one!
He is so handsome!!! :)

Yeah, we know we're lucky!!! :)
Later in the week we went to lunch with my parents at PF Changs -a favorite!!!:) It was the day before Tuckers birthday, so he got a special birthday treat!
I don't know if I've mentioned Tuckers obsession with 'Managers'. But he has one. It started a few months ago when him and Ben were at a grocery store and he was being a pill, so Ben told him that he was going to have to talk to the manager if he didn't start acting good. I think it put a little bit of fear in him of managers. A few weeks later we were at lunch and I took him to go to the bathroom and while in the stall he saw the key hole to the toilet paper dispenser and he asked me where the key was. I casually replied, ' oh, I bet the manager has it.' He looked up at me with kind of a scared face and said...'...manager?' Like, please don't tell the manager I asked! :) He mentions managers all the time like they are kind of a scary thing. So anyway, while we were at lunch he asked our waiter if he was the manager and he told him no, he wasn't and I explained that he was the waiter, yada yada yada. The next thing we knew the manager was at our table to talk to Tucker. Our waiter had gone and told her that Tucker was asking about her, so she decided to come out and have a little chat with him. They became buddies, and when she found out it was his birthday the next day, she sent him out a special b-day treat! :)
This boy is fearless when it comes to making friends and people just fall in love with him all the time! Can't say that I blame them! :)

The next Sunday after Thanksgiving was Tyson Orndorff's mission farewell party and I had to post a picture of these four. Bens work buddies. :) I didn't have my camera, so I stole this from someones facebook! :) These three guys see WAY more of my husband than I do and I thought I should post a picture of the four of them! :) They are funny guys, that's for sure!! :)

Ok, now I can offically move on to December, my FAVORITE time of the year! :)

Best b-day present of all...

But the best thing Tucker got for his birthday (well, a few days after) was a brand new baby cousin, Cassidy Kay! :)

Cassiday Kay Campbell
born on November 28th, 2009
Congrats Allen, Kelli & big brother Keyton!
We are so excited to meet her and snuggle on her.