Christmas with the Campbell's

Christmas with Will's family is always a zoo but its always so much fun. There are 17 of us when we're all together and we do not even think about drawing names. Everyone buys for everyone. And we also do the traditional each person opens one present at a time and we go in order, youngest to the oldest. I always take pride in being the first adult to go after the children (I only beat Will by about 2 months). We have a traditional meal we eat, which we call Chasagna, meaning lasagna made by the Chaffin family. Will is usually in charge of dessert but this year he passed it off to Cathy who made this ridiculous white chocolate bread pudding. After we eat we all sit together in the living room and the madness begins. I will post some pics of how it looks. No, I don't have a camera yet, I am using my mother in laws pics to post this.

G&T got new matching Leap Frog scooters that play music, have lights, a fan, a basket and lots of other features.

This is a typical scene of the opening of presents: paper, bows, bags, gifts and whatever else are just basically flying around the room. Its pure chaos but always a night to remember.

All the grandkids got remote control cars, some that do more tricks than others. They really enjoyed playing with them all together once they were all opened.

We tend to sit all together as a family, this way you can keep up with who gets what and who its from. There is so much going on its hard to keep up!!

This is Brett, Ethan, Graham, Alex, and Megan. These guys love hanging out together and being loud and playing.

Here's Will's 2 sisters, Laura and Cathy and myself. Also, this year Laura had this idea to make a box full of good cheer for Mema and Grand daddy. We all filled out these cards telling why we love M&G so much and put them into this chest box thing. I think they loved it, it was the present that took the most thought, that is for sure.

More Christmas posts to come....

Hangin out at Mema and Grand daddy's

We came down to Georgia early so we could finish up our shopping and also hang out with the fam. The kids love hanging out at Mema's house, they always have a lot of fun. Will and I were able to go and knock out the rest of our shopping while everyone was being fully entertained back at the house. Above is Will's mom and dad a.k.a. Mema and Grand daddy.

These are Will's sisters kids and this is a very cute photo of them. They are some of our favorite people to see when we come to town.

Fun with mardi gras beads.

Graham and Tucker just being their goofy little selves.

This picture is so funny. Blake was reading a book to Graham and Graham just decided to go to sleep sitting up right there as Blake read him a story. So cute! I think that means Graham was exhausted.


This is not flattering of B&B but I thought it was worth posting since its of several of the children together.

Anticipating Christmas Break

I'm not sure if anyone is anticipating this Christmas break more than us! Will has been counting down the days for weeks now, it seems. I have been so looking forward to a break as well. With our schedules so busy and always, always on the go, an extended break is just what the dr. ordered. No basketball games, no practices, no more parties, no more baking cupcakes at 10 at night or pigs in a blanket at 6 am. Today we start our loooooooong Christmas break thanks to being an employee of Lee University and the public school system.

So what are we going to do on this first day? Shop, ALL day long until we get all of our Christmas shopping done. Sounds relaxing? Not really but we'll have to do it eventually, so today seems like a good day. Also, the grandparents are willing to watch the munchkins today, so its a win-win situation.

The Home Team

The "home team" refers to the people who make the office I work in one of the best offices on campus. We get the cream of the crop when it comes to the students who work in the office. We enjoy the camaraderie that we share and we get along extremely well. We had our annual office Christmas gathering this year and these photos are from that night.

Thanksgiving Weekend

I know, this is so late. But, better late than never. This year at Thanksgiving we decided to stay at home since we've been traveling so much recently. Our families didn't love the idea but its what we felt was best for our family and, I'm so glad we did. We were able to spend time together as a family doing lots of different activities, putting up Christmas decorations and totally getting into the holiday spirit. It was great.

I am going to post some photos from that weekend. I also had to work a couple of events at Lee since we were in town but they were for our students who stayed on campus and that was lots of fun for the family as well.

That Friday we hosted 175 person luncheon at the Holiday Inn here in Cleveland and these are from that event.

This is our tree that we put up Thanksgiving morning. We love our tree, it is very much a kid-tree since almost every ornament is for a child or made by a child. We love it that way. We don't have fire place in this house so we just hang our stockings on the wall.

Happy 4th Birthday BRETT!

Brett turned 4 years old today. Man, I cannot believe its been 4 years. I can remember it so well, he was born Nov. 23, 2004 and we spent the next day which was Thanksgiving in the hospital. Then the following day when we went home from the hospital, Wills family drove to Cleveland and we celebrated Thanksgiving with a newborn baby boy. He was so easy getting here and was such a huge blessing to our family...weighing in at 9 pounds, 4 ounces, 2 ounces shy of his older brother. My boys are big, they just are. The twinks weighed in at 5'1" and 5'11" but they were also 7 weeks preterm, so just think 7 weeks later, they would've been right in the 9 pound range. (Thank God they came early!)
What can I say, Brett is our Mr. Personality. He has so many friends and we feel like everyone "knows" Brett because he will talk to anyone. He will just go up and start talking like you've been best buddies your whole entire life. He's so great and so much fun to have in the house, he keeps us laughing. He also has to deal with having an older brother which automatically makes you think you're older than you really are.

Brett invited some family and friends to ArcadeBounce in Cleveland. We've never been there before but it turned out great.



This place is a cross between Monkey Joe's and Chuck E Cheese but its in Cleveland which makes it so nice. It has 4 inflatables and then regular arcade games including skee ball, air hockey, Mrs. Pacman and lots of others.

















Brett has lots of friends that are girls...he's quite
the ladies man. These are 2 friends from PDO or "his school." They were loving this dancing game.























It was a fun time but I must say that when the 2 hours were up, I was ready to leave. It's loud and lots of children running everywhere. I think they all had a good time and most everyone with us had never been there or seen it before so I'm sure there will be other parties there over the next few years or so. They had signs up for Lazer Tag coming in Jan 09...sounds interesting. Seems like it'd make a good small group outing, but with no children of course.



Shout out to Mamaw and Papaw for coming down to the party. They had fun watching the children run around. They were always keeping their eyes peeled for G&T, they could've easily gotten lost in a place like that.

This is a cute photo of them, so I thought I'd share it.





Will and Tucker are trying their hardest to ride this "mote-cykee" as Tucker would say. He's really into things that make noise and move, like cars, trucks, motorcycles, helicopters, dump trucks. He likes them all.








Here's Graham and cousin Baylor discussing whether they will go down feet first or head first. Boy wouldn't you have loved to have heard that conversation. Don't worry they did it both ways a zillion times before the day was up.













So, here's to you Brett, Happy 4th Birthday. We love you!! Thanks to everyone that came and helped us celebrate.

Update on camera

Several of you have asked and I'm sorry to report I have no good news on my camera. So...I have no new photos to post and so all you are getting is boring text, sorry about that. Dr. Conn preached a sermon today that reminded me that, 'God cares about the small stuff.' It's true, he does so it did give me a glimmer of hope that some sweet soul will feel terribly bad about having my camera and return it to me. I am doubtful though and as each day passes, I get even more doubtful. Needless to say, if anyone wants to know what to get me for Christmas, a Wolf camera gift card will do the trick so I can try and replace or get something soon. Wolf has great deals and they are a one stop shop for photos and accessories. I love developing photos there, they really do the best job.

That's the update. Keep praying and believe that God cares about the small stuff.

I'm REALLY sad.

This is sort of a personal entry, all about me, so you can scroll down if you like. Friday night was our 10 year reunion at Lee. We went and took all of our children. It was fun and the kids enjoyed themselves. It was a good start to a very good and fun Homecoming weekend. However, something terrible happened and I am so sick about it. Somewhere between Will leaving with the kids and me going to my DZT reunion thing, we left my really nice camera sitting in the old Mayfield gym, along with a few of our kids coats. I don't know how it happened, it just did. When we realized what had happened, it was Sat. morning and the whole gig was cleaned up. Lots of people remember it sitting there while cleaning up and it was moved twice after we left because people have told us they saw it in a few different places. So, someone was being very careful to help us not let it get stolen. But now, after its all said and done, no one knows what happened to it. I really want to throw up as I type this. I called everyone I know that worked over the weekend and they called everyone they know. No camera to be found yet. I still believe it could turn up but as time goes on today, I have my doubts. Several people have asked, is your name on it??? The answer is no, but its a Nikon D50 and on the memory card are about 300 pictures of my kids and our family. That's the only way to know its mine.
This might sound super-spiritual but I'm still praying that it'll turn up tomorrow in my office or something. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Believe for it with me?

Happy 7th Birthday Blake!

Blake turned 7 last weekend, I can't hardly believe I have a 7 year old...honestly I can't believe I have 4 children. We had the party at the Creative Discovery Museum in Chattanooga. What a dream. That place was so great. Its the kind of party where you pay your fee and then they take care of all the rest, the cake, punch, clean up, making the list of gifts etc. What more can you ask for? And...I didn't even have to clean my house.

The Creative Discovery Museum is great for kids too, and lots of different ages. Even the twins love going there. Blake invited lots of family and several friends and we had a group of about 35 people show up.














These are some of Blake's favorite buddies. There was also face painting involved as you can see, Blake was totally into that part.
This is Avery and Briley, both cousins of Blake's. They see eachother at family functions and have become cute little buddies that only see eachother about 3 times a year.





And these are my buddies who haven't missed many of my kids birthday parties.








This is Meg, isn't she just a doll? She and Blake favor eachother. When we go places people think that they are brother and sister instead of she and Ethan. Funny stuff.





Graham and Tuck love the CDM, they have something called the Little Yellow House and everything is toddler size. Its gated also so when you go in they can't get out unless an adult helps them. Toddler size kitchen, playhouse, garage, garden etc. It's way cool if you are a 2 year old.


The museum is for kids but as you can see, even if you are "29 and holding" you can still play and have fun. Caught you guys on camera!!!

Halloween 08

I've decided, I don't really like Halloween. It is so much added stress, especially with all the school parties, school trick or treating and then of course the regular trick or treating.
At Blake's school they didn't do parties but they had an Accelerated Reader dress up day and everyone in the school was supposed to dress like a pirate. It was great. Blake participated willingly and decided he'd like to go all out. So we piece mealed a costume together complete with eyepatch and earring and with the painted on beard and do-rag. I'm sad I didn't take a picture but we were in such a hurry that morning trying to get all of that together. The same day, Brett and the twins had a party and had to be in costume for school. Whew! Getting 4 children dressed in a costume at 6:45 in the morning isn't an easy job, its HARD. They all had a good time and got lots of good treats. Keep in mind this is all pre-Halloween activities.

Then there was the "real" trick or treating and dress up night. It was stressful but it turned out to be very fun. Everyone looked cute and loved being in costume and of course getting tons of candy. The amount of candy is ridiculous and we are going to have to find a way to get rid of some of it so their teeth don't rot out.

We chose to do one event this Halloween instead of 2 or 3 and we went over to Rachel's house in Hunter's Run and spent the evening. Rachel made chili and hot dogs and Teddi made lots of sweet goodies and then there's candy of course. There were several families there and mostly boys and they were wild and crazy, as if we're surprised, right? The kids trick or treated for a little while until they were tired and then came back to the house where they just were hyped up on sugar. There were a few bloody noses and lips but all in all, it was fun and they had a good time.













As you can see, we had a cow or dalmation, whichever you prefer, a lion, a Ninja and Indiana Jones.

This is what you call a cow/dalmation on a bike. And then a lion playing trucks. I believe that if they little boys could just play outside on bikes in their costumes, they would've been perfectly happy.


















These are the "big" boys that were at the party. Winston and Fletcher, Traegan, Clark, Luke and then my older boys.

Rachel and Abby are smiling so sweetly and Harper was so tired she was "over" the party and wanted to go to bed. Sweet girl was a real trooper for the evening with all those boys running around her.

Early on in the evening some friends stopped by and this is their cute daughter dressed up like Dumbo.
When the twins and Brett trick or treated at Lee, they stopped by the office and these are photos from that visit below.

This is Indiana Jones doing some sort of jig in my office floor. He's a trip.