To our Friends and Family that I don’t have e-mail addresses for or in contact w/on FB,
We are going cheap oops I mean “green” this year on our Christmas cards, well actually we didn’t do a Christmas card either, just a letter!
Merry Christmas and Happy New year!!! Now that that’s out of the way…….holy crap this year went fast! Not only that but the fact that we have been out of Utah for 4 1/2 years just blows my mind! I know that time moves fast for me, but shouldn’t it stand still for everyone else that I’m not around?! If only, right?
2009 Started out with a whole lot of noise in our house, yeah you heard me right NOISE! My parents bought us Rock Band2 for Christmas and our family just couldn’t get enough of it!! Even Leah and Brody want to jam with us! We made a big MOVE and JOB change and it landed us in Eugene, Oregon!!! We spent the summer doing daily bike rides, LOTS of swimming and house hunting. We found a house we had to have and bought it! Since then we’ve pretty much been working on getting into the groove of our new life here.
Ryan is working for Palo-Alto Software. What a great company, I could go on and on about them but I won’t, I will say that Ryan is so happy and loves what he does! He still enjoys running and is planning to sign up for some races this coming spring. He did get some biking in this summer, not as much as he’d like but enough for me that I didn’t despise biking, he biked Black Rock(many times over), some trail in Bend, Post Canyon(a few times) and tried a few local trails with his new biking buddy Ayden! Our kids love Ryan so much. The boys especially love it when he plays Halo 3 with them, Leah loves to give him big hugs and of course could spend hours jumping on the trampoline w/him and Brody figured out that daddy needs kisses when he leaves for work and screams of joy when he returns home!
Jackson turned the big 7 this Sept. and started 1st grade. He finally learned to ride a 2 wheeler this Spring, it took him about 5 minutes to get it and once he did it was like he had been riding for years. He also learned to swim, after 2 years of me teaching him and not getting it I put him in lessons w/out me and BAM he’s swimming-lame for me awesome for him! He’s getting so big and I have to laugh at some of the things he says, “Mom I’m not wearing that shirt, it’s so NOT my style”, another was “I like Meg cause she dresses way cute”. The other day we found him, Ayden and a friend in the bedroom talking about how many girls they have kissed! Most would be worried, me I just thinks it’s funny!
Ayden my little big 6 year old, started Kindergarten and the teacher says that he has the kindest heart in the class. He loves to help with Brody and Leah and helps me around the house. Ayden found his love of mountian biking this summer w/Ryan, though he pretty much will do anything if it’s with Ryan, he is for sure a daddy’s boy! I wonder about his safety though cause he’s so crazy going off jumps and cruising around like a maniac. He also learned to swim this summer and jump in the deep end all by himself! He is learning to read and sound words out and walks around telling me that this word starts with that and what not. He talked me into taking care of his class mice for Christmas break, seriously if he would have asked you, you wouldn’t have been able to say no either!
What to say about Miss Leah?! She just turned 3 and we can hardly believe it. Last spring she all the sudden started picking up on all the signing I’ve been doing with her. Though she doesn’t understand that they mean things, she’s still good at doing them when asked. Some of her favorites are: cracker, bird, apple, more, bath and milk. She loves to watch signing time and in the car can sign most of the words to the signing time CD. She loves to say “Hi” to anybody she sees and loves to wave. She could jump on the trampoline ALL day if I let her. She has just started interacting w/other little kids, she’s actually starting to tolerate Brody more and more each day. She started a mommy and me pre-school class this fall and we go every Friday morning and she LOVES it! Coloring is her new obsession, but not in a coloring book, only on blank pages, when we leave pre-school she’s done 5 art projects when the other kids have only done 1! She gives the best hugs, hands down.
Brody started the year out as a winey, fussy, sad little thing of a baby. He’s had a big year adjusting to this world he has come into, crawling at 7 1/2 months, tubes in his ears at 8 months, turned 1 in July, started walking at 14 months and got his first tooth at 14 months! Finally being a toddler he has shed his fussiness and we are finally enjoying him! He loves to jabber: dooooo, deahhhhhhhhh and yeahhhh all day long. He is so full of energy and excitement, you can see it in his face and some times you think he’s gonna burst!
What a year this has been for me. Lots of changes, lots of growing. Again I left a place that I called home, friends that I loved and people that were so wonderful! Moving to a place where we knew no one, I learned that going to the Doctor or grocery store w/all 4 of my kids isn’t that big of a deal, living by a Kohl’s and Target can get me into trouble, walking around a mall is NOT overrated, being deprived of fast food for nearly 4 years and then going on a fast food binge isn’t always a good thing, running on the treadmill is a great stress reliever though it won’t necessarily make you skinny, having 3 boys isn’t that bad, happiness is what you make it and I think I’ve finally got it figured out, good friends don’t go away because you move they just adapt to the new situation, my husband is my best friend, my children are my reason to get up in the morning and making new friends is something that I really enjoy doing. As much as I hate leaving people behind, I love being taken out of my comfort zone and seeing who I really am, it’s very refreshing!
I swear it’s impossible for us to get a picture of our whole family together, so you’ll just have to check out our recent posts here on our blog!
We are thinking of our friends and families that we miss so much this year! Have a great Holiday season!
The Campbell Family
