A typical summer day at our house

Today we played in the backyard all day. Neighborhood kids streaming in and out playing in the water and asking for popsicles . The sprinkler is going under the trampoline and the kiddie pool is full and all the kids seem to take a turn swinging the hose around making everybody around them angry because their getting them wet (isn't that what were all here for anyway!) I'm sitting at the patio table with my glass of lemonade and my camera breaking up the occasional fights here and there. Around 5:30 pm just as I tell my kids its time to come inside and get some clothes on and get ready for dinner we hear the ice cream truck come strolling into the neighborhood. Awesome, just in time for dinner! :o) The kids go running up the street before I can even dispute the action. So i dig out some change from Mr. Piggy and walk up the street behind them. How can i turn them down now? They realize once they get up there, and before they realize that I'm walking behind them, that they might need some money. So they turn around and come running back and find me with a handful of change. Popsicles for everyone to spoil all their dinners. Then, I get talking with all the moms, the kids keep playing with all their friends and then we don't make it back into the house until 8:30pm. just in time for dinner, baths and FINALLY BEDTIME! aaahh!

Happy Birthday to ONE AMAZING MAN!




So when we found out that Cody was going to be leaving town to work on a job in San Francisco for a month we were sad to realize that it was going to fall over his 30th birthday! We were talking about it with the kids and they were especially devastated because this meant no cake and ice cream for them. So... Cody made them promise that they would celebrate his birthday without him. The cake, the ice cream, the party...ALL OF IT! So guess what we did tonight? We even got the reminder text from Cody today to make sure we were going to keep our promise! hello.... OF COURSE!

The kids had a lot of fun for you! Happy Birthday Daddio!

It was a pretty LAZY sunday morning at our house. We were at some friends house until late the night before so everybody was sleeping in. Cole was the first to wake up and he came in and climbed into bed with us. Layed there for a few minutes and said the inevitable "I'm starving" Cody replies with "Cole go in and pick out your cereal and we'll be there in a minute". I soon hear some serious rattling going on in the kitchen and then Cole comes in and asks us what kind of cereal we want. He was fixing breakfast for all of us. He's so freaking CUTE. I told him I wanted the box with the big red K on it. (Special K with fruit and yogurt clusters) Cole comes in and tells us breakfast is ready. So we all drag ourselves into the kitchen. We are all quietly eating our breakfast when i notice i haven't had any fruit OR yogurt clusters. I look over into Ry's bowl who had the same kind and noticed she didn't have any either. "Cole, did you pick out the fruit and yogurt clusters from Ry and I's cereal?" I look over to see a very sheepish look on my little man's face. That little stinker picked all the good stuff out of our cereal. I guess i get what i get and i don't throw a fit....RIGHT? Thanks for breakfast Cole!

Happy Birthday to our PRINCESS RY RY

It's all we've heard about from our little princess for the last 3 months "my buthday's comin up....it's Apwil 21st" "my buthday's comin up it's Apwil 21st" So when the day finally came we had to make it a big one! I had the feeling the expectations were high.

So the first thing we did is invite 3 special little princess friends.




and then we got everything ready. I had lots of help in the kitchen. Ry and Cole frosted the mini cupcakes. Rylee's favorite part was licking the frosting off her fingers.




and then the princesses arrived.



and a princess tea party it was.







I think our little princess had a pretty good day!


To top it all off we had a little family party that night. Rylee requested tacos for dinner and Uncle Dal came over. We had dinner, opened presents and had cupcakes and strawberry ice cream cones. (she got to blow candles out again, she really likes that part) Ry got a new cradle for her baby, a shopping cart, polly pockets, and makeup (her favorite)




Happy birthday my little Princess!

The effects of raising kids with DVR

My kids have become pretty good about knowing what button pauses the cartoon they are watching when they need to go potty or knowing which button fast forwards the commercials so they can get to the good stuff. Something we didn't have back when we were watching little house on the prairie and the brady bunch.

So we were watching General Conference on tv this weekend. Sunday morning we really made a point to try and have the kids sit with us as long as their little bodies could handle it. I printed off some little conference related activities to keep them busy as we did. Cole was working on this coloring sheet that had pictures of those men speaking with a tie next to it. He was supposed find the picture of the speaker and color his tie the way it looked on tv. So the first speaker came on and he was pretty excited. He colored it the way it was, took him all of 2 minutes and then he says "k, i got this guy now can we fast forward it to the next one" Cody and I fell on the floor laughing. hmmm...this kinda defeated our point. We both agreed that that's what we get for having a DVR, our kids don't know any different! Wow how things change!

cause i'm so cute?

On several occasions when i look at Rylee she will get this cute little grin on her face, giggle and ask "WHAT? Why you lookin at me?" and I will always say "cause your just so dang cute". So on this particular evening with my little girl being sick we were sitting on the couch watching Herbie Fully Loaded and eating popcorn when our conversation went EXACTLY like this!

RYLEE: MOM!
MOM: ya?
RYLEE: Mom, look at me.
MOM: ya Ry...whats up? (as i turn to look at her)
RYLEE: Why you looking at me?
MOM: cause you told me to
RYLEE: is it cause I so cute?

I am so in love with this little girl!

I think she likes to cook!

I can't keep up with this girl. It is literally MESS after MESS in the kitchen! I was in the office on the phone with my little friend Becky when Cole came running in telling me I had to come see what Rylee was doing. By the time i got in there i found this. I was freaking out but Becky reminded me in my panic mode to grab the camera and take a picture! Thank you Becky! After all was said and done..cleaned up out of the way...i was so glad i did. It's worth a good laugh.....now!

Here's just a few of the latest kitchen experiments!



This is Rylee helping mom make the noodles for chicken noodle soup. She got a little carried away with the flour.


This was popcorn, stirred with lots of parmasean and a little lime juice! A RyRy special!

And we must not foget the tea parties that we have at our house EVERY SINGLE DAY!



The specialty this day was whipped cream.....sprayed IN EVERY DISH!

WAAAAAAY overdue!

wow...took a little sebatical from the world of blogging. So sad...i have so much to catch up on. So here is my best attempt to review the last 3 months in a flash!

For the sake of journaling (bear with me)
Thanksgiving was spent with the Campbell side and mom and dad hoggan at Tia's house in Idaho Falls.


Heres Cody, Brady and VJ. Do they even look like brothers?

Oh and ps...let's not forget the BYU vs. Utah game Thanksgiving weekend that we had to rush back home for. What a great game! BYU 17 - Utah 10. We had an extra ticket and invited Cody's friend Travis (who by the way was wearing red) to sit with us.



We had an early Christmas party with the Perry's the first weekend in December. We rented a cabin up by the City of Rocks in Idaho. It snowed the entire time we were there...it was so fun to have our Perry Christmas so early in Decemeber...really got us in the Christmas spirit and we were able to cross so many things off our Christmas list so early. We had so much fun tubing down this big hill by the cabin and then behind Calvin and JoNae's truck (until Hawk and I flipped our sled behind the truck and Hawk lost a tooth). How sad no pictures. The camera got left at home! :o( My sister Julie had this fabulous idea to re-create "THE CITY" for each of our siblings and their families for Christmas. So Julie, my mom and I got together just after Thanksgiving and threw these together. LOL! These little things took so much longer than we had anticipated but it so worth it. We had so much fun making them! "THE CITY" is something that my mom made for my brother Scott for Christmas one year when he was younger. Scott was later killed in a car accident but this little city entertained all of us growing up. We all have so many fun memories playing "city" together. Which is why we were all fighting over the original.


We spent Christmas at Mom and Dad Campbells house in Shelley. So fun to just hang out and play games. We seriously got snowed in and came home 2 days later than we planned to. I unfortunately didn't get enough pictures of this one! Oh and we need a new camera so bad. We really just got one so either its just a really crappy one or we haven't figured out how to use it right or something. All of my pictures turn on blurry or pixely!






Rylee got pretty much EVERYTHING pink! She got the pink barbie phone that she's been dying to have. She got pink lip gloss, a pink balarina outfit, pink candy, pink legwarmer, pink pajamas, pink slippers, pink headband....you get it right?

Cole asked for one thing! A POCKET KNIFE! Santa must have thought he was big enought to handle it because thats what he got. After all the knife safety lessons he got from his dad he's only sliced his arm open ONCE already...not too bad! Other than that dang pocket knife he got legos, guess who game, race car track and lots of things that i can't remember now.

Then it was back to the January drag! It seems like after the holidays are all over it's just so hard to get back to normal life. After Christmas is over I'm just so ready for SPRING!!! January and February seem to be the longest months of the year!

Halloween '07

Dad took the kids shopping for Halloween costumes this year while mom was in Vegas a few weeks ago. They all did a pretty dang good job. Ry was a PRINCESS (of course...its all she talks about...princesses, purses, and makeup) and Cole was a NINJA. They were definatly the cutest kids on the block (sorry if your kids are on our block :o)

MOM was the TOOTH FAIRY. It was something i threw together last minute with what we had at home. I wasn't planning on dressing up until i woke up that morning but it sure was fun. DAD was....THE DAD! I had him convinced to wear Cole's Superman cape for about 2 minutes...but it didn't last.


This is my kids on drugs....i mean..Halloween candy! after all the trick or treating they could handle...or should I say..we could handle!

HELP!

Has anyone else ever had trouble keeping their pictures on their blog. Nothing about the way i take or upload pictures has changed but i can't seem to keep the last few posts in one piece. They are there when i first post and then the next day they're gone. Buggin! Is it just me? And ps. I can't seem to upload a camera video, what am i doing wrong, does anyone have any suggestions?

SK8in FOOL!

Cole...(ps. and dad)are learning how to skate. Its their new favorite thing and their getting pretty serious about it. If you know anything about my boys their both die hards. Cody's been teaching Cole that you never quite, even when ya fall off ya get back up and do it again. They've both been taking some serious hits. Some more than others...lol! dads been limping around here for the last two days now cause he rolled his ankle pretty good when he tried dropping in the first day he got his new skateboard. Our neighbor built a skate ramp up by his house. Thats usually where i can find them if their missing. In fact Cody helped him put in a flood light on the side of his house so they can go out there and do it when it gets dark now. I have to admit...it's pretty cute! Rylee's even getting in on the fun!

Poor little Brett!

Ok...so he's not so little anymore but my 16 year old nephew Brett broke his leg lastweek in a motor bike accident. We had just returned from spending a few days at Grandpa Campbells house in Shelly and then the very next day my sister Julie called to tell us Brett was in the Blackfoot hospital. (just 15 minutes or so from Shelly) So Friday morning the kids and I turned back around to drive 3 and half hours back to Idaho. It was so worth it! We've really been missin Brett and Colt since they went to live with their dad in Blackfoot. Cole had school that day so i asked him if he wanted to stay home and go to school or drive with me to see Brett. He really really likes his cousins Brett and Colt so of course he wanted to go see them. Geez mom what kind of a question was that?

First Annual Jones/Kessler/Campbell Reunion

Ouray Colorado - October 11-16



Went on a fun family trip to Colorado with the Kessler's to visit the Jones's. Brandy and Coby moved to Grand Junction about a year ago. This was our first trip out there to see them. We drove as far as Grand Jct. to their house on Thursday stayed the night and then got up and drove with them to their friends vacation home in Ouray. Oh my gosh beautiful! Lets just say it was such a fun, relaxing way to spend the weekend! Did a little fishing on the most beautiful private lake, TOTALLY MY KIND OF FISHING!!! You could pretty much catch a fish everytime you threw your line in. The kids LOVED it...ok and so did mom.







Had a serious fish fry for breakfast/lunch. I couldn't bring myself to touch the fish head but Brandy came pretty close to having Ry kissin it!


this is where i sat a read a book....ahhhhh!




We even had the boys singing and doing dishes together.


Here are the kids warming up by the fire after playing outside in the rain with their dads. For the sake of this being a family site I won't post the pictures of the boys playing basketball in the rain. Their shirts got a little heavy being so wet and all...so clothes started comin off.....i know..iknow...if your really dying to see them, i can email them to you :o) let me know!


Sunday we drove into the town of Ouray to check out some cool sites and scenery.


We ate like royalty for every meal. This kitchen had like 20 sets of different dishes, we ate with a different color every day.