Happy New Year's Eve!

I can't believe another year has come and gone. I guess time really does fly when you're having fun. Oh boy, what fun we've had. I have to admit that I was hesitant when we added Kian to the family, but I can't even remember what life was like without him. Have two little ones to entertain us does provide twice the fun. Kyle and I are truly blessed to have Jackson and Kian as our children.

As our family grows, we try to start and uphold traditions that the four of us can enjoy for many years to come. Mostly we focus on the holidays, but I realized that we haven't started a tradition to ring in the New Year. I've been asked many times what we plan to do for a celebration this year and my response is, "I'm going to bed the same time as usual. It'll be the new year when I wake up." The little boys have a hard enough time staying up until 9pm, let alone even thinking about letting them up until midnight. I can only imagine how long it would take them to regulate their sleep schedule. I suppose we'll have to come up with something fun to do when they get to a riper age. Right now the boys are hanging out eating some popcorn and watching IU play in the Insight Bowl game. Go Hoosiers! If only that were an easier name to pronounce. For now, Go White Team!

Another great moment...Jacob turns 21 tomorrow. Happy Birthday Bo! What fun we had while you stayed with us over the summer. I look forward to your visits in the future. The boys sure enjoyed your company as well. Jackson loved playing soccer for what seemed like hours on end.

Happy New Year to all. I've got to run and start the bedtime routine. Kian just attempted to have a sip of Daddy's whiskey and was denied. I haven't heard so many consecutive "no's" yet! I'm sure he's making his father quite proud.

Santa's GOTTA Be a Hard-Drinkin' Man

Or, else, he's a stock owner in the company that manufactures Valium.

Now, before you deride me for calling Santa Claus chemical-dependent, I'm not implying that he'd ingest these relaxation agents before, or during, his yearly trek around the world delivering joy and cheer to the world's children. That would be bah-humbuggy of me to make such an insinuation, and anyone who knows me knows I'm the embodiment of the holiday spirit!

Ok, you didn't need to laugh THAT hard.

Anyway, seriously, I feel like I'm only now regaining my sanity and feeling of calm after running around this holiday season. It's not that I mind it, at all. I love to get around to see our family. It's just that the wham-bam-thankyouma'am-iness of it all leaves something to be desired. I really wish everything could be spread out over, say, 2-3 weeks wherein we could spend a full day or more with each group of people; and, we could get around to seeing all those with whom spending any time during the holiday season is simply impossible. But, to get that kind of time, we'd have to live in a country that actually values the time families should be spending together (someplace like, maybe, Sweden, eh, Jason and Gunmari?) rather than the good ol' U.S. of A. where we wonder why family dissolutions are at an all-time high and the social ills that stem from a lack of a strong household seem to be MYSTERIOUSLY sky-rocketing. Yeah, reeeaaalll tough to figure that out. But, I'm not here to make a socio-political commentary...just giving everyone the old holiday update.

My apologies for the diatribe. We did, despite my cryassing, have a wonderful Christmas. We did get to spend some well-deserved time with both sides of our family, and everyone truly enjoyed themselves. Even if we are still dealing with Jackson's inability to slightly adjust his sleep schedule (and, the unseemly aspects of his attitude that creep up along with that), it was well worth the travel and the visits that seemed to end all-too abruptly.

Hello from Jackson

In an effort to make this a true family project, Jackson is going to share some photos he has taken along with some of his narration.




Kian is sad, because he don't has a nose.



Aunt Ashley is giving Uncle Frank bunny ears. Mel is doing a funny face. Ashley has nice hair.



This is my daddy. My daddy is a bat.





This is daddy fighting a picture. He is going to fight a pirate. And he is fighting a dog.





Mel and Papaw Hop say they are friends. Mel giving Papaw bunny ears.




Aunt Ashley is saying she is nice. She is sitting on couch.




Nana Hop is doing number 2. She's sitting on the couch. Nana is showing her teeth.


Some words of wisdom from the little guy:

I hope you like my pictures. I'm going home to sit on the couch and then I saw icing on the other side when I got my shoes off. I going to sit on the couch and read a book and there was a gingerbread man inside it. And the gingerbread man ran through a dragon , Wiggles, Barney, Thomas and Barney and Elmo and doggie and Bob the Builder and Thomas. Nana loves me. Um, Nana love everybody. Um, then Nana throws pies at me and I throw pies at her. The arrow go up and down so you drive on the road. Um, you click on .com and you see the color which color you want to color on. And when you try to um drive on the road, don't let a car with sharp teeth on top crash into you. That's all my story. And the gingerbread man ran away from you. That's all.

My first post!

Yeah for me! I finally took the time to contribute to our family post. After all, this was my idea and the guilt has set in. Also, Kyle has already posted 3 times and I can't let him get ahead...right? What a fun way to keep everyone in the loop on some of the funny things that happen at our household. We are always good for a funny tale from the boys, and fortunately this allows us to share them with more folks.

I sent along some recent photos of the boys to a friend of mine and received the response that the boys look like they are best friends. I could not agree more. To sit back and watch them interact melts my heart at times. I love it when Jackson gives Kian some "lovin" and looks up and says, "Isn't he so precious, Mommy?" How sweet? I know we should be couting our blessings that they get along so well at this age, but we only hope that they don't grow out of it too soon. I only hope they are still the best of friends when they are all grown up and out of our house. Take for example yesterday. As Kyle mentioned in a previous post, Jackson was out of daycare yesterday forcing Kian to fly solo for the day. Kian could not have been any happier to get home last evening. Michelle mentioned that Kian was grouchy after lunch and couldn't figure out why. One of the older kids mentioned that Kian was most likely missing Jackson. Sure enough...as soon as he saw Jackson last night he ran over and hugged on him. Again, how sweet? Give that they are together near 24/7 outside of sleeping, being away from Jackson for about 9 hours was enough to upset Kian.

As fun as it is for me to sit here and ramble, I'll save some for a future post. I'll have to get Jackson in on the action as well. He received a Fisher-Price digital camera for his birthday and has been snapping up some action at home. He and daddy uploaded some pictures the other night and we'll have to share some of his talent.

Until next time...lc

Take your kid to work day

Yesterday, Jackson was sick so I took most of the day off to stay at home with him. Laura and I do our best to keep the boys out of daycare when they're sick, because the last thing our provider (Michelle) or any of the other kids' parents want or need is a fast-spreading infestation of the kiddie gunk that seems to strike all to easily this time of the year.

Unfortunately, there were a couple of things at work that I just had to get done, and couldn't pass along to one of my co-workers. So, I decided to pack up some coloring books, crayons, an L-Max and games, and a canteen (Jack got a canteen for his birthday that has his name on it, so this was not something we planned to need for extended periods without water or anything) and take Jack to the office with me.

We got in super early, and there was only one person on my side of my floor in her office. I said something to Jack as we were walking to my office, and he responded - obviously noting how silent the floor was at that hour - "SSSSHHHH, Daddy, we have to be quiet." I replied we didn't have to be quite, it was just like that because no one had yet arrived.

So, we sat in my office and he colored me a couple of pictures, played his video game, and was generally a good boy. He started getting ansty after about an hour and a half, so that's when I broke out the big ammo - letting him draw on the dry-erase board in my office. He loved that, and that bought me the additional 20 minutes I needed to finish up the work that kept us in my office and allowed us to roam the rest of the building. I had to burn some CDs for one of the lawyers here, and the burning station is 6 floors up from me, so we took a little trip.

One of the benefits of working in an office with a lot of women is that they all wanted to talk to Jack and smile at him and dote all over him. Never a bad thing, for either of us (sorry, Laura)! He got several comments about his Spider-man shirt he was wearing, to which he often replied, "Well, guess what!?!? I have on Spider-man boxers, too!" Which was the truth.

So, at the end, he got to see a bit of what his daddy does on a daily basis, he got some lessons in flirtation, I got my CDs burned, and all was well. I think that was a successful adventure.

Compare these two pictures. Could this possibly be the same little guy?!?!?!?

I'm having a VERY difficult time wrapping my mind around the fact that Jackson's been a fixture in this family for four years now. Four years!

Happy birthday to our big boy! May your next four years see as much growth, as much advance, and as much love as your first 4 have.

Mom and Dad love you to the end of the earth. We hope you'll always love us to the moon and back.

This is our first blog

Hola. We've started this blog in the hopes of providing a portal into our lives for our friends and family members with whom we may not communicate as often as we'd like. We're sure, within a month or two, we'll be kicking ourselves for not having updated this thing as often as we should; but, hey, that's the way things are. Deal.

Read on, enjoy, comment, call us on our crap (probably, mostly my crap), but most of all, bask in the glory of all that is this branch of the Campbell family.

Love,

Kyle