Park and more

On President's Day we took the kids to Comprehensive Park to feed the fish/pigeons and play on the playground, followed by dinner out at Macaroni Grill.

Jacob took on the challenges of the playground.  He was very careful but not afraid.

Since I had my camera I captured the memory of the kids in our black van.  Brandon said, "Why are you taking our picture?"



On Valentine's Day, Emily put on a puppet play called "The Animals' Valentine's Day."  Like she did for her Thanksgiving Day puppet play, she scheduled a show time and passed out invitations.

Since I had my camera handy I had Brandon take a picture of this cozy scene.

And I'm throwing this in just because Nicole is adorable!

Paul was resting after work one day and Nathan wanted to join him.  By the way, in this picture he has on his Batman PJs, Batman socks, and the Batman cape from Grandma.  He loves to do that.

This is out of order... but here's the shark box I helped Brandon make for his valentine exchange at school.  It won the award of "Most Dangerous."  There's a red fin on top but the camera angle shows only a sliver of it.

Emily's Creations

In case you didn't know, Emily loves to make crafts.  She has for a long time, only now she's getting old enough that she can do most or all of the work herself instead of mostly watching me!

 Here's a pumpkin with a yellow felt pumpkin face she made, and a blanket we sewed together for her little lifelong friend, "Baby."

 She stitched around the star with yarn so it would show on the back.

 She made this little Oreo turkey at Activity Days (I think), a semi-monthly girls activity sponsored by the Church..



This one isn't crafty, but is nevertheless creative.  She wrote a Thanksgiving puppet play and made invitations and posters to advertise it, and performed it on Thanksgiving.

Jacob is 2!

He LOVES this motorized Thomas train.  (So does Nathan!)

 

Still holding the train!

 

Emily made him that paper plate boat.

We love our Jacob!  We're so glad he joined our family two years ago.
 
Here you see all his presents.  We keep it simple for a two year-old.  He was really  happy with it all.  By the way, that shirt was Nathan's.  Nathan loved it so much and didn't want to stop wearing it even though it was getting too small, so I suggested he give it to Jacob for his 2nd birthday!  It worked!

Welcome, Nicole!

Nicole Jill Campbell joined our family on Sept. 27, 2010, at 12:23 a.m.  She was 9 pounds, 1 ounce, and 20.7 inches long.

 A few minutes old

 Her siblings met her when she was not quite one day old.

 Two days old

 Six days old

 3 1/2 weeks old

 5 weeks old

 7 weeks old--her passport pic.  I think she was upset that I forgot to fix her hair for the picture.

 7 weeks, 2 days

7 weeks, 2 days

Bear Party for Brandon

Brandon turned 6 on June 25. He had his first party with friends invited, and his first party that was not combined with Nathan's birthday (June 22). He decided on a Bear theme. I had my kids decorate the living room with all their teddy bears. We have a lot of teddy bears in this house!

When the kids arrived, they made Honey Comb necklaces.

We put all the bears on our big blanket and played "flying bears"--like the parachute game kids play at school. The bear who stayed on the blanket the longest was the winner. We played this twice and they loved it so much that we played it again while we were waiting for the parents to pick them up at the end.

Pin the heart on the bear!

Hot dogs and fruit salad for lunch.

Brandon requested "strawberry blondies" for his birthday cake. They're bar cookies made from strawberry cake mix with chocolate chips in them. Paul turned it upside down out of the pan to make the bear face with candy and cupcakes as accents. Cute!

After eating cake and opening presents, they played "pass the bear" (hot potato). When a kid got out, he got his favor bag.

So, the party was a success. Fortunately our landlord let us use his empty lot near our house for parking. And fortunately Paul was off school to help me pull it all off!

My Nathan is FOUR!

He wanted cupcakes with chocolate frosting. We had some leftover custard so Paul poked a hole and put some custard in the middle. YUM!

After cake, Grandma Winterton called to talk to Nathan!

First present opened: a guitar made by Emily!


"My tools!" (It almost sounded like he'd seen them before, maybe when he was shopping with me...)

He already knew the names of these "Thomas & Friends" characters: Troublesome Trucks! One of them giggles when you press the button. He played with these the most after opening presents, I think. Jacob is going to love them, too. He loves Nathan's other trains and loves to push buttons to make noise! Maybe it helped that he was taking a nap during present time.


Big fan of Thomas.


Matchbox truck that he can load his little cars into. He loves this. I knew he would, which made it so much fun to get for him.


The final present was for both Brandon and Nathan: a hot wheels race car track (Thrift Store find!). Brandon's birthday is on Friday.

Emily enjoys the race car set and the tools, too. She asked why the boys get a different kind of toys than she does. Specifically, she's never gotten anything like that race car set before. She just got pretty things for her birthday that don't really do anything. (She loved them, though!) I said, hmm... yeah, people give boys and girls different types of things, but girls are lucky to have brothers and brothers are lucky to have sisters so they can play with each other's toys! Would Brandon and Nathan play with Barbies and My Little Ponies if they didn't have a sister? She smiled. I always figured my brother was lucky he had sisters so he could get away with watching Little House on the Prairie with us! (But I don't think he ever played Barbies--did you, Dan?) And I had a ball playing with his electric train set with him, and his race car set, walkie talkies, etc. If I had kids of all one gender, I hope I'd get my girls some cars and trains, or my boys some dress-up clothes.

As a four-year-old, Nathan graduates to a simpler booster car seat, and today at lunch he asked me to take his booster seat off his chair. I asked him why, and he said, "Because I'm four!"

Summer is here!

School ended June 17. Yay!

Brandon got a kindergarten diploma and graduate's cap on the last day of school.

The day after that, we headed for the beach!

The next day was really hot, too, so the kids cooled off in the back yard.

Emily asked me to help her decorate her scripture case to look more girly. Think we succeeded?

Baby GIRL Campbell

So, I never posted on this blog that our new baby is a GIRL. We found out on May 12. Emily and Brandon were pretty excited to hear the news. They'd both been praying that it would be a girl--especially Brandon, who said there were already too many boys and that Emily needed a sister. :)

Since we found out it was a girl, we've begun the task of searching for a name. I got a bigger baby name book this time--The Complete Book of Baby Names. It claims to have the "100,001 best baby names." Well, it seems to me that a bigger book of baby names just has that many more RIDICULOUS names for a child! I think choosing another girl name is a harder task than I'd assumed! If you have any good name ideas, feel free to comment.

For a while after I got pregnant, I felt pretty nervous to have another baby. I thought, if only I had boundless energy and never needed any sleep, I'd do fine! I wouldn't be cranky, I'd meet all my kids' needs... but alas, I'm human. It comforted me a bit to read in my 2008 journal that I was scared before I had Jacob. I didn't know how I'd handle four kids. (And now look at what a pro I've become! Eh, heh...) I do remember being really tired sometimes when Jacob was still really little.

But back to the more recent past. My nervousness mounted and I really wanted relief. I knew if I talked to Paul about my fears that I would be strengthened. So, the other night I told him all about how worried I was that I would be irritable with the kids and be generally unhappy for a while, and I didn't know how I'd get them all ready for the bus stop in the morning, etc. And he did strengthen me. In fact, from then on, I've felt really different about it all. Now I feel I can just wait and see how it'll be without stressing over it beforehand; I feel even more grateful for this amazing gift of another child that God is giving to us; I trust that God is the best helper and that if I ask, He will help me do this! I know that things will be okay. And who knows how many more babies, if any, we'll be blessed with after this. So after she's born, I want to try to relax and soak in the joy of having a newborn. And another GIRL! (I'm so glad I saved a few of Emily's baby clothes! It'll be so fun to use them again!)

Negative!

From time to time, Jacob still gets liquid-filled bumps. When he was 12 months, the doc assumed they were still MRSA. She figured he was a constant carrier of the bacteria. But at his 18-month checkup, the doctor (a different lady) took three skin tests to see if Jacob was a MRSA carrier, and all came back NEGATIVE. Now that is good news!

More Spring Happenings

Jacob signs "more" over and over when he sees food on the dinner table. It's a definite improvement over the screaming he used to do when he wanted food!


June 5, Paul made this lovely Japanese ensemble called mosubi: rice, fried spam, and eggs wrapped in seaweed. Everyone liked it.

On April 10, Paul ran the Ie Island half marathon. What a stud.


On May 25, Emily's 2nd grade class performed a hula dance for the Asian Pacific Heritage Month assembly. She's on the right. They made their own yarn leis in class.

For the past few months, Emily has participated in Taiko drum club (see last month's post). The girls in the club also learned a Japanese girls' dance and performed it at the Asian-Pacific Heritiage Month assembly. They were so cute in their kimonos!

Emily also participated in Music Club this year. Here she is during a performance for parents.

Nathan's preschool class had an end-of-year program. They sang songs and received certificates. He didn't feel like singing the songs for the parents, but he didn't mind posing for this picture with his teacher, Ms. Melina (right), and Ryoko-san, the teacher's assistant, who also taught them monthly lessons on Japanese culture.

The kids love seeing big bugs.

On Saturday, June 5, Brandon lost his second front tooth!

The same day, I gave Brandon a shorter haircut than he's had before. He initially was asking me to shave his head (no need to comb!). I showed him pictures online of kids with really short buzz cuts to be sure he knew what he was getting into, and he changed his mind and asked me just to give him a trim, but Paul and I talked him into getting a shorter cut. We all love it, including Brandon. (And it is easier for him to comb.)