Proud Mama

I'm so dang proud of my kid! He's such a smarty pants...which is one of the reasons I've enrolled him and Maddie in the new Charter School coming to Tooele County. Woo hoo!
So Jaden nonchalantly says to me this morning, "Oh yeah, mom, I received this certificate at school on Friday." He says one other person in his class got one, too. Not sure how well it will shows on the computer but basically he scored in the top ten percent nationally on his Iowa tests.

New Years in St. George

We headed down to St. George again this year for New Years. As you can see from these photo's, the weather was fantastic! We went to this new innovative park that had all sorts of futuristic toys to play on. There wasn't one thing there that you'd see at a regular playground. Below is Jaden with his cousins, Brielle, Karissa and Emily.

Brooklyn and Maddie are playing around on this flying thing that pivoted with how much weight you put on it. It was lot's of fun but very difficult to maneuver...

We had Val's church building reserved for some of the time since there was quite a few of us down for New Years. Tracy's family, Guppy's family and mine all went down. Combine that with the Southern locals (Joel, Val and the parents)...we had a large crew. Below is Jaden.....some of his girly cousins got a hold of him and went wild with a new straightener someone got for Christmas.

 

The siblings...... Joel, Valerie, Guppy and Deb. Tracy's family left a day early and didn't get to see this cool park. Bummer!

More church games. Here is Val and Guppy going up against in other in "GUTS".

More guts. Yes, they got me to play...even in heels!

Maddie, Allie Beckett, Kenna Ruud and Brooklyn Ruud.

This was one of my favorite things while we were down there! Papa made his famous french fries. He would make these while we were growing up and they were the absolute BEST!!! I can still taste them now....

This is me and Kally.....probably being all giddy and excited to go and see the movie Twilight! (Yes, again).

Well folks, here is it. My baldness. My friend pointed out to me that I hadn't really chopped off my hair since the 6th grade. Holy cow, has it really been that long?! Here's a short story as to why I haven't chopped it since then: When I was in 6th grade, one of my friends gave me their head lice! (I know, gag me omedeus.) My mom had a VERY hard time trying to get all the eggs out of my hair (go ahead, dry heave here....I am) because my hair was so thick. So she cut it off. And I mean she WHACKED it! I was my brother Ben's twin....exactly. I promise, I was Ben's clone. Not that that is bad, it's just that I was at a critical important time in my life when everything mattered and I had crushes on every boy in the 6th grade....but I was suddenly one of them. Tumultuous, I know.

 

Holiday Schtuff...........

Here is Maddie and Jaden with their new PJ's Christmas Eve.

 

Maddie had her Winter dance recital and did such a great job! There to support her were Grandma and Grandpa Brown, Grandma North, Me (manning the camera) and of course, Jaden! We had to record it for Dad to watch later because he had to work that night.

Me on my 31st birthday. It's absolutely disgusting that time marches on and aging is inevitable. In this picture I'm celebrating because my sister, Tracy and her family came over and sang me the coolest rendition of "Happy Birthday" you ever heard. It was totally rockin'!

Back from the warm California Sun...

Well, our nine days are up already and I miss it! Holy crap we had such a great time and a million memories were made! We left on Friday, Nov. 21st and went to St. George to stay with Joel and Kally. Kally had gotten us girlies tickets to "Twilight" and can I just say I LIKED IT?! There is so much discussion to be had on the movie, both good and bad but that will just have to wait for another day.
Anyway, Allie Beckett (my sister, Tracy's daughter) saved up her money all summer long and bought her theme park entrance passes and was able to join us on our fun trip! This has been very hard in deciding which pictures to post because I took over 600... whoopsie! This first picture is just outside the theatre in St. George right after we saw the movie. Kally and I talked all the way home about the parts we liked, disliked and what parts they should have expanded more on. We totally dissected the movie bit by bit...it was a blast!

Our first day in Cali we visited the San Diego Zoo. I must admit that it was not the greatest thing in the world, to me. I was actually kind of bummed out that it was so boorish. So I was mostly glad we didn't save this park for our last day of vacation.



Maddie wanted to get her caricature done. They guy who drew her was amazing! Her favorite part of the drawing is her braces because the guy put dollar signs where the brackets are.

Jaden was so excited to get his face painted. He walked around the park all day will cool attitude.

After the zoo we drove to Laguna Beach just as the sun was setting. Don't even get me started on our bad luck trying to find a place to park in that teensy town and all of the claustrophobic little streets! But the kids had fun splashing in the ocean so it was totally worth it.

Our next day was spent at Universal Studios, which we absolutely loved! Maddie and Allie are about to be swallowed by jaws...

I want to be barbie!

Next was Sea World where the prices for cotton candy exceeded Disneyland! Grrr. Anyway, Jaden loved the place where we (I shouldn't say "we"....the kids and Matt) were brave and touched disgusting creatures. Below is Jaden holding a starfish.

Maddie and Allie were quite scared touching the sting rays. They are actually called bat rays because the actual stinger had been cut off, luckily. The girls were WAY braver than I was, but still were a tad leary of them. They said they felt slimy-ish and jello-like.

We finally got to spend three whole days at Disneyland and Disney's California Adventure Park. By far, those were the highlights of our trip! If anyone know's Jaden, they know he LOVES Star Wars and especially Darth Maul. So WO WAS HE when he was chosen from the crowd to participate in a Jedi Training Camp. And lucky him, got to have hand to hand lightsaber combat with Darth Maul himself.

Me and Allie seriously almost cried when we first saw the castle. Keep in mind here, this was my FIRST trip to Disneyland. The only other castle I had seen was in DisneyWorld in Orlando. I can't even count how many times I've been to those parks because I lived there for a few years. Well, upon seeing this castle, I just about was disappointed. It is miniscule in comparison with Cinderella's castle in Florida! But really, how can you be disappointed in any way shape or form if you're in Disneyland? So the shock was short-lived and me and Allie soon grew to love it...especially at night when all the pretty lights came on.

This was how our first day at Disneyland ended. It began to rain about 7pm and the park didn't close until midnight. I literally felt soaked through. My toes were so soggy it was gross! But we decided to brave the rain and continue going on every ride we could. We actually were happy because when I checked the weather before heading down to Cali, it was supposed to rain for four days straight. And this was all we got the entire time we were there. LUCKY!

Here is Maddie in line to see Minnie. She was lucky because they cut the long line off just after her!

Look how pretty all the lights are on "Small World". I don't think I will ever get sick of this cute attraction...even though it's just a simple boat ride!

You can't go to Disneyland without riding in the teacups!

Happy Thanksgiving to us! My favorite thing in the world....the $7 turkey leg! Yep, we spent Thanksgiving day at Disneyland and enjoyed every last second of it.

Last but not least, our favorite, FAVORITE ride, "The Tower of Terror!". I bet we went on this more than ten times! It was a great trip and as usual, we are glad to be home, but sad we had to leave. Long live Disneyland!!!!

 

Happy Haunting!

Ok first of all, I have to give a big "THANKS" to my friend Allison because she was smart enough to tell me how to add more than 5 pics at a time..........
Here's Maddie and Jaden last night. Jaden was Dracula, or a Vampire, or Edward or whatever...
Maddie was all decked out in her jammies and curlers. Earlier this week we went to a Halloween party at my sister in law's house. Here I am being a "Flapper Dancer" from the '20's.

Jaden Potter!

Maddie the disco dancer. Groovy!

Sister's Weekend Part 1

So it's been two years since we've had a sister's weekend. This was LONG overdue and quite possibly much too short but it was well worth it! Tiff had us over to her place in Salt Lake from Friday to Saturday. Below is a picture of all of us (and Ben! He stayed for a bit and then took his kids back home) who came. We missed Mom, Tawnja, Guppy, Tran and Kally who weren't able to make this one...bummer!
Back row: Ben, Brenda, Karmen, Nadja.
Middle: Deb-T, Tracy, Valerie, Jen.
Front and center: Tiffy who is 11 weeks pregnant!

Me, Tracy, Val and Tiff started off sister's weekend by running a few errands before the others arrived. We found this awesome place that had killer deals on modest shirts and dresses. It's a small warehouse in Salt Lake by Tiff's house...the DownEast Clothing line. We seriously found shirts for $2.50 and dresses for $7.50! Everyone else arrived about 5:30 that night (coming from Idaho). We had artichokes for dinner, which is a Campbell delicacy! Then everyone brought food to share. Karmen made our traditional avacado sister's night dip and Nadja brought some Danish abelskiver...just to name a few. We had so much to eat but that's part of all the fun! We kept going back for more again and again...


One or our new traditions that Tiff came up with, was to bring "our favorite things" to sister's night. We each bought, made or came up with something to bring that we considered one of our favorite things...and gave one to everyone in the group. It's a little bit hard to do because we have a $3 per person limit so it doesn't get too expensive. That was SO MUCH FUN! This first picture below is of Brenda. She brought some dried apples that she had made, and a roll of very pretty scrapbook paper.

This one is of Karmen who had made handmade greeting and birthday cards, and her favorite candy bar, an Idaho spud!

These were some of the shirts we found at DownEast! What a find, Val! We were all excited about these... Notice "Charlie" in the background about to take a bit of Val's head.

Ok, since I'm computer challenged, I can't figure out how to make my pictures smaller. It will only let me put 5 pictures on per post so you'll have to go down to the next post to see the rest of the pics from sister's night.

Sisters Weekend Part 2

Here is Jen with her cute baggie of goodies. She put in some dove chocolates, some breathe right nasal strips (totally funny!) and some cherry carmex. Jaden snores so I'm going to try the nasal strips out on him!

Here's Tiffany with her tootsie rolls, some shiny lipgloss and some lotion for our purses. She and Tracy were so funny because they kept 'apologizing like a Campbell' for being too practical in their goodie bags. SILLY! That was the fun part...seeing everyones different ideas. Plus I was totally out of lotion...


This is Tracy with her bottle of Calcium pills for all of us. The funny thing about this was that we all gasped in happiness about getting this! We small boned too-skinny Campbells are starved for strong bones and it was funny to see how excited we all were about these!

Nadja made the cutest witch hats that she painted up and decorated herself. We all squealed with excitement to get a cute Halloween decoration!

I had made up some wooden blocks and decorated them up for everyone there. The 'C' is for Campbell. Each sister there had the letter for her last name to display somewhere at their house (G for George, B for Beckett, R for Ross, H for Hansen, M for Memmott, P for Pope etc...).
We stayed up til just after 2am on Friday and then crashed. Saturday we had orange rolls for breakfast and then headed off to Salt Lake Temple for a lunch and a session. There is something special about being in the temple with your family. All the sweet little old temple ladies kept commenting on how we all looked alike and was amazed at how many sister's we had.
SISTER'S NIGHT ROCKS!