Soccer lessons, taxidermy, and where we call "Home"...

Good news friends, I saw an advertisement for "The Hills: Season 3" just the other day! It looks like the season is set to start on March 24Th, so expect "Hills" viewing parties to resume at my house- 11pm on the dot- snacks will be provided. Oh, and I thought I'd mention, I also heard earlier in the week the Teen Vogue Intern L.C. (Lauren Conrad) just bought her first house in the Hollywood Hills for $2.3 Million... She's really doing quite well for being a student and an intern; too bad I can't be an intern at Teen Vogue too and get her stipend- I just might also be able to buy a house in her neighborhood. (In case you haven't caught on yet, I'm being completely sarcastic about the stipend she gets from Teen Vogue- I'm sure L.C.'s cashing it in through MTV). I often ask myself when I watch her show: Where was MTV while I was in high school??? I would have made a fabulous narrator for my OWN reality show.

Speaking of homes, Spencer's tried to amuse me in the last week or two on a couple of occasions and suggest that it's only been a few weeks since we've been living in the basement at his parents house- au contraire- make that 3 years this July. It's amazing how quickly the time has passed, and our stay here has been pleasant for the most part *, but I sense we're beginning to outgrow the space we have and I am beginning to get impatient with the desire to finally have a place of our own.

I think most of our friends and family members have always known that we've been living here in Orem with my in-laws, but maybe some people never caught on to the fact. Let me debrief. You see, a year into our marriage Spencer and I were still living in our lovely, little, one bedroom apartment in Provo. I liked our place, especially since it was brand new, but I HATED our neighbors and our ward. BYU College Wards are the pitts. There wasn't a day we didn't have neighbors knocking on our door begging us to come over and play board games with them because they were bored!!! We tried to get out of our contract early because we'd found 2 houses in Provo we were interested in renting, but we couldn't sell our contract until a month before it was set to expire. We certainly didn't want to renew our current contract because we'd be stuck in the 1 bedroom apartment for another year and we were expecting a baby in just a few months. Where would we have put the baby crib- the closet? By that time, the houses we were interested in renting had already been rented out to other couples, and we weren't prepared with any new rental options when our contract finally did sell- so since I was sick and preggers at the time with Noah, we decided to TEMPORARILY move in with Spencer's parents until after Noah was born and Spencer completed his Fall semester of studies. Funny how TEMPORARY has developed into ON GOING for us...

We intended to move by December or January, but at that point, Spencer's dad encouraged us to stay until Spring and through Spencer's Winter Semester in college for that year. Once April arrived and the Winter Semester was over, I was itching to move out, but Spencer's dad suggested again we stay putt at their place and make ourselves comfortable while Spencer finished out his schooling. It wasn't a bad idea and it's been incredibly gracious of Les and Linda to let us stay and live with them for all this time, especially since we've been able to keep out of debt and set some money aside in savings and other assets. Spencer's been able to concentrate more on his schooling and the business that he and his brother share. He eventually dropped delivering pizza in the evenings and it's been oh so nice to have him home at night and even more at times through out the day.

Spencer finally finished up school last April, with the exception of one math class he had to wait to take this past October, but I was due in May to have Ian, so we thought we'd wait to move sometime this last summer after Ian was born. Again, I was anxious to move out and have a place of our own, but it dawned on both of us that while Spencer's parents still welcomed us to stay in their home, it was wisest to stay with them for another year while Spencer concentrated on work and until we heard back from the Graduate Programs he has applied to through out the country. Some people may argue the last fact and insist we should have moved, but with the way the housing market is right now, we wouldn't want to buy anything and be stuck with a mortgage on a house that couldn't be sold in Utah if perhaps we have to relocate to another part of the country by this summer for Grad School, and we certainly didn't want to rent anything since renting isn't an investment and we'd be bound to another contract. If I have to explain it to anyone who asks, I just tell them we're still living here while we're in a state of "limbo", meaning we really have no idea what will happen in another 6 or 7 months or where we'll move too.

Spencer's submitted all of his graduate school applications to the schools he'd like to go to; (last week he sent in his last app. to the University of Bowling Green in Ohio- it's his first choice school, but it's also probably the hardest to get into since its Creative Writing Program is one of the finest in the country. We just received word earlier today that their admissions department received all of his stuff and they're in the process of reviewing it). It may be months, possibly until May, before we hear back from any of the schools; at which point Spencer will have to decide, if he has been accepted to any of the schools he's applied to, which one he wants to enroll in- he's also hoping some of the schools will offer him an Assistance ship in Writing that will pay partially for tuition- with out an Assistance ship, he just might pass up the opportunity to study at a particular college; really it depends on how much tuition is because it will likely be YEARS before we'd ever be able to pay it all off based on a college professors meager salary. The baby is due in June, so we'll stick around till he's born and probably at least for a few weeks afterwards, but by August we should finally be moving! If Spencer doesn't get into Grad school, we will find a place to buy somewhere here in Utah County and settle in calling it home for sometime.

* Like I said before, our stay here has been pleasant- the first few months we lived here were a little difficult for me to adjust to, considering EVERY member of the Campbell family lived just with in 2 blocks of our current address; not long after our initial move in, family started to disperse and Spencer's sisters found places of their own and his brother's family made the big move to Uruguay. We live in the finished part of the basement- although, I must admit, in the last couple of months, some of our stuff has began to spill over into the unfinished portion of the basement. (I keep trying to downsize and get rid of unnecessary things or send stuff off to storage, but as our family continues to grows, we accumulate more and more things). We have two really LARGE bedrooms, one huge bathroom and one living room we use as our own. Our space is only separated by the staircase that leads to upstairs, (the main level of the house where Spencer's parents live), so if Noah ever becomes bored with us, he'll sit at the gate that we've put up at the bottom of the stairs, and call out to Grandma or Grandpa... after some time, one of them will hear him and they'll often ask if he can go upstairs to join and play with them. We share the kitchen and the dining room with Spencer's family; Spencer's parents have offered to build a kitchen downstairs in part of the unfinished basement for our own use but neither of us really mind having to go upstairs to share their kitchen. Usually, if I'm cooking a meal, I prepare enough of it anyhow to share with my in-laws. Linda (my mother in law) is rarely home during the day since she works over at the SCERA and Les (my father in law) despite being retired, is usually busy at work in his wood shop out side turning eggs or off on city assignments. I've had quite a few times, where it will be three or four days I haven't seen either of my in-laws because either they or myself have been busy- our paths rarely cross unless we mean to intentionally. We really have quite a lot of privacy living here- possibly more than what we had while we lived in our apartment complex down in Provo.

Noah's developed quite a unique and very personal relationship with his grandparents, for which I'm grateful. It will be difficult for Noah to move and leave behind his grandparents, especially his Grandpa Campbell of whom he's grown quite close to. The following is a picture of Noah wearing Grandpa Campbell's work hat- he loves to get a hold of it and wear it!

Again though, despite the comfort of living here, I'm getting anxious to move onto somewhere new. I can't wait to actually use again those things we've kept packaged up in storage, especially my own kitchen stuff. I'm naturally a very impatient person, so the idea of our future being in "limbo" or just up in the air for right now is driving me crazy! I'll tell you what else is driving me crazy and making me completely impatient, it's waiting for the couch we bought a month ago!!! I'm more than ready to trash the couches we have currently and bring in our new sectional- my lack of patience thereof has caused me to call twice now in one week and pester sales people about the delivery status of our furniture, and apparently, if the person who helped me over the phone was correct, the new couches should be here sometime next week!

In the meantime, I've kept busy a few afternoons in the past week completely reorganizing stuff around the house. I call it Spring Cleaning. I spent an entire afternoon last week reorganizing my scrap booking and craft supplies. I'm sure if you'd seen my collection before you would have thought everything was tidy and in place, but the lack of organization has been driving me crazy for months; I finally decided to put everything into it's right carrying case or file. I would be ready to begin Noah and Ian's baby scrapbooks, but I still had yet, until today, to have the thousand pictures or so of the boys and our family vacations printed. I spent all afternoon yesterday trying to checkout of Walmarts Online Photo Center with the 2 thousand pictures I had sitting in my cart, but apparently after trying to checkout unsuccessfully and speaking with a customer service rep. for help, my order was too big for their system, so I was asked to downsize the order and buy my photos in in a couple of orders rather than just one. Oh the frustration!!! All I wanted to do was pay for my dumb pictures and have them speedily sent to my home so I could start scrap booking. Well, this morning, I emptied my cart, and began the tedious process of re-selecting which pictures of mine I wanted printed, but this time I made sure to keep my orders small. I was ticked at first I had to do this all over again- but I actually won in the end, because I used a little bit more discretion as to which pictures I chose to have printed and downsized my orders largely from 2 thousand plus pics to just a mere 900 pictures. It ended up saving me an extra $140 dollars.

Speaking of pictures, and lack of patience on my part, my digital camera I have at the moment is totally driving me crazy! It's a Canon- and it serves it's purpose, but I hate how long it takes to focus before taking pictures! My birthday's coming up soon, and I would love, love, LOVE to get a new digital camera- preferably something that is a bit fancier than a Canon and captures color better than the ordinary old digital cam. Any suggestions??? My dad has always had Nikon cameras and I know they're pretty fancy because he never let me touch them, but they always took amazing pictures. Anybody have any idea about the different Nikon models or price ranges? Also, if you could do me a favor, please hint along with me to my husband that I would love a new fancy camera for my birthday! Thanks.

So I finally dropped the hint this last week to Spencer that I wanted to go to San Diego sometime with in the next few weeks. I would drive there just myself with the boys if it were only a 3 hour drive, but I don't trust myself driving the 11 hours... I get bored if I'm the one driving long distances and I also get tired immediately. It would take me a week, of stop and go driving, to finally make it down to San Diego, where as usually if Spencer drives, we leave at 5 or so in the evening and we make it there by 3 or so in the morning. I've thought about flying, but flying by myself ain't so easy anymore with two babies and one baby bump on my belly. Anyhow, after some convincing and a little bit more I plan to do this next week, I think we'll make it down there in the next couple of weeks. I can't believe it's already been nearly 6 months since my last visit there! That's the longest time, aside from when I lived overseas in Portugal on my mission, that I've spent away from San Diego! I've always visited home nearly every 3 or 4 months.

We've been fairly busy these last two weeks. Before I forget, I must mention Valentines Day. Spencer and I didn't do anything incredibly special. I don't like getting flowers, because they just die, and I'm not a big fan of jewelry or chocolates, so Spencer gets to avoid giving me any of those sappy "ideal" Valentine gifts. He said this year my big gift was the leather couch sectional he just bought for us. (I know, I keep bringing up the couches, how lame am I, but I just thought I'd mention, I think Spencer's going to use this excuse about buying me couches 20 years from now on Christmas or Valentines Day). We spent that evening at the movies-we watched "Definitely, Maybe"- good movie overall, it was written and directed by the same person who wrote "Love Actually" and I LOVE that movie. We left the boys with their grandparents, Les and Linda took the two of them out to see that "Veggie Tales" Pirate Movie- Noah couldn't resist talking about pirates the whole next day! After our movie, we picked up take out from C.P.K. (California Pizza Kitchen) and ate it at home. It strikes me as being funny how when I was in high school or college dating someone, Valentines was such a big deal to myself and my peers, but now that I've been married for sometime, I don't feel like I need a specified holiday to determine when to be romantic with the person I love. I can be sappy or "love struck" any of the 265 days a year! Thus being said, Valentines this year was almost just like any other date night for Spencer and I. The boys got a super cool Valentine from their cousins, Luke, Jake, Daniel & Bella. They surprised Noah on Valentines morning and brought over some candy and two GINORMOUS Valentine balloons-











one love bug balloon for Ian and a Prince Charming Frog balloon for Noah. It really made Noah's day- he ABSOLUTELY loves balloons. It's a week later, and those balloons are still floating around the house. Quite usual; there's always one or two helium balloons of some sort floating around since Spencer's mom seems to ALWAYS keep bringing them home for Noah.

I finally went and watched "27 Dresses" with my mother in law and sister in law, Megan. I really liked it- it's a total romantic comedy. It reminded me of "Runaway Bride" and "My Best Friends Wedding"- two movies I can't resist watching if they're being shown on TBS.

Spencer's kept busy with work, and outside of work he's taken up two new interest- blogging and web designing his new Utah Jazz Fans Website that he and his friends share basketball comments on, and becoming stock savvy. Click here to read his temporary Utah Jazz Fans Blog while he's designing his actual website- if you're really a basketball fan and interested I'll let y'all know once the real website is up and running and what that URL is. He also just invested in some Roth IRA Mutual Funds last week, something he's been wanting to do now forever, so he delights himself once daily by checking out the rise and fall of the stock market. I'm still totally clueless about stocks and money investments- when he trys to explain it to me it's all just jumble- maybe that's because I spend the better part of my days conversing with a two year and the most we EVER talk about is our ABC's or counting.

Talking about counting, Noah's still quite intrigued by his numbers. He can count up to 16 and it ends there for now. I think his favorite number must be "9" because he mentions "9" at least 90 million times through out the day. In fact, I haven't quite figured out why, but he uses the number "9" now as a filler word in his sentences- you know, some people say "um" or "uhhh" as filler words- Noah uses "9". Kinda funny. I think he'll be an Engineer once he gets older because he sure loves to count and he sure loves to build. I was playing a game with him the other day while I was grocery shopping- I would start off by saying "1" and he'd say "2", then I'd say "3" and he'd say "4"; he's a smart little cookie and we kept counting on like that until we reached the number "16". A lady who was in line behind me thought it was so fascinating that for as little as Noah is, that he could count like that. He's getting a little bit better at singing the "ABC" song correctly and as far as colors- the only color he cares to identify for the moment is green. Everything is green to him.

He's had a lot more interest and he's been paying a lot more attention to his brother Ian. He actually even gets upset if Ian's asleep because he wants to play with him! They love sharing bath time together! I think Ian enjoys the water just as much as Noah does, because they'll spend a good 30 or 45 minutes in the tub playing together. Oddly the other night, Noah wanted to spend so much time with Ian, that when it came time to go to sleep, an hour after we laid them down, I found Noah had crawled into the crib to sleep with Ian. Now that Ian's semi-mobile and rolls all over the place, he'll do so in his crib till he's at the point where he can pull down the crib bumper and peer out to watch what Noah's doing in their room at night or in the morning before I've gone in to get them. If we listen by their door, we'll hear Noah carrying on all sorts of conversations with Ian and even Ian at times will jibber jabber back in response. It's too cute!

Oh, Noah's new word he's used and abused a lot this last week is the word "cool"- like as in "that's cool!". He thinks he's one cool cat when he says it- it's amazing how confident and prideful a two year old is sometimes. Another thing I've learned about two year old's- there's not a chance you can negotiate or reason with a two year old! NOPE, I've learned really it's their way or no way at all if you're trying to get them to do something. I mention this because this last Wednesday Spencer and I took Noah up to Murray for his first soccer lesson. Yep, that's right, he's now taking an 8 week course in soccer lessons for tots. It's actually a really fun program and the coach has more energy than I think I could muster up even if I had a full 24 hours of sleep. Noah liked the class, but he didn't care to do everything as the coach instructed he and his peers to do. I've decided he's sort of a "free spirit". It's an hour long class during which he spent half the time goofing off and or in tears because I took the pool noodle he stole from the obstacle course away and the other half he seemed semi interested. I don't expect him to be a soccer star from the beginning by taking this class- in fact I just hope it will give him some additional structure in his life and he'll learn to work and share with other young kids his age. It doesn't hurt that he gets to run all over an indoor soccer field and kick balls for an hour to exasperate some of his energy. It's kinda funny, because there are about 15 kids in this class- and they all range in age from 18 months old to 4 years. Noah's 2, almost 2 1/2, but he was the shortest in the class. In fact, he was even shorter than some of the other kids that were there with their folks, and these kids were too young to take part in the class! I know the doctors have always told me that Noah's short but I never really thought much of it until that day at soccer.

In the last week I've taken Noah and Ian to two different museums; sort of as a conscious effort to get them out and moving during the dull of winter. We visited the Aquarium that's in Sandy. In fact, admission is so cheap there, I just went a head and bought a year pass there. There are a lot of fish there to look at. Lots of trout and some salt water fish. Noah especially liked to look at the jelly fish in their tank. There's a few sharks there, and a few sting rays to pet. Overall, pretty disapointing compared to Sea World which I'm used to; in all honestly, the fish they had at this aquarium were all fish or sharks I could have seen if I went to La Jolla Shores beach in San Diego, but the fish in their aquariums seemed to capture Noah's interest for nearly an hour and that pleased me enough.

This last Monday I met my sister Celeste and her four kids and we went to the Bean Museum on BYU's campus to check out all of the dead animals that have been stuffed. It's actually pretty cool get to see these animals up close and see for yourself just how big they really are! In fact, when I came home, I think I told Spencer's mom that the Bean Museum is a much better place to visit if compared to Utah's Hoogle Zoo because the Bean Museum has a larger variety of animals to see and study. Best yet, it's free too! Who cares that they're dead! Above Noah's with his cousins Alec, Kirsten, Rayanne & Christian. I think Noah's short enough he could crawl through the bears legs!

Below I'm holding Noah up to a hippo- that's probably the closest I'll ever let him get to one! Noah got to touch for his first time, a real live snake! He's really been fascinated with snakes in the last month, so I imagined he'd love the chance to touch one there at the museum, but he was actually pretty timid. I could tell in his little mind he was a little unsure of touching it, I don't think he liked the feeling.

We went for ice cream at the Creamery afterwards. I love this place- I never go down to Provo, otherwise I'd be a regular at the Creamery. Anyhow, I also forgot how busy this place gets! Oh the craziness of having BYU students EVERYWHERE! Noah had a great time eating his ice cream and even Ian wasn't satisfied with just one or two bites of ice cream- he wanted it all!

I spent one day this last week at multiple doctor appointments. One for myself- just a pregnancy check up- the baby's fine- one for Ian- it was his 9 month appointment- apparently he's not quite as big as I've been telling everyone. In fact he weighed 23 pounds and 1 ounce- that's the 85TH % (still though, that's big compared to what Noah weighed at the same age- Noah was only 13 1/2 pounds), and Ian's in the 95TH % for his height- definitely not short like Noah. (I finally broke down this week and bought Ian a new car, it was just getting impossible strapping him into his infant seat anymore). He's been fairly healthy. Although, I think today he started coming down with some sort of bug cuz he's been coughing a lot and I haven't been feeling very well either. His first tooth finally came through last week and now he's in the process of cutting his 2ND tooth. He's been pretty easy to please through the whole process- in fact he's just been sleeping a lot! He still has a blocked tear duct on his right eye so his pediatrician suggested I schedule to have an Ophthalmologist preform a minor surgery to correct that problem. Ian was scheduled to meet with the Ophthalmologist this morning at 8:30 but when Spencer got him there, the receptionist apologized and rescheduled his appointment there on spot. Turns out the doctor had something come up and the receptionist forgot to call us and cancel Ian's appointment ahead of time. So frustrating, especially since we woke Ian up super early to be there on time.

The third appointment I had that same day was for Noah. It wasn't really an appointment, I just had to take him down to Utah Valley Hospital to have his blood drawn for a panel of Chromosome test his Genetisists asked to have done. I expected Noah would scream or at least cry quite a bit while the nurses drew his blood- especially since they had to draw a lot of it, but he was quite the brave one and didn't even wince- he charmed the whole staff of nurses in fact. We don't have the results back from the tests yet- I'm not really worried about the outcome because I believe the results will be normal, but I do have to be greatful that at least the Genetisists is testing to make sure everything genetically is okay with Noah. (You see, Noah has Hypotonia (it's partially a neurological condition) along with few other anomalies he was born with, and typically, hypotinic kids usually have some other underlying problems or syndromes; so far doctors haven't been able to diagnose Noah with any other problems or syndromes which really is quite lucky in his case).

Ian turned 9 months last week. He's getting so big, sometimes while I'm at church I wish he were twice his age so he could go into nursery and spare me the exhaustion of carrying him around along with the diaper bag and what ever else I might have in hand. I'm literally exhausted after carrying him around at church. Spencer can't help much during church by way of taking care of Ian because he's in the Sunday School Presidency and he's always teaching a Sunday school class and then he has to teach the lesson in Elders Quorem nearly every other 2 or 3 weeks. I'm beginning to worry a little and wonder WHAT IN THE WORLD I'll do once this 3rd baby arrives, since Ian will still be too young to go to Nursery. I imagine I'll spend most of my time out in the hall way.

He still isn't crawling- just rolls everwhere he needs to go. In fact, he even steam rolls Noah if it's a race between the two of them to get to a toy. The two wrestle- it's so funny to watch. Ian will still get up and rock on his knees, in fact he does PUSH UPS, they're the real thing and it looks like he'll crawl, but he's only leading us on.

He doesn't say much a lot of the time, but in the last week he has begun to say "Mammamamma", but only when he's frustrated or tired. He likes to jump for a long time in his jumper and he loves to get into Noah's box of cars; usually this will irritate Noah just a bit.

Okay, well I think I've caught up on the last week or two that I missed. I'm doing well, aside from feeling sick last night and today I've been feeling pretty good. My biggest problem is finding pants in my closet that will actually stay up on my waist without falling off now that my bellys growing bigger.

Below is just a random picture we took on Sunday when friends of ours came to visit- Sean and Monica just moved to Pheonix a couple of months ago and were up for a visit.