Archives for December 2008

In our family, the first gift is always on Christmas Eve.  I was told by my wife in our first year of marriage that it was going to be Jammies.  Every time evidently.   This year, TJ caught on and looked at his brothers and said, “Hey, it’s jammies.”  Kinda takes the surprise away, but my wife says that’s not the point.  It’s just what you wear on Christmas morning- which is chosen by Mom.

This was the first year that shannon and I did not give each other jammies. We piled all our money into one family gift and wore old jammies.  That’ll be the next post.  (Shhh.  I think my wife bought herself some and didn’t wrap them though.)  

Anyway, here’s our beautiful children in their new pajamas.

Well, we are less than 2 weeks away from going to officially start the process of adopting Becky and Billy. Since my sister, brother in law, and their 3 boys have no family to speak of in Uganda, they drove from Kampala to Jinja to join their soon to be neice and nephew on Christmas. What a great gift of family for both the Crawford Clan and the soon to be additions to the Berrytribe.

They took some crafts and some books and a calendar of us that we gave at Christmas last year to share with them. So fun. Thanks for making the drive Brad and Alisha. We are jealous and anxious for the chance to hug them ourselves. You can read their experience on the Crawford blog here.

While looking for stuff for my wife for Christmas, I found this steal of a deal at Longs 2 days ago. Hurry up.  You better get there. You don’t want to miss this.  Check out that mark down!!

Grandma and Grandpa came to town with Santa.  Grandma brought her gingerbread making stuff and I had a house kit, so that made for a night of fun with the boys a few days ago.  Here’s our kitchen bakers hard at work.

Shannon has two sisters, Caitlin and Erica, that also share the Campbell name of her dad  They are 12 and 13 years younger than Shannon, so since we started dating in high school, Shannon and I have been dating or married for their entire memory.   During those years, we have spent some time with them every Christmas.  Initially, it was with their Dad too.  But ever since Shannon’s dad died about 10 years ago, we have kept the tradition alive.

They now are college graduates with full time jobs and getting together is no longer easy (requiring time off jobs, plane flights, and expenses), but it was super to have them join us this year again.  We so enjoy spending time with them and we have great memories together.

So, last weekend we got together and on Saturday we spent the whole day together for our “Campbell Christmas”.  We had planned to go to the new aquarium at Legoland but found out that it was closed, so we made alternate plans.   We had breakfast, caught a movie, grabbed some java, and then made a ceramic art project together on a whim in a shop at the mall.  It turned out to be tons of fun.  We bought a large plate and divided it up into sections and each of us painted part of it.  It’s now being fired in a kiln and we will pick it up after Christmas. 

Once we were done, we cruised over to panera for dinner, home to make some hot chocolate, and then headed to cruise some neighborhoods for Christmas light.  Tons of funs.  Here’s a collage of some of our day.