Top Ten: U.S. Trip

I feel as though some sort of explanation is in order as to my long absence from this blog. Life has been very busy these last months, it's true, but there's more to it than that. I've been struggling to work through some things recently, and I'm unsure how much is appropriate to share in a public forum such as this. This blog is mostly just a "chronicle of days," snapshots of the Campbell family's life, and there's certainly nothing wrong with that. But, like most of us, I would imagine, we usually take pictures only of the good things, the fun things, the things we want to remember. We don't pull out the camera to capture the cluttered house, the defiant children, the pile of dirty dishes in the sink, the embarassing language blunders.

So... how to capture the good as well as the bad, the difficulties as well as the joys... this is what I've been trying to figure out lately. But that will really have to wait for another post. For now, as the title of this post indicates, I need to recap our recent trip back to the United States.

And how to do that in just 10 pictures? Our six weeks there were filled with so many fun memories. We saw both sides of the family, spent some time with Hillsboro (our sponsoring church), visited with many supporters, including the Somerset church in Pennsylvania, and met up with many friends, both new and old. I limited myself to just 10 pictures to highlight our trip, but I'll try to fill in the gaps with a little commentary along the way.

We began by spending a few days in Michigan with my parents (and my sister and her family who happened to be there, too!):

Celebrating Christmas in Michigan with Nyanya and Babu and the cousins... highlights included the obligatory pic in front of the tree, opening presents (my parents gave us a Wii -- yay!) and tearing down and eating the gingerbread house.

Seeing the model train display at the Henry Ford Museum.

Indoor playgrounds galore! Jungle Java in Detroit, the Monkey's Treehouse in Nashville, Playdate PDX in Portland, and of course, McDonald's Playplaces!

Lots of fun in the snow, in both Michigan and in Pennsylvania -- besides helping build this giant snowman, Alex got to go sledding one day with Daddy and Michaela!



From Michigan, we headed south to Nashville, where we spent about a week with the Hillsboro church. A big highlight was the time we got to spend with Hillsboro's new preacher and his family, the Hopes. They have two kids about the same ages as our two boys. We love them already, and we're so glad they are at Hillsboro! We also took a day and drove to Huntsville where we met up with Rick and Marinda Trull, our team coaches, as well as some of Rusty's extended family who live in the area.

From Nashville, we flew out to Portland, OR to spend a few days with Rusty's sister and nephews. Robbie and Johnny are seniors in highschool this year, and they are both starters on the varsity basketball team. We were able to go to one of their games while we were there, which was a lot of fun! We also saw several friends and visited my grandmother (my dad's mom) who lives in Portland.

Cousins ("My big cousins," as Alex calls them!)

From Portland, we flew back to Nashville, and then began a roundabout trip back to Michigan... driving first to Virginia to visit my "oldest friend," Michelle, and her family... then to Pennsylvania to spend some time with our friends Jimmy and Natalie and the Somerset church, also one of our supporters... then finally back to Michigan, stopping along the way to have some down time as a family at the Kalahari Resort in Ohio, home of the largest indoor water park in the U.S!

Stephen liked to float on his back in the giant wave pool while Alex and Daddy had fun on the waterslides!

Back in Michigan, we enjoyed almost two more weeks with my family before we headed back to Portugal.

We took a day and drove to Coldwater to visit my other grandmother (my mom's mom).

There was lots of grandparent time. Stephen liked to use Babu's chest as a ramp for his trains.

Music time with Nyanya... she would play from this book of kids songs she's had forever, and the kids would dance around the living room, playing with noisemakers or pretending to be a choo-choo train, or any number of other things, as the songs dictated. The kids also enjoyed finding the candy hearts that Nyanya would hide around the living room... like an indoor Easter egg hunt.

Celebrating Alex's 5th birthday with his cousins... he didn't actually turn 5 until the end of February after we got back to Portugal, but how often are we going to be able to celebrate with his cousins who live in South America? He wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese, so we did that one evening as part of his present, and then opened presents and had cake and ice-cream at home the next night.

Christmas in Portugal

This post is long overdue, but with all of our traveling these past few weeks (we have been in the U.S. since the beginning of January, but will be returning to Portugal soon), it has been difficult to find either the time or the motivation to blog. As a way of "catching up," I thought I would post a few snapshots that capture how we celebrated Christmas in Portugal this year.

Interestingly, our family has now celebrated Christmasses on 4 continents! And, although this was not our first Christmas overseas, far from our families, it was our first Christmas abroad since our kids were born. So, we focused on beginning some of our own holiday-related traditions, and of course we tried to make the most of our "European Christmas," since it will likely be our only one!

We kicked off the month of December with a cookie decorating party for all the team kiddos.

Everyone got a big Christmas tree to decorate.

Stephen just wanted to eat his cookie!

We went to the zoo one Sunday after church to see Pai Natal (aka Santa Claus), and Alex had his face painted.

And Biruk and Efesson had their faces painted too!

After spending the afternoon at the zoo, we enjoyed some of the Christmas lights in downtown Lisbon before heading home.

Rossio Square

Every street had some sort of lighted display.

Carousel ride in Rossio Square

Alex had a school Christmas party one Saturday.

And that same day, there was a Christmas party in the evening at the Lisbon Church. Alex's Sunday School class did a reenactment of the birth of Jesus. Alex was one of the wise men.

We had a yummy dinner, and a table full of delectable desserts. In the front is Jesus' birthday cake. It was topped with sparklers that they lit as the grand finale to the evening!

We invited Jordan to spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with our family this year. She helped Alex decorate his gingerbread house.

And here is the finished product. Obviously, we let him have a lot of creative license. (By the way, he aquired the big bruise in the middle of his forhead when he walked into a pole on the street because he wasn't watching where he was going.)

Watching "The Polar Express" before bed. Our friend Regina also joined us for Christmas Eve and Christmas Day this year.

Opening stockings on Christmas morning.

Alex got a new raincoat and some rain boots for Christmas this year. He was so excited to wear his new gear to walk to school!

Christmas Dinner with the Reeses, Jordan, Regina, and another friend, Linda. It took some work, and some creative thinking on my husband's part, but we were able to cram all of us into our tiny kitchen around an actual table for a nice sit-down meal of roast lamb, mashed potatoes, spiced peaches, and all the other trimmings!

All in all, a very Merry Christmas!

Top Ten: Arvore de Natal (Christmas Tree)

Here are a few pictures of our Portuguese Christmas tree:

We put up our tree on Thanksgiving weekend. It cost us 13 euros at Aki, our local "Home Depot" type store. Even if we only use it one year, I figure it was worth it!

The boys enjoyed helping me decorate the tree. Stephen wanted to put all his cars on the branches!

Straw ornaments from IKEA

One of our souvenir ornaments from Lisbon. We made it from a small porcelain trolley car that we bought at a souvenir store downtown and a piece of twine.

Our homemade ornament project this year was ornaments made from metal bottle caps. Rusty and Alex collected metal bottle caps all over Morocco when we went there in October. After we got home, I washed them; then we picked out some of the best ones, Rusty punched holes in the caps, Alex glued the foil stars inside, I attached the twine for hanging, and voila -- bottle cap ornaments for the tree!

We made 16...

... and each one is different!

With some of the leftover bottle caps, I made this garland to go around the bottom branches of the tree.

Rusty's Christmas train is in storage in Nashville, awaiting shipment to Angola in the near future, but Spencer, one of Alex's toy trains was happy to serve as a replacement this year!

The finished tree... and hanging on the wall behind, our stockings, also from IKEA (love that store!).

More to come soon about how we celebrated the holidays in Portugal. Hope your Christmas was merry and bright!

Thanksgiving, 2010

This year, our team celebrated Thanksgiving all together for the first time. We had a traditional turkey dinner with all the fixin's, hosted by the Meyers. It was a lovely day... feasting... friends... and a time of singing praises to our Father to bring the day to its close.

Enjoy the pictures!

Teague's first turkey! It was dee-licious!

Irene the Turkey was bigger than 4-month old Sophia Reese. She fed our team for 3 meals!

The guests who shared our day with us.

Our team

Of course there was lots of pie! I think there were 12 pies in total, all homemade of course.

Me and the littles, reading the Berenstein Bears Thanksgiving book.

Team Retreat

In November, our team had its first retreat. We left Lisbon for the weekend and traveled out to the farm where our family stayed one weekend last April. We spent three days together reflecting on how far we've come, looking at where we are now, and dreaming about the future. There was a very cool slide show, created by Teague, which recapped our team's history over the past 8 years, from when the seed for Angolan missions was first planted until now. It was good to look back and see how faithful God has been through the years to bring all of us to this point.

Of course, there was time for fun as well. We spent a gorgeous day playing with our kids and picnicking in a park in Évora, played Settlers of Catan and a special "Angola Team" version of Scattergories, and took a walk around the farm, which ended with a tractor-ride for the kiddos, a special gift from our hosts:

When I think back on the retreat, the chorus to the song, "The Family of God," always pops into my head. Incidentally, we sang this song during our Sunday morning worship time, and I think it recaps beautifully what we did during what I hope will become an annual event for our team:

Sometimes we laugh together, sometimes we cry,
Sometimes we share together heartaches and sighs.
Sometimes we dream together of how it will be

When we all get to heaven, God's family.

The Angola Team, November 2010

How far we've come...

How far we have yet to go.

Top Ten: First Annual Angola Team Halloween Party

When you celebrate the holidays overseas, you often have to get creative in the way you celebrate them. Certain holidays are uniquely American (like Thanksgiving)... others might be known, but are not as hyped-up or celebrated in the same ways as they are in the United States. Halloween would fit in this category. We decided to have a Halloween party for our kids to give them some of the experiences of dressing in costumes and trick-or-treating. Our family hosted the party this year. We spent most of the week leading up to it getting ready... hunting for pumpkins, decorating our apartment, deciding on activities for the kids, and planning the menu.

Rusty drew the faces on these oranges.

Pumpkin lumiaries... they were so pretty! 

We planned several activities for the kids to do during the party. First, we painted pumpkins. Interestingly, large, round, bright orange jack-o-lantern pumpkins are hard to come by in Portugal. We ended up using smaller pumpkins that were either pale orange or speckled green and white. We did manage to find one big round pumpkin which Teague carved during the party so the kids could see what a real jack-o-lantern looked like. Efesson and Biruk had never seen one before!

Alex painted a very colorful pumpkin!

Teague's jack-o-lantern

Stephen was so fascinated with the pumpkin-face and the candle inside.

We played a game where we gave the kids balloons with candy inside, and they had to figure out how to get it out. It provided several minutes of very loud entertainment.

Trying to pop balloons (Stephen just wanted to play with his.)

Then, we decorated Halloween treat buckets (we used old yogurt tubs) and had the kids go trick-or-treating in our apartment. An adult went in each room and closed the door. Once they were ready, the kids went around knocking on the doors and saying "Trick-or-treat." It worked pretty well, and they all went home with full treat-buckets!

Decorating treat buckets

Trick-or-treat!

Surprise! The Tosta Mista Man (Grilled Ham-and-Cheese Sandwich Man) was behind the bathroom door. Rusty came up with this costume all on his own the hour before the party, and the inspiration behind it was the Powdered Toast Man from "Ren and Stimpy."

All the kids in their costumes. From left to right, we have, a gorilla, a fire chief, a train conductor, Winnie the Pooh, and a fire lieutenant. Our littlest participant, Sophia, was an adorable zebra, but she was asleep at the time of the picture.

And that's how we celebrated Halloween in Portugal this year!

There are lots more pictures on Facebook... just look for photos of Rusty or me.