We are moving for real...

I'm convinced that God was wanting to give us a little taste of Cali because this weather lately has been awesome, I'm also pretty sure he wanted all of our friends and family to get a little teaser of California weather and love it so much that they will for sure want to come visit us! =)

The last couple of weeks have gone like this for us:

packing, seeing friends/family, packing, cleaning, sleeping, packing, painting, oh and did I mention packing?

As much as I am going to miss Texas I am so ready to be in California and settled in my own house that does not consist of ANY boxes. This last weekend we had to repaint our apartment that we just painted only a mere couple of months ago because we thought we were staying here for at least a couple of years... God had other plans for us... but His plans are better that ours and we couldn't be more excited. (except for the painting & packing part) Don't I look so happy?

Besides getting ready for the big move we have had so much fun getting together with everyone before we leave. This last weekend we had our very last get together with our Small group from church. It has been such a blessing getting to know and love every person from that group. They have supported us and helped us grow as followers of Christ over these last couple of years.

How Cute is this little Beach Cake?

Our Small group minus a few...

Last night we had a ton of fun getting together with some friends to watch the Cowboy's game.... Wonder how many friends will invite us over to watch that in Cali?? I'll keep you updated on that... Micah and Justin hosted it and during half time they had planned out minute to win it games and boy was this entertaining! 

How cute is this poster? They went all out for this, they even had the legit sounds and everything.

The first Challenge was putting an Oreo on your forehead and then getting it into your mouth without using anything but moving your face. The first person to get 3 Oreos first wins! Guess who won?? Oh yeah you guessed it... Me!! Mom I know you are so proud!! Here is Jason (second place winner in this challenge)

This is the tissue challenge where you have to get all the tissues out of the box with only using one hand... Caleb let the Campbell team sown on this one... 

Unfortunately the Campbell's got second place in the minute to win it challenge.. we were beat by a whopping one second! Can you believe that!! Props to the "almost" Davidson's!

Caleb and I have been so excited about the big move but last week it kind of hit both of us that this is for real. I have been emotional lately realizing that I won't be able to just drive down the road to see our family, we cant just pick up the phone anymore to call our friends to go have dinner etc. I am not usually an overly emotional person but lately I have definitely found myself pretty emotional over the smallest things. Don't get me wrong I am so thrilled to be starting a new chapter in our life, it just I'm sad about closing this one. It's very bittersweet. My sister pulls on my emotional strings more than anything, she is more than just a sister to me and I care about her more than almost anything in this world. I worry about being that sister that moved away that she hardly sees. I want to be there for her as she grows up and I don't want to miss those big things in her life. I am going to miss all my family tremendously but Emily is my baby. I take comfort in the fact that technology is so awesome that we can facetime as much as we want, I'm still waiting for technology to be able to send hugs... maybe one day. Just pray for us as we are having to say these hard good bye's to all of our friends and family... 

Im going to leave you with a list of some things we are excited about and going to miss:

Things we will miss about Texas:

• Friends and Family
• Good ole Texas fried foods
• Our garage/storage (we have none of this in cali)
• Low cost of living
• the occasional snow days and getting to stay home from work
• Our Church
• Blue Bell Ice Cream
• Lack of traffic

Things we are excited about for California:

• Meeting new friends
• Trying new things like surfing, mountain hiking, etc..
• Enjoying outside activities without the heat
• Getting plugged into a new church
• Going on this adventure God has sent us on together
• Starting new jobs and growing in our careers
• Caleb starting a new job that he is passionate for and honors Christ

We will do another list after we have been there awhile and see how they match up!

Back to Blog-umenting again...

Don't tell me..I know I know.. I suck at blogging. I'm hoping you will bear with me once again as I try to enter the blogging world. It has been almost a year, yes a YEAR since my last post. I am just going to warn you this first post maybe kind of long...

 

By now pretty much everyone knows we are moving to California in a few weeks and I feel like this is such a big step in our life. The other day throughout all this chaos, otherwise known as picking up and moving your whole life across the country in only a few weeks, I decided I wanted to document all of this craziness. I wanted to somehow after all of this is said and done be able to look back and remember this change in our lives and how we were feeling. So for the next little while this blog will be my journal... that I can't loose in all the shuffle of moving. 

I am going to back track a little bit and fill you in on the whole reason we are moving. This summer has been craziness. Caleb first got a call from TOMS back at the beginning of June, we were at Summer Spectacular practice and I remember him standing in his little monkey suit (we were monkeys in the play) and the look on his face when he realized he was in the running for a position at TOMS.... PRICELESS. Caleb loves his job at AOA but his true passion isn't marketing for Orthopedics, both of our passions is to try and make this world a better place and while doing that spread the message of Christ. What a great opportunity he has been given to live out his passion while making a living. We are both super excited about this its almost surreal. 

For whatever reason before we were married I always had this feeling that we would one day live either in Africa or California. Which is completely crazy because at that time I had never even been to either of those places. We did go on an awesome mission trip to Rwanda, Africa this last year and Rwanda definitely still has a tight grip on our hearts but God has opened these doors wide open for us in California. Who knows maybe God has plans for us to live in Africa one day but for now without a doubt in my mind I know he wants us in California. Caleb went through almost two grueling months of interview after interview with TOMS and finally he was offered the position. It was so hard for us to keep all these interviews and the possibility that we maybe moving across the country a secret. We prayed and prayed asking God to show us if this was the right move for us and in numerous ways he has showed us this is what he wants for us at this moment. 

Since Caleb has accepted the job we made a short trip out to LA after much searching we found us the perfect apartment with the not so perfect price tag.... but we quickly learned there is no such thing as a perfect price tag in California. We have been overly spoiled our whole life to Texas real estate we just didn't know it. We are moving to a community called Playa Vista and we are exactly one mile from the beach! I didn't take my camera a long so this is the only picture I got of the place from my phone:

Since neither of us had ever even stepped a single foot on California soil we had no clue what to expect. In my mind I had envisioned all these hippies with long hair smoking funny things or the Real Housewives of Orange County type. When we got there we were pleasantly surprised at how at "home" we felt. I didn't see any people with long hair, tied-dyed shirt with a leather vest, peace sign necklace around their neck or anyone smoking funny things. Don't get me wrong I know there are some out there but thats not what the whole state of California produces, thank goodness. 

After our trip we have been busy getting everything in line for us to be able to move. Which to say the least has been super stressful. More so on Caleb than me, which if you know either us at all you know Caleb is very much the stresses/worries way too much type and I on the other hand usually do not worry/stress enough. We have had a couple of bumps in the road mainly with breaking our lease at our apartment... I think if they could they would want me to give them my first born child just because we are moving out before our lease agreement was over. But you know the devil has to try to get you somewhere and the devil knows the best place to get my husband is his pocketbook. If you have a chance if you could just pray for us as we prepare to move, that things will go smoothly and to not let the stress get to us. Prayers are greatly appreciated. 

Well this post is already entirely too long and I have about a 97 things and counting on my to-do list that needs to be done. 

I'll leave you with a picture of us from our first trip to Cali..

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

As you all know I absolutely LOVE Christmas, so of course I have had my Christmas decor up for a few weeks now, but I am ecstatic that everyone else is finally getting around to putting theirs up too!

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving this year got to spend some good quality time with our family & friends back home. Which it seems like lately we haven't been able to get back as often because we are just so dad-gum busy! We of course went on our traditional Black Friday shopping trip EARLY Friday morning. I just have to say I was really disappointed in the sales/items out this year. I think this is the first year that we didn't get most of our Christmas shopping done. I dragged my brother and his girlfriend with us and I dont think he will be joining us again in the near future, I dont think he enjoyed waiting in line outside in the cold as much as we do haha.

Over Thanksgiving break my friend Ashleigh got me hooked on these crafting blogs. I am so addicted now! Thanks Ashleigh, as though I didn't have enough to do already! Plus Caleb is  Suuuupper excited about this because he now come home to glitter, glue and whatever else I have been trying to craft that day all over the kitchen floor. We have both decided we definitely need a bigger place! A girl definitely deserves her own craft room =) Not just the kitchen floor! So hopefully when we have to move out in May we can make that happen ( hint hint Caleb).

School is beginning to wrap up but I cant even think about that because of all the craziness we have going on during the month of December. Its not even December yet and we are already almost completely booked! We have so much with Christmas parties, All the Christmas' with our families & getting prepared for Rwanda we have no down time.

Please remember to keep us in your prayers as we continue to prepare for Rwanda. We need each and every one of those prayers as we prepare, travel and throughout our journey there. We will keep you more up to date as the time gets closer. You can read more in depth about our mission trip at www.rwandahope.blogspot.com

Long Time No see

Hello to all the blog fans, if there are any anymore since we haven't been on here in months! A lot has happened since then! Ill just hit a few of the highlights of what has been going on in The Campbell world since March!

I have had the opportunity to be a summer nanny this summer for a wonderful little family, whom I grew to love so much over the summer! I had 3 little ones, Emma who is 4, Cooper who is 3 and Milo turned 2 over the summer! So, yes they did keep me very busy, but I wouldn't have had it any other way! 

Over the summer I finally invested in buying a camera I have had my eyes on for awhile! I took a photography class in the 8th grade and ever since then I have always had a passion for photography. I did a lot of research and I decided on the Canon T2i. I could not be happier with it! I am still learning and try to get everything figured out but I have had lots of fun playing with it! I am even going to photograph a wedding this Saturday.

Here she is! =)

Over the summer I turned 21! Yay, Caleb threw me a wonderful surprise birthday in downtown Fort Worth with lots of friends! We had a great time! Caleb and I also hit a milestone on Aug, 8th! Our 1 year anniversary! We went all out, and took a trip down to Cozumel, Mexico!! We absolutely had the time of our lives there! We stayed at Cozumel Palace, and we can not say enough about this place. The staff was phenomenal and couldn't have treated us better! This was a first class hotel all the way, we didn't have to lift a finger from the time we walked in till the time we left!

Here are a few pics from our vacation:

Too many photos to post on here but click on this link and you can see many more! 1 year Anniversary!

Right before we left for our vacation I found I got a Resident Assistant job here on campus! We are very excited about this because essentially it means free rent for us! I love this new job and hope I have a wonderful year here! I also have officially started my Senior year at UTA! Yay!

We also have some exciting news, Caleb was re-baptized on Labor day! He has been talking about this for a couple of years now and just felt when he was baptized the first time he was so young and didn't quite fully grasp the importance of this life changing decision! So he went and had coffee with the leader of our small group and he called me and he said he didn't want to wait any longer, so he would be getting baptized the next day! This meant so much to me to be able to be there and watch my husband be baptized!

We also have some exciting news! The Lord has called us to be part of a mission team in Rwanda, Africa at the end of this year! We are asking that you all keep us, our team, and all the lost people we will reach in Africa in your prayers! My brother is also going to joining us on this mission trip! We have created a new blog that we are going to keep everyone updated on our preparation before the trip and we are going to try to also blog during the trip!

Here is the Rwanda blog http://rwandahope.blogspot.com/

We love you all and we are very excited to go and spread God's love!

Short Week!

     This week seems so short! Probably because we played hookie on Tuesday. In case you are wondering, Yes, we went to ANOTHER Chick-Fil-A Grand Opening! This makes it our 5th opening! I know people think we are crazy but they are so much fun. Except this one... For some reason this opening was just not as well put together as the other previous openings. The last opening we went to has laser tag, human hamster ball, video games, they played movies, DJ,  etc. This one only had a DJ, and not the best DJ at that. Not to mention it was freezing cold, and they usually let us go inside to eat dinner, nope not this one. This will probably be our last opening for awhile. They are just get more and more popular. The first opening we ever went to I arrived at 6 pm the day before and was number 93. Now you have to get there at 6 am the morning before the opening and there is well over 100 people already, so they do a raffle. So your never guaranteed a spot in the top 100 anymore. We got really lucky this time, I got number 3 and Caleb was number 101, but some people dropped out which bumped him up into the top 100!!! Our friends Courtney and Trey weren't so lucky, but courtney was a trooper she stayed they whole night anyways! For all of you folks that don't know what goes on at these grand openings we took a few shots just for you!

Courtney and Cregg in our tent!

Grouchy Caleb from lack of sleep the night before! haha

All the tents set up in the parking lot

Eating our dinner! 

We love chick-fil-a!

     Last weekend we got a chance to babysit my adorable little cousin Jocelyn! We love her soo much. We think she is the cutest thing that has ever walked the face of this earth. She is growing up so fast, and is learning so quickly! We had a blast with her, and cant wait till next time we get to watch her!

She LOVES the fridge, every time we opened the 

fridge she ran straight for it!

So stinkin CUTE!

We gave her some new sunglasses!!

     This weekend isn't going to be much fun for me, I have about 286672638762 things to do for homework this weekend. Its midterm time, thats for sure! This weekend I have to write an 8 page midterm, take a spanish test, got watch a play write a  page paper over that, write another 2 page paper for sociology, write 2 journals im behind on, go buy a book and read it before monday, and study for another midterm which is also on monday!!! It makes my head hurt just thinking about it! Well I hope everyone else has a better weekend than I do!

xoxo,

Jenna & Caleb

How many more days till summer again??

     Yep, 79 more days till my chains are broke and I am free from this semester! Woo Hoo, Spring break is just right around the corner... I have a love-hate relationship with spring break. I love that I get a nice week long break, but its just long enough to tease me with what summer will be like, then BAM I have to go back to school again! Plus in college most teachers give you a heavy load of homework over the break (which i think should be illegal!).

     We had a really nice first Valentine's as a married couple! Caleb must have took the hint about Piranha's Killer Sushi, because thats exactly where he took me! You can't beat a meal there! Just talking about makes me crave it! He also got me tickets to go see the Bodies Exhibit in Dallas, I've been wanting to go check this out it looks so cool!

     This last week was a rough week for my family. My brother participated in the awesome program that the Drug Free Greenville puts on every four years, Shattered Dreams. This is where thy simulate a drunk driving car crash in front of the high school. The crash ends up killing several students and injuring others. The care-flight, police, the funeral home, Ambulance, and firefighters all show up and treat this as if it were a true crash, while all of GHS and GCS students watch. My brother was selected to be the "drunk driver" in the crash a few months ago. We never understand the impact this would have on all of us when he was asked to taken on this role. They do not leave out one detail in this crash they even used the jaws of life to cut Evan out of the car. After the cut him out the police put him through numerous test to see if had been drinking. They handcuffed him and took him to the hospital to draw blood, then he ended up in jail. He actually stayed there for a majority of the day. After they let him go, he and the rest of the students that participated where taken to a camp where they were not allowed to have type of communication with friends or family until the next day, giving the effect as if they are truly gone.

     The next day, Wednesday, they had a funeral for the victims of the car crash in the GHS gym. After the funeral was over the students are then reunited with their family. This is a very emotional experience because drug free Greenville does such a good job in making this so real, not leaving out any details. They don't stop here either.

     Thursday, they held a trial for the drunk driver, my brother, this was probably the hardest for my family. Evan took this to heart too, he had a REALLY hard time with this. I was so proud of him though. He was great! It was so hard to see your little brother in jail clothes and in handcuffs. Especially not being able to touch him or hold him while he was hearing all of this horrible accident he caused and took the lives of so many just because of his stupid decision to drink and drive!

     This was an awesome experience for all it gives you the experience of what a drunk driving can do without having to truly lose someone you love! Here are a few shots from this week!

You can see Evan sitting in the front seat waiting to be cut out of the car, while his friend was flung through the back windshield.

Evan leaving the scene in the police car, headed to give blood at the hospital.

The nurse checking his blood for alcohol

Being cuffed and taken to jail

Morgan Milliard was pronounced dead at the hospital

The funeral at the High School, bringing in Morgan Milliard

Mom and Evan reuniting after having no contact for 24 hours

The beginning of the trial

Listening to the witnesses 

Hearing his 90 year sentence!

Mom listening to her son being convicted of Drunk Driving

Evan coming back in after being convicted, reuniting with our family!

    

    This experience has forever changed our families lives, and I'm sure many more. Teaches us that one little mistake can ruin your life forever! I am so glad this was just a "simulated incident" but it could so easily become true with anyone deciding to get behind the wheel after drinking! So I pray and hope that you all will be responsible and not drink and drive! 

     On a lighter note, it is suppose to snow AGAIN tomorrow! Let's hope that it does and they cancel school and we get a snow day again! =)

XOXO,

Jenna & Caleb

    

Snow in Texas!

     That's right SNOW in Texas! Not just a little snow, but the most snow EVER in one day in the DFW! We were so excited, us Texans go crazy when we see snow, and everything shuts down! No school! Caleb had no work! woo hoo! We are enjoying this day, lounging around the house and trying to stay warm!

     Yesterday along with our friends we took full advantage of the snow and built an igloo!! This was the first time we have had enough snow for this, and let me tell you I have a much greater appreciation for igloo makers now! After 4 hours in the cold snow I thought I was going to die! But we couldn't give up till it was built! Here's a few pictures and when I say few I mean ALOT!

Our Friends Trey and Austen

Snow Angels!

Snowball Fight!!

snowwy love! =)

Building the Igloo

Someone made a snowman out of a car!

I bet the owner of the car wasn't to thrilled..

Out friend Austen's hands turned purple, but he was a trooper

he warmed up a min and got back out there and kept building! 

We're Done! Finally! =)

The Parking lot, I bet its never had this much snow!

Someone made use of our igloo over night, They turned it into a smoke hut!

They left this for us! How nice of them..

Caleb relaxing in the igloo

Igloo is starting to collapse from the snow melting! =(

     We had so much fun building the igloo! We LOVE snow days, but I think Im a true Texan because now after I have had some fun, Im ready for it to melt and bring on warm weather! haha. We made a video tour of our igloo and you can find it here Igloo Tour!

    We hope yall had as much fun in the snow as we did! Be careful out on these slick roads if you decide to go out!

XOXO,

Jenna & Caleb