David's Visit

Well as promised, here are some pix from David's visit. At the beginning of December 2008, David's dad had a very serious heart attack. There was a Red Cross message sent to David and because of the seriousness of his father's condition, David's Company gave him 10 days leave to come back to Atlanta to spend some time with his family. David's dad had quadruple bypass surgery and has been recovering better than expected.

Bellah and I were able to travel out to Atlanta and be with David for the full 10 days. :o) It wax such a welcome break from this separation - it was a great Christmas present! It's just a shame it had to come at such a stressful time for his family.

Bellah and her cousins (Leah, Carlie and Nathalie - Suzie's kids) had a blast at Papa's house. They played ring-around-the-rosies a thousand times! That's one of Bellah's favorite things to do!

All Fall Down!! (Bellah, Leah and Carlie (laying down))

Natalie (standing), Bellah (to the right of Natalie), Leah (sitting) and Carlie (to the left of Leah - on her back)








Bellah had tons of fun playing with her other cousins Gage, Ethan and Sadie too! (Joyce's kids)




We went to an outlet mall near Atlanta and one of Bellah's favorite toys is the carousel. She could ride it aaaaalllll day!






Gage and Ethan were monkey boys - they wanted to climb on the carousel - Bellah thought they were soooo funny!

There's this place called Noah's Ark near Joyce's house - it's an animal shelter for rescued animals - but the typical animals. They had Emus and Ostriches and Tigers and Deer and Lions and all kinds of exotic animals. It was a really cold day, but Bellah love it!

That's Aunt Joyce and Cousin Ethan.

There's David!! The cage around the animals said not to touch them, that the animals can bite, kick, spit and other stuff. The llama seemed pretty tame - they had some llamas running free around the park - it was crazy!!!













Aunt Joyce had a coupon for Chuck-E-Cheeses so we all went there for dinner one night. Obviously - we had a lot of fun!! :o)











Daddy and Bellah had lots of fun! :o)







Bellah wasn't too fond of the game when the horse started to move a little - it kinda freaked her out. :o)




We had Bellah on this horsie, but it was lame because it was weight activated and she was too light to make the game register that she was on it. So mommy had to help. :o)


Mommy got on the horse with Bellah, but as soon as it started to move - well, she didn't like that too much. (See previous picture for details!)

We spent a little time over and Aunt Suzie's house and Bellah discovered Leah's Barbie computer and was captivated!

Bellah's eating a plastic egg that David, Carlie and I were throwing back and forth. :o)

Uncle Nate got a kick out of Bellah on the computer - her typing skills were phenomenal! :o)










So, now David is back in Iraq and we only have a few weeks left in this deployment. It was a welcome break to have David back in the states, but Bellah and I were happy to get back to our routines! Bellah enjoyed daddy, but had a lot of separation anxiety issues and took a long time to warm up to David. Hopefully when he's back home and Bellah's in her environment, she'll adjust better.

Merry Christmas everyone! We'll see you soon.

Love ya!

DB, JB & BB

Family Pictures

Holy Guacamole! It's been a while since I last wrote and soooo much has happened!! But, first things first: about two or three weeks ago, Bellah and I had some family pictures (minus daddy :o( ) taken by a lady in our church. We got them while we were in Atlanta visiting with daddy (details in a post to follow) and they were soooooo great, we wanted to share them with everyone!





These pictures were taken by Kam at a park that is just down the street from our house. It's litterally less than two miles from our house and we never knew it was there! It used to be an old farm that was donated to the city for a park. (Hence the donkeys in pictures below.)












Bill and Carlene just happened to be in town when I scheduled the pictures so they joined us for our session.







We got some great pictures! Kam (www.kamlingphotography.com) is very talented!! I saw pictures on her web site after I heard that she was a photographer and I was very impressed! Thankfully she's as good as her pictures and all our pictures look so professional without the price!!!!













This black and white picture of Bellah is one of the first pictures on her site - we are so honored!!








As I said, the park has donkeys and Papa Boyd brought some apples to feed the donkeys with. They were very nice and you could tell that people feed them often because they came right up to the fence! :o)



I can't believe we got this picture because we were all right next to Bellah making sure she didn't curl her fingers too much and get a chunk taken out! Kam is very good!


This is what it looked like around Bellah feeding the donkeys - she loved it though and we all had a great time watching her. :o)

Mimi and Papa Boyd and Bellah checking out the donkeys. There were two of them in this corral area - it was really cool - very Texas-y!! :o)

There was also a park area and Bellah and Mimi had LOTS of fun playing on that. Bellah wasn't in the mood to smile that day (go figure) so the slide pictures were really the only ones where she would smile! :o)

I've got some pictures from our trip to Atlanta that I'll post in the next week. David's dad had a heart attack two weeks ago (he's doing very well now) and the military let David come back for 10 days to spend time with him (Merry Christmas to us!), so off to Atlanta Bellah and I went. Stay tuned for more details! :o)

Love,

DB, JB, & BB

Well, it's been a while since I last posted - sorry about that! Things have been getting a little crazy in our house trying to prepare for the primary program, reupholstering chairs and breaking my laptop. :o( Here are some of the latest pictures of Bellah.

Bellah loves to put band aid on old owies and this is no different. Notice the careful precision as she places the "band-aid" on the problem area.

The dedication as she carefully maneuvers the... ummm.. noodle (yes, that's her dinner!) to cover the scar.

Almost there, just once more..... noodle....

TADAAAAA!! The spaghetti noddle band aid is complete! The scar will heal! Hallelujah!!! The operation was a success!!!!

So, I've grown tired of the old dinning room chairs that we have and the countless "accidents" Bellah has had on them. :o( I figured it's probably cheaper to reupholster them myself so I did a little research to figure out how hard it would be to do. (This was the first one - it's Bellah's chair.)

Thankfully, reupholstering isn't too hard or expensive. I decided to go with a nice dark blue to hide stains - then a thought from my childhood manifested itself - PLASTIC! My mother's a GENIUS! As a kid those chairs were kind of annoying, but as a mother who has to clean up after messy kids - it's PERFECT!!

So, not too bad! I am going to finish the last two tonight - I'm so excited!!! :o) And, Bellah has already broken them in! They work GREAT!!! Hopefully they'll last for a while! As you can see, Bellah thinks they are pretty cool. She kept trying to help me get the staples out and wanted to play with the nasty foam. :o( Yuck! Luckily I threw them out before she could get into too much trouble!

Life is going well - we only have 2 1/2 months left and we are SOOOO EXCITED! Luckily, we have a lot of activities going on in the next two months to keep us busy and hopefully help the time to fly! We'll keep you posted on the "after" party!

Love you!!!!

JB, DB & BB

Happy Halloween

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!  What a week!! With meetings and church functions and trick or treating, this week has flown by. (Yea!!!) Bellah and I have had a blast with this holiday!  This picture is from Bellah trying on her Halloween outfit right before the Fall Festival at church. (They didn't do a trunk or treat this year but they let the kids dress up at least - I know- Lame-o!!)

Bellah loved going around in her outfit.  In case you couldn't tell, she was little red riding hood. She and mommy were twinners this year! (Check out the last picture for my outfit.) She did the cake walk and came back with some little chocolate bar. She found her little friend Ian and ran laps around the satellite dish on the sidewalk - it was so stinkin' hilarious!!

There was some music at the Fall Festival at church and Bellah was a dancin' fool!!  We had some square dancers show up from Sun City (You know, the neighborhood that hates kids ;) ) and Bellah was hooked - I could not get her to leave.  It was 8pm and she was running around dancing and trying to get me to square dance with her too!!  I eventually got her to leave, but it was definitely pulling teeth!  I'm glad that she had fun - she loves going to church!

So, on Friday, Bellah's school had a Halloween Party, which really was come and see how much sugar your kids can eat before getting sick!  I mean seriously, do you really need to have parents of 2-year-olds sign up for, cookies and cupcakes and any other sugary substance you can get your hands on? Really - REALLY!!  But, I guess it's Halloween - I'll let her get high on candy once a year, I guess... :(

The lady in the orange UT shirt is her teacher Miss Heather .  I had woken Bellah up from her nap when I got there so she was a little clingy and unhappy at first, but then she saw the sugar cookies and got VERY excited! lol .... She has my sweet tooth. :o)  

So, Bellah and I decided to go trick or treating with some friends in the ward.  This little boy is Ethan (I know! Great name!) and he LOVES Bellah and she LOVES him too!  She is always talking about Ethan and Savannah (his little sister).  Ethan is a few months older than Bellah (His b-day is March) but they have a great time.  Kinda like Camden and Gage - a little wacky and get really hyper together - pretty crazy! :o) They are a trip!!

So, of course, in Halloween spirit, Zeta dressed up too.  And, how appropriate - a Devil Dog..... crazy little rat! :o)  j/k Zeta. ;o)

Since I hardly ever (well, never really) take Zeta for walks, I couldn't find her collar or leash, so after a few times of her trying to run and get candy from strangers too and running into garages, I had to ground her.  Into the stroller, she loved it - I know she did. :o)

Here's Bellah, after a house or two - starting to get the process down.  At first she wanted to sit in the stroller, but after the first house she was allllll about walking!! Too funny!!!

Here she is doing her thing - at first we did a few houses without porch lights on, but from what I understand, if your porch light is off - you don' t want trick or treaters.  But Bellah wanted to see. :o)

It was sooooo much fun watching Bellah start to understand what was going on.  We were with Ethan and Savannah and Jenny (the older daughter) was walking around Savannah and Sandra and I were kinda hanging back and watching and talking.  It was so cute to watch Bellah look and Ethan and Savannah going up to the door and getting candy in their bags and understand that she could get candy just by going up to doors too.

So there's Ethan and Bellah again.  Ethan was Elmo. :o)  Everyone loved Bellah's outfits - soooo cute and they loved Zeta's too.  :o)

Candy! Candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy, candy!!!!  A very happy Bellah with a sack full of candy.  At one point it was getting so heavy she kept dragging it!  So, we had to unload a little so that she could keep going! hahahahaha!!  We stayed out for an hour and a half!  The last 15 minutes were Bellah in the stoller because she was too exhausted to walk!  I don't think she's ever walked that much in her life!  It was awesome!!

And to continue the tradition of the coolest accountant -  we were allowed to dress up for work today.  In case you don't live in Texas, there's one thing you have to understand - Texans are crazy for football.   I mean, seriously crazy!  They go nuts over high school football- seriously!! They are also crazy about college football.  So, for those "too cool" to dress up, they wore their team shirts instead of a costume.  And Ginger, our receptionist, felt we might need a little intervention, so she wore a referee costume. lol! Soo funny!! :o)  And, of course, I was little red riding hood too.  Bellah and I were twinners! :o)   I didn't get a picture of us together (I know, I know) but Arien did, so I'm gonna harass her for the pix and I'll post it when I get it.

So, we had a really great Halloween week and we are so excited that October is over! One more month closer to daddy coming home! Daddy can take Bellah next year while mommy holds down the fort. :o)  We hope you guys had a great Halloween and we are soooo excited for this holiday season to come and go.  We have so much to do and so many people to see - it's going to be awesome!!! :o)  Take care and stay tuned for more posts - I love doing this! 

Love you!

JB & B

Pumpkin Painting :o)

So, a few weeks ago, Bellah and I got some pumpkins at the grocery store and this week we decided to paint them.  Obviously Bellah can't use knives and things, so painting was the next best thing.  So, we painted pumpkins - this first one is Bellah creation... my little Van Gogh!!

This next one, is mine.  Awesome, I know!! :o)  You can see Bellah's amazing creation in the background.

So, after painting the pumpkin, we had some paint left over and Bellah wasn't quite done painting. :o)  So, we decided to "think outside the pumpkin" :o)

The table was a hand-me-down thing and has been outside for a few years - so Bellah decided to spruce it up! :o)

We had so much fun - we'll have to do it again. Maybe next time it rains. :o)

Stay tuned, with Fall Festival/Trunk or Treat on Thursday and Halloween on Friday - we will have lots of fun pictures this weekend!!!! :o)

Happy Anniversary!

So, Saturday, October 18th, was our 5 year anniversary (I know!!) Since David is overseas this year we couldn't celebrate it together, but we did get gifts.  The first two pictures are of the gift I got for me and David.  As I was looking through ideas for a "wood" gift, I saw this plaque and I knew it was perfect!  

I was trying to get Bellah to hold it so that I could take a picture of her and the plaque, but as I was putting her hand on the bottom so that she woudn't drop it - it went up and hit her in her mouth: hence the teary-eyed Bellah in the next picture.  We have the plaque mounted above our front door.  I LOVE IT!!! :o) 

The next two pictures are what David sent me.  David went by the modern gift list and got me some new silverware! Ooooooooooooo..... It's a bamboo pattern.  So now, I have enough silverware for everyone in the family to visit, but only 3 people will be able actually stay in the house with us... sorry. :o/

My Precious...... Oooooooo, shiny! :o)

One of our anniversary activities, was shopping for some shirts for me for work(Kohls and JCPenny's were having great sales!!!).  While at JCPenny's, Bellah found an Elmo shirt that she just had to have! (And a pink, poodle purse :o/) :o)

And, a fantastic smile! :o)  I don't know why the picture turned out so blurry (stupid camera!!) but it was a cute smile so we had to share it.  Yes, I know it's sideways - but, hey people - I can only do so much! :op

Here we go, out to pick up mommy's anniversary dinner - Chili's... mmmmmm... :o)  I caught her as she was walking - she is not giving me the "I can't believe I have to take this purse - lame" look, because she picked it out!!!! Doh!! ;o)

So, Saturday morning, mommy was getting ready for the day and putting curlers in her hair - well, Bellah loves to play with my curlers - so while she was sitting on the sink in our bathroom, she decided to fix her hair like mommy.  She put the curlers in all by herself - precious!