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