Our Christmas 2009

Ok...it's been a while since we've posted, but such is life! We had a great Christmas! I'm really sad that it's over as it's been so fun to see the girls get so excited about Santa Clause and Christmas in general. We were lucky to have Nick have a 5 day weekend for Christmas, which was really nice since last year he was on call for Christmas! Here are some pictures from our Christmas.

Here's the Sunday before Christmas with the girls' Christmas dresses. Kayley was not having a good morning and it reminded me of myself when I was younger and being upset about doing things like this at times. So, I only got Cora to smile, who we can always count on a smile, but I still think they looked pretty in their dresses.

Then here are some pictures a couple of days before Christmas of the girls in their Santa Claus hats. I love them in their hats as they are actually adult hats and are way big for them! It's fun! They also did some good silly faces.

And I'm just cheesy as I love to coordinate the girls outfits any chance I can! So here are their coordinating Christmas Eve outfits. I only got a few without Kayley's cheesy grins...and of course Cora had to do a cheesy grin as well!

For Christmas Eve, the Carles came over and made cookies for Santa Claus with us. It was lots of fun...the girls enjoyed of course having their cousins over and also eating all the icing they could eat! They also put out carrots for Rudolph that night as he definitely needed it trying to get through the snow we got Christmas Eve.

Here's the girls hanging up their stockings Christmas Eve. Growing up my Mom made all of our stockings as a kid and I still have mine today. So to carry on the tradition I've made all the girls stockings, as well as Nick's. Also as a tradition we would always have father/child interviews with the video camera while hanging our stockings Christmas Eve. I'm going to try to upload the videos I got of the girls after this.

Here they are with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads Christmas Eve night. Even notice that Kayley wanted to sleep with the Night Before Christmas book that night (it's up by her head.)

Christmas morning was lots of fun to see them open their presents. Cora had asked for a new baby, which she got and loves it dearly. Santa Claus also got her a new Einstein doll so that Mommy now longer has to hear about the fights between Kayley and Cora over Kayley's Einstein doll. Kayley had asked for a Rainbow Brite dress, new Dorothy shoes that sparkle, and a Dorothy doll. She got all three, except Santa thought Kayley was extra special and instead of just getting her a Dorothy doll, she got the whole crew, Glenda, wicked witch, lion, tinman, scarecrow, Toto, and Dorothy. Kayley was pretty excited and grateful to Santa for getting her all of them! She also learned what the term "White Christmas" meant that morning. I had asked them if they were so excited that it was a white christmas? She didn't know what that meant so I told her to go look outside and told her that it was because of all the snow outside. She said, "I thought Christmas was just red!" Now she knows that Christmas can be white too with the snow! Kayley also got a Little Einstein's learning laptop computer. When she opened it, she was excited that it had a "dot com" like Daddy's (pointing to the mouse on the computer)! We got a chuckle out of that, but she later corrected herself and told us it was a mouse and that you could look up "dot com" on her computer now since she has a mouse like Daddy's mouse. It was cute! It was a great Christmas and it was so much fun watching the girls open their presents.

Later that day we headed to Nick's Mom's house for Christmas weekend and had a great weekend with the Bell family. We froze our rears off at Silver Dollar City, but the girls loved it and were excited to go one more time for the year. I didn't get any pictures though as my fingers would have frozen off if I did it was so cold! It was a great Christmas!

Kayley hanging her stocking

Cora Hanging her stocking

Merry Christmas

Make a Smilebox scrapbook Enjoy our Christmas Card for this year and we hope you all have a great Christmas! Love, the Bells!

Christmas in July

Well, we will get to celebrate Christmas twice within the next year. Once in December as normal and we will get a special Christmas in July with the addition of our 3rd child. We are 10 weeks along now. Baby is doing well and thankfully there is only one in there. I was feeling a lot more movement and I've already started to show as early as 10 weeks (which is abnormal for me as even with Cora I didn't start to show until at least 16-18 weeks), so with those symptoms as well as my family history of my brother and sister being fraternal twins and my mom's sisters also being fraternal twins, the doctor decided to do an ultrasound to make sure there was only one. We would have thankfully accepted having twins, but I'm a bit relieved!! :) When I told my mom I was pregnant and thinking it was twins, she just laughed! Then when I told her it was only one, she was like, "well, somebody has to have them!" So, Mary or Sarah, I think it's up to you guys!! :) Baby was measuring right on schedule and everything looks good. I'm still feeling quite a bit of nausea and I hope that goes away soon. I'm feeling a lot more tired with this one than any of the other two, but I guess part of that has to do with the fact that I'm also chasing around 2 instead of 1 or none this time.

Last weekend was when Randy and Marchelle were in town for their Christmas weekend so all the Bell siblings were in town as well. So we decided to tell his family that weekend. What was also funny was that we told the girls in the car on the way to Michelle and Kendall's house, as that was the only time that weekend we had alone with the girls to let them know before we told the rest of Nick's family in person, Kayley responded, "I know there's a baby, Cora already told me in a bedtime story one night." Then they went back and forth on if they wanted a boy or a girl, they have both settled on wanting a baby sister. Then as soon as we got to Michelle's house Kayley told Ashlyn her mommy has a baby in her belly and Ashlyn immediately said, "No, my mommy has a baby in her tummy!" They got into a small argument about who's Mommy had a baby in their tummy. It was cute, but I had to hush Kayley as we still hadn't made the big announcement to everyone, but all went well.

We are excited and anxiously, but patiently awaiting July 9th. The fun part is my cousin who's birthday is one day before mine is due the same day with their first one. That would be really cool if both of them were born on the same day. I would even take it early on Grandpa Sargent's birthday, July 3rd! :) Too bad they don't live by us!! So Olivia and Nathan I think you need to start heading towards Missouri before July 9th so our kids can be best friends!! :)