Here's one of Rex...who didn't stop looking at me. I also didn't get a picture of him freaking out when getting his toy from Santa...it was cute though. Luckily now that he's seen it for a few days, he is actually liking it now.
And here's the girls remembering to give Santa a hug goodbye and telling him what they want. As a parent I love these moments...seeing the belief of Santa Claus come to life! 
Then Thanksgiving was last week. Kayley was so cute because a couple of weeks ago we talked about how Thanksgiving was coming up. Kayley said, "Thanksgiving is when we get to eat Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy...it's the best meal ever!" And that is exactly what she ate...Turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy and nothing else! Cora on the other hand just ate the turkey...she loves meat! We went to Michelle and Kendall's house for dinner on Thursday with Kendall's parents and Patsy made the Turkey and kept the Turkey legs for the kids to play/eat with. My girls absolutely loved them!! Cora couldn't get enough of it! We had to take some pictures of them devouring it!
And of course, it was Rex's first Thankgiving...although he wasn't able to eat anything he enjoyed watching us! I tried to get him to smile for his "first Thanksgiving" picture, but he kept giving me this funky grin...still cute none the less. He's getting so big and almost 5 months old now. And the bottom right is of Kayley, Ashlyn, Cora, & Preston cuddling up on the bean bag for Diary of a Wimpy Kid or "Diarrhea Wimpy Kid" as it sounds when Cora says it. We watched this with the Walkers after dinner...it was our second time watching it...it's hilarious!! The girls love it except for a scary story the older brother tells his younger brother on Halloween night. Part of the story is of these kids who get killed because an oven gets left on in a house and catches the house on fire. It is a pretty scary story when you think about it. But earlier that day I was baking stuff for our dinner and I guess I had left the oven light on. So when we came home the girls sad there was a monster in our house (because the oven light was on, they associated that with the oven being on that killed the people in the scary story)...We had to reassure them many times there were no such thing as monsters. They are smart!
And every year Santa Claus and Mrs. Claus come to our house. Rex got to join in on the fun this year. However, the toy Santa gave Rex actually scares him. We are noticing more and more how sensitive this little boy is. One of Kayley's Jesse dolls scares him like crazy and now this dog toy from Santa Claus does too. Oh well. The girls absolutely loved seeing Santa at their house. They watched him come and go visit the other neighbors too. It's always a fun day when Santa comes!
And this past weekend we also got our Christmas decorations up. The girls were SO excited to decorate this year. They always are, but Kayley couldn't get enough of it and has asked everyday for the past month when we get to put up our tree. We sadly had to do some switching around with our tree lights as half of our lights from last year stopped working, but we finally made it work tonight and have all our ornaments and decorations up except the outside lights which Nick has to still put up. Kayley was cute because she insisted on everyone having Santa hats on, even Rex, and she kept telling Nick when to take pictures. I'll have to post a picture later of the finished product...although it's not anything amazing...however it's amazing to see how elated the girls are with the finished product! So let the holiday season begin in the Bell household!!
Here's Cora's 3 year portrait. She is my little trickster, inquisitive girl! She asks me about things all the time. The other day, she asked me what police do. I told her they help take care of people...that wasn't a good enough answer cause she then asked me what it means to take care of people. Another thing she does is pay attention to detail in what you say. A while back she was saying 'stupid' when she was playing. I told her we don't say that word in this house. She then asked me if she could say it outside of the house. Then a couple of months ago we went to St. Louis to go to the Temple, see extended family, and do some other fun family stuff with just our little family. We stayed in the hotel for two nights and the girls loved it and begged to go constantly after that to stay in another hotel. Cora would ask why we couldn't go to a hotel and I would tell her that hotels cost too many moneys for us to go all the time. Well, a couple of weeks ago, we went to St. Louis again to attend the Temple and we went and stayed in a hotel. When I told Cora we were staying in a hotel, she asked me if hotels were free now? She sure is cute! 
Here's Kayley's 5 year portrait. Too often than not it is very difficult to think that Kayley is already 5 and going to preschool!! Kayley loves school! She has already had two boys give her things to take home. One day she came home with a handful of flowers that were picked from weeds from a boy. Then later that week she came home with a pine cone that she said one of the other boys in her class gave her. She also loves to play dress up and pretend a lot. She probably changes 5 times a day because as soon as she wakes up, she puts on dress up, then she has to get dressed for school. Then as soon as she gets home from school she is getting other dress up clothes on up until we're ready to get PJ's on for the night. She is trying to learn how to read, and I think she is slowly getting it. We are doing some reading lessons and she is constantly asking me what letters spell what. I know she is just SO close and the breakthrough will come anytime now! 
As mentioned earlier, a couple of weeks ago we went to St. Louis. On the way we stopped to see our new niece Ruby Ellen in Columbia. She is SOOO cute!! I just couldn't get over how tiny and sweet she was! They just grow so fast it's hard to believe that Rex was close to that size (he was bigger), but it was weird to see how big he is now and how tiny Ruby was. The girls just loved getting to hold her and Kayley said that Lauren would be really glad her name was Ruby because it was like Dorothy's Ruby Red Slippers. (Lauren and Kayley are BIG fans of Dorothy and she just loves that they share that in common with each other!) Cora continued to ask me after seeing Ruby and even before, "Mommy when are you going to have a baby girl in your tummy?" Not for a while Cora!! :) 
More pics of cute Ruby...
Here are the pictures from the hotel. The girls just love that they get to share a bed with one another. THey also loved being able to swim in the hotel (but what kid doesn't love that!?) I personally LOVED the hot tub...it was huge!! We didn't get to swim that long though since we had stopped to see baby Ruby. But the girls had a blast swimming and then coming back to the room and taking a bath and then playing restaurant with the ice bucket and cups. The next day we got up and took our time getting ready then headed to the temple. I was able to do a session and then I came out only to find out that Nick had a fever. He was going to try to do a session since we had traveled 4 hours and it had been a while since we had gone...but he went in and was barely able to do initiatories...so we just did that and headed home. A couple of days later Nick went to the doctor and found out that not only did he have strep throat, but he had scarlet fever as well. Pretty crazy, but luckily no one else got it! 
Here are some pics of Rex just being cute. It is getting easier to get him to smile in pics, but it's still a struggle because he gets caught off guard with the flash of the camera. But there are a few smiles in here. My fav pic though is the one on the bottom left..."what are you doing to me Mom!?!"
The same day I was trying to clean up stuff while Kayley was in school and Cora was already down for a nap. He wasn't quite ready for a nap until later, but ended up falling asleep on the floor while I was cleaning. Silly boy.
Nick was playing with Rex the other night with his hat. He looks awful cute. Rex has his own hats, but I think he looks the cutest in Daddy's!!
Then both of the girls got a coupon for a ride on the carousel at the mall for their birthdays. The first one we used with their cousins earlier in the summer. The last one (Kayley's), she wanted to have her Daddy come with her as he had yet to come with them on the carousel. So we had to wait for a day that coordinated with his day off and her being finished with school. They were both so excited to ride with him. Rex even got to ride with them, but Mommy always has to sit and really concentrate on not getting sick on the carousel...I can ride roller coasters just fine, but for some reason this carousel gets me really dizzy!
We also found out that Parents as Teachers activities were still going on, even admist all the cut backs that have happened this year with the economy. The girls favorite activity is going to the gymnastics place Rebound where they get to play on all the gymnastic equipment. Here are my two monkeys swinging around. Rex also rolled over for the first time this month from tummy to back. This isn't a pic of him rolling over, I think he actually did it the week after this pic was taken, but he has done it a handful of times since then. He's been getting so big so fast!
I always have to get pics of Rex cuddling with Daddy. Sometimes it is rare that he actually wants to sit with him for a long period of time. He just likes his Mommy too much sometimes, but it is actually getting better.
We also went to Camdenton to visit Kyle, Cassie, and Alexa for Alexa's 2nd birthday party. Everyone from Nick's family was there except Shannon and John, who was sadly missed. It was great to see everyone and just visit. We had to make our trip short as Nick was on call on Sunday plus Kayley had her Primary Program, but it was a great visit. Here are some pics of the cousins playing together.
Then Saturday morning Kyle took all of us out on boat rides. The weather was really nice, just a bit windy...but what do you expect on a boat. Cora got up and drove the boat and loved it! Kayley was going to, but as she was getting in the seat Nick accidentally poked her eye so she got upset and then didn't want to drive the boat. But they both did enjoy the boat ride. It was fun to get all of us on the boat together as we are all just used to the jet ski that only fits two-three at a time.
Then that afternoon Alexa's party was at Miner Mike's. We have passed this building a million times when we lived in Columbia going to and from Willard, but we had never been there. It's a really fun place and I can see why it is Alexa's favorite place to go. It has an indoor roller coaster (which the girls were too scared to ride it because it was loud), bumper cars, ferris wheel, and tons of fun games, and then a huge tunnel fun for the kids. It took the girls a while to actually go into the tunnel because of the noise from the pretend guns that you shoot balls out of...if you haven't noticed our girls are scared of the slightest noise for some reason! But once we got both of them in there, they both had a blast. Cora kept going down the slide constantly, she even said, "It's so much fun, I can't stop!" Kayley had fun, but still wouldn't go near the pretend loud guns, so she didn't go down the slide. They both got lots of tickets to pick out prizes and were so excited to pick out their toys at the end. I wish I had had a camera to catch Cora's reaction when she figured out how much candy she could get. They had tootsie rolls for 1 ticket each and I asked her how many she wanted. She asked (hesitantly as if it was too many) if she could get 5, I told her she could and you would think the girl won the lottery! I'm not sure how many she ended up getting, but I know a ton of her tickets went towards candy!! Rex was a great trooper and was all smiles towards the end!! Or trying to be all smiles!
The girls still play with Rex as if he is a baby doll. This is what I found them doing the other day while I was in the kitchen, putting a diaper on him outside his clothes. Again he was just laughing, for the first part of it anyway...the picture says otherwise, but at this point he had seen me and wanted me to save him! 
We also went to the pumpkin patch with Ashlyn and Preston. Kayley's school actually had a field trip to a pumpkin patch, but had missed it. (story with this...) I was so nervous to let her go on the field trip because I wasn't able to go and was worried about stranger danger, etc and didn't know how many adults to kid ratio there would be...all these worries. I really wanted her to have fun and go, but couldn't bear her to go. Ironically (but fortunately for my worries) she ended up getting a fever on Saturday and had it up until Sunday evening. Well, school has a rule where you can't attend school until you have been fever free for 24 hours without medicine and that wasn't going to be until the day after the pumpkin patch. So she did actually miss her school field trip, but she was a trooper and told me she was completely fine with it because she knew she was going to get to go to the pumpkin patch with Ashlyn and Preston later in the week. So here are pics from when we went with them. Preston was Kayley's little shadow. As you can see in the pic on the upper right, he continues to block the sun out of Kayley's eyes while we were on the hayride. It was cute. Kayley is the only one that will allow Preston to wrestle and play rough with him. They all four had tons of fun playing with each other as always! Then afterward we went trick or treating with them at the Liberty Junior High School and they all got TONS of candy! I didn't get any pictures though sadly. 
Here are pictures of them before our trunk or treat for our ward. Kayley and Cora are both really into Toy Story right now. Ironically they both will watch the new Toy Story, but both say it is scary. But they love the 1st and 2nd ones. So, Kayley was Jesse this year, Cora was Woody, and Rex was "T-Rex". We also got to go trick or treating with Grandma in Willard on Saturday over Halloween weekend. We didn't have any fighting over them not being able to go trick or treating on Halloween itself either. We even ran into a bunch of trick or treaters on our way home from Willard on Sunday and they asked why we weren't trick or treating and we explained that was something we didn't do on Sunday and they were just fine with that. I was so proud of them...and that is why I tried to find many other activities that we could do before Halloween itself to take the place of trick or treating this year. 
