I love my girls

Just a few cute things my girls have said/done recently...

Cora: the other night she wanted Daddy to lay in bed with her, she was literally begging him to sleep by her (she's in this scared for a bit before bed stage now)...Nick went in to lay by her and then he pretended to snore, she turned toward him and said "That's annoying Daddy, I don't want you to sleep by me anymore! Get up!"

Kayley: (the same night or the night before) Kayley is into to this thing now with having us (Nick and I) carry around our favorite stuffed animals. I chose Abby Cadabby, Nick chose Oscar, Kayley carries around Zoe, and of course Cora carries Elmo...Kayley has even tried to get Einstein to carry around Big Bird. Well, the girls were already in bed and Nick and I were brushing teeth, etc. Nick was on the side of the bed taking off his shoes and Oscar and Abby come flying out of no where...scaring Nick half to death!! It was funny cause she knew she wanted us to sleep with them, but knew that if we saw her out of bed, she'd get in trouble!

Then just the other day on my Dad's birthday:
Kayley came in and asked me if I knew it was Papa Felker's birthday today? I of course said yes. She responded, "Well, don't worry that you can't celebrate with him, he can celebrate his birthday with Heavenly Father today!" It made me cry!
Then Cora followed her with singing "Happy Birthday" but got confused and sang happy birthday to me instead of to Papa Felker.

Have I said I just love my girls!?!

My Dearest Baby Bell

My dearest baby, I wish you could give me some answers...

Why am I showing this much this soon (14 weeks...but I feel like I'm already 20 weeks)?
Do you enjoy giving me headaches EVERYDAY?
Why do you already make me uncomfortable sleeping at night?

Are you sure it's just you in there and not another sibling that hid during the ultrasound?

Could you be a boy because of the way you sit differently in my belly?

Why do you make me tired all the time?

Do you have all my desire to do anything hidden with you, cause I sure don't have any drive right now to do anything!

Do really just enjoy making your Mom miserable during these 9 months?

So, if you could get those questions answered for me that would be great and please get back to me as soon as possible! Oh yeah...and I still do love you, even though it may not seem like it at times!

Love,

Mom

Girls banging pots and pans for New Years 2010

Ok...I didn't realize my voice was SO loud when I was taping this video of the girls...oh well. It was fun having them up for New Years this year. We had a party with Grandma (Nick's mom) who came up and surprised the girls for the weekend. When she got there that evening, the girls opened the door and just started running aroudn the house screaming with excitement! New Year's was fun since we all got our "party clothes" (our PJ's) on and had lots of fun snacks we had all made. We (I) even got to get some "special juice" (Welch's sparkling grape juice, which I could drink everyday...especially being pregnant!) The girls had lots of fun! The girls got to bang pots and pans after watching the ball drop and we had to call Daddy on the phone and wish him a Happy New Year over the phone as he was on call that night and sadly got called in right at 11:45pm...he got to spend his new years with an 85 year old patient! It was a fun celebration and we hope all had a great New Years as well!

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!! :)

Christmas is Here at the Bell House

Santa Claus came to our house a couple of weeks ago. The city of Grain Valley has a group of volunteers that drive around in Santa's sleigh house to house in Grain Valley on Saturdays starting after Thanksgiving up until Christmas. They have police escorts and everything! I was excited this year as Cora did not scream as much as last year when Santa came to our house! Plus we couldn't have asked for a better day as the weather was perfect!! Poor Santa Claus and Mrs Claus was probably hot! Santa Claus also gives out toys to the children from his sack after they sit on his lap and tell them what they want for Christmas. The girls each got a bear from him. It was cute because Kayley was like, "I have never had a real teddy bear before, how did Santa know!?" I always worry that they are going to expect Santa to get them what they have asked for all year right there instead of on Christmas morning. So far that connection has not hit thankfully!

We also put up our Christmas tree a few days later. The girls were so excited to get it up. We waited until Nick got home to put it up as it's always been a big thing in my family to put the tree up together as a family. My Dad's cousin has always given us (my siblings) a handful of ornaments each year for Christmas and now she continues that tradition with our own kids. She always puts our names on them so we know which ones are ours. So it is always fun to open the ornaments each year and reminisce on all the memories and now that my girls are a little bit bigger this is their favorite part. We had a lot of fun putting it up and it's getting more fun each year as the girls get bigger and get more excited each year about Christmas.

Here's our finished product! It's small, but it's our tree! :)

Last of our gymnastics

The girls' gymnastic class is officially over now, but we had so much fun doing it! They are both really good at listening to instructions from the teacher and doing the moves. We were really impressed. They both were the best behaved students in their classes. Here's a fun video of Cora doing one of her moves...I sometimes think she was meant to be a monkey! It's cute! We now know that they both enjoy this and are good at it, so we might do it next year with Kayley as she won't start school for another year and a half.