The Bell Family: 2011

The middle of the fall brought so many fun experiences.

I was asked to be the Toastmistress at Alpha Gamma Delta's Feast of Roses luncheon which followed the initiation of the fall pledge class. Here I am with my Pearl Sister Erin (middle) and her newly initiated "Little Sis" Katy. The Monday following this event, Erin was elected Chapter President! I knew te first time I met her that she would one day be President of our chapter at ASU. So proud of her.

Quincy's preschool held a "Night with the special girl in my life," which I attended with Quincy. The children sang us songs they had learned, we participated in a scavenger hunt, and craft project. It was nice to see how he interacted with his friends and his teachers.

For Thanksgiving at Shadow Rock, all the children came together for a Thanksgiving feast, where they sat around a "table" together (that they helped create) and said what they were thankful for. Quincy was thankful that the "feast" included popcorn.

Thanksgiving with Solon's family

Thanksgiving with my family

Papa Allen was in town for Thanksgiving weekend, and the kids loved spending time with him

Thank you Tony for these awesome pictures with your new camera!

I love this picture

The Hutton family came to visit while they were in town

Quincy helping me trim the tree

Hanging with Daddy

Colder weather means fun pajamas and plenty of photo-ops

Still loving eachother

Paloma playing on her brand new quilt!

Quincy's 3rd birthday was December 10th. I wanted to do something BIG for him, because he has had a year of a lot of changes (new sister, potty training, big boy bed, food therapy, pre-school, etc). We decided on a bounce house for the kids, and a Thomas the Train theme, so I hit up the dollar store, Michael's and Goodwill to create props that would transform the park into the Island of Sodor. It was a blast!!!

Quincy had the best day of his life. It took him 2 days to recover. It took me 3 days to recover =)

Thanks to our friends and family who helped make his day so special. It was a wonderful day.

This title reflects a couple things in the life of the Bell "Empire"...

For starters, if you read my previous blog post which I posted about 2 months ago (remember the one where I had had it up to my eyelashes with Quincy's "terrible two's"?), you will know that I had just had a "mommy meltdown" and was clearly using the blogosphere as a means to vent. I am proud to say that approximately 60 days later, there has been a complete 180 as ar as Quincy's behavior. And wouldn't you know, it actually only took about a week or 2 to get it that way. He ABSOLUTELY LOVES preschool now. He's made friends, he loves to go in with a "happy heart" and a smile on his face, he gives the teachers hugs, and his favorite part of the day is the snack of course. But he has become adventurous, engages so well with people of all ages, sings songs ALL DAY LONG, and is just genuinely so happy when I pick him up. We are so happy we worked through that rough beginning. He also has opened up so much more to Paloma - he's sharing toys with her, playing with her, greeting her when I bring her in the room, etc. And nothing could make her happier because she just ADORES her big brother.

The other 180 in our life, yes I am going to mention it, THE WEATHER. Today was 60 degrees. Two weekends ago at the pumpkin patch, it was still in the high 90's, and I was wearing a tank top and shorts. THIS IS WHY I LOVE ARIZONA. I took out sweater boots today,and wore them for the first time. It is just absolutely gorgeous right now and we are spending as much time outside as possible. At night, Solon throws some logs in the chiminea and lights a fire. We are just loving it right now. So those are the "extreme" things that happened in the last 2 months, and here is everything else we've been up to...

Paloma loves to eat

And loves to get clean

We celebrated Mexico's Indepence on the 16th of September at my parent's house

Playing with Great-Grandma Mimi

While Quincy colored with my daddy's crayons from when he was a kids (60-year-old crayons that worked perfectly!)

In the beginning of October, we participated as a family in the American Diabetes Walk along with some of my Alpha Gamma Delta sisters. I raised about $150 for our team, and we took the 3-mile walk through and around Rawhide at Wild Horse Pass. It was a beautiful morning for a walk. One of our sisters, Chrysty, took some action shots of the day.

Proud Daddy

For about 2 years now, a Says Phoebe bird has been coming to our house at dusk, perching on our twinkle lights on th back patio, and staying until dawn. Every day. Same time to same time. Except he (I'm assuming it's a he) left the night we had everyone to the house to celebrate Father's Day back in June. Solon was distraught about it, for months. And then one day (3 months to the day later), Birdy Friend (as we like to call him) showed up again. And this time, Birdy friend brought a friend! The two lovebirds (I'm assuming #2 is a girl), are perched together every night on ou new LED twinkle lights. Solon is overjoyed by it, and all is well again at the Bell house.

A Denise-Candida-Denise sandwich! Love these women.

Quincy helped me frost some cookies

The Three Amigos are getting so big!

Look at our #2s! They are so cute.

The Bells and the Jacobs' went to the pumpkin patch and took Papa Tom with us. As mentioned before, it was in the high 90's, which is a little hot for the patch, but we had a great time anyway.

Look at the difference 2 years makes!

I don't know if everyone is familiar with the game WORDS WITH FRIENDS or not, but it's basically the online version of Scrabble. I have been beating Solon an average of 3 games to 1, and Solon wanted to redeem himself so we decided on a pumpkin carving contest against eachother. I took this picture and posted it to Facebook for instant gratification, and let's just say he beat me by 30-something votes.

His is on the left. Now, I am not going to be a sore loser, but I would like to say that a) I did his design last year, and b) mine was a level 2 difficulty rating to his level 1. That's all I am going to say. Clearly, people like "cheeky" Halloween rather than "scary" Halloween. Whatever. Next year, I am going to bring it!

Halloween Day