The Bell Family: End of 2013 Catch Up!

So I am dreadfully behind in posting so I'm just going to try my best to catch us up!!

October 31, 2013: Halloween!

This year we didn't do anything major for Halloween. Parker was able to wear his costume to school and the whole school came together outside to do a cool parade. He had fun with that. And then that night we decided to go to the outlet mall and trick or treat there instead of going to houses. We got there a little late and most of the stores had run out of candy, but the boys still seemed to have fun. Tyler dressed up as Sully from Monster's Inc. (I will have to get those pictures later!)

Parker was a Knight in Shining Armor!

All the Kindergarten Teachers...Parker's teacher is in the red stripes!

Waiting for the parade to start

Ready to go!!

Happy Halloween!!!

November 2013:

I don't really remember what happened this month, it wasn't too exciting. This month we started cracking down on Tyler's potty training and after just 1 week he was completely potty trained, during the day at least!! He was so much easier to train than Parker and I think it was because I just didn't even push it this time, he had bee going off and on for several months and we would just let him go when he felt like it. Gives me a nice little break before the baby comes next year!! On November 20, the Kindergarten classes had a "Cultural Thanksgiving Feast" where everyone brought in their favorite holiday dish. And the families were able to come and have a picnic with their child for lunch. It was pretty fun and there were tons of different dishes! (Don't mind the quality of the picture, my camera was dead and so this was from my phone!)

For Thanksgiving this year we just stayed home and did our own little family meal. It was a little sad though because this was the first year we weren't with family or friends for Thanksgiving. But it was nice to just relax and spend time together. Instead of getting a real turkey and having to mess with a whole big meal, we just bough a pre-cooked small turkey breast from Costco and some gravy (they were sampling it and it was delicious!!) and then we made some stuffing and mashed potatoes and had pie for dessert. It was all really good! After dinner we went to the movies and saw Frozen. The boys loved it and it was a fun family activity.

December 2013:

The first half of December was pretty uneventful also. But on December 17 we all headed out for a 2 week vacation to Seattle to visit Grammy, Granddad, and Uncle Connor. The boys were so excited to go, but they got even more excited when the found out that we were going to ride the lightrail from Chris' office to the airport, then a shuttle bus to the airport! Our flight was at night so I was hoping the boys would just sleep the whole time...well, Tyler did fall asleep but not until we were just about to descend!! Oh well, they both were really good none the less. We had a blast the whole time! My sister, Kelsey and her husband, Alex, and their adorable little girl, Delaynie all came the next day also! It was so fun to all be together for Christmas this year. Our other sister's Bri and Ash and their families were also there for a couple days before Christmas so we were all able to be together and get all the grandkids together for the first time, which was a lot of fun!! We did a lot of game playing and hanging out.

Briana had brought a Christmas Bingo game for the older kids to play...

Grammy and Granddad watching a Christmas movie with all the grandchildren...

Playing games...

Since it had been FOREVER since we had a fully family picture done, we also got those taken care of! We are definitely growing!!

My parent's also got a brand new golden retriever puppy a few days before we came and the boys had so much fun playing with him. His name is Tate and he is just the sweetest little puppy! We even got to see a little snow while we were there, which was fun for the boys, since we don't get to see snow anymore! Even the puppy got to play in it with them!!