The Bell Family: July 2014

Kailey's Baby Blessing - May 4, 2014

Kailey was blessed at church today by her daddy! It was a little weird not having all of our families here but we were lucky that my mom, step-dad and brother could make it down for her special day.

I think Tyler was trying to sneak out of the picture...Sorry little dude!

Yep, so I am still getting used to this whole girl thing and all their many hair accessories!! Totally forgot that I had taken the head band off earlier...Good thing we at least remembered half way through!!

I just LOVED her dress! We bought it at the Distribution Center...I may or may not have been eyeing this dress for the last 4 years!!

Family Comes to Visit - May 2, 2014

Today my family from Washington came down to visit us!!! They came down for Kailey's baby blessing and stayed for a couple days. It was so fun to have visitors and do fun things with them! They flew into San Francisco so Chris and I drove both cars up to the airport to meet them so they could drive one of our cars instead of renting one and then we drove up to San Francisco and walked around, and visited the Ghirardelli Chocolate Store. It was FREEZING!!! We all failed to think about it being way colder than it was down in San Jose, so we all pretty much froze in our shorts and sandals! Oh well, it was still fun to walk around since we haven't ever been up there in the year and half that we have lived here! I know crazy, right?!

My Mom and brother were the only ones who would turn around for a picture!

Alcatraz

Sea Lions takin' a nap!

The boys were so excited to see their uncle Connor! They loved playing with him the WHOLE time he was here!

Beautiful view and you can even kinda see Kailey's head!! I told ya it was cold! We had to layer everything we had on top of her so she wouldn't freeze :)

Family photo...complete with Kailey in the stroller! We didn't want to take her out and we really didn't want to carry the stroller up there...it works.

It was funny to watch the boys in this store...Tyler even got a basket and just started helping himself!! Could you imagine the sugar high these boys would have been on if we had bought everything they grabbed!? Luckily they just settled for the free sample and the bag of chocolate their Grammy and Granddad spoiled us with!

On Saturday, my family came over and watched Tyler's soccer class. He was so excited for them to come see him play! They enjoyed watching him...and holding their newest granddaughter!

After soccer we went back and got ready to go play at the beach for a while! (And YES, I was just there the week before!!) Only this time, we went to the Santa Cruz Boardwalk, and Chris was able to come with us. And this time, I actually took a picture of Kailey for her SECOND trip to the beach!!

The boys had so much more fun because they now had not one, but THREE grown ups that would play with them in the water!!

Which meant that they could go out further in the water...

It was a very fun and relaxing day at the beach...only it was pretty crowded, being a Saturday and I kept getting bad whiffs of people smoking...GROSS!! We love the beach though and all the sounds of the ocean. Later that night my parent's took Chris and I out to dinner at this quaint Italian restaurant and then for frozen yogurt at Yogurtland (which my mom had REALLY wanted to go to when she was here when Kailey was born!!) It was a nice night!

On Sunday, after dinner we went over to my family's hotel so the boys could swim and we could see them just a little longer. They loved it because they were able to take off their arm floaties and practice swimming with Granddaddy. We were sad to see them go, but had a great weekend together!!

Soccer Class

April 26 was Tyler's FIRST soccer class!! We signed him up through the Berryessa Community Center but the instructors were from Kidz Love Soccer. He goes on Saturday mornings for 30 minutes for 8 weeks. His class was for 3.5-4 year olds so it was perfect because they are just getting introduced to the game and learning to kick the ball around. It was a fairly good sized class and there were three instructors. each week they played several different games and made it really fun for the kids. One of the games that they pretty much did every week was putting the toys (soccer balls) into the toy box (goal). Another game they played was putting out the fire with their water ball. They had to kick their soccer ball and hit a bunch of tiny cones to put the fire out to help them learn to aim and kick. It was really fun watching how much Tyler was enjoying it. He was so excited to finally have an activity for himself since he has spent the last season and a half watching his older brother play T-Ball.

Warming up by running to their coach on the other side of the field!

There were several soccer balls which was nice so the kids didn't have to fight over the ball, they each got at least one!

Another game was to plant the garden but setting up the cones...

They also learned soccer terms like "soccer stance!"

Overall we were very pleased with this class and loved seeing Tyler have so much fun with it!

Beach Trip #1 - April 24, 2014

This week was spring break for Parker and I really wanted to do something fun and out of the ordinary from our normal just going to the park. A friend of ours planned a beach trip with other friends in our park group. It was so much fun, and quite the experience going without our husbands!! We went to Sea Bright Beach in Santa Cruz and it was a really nice beach, and a lot closer to the car than going to the boardwalk. We got there fairly early in the morning so it wasn't packed at all and then we just let the kids at it! Oh and did I mention that this was also Kailey's first beach trip??! Yep, she was just 7 weeks old and slept basically the whole time! I failed though and didn't get a picture...oh well...NEXT TIME!!