Bella's 3rd Birthday

I can't believe my baby girl is 3 already! She is full of personality and creativeness! I'll have to post a few of my favorite stories later. At her 3 year old check up she weighed 27 lbs and 6 oz which is in the 40% range and she was 3 ft 1/4 in tall which is in the 50% range so she's right in the middle!

Bella loves make believe play in her kitchen, her new cash register, and dressing up. She loves creating with paint, play dough, stickers, markers, and glue! And she loves to be active wrestling around with us, jumping, playing soccer, and just being really silly. She's also a girly girl loving to paint her nails and pick out dresses to wear.

We had a big day of celebrating for her 3rd birthday! We started with monkey bread for breakfast and I let her open one gift from her Aunt Christie and Uncle Barry. She got a cute little puppy in a little purse and all three toy story movies! Wow, was she excited or what! I let her pick one out to watch while Benjamin napped in the morning. What a treat!


Then, Daddy came home and we went to Monkey Bizness to jump and slide around! The kids had a blast there are always!

Bella said she wanted a cheeseburger from Five Guys for lunch (mommy helped a little with this idea) and she picked out a chocolate cupcake with pink icing from Smallcakes for her dessert.




After naptime we met Papa, Gigi, Uncle Kev, Aunt Val, and Sophie at Chucky Cheese to play games and eat pizza. The girls had a blast crawling around the tunnels and playing games. Brandon and Kevin played a few games to get tickets so the girls could pick out a few little prizes! The got a little sucker, a bracelet, and a ring!



We even got to meet Chucky and the kids were not thrilled. Bella looks very concerned! I don't blame them after some of my childhood memories! haha




Everyone came back to our house for brownies and more presents. By this time Bella had a bad case of birthday sassiness! I just want to say she woke up the next day and was back to her sweet self. It's a lot of fun to handle with Christmas just a couple of days before! She and Sophie loved dressing up in her new princess shoes from Uncle Kev and pretending to be a fairy with the bling from Aunt Val.




Bella's window seat makes the perfect stage for their performances!

The silly girls were hiding under the covers and pretending to be asleep!

Holiday Outings

We thought it would be fun to do some Holiday outings as Christmas got closer. One night we drove out to Lee's Summit and ate dinner then drove through Christmas in the Park in Lee's Summit. The lights were awesome and Bella loved it! She got to sit up and "help" drive as we looked at the lights and we enjoyed chocolate chip cookies as we waited. Benjamin fell asleep by the time we go to the lights, but he'll love them next year!



The next two pictures are very deceiving of our outing to Crown Center. Our plan was to get there right when it opened to play in Santa's playland and then have lunch. Due to missing carseats we got there late so the line was an hour long so we had to skip playing and seeing Santa and met Sophie and Porter by the antique Santa once they were finished playing. We headed straight to Fritz's for lunch and there was no line so we timed that great. Meanwhile, Bella came down with a fever and the chills and Porter gagged and threw up his green beans. It was an extremely stressful and crazy morning! We left quickly, a little too quickly, because we all forgot to get our parking tickets validated and instead of getting free parking, we all had to pay $7! It was not the Christmas outing I had envisioned, but we've made plenty of other wonderful memories!

Gigi and Papa's Christmas

After waking up and having Christmas morning at our house we headed to Gigi and Papa's house to celebrate with them, the Bailes, and Uncle Kev. The kids were pros at opening gifts by now, especially Bella, she was ripping into things so fast it was hard to keep up!

They got to work right away on their ironing!

They loved their CD players with microphones! Bella really put a show on!

The boys enjoyed lounging on their bean bag chairs and opening their new books.



Benjamin is really into playing the piano these days!

Benjamin and Porter with their matching Jingle Dogs and books.

He's so curious to see what's in there!

So excited about their new water bottles! What big boys!

We enjoyed amazing foods and tried out a new game, but the kids dominated most of the pictures!

Baby Brunch

This weekend we celebrated the upcoming birth of one of my closest friends, Emily! We had an amazing brunch at Room 39 in Westport. Mmmmm, the food was amazing! I can't wait to go back and try every other item on the menu! We enjoyed french toast cupcakes from Smallcakes for dessert. Emily got sprinkled with so many cute little boy goodies! She makes pregnancy look easy and beautiful! I can't wait to meet him!

Christmas fun

Last weekend Brandon's dad came in town so we had some Christmas fun! We went to the Belton Train Station for the Santa train. It would have been really fun (a 45 minute ride with Santa, cookies, and hot chocolate), but the train engine was having problems so we sat on an unmoving train for an hour while they still did the little program. We got back to the car and Bella goes, "I'm sorry mama." I asked her for what? Bella said, "I'm sorry the train broke." It was so sweet and sad at the same time. Since we were out we decided to go ahead to crown center. We ate at Fritz's and then stood in line to play in Santa's playland. We didn't sit on Santa's lap, but the kids had a blast playing. While Brandon and Bob held our place in line I took Bella to the candy store where she picked out a sucker and then we went and looked at the Gingerbread village. She loved watching the miniature trains travel around the gingerbread village as she ate her sucker! Both kids had a blast in the playland, Benjamin couldn't get enough of the little slides and the craolya house. The silly mirrors played tricks on him and he kept running into them, haha it was pretty funny as he tried to figure them out!