Fall

Well, I never really got why everyone loved fall so much, because in my mind it was always the begining of winter, but this year I understood what all the fuss was about!  We had about two months of 70 degree and sunny weather and plenty of fun fall activities.

Ivory turned one year (separate post on her birthday celebrations to follow) but she is getting so big and wanting to do a lot of the same things as Tristan now

We did hardly any hiking this summer and fall, so we went on a little hike on one of the last really beautiful Sunday afternoons we'll probably have for a while. 

Tristan and daddy throwing rocks into the river

Tristan and grandma in this fun little cave

 Finally stopped to see Mater which was fun until we had to leave.

 Ivory is going to be a reader, I just know it,  I find her like this all the time

 I made the mistake of mentioning the library was going to be having Halloween puppet shows at the beginning of October within Tristan's presence and that was all he could talk about doing for days unfortunately they didn't start until the week of Halloween, so there was a lot of days of me telling Tristan we couldn't go to the puppet show today.  I have learned my lesson not to tell him about anything fun until we are literally walking out the door to do the fun activity.  He did love it  when the time finally came and even got his pic in the local newspaper!

 She's just so cute! She wore this shirt on Halloween day, which says Wild Child but she so is not, which I love about her!

 We went to Corn Belly's for Penny's birthday celebration and it was a blast!

 We did a pumpking carving night for family night but what actually happened was Ivory went to bed early and me and Tristan watched Halloween cartoons while Ryan carved the pumpkin and this pic is totally set up  ;)

 Tristan had so many cousins/sister birthday parties this fall!  At the twin's birthday they had this zip liner which I was sure Tristan would be scared of doing, but he wasn't in the least!  He absolutely loved it and did it about 10 times.  Finally with no more birthday parties in the horizon Tristan wakes up a lot of mornings telling me it is his birthday, I think he feels like it has been everyone else's birthday so now it should logically be his turn.

 This was a fun little bean bag toss, Tristan waited his turn and finally when it was his turn instead of throwing the bean bags from the line he ran up to it and threw them in, like duh, why  stand so far back?  He cracks me up!

And finally the Grand Finale!  Trick or Treating Halloween night!  I don't think there's a better holiday for Tristan, he loves dressing up and he loves candy and he loved seeing all the other kids in their costumes! He could've trick or treated all night it was us who got tired and Ivory, who was the cutest little mouse there ever was!

Pillow Game

This is what we do to amuse ourselves sometimes...

July

July started off with a bang, literally! As I was taking the kids to my brother, Richard's house for a pre fourth of July celebration, I was happily driving along in our newly purchased suv thinking life is pretty good right now.  As I was stopped at a red light a girl slammed into us pushing us into the intersection a little ways.  It was a little traumatic as both kids were scared and screaming but, luckily were fairly quickly calmed down and not injured. Even while waiting for the police to arrive Tristan kept talking about going to Libby's house. Thinking that since we were obviously not at fault we'd get a rental car and our car would be fixed up soon.  We soon found out that the other driver did not have insurance and thus began a very annoying process.  I won't go into all the details but suffice it to say it has been a long frustrating experience in which things did not work out in our favor. I'm pretty sure this summer will go down as the year of bad car luck.It has taken about 6 weeks to get our suv back (And after having a second car for a month not having one has seemed like torture) and now our Mazda needs new tires, to be registered, a new sensor of some sort  and still needs cosmetic work from our last accident.   And what I really want to be spending money is on our house not our stupid cars. Aside from our continuing car drama, tho July is usually one of my favorite months of the year with the 4th of July, my birthday, pioneer day and my overall love of summer.  We still managed to do some fun things... on to the pics:

 Tristan is ready to ride lightning Mcqueen in the kid's bike parade!

 This girl slept for at least 20 min in my arms in the pool, getting splashed and everything, thats how you know your baby is one tired baby!

 Ivory wants to be able to get around faster!

 Us riding the train at the zoo

 Ryan got to go to San Fransisco on a work trip!

June

We (and when I say we I mean Ryan) started off the month in June finishing these awesome bookcases.  This was a in the process pic, I didn't get a good before picture but just imagine nothing to...

this... Cool "built-in" bookcases! We found a blog that showed how to buy book cases from Ikea and make them look built in and they turned out awesome.  Hopefully I can get this room finished this year and do a blog post on actually finishing a room!

 Then we had the awesome Bell family reunion (except for missing mom/grandma) at a cabin near Park City.  The kids had fun playing together, and the adults had fun after the kids went to bed playing games.  One of the highlights was definitely the film festival!

 Ryan took Tristan out to do a photo shoot while at the cabin and this is the result. This kids cracks me up!

 Ivory turned 8 months old and we went to the Lehi City parade, it was so fun.  Tristan just loved the bands and most importantly the candy!

 These two are best buds and so goofy together:)

 The same day of the parade we went to Taylorsville days which we do every year with Ryan's sister and some of their friends.  It is the best fireworks show of the summer! And Tristan just thought the fireworks were the coolest thing ever he kept laughing hysterically and calling out to his cousin "Ashy, see, see"

Tristan gets tackled by his cousins

He may have started it...

 This is just a random pic of me and the kiddos that I think is kinda funny!