"A Really Fun Day"

I'd been missing my sister Necia lately, so I finally decided to do something about it. In case you didn't know she is pregnant! I am probably more excited than she is! Haha! She is due Jan. 28th. Since I wanted to see her, I packed up the boys and headed down to the Valley for a day trip to have fun and spend time with her. We hung out together while we went around doing things the kids would enjoy. Necia suggested that we go to the Phoenix Children's Museum, so the day before I went down I hunted the internet for coupons to no avail.  I finally just called the museum and asked if they were currently running any discounts. The lady told me about the Phoenix Cultural Pass available at the Phoenix Libraries. There are only a very limited number available that people can check out for a few days. I did a search and was lucky enough to find out that two passes that would each allow free enterance for 2 people would be coming available the morning we would be down there. We got to the Library 30 minutes before it opened, and got to hang-out with some very nice and friendly homeless people. Long story short, we were able to get the passes which saved us $36 in admissions costs. If you live in the Phoenix area, I would really reccomend taking advantage of these Cultural Passes. They have them available to lots of awesome places like museums that will get 2-4 people in totally free per pass. We all really loved the Children's Museum. Although, I think the AZ Science Center may still be my favorite. We also got to walk around the ASU Downtown Campus where both of my sisters will be attending school this fall.

Luke's favorite: Car Racing!

Necia and Grady. Grady just absolutely loves riding bikes more than anything in the world.

After that we relaxed, and then we went to the Tempe Beach Splash Park. I had heard about it for a long time, and had always wanted to take my kids there. They had a blast! I think they were just the perfect ages for it. Best of all, it was free too! Notice the snorkle in Luke's hand in every picture? He insisted on bringing it, and I don't think he even set it down for a second.

This is a nice action shot. While I was trying to take a few shots of Luke coming down the slide, this little girl came up to the slide before Luke was getting ready to come down. Her mom had been yelling at her for quite a while for her to get out of the way of the slide. She didn't pay attention to her mom, and she got seriously flattened by Luke! Luckily no one was seriously hurt.

We ended the day with a little bit of shopping, because we just can't resist! As we were headed out to the car to go home, Luke said to me "This was a really fun day, mom!". Yes it was! Thanks Necia!

New Photography Blog!!!

So I finally decided to put together a photography blog. It's rachelbellephotography.blogspot.com. It's been a lot of work. I'm not sure about my watermark yet, but oh well! Please take a look at it and tell me what you think! I started it off with a cute summer session that I'd been wanting to do for months with Luke and Grady. Maybe I'll post those pictures over here too, but right now I'm just lazy.

ETA: I forgot to add, that I'm very willing to barter with good friends and family. I could always use someone who'd watch my kids for a few hours or some nifty thing that would make my house look cute! Make me an offer!

Evening Magic

Luke got this bubble mower for his 2nd birthday. We hadn't actually filled it up with bubbles for quite a while, but we did tonight and helped daddy mow the lawn. It was the most amazing thing: the bubbles would come out, hit the grass, and not pop! Our yard turned into a field of bubbles! It was beautiful!

Grady stomping the bubbles.

This one is my favorite picture from the evening!

Whatever Happened to July?

I've really enjoyed being busy for a change this past month. Although, we have done a lot of just hanging out at home too. This next picture cracks me up. Yep those are light sabers that Luke attached to his underwear! I love that little tan line too! This picture really represents what it means to be a 3-year-old boy during summertime.

Me and the little boys got to spend almost a whole week at my parent's house while Ty had some job training out of town. All three of us were very spoiled!

My dad made these awesome croissants from scratch, and I just had to take a picture...

... but my mom thought it was kind of silly just to take a picture of a croissant like that. "You need someone to hold it. Like this!" she said. Haha! I love my mom. Which picture do you think turned out better?!

We did lots of fun things like going to the park, feeding the ducks, and eating junk food. We even went to Wal-Mart twice with a little stack of quarters for Luke to put into the machines. That's where we got the mustache! My dad even got this old battery powered jeep for free and fixed it up for the kids. The smile Luke had on his face when he was driving it for the first time was priceless! In case you didn't know, my parents have 4 Llamas, 2 dogs, and a bunch of chickens which also provided us with constant entertainment. A special thanks to my sister Necia for coming down and spending the week with us. She's the one who took that awesome picture of me with my boys! Thanks!

After a week at Grandma and Grandpa's the kids were quite worn out. That made for a nice mostly quiet drive home for me! Hooray!

Every year the Stakes in the Gila Valley put on an awesome 24th of July celebration. This year our Primary was in charge of our wards float for the parade. Since I was riding on the float, I decided to bring Luke along even though he's only in Nursery still. He loved it! He waved at everyone very enthusiastically and kept on yelling out "Hello kids! How are you?" to all the kids in the crowd! All the older kids on the float though he was hilarious. It was raining like crazy, but the parade went on. Check out the before on the left and the after pic on the bottom right.

We skipped the festivities because it was raining so hard, and spent time with Ty's family instead. We did come back for the fireworks though. Every year I am always amazed with how close the authorities here let us get to the fireworks. I think almost every year for the 4th or 24th some one I'm with almost always gets hit with some firework remnant falling from the sky. Anyways I had a lot of fun taking pictures of these fireworks. These aren't your usually pictures of fireworks. You can try it with any camera. Just put your camera on a setting where the flash can't fire, and just wiggle the camera like crazy while you take the picture. I kind of liked how these turned out.

This is what Luke looked like while we watched the fireworks.

Just to end off this ridiculously long post, the craziest thing happened the other day. After we had eaten dinner, and I hadn't cleared off the table yet, Grady climbed up into Luke's seat and started eating all of Luke's left-over spaghetti. That is not the crazy part, we're still getting there. Of course, I think it's too cute, so I whip out my camera for a picture. Okay this is the crazy part, when I put the camera to my face to take the picture he all of a sudden puts the hugest smile on his face and says "Cheese!". Well it was at least something that sounded a lot like "cheese". This kid is only 13 months old, and has a vocabulary of only like 5-10 words, and yet he looks at the camera and says "Cheese!" and smiles! Crazy! I've never taught Luke to say "cheese", so I'm really not sure where he learned this from. I've tried it again this past week, and to my surprise he did it again. I think I may have found my perfect baby model! Too funny!

It Breaks My Heart

My neighbor, Glena, is fighting her second battle with cancer. She is an incredibly wonderful and strong woman. She has substituted in Primary a few times since I've been in the ward, and I just stand in awe of her. She has an incredible ability to capture all the little children's attention and hold their attention. A little over a year ago, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. She went through a, no doubt rough, year of treatments for that. During a follow-up visit to check and see if the cancer had returned her doctors found a completely different cancer present now. She's been diagnosed with stage 4 neuroendocrine cancer. I was asked to do some family pictures for her since she doesn't know how much longer she has left.  I took these a week ago, and now her head is already bald again. (Her hair had just only started growing back from her first year of chemo.) Their three children are ages 4, 5 and 8. The oldest, the boy, is pretty severly autistic. She especially wanted one-on-one pictures with each of her kids. I think these may be some of the best pictures I've ever taken.  I really tried to capture the emotion and connection  between mother and children. I really felt honored to finally be able to really do something for Glena and her family. It just breaks my heart to think about these precious children loosing their mother. I've also done a lot of introspection this past week. There are so many things that I get caught up in that do not matter, and I've really realized that the only things that truly matter are the ones that are eternal.

I know this picture isn't prefect, but I just love the expression on the 5-year-old!

I think this next picture could possibly be my favorite. I just love it when my children snuggle into me like this.

I made this template with the lyrics to the Primary song "I Often Go Walking". I especially love the last part of the second verse that says "For if I love blossoms, and meadows, and walking, I learn how to love them, dear mother, from you." I think this whole song could have been my theme for the photo shoot. I hope these children always remember the things their mother has taught them.

This last one is of her and her sister. This sister lives all the way in Utah, and has sacrificed so much of her time to be with her sister and her sister's family to help them through the hard times they have faced over this past year.

Update!!!

Okay, so it's been a long time since I've actually shared what's been going on in our lives, and since I am almost completely incapable of short posts, be prepared! Now that Grady is 1 that means big changes for him. First of all, I've started giving him cow's milk, and to my suprise he absolutely hated it at first! Hopefully now I can get him weaned from nursing in the next couple of weeks! Luke was really easy. He took to milk really well, and I had him weaned within 2 weeks of his 1st b-day! Second of all, Grady got his big boy hair-cut. Ty and I were both really relieved to see that he looks good with short hair (or at least we think he looks good)! He hated having his hair cut, so I know I probably missed a few spots, but here's the new do!

Regular

and Spikey!

Moving on. Swim Lessons! Luke took swim lessons for 3 weeks at the Safford Pool. The staff encouraged parents to not be present at the pool during swim lessons. If we really wanted to watch we had to do it from quite a distance away, so that our children could bond with their swim instructors. On the second to last day, they told parents to come and to bring their cameras. I was all over that! I'm so proud of my little Luke! He did so good, listened to his teachers, overcame a lot of his fears, and learned a lot! He can by no means, swim now, but overall it was a good experience for him.

We had a great 4th of July! All the festivities were on Saturday, and we spent almost all the day with Ty's family. We went to a parade that morning, swimming in the afternoon, dinner with Ty's family in the evening, and then fireworks at night! Luke was very scared of the fireworks, but after about 5 minutes at least he stopped screaming and shaking! Luke did love running around and pushing a big car in his Papa's dirt in his underware. On the actual 4th, Ty and his brother Aaron put on a little fireworks display for the family in the evening. Oh yes, and I just realized that I mispelled independence!

My favorite part of summer is just spending almost every evening in the backyard together as a family. I just love how I can get my camera to turn what would be an incredibly ugly background into beautiful creamy blurryness! I can't believe how tan Luke is getting either!

These next three are just for proof that Luke does at least occasionally wear clothing when playing outside! :)

Just look at those muscles!

This is my new favorite picture of Luke ever! I'm happy, because it is soooooo ridiculously hard to get him to look at the camera! Just look at those big brown eyes, as he relaxes in the backyard!

Our neighbors just upgraded swing sets, so they gave this one to us for free! We  have awesome neighbors! The boys have already had so much fun with it!