Check this out! :)

If you'd like to see more of this beautiful family, check out my photo blog! Do you recognize them? I took their pictures last year too. I've also got a couple more sessions coming up so stay tuned! Thanks!

 One of my favorites from the session!

 And just because I love it, a picture of the Gila Valley Temple I took yesterday. I'm getting this one printed BIG to hang on my wall. Let me know if you'd like a print too!

"Preschool"

Preschool: (defined) The few minutes every morning that I spend with Luke working on vital school readiness skills such as how to store a pencil behind your ear.

Goodbye Summer

Summertime, you will be missed. But honestly, you won't be missed all that much, because I'm really looking forward to some cooler weather! Here are some pictures from this last month of summer.

In the beginning of September me and the boys went with my parents and their friends to Lake Powell. It was a lot of fun! Grady made me so nervous though. I never let him take off that life jacket! Luke loved everything. My favorite part was the feeling of total freedom I got when I rode the jetski by myself. As a mom of little kids, I very rarely get that feeling of freedom!

Grady suprised me and was actually a little scared riding on the jet ski, boat, and being pulled on the tube.

That is Grady sitting on my mom's lap in the middle of the tube. He sat very still.

After we went to Lake Powell, the boys and I spent a whole week at my parent's house while Ty had job training down in the Valley. While we were at Lake Powell my parent's llama, Dolly, had a baby llama. Luke named the baby llama Lisa. I have no idea where he got that name from, but I think "Lisa the Llama" has a nice ring to it. My parents now have 5 llamas. This is baby Lisa with her mother at only 48 hours old.

While at my parent's house and Lake Powell I read the entire Hunger Games series in only 8 days. This series is even better than Twilight! If you haven't read it, I highly reccomend it! Even my brother and brother-in-law enjoyed the books.

My mom and I went and took the boys out a lot while I was in Lakeside. We took them bowling, mini golfing, to the park, to visit my parent's horses, and I even got to take Luke on a go-cart ride.

I wanted to close with this one shot of my boys actually playing nicely together in the backyard. This happens so rarely I just had to take a picture! (Luke honestly was happy!)

This "n" That

This post is going to be a summary of what we've been up to lately mostly in pictures.

First off, last weenend we went down to the Valley to watch an ASU football scrimage. The past two years Ty has gone with just Luke, but this year we made it a family affair.

My favorite picture

Grady quickly made friends with this nice little family. They loved feeding him doughnuts.

Wow! All 4 of us in 1 picture! What a concept!

Grady tried finger painting for the first time. It was probably a mistake, but he had fun!

One evening we were playing in the backyard, when daddy pulled up, home from work. This was Grady's reaction: from complete shock to pure joy!

We've had some great monsoon storms lately. For anyone not familiar with them, they are pretty special. They usually come without much warning, and usually don't last that long, but when they are going they can get pretty intense. Our whole town experinced some minor flooding on Tuesday, and our front yard turned into a lake.  The boys thought it was pretty great.

Another plus from all the monsoons are the frogs. One morning we found this little guy and his brother in our back yard. We called him Hopper.  You should have seen him swim in our splash mat! He only played with us for about 20 minutes, before he hopped away. It was probably for the best that he left, because Luke was getting really upset that he couldn't get Hopper to say "ribbit". This first picture isn't the best, but that's Hopper in Luke's hand.

"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!