I can't believe that summer is almost over already. Where does the time go? And Bella is 3 1/2 weeks away from being 1 year old!! I can't even believe it. She's getting so big.

Although summer is drawing to a close, we still have been enjoying the outside and keeping ourselves busy. We will be moving in a couple of days (officially on Saturday) and Adam has been spending lots of time at school getting ready. He has a lot to keep him busy with K-12 PE and also a worship class. And I have now started to watch some children at home! I am still searching for 2 more full-time kids, but I have a couple of maybes that I am talking to. I hope that at least one of them works out. That would be so nice

I am really enjoying the weather on the days that it's just cool enough to wear jeans and a sweatshirt. This is my favorite time of year, I like it for about a month and then I'm ready for the warm weather to come back!

Here are some pictures from the last few weeks. I posted them goofy this time, the most recent are first and the older pictures are at the bottom!

We were just hanging around the house a couple days ago and I wanted to try to get a picture of Bella where you could see her teeth (she now has 8). But, it is so hard to get one. The next few picture are my attempt at showing you all her little teeth! (two on the bottom and six on top)

This picture was not because of her teeth! We dog-sat for my Mom while she was out of town and Bella loved playing with Skeeter and crawling into his bed!

Another tooth picture (kind of).

Last week we went to the pool a couple of times before it closed for the summer and Bella had a blast! She loved the water, but she also loved waving and "talking" to all the other kids that were there. The pool here is so nice because it graduallly gets deeper so Bella could play and splash around in the shallow part and we didn't have to worry about her going too deep.

Every few hours there is a little break from swimming (15 min.) so this was during one of the breaks. I think Bella was pretty bored, since she resorted to "eating" Daddy's sandle.

My two favorite people playing in the water!

I love this picture because Bella's a pretty small baby, but sometimes her belly looks so big! It does in this picture especially.

The next few are Bella splashing around and having fun. I just couldn't stop taking pictures of her, she was so cute!

These last pictures were from a day that Bella and I went with Adam into school. We went into the fitness center and Bella had a great time working out with Daddy!

We hope that everyone is doing great and enjoying their last little bit of summer.

Fun At The Mall

So...I know I just posted a couple of days ago, but Bella and I took a little trip with Grandma Peggy up to The Twin Cities. We spent one day at IKEA (I had never been) and then we went to the Mall of America the next day! We had a great time both days. Bella especially like the mall because we did so much more than just shopping! So...here's some great pictures of all the fun things we did at the mall.

The theme park in the mall was built on the site of the old Twins stadium and they kept home plate. So because of our love for baseball, here's Bella and I at home plate!

Grandma and Bella walking through the theme park. She had such a good time looking and waving at all the other kids there!

Bella got to ride the Carousel. Grandma thought she would really like it. We were one of the first ones on the ride so she got to sit on her animal for a while before the ride started and she LOVED it! But then when the ride started to move and the animal went up and down she started to cling to me and wouldn't let go! So, I was bending up and down as the animal was moving up and down. Finally I decided to unbuckle her and sit down in the chair behind us, then she liked it a little bit better again! I should have found an animal that didn't move up and down!

So...here's the progression of pictures that Grandma got!

Before:

During:

During:

After:
After the Carousel incident, we went to eat at the Rainforest Cafe. Bella really liked that because there was so much stuff for her to look at! Every 30 minutes they had thunder and lightening, so this is Grandma and Bella during the thunder and lightening!

After lunch we went to the Underground Aquarium. That was a lot of fun. We got to see so many animals!

Here's Bella with the turtles (she loved looking at the animals through the glass).

The next pictures are of the underwater aquarium. We walked through a tube and the fish swam above and around us.

Bella looking at a shark:

This shark looked like it was thinking, "that looks like a nice little bite-sized treat!".

Here's a big sting ray that swam right by Bella a lot.

A sword fish:

In this display there is a green snake wrapped around the branch. It was moving it's head and Bella liked looking at it!

I told Adam that I wanted to get a picture of a shark 'biting Bella's head off' so here it is! How cute is she?! She looks genuinely concerned!

We had a lot of fun on our little vacation, but are so happy to be home with Daddy and sleeping in our own beds! Thanks for the fun vacation Grandma!

Summer Fun

I don't really have any new news to talk about...but, I do have some really great pictures from the past few weeks!

Bella and I spent a day in Rochester with some girl friends from college and we just hungout by the pool and talked, it was so good to see everyone again and it was really fun! Bella really loved this beach ball.

We went to a wedding yesterday of one on my college friends and we had a great time! Here is Daddy and Bella dancing to a "daddy daughter" song. We didn't stay too long for the dance because it was bedtime for Bella, but we had fun!

My Uncle Bob made this rocking horse for Bella and this was her first time on it! She got to ride it as we were getting ready for bed last night. She really liked it, thanks again Uncle Bob!! :)

Grandma Peggy gave us some boxes to help with the move coming up, but we have been letting Bella play with them until we really need to start packing! She is getting so daring, climbing all over.

She also likes to play inside the boxes. Here she is watching Sesame Street while in the box! Adam took this picture and I love it because of the face Bella's making!

Bella and I went outside to play one morning this past week because it was beautiful! I brought bubbles and these flowers, these pictures turned out so good! I especially love the second one.

This is the face that Bella makes when we tell her 'no'. I think she was trying to eat something from the floor so I told her no and she looked at me as if to say, "What Mom, I didn't do anything!".

Here are some pictures from when Eli came over to play! I got a little splash pool from Kmart (on sale for $4.99) so we had Eli over to play. They really enjoyed it, except for the fact that the seam of the pool broke and it doesn't squirt water up anymore like it's supposed to! Good thing I only payed $4.99! Although the pool broke, we did get some really great pictures!

Looks like Bella's going to be a drummer, just like Mommy!

We went in to CRCS (Adam's new school) to help him clean/decorate his office and Bella loved crawling all over the gym and playing basketball with her Uncle Ethan!

We hope you are all having a great summer!