Belle's 3rd Birthday

Belle wanted a pink party for her birthday this year.  I found a fun idea for the cake and used pink and red m&ms to decorate it.  It turned out so cute and the inside was pink and white zebra stripes.  I need to get some pictures off our video camera cause I didn't take a lot of still shots.  We had family come over for the party and ate soup, rolls, cake, and of course homemade chocolate ice cream.  We opened presents which included some some games to keep her busy from Bart, Kellie, and the boys, some dolls, dress up stuff, and a basket for her bike from Grandma and Grandpa Yeates, and a Cinderella doll, helmet, bell, and puzzle from us.  We played a fun balloon popping game where candy and confetti went everywhere.


 

 

This wasn't taken on her birthday but its a fun picture and shows how much fun Belle is.  She loves to laugh and often asks us to tickle her or chase her.  She is becoming quite the daddy's girl and wants Jarod to see her a naptime and bedtime and wants him to participate in her picnics and play in her room with her.

 

Christmas!

Of all the Christmas presents we got Belle's favorite was the box Jarod's new saw came in.  She played and played in that box for hours! 


 

Belle's big toys this year was a dollhouse from Grandpa Rollins and a bike from Santa.  She is in love with both and wanted her bike in her room when she went to sleep that night. Jarod got a new miter saw and Tanya got the new Kindle Fire HD.  It was a great Christmas was lots of food, love, and fun.

 

 

 

Santa & Sledding

At the ward Christmas party Belle got to meet Santa.  She has been very excited about Santa this year and talking about how "maybe Santa will get me a bike" for like the last 3 months.  Once she Santa in person, not so excited.  She would not get very close and was clinging to Jarod.

 

For Christmas Eve we went to Chewelah this year.  There was so much snow.  You can see Jarod's parents house in the background.  There was at least 2 feet of snow.  We took Belle out sledding and found a little 10 foot long run for her to sled down.  She loved it so much and wanted to go and go. We had fun staying in Chewelah and Jarod loved seeing familiar faces at church. We stayed for a few days and came home Christmas Eve so Santa could visit us at our own house. 

 

 

One of the best parts of our stay was Belle's story about the snow.  There was a ton of snow hanging precariously off the side of the airplane hanger and when Jarod when inside and slammed the door all the snow fell down with a loud thud.  Belle thought that was great and started saying "whump, whump, whump, and the snow all fell down" over and over and over again.  She was still telling the story weeks later. 

Cider pressing & Thanksgiving

The weekend before Thanksgiving we pressed cider with Jarod's family.  The kids had a blast picking apples, playing in the water, and taking a bite out of every apple they could get a hold of. 



Everyone was pretty wet by the end of the day, it rained most of the day, even though we were under a canopy and the kids we were all so tired.  We pressed 100-half gallons of cider and everyone went home with a huge bag of potatoes (thanks to Uncle Dan!) and a years supply of juice.

Thanksgiving was spent with Tanya's family in Quincy.  We had a super yummy brined turkey and a deep-fried turkey (because one turkey is just not enough) and we had about 10 different flavors of pies! 

Belle's new smiling face-she likes to show all of her teeth.

 

A great highlight of the day was Belle trying to blow out the candles.  It took her about 20 tries because she was blowing straight down-not at the candles.

 

First Snow

Jarod and Belle went out and made a snowman after the first snow of the season.  Belle loved it!




I think it was a missionary snowman. 

Belle has started to wanted to dress up more.  Here is an outfit of her choice (of course wearing pants is optional at our house-like most houses with toddlers).

She loves to put my shoes on and she also loves to have her toenails painted.

 

Snow & New Bed

With the cold weather and snow coming (we got some last night!) we have been trying to find all of our snow clothes.  I got Belle some snow pants at the end of last year on clearance for this year and they fit great, a little wide in the legs but all snow pants are.  She thought they were funny when we tried them on.  She looks like a puffy little pink and red marshmallow.

Jarod has been working so hard at building a bed for us.  We have only ever had a metal bed frame for our bed and a couple of months ago we took our queen mattress back to Costco since it was sagging after only 3 years on a 10 year warranty and bought a new king sized memory foam mattress.  We have loved the new mattress but its made to be a platform bed so it has just been on the floor for the last few months.  I found a great tutorial for a farmhouse bed and both Jarod and I loved the style.  Find the tutorial HERE.  It was a little time consuming but it turned out fantastic.  Its a little rustic and is really solid.  We modified the plans a little to our liking and the size we needed (our footboard is a little taller than the original but I wanted it above the mattress not below like in the plans).  We painted it the same white we are planning to paint all the moldings in our house and gave it a couple coats of a super nice clear coat to protect it for the next 100 years!  We are slowly (and I mean slowly-like a 5-10 year plan) remodeling our house.  Eventually we are going to have bigger, nicer moldings that are white, new carpet, and different colored walls.  We are also moving the master closet around and there will be a door to the closet off of the right wall in the photo below.  We have a couple of unfinished nightstands we are adding trim to and painting to match the bed but it will be a while before those are ready. Jarod did such a great job, right!

Books & Halloween

Belle loves to read books.  She will spend long periods of time in her room going through all the books on her shelves.  One day she was being quite reading her books and I went to check on her to discover that she was lining all the books up after she read them on the floor.  They were all across the whole floor and she had them all organized neatly.

Belle got to dress up a lot this year.  We went to a Halloween party at Bart & Kellie's house and she wore her fairy costume from last year.  The next day was our ward Trunk or Treat and she decided instead she wanted to wear her ballerina costsume. She also wore it on Halloween.

We went trick or treating downtown for the first part of Halloween night.  Belle was really nervous about all the kids and people everywhere.  She finally wanted Jarod to pick her up and she just hugged him and buried her face in his neck.  It was so cute but sad that she was nervous.  I think all the costumes were confusing and making her unsure.  After a few minutes she was fine and was loving all the candy she got.