I heart her.

Happy Birthday x 3

Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday to you, Happy Birthday dear YaYa, Papa Steve, and Chelsea. Happy Birthday to you and you and you.

That is how we celebrated last night!

And of course every party has a theme and this party's theme was "flowers"

Thank you very much Kyla!

Here is the decor.

Thanks to Jessi for cutting out most of these flowers.

Kyla decorated the kids table in her own flower style.

And the cake.

Those are pictures of the birthday girls and boy.

The girls had a blast and loved every second of this party celebrating three people we all love

very much. The present portion was my favorite. Kyla and Heidi worked VERY

hard on everyone's individual gifts and were thrilled to have them open then.

We love you guys...thanks for being so gracious and sharing your birthdays with each other.

purple

We went to Purple (which I love and highly recommend) on Monday night

to celebrate the birthdays of these lovely ladies:

27 and 28 respectively and so cute. This week is birthday bonanza week. It goes: Steve (my father-in-law), Taryn, Chelsea, and my mom all a day apart. This makes for lots of fun birthday celebrations almost everyday.

Monday was a great kick-off to the festivities. Although, I was really feeling the wine and delicious blue cheese deprivation. Everyone else were loving them both. YUM...two of my favorite things...forbidden. Darn. What made up for it was the $50 in free apps and desserts we scored for poor timing on our meal. We didn't care...it was worth it.

Happy Birthday girls!

Shout Out to Jessi

Jessi just finished up her annual summer week long stay with us. I didn't want her visit to go unmentioned. We didn't have any fun adventures this year like we did last year with the water taxi and no great pictures. We still had a great time with her here though and she did get a good adventure in with my mom. They went white water rafting! Until next year...love you Jessi.

Shades of Summer

This post is mostly to taunt my friend Amy- most of you will not understand. Not only do I receive personal emails from Mrs. Becky Higgins herself but I also received Elizabeth Kartchner's Shades of Summer in my very own mailbox this week. That's right...she touched them...then I touched them...then I sent her this photo as directed...and she sent me a personal email back! What?! Yep. Anyways... check out what this sunglasses thing is all about. Actually, I'm not really sure she actually even does anything with the pictures when summer is over. I'm just glad I got to be a part of it because I think Dear Lizzy is just about one of the cutest people on the face of the earth. Maybe I'll even make a flower embellished prego T.

sister love

Swagger Wagon

Since we will have to get a new car pretty soon and a minivan is not out of the question I thought I'd post this YouTube video that makes me laugh every time. It's an ad for the Toyota Sienna and I think its pretty hilarious. Don't forget to pause the playlist. Enjoy...

Lake Cle Elum

Heidi's first time tubing... it went about like Kyla's first time last summer-

half laughing and smiling and half crying. She said she liked it though.

Ten on Ten: August

new strap.

drop off.

driving by.

going down.

second waiting room.

our baby.

her new best friend.

more driving with cute toes.

dad's gone. dinner.

bath time.

I'm Still Here

photo by Hannah Lombardo (age 8)

Yes, I'm still here. I've been in a bit of a computer/camera funk. I just downloaded some photos today- from yesterday and realized they are the first ones I have taken in August. A whole week went by without one picture. WHAT? Usually there are several everyday. I'm just tired.

I did receive two fun things in the mail today! One was a book (a late birthday present from Amy) and the other was my long awaited camera strap. I was about to go ballistic on this lady (I ordered it on my birthday- two and a half months ago) but its just too cute to be mad. It was worth the wait.

We had a weird kid free weekend. Don't get me wrong it was great but I did miss them. The weird part was we didn't have anything planned and we didn't need a babysitter. We just have a Grandma and Yaya who love to see those sweet girls. They had an awesome time- toenails painted, haircuts, Red Robin, a trip to the mall, playing nonstop with out of town cousins and cousins they see all the time, and swimming. Casey and I had a nice time too. I beat him in a putting contest. But I must say he DID beat me at very long game of Mexican Train Dominos.

Also, still going to change the name of my blog. Props to Anne Marie for sending me a list of ideas. I loved them all and so did Casey. They did get the creative juices flowing. My favorite though...."Regulators Mount Up"  This was totally not a serious blog name but it made me laugh out loud. You will only get this if you like Warren G and you were a bit of a closet gangsta rap lover in the nineties.

Tomorrow we get to see baby number three aka peanut for the first time. I'm excited.

Tomorrow is also Ten on Ten. We'll see how mine turns out. I have about two hours worth of driving tomorrow and three hours worth of doctors appoints/ultrasound.

Til tomorrow.....

a taste of italy

Yesterday we got a little taste of Italia. We visited Joe & Fran Lombardo aka Pa & Gigi or Taryn's Grandpa & Grandma's cute little house on the Key Peninsula. It was a great day, a much warmer beach experience, and a delicious meal (minus the icky dessert I made).

Classic Bell/Lombardo behavior seen here. Casey posing Karate Kid style while Joey laughs. Too bad he had a stiff neck or he would have been up there too.

We all enjoyed our walk on the beach, even if the kids did need to be carried part of the way...

Kyla LOVED the clothes line and clothes pins that Gigi had. She had never seen such thing before. She had several pins stashed in her pockets. Gigi let her take them home and when the kids clothes got soaked from the bird bath it was the perfect opportunity to hang some things to dry. She loved it.

                     And of course what little trip is complete without quad rides and quad photo ops.

Thanks Gigi and Joe for having us.

Thanks Taryn and Joe for inviting us.

We loved it.

Chels and Tyler you were missed.