So like I promised here are some photos of our trip to the U.K. The first one is of Olivia on the way home in the London airport, she likes to put her headbands on herself. Next is a photo of me and Livi with my dad and my grandad. After that we have Livi and Betty, Livi had a great time playing with Betty. Betty did pretty good with putting up with Livi for the most part, sometimes Livi has a hard time understanding boundaries with kiddos younger than her. The last picture is of Livi dancing with some good family friends kids one afternoon. They kept on dancing over and over again to this one song, Olivia loved it. All and all it was nice to see some family and friends but I'm pretty sure I'm not going to make the trip again, especially not without Damon. Speaking of Damon, I'm so excited to announce that he got into the nursing program he applied to. He starts Feb. 16, so we'll be packing up very shortly. I'm so proud of him for getting in. With 431 applicants, Damon was one of the 44 who got accepted. He is so excited to get started, after a very long journey will finally be heading in the right direction for his career. The next 18 months will be rough, but very, very worth it.
Oh don't mind my hair in the one photo, I had to go 10 days without using my flatiron, AAAHH.

Were Home...

After along day of flying on Monday, and then a long day of driving home for San Francisco. We finally made it home at about 8:30 pm last night. Olivia fell asleep on the way home and didn't wake up until 5am. A little early for Damon and I, but at least she had a good nights sleep. Really glad to be home, will post photos later.

This video is of Olivia singing her favorite primary song from church (I am a Child of God). If you know the song you might be able to catch some of the lyrics. I think she sings it pretty good for only being 2.

Life in the Bell household is going pretty good. Olivia and I are getting ready to go to England this week with my parents and my older sister and her daughter. We're going to visit the grandparents and see about every relative we have over there. I'm not nearly as stressed out about going this time as I was the first time I went with Olivia. I have a better idea of what to pack and don't really need to pack all the extra stuff that you never use anyway. Olivia is really excited to go the planes, she loves planes, and she is also excited to see her cousin Betty. It will be much nicer this time with Emma and her daughter Betty coming, so Olivia will have someone to play with. As great as it is to see my Grandparents, they really don't have anything for toddlers to play with.

Well that is about it for us, poor Damon has to stay home and work, but he is going to go and visit his family up in Portland so hopefully he will have a nice little break.

Hope everyone has a great couple of weeks, I'll make sure to post some pictures when we get back to the good ol' USA.

Christmas...

So I realized that I haven't talked about our Christmas yet. We had a wonderful Christmas, this year was the first year that Olivia was really into it, so it was so much fun to see how excited she got. We did the whole thing with leaving milk and a Ritz cracker(I forgot to make or get cookies) out for Santa and we left some carrots out for the reindeer. She was so happy in the morning to find that the milk was gone and that most of the carrots were gone and that Santa had taken a bite out of her cracker. She lucked out this year with gifts, Damon and I got her a new robe which she is wearing in the first picture and some dress up shoes, a purse, and some play bracelets and lots of books. My sister Megan got her the doll she is holding which she loves, and my other sister got her a snowman book, Olivia really likes snowmen. The big gift was from my parents and its the dollhouse that you see in the photo. She loves it and plays with it quite often.
The last two photos are from our annual Christmas party out at our church. Olivia was so excited to see Santa, but when we tried to sit her on his lap she kind of got a little scared. I don't really blame her, I never liked to do that either. She was however more than willing to take the goodie bag that he had for her. Such a girl always willing to have presents. Well that about sums up our Christmas. Aside from tons of snow that we received, we really had a great holiday season remembering the real meaning of why we celebrate Christmas.