July 4th to the 24th!

We celebrated the 4th, the 24th and played a lot in between. We went to the Stadium of Fire with my family and had a lot of fun watching Carrie Underwood and the awesome fireworks. Jayda looks kinda funny in this picture, but hey, it's a family picture.

We hung out with Clark's family and had a great BBQ's! Here's Jayda in her festive outfit from Grammy Tammy.

I recently discovered the "fireworks" setting on my camera. It is awesome. Clark's cousins and I had a lot of fun with some sparklers. It says U of U, if you can't tell. How cool! :)

Jayda is pulling herself up onto everything. She is quick too and loves to be standing! She is getting stronger every day and I'm pretty sure walking is just around the corner for her. She is getting so big, but oh so fun.

My mom had her 50th birthday! Being the wonderful daughter that I am, I planned a little surprise birthday lunch, with the help of my sisters. I had to plan where we would eat in advance and then somehow convince my mom that it was her idea to eat at Mimi's Cafe. I thought I did a good job of this, but my mom told her friend the night before that she was a little bugged that she didn't even get to choose where she had her own birthday lunch, but she was pleasantly surprised to find all of her close friends at the restaurant supporting her in her youth. Here's the girls, minus Jayda.

We have been going swimming at least once a week and are loving being outside in the sun. Since my sister lives in Saratoga Springs, we headed down to Lehi Rec Center and it is pretty cool. It's very kid friendly and Jayda loved hanging out in the water swings.

Rachel made it back to Utah for a few weeks so we have been trying to catch up and get our kids to like each other more. I don't know what Gavin thinks of Jayda, but she sure liked to grab at him. It's been so fun to hang out with her and I wish she still lived here.
My dance studio, Prodigy, performed at Raging Waters and they did such a great job! We have such good dancers! Anyway, we made a day of it and Jayda had fun hanging out in the Lazy River. That was about it. She really liked this tray though!
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We had a family reunion, which is somewhat rare in my family, but it was good to catch up with people I haven't seen in a long time and hear about what my mom's family came from. We've been wanting to get a four generations picture since Jayda was born and finally got one. It's blurry, but it's four generations, which I think is pretty cool.

And we made it to the 24th! We went to see the parade floats at South Towne Expo. If you have kids over 2, this is a really fun thing to do. You get to see all the floats without sitting in the sun, they have performers, face painting and clowns making balloon creatures. My mom loves this kind of stuff and was having so much fun walking around every single float. Jayda liked looking at all the fun colors too.

Jayda is now 9 months and is becoming even more of a mover, if that's possible! She weighs 16.1 pounds (8th percentile) and is in the 12th percentile for height. With Clark and my genes our kids are just destined to be small. Jayda says dadadadada and mamamama and waves bye to everyone, even cars that drive by our street. She likes to sit in the grass and eat leaves. Clark's sister found out she's having another girl, which will give Jayda 3 girl cousins and 0 boys! I love it!

Vegas Baby!

This baby went on her first vacation... to Vegas!

Our first stop was a night in St. George. We went to Tuacahn to see "Tarzan." It was a blustery night, but Jayda did great and wasn't too distracting to the people around us (yeah right! I think the old lady next to me wanted to move the second we sat down. Oh well). She loved the flying monkeys and the fun music and lights. What a cute little family we are!

We made it to Vegas and had to unload all our STUFF! Geez, we had a lot of freaking stuff! I had never packed for a baby before and may have over packed, just a little, but I didn't know what to expect. We traveled with our friends, The Stringham's, who had almost as much stuff as we did!

We stayed at Excalibur because they are one of the cheapest and have a great pool! Since we don't gamble, we swim instead and spent a lot of time at the pool. Cute dad and Jayda Bear.

The kids schedules pretty much went down the drain the first night when we were at Tarzan until 11 PM so we ventured out a little later in Vegas and stopped by The Coke Factory. It's just one of those places you go every time you're there. Well, I do anyway.

We, of course, ate out a lot and it was awesome! Us Bells love to go out to eat, even Jayda! Although by the end of the trip she was pretty sick of sitting in her car seat, stroller and random high chairs.

We hit up The Cheesecake Factory and did some good shopping too (I love H & M!). Jayda is a good baby, but a full day of shopping is not exactly her favorite thing to do. When Jayda gets a little whinny, our trick is to put her on Dad's shoulders. She loves it up there and it gets a smile every time. Clark also loves getting his hair pulled out!

One thing I really wanted to do was see the fountain show at Bellagio because I've missed it the last couple time I was there. So we made the trek there, in the 99 degree heat, only to see the last 30 seconds of a show! The next one didn't start for another 25 minutes and with the babes, we weren't about to just sit and wait for it. So we took a picture with just the hotel in the background and went on our way. Dang.

We stayed one more night in St. George. It was nice to break up the drive a little for the little ones. We had such a good time that Jayda apparently wanted to go back. She has been crawling everywhere and has recently discovered climbing. She climbs up my legs, up the stairs, up her crib (which scares the crap out of me) and is now attempting up the wall!

I made it back from Vegas just in time to go to girls camp for two days, which was so much fun. Then made it home from camp just in time to go to the most awesome concert with my sister, Alli. Here we are before the show, getting really excited. What concert was this, you might be wondering...?

That's right: "Backstreet's Back Alright!" This had to have been one of the funnest concerts I've been to! I knew every single song and sang my little heart out. The dancing was awful and I don't think they have changed any of the choreography since 1998, but that's what made it so awesome! Backstreet Boys will always hold a special place in my junior high heart.

"Tell me why (ain't nothin but a heart ache), Tell me why (ain't nothin but a miiistake), Tell me why (I never want to hear you say), that I want it that way!" Yes!