It’s snow day #2 for us here in southern Indiana… I don’t even think we made it above 20 degrees today.  BRRR.

The kids have played outside some, but I am a wimp- I’d much rather stay snuggled up inside with my thick blanket and hot cocoa.

K and I built a girly fort today, just to have a nice indoor activity to do. It was inspired by Amanda, but ours isn’t nearly as fabulous as hers was. K thought it was pretty darned neat though- she even wants to sleep in there tonight!

It was nice for me to just be a little girl for a while. I don’t do that nearly as often as I should. Hmm… New Year’s resolution???

Can you believe that Max is 3 months old already??? He is getting SO big and cute, so much more alert and responding to people too. He is just a big ball of happiness and I love it! Audrey (my sis) is completely blessed with her two amazing little men… they are perfect.

Wow, it seems like it’s been ages since I’ve blogged. SO much is going on in my life right now, it’s taking a lot out of me and I barely have time to breathe, much less take personal photos and sit down and write. I miss it though, it’s a great outlet for me. I’ve decided to go back to school- I start on Monday. I am completely excited and scared out of my mind. I’m going to study web design. I think it will be a nice compliment to my photography, and it’s always good to have something to “fall back on” in these uncertain times, right? My mom had two surgeries recently, and last week I took care of her while she recovered from the 2nd surgery (her knee). The kids were also off school for Christmas break, so needless to say, it was pretty busy around here! Things are slowly settling down, and we are getting things to come together finally. Slowly. We appreciate all of the prayers, and all of the nice emails and phone calls concerned about how we are doing. It’s so wonderful to have such caring folks in our lives, and this holiday season would have been pretty bleak if our friends hadn’t stepped in to hold us up {you know who you are- LOVE YOU!}. But there is a purpose to every trial in life, and we will come out stronger than ever in the end, I’m sure of it!

I love you all… until next time..

xoxo,
jess

Wishing you a very merry Christmas, may your holiday be filled with light and love.

xoxo,
The Bell family

I apologize for the lack of blogging lately. These past couple of months, God has REALLY been trying me and I admit, all of the stress has completely zapped my “mojo”. I will try to do better!

I got the Christmas trees up (actually, they’ve been up since about a week before Thanksgiving), and I’m trying to get into the holiday spirit. It’s tough this year though, and it makes me especially sad since Christmas has always been my favorite time of year. But this year, I’m just not feeling it. *sigh*

I don’t want to get into the details, but if you’re the praying type, my family sure could use them. And if you don’t pray, we’d love some positive thoughts/vibes if you’ve got any to spare.

Anyway, here are a couple of snaps I grabbed of our trees- this is the smaller tree in our dining room (please excuse the messy corner)..

and here is the main big tree in the living room, with all of our special ornaments we’ve collected over the years (I call it our “mutt’ tree, haha)

I also played around with taking out of focus shots of the lights to get some cool effects. I liked the multicolored lights better than the white ones.

I hope you all had a wonderful Thanksgiving with your loved ones… even in the midst of turmoil, we do have a lot to be thankful for. xoxo

It’s hard to believe, but my little nephew Max is one month old already! He just gets cuter & cuter…