My 25th birthday!!

I'm putting this video up on the sisters blog tomorrow, but I wanted to put it up here too!

I documented a little bit of what I did on my birthday and put this little video together.

What I didn't include was the beautiful journal entry Steve wrote for me in the journal that he proposed to me with. Once a year he updates it and he decided to do it on my birthday this year :) I loved it; it made me tear up! Steve is such a good writer and he's always been so thoughtful and loving :)

He also surprised me with Johnny Carino's take-out. YUM! My favorite. 

We weren't able to go out to eat since we went to the football game. It'd been SO long since we'd been to a football game!

And thank you SO much, Britt for watching Cole for us so last minute!

Britt has always been so sweet and giving. She amazes me. Thank you so much!!

Here are a couple more pictures from the football game:

Thank you to all my friends and family who got me gifts and wished me Happy Birthday. I felt super loved!

Now, I'm excited to go on a shopping spree with the money Steve's family gave me (YAY! Thank you!) with Steve since he still hasn't spent his birthday money. This should be fun. :)

Ps, Mom! (and Dad and Lissie and Christian and Bryant) I LOVE my shirt and scarf soooo much. :) In case you didn't notice, I wore the scarf as part of my Taylor Swift costume!

Taylor Swift and Joe Jonas get back together.

Look at these guys!

I don't know why they ever broke up......

via

Well! They are back together.

Married.

And all over each other ;) 

(On Halloween anyway....)

Taylor Swift's (I mean my) favorite number! 

Look who else we spotted not too far away:

NICK JONAS!!!!!!!!

This Halloween we had tons of fun going to the ward party and then we also enjoyed Britt's super fun  Halloween party at their complex's club house! It was probably our funnest Halloween in a long time :) (Thanks for an awesome party, Britt:)

But my favorite moment of the entire evening was probably when I was buying drinks right before the party. I was checking out and the girl at the register looks at me and says:

"You....look like Taylor Swift."

HA!

"Well, good," I replied. "Because that's who I'm dressed up as!"

I'd say my costume was a success :) It was all in the hair, I think. Maybe the fake eyelashes too :)

Halloween costume preview

Just a preview of Munchkin Man's costume!

He's totally going to be rocking on his cardboard electric guitar! :)

More pictures to come :)

Dense Fog Advisory

That's what the weather warning on my phone said this morning.

Sure enough, we woke up to this!!!

I was so excited! I've never seen so much fog here before!

It's Fall finally! I'm so ready to bust out my scarves and coats :)

(Nevermind that a couple hours later it was looking like this:)

And on our walk last week, it was the first time I had to put a hat on Cole and cover him with a blanket:

(cutie)

We're going to Washington for Christmas this year (SO EXCITED) and Steve brought to my attention that Cole has like *zero* winter clothes. His baby BYU beanie hardly fits him. I guess I'm going to have to go on a baby clothes shopping spree...........yay! ;)

Decorating for Fall

I've really been on a decorate-with-food kick lately.

Probably because I don't have much of a sense of decorating and food is just...easy. But I wanted to do something for Fall!

I saw this pin on Pinterest and I thought it was so pretty and I wanted to do something similar.

Luckily I had a little basket tucked away somewhere and a bunch of apples in the fridge so I could :)

And then I bought little squashes and pumpkins and lined them up on along the counter, on top of the fridge...I love fall colors!

And the last picture, the jars, I need to figure out something crafty to do with them! I've seen a bunch of ideas on Pinterest, but I want the perfect craft! And something Christmas related. 

Any ideas, friends?!? :)

My jar collection just keeps growing!

Autumn Evening

Steve worked from 3 to 9 pm this evening and so it was just me and Cole.
We went on a walk together by the canals and Cole got his 10 month old photoshoot since he's 10 months today!
(Click HERE to see all the pictures from the photoshoot on my photography blog!)
Cole loved playing with the pumpkins and weeds. He tried eating the leaves, but he didn't really like how they tasted ;)
I can hardly believe he'll be one in 2 months. My baby!!!!!

Anyway, I also filmed Cole a little bit and put this very primitive video together! It's about a minute long so you should watch it! :)

Cole Update!

Cole is five days away from being 10 months old!!

Here's some things he's learned and what he's been up to:

CRAWLING. 

Kind of. He still drags his belly on the floor a bit. But it doesn't really slow him down and he gets into everything!!

THURSDAY NIGHT YOGA.

That's right, we take him to yoga with us. He crawls around in the back and watches the class do crazy yoga poses. I think he thinks it's funny :)

POINTING.

He learned to point and points at everything. I think it's so cute :)

GOING ON WALKS WITH MOMMY.

In theory, I exercise 5 times a week:

Monday, Wednesday, Friday morning, we go on a walk on the new trail with our friend April and her kids.

Thursday we do yoga.

Saturday I jog in the morning.

But this is only in theory, and in reality, I work out, ummm, probably about 2 times a week.

Cole likes the walks though, so I really need to do that more :/

And last week, Steve and I traded off going to the temple so Cole got to spend a lot of time playing in the grass by the temple :)

I recently posted some cute pictures of him with apples on my photography blog which you can check out HERE.

I can't believe he will be ONE in two months!!!!!

Waffles on a Friday morning

My mom sent us their old waffle maker in the mail and I've been happy as can be to have it!

I don't normally make waffles just for myself on a Friday morning, but Steve was already at school and we're running out of food in our house since I haven't been grocery shopping in like 2 weeks. We haven't had time and I hate going by myself.

But luckily we have looots of Bisquick so since that was pretty much my only option for breakfast, waffles were the winner :)

I did, however, switch these waffles up a little bit.

I don't know if you can tell in the pictures, but do they look kind of brown? Don't they kind of look like they're whole wheat waffles?

Well, they're not.

I made them with unsweetened chocolate almond milk! Yum!

Honestly, they don't really taste like chocolate but they do smell like chocolate which makes them fun :)

So, no, they're not wheat.

No, they're not really healthy (except for maybe the flax as an egg substitute)

....

They're just chocolate :)

........................................................................................................

And I thought that I would suggest watching this video called "Food Matters."

Emma posted it on her blog yesterday. Steve and I watched it last night and loved it!

It's a video about "The 'scoffed at' solution that can prevent and treat most diseases." 

It talks about how important the food we eat is. "We are what we eat."

I feel like half the things they talk about in the video are things that Steve has been telling me ever since we've been married. He is a nutritional science major after all. 

So, if you have time, watch this documentary. It's a little over an hour long but it will only be available to watch for free online until tomorrow! After that you have to buy it for $10!

It might seem kind of silly of me to push watching this healthy food video after posting about chocolate almond waffles, but hey! at least it's almond milk and not soy! I've recently learned that soy really isn't all that great for you. And at least it's unsweetened, right?!! :)

Anyway, click HERE to watch it!

A tender moment

The other night we put Cole to bed at around 6:30 pm because he was exhausted somehow. He slept soundly until about 11:30 pm when Steve and I were getting ready for bed. So I got him and fed him as Steve fell asleep. Cole was practically asleep as I nursed him for a good 10 minutes at least. But when he was done, he looked up at me and his sleepy eyes locked with mine and he just smiled at me for a long time it seemed. The way he looked at me I knew that he felt safe and secure it my arms. I could tell that he loved and adored me, his momma :) It melted my heart and I couldn't help but cry! It was such an innocent, tender, loving moment; I will never forget it!
Then he fell back asleep and I put him back in his crib.

This little experience reminded me of how grateful I am to be his mom! I love being a mom, it is the best thing I have ever done in my life and this is only the beginning!

It also reminded me of my favorite talk from General Conference this past weekend. Neil L. Andersen gave a talk about the importance of having children and one of my favorite quotes was when he said:

"Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling. You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps. It's not something you do if you can squeeze the time in. It is what God gave you time for."

You can watch the whole talk again here:

I'm so grateful that God gave me my time to be a mother!