Silverwood

Amusement parks, train rides and huckleberry ice cream. 

These are things I hadn't experienced in a looong time and that Cole had never experienced his entire life until last Wednesday when we went to Silverwood (a little amusement park in northern Idaho) with Steve's family where the only ride I rode was the merri-go-round with Cole. 

It was also our anniversary and since it was spent all day at the park, we actually celebrated the next day, Thursday, by going to see a movie all by ourselves! Steve and I hadn't seen a movie together since long before Cole was born so it really was a treat for us and I'm so thankful to Steve's family for watching Cole for us! Our movie of choice was The Bourne Legacy and I LOVED it! I thought Aaron Cross was way cuter than Jason Bourne ;)

And these are my instagram pictures to document. As we walked into the amusement park, Steve told me that this might be something better left for instagram instead of lugging my DSLR around. I love how he understands my need to document everything in my life ;)

So In LOVE!

Three years ago today I sang this song I wrote for my love on our wedding day. This is the first time I'm posting this footage for the whole world to see and it's nothing less than a little embarrassing!!!!!

I'd like everyone to know that I prefaced my song by saying:

"I don't exactly have a performing voice so we'll just take this as a sign of my love for Steve."

Of all things, this phrase was cut out of the video (not by me), I have no idea where it went. While I'm at it, I'd like to add that Christian hummed a harmony during each chorus, his mic just wasn't loud enough so no one heard. It was so pretty though! Oh well.

In any case, it was so fun to write this little song the week before our wedding as I road-tripped with my family from Utah to Washington. Every time I hear it, I remember myself coming up with lyrics, making changes, switching words around as I looked out on the Idaho/Montana countryside. 

To a real song-writer it might not be anything special, but to me the words were from the bottom of my heart. I love Steve so much. I feel so lucky that we have each other forever. We both make each other want to be the best people we can be. I'm so lucky because if nothing else in this life, I know what it's like to truly love someone, and to be truly loved by someone else. And plus, we have a really cute kid too :)

Ok, that's all of my sappiness for now.

Happy 3rd anniversary, Steve!

So please, lower your volume and watch me sing this little love song ;)

"So in love"

by Lauren Allred, music by Christian Allred

I lay my head down

and shut these tired eyes

Rewind, let's hear it again

You say I'm too pretty for this

You say I'm too pretty for that

And suddenly 

there I was so in love, so in love

And suddenly 

there I was so in love, so in love

My thoughts go back once again

a silly love song stuck in my head

I know I took my sweet time

good-bye babe, thank you for the ride

as he pulls me back in

and plants one right on my..chin!!

And suddenly

there I was so in love, so in love

And suddenly 

there I was so in love, so in love

I'll happily hold you while I focus on forever

and I will love you even longer than that

I'll happily hold you while I focus on forever

Forever

and I'll love you even longer, I'll love you even longer than that

And then I roll over again

Once more, in my head

blue eyes, so intently

at me, looking so kind

there you are on one knee

asking me

will you forever be mine?

And suddenly 

there I was so in love, so in love

And suddenly 

there I was so in love, so in love

And suddenly

here we are, here are

here we are so far

Will you forever be mine?

Coeur d'Alene

Ahhhh. We are on vacation in Spokane right now and yesterday we spent the entire afternoon at lake Coeur d'Alene and I was in heaven! We've somehow managed to come here every summer since getting married and I have no idea how we even did that. 

The water was the coldest water I've been in for a loooong time, but I still got in, more than once! We played ultimate frisbee right there in the water and the score was 5-0. (take a wild guess which team I was on.) Running around in water/sand is quite the workout! Cole hated the sand and therefore hated the water. He warmed up for about 2 seconds and then wanted out again so my anticipation of him being a fish in a real body of water was not fulfilled. He loved the seagulls though! He followed them around, trying to feed them the frisbee (I'm not sure where he was going with that...)

ANYWAY, I had this whole cute little video put together of our day at the lake and then before I could save it, Steve's computer died on me and I lost it and I was soooooooo mad. And now I will probably never ever put that video together ever again. So sad, I know, you will just have to picture footage of Cole running around, Steve and his dad and brothers playing ultimate frisbee, handstand contests, cartwheels, and Cole digging in the dirt. Yep!

I really like being on vacation here, seeing family, having a handful of babysitters on hand all the time and riding in the back seat with Steve by my side. :) 

ps, thanks to "Uncle Ben" for taking the pictures of me and Steve!

learning to swim!

Ok, so I hope that I wasn't misleading when I said we're teaching Cole how to swim. Obviously he can't really swim yet, but he can put his head under the water which is HUGE to us. This has been going on for the past month or so. We started out by watching a few youtube videos that gave us a few pointers.

First of all, if I had known that babies just naturally have this instinct that they know not to inhale when they're submerged under water, I would not have been so crazy paranoid when taking Cole to the pool before. So that was the first thing that I needed to get over which made it really easy for me as his mom (believe me, my job is hard) to let Steve put his head under water. 

Another pointer from the video was to just make it fun. Steve was really good at this. The first thing we did was sing "Ring around the rosies" and when we got to "...we all fall down!" we would put his head under water. Cole loved that! He wanted to do it over and over and before we knew it, he had no problem with stepping off the ledge and going completely under water.

And that is pretty much where we are still at. He does kick his legs when we tell him to, and he's started wiggling his whole body when he's completely submerged so that's a step in the right direction; he just doesn't really swim yet. But we're getting there! And I feel so much better about being at the pool with him now! That little boy loves the water! And he loves that silly tennis ball :)

Ok, now you can watch the video. There's actually not very much footage of him "swimming" at all. Sorry :/

Nighttime, lights and weekends

It's the weekend but this post is all about last weekend. Saturday we got a game of volleyball going in the pool at our complex. Actually, the boys played volleyball, I didn't. Instead I was chasing Cole around the pool as he would get in and out, in and out, throwing his ball around. He LOVES the pool and I finally got some footage of him "swimming" today which I'll post soon :)

But anyway, it was fun because a new neighbor that just recently moved into one of the apartments here, was at the pool while we were there and he was totally friendly! Not only did he pull out his big speakers and play some fun music (like Jack Johnson), but as it got later, he even got out a mic and pulled up karaoke on his phone! I wasn't brave enough to go up, but some of the other girls were!

And then, when it got dark enough, the colored pool lights came on (which I'd never seen before because we never stay at the pool that late..) and I joked about how Steve and I really throw a great pool party. Karaoke and L.E.D. lights in the pool? Totally cool ;)

It's only kind of funny because the time that we invited people over before to play volleyball, it was kind of a similar situation, except it was more like a college party with r&b and hip hop playing MUCH much louder and lots of dancing in (and out of) the pool. They were cool though. I don't think they'd ever been around so many babies at once. I'm talking like 3 babies in a pool at the same time and they were all completely fascinated and kept saying how much they wanted to have kids. {just get married first!!!}

I never realized that the pool at our complex was so hip on the weekends. One more thing to add to my list of "all the things we're going to miss when we leave Texas."

Sunday was obviously a lot quieter. It consisted of three things: church, naps, and a nighttime walk. And that's about it! We slept in til 11:30 that morning (halleluja for 1 pm church) since we stayed up til 2 am the night before (party animals!!!). And after church we all went back down for a nap and slept til 7:30 pm. We took Sunday as the "day of rest" quite literally last week. Not to be confused with laziness of course. I don't even remember if I made dinner or not. If I did, it was probably spaghetti and if we did have dinner we went on our evening walk afterwards, which I don't know that I want to do anymore since apparently Dallas county has declared a state of emergency when it comes to the West Nile virus. So creepy right? I hate mosquitoes. 

Good news, though. There's a deliciously yummy brownie peanut butter trifle recipe that we made for Bekah's birthday on the sisters blog!

Also, we're leaving for Washington in one week from today!!

And one more thing: Steve has gotten 100% on three of his final practicals! He's already one crazy good chiropractor :)

lately.

What have we been up to lately?!

*Nighttime walks: because it's too hot outside during the day.

*Blueberry waffles: they might be getting old to you, but not to me :)

*And playdates!! Cole loves his buddy Aidan. And apparently he loves to color too! Steve and I decided we need to stop depriving him and actually get him a coloring book so he can express his artistic scribbling abilities. (The one above is Aidan's.) Don't worry, I'm going to the dollar store to get him one SOON.

Also, we've been going to the pool like CRAZY and I'll have to post all about that later because we're teaching Cole how to swim! WE'RE TEACHING COLE HOW TO SWIM!! (kind of, not really)

And with that, I'll leave you with a bunch of links of all the things we've been up to lately:

*wishing I could become a yoga teacher

*having a blast at cub scout day camp

*being thrifty with my little munchkin

*running errands all by myself?!

*AND running errands NOT by myself

I'm pretty sure I mention how hot it is right now in every single one of those above links. Have I said it enough?! Is everyone getting the picture?!