Allred reunion: SKIT time!!

It's always a little stressful getting our family skits together, but it's also always worth it. It's so fun to re-watch these!! This is what family reunion memories are made of ♥

Labor Day Weekend 2017: Allred family reunion in Seattle, WA!

^^My favorite beach ever^^


This was such a fun weekend!! First things first: My parents have moved from Germany to Seattle, WA! Let me repeat that: MY PARENTS LIVE IN WASHINGTON NOW!! That is exactly 5 hours from my house!! I can hardly believe that this is real life but I am so so happy!! There will be many trips to Seattle in our future!

My mom had this family reunion planned since the beginning of this year. Bryant would be home from his mission and my parents would have just left Germany so a reunion over Labor Day weekend was in order. And since Marie has a nice big house to host lots of people, we did it at her place! Everyone arrived by Friday evening, Marie made us a nice enchilada meal and my mom had a little name game and gave each family a bag full of German candy (YUMMMM) and she got all the grandkids the cutest Heidelberg tshirts! Oh I love them! Then we roasted smores around the fire that evening. The kids surprisingly didn't last long because they were serious about having a Taylor Swift dance party in the bonus room in the house. LOL. It was so fun seeing the cousins have so much fun together. I hope they have only fond memories of all of this ♥

On Saturday we took the foot ferry from Port Orchard into Bremerton. That was an event in and of itself! Everyone loved it. In Bremerton, we went to the Naval Museum which was perfect because there was this fun room dedicated just for kids! And afterwards, there was a splash pad type park that the kids had so much fun at! Steve made his cowboy burgers for everyone that afternoon and that was no easy task! They were so good!!! After lunch, we went to my favorite beach ever: Narrows Beach which overlooks the Tacoma Narrows Bridge and I just love it! Cole jumped right in, like he always does. It doesn't matter how cold it is, he is all about it haha. He could stay out playing in the water and sand all day and never get hungry, I swear.

That night we ordered pizza and then we did our skits!!! Our skits were so much fun!! Seriously, I was impressed with everyone's skits. It's kind of stressful getting the skits together. You know, coming up with a good plot, getting the kids on board, getting your husband on board. But we pulled it off and I think everyone did a pretty dang good job. They were all hilarious!!

Sunday was fast Sunday and we took up almost 3 pews at church! We had spaghetti for dinner. #tradition and then did family pictures in the evening. I don't know why, but I love getting family pictures. Something about seeing all my boys in their best outfits and their hair all cute makes me love them that much more ;) It was awesome to have all of my immediate family in a picture too. That hasn't happened since our wedding in 2009! Eight years ago!! That evening, we witnessed the men play a little song with their guileles that my mom got for each of them for their birthdays last year. Steve has no clue how to play one but even he had a little role and he pulled it off pretty well! Good job, babe! We ended the night with Bryant showing us pictures from his mission and telling us stories and it was so fun to hear about it all. We also had angel food cake that night for dessert (my dad's favorite) and it was so good!!

Monday was Labor Day and Emma and her family sadly had to leave already that day. They drove all the way from Utah and were only able to stay for 2 days, so kudos to them for doing that!! That's a whole lotta driving in one weekend. With four little kids! The rest of us took the ferry into Seattle. My dad paid for everything which he didn't have to do, and which was not cheap! We went on the ferris wheel, "The Great Wheel of Seattle" and my kids loved that! We walked around Pike's Place Market and we went to lunch together at this cafe in the market and the food was soooo good! We had to say our goodbyes after that so that we could make our way back home since Steve had work the next morning. But our goodbyes weren't even sad since I know that I'm going to see my family so much more now!! I am seriously so thrilled about it. We couldn't have lucked out more ♥

Cole's first day of 1st grade!

First day of 1st grade!! He was super excited. As he was walking into school, an older kid he didn't know started walking with him and was like, "what grade are you in?" Cole told him and the kid was like "I'm in 2nd grade. Next year you're gonna be tall like me." 😂 Cole walked right into his classroom and did NOT want to give me a kiss goodbye. I think it's going to be a great year!

The Summer of 2-0-1-7

Ahhh Summer.

Summertime in Spokane, WA is just heavenly. Everyone lives for these months and we're always sad when it's over. And it's OVER! We had so many trips to the beach and this summer we discovered how fun the Tubb's Hill hike was! And I discovered how nice it is to use a baby slip as a carrier! I'd never used one when Cole and Logan were babies. We did the Tubb's Hill hike at least three times where you hike to this gorgeous beach where there are fun rocks to jump off of and the water is so clear. Heaven.

Emma, Lissie and Christian drove up one weekend in July so that we could go to the Hermes reunion that they do in Idaho every summer. It was so sweet of them to come because it was a long drive just for a weekend all the way from Utah!

A week later, we had the first annual Brent & Yvonne Byers family reunion and all of Steve's siblings came into town! We did the Spokane Temple 5k and fun run! (My first time running a 5k in about 3 years ha!) We went boating along the Spokane river that then fed into lake Coeur d'Alene that will always be my favorite lake! Yvonne took all the girls to do a spa day, oh my! She certainly spoiled us! And we went swimming at Hauser Lake too.

At the beginning of August, my sister Marie and her kids came to visit and we did the same Tubb's Hill hike, we got huckleberry milkshakes (my all time faaaaaavorite!! Crew even got to try his first milkshake and he loved it too of course.) We did soooo much thrifting which for whatever reason is so much more fun with sisters around ;)

Later in the summer we saw the eclipse. We thought that since in our area it would cover the sun 90.5% that it would surely get dark outside but it didn't get nearly as dark and we thought it would! I was amazed at how light it was outside still. Luckily a friend of mine let me buy some of her extra eclipse glasses off of her so we were able to actually see the eclipse. It was so cool! It will happen again in 2024 I believe so we don't have to wait too terribly long for the next one.

On a Saturday not too long ago when we were spending time as a family, we decided to go the the pool at the apartment complex where our friend lives. Steve was showing Cole how to do backward rolls in the water but unfortunately the water wasn't deep enough and Steve scraped his face across the bottom of the pool. It was baaaad. It was less of a cut and more like a chunk of his nose just came out, right at the bride of his nose! Steve's buddy who is a doctor agreed to come to the house and stitch it up for him. He had road rash on his face for at least a week and it's still healing, even now, over a month later. I think maybe in like a year the redness will be completely gone?? haha. He definitely did a number on his nose. We're glad he's ok though.

It's crazy to think that we didn't go anywhere this summer! We just never planned a trip but everyone planned a trip to come see us. I actually loved it. Like I said, summers in Spokane cannot be beat ♥