Summertime and the livin' is easy

My phone is what goes every where with me and what I seem to take most of my pictures with. I don't pull out my real camera hardly enough and I blame it on my pregnancy-laziness. It's a real thing!
Anyway, following is a major phone dump from the past few summer months. And summer isn't even close to over yet!


^^Yes, my baby is always naked. He hates wearing clothes. Especially in summer. // Lots of time spent in the kiddie pool // Texas thunder storms // and a flower that Cole picked especially for me :)^^


^^Lots of ice cream-eating and messy faces // Lots of family evening walks by the canals // and lots of time spent poolside :)^^

^^Peaches. Yum. It's a good day when I crave healthy things like this and not McDonald's french fries :) // Cole learned to open the fridge. It was cute and sad all at the same time. // a froyo date with mom just because // First time to the aquarium! // And of course my favorite treat ever for the fourth: a patriotic fruit pizza!^^


^^I'm 20 weeks pregnant and already I have pregnancy face. *tear* It's only downhill from here! // Donut-muffins. A pinterest creation. Something I probably wouldn't have been drawn to if I weren't pregnant. // And free slurpee day!!!! This is like heaven for a pregnant lady :)^^


^^Family outing to the community pool. That's my 20 week bump squeezed into my polka dotted suit. // Cole basically forgets me and only wants his dad when we're at the pool. Because Steve is way more fun than me. // And lastly, Mr. Cole's cute little face on our walk yesterday evening.^^

Happy half way through summer!

My sweet boy

This little one has been full of spontaneous kisses for me lately.
He tells me "I luh you mommy" out of the blue multiple times a day.
He loves to play with my hair (when I actually do it!)
And when I don't do it, he loves to pull it out of my messy bun, get the comb out of the bathroom and comb it for me :)
He randomly tells me: "wow you pritty mommy!"
And he calls me "cute" sometimes too :)

I adore that little boy. And I think it's safe to say he adores me too :) Here's to never growing up!

Happy Fourth!

^^Are they not the cutest? Cole obviously loved the fireworks and has been asking about them for days afterwards. We even got to see fireworks two days in a row! He was in heaven.^^



^^Lots of fireworks! The 4th of July in Texas totally beats having it on base in Germany.^^



^^Small town Texas parade. The same one I was in last year! Those sirens were loud!^^



^^And a yummy patriotic treat shared with friends. The whole thing got eaten except for the part with blueberries on it. I guess people don't like blueberries ;)^^

And that sums up our 4th of July holiday! I think the 4th of July should fall on a Thursday every year because then you get to celebrate the day before on Wednesday, and you have Thursday, Friday, Saturday AND Sunday off and it's pretty much like having a 5 day weekend. Which rocks when there are only 7 days in a week anyway ;) It was fun and I was so grateful to not be feeling sick for any of it! I'll be 20 weeks next week and I cannot wait!

Two of these running around.

Can you believe it? I'm going to have two of these little munchkins running around come this fall! I wasn't surprised when I found out that it was a boy; I always thought we'd have two boys in a row! I am super excited, especially now that I don't feel like a walking dead person all the time. I wanted to kill myself for the entire month of April, and the month of May was half as bad as April. It was funny but the minute I heard my little baby's heart beat and saw him on the sonogram at the first doctor's visit, I thought "It's totally worth it." Being sick non stop is worth it when you get to see your baby wiggle around :)

And now that it's June I am so happy!! I feel normal again and gasp, I even pulled out my camera and got some shots of Cole today!! I don't think I took a single picture of him during April and May so I guess we'll never know exactly what he looked like during those months ;) The first trimester made me lose all drive to be productive in any way.

We ask him all the time if he wants a baby brother and the answer is always "nooooooo." He definitely knows what we're asking him and at this point we think it's pretty funny! Not sure if baby brother will think it's funny though ;) I love that little boy so much and I think he's going to be a great big brother. I'm so excited for this next little baby to come! Nervous too, but when I'm not feeling exhausted I just feel excited. Family of four, here we come!

ps, that nasty scrape on his forehead is from him running and falling at the pool :/ It drives me nuts when he hurts himself from doing something that I specifically told him not to do! See, this is why he needs me; two year olds don't know what best for them!

Texas Rangers

When Steve's family was in town, the first thing they did when they got into town was go to a Texas Rangers baseball game. I let Cole skip his nap and his uncles and grandpa took him to the game while Yvonne and I stayed home, enjoyed some kid-free time and relaxed out by the pool. I'll never forget how excited Cole was to leave me and spend time with the boys. I think he had never had so much fun in his entire life! These cute pictures of him at the game are courtesy of his uncles :)

S u m m e r

Cole's been spending a lot of time in the kiddie pool lately. And I've been doing a lot of babysitting lately! The kiddie pool is triple as fun when friends are over because I'm pretty sure Cole thinks I'm pretty boring! He just doesn't understand that I'm too big to sit in it with him and splash around. Right?! Or maybe I really am boring ;)

Either way, Cole is going to love having Steve's family over just next week! He's going to love being entertained by them and playing with them. And I'm going to love having babysitters on hand all the time :)

And one more thing: today is my mom's birthday! HAPPY BIRTHDAY! We love you so much :)

Waffles and whip cream and staying home.

I haven't posted pictures of waffles in a while so I thought it was about time! Yes! We still eat waffles almost every day and Cole loves them now with whip "keen" on them.

This is every day life for us. Our mornings are always really quiet: because I hate waking up early and I hate having to be somewhere in the mornings. (8:30 am church is really killing me this year!) Cole and I will watch a show together (bad mom! I know!), he currently loves Curious George. Then we go on the porch and play basketball together, or really just shoot hoops. Whenever I make a basket, Cole yells out "NICE SHOT MOMMY!!!" really really loud. I always think, thanks sweetie, for believing in me ;)

He also loves to get Steve's golf clubs out and dump out all of his golf balls and hit them around the house. He always wants me to do it with him and it's probably my least favorite thing that he does because the golf balls get stuck under the couch and the fridge, and really, playing golf is just not my thing! Especially in the house!

After lunch, he goes down for a nap at around 1 pm and always sleeps til about 4 which is wonderful for the both of us :) Because most of the time I sleep with him! And when we wakes up, we leave the house for the park and/or library. The other day we left the house at 4 pm and had Steve pick us up on his way home from  the clinic at 7. He played hard for 3 straight hours!

Then we come home, make dinner, he plays with Steve for a good portion of the evening (this is when the neighborhood boys stop by to see if they can play basketball with them) and then we put him to bed at around 9 pm and we do everything all over again the next day. I love how the simplest, most redundant things make Cole happy. It's nice for me because I love staying home with him :)

Happy Easter!

I think I've mentioned it before, but Steve and I are the worst at holidays. It was 11:50 pm last night when we realized that we had absolutely nothing to put in the plastic eggs (which I'd saved from last year) for Cole's Easter egg hunt which we had given zero thought until just then. And so Steve went on a late night errand for the Easter Bunny to 7 Eleven and brought back some gummi bears, as non traditional as that sounds. (bears? not bunnies?!)

Honestly, I think Cole has zero clue who the Easter Bunny is and he probably doesn't even know the real meaning of Easter either! What!! Although I did try to explain both to him. Either way, I think Easter this year was my favorite Easter yet, probably because I didn't stress about anything until it was almost too late, but also because I taught the lesson to my young women at church today and I felt like it went really well and that everyone, myself included, was uplifted by the beautiful message of Christ's resurrection. There might not have been any special dinner, or coordinating outfits but that's not what it's all about anyway. (although those things are fun too :) There was however a nice long nap for all three of us and an hour long walk in the most perfect kind of weather you can imagine :)

Happy Easter! If the Easter Bunny happened to bring you gummi bears too, I hope you enjoyed them as much as Cole did ;)