We try to keep busy...

Well, I do try to keep busy. This is about the only craft or project I've done since we moved to Portland, but I hope to do more.


I kind of felt like I was at super Saturday (from relief society) every time I worked on painting this for Cohen. Thank you Sabrina for holding a "craft night" to get me started.

Every day Cohen and I go out side to get the mail. I've always looked forward to it... and Cohen has started to catch on too.

These are some of the trees in our little apartment complex. Aren't they beautiful?! They are blooming all around the city right now. I'm teaching Cohen to smell them. He does smell them... and then gets a handful of them, and then tries to eat them. I shouldn't be surprised.

Cohen is fascinated with balloons, and that's an understatement. He has been for a couple of months now, but I can never get the excitement recorded just right. There's a video below. While on our little walk to the mailbox he sometimes pulls me in the other direction so he can get this close to the balloons or "Bo-bo" as he calls them. It's really cute.

I like that my relief society president is good with following through. When I expressed my desire to her to get out more she made sure that Amber called me. Amber is a great mom that is always out and about with her three kids. She told me about the Portland "Ladybug hikes".... and here we have it. The hikes are for 2-5 year-olds (Cohen's too young, oh well) and are basically nature walks that occur every week and rotate between parks in the city. All the little kids wear these ladybug backpacks that have all sorts of fun things in them like cups for dirt, containers for bugs, necklaces that make noise, etc.

The backpack contained a spoon to dig in the dirt. Here our leader, Annie, told the kids to dig in the mole mounds to try to find the hole where the mole came out. I don't think Cohen consumed too much dirt. :)

There were lots of sticks on the ground in one area so they all played pretend magic wands. By the way, Cohen was always leading the pack down the path, and didn't want to focus long.
Did I mention this park was absolutely beautiful? When Portland says "park" they really mean forest. I didn't see a soccer field, but of course I didn't come close to seeing the whole park.
This is what it looks like to walk with Cohen.

Pardon the bare bum....
The evening bath sometimes brings surprises. This is our tub, you can't see the water because Cohen's so high up. Oh dear, this boy likes to climb, and it really scares me sometimes!
Cohen's had this toy turtle since December, and he mostly likes to hit the top button because it plays music of course. Tonight I thought I'd see if he's learning numbers at all, so I asked him where the "1" is and where the "3" is, etc. He's so smart! He knew all the numbers on the first try! I know I'm his mom, so I think he's smart just because he's my son, but I'm impressed that we've never really practiced written numbers, and he knows them.

There is another member to the family. I don't want to leave Josh out. He's loving studying chiropractic. School is pretty much his life right now. Finals are next week so he spends a lot of time studying. I'm happy when I get to see him for dinner and to have him for bath-time with Cohen. He's doing great in school, but we are all excited for our two week break coming up.

Here's the balloon video. I wish it really showed his excitement. This is only a taste.