I LIIIIIIIIIIIIIVE!

Hello all!
Well, friends, Stephan and I have endured our first vacation without our precious Noah along for the ride. (Since he was born, that is). We, with our friends, the Jimilys, ventured to the incredibly peaceful and restful Beaver's Bend, Oklahoma. We stayed in a lovely cabin, enjoyed lots of downtime, and only ventured out to sight see. We went to the historic national park there to see said sights. While there, we partook of a meal at a quaint restaurant, rented paddle boats to paddle around a pristine river (that was almost a bad idea as none of us realized how strenuous propelling a paddle boat was.), and then enjoyed snowcones! Then, we may have crossed into land not meant to be seen by tourists.
      We drove up to the top of the dam there at the park. At the top, there was a place to park and look out over the dam and beautiful lake. I, however, saw a 'trail' of sorts and decided that is would be awesome-er if followed the trail. It turned out to be a good idea, as the steep, treacherous trail lead right down to the lake shore! The entire lake is carved out of shale, by the way, which is an incredibly neat rock! (Pictures to follow will show some fun we had at the lake with the rocks.) After skipping stones and taking pictures, we returned to our cabin and grilled food and s'mores, then watched t.v. until we passed out.

     Here, Stephan feels sympathy for a native Beaver's Bender who seemed so glum.

      This is the mighty Stephan hoisting some rocks he broke of the face of the hillside with his own brute strength.

 My camera on my phone takes horrible shots from a distance, but this would have been a framer had it turned out alright. You can still tell the water if crystal clear and the lake is beautiful. What you can't tell is that the lake and river water was freezing!

   Here are our traveling buddies. Again, look at the beautiful view of the lake.

Stephan is so hardcore that he found a rusted cable and gnawed it in twain. Under job skills he should add "out-of-control awesome".  

    Remember what I said about the shale being the coolest rock ever? Stephan was trying to lift up this entire bolder, but it broke off into the two handfuls of rock that you can see in a picture above. We spent most of our time on that lake shore prying rocks apart with our bare hands, then skipping the smooth, skinny fragments across the surface of the lake. 

    Meanwhile, Noah was back in Texas having a blast with Bebe and Papa. I was pleasantly pleased that I didn't miss my baby painfully. He played outside and crawled all over their house and got a new bruise and scratch (...?), When we went to pick him up, he looked warily at us, as though in disbelief that we had returned, and then reached for us and held us tightly. That made my weekend great.

His new pastime? Crawling through chair legs.