My Little Cookie Monster

We are finally feeling settled enough to hang out and bake some cookies! This has been such a pain-I never want to move again! For the first full week we did nothing but paint (6am to 6pm everyday). Thank goodness my saint of a mother came up and painted our whole house. I was just slave driver and kept making her and Brandon paint the walls over and over (we had a little problem with our color not matching...ughhh, and we had some truly horrid colors picked out. Double ugh....) It was so sad after Cooper's Nana left, he really thought that she came with the house since she was here when we moved in so he spent days after she left wandering around shouting for Nana!

Anyway, the place is starting to feel like home and look a heck of a lot better too. And Brandon is so wonderful, he has been busy tiling and remodeling things. Thanks goodness for his killer crafty skills.

Cooper didn't want to let go of that cookie. He kept slobbering on it and I had to promise that we would give it back in just a few minutes.

This was Cooper's highlight today. He has been super crabby because his eye-teeth are coming in. Last week he also had an ear infection and screamed all night for two nights.

Cooper likes the new house. So far he has avoided serious harm, but it isn't for lack of trying. We coached him about going down the stairs on his bum (but when I wasn't looking he would go on his belly-so much faster you know). He even told Chloe, "No Coco, sit bum bum" when she tried to walk down the stairs. But alas, that was short lived, he was hanging out at the top of the stairs and tripped and rolled all the way down. Of course, I was at the bottom and got watch a streak or green roll down the stairs. So we decided to get back out the gate. Then yesterday he pulled down a propped up door that Brandon had off as he remodeled the bathroom. Luckily it didn't hit him, but geez, this kid is killing me in this place.

We've Been Missing!

So I haven't posted in a long time. But I have a good excuse! We got our house sold so we have been busy packing everything, gathering all of our loan documents (what a pain!!) and most important...shopping for the new house!! Brandon and I are getting a couple of leather chairs for the family room and there was a super cute little chair that was perfect for Cooper but it was $150 dollars, so I was sad because that is just way, way too much for a baby chair. So then we went back to the store a couple of days later and they marked down the chair to $29! So here is Coop big pimpin' in his leather chair.

Christmas Pics

We had such a great Christmas and got to stay in Burley for over a week. It was really hard to come back to work after that long and I miss my Momma taking such good care of me! It was so nice of them to let us stay since we come with a wild child and bad dogs!

Kenze came over one day so we could see Brynn. She is getting so big and is still the cutest little thing ever. I wanted to trade babies again:)
Here's our Hodge Herd
We went to Mitch and Shari's for Christmas Eve. Cooper loved the guitar and really wanted to help Mitch play.
Here is the big guy opening up a present. We had to practice Hanukkah and open a present a day to keep Cooper entertained. So he really didn't have too much to open by Christmas, but he still enjoyed ripping into the paper.

Casey's Party

It has been forever since I updated, but here are some pictures from Casey's going away party we had over Christmas.

What a cute family!

Ok, so I wanted to trade Cooper for David for just a minute. I really couldn't help it, look at those eyes!

So now you know why I wanted to trade him, right?
(Cooper, Mama's just joking-kind of...)

Naughty Red before her domination of the bouncy horse and her exiling scary Uncle Dick upstairs, and far, far away.

Cute little gang

Holiday Fun

Here is Cooper and Santa. Coop wasn't scared of the big man at all. After all he's been 'good'. He said 'Santa!' when he saw him and promptly asked for an offical Red Ryder, carbine action, two-hundred shot range model air rifle!

Last weekend we had a ton of snow so we stayed home and watched all the old Christmas shows and Cooper turned into the Santa-Dragon. We got kind of bored, as you can see.

Laughing with Co-Co

And screaming as the Santa-Dragon.

Yost Christmas Party

We had a great Thanksgiving and went up to Yost for the Christmas party. Cooper had a blast since he got to play 'outside' and he ran all over the place looking at everything. He also loved to get to see his cousins, he loves to see what the big kids are doing.

Here is our cute cousin Taylor and his dad.

The Grinch even paid us a visit, but didn't steal the presents (the kids were happy about that!)
Here is Cooper and his Momma, Nana and Papa.
Dick had fun yelling at all the kids to be careful and parents to watch their kids. Oh, if we didn't have Uncle Dick to point out all the options for potential death and maiming, how could we possibly survive?? Taylor liked his new Grandpa Uncle Dick. I think Dick actually looks more like a bad Santa with all that chest hair!

Katie, I had to steal this picture, it is too funny (thanks!). Here is Cooper playing the role of Randy (Ralphie's little brother in a Christmas Story). His snow suit was so puffy that whenever he slightly leaned over, he toppled over. Here he is face planted in the tree decorations and when I pulled him out he had bird seed stuck in his snotty nose. Nice. But the snow suit was really handy since whenever he fell (which was a lot thanks to the suit) he never got hurt and he couldn't get up so I could always find him face down and waiting semi-patiently for a rescue.

Here is the herd after the decorating. They all seemed to have fun decorating and eating all the animal treats. Good thing bird seed is so nutritious.

More Burley Fun

Here we were able to get all the kids together for a picture, of course my kid was the only one screaming, but whatever works.
Avery is giving Brynn a kiss on the hand. It was sooo sweet. And Kenze, Brynn is so beautiful and she has the greatest smile! You can really see her little personality and it is so cute.
Here is Cooper's first haircut! Thanks Shawn, it looks awesome. We have successfully avoided the Joe Dirt syndrome (at least for awhile).

Avery and Cooper Hang Out

Shawnae came over while we were in Burley to cut Myrna's (and Cooper's) hair. So she brought over Avery and McKenze brought over Brynn and it was fun to get all the kids together.

Avery wasn't too excited about hanging out with her cousin, but I really think it was because he was sporting that mullet and she was not having any of that. Here Avery is doing the Stewart (from Mad TV) "Shut up! Gooooo AWAY!!!"

And here (after the haircut) she is more willing to love on him. They had a very tender goodbye moment of cheek pinching and eyeball gouging.
After the gouging, we were able to get our hug on.

Really, how cute are these blue-eyed heartbreakers?

Check out those lashes...

These are really a foot long, of course they would be given to a boy who could care less about them, but oh they are pretty.

Coop's Cow

Here is Cooper's cow at the Pumpkin Patch, I just loved the look on his face.

Millions of Pumpkins, Pumpkins for Me!

Last Sunday we took the munchkin to a pumkin patch and he had a blast. He loved the rotten, moldy pumpkins the best and really wanted to stick his fat little fingers in them.

They had some animals and a hay bale maze, but Cooper's absolute favorite was....

The tractor! He is such a boy! He loved being pulled by it and kept trying to make the tractor sound (and he hasn't stopped since then!)

Boo at the Zoo!

Since we couldn't get the swine flu vaccine, we decided the next best idea was to hang out with 20,000 of our closest friends at Boo at the Zoo (so much for our bubble boy). It was super, super fun though. They had everyone in costumes and the kids could trick-or-treat the characters. Don't worry about Cooper eating too much candy, Brandon and I made sure to help him out with most of it (can't be too careful, you know!)

Cooper was a little tiger and he had a blast running around roaring at EVERYONE. He loved the animals so much more than the last time we were at the zoo and he really thought the zebra and especially the giraffes were super cool. He even escaped me and ran back to see more of the giraffes. When we went to lunch after, I asked him what his favorite animal at the zoo was and he said, 'erraffe'.

Here we are chumming up to Winnie for some candy (what happened to the honey??)

Cooper stood there for a few minutes practicing saying zebra. He didn't get much further than 'zzz' but he kept trying!

And yesterday he learned to say 'outside' so now he knows what to scream while he is holding on to the door frame trying to kick me.

I went to a swine flu clinic and all I got was this lousy picture.

I have really tried to keep my paranoid hypochondria under control with this swine flu crap, but I am a little crazy and it still freaks me out with Cooper. So I have been stressing about getting the vaccine, whether it is safe or might turn everyone into flesh eating zombies a year from now, and then when and how to even get one if I want one.

This morning a couple of my friends and I planned to take our kids to a vaccine clinic. We went an hour early, but there were already about 4000 people in line (many apparently camped out over night) for about 1200 vaccines.

Ok, well I guess we'll keep on with my obsessive compulsive hand sanitizing.

Lots of Love

Ok, I promise to take some new pics this weekend and do something interesting so I have something to blog about...

First Drum Circle

Cooper is just getting more and more grown up. I dropped him off this week at school and instead of crying, he just turned around and waved and said ‘bye-bye.’ I am sad when he cries to see me go, and I am sad when he doesn’t! The next day I figured out why- he has a little friend and he doesn't need me anymore! When I dropped him off, he waved to his friend and ran over and patted him on the shoulder, then he looked at me like, "umm, why are you still here?"

He is talking so much although a lot of it is his own special language. He loves to chase and torment the dogs, especially Chloe since she hates it so much!

We had a good weekend and we took Cooper to the Hyde Park Street Fair so he could join in on his first drum circle.

Here’s Cooper with the big drum with a little help from his dad.

And here is Cooper in the drum circle. The look on his face says it all-he really didn’t know what to make about the whole thing. He did have a funny smile on his face the whole time-he liked it but thought all those grownups banging on things was a little weird.

Sadly we did not stay long enough for me to win the digeridoo in the raffle-oh well. Now I just need to find a mommy and me drum class and we're good to go. And I just noticed the Hands Only! sign on the drum, I guess they have problems with people using other body parts to play?