To kick off Christmas Vacation

Our Christmas vacation officially started today!! I am uberly excited to spend the next 10 days with my family! Martha, Alan & Griffin stopped in Birmingham on their way to Tuscaloosa today. I picked Cooper up from school after her nap and we met Bebe, Martha, Alan, Griffin, Linda, Anna Grace and Millie at the McWayne Center. This was Cooper's first time to go and she had tons of fun! She ran around with Anna Grace and Millie and thought she was such a big girl!

One of her favorite things was the indoor play place. She went down the slide over and over again all by herself!

There was a winter wonderland exhibit where we were able to play in "snow".

And make Christmas cookies.

And drive Santa's sleigh!

We also dug for dinosaur bones.

Played in the water.

Pretended to be a reporter.

And stood in a wind tunnel!

We had so much fun at the McWayne Center and it was a great way to start our Chrsitmas vacation!

My birthday...the last year of my twenties

My 29th birthday was Saturday and I had a great birthday weekend! It started on Friday night with dinner at Iguana Grill. Mindy, Joel, Hudson, Kristen, Cameron & Caroline met us for dinner. Cameron brought Hudson and Cooper a Christmas gift!

The kids were really good at dinner. They kinda just looked at each other at first, but then they ended up sharing stickers & colors & chips! Dinner was so yummy and so were the DreamCakes cupcakes that Caroline brought!

Saturday morning we woke up and went to La Reunion for coffee & pancakes. Afterwards, I went to the spa for a facial... my birthday gift from Wes. It was nice to be pampered and to have some me time! We spent the rest of the day hanging around the house. Which is what I love to do! Be lazy at home and spend time with my hubby and baby girl! We finally got dressed for the day about 5:00 pm and went to Margarita Grill for dinner. I guess I forgot to mention...I love Mexican!

Sunday afternoon we went down to Tuscaloosa for a family birthday dinner at my parents. Jack, Diane, Brian, Grandma, Mom & Dad were there. Cooper loved all the attention! She helped me blow out candles and open gifts!

Christmas with Tucker & Addy

Courtney, Lauren, Tucker and Addy came to our house for our Christmas/birthday swap this year! I was so glad to have them over. It was a Friday afternoon and of course, I was busier at work that morning than I had been all week, so I was running a little behind. Courtney offered to pick up lunch, which was so great. She got Zoe's chicken salad, pimento cheese and potato salad. We made sandwiches for ourselves and the kids ate stuff we already had around the house. After lunch, we opened presents!





Tucker in his superhero cape

  

Then Cooper had to put it on





Then Addy



The kids had so much fun opening their gifts...and the moms did too! Tucker is really sweet to Cooper & Addy and is so gentle and loving when he is around them. Addy and Cooper spent most of the afternoon running around the house chasing each other! They all had fun running and squealing. This is pretty cheesy, but life has really come full circle when I spend the afternoon with my best friends and our kids. In about a month, there will be one more kiddo! 

We attempted a group picture and here is what we got...



A pretty good picture of Cooper & Tucker...minus the shadow problem again. We tried to get all 3 kids to stand together by the tree, but that wasn't happening...so Lauren had a great idea to put Addy in a chair to keep her contained!

And we got a good picture!! We were so busy worrying about getting a group picture of the kids, we didn't get a group picture of the moms. Oh well, what I really want is a picture of the moms and kids together...that is my goal over the holidays.  I am looking forward to seeing the Tidmores and the LeCroys again at Christmas!

Putting up the tree & Helena's Christmas parade

We still put up a live tree at our house, which I love! I really wanted to take Cooper to a tree farm to pick out our Christmas tree (because that is what my family always did), but there weren't any tree farms near by. One more reason to love Tuscaloosa...there was a tree farm about 15 minutes from our house growing up. So, we settled for The Home Depot. It was freezing, but Wes did a fantastic job of picking out our tree...it was the first one he picked up! Here is the bare tree before any decorations. Plus a shadow on the right hand corner of the picture...this has happened to me a lot lately and I can't figure out why??

And here is the tree after...

And, check out the cute pjs that Addy gave Cooper for Christmas! We got a lime green monogram on the shirt and are planning on wearing them Christmas morning! Somewhat surprisingly, Cooper has done great with the tree and presents this year. From time to time, she will walk over to the tree and point out the ornaments. She wants you to tell her what they are. She also points at the gifts and says, "Cooper presents". We point to all the gifts and tell her who they are going to.

We also went to the Helena Christmas parade this year. Wes and I were joking before the parade that it would probably be all of 2 cars, but it ended up being HUGE!! We drove to the top of the neighborhood and walked down the trail, passed the elementary school and down to the street to see the parade.

There were bands and dance teams and twirlers and Christmas music and everyone was throwing candy! We stayed for about an hour, but it was way past Cooper's nap time, so we ended up leaving before the parade was even over!

 

We found the May's, our across the street neighbors, a few minutes before we decided to leave. They were doing the same thing we were...going home to take a nap! Cooper LOVES Kate and was so excited to see her. They held hands all the way home!

Breakfast with Santa



HA!



This is the third year we've done breakfast with Santa at our church, Riverchase Methodist. The men in the church cook a hot breakfast and the price of admission is a new toy for Toys for Tots. There is a great Santa set up and usually some type of craft for the kids. This year we made Reindeer Food to set out Christmas Eve. Cooper was so excited to see Santa...she ate a few bites and was ready to go stand in line to sit on Santa's lap. Bebe stood in line with Cooper while Wes & I finished our breakfast.  She watched as the other kids sat on Santa's lap and it seemed like this was going to be no big deal! Lots of other kids her age are terrified of Santa. Well, when we actually got up close, she wasn't so sure. I had to sit with her while Wes took the pictures. Cooper never cried, but there was no way she was going to smile! She just kept looking at Santa like she really wasn't sure about him. So, not the perfect picture this year, but oh well!

 Bebe and Cooper in front of the Christmas tree. Cooper got a candy cane from Santa and she was happy!

 The first year, Cooper was only a month old! It is so funny to look back at pictures from her first Christmas...she didn't have any hair and looked like an old man! Still the cutest baby I've ever seen though!

Tacky Christmas compliments of our moms...

The SRHW Christmas party was the first weekend in December this year at Ted's Garage. And, the theme was TaCkY ChRiStMaS!! I was pretty pumped because it was going to be a change from the more formal, cocktail type parties of the last few years. I started thinking about what to wear over Thanksgiving and happened to mention to my mother in law that I was in need of some tacky Christmas clothes. She disappeared for a few minutes and then came back with a ton of options. Luckily, she kept most of her Christmas attire from the early 90s! I didn't want to pressure Wes to dress up, so I left it up to him to decide what to wear. On Thursday night, he still hadn't decided. My brother was going to a tacky Christmas party that night and he wore one of Mom's old sweatshirts, so Wes decided he would wear the Santa sweatshirt too. Mom had lots of extremely tacky/90s elementary school teacher jewelry for me that went great with the poinsettia sweater. I wore silver/gold angel earrings, a moon shaped Santa necklace, a snowman watch and 3 beautifully tacky broaches.  Ta da...here is a picture of the tacky couple.



Plus one extremely cute kid!

We definitely weren't going for the big prize of the tackiest couple, but I believe we fit the theme! It was fun to see all the preppy, uptight accountants let loose and have fun! The food was catered from The Fish Market and it was delicious! Here are a few pictures from the party.

Ashleigh, Mindy & Me

Jennifer, Korey, Ryan, Me, Mandy & Wes

Winners of the tackiest couple...Jill & Paul!

Overall, tacky Christmas was so much fun! Good idea Kristen!! Wonder what we'll do next year??

Gobble, gobble, cough, cough...

Thanksgiving 2010 was eventful, but not in the tradition, yummy food, family fun kind of way! Cooper started getting a cold last weekend and it just got worse. By Wednesday she was feeling pretty bad, so I stayed home with her. That afternoon as she was waking up from her nap, she had another seizure. We spent the rest of the afternoon at Children's Hospital getting her checked out. Thankfully she was fine. The next few nights were not fun. She was coughing so much that she couldn't sleep. Wes and I took turns sleeping with her so that she could get some rest. He slept with her in the chair in her room because she seemed to do ok as long as she was propped up. I slept in the bed with her but she kept thinking it was play time in the middle of the night! After 3 nights of being up for 3-4 hours (which gave me flash backs of having a newborn) we were all a little moody and ready for a good nights rest!

Cooper still had a fever on Thanksgiving day, so we stayed at home. It was pretty sad not to spend the day with our families. Wes, Cooper & I watched the beginning of the Macy's parade together and then Cooper was ready for a nap.  Nanny & Papa were in Georgia with the Sides', so we weren't going to be able to see them anyway. Nanny did make me some of her famous dressing! This was the first Thanksgiving I can remember that we weren't able to be together and I did not like it at all! Mom, Dad & Brian did come up to our house for dinner. We put together a pretty fantastic last minute dinner!  This was the first time we had ever done the turkey. I tried to tell Wes before hand that you have to pull the nasty stuff out from inside the turkey, but he didn't believe me until he saw it for himself!

After the turkey was prepped, Wes used his new inferred frier to cook it up! The fried turkey was delicious! We also had Nanny's dressing, mom's shoe peg corn casserole, my mash potatoes and Sister Shubert's rolls. For desert, we had mom's yummy pumpkin cheesecake. Cooper was feeling better and dinner was fantastic! It had finally started to feel like Thanksgiving.

Cooper's fever finally subsided by Saturday so we went down to Tuscaloosa to visit with Brian, Barbara, Evan, Meredith, Nanna & Papa Jack! Cooper had so much fun playing with Evan & Meredith. She is really in a copy cat phase, so she would do anything that Meredith & Nanna did. I forgot the camera, so we didn't get any pictures from our visit. We had a great day and we were all glad to be out of the house! I also got some super fabulous things from Nanna to wear to the SRHW tacky Christmas party next weekend!

Today we spent most of the day decorating the outside of our house for Christmas. We added a new touch this year...lights in the trees in our front yard. We only had two trees to do, but it took a while! Wes just kept saying he was glad that we were doing the decorating early so that we could enjoy the lights for a whole month! We are hoping to get our tree and the other inside decorations done next weekend.

Woops, no post last weekend...

I forgot to post last week! The last couple weekends were quiet and low key. We just stayed around the house and enjoyed our time together. Last Sunday I hosted a Stella & Dot jewelry party at our house while Cooper & Wes went to Tuscaloosa for Dalton's birthday party. Sunday morning I was cleaning house and Cooper was such a good helper!





Doing laundry



Cleaning the floor



I enjoyed the Sunday afternoon drinking apple cider and eating cookies with good friends! Oh, and the jewelry is gorgeous! I LOVE Stella & Dot and I can't wait to get my new earrings in. I used most of the jewelry credit I earned on Christmas gifts, but I did get myself a pair of fabulous earrings that I have had my eye on for a while now!



Here is a picture Wes took at Dalton's party. He said Cooper loved going down the slide!

One of Cooper's favorite games right now is Ring Around The Rosie. She loves to fall down in the floor and thinks it is hilarious! I can only play a few times with her because it makes me SO dizzy to spin around, but Wes is always willing to play!

Princess slippers Cooper got for her bday...she adores them and usually sleeps in them!

Ride a horsey on Jacey

24 Month Checkup

Today was Cooper's 24 month appointment with Dr. Dudgeon. She weighed 25 lbs, 11 oz and was 35in long. That puts her in the 40th percentile for weight and 92nd percentile for height. She is still in the 10 percentile for head circumference...Mommy & Daddy have small heads! She is using 2-3 word sentences and has started trying to repeat everything we say. Other milestones at this age are using a spoon and fork, running, walking up stairs, kicking a ball and scribbling with a crayon. She also had to get 2 shots. She was such a big girl...she held my hands and only cried for a second. Dr. Dudgeon was pleased with her development and we won't have to go back until she is 3. I did find out that we need to schedule a dentist appointment, which I am dreading. I can't image her laying in a dental chair letting someone work onher mouth!

A couple random pictures...

Cooper wanted a pony tail because I had one in my hair!

At Jill and Paul's for the AL vs. LSU game. Cooper had a mouth full of crackers but she said cheese on command!

One more thing I wanted to add...Cooper started sleeping in her "big girl" bed. Okay, kinda but not really. She has a convertible crib so we morphed her crib into the "toddler" bed. Which really just means that the front part of the crib was removed and there is now a little railing half way across the front of the bed. Cooper can get in and out herself! She had done great about staying in bed too. My tactict was not to make a big deal about it, so we didn't. As far as we know, she stays in bed at night. In the mornings she will stay in bed and call for one of us (usually Daddy) until we come into her room. Then she usually hops out!