Easter 2015

This year we were super lucky to have my parents fly out for Easter, my birthday, and Allie's birthday.  The kids were super excited to have Grandma help color Easter eggs the night before.

Coop getting ready to drop an egg in, as you can see he is getting all his adult teeth in!

Squeezing that egg with so much Allie love!  I'm pretty sure every egg we colored this year was cracked in multiple spots.

Grandma helping color eggs.

She loved poking the eggs with a fork...which I'm sure contributed to our eggs cracking. :)

Miss B with all of our hard work!

Allie smiling and trying to lift wet eggs out of the carton.

Coop showing off those beauties!

It's a good thing the Easter Bunny woke up earlier than anticipated because these kiddos were up at the crack of dawn (6:30) to find some Easter eggs! Here is Miss Allie finding lots of eggs...we can thank her grandpa for taking out her pigtails before bed and the resulting mess it created. :)  She also insisted on wearing Christmas pajamas, so, there you have it.  She celebrates Easter in style!

Here are the three amigos with their baskets this year.  I love Allie's face stuffed with cadbury eggs and more clutched in her hands.

Snow in Birmingham

Yes, we are still alive, and no, I still don't have my act together about posting on the blog.  For those who don't know, and really, I don't know who that would be, we moved to Birmingham, Alabama, in August of last year.  I need to be better about posting pictures because I have two sets of grandmas missing grandbabies and wanting pictures.  So, I'm just randomly going to choose February as a starting point and might add random things in as I try to post pictures of the kiddos.  I'm choosing February because miracle of miracles, the South got some snow!  The kids were so excited to see even the small dusting that we got.  Before Coop headed out for school that morning we marched outside to build a snowman.  Here is our documentation of that event:

Allie trying to say, "Snow" while keeping it on her gloves.

Bailey rolling the snowball.

Family posing by the Mickey Mouse snowman...someone wasn't very happy.

Someone finally decided they could sit by the melting, muddy snowman.

After we told her it was Olaf, she decided to try and kiss the snowman's nose.

Coop and his "Snow-Dog."

As you can see, the snow was melting quickly.  We didn't get much time to play in it but what little time we had we enjoyed. :)

We are ready for Spring!

We are so ready for some warm weather!  On one of the few nice days that we've had lately, we pulled out our big Christmas present and let the kids drive around.  We were surprised at how much Allie enjoyed being in the car...as long as mom or dad was right there of course!

She even found her own little handle to hang on to while her siblings drove her around!

Miss B loves her bubbles, here she is trying to blow a really big one! :)

These two are like peas in a pod, Allie loves her big brother a lot, she always laughs when he is around.  He really wanted to get his picture taken with her and she'd only sit still while trying to eat the grass.  This is the best we could get!

 I can't believe how much she has grown up, time flies so much faster than with the first baby.  She will be 1 in just a couple of weeks.

This was one of my favorite shots, she kept crawling trying to get the camera.  She is such a busy body these days, she'll be walking before we know it.

Here is one last shot of Bailey doing one of her favorite things in the warm weather, coloring with chalk!  She was so proud of this picture (I'm not sure what it is...) and told me, "Look mom!  I used all the colors!" :)

Coop Starts Preschool

Our little guy could have started Kindergarten this year, but we opted to hold him one more year since he *barely* made the cut-off.  We knew he needed some outside stimulation and structure, so this mom "who doesn't really believe in preschool" signed her son up to go.  He was so excited, and still is excited to go to school. :)  That morning he couldn't contain his excitement and and shouted, "Today is my first day of school ever!"  Here are some shots we did that morning in celebration of going to school!

He doesn't get to have a traditional backpack this year, his school likes these cloth bags.  We added his name on the front pocket, and he loves that it is monsters!

This last one I took on my phone, by this time he just wanted to be goofy and I was busy dealing with a little girl who was super jealous that Coop got to go to school  Why do they always want to grow up so fast? :)

He told me at the end of the day that his favorite part was recess, that it wasn't nearly long enough, and second best would be the snack where he got juice and crackers. :)

Coop Turns 5!

Where does the time go?  Before we knew it, Coop turned 5!  For some reason, every year Coop's birthday seems to last forever, and this year was no exception.  I can honestly say when my head hit the pillow on Sunday night, I was exhausted.  He is growing up to be such a great little guy.  We love him lots! :) On his actual birthday, we let him open up presents before dad left for work:

Summer Adventures: Camping with Cousins!

A couple of weeks ago, we broke out the camp trailer and headed up Strawberry to camp with family!  We like to camp, and it is a lot more fun to go with others.  In traditional form, it rained the whole first day that we were there.  I'm not talking just a little bit of rain, but a downpour that lasted most of the day.  Good thing we camp in trailers...had we just been in a tent, I'm afraid it would have been a one night camp trip! :)  The kids holed up in Aunt Aubrey's and Uncle Bret's trailer since it is a bit bigger than ours and played lots of games and puzzles:

Summer Adventures: The Fair

The fair rolled into Farmington the middle of August complete with elephant rides and diving dogs.  Once again, it was hot (the story of this summer), and there was a fire on the hill by Lagoon but we thought we would brave the elements and take the kids down.  We stopped and stuck our heads through the photo prop:

The highlight of the fair was the animals.  We visited goats, rode ponies again (yay!) and fed some baby animals carrots in the little petting zoo.  We watched and got splashed by the diving dogs and walked over to see the elephants but the line to ride them was insanely long and we opted not to stand there for hours in the heat.

While brother and sister were riding the horses, this cute chub-a-lub practiced her sticking out her tongue skills. :)

The kids were spoiled with some free balloons in the discovery tent.  Bailey wanted to have a pink sword:

 And Coop wanted a pink elephant:

They also got face painted by some people that I'm pretty sure haven't face painted a day in their lives. :) Using stencils that were *way* too big, Bailey got a pink monkey and Cooper got a pink flower.  Yes, we are a household of pink folks.  The people used toll paints and I spent the next half hour making sure that it didn't touch their clothes.  When it finally dried, it started to peel, so we didn't get any pictures and we learned that maybe we shouldn't be so cheap when it comes to face painting. :)