a few more beach pictures

The day of the wedding I did another beach "photo shoot" with Cooper so I thought I'd post a few more. You're not getting sick of seeing Cooper on the beach are you?? :)



Here he is with his name. I literally had to take this pic as fast as possible b/c he started to cross out his name the second I sat him down. What a stinker!







Cooper with the stingray Gma B got him after we visited Stingray Island

This is a family photo from the rehearsal dinner. We ate outside on the balcony of a yummy restaurant, and this was our view. Isn't it amazing? Jodi, BJ, Chris, Roger, Katie, me, Ryan

Stingray Island

On Friday during the day we took a boat to "Stingray Island" or "Stingray City", I can't remember the exact name. It was fun but also scary!! (I'm a wimp) We took a boat out to a sandbar where lots of stingrays swim around and all of the tourists can touch them.

Here's Cooper on the boat, he's showing off his "pirate"







Here's our group looking at stingrays. You can see a few in the water, the big dark things under the water are the stringrays. They're HUGE! I wasn't in the water yet, it took me awhile to get in!





Here's Ryan holding Cooper, and they're both looking at the stingrays. Cooper wasn't too sure about them and got out pretty quickly.

Cooper with his Gma's on the boat.

Cooper, me and Ryan on the boat.

More vacation pics... Pirate Sunset Cruise

By Wed afternoon most of the family had arrived, so that evening some of us went out to dinner. (Cooper, me, Ryan, BJ-the groom, Katie (Ryan's mom) Evan (Ryan's cousin), Roger (Ryan's dad), John (Ryan's uncle), Jesy (Chris's girlfriend) and Chris











The next evening BJ and Jodi treated us all to a sunset cruise on a pirate ship. It was a lot of fun! I wasn't sure how Cooper would do being the only child there, and it was probably 2 1/2 hours, but he did great. Here's the ship we took, doesn't it look authentic??

BJ and Jodi on the cruise

The beautiful sunset on the cruise

Waiting to get on the cruise: Katie, Ryan, Cooper, Roger, me, Jesy, and my dad

Here's another pic of some of Jodi's family and friends (plus Chris and Jesy up front) on the ship. You can see that there were a lot of us there!

Towards the end of the cruise, the "pirates" brought out some stuff for Cooper to dress up in. He thought it was SO fun. We taught him to say "arghh" like a pirate and he made everyone else dress up in the pirate gear. Of course I had to post pictures of that. In some of the pictures, you might be able to tell that it was an unlimited bar and all of the adults (except me of course!) were enjoying it :)



Here's Cooper with his pirate hat and sword.

Now here he is with dreads. Gpa is being a pirate too!

Here's Gma S wearing the dreads

Gpa S being a pirate

Gpa B being a pirate (I also have a picture, a GREAT picture, of Gma B being a pirate, but she wouldn't let me post it.. she thinks she looks scary in it. I think she looks like she's having fun!! :))

Daddy wearing the dreads

Mommy wearing the dreads (by the way, he didn't wet his pants, he was drinking out of a big full cup and dumped it all over himself!)

We had a ton of fun, thanks BJ and Jodi!

On the beach

We arrived a few days before the rest of the family, so we spend the first few days hanging out on the beach most of the day. I have probably 100 pics of Cooper on the beach, so I'm posting just a few of those.

In the morning, Cooper would get up early, so this is how he would spend his time while we got ready (watching his fav. shows). Ahhh, how relaxing!



Feeling the sand for the first time



The beautiful ocean. It was GORGEOUS! Great sand, hardly any waves, turquoise water...we could have stayed forever!

My mom teased me about how covered he was on the beach, but it kept him from getting burned!

Playing with his beach toys. We brought him a few, and then Jodi and BJ got him some to play with when he got there. He loved that!

Cooper's footprints in the sand

On Tuesday afternoon before all the other guests arrived, Jodi and her friend Jessica (along with BJ who is taking the picture) joined us at the beach to have some pre-wedding relaxing time!

Ryan, Jodi (the bride), Jessica, and me with Cooper

We're back

We're back from our trip to the Cayman Islands, yea!!! Actually, we're not too happy we're back, because we had such a wonderful time! Although it is nice to sleep in our own bed. I have a million pictures to go through (about 450 to be precise) so it might take me a little while to download them and post, but I wanted to post at least one picture today. We went to Grand Cayman from Monday through Sunday (April 19th) because Ryan's brother B.J. was getting married there. It was an awesome time and I'll share lots of pictures from the week. Here we are in our wedding attire; Ryan was one of the two best men, I was a bridesmaid, and Cooper was the ring bearer :) So cute, he did a good job too! But I'll post more about that later.

Thomas the Train!

My mom got me, Laura, and kids tickets to go see Thomas the train this past week. Cooper LOVED it. He's very into all types of transportation, and he's seen Thomas once or twice at my mom's house. Mom got him a book and train before we went so he was very ready to see Thomas and knew right when he saw him.

Here he is, in awe of Thomas.


Cooper and Ben riding on the Thomas train. They thought that was really fun, but kept running around changing seats. They are getting really wild!

Riding on a mini-train. There were tons of activities to do and the kids loved them all. Drew and Josh, friends of ours, also were there. Here are all the kids on the mini-train.

Thomas drove by while we were by the mini-train, and here is Cooper waving to him. Again, in awe. :)

One of the other activities they had was a pony ride. Cooper wasn't too sure of this. A few times his lower lip quivered like he was going to cry, but he held on and rode the whole time!

Posing in front of one of the many train pictures. Elizabeth, Cooper, and Ben.

Ben had been sick with the flu for a week and Cooper had to be apart from him the whole time. This was right when we arrived, and the first time we let Cooper and Ben be by eachother since Ben had been sick. Without me telling him to, Cooper ran right over to Ben and hugged him like this. Then Elizabeth joined in. It was SO cute! Ben's not too sure of it, he was still tired from being sick.

The bluebonnets are here!

The bluebonnets are beautiful here in spring and every year I want to take pictures of Cooper by them, but never have. This year I finally did! My parents have some near their house so it was a perfect opportunity. Here is Cooper walking to the flowers with Gpa and Gma.



Cooper looking at the flowers. I had a really hard time getting him to look at the camera while surrounded by all of the flowers, he was just interested in touching them and digging in the dirt!

(the ducks are from the pond right by the bluebonnets. They came right up to Cooper expecting food!)

I love this pic! :)

Easter Egg time!

We had a really fun day today! We babysat Elizabeth today because poor Benny boy has the flu! :( So we got to spend the morning with Elizabeth, and I decided to do a few "crafty" things with them since Elizabeth loves crafts. It's also fun to do with her because she can do so much, Cooper just enjoys watching her and is better behaved with all of the messy stuff. She's a good police-woman too, I always would hear before he would try to touch something because she would yell "Cooper, no! Don't touch!" :) I loved it!! It really helped me out, I think she needs to come over more often.

Here they are, cheezing it up before we started dyeing the easter eggs (Is that how you spell dyeing?? I hope so!) Notice the covered couch behind them, I was worried about splatter.

Eliz drawing on her egg.

waiting patiently for me to take the picture

Cooper dyeing an egg

Elizabeth's turn

Elizabeth with her finished eggs

We tried a few different techniques. I've been saving ideas from kid magazines for a few years, so it was fun to finally try them out! Some didn't turn out as cute as the magazine, but it was fun to try it out.

Cooper admiring our eggs.

I had to put in this picture because I thought it was so funny how you can see him in the background!