My Sister the Photographer

Last weekend Laura came over and took pictures of Jackson for us. She did such a good job! I was telling her she needed to go into business because I thought they were so cute. Be prepared, there are a lot of pictures in this post because I loved so many of them.


Ryan and I are holding Jackson in this picture.

Cooper is holding him too in this picture. I love this one!

Oops, need to turn this one!

Home Sweet Home

On Fri we were able to head home, yea!!! Here are the boys, all ready to go home.









The cute decorations that were out when we got home.





All of the cousins.







Grandpa meeting Jackson for the first time. He was out of town until Fri but was able to come over and meet him when he got home.





Wearing the adorable giraffe hat Gma and Gpa got him. It's a little big, will be perfect for winter!





Cooper opening the present from Gma and Gpa, his very own doll! He's not super-into him yet, but I'm working on it :) (Daddy LOVES that, ha ha).

Phew, a long day! It's good to be home.

Hanging in the Hospital

Here are some pictures of us in the hospital before we were discharged. Jackson was born at 8:11 pm on Wed, and we were discharged around 11:00 am on Fri. So we weren't in the hospital even 48 hours, it was great! On Thurs our family came up to visit and brought Cooper up for the first time. Thurs night my mom was nice enough to stay with me while Ryan went home with Cooper.

Here is the proud Gma with Jackson. I didn't get another one of her with him at the hospital, bad me!

big brother Cooper with Jackson

I thought this outfit of Jackson's was so cute so I had to add it to the blog!

Our first family photo

Cousin Benjamin with Jackson. He was very into holding Jackson, at least for a minute!

Cousin Elizabeth with Jackson. She is VERY into holding him. She's going to be a big help, I can tell!

The brothers

Big Bro and Little Bro (that's what their shirts say, you can't tell that well though)

He's here!!!

We are so excited to announce that Jackson Ryan is here! He arrived on his due date, August 19th, at 8:11 p.m. He weighed 9.2 pounds and was 22 inches long. He's a big boy like his brother Cooper! For the most part the delivery went really well. He did give us a scare right when he was born though. He was born with his cord around his neck and it took a few minutes for him to "wake up" and start crying, things like that. A lot of specialists came running in and it was scary for Ryan and I for a few minutes. But everything ended up ok, thank goodness. Now he is very very healthy and is doing so well.

Here is Jackson! (I'm too lazy to go back and turn the pic)

Me and Jackson, right after delivery. (Sorry I look rather naked!)

Auntie Laura and Jackson

I have a bunch more pictures to go through, and Ryan and Cooper are in those, so I'll hopefully be posting these soon.

We have been home since Fri afternoon and so far so good! It's pretty easy with Ryan home too, I wish he could quit his job and be home with me full-time, it would make things very easy :)

Fun Times

We've had a laid-back and relaxing week or two, just waiting for the arrival of Jackson! I did take a few pictures here and there.


One morning we went to my mom and dad's house to swim and our friends Ashlynn and Hunter (and their moms) came with us. Here are the kids eating lunch after swimming.



This is a funny story. Lots of mornings while Ryan is getting ready for work, Cooper asks if he can go with to work. Ryan didn't think much of it this day and said "sure." We forget how literal Cooper is! So Cooper immediately ran and got an outfit out of his closet, then ran to our closet and grabbed a sock of Ryan's off the floor. He tried to put on the outfit and sock telling me he was getting ready to go to work. Then he kept saying "bye mom, I'm going to work!" "bye mom, I'm going with daddy!" I started to get kind of worried because he REALLY thought he was going to work with Ryan, and Ryan was starting to feel really bad too. So I kept saying how sad I would be if he left and I'd be here all alone, blah blah blah. Eventually we decided to have Ryan drive him up and down the driveway a few times before he went to work. Here they are, and look how excited Cooper was! I wanted to cry I felt so bad. Cooper did cry a little when Ryan went to work but got over it very quickly. The next day he wanted to wear a matching shirt as Ryan when he went to work. He is SO funny, and is in a daddy phase again, which is perfect timing!! :)


One evening before bed, Cooper and Ryan built a very tall tower and called me in to see it.


Yesterday Ben and Elizabeth came over to play. Look at how cute Ben is being, and look at my son. Not exactly cooperating in the picture!


Cute Elizabeth, she was being very cooperative and let me take a bunch of pictures of her.



I thought I'd put one more belly picture of me. (although if he takes forever to arrive I might be able to post another one). I'm 38 1/2 weeks here, and I was thinking that Jackson would be arriving at any time! But this was Sat evening, and it's now Tuesday and he's still not here...wonder when he'll arrive??!!

More videos of Cooper

I've been taking some videos of Cooper now that we finally got a camera that we can download to the computer, so I thought I'd post a few. The top one is him just a few days ago. He was trying on some pants I just bought him, and I guess he thought it was funny to be wearing pants because he was dancing around in them. So I tried to get a video of the dancing.

In the second video he is singing his "name song." (song that spells his name) He thinks it is SO fun to watch himself on video, I'm sure all kids like doing this! He has me play them over and over again for him.

On the baby front, no baby yet! We'll see if he comes along soon, not too many days left!!

Strange

I made a post in July of a few random pictures of Cooper, but just got around to posting it today. For some reason it won't post under August, it posted under July since that's when I created it. I'm not very computer savvy sometimes! So anyway, I just posted a new post (nothing that exciting) but it's under July... weird.

Birthday Song

This is a video of Cooper singing "Happy Birthday" to me in his silly voice. He thinks it's funny to sing in a silly voice sometimes. Sometimes it's a high voice like on this video, and sometimes it's a really deep voice. I don't know where this craziness (is that a word??) comes from, I think from Ryan!

A Surprise Party!

My parents had a surprise party for Laura and my 30th b-day this Sat. We were so surprised and had so much fun! They had invited us over to swim and have a little birthday party, but we thought it was just going to be family. What a surprise to see a bunch of people in their backyard as we drove up! It was a "beach/flip flop" theme... invitation is below. Isn't it cute??









The table inside. My mom had such cute decorations. And of course there are 30 balloons around the house! :)









This is the majority of the women who came. The guys and kids were outside.





I tried to get pictures of most of the guests, but I did not succeed! I did get a few...



Laura with Joanne and Jill.





Ben, Cooper, and Elizabeth eating dinner





Paul, Emily, and Allison







Kristi, Ken, Ashlynn, Alyssa, and Dana





Some of the people inside, ready to watch the big present opening!! :)







Me and Laura





After the party Cooper went kind of crazy with the balloons. He LOVES balloons!





What a mess!

We had SUCH a wonderful time, and it was my first surprise B-day party! (My first surprise party ever was the "sprinkle" Laura and Dana threw for me in June. I've had a fun summer with surprises!! :)

I don't have a picture of this but one other amazing thing our parents did for us was make us a 30th B-day video, basically a picture slide show of pictures of us from birth all the way until we turned 30. My mom actually made it HERSELF, which is very impressive, she is not very computer savvy but did an amazing job. I would never have been able to do it. Dad helped some too, I don't want to leave him out! I LOVED the video, and the best part was at the end she added a video of our kids singing Happy Birthday and telling us little messages. It's hilarious to say the least. A great end to a great day!