Christmas Fun

We have been fun doing our Christmas traditions around here. Here are pictures of a few of our advent calendars we do. Every night we do our advent calendars. My mom used to give us one each year and has also given the boys some, so we do at least 8 advent calendars a night..it's quite a process!

This one is Cooper's favorite because there is candy in each drawer!
Putting an ornament on our advent tree.

We have another tradition of the "elf." Every night our elf visits Santa and reports on how Cooper has been that day, then comes home to a new spot in our house and brings Cooper a little treat. I don't have a picture of that but I wanted to write about it because I thought Cooper gave him a funny name. We talked about naming him and he came up with "arf." I think because it sounded like "elf" and maybe he forgot the word "elf" for moment?? I'm not quite sure, but now we have Arf the Elf who stays with us throughout the Christmas season. Cooper's not that into finding him every morning, he just wants the little treat. Arf made the mistake of leaving Cooper a hershey kiss one morning, so now that's what he expects every morning! Healthy, huh?

Showing off an art project
I just thought this was a funny picture so I had to post it

Cooper has been a little more into making Jackson smile. Here he is making him smile at lunch. I thought it was so cute that he's getting more "into" Jackson.

More 3 month pics

I went to a photo place to get Jackson's three month pictures taken and I just didn't think they turned out that great. Of course I still bought some because I couldn't resist! But it's hard at his age because he has such a short awake and happy time before he needs to sleep again. So anyway, I decided to try to get some photos here at home. I'm no photographer like Laura but I think some of them are cute. Warning, there are a lot!



This one is one of my favs. Such a happy smile!

Can you tell he likes to chew on things??

Ryan had taken Cooper to the Home Depot kid class while I was taking the pictures but he came back at the very end so I tried to get a few of them together. The light wasn't really cooperating and Jackson was not his smiley self at the end but I liked this one.

Fun Times

We've been having fun this past week just spending some time at home! Here are some pictures from the week.


Jackson in his bouncy

B, E, and C playing Simon Says

Cooper playing an m & m (or m m m as he says it) Santa game. He LOVED this! :)

The boys posing in front of the tree.

I just thought this was funny. Cooper took all of our Christmas stuffed animals and added them to the already tons of animals he sleeps with at night. I thought it would be funny to pose him with them.

and here he is sleeping with them. Can you spot Cooper? He seriously sleeps with all of these animals!

Cooper and Jackson with their matching hats from Laura

happy boy

playing with the nativity from Gma and Gpa B.

watching us decorate the tree

Cooper decorating the tree (and finally we're starting to potty-train him!)

Let It Snow!

We had our first snowfall here in Texas a few days ago. Cooper was so excited to go out and play!
We had just read Snowmen at Night the night before so we really tried hard to make a snowman. Unfortunately we were only able to make a few snowballs and have a snowball fight (which was fun too!) It'll be really fun when Jackson can join us!


(He's sporting the hat Auntie Laura made for him)




Throwing a snowball at me

3 months old

Jackson was 3 months old on November 19. Time has gone so fast, I can hardly believe he is getting so old! He is wearing mostly 6-9 months clothes now. He's starting to reach for toys and giggle, it's so much fun!


I took a few 3 month pictures...

and some pictures of the boys in their matching pjs. Cooper was being unusually snuggly with his brother which I loved!

Jackson looks a little startled!

Thanksgiving Part Two

We had Thanksgiving with my mom's side of the family on Thanksgiving day. They all drove down from Minnesota at the beginning of the week. We didn't get in town until late Wed night but we went over on Thursday and spent the day with everyone.

Here's the only group shot we have, I set up my camera on a table if you can't tell by the angle!

We tried to do some pictures of our family- Cooper was being very funny and didn't really want to smile. He was staring at his cousins the whole time. He was so excited to see them after being away from them for almost a week!

(These pics are all out of order) This is at the end of the night. All of the kids were either asleep or watching a movie on my mom's bed, and we played a fun dice game and did a present exchange. It was a lot of fun!

My Uncle Jim and Aunt Amy with some of the kids (Elizabeth, their son Evan, Jackson, and Ben) Their daughter Emma was asleep at this point and Cooper did not want to be in the picture. (it was late and he hadn't napped!)

Laura and me with our kids

We had "Christmas" with this side of our family on Thanksgiving, so the kids got to open some presents. They were SO excited. Cooper loved this gift, it's a "grabber" I guess. He has lots of fun with it still.

Cooper with Emma. This is the only picture I have with her! We were going to try to do a group shot of the kids but never were able to get all of them together. She was being so cute and hugging him. He hugged for a minute and then was being ornery.

For dinner the kids got these adorable turkey cupcakes from my Aunt Amy. They LOVED them.

My mom gave the kids these real glass goblets for their drinks. Here they are toasting. I was very worried Cooper would break it but he did a great job! They thought it was so special to use these glasses.

The boys playing around

Auntie Laura and Jackson

The kids outside playing. It was a beautiful day!

I just thought this was a funny picture. It's Cooper on our drive home from KS. The sun was in his eyes so he wanted to wear my sunglasses while he watched his show.

My Uncle Ross and Jackson.