Water balloons!

We've been playing with water balloons a lot around here recently. They are SUCH a pain to fill up but Cooper loves them.

Dana and her family came over for dinner last weekend and the kids enjoyed playing with the balloons. Here are the moms and kids posing for a photo!
Ashlynn and Cooper very carefully playing with the water balloon.

Then I watched Ben and Eliz one day so I thought I'd make them again. Here the boys are playing with the balloon carefully. This lasted about 1 minute, then they just had war.

Here Cooper is getting Elizabeth.

This is how she felt about it! She was SO upset she got all wet. After this no one was allowed to throw at her, she only could throw at them! :)

The cutie pie boys.

I made them stand with their eyes closed then I threw a balloon at their feet hoping to get them wet. They didn't really seem to care.

The balloons were gone in about 1 minute so I got out the sprinkler.

Jackson's watching all the fun.

Eliz was happier now!

Jackson tried to eat anything he could get his hands on!

We had a fun day with our cousins!

Brothers

As Jackson has grown older I have loved watching the interaction between the two boys! They generally play well together (not that they "play" very much together yet) but there are times that they fight or Cooper doesn't want to share toys with Jackson. Just recently though, JACKSON has been the one to not share with Cooper! I posted a few pictures below.

Here are the boys dressing up as daddy for Father's Day.
Either giving Jackson hugs or tackling him, I'm not sure which.

Awww... my pseudo twins. I like to dress them alike! :)

Ok, evidence of Jackson not sharing. He loves this sheep seat and Cooper started sitting on it. Jackson crawled over and is now in the process of trying to pull Cooper off of it.

"What mom, is this wrong??"

VICTORY!

More...

They have matching shirts and I tried to get a good photo of them in them. This is what I got...

Oh well, better luck next time.

Birthday Fun

Laura and I celebrated our birthdays last week (along with my Aunt Amy and Uncle Ross!) and my parents took us to Cheesecake factory for lunch. It's been a tradition the last few years so it was fun to do it again.

My dad took a long lunch and joined us!

Cooper, Ben, and Elizabeth. What's so funny is we did NOT plan to have the boys wear their matching shirts. We just showed up and they were each wearing them! They truly are our twins :).

Here's sweetie pie Jackson. He did a great job at lunch.

All of us outside Barnes and Noble afterward.

That night when Ryan got home, they had a Sponge Bob birthday for me (cute huh? :))

Then Cooper took the camera! I asked him if he'd take a picture of me and daddy, and he was actually able to get us in the camera and take a picture. No small feat considering the camera is so huge! After this though I couldn't pry him away from the camera. I thought I'd post a few of the photos he took along with his commentary...

(btw-not a flattering photo of me but his commentary was too funny)

"Mom, why is your mouth in an o ? I don't want your mouth to be in an o."

So then he takes this one

"Mom, where are your hands? I want to take a picture with your hands."

"There are your hands!" (Isn't he so funny?!?)

Then he took this one of Jackson

Maybe he'll be a photographer one day! Now I just have to fend him off every time I get out my camera (which is about 5 times a day). Maybe it wasn't so smart to introduce him to the camera this young!

The Final Days of Our Trip

We ended our 2 week long trip with a few days in Kansas. We left WI a day early because Jackson got a fever and we weren't sure what was wrong. The cabin doesn't exactly have lots of drs around so we thought it would give us a better peace of mind if we drove to KS so we could be around drs. if we needed them. Turns out he had an ear infection...shades of his brother!

Here's Jackson trying to recover from his infection.

The big hit of the trip was FIREWORKS!!!!!! Cooper was in heaven. He loved the poppers and, really, everything else too!

Jackson liked to be outside checking out all of the toys too.

Cooper loves Grandma S!

Looks just like he did in WI with fireworks! (Please excuse his horrible outfit! Doesn't really match does it? :))

We also played with water balloons. Cooper LOVED them.

And Jackson loved Cooper! (can you tell he's reacting to his brother? You can kind of see Cooper's reflection in the glass door)

This "excited" look was Jackson's new expression while in KS. He did it ALL of the time. He'd just open his mouth as far as it would go! Crazy boy.

Uncle Chris came down to spend the weekend with us. Both boys were in heaven. Ryan was too as he and Chris went to Manhattan to golf on Ryan's birthday! :)

Celebrating Ryan's birthday after they got back from golfing. I asked Cooper how we should decorate and he said "Fuzz Lightyear birthday!"

We did a little 4th of July craft while we were in KS since it was almost the 4th of July!

One day while we were there we drove up to KC to visit some friends. Here we visited our friends Justin and Kelli and their kids Eleanor and Will. Here Eleanor is telling Jackson something! It was so cute because she was really having a conversation with him complete with hand gestures and he just looked at her like... what?!?

When he's older he's going to be mad he spurned the advances of Eleanor :)

Cooper and Will are relaxing before lunch.

Justin and Ryan with all of the kiddos.

After we had lunch with Justin and Kelli, we headed to Gretchen's house for the rest of the day. We had an amazing time catching up and relaxing, then a few more of our college friends came over for a BBQ. We had such a great time.

We actually got a good picture of all the kids looking! Probably the first time this has ever happened!

Cole, Nolan, Avery, Maya, Jackson, and Cooper

All the kids with their mommies! Linsey, Megan, Gretchen, and me.

Then we made the dads pose: Brandon, Ryan, Craig, and Darin

Ahhh, finally done posting about our trip! We had a wonderful time though and I was sad to see it end.