Christmas Dinner

We had our annual Christmas prime rib dinner at Janet's house Christmas evening. Cooper had a couple more gifts to open there. Dinner was delicious, games were had and conversation was aplenty.

Connie, Susan and Sue

 Holly and Angie

 Janet (Host with the Most)

Christmas Pictures

Here are some pictures from Christmas, opening the presents.

Santa's gift, Imaginext Aircraft Carrier

Another Santa gift, Imaginext Airplane with Rosey

Sharon excited for the gift opening to commence!

Yay! Money from Mom and a calling card.

Hot chocolate from Florida Mom!!

PlayMobil from Auntie Sonya

PlayMobil from Alexander and Adam

Monogrammed mugs for the Rose's

Monogrammed letter openers from Frances.

Travel mug

 Serving bowls from the Rose's

Efren and Rosario (and Riley)

Efren and Amanda

Efren's Game Chair

Sharon's fridge

Efren's TV

Over

"Christmas is over," said Cooper. We took down our tree and decorations inside the house yesterday. We had an excellent holiday, Rosey, Rosario and Efren were with us for two nights. Cooper loved having them here and hated to see them go on Monday.
Cooper woke up Christmas morning humming at 7am and we are not sure if he was sleeping or awake. He woke us at 7:42am with, "I wonder if Santa ate his cookies." With that he jumped out of bed and ran into the living room. He saw all the presents and said, "Oh my goodness! Mommy come quick you have to see this." I will post some pictures of Christmas soon. 
This week Sharon is busy working on the bathroom and storage spaces. Almost all the sheet rock is up and we bought the tile for the shower and floor. Cooper and I have been staying busy too, we went swimming yesterday, playdate Wednesday and some lounging around today. I am excited for the weekend, more family time! Oh and of course the Rosebowl, Go Badgers!!!!!

Pittock Mansion

We went hiking yesterday with Anna and Elliot in Forest Park. We took the kids to Upper Macleay Trail and hiked all the way up to Pittock Mansion. I think it is 2.5 miles to the mansion and the kids did great. It took us an hour to get up there, we had lunch outside, checked out the gift shop and then hit the trail back to the car. The hike back took about 20-25 minutes.



Elliot climbing up a hill to the trail. Cooper did the same thing but I missed the photo op.


Having lunch, it was freezing sitting there.




Cooper and Pittock Mansion


Great to be outside, it drizzled a bit but we were dry on the trail.

Tidbits

I parent helped at preschool on Tuesday and snapped this picture of Cooper and classmates enjoying a book on tape together. The kids totally enjoyed listening to the book for 15 minutes or so.






Cooper loves books on tape, we get them from the library and listen to them in the car. It was so cute to see the kids calmly listen together by themselves.

Thursday I called it quits on the scarf I was making and gave it to Cooper. He wore the scarf to preschool with a hat I made and gloves we had. He looked super cute and was so proud of his outfit.



Sharon is done with her travels for now, Yay!! We are very happy to be together.
I am looking forward to this week, Sharon is going to take some vacation time. We still have to visit Santa and do some holiday things. At least our shopping is done!

Tiger

Cooper was drawing a card for his cousins this weekend and decided to draw on his nose. This evolved into drawing a tiger on his face. He did a pretty good job and wore it for two days until swimming took it off.

Scary tiger?






He loved his face drawing!

Cold Weather

It has been very cold her the last few days and Cooper has decided that he doesn't want to go outside. As long it is not pouring rain, his preschool teacher has the kids outside. Cooper hasn't been wanting to go outside at preschool, doesn't want to take the dogs for a walk or play in the backyard because of the frigid temperatures. Today, I was able to get him outside because Larkin and I and the dogs were all outside. This is the outfit he wore, I love it! He's wearing a hat I knitted, duck boots that are torn, his jammies and a Carhart jacket (like Mama's)! He played outside for a half hour and was done.




Shortly after coming inside we all took Luke for a walk. Since Luke is still a puppy and likes to pull on the leash I am trying to take Riley and Luke on separate walks so I can really work with Luke. I think he picked up some of Riley's herding instincts because he hates when the kids are too far away, he will whine. He is really smart and food motivated, he just needs reminders and practice. The kids and Luke ran around the field and then we walked home. Before dinner Cooper and I took Riley on her walk, the only way to get Cooper to agree was to push him in the stroller. I put a blanket around him and off we went.

It's December

Wow, I cannot believe we are in December already. Let the holiday craziness begin.
We had a nice weekend with Mama home. Cooper and Mama went to the Home Depot Kid's Workshop Saturday and made a snowman napkin holder. I volunteered to help at Cooper's preschool for Date Day, which was providing childcare for three hours so parents could go shopping, have breakfast or simply hang without their kids.
Saturday afternoon Sharon finished up the electrical work for the upstairs.
Sunday I took Luke to the dog park for the first time and met Donee and Toby there. The dogs had a blast, pure exhaustion for Luke. Sunday afternoon there was a model steam train event happening and we took Cooper there. It was a free event and benefit for a local charity. Cooper loved it! He was doing the chicken dance while he watched the trains go around. It was cool because the trains went inside and outside.






We had a nice dinner out, then came home and built Cooper's wooden train tracks.
Tomorrow Sharon leaves again for Montana. There was lots of tears and stalling at bedtime tonight by Cooper on hearing this news.

Skype

The beginning of this month is going to be rough. Sharon started her first week away on Tuesday followed by two more weeks. She is gone four of the five days during the week so she's home on the weekends. Cooper was pretty mad at her when he found out she had to leave. He had a hard day that Tuesday, he whimpered a lot, kept saying things like, "I can't go on a walk because it's too cold and Mama isn't hear to keep me warm." As he gets older he is way more vocal about his disapproval in her traveling. He likes to be comforted by me when he is feeling sad and it's hard for all of us.

This week we decided to try Skype. Cooper isn't big on talking to Mama on the phone, we thought seeing her may help him. Skype is awesome!!! Cooper did a complete 180 last night after Skyping with Mama. He did a happy dance, got totally crazy and talked a ton. It was great.

Today we had a long day and we Skyped with Mama again tonight. We could see how relaxed he got after talking with her for awhile. She read him a story, I read a story and we talked. When we hung up, Cooper was asleep within 30 seconds.

This is definitely a tool that we will use on her trips. It means so much to him to see her on the computer and it allows them to be silly and laugh together. He kissed the computer tonight and said "I love you Mama."

Christmas Time

We put our lights up on the outside of the house last weekend. Cooper was very excited about that.

Yesterday we bought our tree and decorated it. For the last three years we have gone to Sherwood, OR to a place called Sleighbells Tree Farm and bought our tree, sat on Santa's lap, had some hot cocoa, bought fudge and an ornament or wreath or two. This year we decided to bypass the gift shop place due to gas prices and we hit the local tree farm in town. Grandma Lindsay came to our house, we had coffee and a friendly game of cribbage before heading out. The tree lot is about 1.2 miles from our house, they bring the trees from their farm in Mollala, OR and they are very reasonable. Cooper gravitated to the 8' tall 8' wide trees. He said we needed a big tree for all his decorations!

Here is our tree and Cooper decorating.

Tower

Cooper and I were making towers with wooden blocks the other morning.

New Toy

I finally bought Larkin a baby doll and accessories to play with. She gravitates to them at other people's houses and I know she has some at home so it was about time I get one. Cooper brought it out for her on Monday and they played together a little bit. She played with the baby in some form all day when we were home.

Happy Thanksgivig

We had a great Thanksgiving today with our family of friends. We had an exquisite feast including deep fried turkey, ham, yams, green bean casserole, rolls, fresh cranberries, delicious salad, sausage stuffing and roasted garlic mashed potatoes. Dessert involved homenade apple pie and homemade pumpkin pie with fresh whipping cream. This is the first year since getting pregnant that I ate the turkey (yay for deep frying)!!
I am excited about leftovers tomorrow.
I intended to take lots of
pictures today but didn't. Cooper enjoued a movie marathon with his movie buddy Angie.

Bedroom

We are slowly transitioning from a family bed to Cooper sleeping in his bed in his room. We have had his bed on the floor in our room for the last few months and he has been sleeping in it every night. Typically he will wake up sometime in the middle of the night and climb in our bed for the remainder of the night. We have talked to him about sleeping in his room and he kept saying he would do that when he is 5 years old. Well Sunday we decided to go for it and we put his mattress on the floor in his room. It's a great spot under his loft and it doesn't take up that much space. He's slept in there twice so far. Monday night he told Sharon very seriously, "Mama, I think we should sleep the other night in your bed and the other night in my bed so Mommy won't be lonely." Mondays I have band practice so I wasn't home when he went to sleep. Monday he slept with us and Tuesday he slept in his bed until 3:30 am. Tonight he is in our bed. We are doing this slowly and it is working for us. I have found that I don't sleep if Sharon is home and not in the bed (Sunday night she slept for half the night with Cooper in his bed). I also found that I can't sleep too well when Cooper isn't in our room. I woke up last night at 3:00 because I thought I needed to check on him. I ended up not checking on him and he woke up thirty minutes later to pee. We are having Riley sleep with him because we know she would bark if something happened. Riley is not too happy about this arrangement, her herding instincts and desire for us to be all together are making her anxious. But she is doing it (well she can't leave his room because she won't walk through the hallway with the floor vents, so really we are trapping her in there :)

Funny Sayings

Cooper is hilarious lately. At Erin's the other day she and I were talking and I said, "if I were to ask Sharon today she would say no." Cooper, who was sitting next to me goes, "Then don't ask her Mommy." Oh my gosh we were laughing hard. Today we were watching Handy Manny and Sharon said, "I want Handy Manny to come finish our bathroom." Cooper said, "Mama you are Handy Manny." How cute, right. He constantly tells her she can't work or travel because she has to work on the bathroom. He is very concerned about the progress apparently.
Some other things he is saying. Today he had two separate playdates and Larkin was here. Larkin was coming outside with me and Cooper said (with his pouty look), "but then I won't have anyone to play with me." When Emory left this afternoon Cooper said (with an even poutier look), "Now no one is here to play with me."
He has never been especially sad to not have friends here and it's not like he was really playing great with Emory at the time but it is interesting to see/hear this commentary from him.
In other news, we had our first preschool parent/teacher conference this week. It was cool to hear the teacher's observations and go through the checklist. It is exciting that this is the start to his school life. I love the play-based model, the freedom it allows and the lack of pressure on academics at this age and I love his teacher!
We also had our first preschool playdate today at our house. We asked Cooper who he would like to invite over and he said Graham. So we had Graham and his Mama Kim over this morning and they had a great time together.

Bus Adventure

Libby and I took Cooper, Emory and Larkin to the airport on an adventure a couple weeks ago. We haven't had a bus adventure since this summer so Cooper and Larkin were super excited! Waiting for the bus.





We took the bus to the Max and the Max to the airport. We stopped at Target after the airport too. Cooper is getting excited about Christmas so he is checking out toys for his list. Libby and I took the boys on another adventure Thursday because there was no preschool. We went on a short adventure to a different toy store at the Clackamas Mall. The boys played for awhile and then we left to play at Emory's before swim class. In both toy store adventures, I didn't buy anything! This is huge for me because I am a consumer. Cooper is also doing really well and isn't ask me to buy him anything. We are continuing to add to his Christmas/birthday list.

Pics from the week

iPhone pics from the week.

I parent helped on Tuesday and saw Cooper in numerous dress up outfits. Some of the girls were being cats so Cooper joined in too.



Picture of the tail.


Mama came home from Montana late Friday, where she was sick the whole time. We all had a snuggle day today.

Cubby

The upstairs is perking up. We started work on it again and I now have a finished cubby for storage! I started moving things in there today and we also set things aside to sell or donate. Cooper loves being upstairs, he has toys up there " in roatation" and he enjoys rediscovering them while Mama works. He also loves the new storage space. He spent a lot of time in there with Mama while she was finishing it.
We have two more attic areas that Sharon is going to finish for storage and I am super excited!
The only downside to all this work is the debris floating around the house and the excess garbage/recycling.

Yay productive weekend!

Fire Station Field Trip

Cooper's preschool went to the fire station near our house this morning for a field trip. We all arrived and the ambulance got a call so they left. Within a couple minutes the firefighters got a call and they had to leave too. Teacher Anette did a brief tour, we looked at the kitchen, living room and the sleeping areas.
We took pictures of the class by the fire truck that was still at the station then carvanned back to school.




While the kids were back at school I went back to the fire station to pick up fire hats, stickers and activity books the firefighters had for the class. They called another fire station and had a rig drive to the preschool so the kids could see the truck, hoses and gear. The kids got to climb in the truck too.

Cooper climbing through the rig.

Pumpkin Patch

We had our first field trip with Cooper's preschool this morning. We went to Farmer Anne's, Gales Creek Meadow Farm to pick pumpkins. The preschool goes to Farmer Anne's every May and plants pumpkin seeds and then in the fall they come to pick the pumpkins. It's pretty awesome, we had a great time tooling around the farm and then had a potluck with the preschool families from both the two-day and three-day class.

We found lots of snakes in the compost piles, three gardener snakes and one rubber boa snake. There were grasshoppers, woolly caterpillars, a rescued goose and roosters. Cooper loved the snakes, he and another girl took turns holding them and she actually caught one and was so proud. Sharon was also catching them for the kids.

It was great fun and the weather was awesome, sunny skies.