April iPhone Rewind

We woke up one morning to find a duck swimming in our pool.  I got Cooper up and let him go see it.  He loved watching it until it flew off just a few minutes later.

This is totally real.  I get jury summons so often.  Luckily this time I am able to claim my exemption of being home with Cooper-- so we went to the Richardson courthouse to drop it off and I couldn't help but grab a picture and think about how often I've gotten jury duty in comparison to my husband who lives at the same address as me.  Pick on someone else please :)

Cooper loves his new Cozy Coupe from his Aunt Jarla and Uncle Marshall.  He drives it all over and thinks it's funny that the car's name is Coop like him ;)

We tried out a new McDonalds for breakfast one morning so Cooper could play.  Except there was Ronald McDonald hanging out in the ceiling so Cooper wanted nothing to do with the playroom.  He still tells us "McDonalds.  Clown.  Scary."

One of Cooper's favorite friends spent the day with us while her parents were out of town.  We had just bought him a sleepsack to try to deter him from climbing out of the pack and play and it was perfect that his favorite person was wearing one too!

When you ask your 2 old if he needs to go to time out and he puts himself in time out in the dog's crate.

We had a picnic at the park one day during showings of our house.  Cooper loved talking to all the ducks.

This was the morning Cooper climbed out of his crib for the first time.  He came running in to tell me all about it and was so proud of himself.

Caught in the act.  Luckily when we put his mattress all the way down and put him in a sleepsack he doesn't climb out so hopefully we can at least get moved before we start looking at transitioning out of his crib.

Practicing his climbing at the park

And then again on the pack and play.  Unfortunately he can still climb out with his sleepsack on and does so immediately after we put him down.  It's made napping anywhere but home almost non-existent, which usually isn't a huge deal.  But we've had to be out of our house so much for showings and inspections that it was a rough month with lots of missed naps.

New rain boots with pajamas.

They just redid our neighborhood park and it is amazing.  We went and checked it out last week and Cooper had so much fun.  I know we will have lots of play times here in the future!

We went on an afternoon date to see the new Avengers movie.  Thankful for some time away with my hubby!

Cooper got this new shirt and bug catcher from his friend AJ and he was so excited about both of them as we headed out one morning

What's Up Wednesday

Even though Wednesday is almost over, I am sitting down to watch a show while David is at small group so I thought I'd post a little update for What's Up Wednesday. 

What we're eating

We had lots of leftovers from Easter lunch that got us through the beginning of the week.  The rest of the week are some of our go-to easy favorites--sheet pan chicken fajitas, instant pot burgers, and almond flour shake and bake chicken.

What I'm reminiscing about

We are deep in the midst of home inspections on both our house and the house we want to buy, so it was reminding me of the craziness of buying our house.  There are so many  things we didn't know about this house when we bought it and all I can remember is just how exciting and new it all seemed.  It's nice to remember that right now when it just feels complicated!

What I'm loving

Cooper started swim lessons this week and we are loving it so far!  He was pretty unsure the first day so we stayed and watched the boys after us. Then he could not stop talking about it and on day 2 he was ready to go in and did really well.  I'm loving watching him learn something new!

What I've been up to

Lots and lots and lots and lots of paperwork for houses.  That feels like it's been pretty all-consuming both time-wise and brain capacity-wise.  I'm looking forward to it all being a little more settled soon hopefully.

What I'm doing this weekend

Planning some fun time with a few friends Saturday morning and a date in the afternoon with David-- we bought tickets to go see the new Avengers movie and since it's 3 hours long I asked that we see it in the afternoon instead of at night.  So we're doing a 2:00 movie and dinner afterward.

What I'm excited about

The possibility of a new house!  It still feels pretty uncertain, but it at least feels like it could happen now.  So I'm starting to let myself get a little excited about it.

What I'm watching

Currently I'm watching Jane the Virgin.  I started watching it on Netflix when I was pregnant with and then nursing Cooper and then started watching the current seasons.  The final season just started last month so I'm enjoying it.  David has also been watching lots of the Marvel movies leading up to the new Avengers movie so I've caught glimpses of that too.

What I'm listening to

Still lots of Podcasts.  A few current favorites are The Lazy Genius, Raising Boys and Girls, Don't Mom Alone, and The Popcast.  We also listen to lots of "Cooper music" as he calls it (in the car he frequently tells me-- no podcast, I want Cooper's music) like Daniel Tiger albums, Sing by Ellie Holcomb, Ask me Whooo, and Hosanna Rock.

What I'm working on

Our house-- cleaning, packing, fixing things.  Lessons for my ESL class.  Schedule of volunteers for church.  A catered lunch for our last MOPS meeting next month.  Nothing too exciting, but feels like a lot of things.

What I'm wearing
I bought a few Lularoe Randys through Facebook marketplace and I really love them for Spring-- they're great with shorts or jeans they've been great this month!  

What I'm looking forward to next month

Wrapping up all of our yearlong commitments (ESL, Bible Study, MOPS, Apartment Ministry)-- I love all the things we're involved in but it's also kind of nice to end the year out well.

Bluebonnet Pictures

Since there wasn't enough going on Easter morning, we decided to throw in some bluebonnet pictures as well.  In all actuality, we went out to breakfast at Rudy's in Allen because it is one of our favorite breakfast taco places and we had some time to spare between finishing breakfast and needing to be at church.  So I looked to see where the recommended bluebonnet fields were and found one not too far off our route.  Since Cooper was already in Spring clothes I figured it was a perfect opportunity to try to grab a few pictures.

He pretty much just wanted to run around and go on the sidewalk that goes through the fields.  We finally coaxed him to sit down by getting an Easter Egg he could hold.

He was loving the song "Hosanna Rock" last week, so we sang that and clapped his hands to get him smiling.

Finally got his Easter Egg open

We tried changing angles-- I had been looking mostly at having the field behind him but it put the sun behind him too, so we moved around.  It was a little trickier to have a good background without getting the street in there and he no longer wanted to sit, but he was happy to smile and laugh for us.

Love this sweet boy of mine!  Glad we took the opportunity to get a few Spring pictures.  We may still look for other bluebonnet patches, but this was a pretty good Easter morning detour.

And of course this gives a good chance to reminisce about other years' pictures

 2018

2017

Easter Fun

Here's a look at some of our Easter fun over the past week.

Since we were in the midst of packing up our house and trying to sell it, I wasn't able to do as much for Lent/Easter as I'd originally planned on.  But we did get a few activities mixed in last week leading up to Easter.

First up was matching colors.  I saw lots of ideas for matching pom poms into Easter eggs and putting things in color matching bowls. I decided to keep it simple and just have Cooper match the top to the bottom.  I laid all the bottoms in an egg carton and put the tops to the side.  He matched them and I helped him close them and then he put them in the bucket.  

We also tried out this snack mix that tells some of the Easter story.  Since we had so many of the supplies, we took it to share with friends one day and then another day I put each thing in a different egg and Cooper would open them as we talked about it all.  You can see more at the link but the pretzel sticks are for the cross, craisins for the blood of Jesus, round crackers for the stone over the tomb, goldfish because we are to be fishers of men, marshmallows to show are sins are washed away, and we did bunny grahams as a sweet treat to remind us to taste and see that the Lord is good!

We also tried out some Resurrection Eggs that we used several times during Lent and then went through at least once a day last week.  I started with the ones based on this link and then tweaked it a little as we went.  We ended up with 6 eggs

1. A Heart to show that God loves Everyone

2. A bandaid that represents a broken world.  We talked about how the world has lots of hurts and Jesus came and took on those hurts.

3. A Cross

4.  A rock to represent the one in front of the tomb

5. An empty egg to represent the empty tomb

6. M&Ms-- the sweet surprise of Easter is that Jesus rose again and we have a sweet life with him!

Cooper loved these so much.  They did end up causing a bit of a 2 year old meltdown when we shared them with cousin Piper on Easter, because what's holiday fun without some toddler meltdowns!

Saturday we also went and saw the Easter Cow at Chick-fil-A.  We had to be out of our house for some inspections so I had mentioned to David that our local CFA was having the Easter Cow out around lunchtime.  Cooper overheard and spent all morning talking about the Easter Cow.

This is how he felt about her in actuality.  He was excited to see her and talk about her, but didn't want to get too close.  When she went for her break he talked about her a lot but still didn't want to say hi.  Afterward he told us he had fun with the Easter Cow, but I'm not sure that's entirely accurate...

He was however a big fan of the ice cream that the Easter Cow gave us a coupon for in an Easter Egg!

Sunday morning we got up and went to breakfast and then church.  Our church had some photobooths out so we grabbed a few pictures before Cooper went to his class.

After church we headed to my mom's for more Easter fun!  She had an Easter basket for him and he was so excited about all of it!

While we waited for lunch Cooper enjoyed playing with his cousins and Piper showed him a few of her books.  After lunch we tried for a nap, but now that Cooper can climb out of the pack n play at my mom's it's just really hard to get him down.  We tried for a while but eventually decided to give up and let it be what it was.

Cooper's favorite thing in his Easter basket was his goggles that Grandma bought.  He wanted to wear them all day and was a little upset when he had to take them off. 

There was so much anticipation for the egg hunt!  This was actually Cooper's only egg hunt this year-- our one with church friends was cancelled due to rain-- so we weren't sure what he would think.  He did demand to use his basket that Grandma has for him and would not take anything out of it, so it didn't leave much room for eggs.  I decided that was not a battle worth fighting and just to let him be 2.

He found his first egg and just wanted to open it.

We did finally convince him to go hunt for some more eggs and he did a little...

... but once he found the eggs that looked like baseballs and footballs it was game over.  He did not want to put them down to get any other eggs.  He just carried them around while his cousins hunted for eggs.

Overall we had a lot of Easter fun over the past week!  We came home exhausted and ready for a good night's rest, but are so thankful for all of the fun things we had to celebrate that day.

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

This past weekend we took an afternoon trip to the Baylor Ballpark.  We love our tradition of going to the Baylor vs OU football game together and started thinking it might be fun to try out some other sports where our teams face off.  By the time the idea came about, basketball season was pretty much over, but we knew baseball season was coming.  We found a weekend where Baylor was hosting OU in baseball on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday and marked it down to try to go Saturday afternoon.  Like everything else this month (at least it feels that way!), our plans got rained out on Saturday.  The game still happened but we would have been driving down in the rain and weren't sure it would clear up.  Luckily there was another game Sunday so we decided to head out after church and it ended up being a beautiful day to be out there!

Cooper was really excited about being at the ballpark!  As I've said he loves all kinds of balls and he has recently started singing Take Me Out to the Ballgame so he was excited to be at a baseball game.

 His shirt from the football game in the Fall still fit!

David sure enjoyed getting to take in a game with his little guy.

Cooper lasted until the 2nd inning in our seats before he wanted to walk around some.  He and David found this hill to the side of the seats where he could run around.  He found some boys playing catch and was in heaven following them around.

And then he was beyond thrilled to come back to our seats with a baseball.

 We also took some time to pose with some of the bear statues they had.  We spent quite a bit of time walking around the whole ballpark and then decided to head out during the 5th inning so we could grab dinner and not get home too late before another busy week.  The game ended up going to 12 innings, so we were glad we didn't try to stick it out!

It ended up being a pretty perfect afternoon.  The weather was beautiful and Cooper really seemed to enjoy himself.   

And I couldn't help but look back at Cooper's first trip to Baylor 2 years ago and see how much he's grown.  Love our little Sooner Bear!