Cooper projects

After we finished the giant pirate ship project, Coop and I headed to the store to pick a new model project.  Everything at the store is pretty tame.  He selected an army tank and the only "assembly" included screwing on the six wheels. 

After that massive pirate ship, this was pretty lame.  Finished in about 10 minutes.


My Aunt Kathy made this quilt for me.  It's called the Ella Mae sampler (Grandma Farm's name!)  I love it!

 And it makes a great fort roof, too.

Reading in the Love Sac:

And Cooper "reading" on the couch (with Little Bill).

At school, Coop's class has been listening to books on tape about "Jack and Annie."  Turns out, they're books in the Magic Treehouse series.  We ordered one, and Cooper was so excited when it arrived, he grabbed it and hunkered on the couch for about 15 minutes "reading" it.

(Unfortunately for him, he later lost the privilege of starting the new book that night, which resulted in tears.  But we moved passed that...)

I made Cooper cry.

I suggested that we put away the Halloween decorations.  Actually, I just grabbed a big bucket and started loading up the ghosts and witches and skeletons.  Bad move.  The child loves Halloween.

So I let him pick three things to keep out.  He chose knitted jack-o-lantern coasters, a big orange skeleton to hang in his room, and a foam haunted house that he decorated with stickers.

And he reminded us that we had not yet made a zombie this year.  Remember Big Bill from last Halloween?  Apparently it's now a yearly tradition we've started.  Who knew.

But, it turns out that we're lazy.  No one except Cooper really wanted to find a straw bale and old clothes and put together a zombie.  So we compromised and made a small inside zombie by stuffing old Cooper clothes with newspaper.

Meet Little Bill:

Here's hoping we can put him away before it's time for the Christmas tree...

The obligatory Halloween photos

Coop chose to be a witch this year for Halloween, and he really wanted green skin.  I'm all about making dreams come true:

The witch hair, which has to be pulled back into pigtails because it gets in his face:

Ta-da!

Except that Coop didn't want to be the only green-skinned witch, so I ended up in the game, too:

Turns out, Parker was also a witch.  (The boys had matching witch pigtails!)

Zachary was a bat:

Off for candy:

Coop ate a ring pop in the car on the way home, and went to bed with blue lips and tongue.  That can't be good....

A little bit of work, a little bit of play

Cooper's ABCs:

The "100 Board" work at school.  He had to sort and order the numbers from 1 to 100.

School friends Ava and Madeline.  Each week, Coop alternates between which of these girls he's planning to marry.  I think it's Madeline this week (but Grayson also wants to marry Madeline, so we'll see...).

Over Labor Day, we went to Topeka with Michael and Kristen.  BNSF had a "family day" event at their huge railyard.  Fun.

Then we stopped by my office at Washburn.  Cooper, Thomas Jefferson, and Parker enjoyed the lovely afternoon.

Finally.... it's done.

Cooper and I finished our model pirate ship project:

 (Excuse the bad hair on both of us.  It was a Saturday morning.)

It's not pretty (the craftsmenship, not the hair), it won't win any awards, but by golly, it's done:

Cooper insisted we add a plank, even though the plans didn't call for one:

It lives, for now, on our fireplace.

Our annual trip to the Ren Fest

Coop, Alan, and I headed to Bonner Springs this past Saturday for the KC Ren Fest.  This year, we stumbled into the children's play area, which included this fabulous pirate ship playground thing.

That's Coop, standing at the front (bow? port?  who knows...) with the pirate spyglass he made out of a toilet paper tube and some cellophane.

There was also a station where you could make a magic wand with feathers and glitter and beads.  And then you had to go to the wizard to get it tested.

Coop's got the magic!

Alan and Coop (and a couple of strangers) rode the elephant.  It's always a toss-up between the elephant and the camel.  This year, the elephant won out.

Quick stop at Ye Olde McDonald's for some ice cream before heading home for a nap.

Like a true witch...

More randomness

One of my Washburn co-workers has a four-year-old daughter who likes to dress up like a pirate.  Score.

She came over in full regalia, and she and Coop vanquished dragons from the yard, had sword fights, and shared the parrot.

I'm guessing Halloween is one of Cooper's favorite holidays.  Not because he can dress up in costume; he does that all year long.  But because there are more props readily available.  His latest acquisition was a witch wig.

Turns out, he hates having hair in his eyes and mouth, so we made witch pigtails.  And fittingly, my witch wig has gray hair in it.


One recent Saturday, we headed out to the Baker wetlands for the monarch butterfly tagging event.

It turned out to be a chilly, rainy day, so all the monarchs were about 40 feet up in the air in the tops of the trees.  That made them a little hard to catch.

But Michael whacked one down with his net.  As it lay on the ground stunned, I swooped in to pick him up.

We were instructed to put a small sticker on the butterfly and to record the sticker number and the butterfly's gender.

After the obligatory photo op, we let him go and told him to "fly away to Mexico!"

Given the blow this one took from Michael's net, we're not entirely confident he'll make it to Mexico, but he's wearing a tag nonetheless!

Summer travel

Alan and I took a three-day trip to San Francisco this summer.  Without Cooper.  For the first time.  We had a great time.

For the first day and a half, this was the only photo we took:

These seven Victorian houses are known as the "painted ladies."  The middle one is the house where the Full House family (from the 80s sit-com) lived.

Then I felt bad that the only photo I had taken in SF was a pop culture reference from my childhood.  So we took some more:

A cable car:

Us:

The flag from the boat we took to Alcatraz:

Alcatraz island:

We had a great tour of the island and the prison.  Fantastic!


In other, less-fun travel, Cooper and I took a trip to Joplin, Missouri.  He had been pretty obsessed with talking about and reading about the tornado.  We had a couple of days off this summer, so we went down to Missouri to visit a high school friend of mine, and we detoured through Joplin.

The devastation is pretty astounding.

Fun new things

Alan went to Steamboat Springs for a family reunion, and he come home with bandanas.  Perfect for pirate head scarves.

Or to be cowbow bandits with the help of Fuzzy the Stick Horse.

Grandpa Cecil cleaned out his shed and sent this toolbox for Cooper. 

Grandpa Cecil's grandpa made it for him when he was a boy. Coop loved putting his little plastic tools in it. I'm guessing it'll get more use when his tools get bigger and sharper!

Grandma Carol found a new pirate hook, as well as a styrofoam parrot to complete Cooper's pirate outfit.

He was crazy-excited and didn't take off the hook, the bird, or the costume all weekend long.

Coop used a box of pencil erasers for witch fingernails.

Never a dull moment around here!