Florida!

We took a quick trip to Florida before Christmas, and Cooper had a wonderful time hanging out with his older cousins:

Star Wars guys for Christmas!

On the plane ride home:

Karate, etc

Coop attended another birthday party at the karate studio.  His favorite part:  board breaking!

Coop and I had dinner one night where they serve chicken teriyaki in a bamboo log!

Coop passed his first belt test and graduated to a white belt with yellow stripe.  We enjoyed attending the belt graduation evening:

Christmas friends

Our friends Gus and Eleanor came over one Sunday afternoon.  Cooper Claus was ready with some gifts for them:

And then we did some painting:

Christmas preparations

Christmas tree!

New Darth Vader ornament:

And a karate ornament too:

And now the tree looks like this:

'Tis a Star Wars Christmas, it seems...

 Coop and I made gingerbread houses out of graham crackers and a bunch of candy:

And Coop visited with Santa, who assured him that the elves have been busy making tons and tons of lego toys for this Christmas:

Surgery Recovery

Friends sent Coop a Lego DeLorean:

So we watched Back to the Future while putting it together:

We celebrated Thanksgiving at the church potluck and used the table covers to play hangman:

We made an apple pie:

And did lots of Star Wars reading:

Hernia surgery

Cooper had a hernia that needed surgical repair.  Watching cartoons in preparation:

Selfie:  (The anesthesiologist offered to take the picture for us, but it's much funner as a selfie!)

"Happy juice" on board, ready to go back to surgery:

Off:

In recovery.  Oof.

Headed out to the car:

Smarts and not

The long division problem Coop worked on at school:

Wooden buffalo model:

Um... jumping off couch cushions to pop bubble wrap:

This jump landed in a belly flop and knocked the wind out of him!

Light saber handles that Coop made in clay class:

Some kind of star wars lego creation that Coop free-built:

The Many Faces of Halloween

Tusken Raider (for karate studio halloween party):

Pumpkin carving party:

As a witch and Boba Fett for the church harvest party:

Darth Vader for regular Halloween trick-or-treating:

Sorting through the loot: