College Friends (mine, not Cooper's)

My friend Thomas and his family were in Kansas recently for a wedding, so we reunited (most of) the college gang, though our parties are much different now with kiddos.

Thomas wrestling with four of the boys:



Coop and Parker in a serious game of Connect Four:

Thomas's wife Colleen and their two boys Matthew and Christopher:

Adorable "sushi" cupcakes that Karen made, complete with green felt wrapped around them ala seaweed!

Karen and her daughter Zooey:

Zooey handing out hugs as they left:

Start of Summer

We spent one Saturday up at Crown Center in Kansas City.  Cooper loves eating at Fritz's, where your food arrives by electric train car.

And we visited the new KC Aquarium, which was lovely, I thought.

Jellyfish:

Talking to a manta:

Coop's been excited about catching bugs in the yard.  We picked up a "bug barn" at a garage sale so he has a home for his critters now.  Before that, his pet roly poly lived in a tupperware container, but died after a day or two.  This was the grave stone Coop made for him.

(I haven't actually checked, but I'm guessing that yes, the dead roly poly is under that cup.)


And we picked up an Operation game, now updated for the 21st Century to include things like a cell phone and a fart bubble.  Alas, no wishbone or funny bone anymore.

School break

Coop's got two weeks off from school now in between the spring and summer sessions.  We volunteered to keep the class pet geckos for the break.  They're low maintenance.  We feed them a dozen or so crickets at a time, give them fresh water, and put cricket food in the aquarium, too.  (Yes, I appreciate the irony of feeding the crickets to then feed them to the geckos...)

Adelaide has been quite enchanted with the critters:

We picked up a kite and spent one afternoon down at the soccer fields trying to fly it.  All in all, not bad, but surely there's some technique I'm missing...

Every Saturday, we go to the farmer's market for a cinnamon roll and across the street to the library for some books and movies.  Here was Cooper's attire one Saturday.

Clearly, pirate skeletons can't get wet.

Weekends

This is such a frantic time of year for Alan and I with exams to write and papers to grade and classes to finish up.  So we've been spending many of weekends around the house trying to remain calm and relaxed.

Coop and I finished up the Titanic model that he got as a Christmas gift.

(It needs paint, but that project may wait until...never.)

This was Coop's outfit for church one Sunday:

Eating ketchup with a fork, because...well... why not?

Talking to Addie.

Working with Daddy:

A trip to the library for books about airplanes and boats and volcanoes and tornadoes.

Is it summer yet?

Mother's Day

Cooper woke up at 6:40 on Mother's Day to give me a hug and tell me "Happy Mother's Day!"  Sweet, but next year we'll maybe work on sleeping in...

And then he demanded I open all of my presents.  Here's what he had wrapped for m:

A gun with bullets:

Um...ok.

My very own Titanic picture:

A telephone for me to use:

A plaster handprint:

 (I think those are the French spellings of our names.)

A picture frame that he made at school:

And my favorite, the pieces to a model ship, with instructions included:

All assembled:

Man, 5 is a great age!

T-Ball!!

We signed Cooper up for t-ball this summer!  He's in a 3-4-year-old league (age as of Jan. 1, so he's probably the oldest kid out there), and it's pretty stinkin' cute.

We have practices on Wednesday evenings for 30 minutes, where Coach Jason has the kids hit, field, and play catch with each other:

Coop was over-the-moon excited about his "uniform" (blue Baldwin Rec t-shirt), which he's worn nearly every day it's clean.

Here he is playing short stop at the first game:

And he got a chance to play first base:

The base squeaks when you step on it, which is pretty cute.  And in this league, we play three innings.  (An inning is where every kid hits the ball and runs to first base.)

Coop at bat:

 Running to first:

The obligatory "good game, good game" line:

And a team meeting after the game: 

Too fun!

Saturday

We made a stop at Dunkin' Donuts.  Coop picked a chocolate frosted donut and a donut with sprinkles.  He and I were to share -- we would each get half of each donut.

Here was the "half" of the chocolate frosted donut that he left me:

We spent about five hours out at Clinton Lake.  Some friends of ours were running in a trail run out there.  Coop and I played down at the beach for about 1.5 hours.  He waded in the water, collected shells, dug in the sand. 

And then we walked some of the trails:

Coop took his ghost costume with us, and he had fun running through the finish gate while everyone cheered for him.

And in the "bad mom" category, check out Coop's souvenir from the day:

Oops.

A quick trip to Lyons

Coop and I headed to Lyons last weekend, originally to attend the MCC sale at the State Fair grounds and to attend Kathy and Gary's 40th wedding anniversary party.  For unrelated reasons, we went to neither of those events, and with tornadoes on the way in, we ended up leaving Lyons earlier than planned.

But we still managed lots of fun things:

Walking on the railroad tracks with Grandpa, Grandma, and Prince:

Easter egg hunt with the neighborhood kids.

Grandpa and Grandma have amassed a collection of 2000 plastic Easter eggs, all purchased during the 90% off after-Easter sales over the past several years.  Grandpa filled them with candy and quarters and threw them in the pasture for the kids to find.

Sorting through the loot:

Grandpa helped Cooper with some t-ball practice:

We cooked hotdogs and had s'mores.

And when we needed to rest, we played "conveyor belt" with Grandma Joan's treadmill.