More Lyons Xmas Activities

Sugar cookies:

 Frosting:

A Grandma Joan cookie:

Movies:

With the Inman crew:

Lyons Christmas Activities

Ipads and iPhones:

Piano (Cooper with our foster kiddo B):

Tv:

Gator:

Clowning around at Lyons High School:

Cots for bedtime:

Christmas with Ally

Cooper and Alan enjoyed Christmas Adam (in contrast to Christmas Eve) with Ally and Juliette:

first Christmases

We celebrated Christmas in Wichita on Saturday the 23rd.  Miss Ally and Juliette joined as well to meet everyone there:

Cooper and Juliette in the hotel pool:

Christmas eve at my house with a pot roast:

Writing a quick letter to Santa:

Magic:

The most aswesomest new lego set ever:

December fun

 Bubble!

A new fountain pen:

And the school spelling bee:

Cooper did great!  He spelled some really difficult words, and eventually missed "malign."  

December starts

Klinger got some new scientific wallpaper for his cage:

Coop performed wonderfully at his piano recital:

And we got our holiday decorations up:

Coop's hat tree is doing double duty as our Christmas tree this year:

New friends, and Thanksgiving

Cooper and Alan have made some new friends.  This is Juliette.  She's a 7th grader:

She somehow convinced coop to dress up with make-up?

For Thanksgiving, Alan and Coop hosted Juliette and her mom Miss Ally:

The annual (the 40th annual!!) Raintree Thanksgiving feast:

Halloween

Step 1. New dress shoes and socks.

Step 2. Pencil drawing of character for inspiration:

Step 3. Appropriately themed jack-o-lantern:

Step 4. Perfect hair cut, jacket, and guitar.  It's Paul McCartney:

Step 5.  Head out with friends:

Siloam Springs State Park

Last weekend, Cooper and I drove to Quincy, IL to meet up with Carrie, Gus, and Eleanor (who now live in Chicago) for a weekend.  We drove to nearby Siloam Springs State Park to hike for a couple of hours.

On the way, we met this guy.  Sitting on a deer (that he was eating) by the side of the road.  We pulled the car up right next to him and watched for a while.  Amazing.

Finally, to the hiking trail:

Reading on the way back to the house:

Mud

Last weekend, Alan, Cooper, and I joined our friends (Madeline and Genevieve and their parents) for a Family Timber Challenge, probably more appropriately called a Family Mud Run.

Here's how we looked at the end:

Along the way, we had lots of obstacles -- hay bales to crawl over, cargo ladders, and this awesome zip line:

And tons of mud.  Just messy slippery mud:

Finally warm, sort of dry, and not even close to clean: