Fishing with Mamaw

The week of Memorial Day, Matt's Mamaw Lucy came in town from Louisiana.  Since she lives so far away, we don't get to see her very often.  This makes it super special when she's here!  Mamaw Lucy is totally an outdoor DIY woman, so Matt asked her if she wanted to go fishing one morning - of course she was game!  LL went too, and Kevin and Luke came along as well.  They had a good little crew!  Matt took the camera with him (I stayed home with Coop - duh), and I was happy that he actually took some pics while they were gone!  

LL was super proud of the first catch of the day!

Luke is seriously the cutest thing ever.

Mamaw Lucy was showing Matt how it was done!

After they had been gone a while, Matt texted and said "she's okay".  Ummmm.....I wasn't concerned until I got that text.  Then I got this pic of her.  Evidently, she fell in the pond when they were walking around.  It is NOT a pond that you want your kid to swim in, and Matt said he snatched her up about the time that she got up to her waist.  She was pretty yucky and not too happy.

Due to falling in the pond (and I think a potty incident??), she somehow ended up sans clothing.  That's when it was time to come home - haha.

I know Mamaw Luch had a good time, and Matt is always happy when he catches some fish!

Memorial Day

Since my sister was in town for Memorial Day, we decided to have a cook-out at our house.  That morning, I actually ended up getting rear-ended, so most of the day was spent either dealing with the wreck or at the doctor (just some whiplash).  We still managed to pull the cook-out off, though.  We invited quite a few people, but ended up only having us, my sis and her family, and the Hempe family.  It's alright - we still rocked it out.  :)

Everyone came early and we had a pool set up outside along with the trampoline and the play house.  LL was nooooot in a good mood because she stepped in an ant bed and got lots of bites, so she spent most of the time inside pouting.  We still had fun, though.  :)

Coop's happy place!

Luke and Ben enjoyed the trampoline (and the big ball - haha)

Luke also enjoyed LL's "lawnmower" (as she calls it).

I'm sorry - when was he allowed to start looking 10?!

Matt did an awesome job cooking a boston butt and some ribs.  We also had corn, baked beans, and tatertot casserole.  It was all so good!  And we stuck all the kids at a kid table.  :)

Good luck trying to get 3 kids to all look at the same time!

Poor kid - not a part of the adult or kid table.  I think he was too busy chowing down to notice.

We had a blast, and I'm so glad everyone came to hang out!

Cooper's 11 Month Pictures

My sister and family were in town for Memorial Day.  Gino was going to take Cooper's 9 month pictures for us, but plans kind of fell through.  I asked him to go ahead and take Cooper's 1 year pictures when he was down (just in case something else came up!), and he said he would take some pics for us - but not his actual one year pics.  We're going to do those the weekend after his birthday.  He took some really awesome ones, and we even did some birthday theme ones, but I'm not sharing those yet since one of the pictures was used on his invitations.  

Before you see the pics, I want to explain his shirt because it has special meaning.  When I was pregnant, my sister and I went on a vacation to California over Spring Break.  On the second day of our trip, we went to an open air market in La Jolla.  While we were at the market, there we a really awesome vendor there selling kids shirts.  The shirts all had one theme to them: pockets.  They had really muted colors, but random shapes of pockets in really neat places.  The name of the her business is Mon Pere (my father).  My sister bought a shirt for "Baby C" and I've been holding on to it ever since.  :)  It was a 12 mo shirt, so he's finally able to fit into it.  I LOVE that we have these pics of him in a shirt that has special meaning.  You can check out the website here, and I know I will be ordering more shirts for Cooper in the future!  I love them!

So here are the best ones that we got from the day!  Check out this handsome dude....

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This one is my absolute favorite from the day.  :)

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We did these early in the morning, and I had not even done my hair yet because I did noooot anticipate being in any of these.  Thanks, Gino.  :)  But I do like this one.  Other than the eyes, he looks nothing like me and all like his Daddy.  I LOVE it.

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This is another one of my favorites.

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How can you not fall in love with this face??

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LOVE

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I love how his pointed finger is in all of these.  :)

Thanks so much to Gino for getting such beautiful pictures of my baby boy!  More to come soon!

Anniversary Date

This year, Matt and I celebrated our 9th year of marriage.  Isn't that crazy??  I did a post about my feelings after nine years on our actual anniversary, but this post is about the date we went on to celebrate.  Grammy came over to watch our kids, and the hubs and I headed out for our first date in quite a while.  

She never wants to take pictures when we want one of her, but she looooves to take them when they're about somebody else.  :)  And we can't pass it up.  I hate that we didn't get a picture of Coop, but he was busy chowing down on dinner when we left.

I mean - that is one good.  looking.  man.  I can honestly say that he is just getting better and better with age!

We were totally lame and ended up eating at Red Lobster.  There were tons of more awesome places that we could have gone, but I really just wanted some seafood.  Matt, knowing that it wasn't a battle worth fighting (he's learned something in 9 years :) ), just agreed and was happy to go.  We just split this bad boy and stuffed ourselves silly.

After dinner, we headed to our favorite fro-yo place and stuffed ourselves even more.  

It's funny, because we are VERY different in our fro-yo tastes.  Matt gets a super rich yogurt (usually something gross like cheesecake), and tops it with chocolate, chocolate, and some more chocolate.  I *always* get a non-dairy option (I think this one was watermelon), and I like to top it with some strawberries, a little bit of chocolate, and kid cereal.  Ugh - my fav.  

It wasn't a super fancy date, and we didn't even stay out very late - but we had FUN.  We enjoyed each other and not having to rush around.  It was a perfect way to celebrate!

Year #10 - we're coming for you!

Preschool Pictures

LL's preschool had someone come in and take pictures this year.  I don't know if this is a typical yearly thing or not?  I asked at the beginning of the year if pictures were going to be taken, and I was told that they would not be.  But then in the spring, obviously they were.  So maybe it's something new??  Either way, I'm super excited that it was done!  It's no secret that LL has had an aversion to having her picture taken lately, so I was nervous that her picture would be of her just looking at her feet - haha.  Well, they must be miracle workers because her picture turned out beautiful!!  I'm sure watching her classmates helped a ton, and LL always does better for others than she does for us (typical kid, right??).

They also did a class photo, which I'm happy about!  It was neat to ask her when we got it who all the kids were and she could tell us all of their names.  Of course LL isn't looking at the camera - haha.  

I'm so happy that they did these this year and I'm hoping that they'll do it next year, too!!