Cape Cod

Steve's grandfather passed away this spring, and the memorial service was held for him in June. We were glad that it worked out for our family to go and visit Grandma H. during this time and be able to attend Grandpa H's memorial. All in all we were in Cape Cod for 4 days, with a day of travel on each end of that. The travel portion of this adventure is somewhat of a bummer. A 2-hour drive to the Chicago airport, a long flight with toddler and baby, and then another 2-3 hour trek in a rental car out to the cape. Lots of car-seat lugging, hand sanitizing, shh-ing, and tricking the babe into thinking he's having a good time. It's a long, full day. But once we arrived there, it all seemed worth the effort. During our first full day there we went to a little Cove near the house with Steve's sister and her hubs while Owen took a nap. Ava was more brave this year, and she had fun running up and down the beach and digging up shells and the like.
At this beach there were a few bridges over some inlets of water, and everything was so picturesque.
The quiet part of the beauty was lost to Ava as she bounded across the bridge while "singing" (yelling).

She got pretty excited about the waves tickling her toes,

and letting her feet sink down into the sand.

After more beach walking we headed over to the fish market to pick up dinner. Ava was well behaved.
After dinner we went to the Flats in Brewster, which is my favorite thing to do while on the cape. When the tide goes out, there's a mile or two of extra beach, and you can walk way, way out and look at all the little snails, crabs, and fish.

Pretty amazing for this Okie girl! This year Ava was old enough to really get into the action, and it was fun to watch her discover things in the water.


Owen came along for the ride in the baby carrier. He was a happy little guy the whole time.

The next day I got a wonderful morning nap in when Owen was sleeping. It was glorious. Owen was waking up at 4:30 Wisconsin time, so the nap felt really good. I think I got one in almost every day of the trip! Once we were all finally up and dressed we went into Chatham to peruse the little touristy shopping area and eat lunch at the Wayside Inn with Aunt Robyn and Uncle Cory. (Both of which, by the way, were super duper helpful with the babes the entire trip! They really went above and beyond the call of Aunt and Uncle duty during their vacation!) That night we drove to Sundae School for some frozen treats after Owen went to bed. Ava was excited to be included in the "grown up" outing. The kid loves ice cream. Maybe because she never gets any at home...

Other activities included making homemade ice cream in memory of Steve's Grandpa, who would always supervise the process when Steve and Robyn were growing up. We also got to take a nice walk through Nickerson State park with Steve's grandma, wade at the National Sea Shore, and tour a lighthouse. Ava loved reading with her Great Grandma, and Owen became better and faster at crawling, enjoyed standing up with support,

and ate his weight in avocados.

All in all a wonderful trip.

Recent Adventures

So much to blog about, so little time! We've been busy since the last post, and I'm not sure how to go about this update. Do I start with the most recent occurrence? Or do I try to hit it all in chronological order? My preference would be to start at the beginning and cover everything with lots of photos, but I never have the time. So I think I'll start at the beginning and just cover a little. ok.
The day after the 5k run/bike race event we went exploring a bit at the Kohler State Park. We hiked along the dunes on a cable path and then walked the shore of Lake Michigan. It was a unique setting for us and we enjoyed it.

Owen traveled in the Kelty Kids backpack carrier, which Steve carried, and Ava hiked the whole way on her own two little legs. Well, almost the whole way. Very close to the whole way. Here's little O trying on the Kelty pack.


He was very content with this set up and jabbered along the way. Almost all the way. Here's Ava on her two little legs:

She was a bit apprehensive at first about the boards and the gaps between the boards and the sand making the boards slippery, but her confidence grew as we went along. By the end she was running along without any worries.
We walked back along the beach and Ava loved "making hand prints" in the sand.

Near the end of our walk, Owen got sick of the kelty about the same time Ava got sick of walking. So here ya go:

Way to go, Coop!
After our walk we hopped back into the car and went down the road to Linda's Diner for some lunch. Or was it Rachael's? See, there's the problem of waiting too long to blog about your adventures. At any rate, lunch was delicious and then we went back to the national park for some playground action,

followed by one more short nature walk,

and then a scramble over a big dune for a last look at the beach. It was during this final scramble that Owen zonked out in Coop's arms.
He slept through the transfer to his car seat and all the way home. Lovely.
The next event which needs a blog update occurred the last weekend of June. The four of us traveled to Cape Cod for Steve's grandfather's memorial service. We stayed with Steve's grandma, and it was so nice to be able to spend time there with her and Steve's sister and her husband. A full report with pics will be the goal of the next post!

The Tour of America's Dairly Land

The Tour of America's Dairy Land is a series of pro bike races through the state of Wisconsin. Last night one of the races was held in our hometown, and it was super duper fun to watch. I think the race was a 100k, and the route was an .8 mile loop. So us spectators got to watch the 80 or so bikes speed by every one and a half to two minutes. It was so fun! We walked the length of the route to watch the competitors zoom around the different corners--very exciting.
Part of the festivities of this two-day event included a 5k run/fun walk on Saturday morning. We thought that sounded fun to do, so we decided that morning to join the action.
We got there just in time to get our racing numbers pinned to our back and join in the group warm up time. It was a hoot. Here's Coop stretching before the run.



Here are my 2 partners for the race. (We were doing the "fun walk" part of this event.)



Ava also got in on the warm-up time, which was lead by someone up front with a mic and some pump-up music.
I think Ava's ready to join the track team.



Or maybe the dance team.



Or maybe karate.



It was a fun race, and Coop ended up taking first place for his division! Way to go, Coop!

Back Home

We are back home after almost 3 weeks of wonderful travel. Steve needed to work from the St.Louis office, so the whole family packed up (including both dogs) and stayed at Papa Cooper's house for a week. Steve worked during the day and we got to see friends and family in the evenings. The kids and I also got to meet up with various people during the daytime hours for lunches, play dates, etc. It was a really nice trip.
The first thing we noticed upon arriving in St.Louis was the humidity. When we opened the car door in the Cooper driveway, I felt like we were in a rain forest. It was so sticky and steamy out! But it did not take long to get used to the different climate and we had a great time that week. Ava LOVED exploring the inside and outside of Papa's house.
The second week we took our family vacation. First we spent the weekend meeting up with my parents, sister, grandparents, great uncle, and cousin. It was so neat to see everyone. We shared a condo with my parents and sister, and my grandparents and cousin had another condo across the street from us. This was the first time any extended family has had the chance to meet Owen. Ava had also changed a lot since our last visit. I wish we could see everyone more. Wisconsin to Oklahoma is a long, long, long drive.
Owen also had his first swim while we stayed at the condo! He really like splashing and kicking in the water. He exclaimed "geee!" a lot. Here's a pic of his cute little board shorts.
We also made a little trip to a blueberry farm about 45 minutes away. We were about a week too early to pick a bucket full of blueberries, but we were able to find a few ripe ones. We thought Ava would really like it, but she wasn't too interested. at all. Owen dug it, though.

After the weekend with extended family we attended a Family camp through Kanakuk Kamps. It. was. wonderful. I would stay all summer if I could. The facility is so nice and clean, there are tons of activities to do (or not do), the food is delicious (and plentiful...very important) and the staff is great. The staff really set the experience apart from any other vacation option we could pick. They are 100% helpful, polite, friendly, eager to help with the kids,and wonderful. And making the whole trip possible: both kids kept to their eating and sleeping schedule beautifully, which was an answer to much prayer, and everyone was healthy the whole time. Here's a goofy pic of our fam headed into the pirate event at Kamp!

After our week at Kamp, Steve worked another 3 days from the St. Louis office before we packed it up and came back to WI. We arrived home at 9pm, and the first thing we noticed when we opened the car door in our driveway was how cold and dry it was. Aaaah....home sweet home. It reminded me of the road trips we'd take to CO, when we would arrive at Woodland Park and realize we were way under-dressed for the weather! Such a great feeling! So we're still wearing our fleeces and jeans up here, esp in the evenings. LOVE IT.
On the kid front, which I know is the only reason my 3 readers even look at this blog...
Owen is crawling! He's been sitting up by himself for a while, even moving from his tummy to sitting all by himself. In fact during our trip, he was sitting up in his pack and play after his nap when I came in to pick him up. It was a very strange sight for this mama. Having mastered sitting, he started "crawling." This included doing an army crawl and the use of his head as another limb. Knee, knee, hand, head, hand, knee, knee. After about 3 weeks of this action, he finally did some official crawling this morning, without the assistance of his noggin. It was very exciting. Ava was cheering him on. "Come on, buddy! You're almost there!" His source of inspiration and motivation was a hot wheels toy. Making daddy proud already. Ava's motivation to finally do some legit crawling was my mother's silver James Avery bracelets. The kid liked the bling at an early age.

Eating Machine

Recent Activities

We are FINALLY having some very wonderful, beautiful, warm days up here in Siberia! So we've been enjoying a lot of time outside during the day and a family walk almost every evening.
Most days our lunches get moved out to the patio.
It's so nice to be out! Having survived our first Wisconsin winter, I will say that we loved it. We loved last fall. We loved this past winter. What we did not love were the months of April and much of May. Ugh. Spring does not exist up here! But now that it's warming up, all is forgiven.
In honor of the warm weather, the garage sales are in abundance these days. I made some large-item kid purchases, including a bouncing pony for Owen. We have a bouncing jumper that hangs in the doorway...but we have no trim on our doorways.
He gets very excited about his new role as cowboy. Ava also had to get in on the fun.

That little peanut. She cracks me up.
The other garage sale purchase consisted of a hot wheels play table with a bunch of hot wheel sets included in the storage bins underneath. My intent was to make this a basement toy, but while the novelty is still in play, we've left it upstairs for the time being.

There were a lot of different sets in those drawers, with no instructions or picture of what they could potentially become. I've never put sets like this together, so trying to figure it all out has become a family adventure. Last night during Ava's bedtime prayers, she said "Thank you, God for the hot wheels table," followed by "please help us with the hot wheels table." There you have it.
So in other news, life keeps clipping along at the Cooper house. Last week, for the first time ever, Ava cut with scissors. For all my OT friends out there, I know: shame on me. But here's a pic of her first attempts at using scissors.

Luckily she's right-handed and will not have to endure all of the hardships and discrimination that her left-handed mother had to face as a child. Oh, the trauma.
For some Mommy-Ava time last week we baked some "shining star" cookies. I think they are meant to be made at Christmas time and hung on your Christmas tree. This would explain why they didn't taste that good. But Ava picked this out of our big kid-activity idea book, and we had all the ingredients, so we went for it. Please ignore the pasta sauce all over the chin.

We had to use up the Lifesavers that Steve had purchased to help his sore throat. Sorry, Steve. I thought that if he still needed one he could just eat one of the cookies. ew.
So there's a few random happenings! We miss all of our friends and family south of here! Owen says "goodbye" and "ba-ba-ba."

Date Night!

Steve and I went out by ourselves to a restaurant and had dinner. I know. It's amazing! After the babies went to bed, a wonderful college gal in town came over to babysit and Steve and I went out. It was such a nice mental health break! In the last 8 months, the only other time we have been out together without our kids was in December when my family was in town. Now that Owen goes to bed easily and at a consistent time, we hope to do this MUCH more often!