Summer 2012

Hello again.  We are all alive and well, just too busy to blog.  The last time I updated you guys it was the end of May.  Here is what has happened since then:

• Maleah started a two-day a week tennis camp for the month of June.
• Maleah went to a three-day cheerleading camp (which caused her to miss one day of tennis).
• Maleah went to a one-night stay at Oil Belt Christian Service Camp.
• Maleah started playing Coaches Pitch Softball.
• I sold the expensive stroller that I had won.
• Jason finished up his busy season at work (10 hour days, 6 days a week for 4 months straight).
• He took a vacation.
• We all went to Disney World for 7 days.
• Maleah missed two more days of tennis and two ballgames because of vacation.
• Carissa got sick during vacation.
• Silas got sick because Carissa was sick.  He had bronchitis.
• Maleah had a bad bike wreck and smashed up her face which required a trip to the ER, some skin glue, and lots of tlc.
• She missed two more days of tennis and two more ballgames because she was hurt.
• Tennis ended and Maleah got to go only one time.  :(
• Maleah finished up her ballgames and did great!
• We all had a great time celebrating the 4th of July with our friends, the Duquaine's and the Kopacz's.
• Silas swam for the first time.
• Silas ate cereal and baby food for the first time (he loves it!).
• Maleah went back to camp for another overnight stay.  She loves camp!
• We went to the county fair three times to ride rides.
• Carissa liked the rides there better than Disney World. (Hopefully, only because she was sick at Disney.)
• We went to Marion County Fair too.  They had better rides.
• Carissa got her thumb pinched at the library and has her first two blood blisters.  She is not impressed.
• Silas is now wearing 6-9 mos. clothes!
• He weighed 14 pounds, 14 ounces at his last appointment!
• He is no longer in the 0 percentile for weight, he is in the 1 percentile.  Progress!!!
• He is in the 10th percentile for height.
• His head circumference is still in the 0 percentile.  No one can accuse the Coopers of having big heads.  lol!!
• Maleah started 2nd grade.
• Calli moved out and will be going to college in St. Louis.
• Carissa went to the dentist for the first time.
• Maleah and Carissa participated in their first pedal tractor pull at the Cisne Reunion.

Carissa with Julie Atwood getting her teeth cleaned.

 

Carissa at the pedal tractor pull.

Maleah at the pedal tractor pull.

 

Okay, so that brings us up to date.  It has been a very busy summer to say the least.  I can't wait to tell you all about Disney.  We flew out on a Saturday.  We went with Jason's parents, Sherrel and Clarence, and Jason's brother and his wife, Craig and LuAnn.  The look on Maleah's face when we took off in the airplane was priceless.  The flight was fairly short and the girls liked it.  I packed activities to keep them busy on the plane and we didn't do a single one of them.  They mostly looked around, squirmed, asked for drinks, ate their snacks, spilled their snacks, buckled and unbuckled repeatedly, looked out the window and talked to me.  Silas slept.  Bless his heart.  He's the good kid.

We landed in Orlando in a thunderstorm.  We got onto The Magical Express bus and headed to our resort.  We stayed at the Caribbean Beach Resort, which was quite lovely.  It was a bunch of two story colorful buildings around a central lagoon.  It was a huge place and had around 3,000 people staying there.  Our room was very nice and worked out well for us.  The only problem was that we were on the 2nd story and there were no elevators, so that means we were always carrying our strollers, our kids, and our bags up and down those stairs.  It was a workout.  I wish we could have been downstairs but the nice thing about being upstairs was that our room was right next to everyone else's.  The resort had a very tropical feel to it and there was lots of beautiful trees and flowers.  There were several pools and restaurants as well.

We arrived late in the afternoon and intended to go to Magic Kingdom but we didn't make it.  It took too long to get settled in to our rooms and to eat supper.  We ate that evening at the resort and within the first five minutes of being in the food court area, we ran into our next door neighbors' grandson.  Funny how you can travel so far and see someone from Flora right off the bat. It's a small world, after all. (drum crash)

Day 2:  We got up early and went to Magic Kingdom.  It was so fun! We got there before the gates opened and got to see the characters sing and dance and welcome us into the park.  The girls got to meet three princesses as soon as we got there.  We all rode rides and had a wonderful day.  We all rode The Haunted Mansion, which scared the crap out of Carissa and Maleah.  I really didn't think it was going to be that scary or we would've sat that one out!  Carissa refers to it as "the black ride" and says "it was reawwy reawwy tary!"  The girls loved the "green ride" (Buzz Lightyear).  We were there all day and stayed that evening for the electrical light parade.  Right before the parade was set to start a big storm came and it poured down rain.  They canceled the parade and we were sort of trapped in a Mexican restaurant for over an hour waiting on the rain to quit.  It never did.  So we all put our rain ponchos on and I put the rain covers on our strollers.  I had purchased one for each stroller from Amazon before we left and let me just say that was the best seventy bucks I ever spent!  None of the kids got wet as we manuevered our way out of the park and made it to the bus stop.  It took forever to get a bus and make it back but we did.  Needless to say, we all slept good that night!

Maleah at Magic Kingdom.

Carissa giving Belle a hug.

The girls with Cinderella.

Grandma Sherrel, Me, and Silas at the parade.

Day 3:  Carissa woke up with a fever.  I gave her some Tylenol.  (I packed for any and all emergencies.)  I thought about staying in the room with her for the day but she perked up a little after she had the Tylenol and chocolate milk, so I decided to take her and if I needed to leave early and come back, so be it.  She pretty much just slept in the stroller off and on and was not her usual perky self all day.  We went to Animal Kingdom that day.  It was fun.  We went on a safari ride and saw a bunch of animals.  It was super hot that day and Animal Kingdom was more crowded than the other parks.  We only stayed at Animal Kingdom until afternoon and then we all went back to our rooms to relax a bit.  Then we headed back to Magic Kingdom to try to see the lights parade... again.  This time it didn't storm.  The parade was awesome.  The kids all wore their hearing protection earmuffs during that parade.  It was loud!  They wore their earmuffs a lot during the whole vacation.  Everything was loud - the shows, the rides, the parades, everything!  My kids have sensitive ears and when it is too loud it just ruins it for them.  Everyone else at Disney World that night was staying for the fireworks, but since my kids dislike loud noises and generally aren't that impressed by fireworks, we headed out of the park.  That was tricky.  We had to manuever two strollers through millions of people.  I led the way, pushing sleeping Silas, while I held onto the front of the sit-n-stand stroller carrying Carissa and Maleah that Jason was pushing directly behind me.  I'm glad I had somewhere for Maleah to sit because it would have been hard for her to stay with us in that crowd.  We formed a human train and pushed our way through.  I didn't make any new friends doing that.  The bright side was that we were able to get out of the park before it rained again and we were at the front of the line to get onto the bus that went to our resort.  Our kids were tired but Jason and I were exhausted!  The busses were standing room only and we had to hold two folded strollers, two small diaper bags, baby bottle holder, a shopping bag, a sick toddler, a sleeping infant, and a partridge in a pear tree, all while the bus is moving for a 20 minute bus ride.  That was my least favorite part of the whole vacation and we did it at least twice each day.  Thankfully, Craig and LuAnn and Sherrel and Clarence were with us most of the time and helped hold stuff.  I think Disney needs to redesign their busses and add stroller storage underneath.  Maybe I could get a job as a bus imagineer...

Day 4:  Carissa was still not herself.  She spent most of the time in the stroller.  That day we went to SeaWorld.  It was super hot.  I was excited to see some whales.  After the first five minutes of the first show the girls were tired of shows.  Maleah explained it like this:  "The whale already jumped.  Is that all he does?  Over and over?  And we're supposed to clap every time?  Once was enough for me.  I want to go to the gift shop."  I thought the girls would love SeaWorld and there were parts that they really liked but overall it was not their favorite thing.  I also "lost" my billfold/small purse thingie during the day there.  One minute I had it and the next I didn't.  It had a lot of cash in it as well as all of our room keys/park tickets.  I backtracked to look for it.  Oh yeah, it also had my phone in it.  And for some reason our cell phones wouldn't work at SeaWorld.  I spent forever looking for it and talking to guest services.  Then I got separated from everyone else and couldn't call to see where they were because I didn't have a phone.  I finally found them and guess what?  They had my billfold and my phone.  I had laid it on top of the stroller and then someone (probably me) pushed the visor shut so that it was all folded up and you couldn't see it at all.  I wasted a bunch of time and it wasn't lost at all.  That evening Maleah and I went back to Magic Kingdom all by ourselves.  Jason, sicky Carissa, and Silas were all ready to rest and get ready for bed at the resort, but Maleah and I took showers, got cleaned up, and went out on the town.  We arrived at Magic Kingdom at around 8 p.m.  They didn't close that night until 1 a.m.  We rode every single ride that we had wanted to but hadn't gotten to earlier in the week.  The lines were so short.  We only waited five to ten minutes for each one.  Everyone else was at the lights parade and then at the fireworks.  We found a nice lady and her daughter in the line at the teacups and I asked them if Maleah could ride it with them.  They didn't mind and I was so happy that I didn't have to ride that.  It would have made me so sick!  It was so much fun and more relaxed at that time of night.  We had a blast!  We got back to the resort around midnight I think. 

Carissa at SeaWorld.

The girls at SeaWorld.

Day 5,6, and 7:  On our remaining days we went to Epcot, Hollywood Studios, and Universal Studios.  Actually, I can't remember the order that well.  I should have written this back in June.  Hollywood Studios might have been day 5 or day 4.  Does it really matter though?  Let's just pretend it was day 5.  It was fun.  We all loved it!  There were some super cool rides there.  Jason and I, along with Craig and LuAnn rode the Tower of Terror and it was so fun!  It was the best part in my opinion.  Everybody enjoyed that day.  Carissa wasn't very active but it was a fun day.  Epcot was day 6 and we enjoyed it too.  Soarin' (a ride) was everyone's favorite.  Carissa was still a little sicky.  She didn't do anything there and was about 1/2 inch too short to do Soarin'.  I forgot to bring her tennis shoes with us that day so she would measure taller.  She had on flip flops so she was just a bit too short.  Oh well.  I felt like Epcot was stroller un-friendly because they wouldn't let us bring the strollers into any of the buildings, even into the restaurants.  Therefore we had to hold both Carissa and Silas, along with a bag, while we were looking around, eating, etc.  Not fun!  The other parks allowed you to bring strollers in to the restaurants and other buildings, especially if you had a sleeping baby.  I began referring to all of the park workers at Epcot as "stroller nazis."

Silas taking a snooze at Hollywood Studios.

The girls met Chip and Dale at Epcot.

Day 7 was Universal.  Universal is split into two parks - Universal Studios and Universal Islands of Adventure.  Each park has its own admission price.  We chose to only do Islands of Adventure because that is where Harry Potter's World of Wizarding is located.  In order to get to the Universal gates you have to walk through this free area called City Walk.  It is full of shops and restaurants.  We walked through that, went straight to Harry Potter WoW, looked around, took pictures, and we all had a butterbeer (except for Silas).  It was delicious and tasted like cream soda (it's not real beer).  The town of Hogsmeade and the Hogwarts castle were amazing.  It was so much like the movie sets.  The inside of the castle had great special effects.  Maleah and I rode a very scary ride.  We screamed our heads off and I felt sick to my stomach.  It was hot and we decided we needed to go get a bite to eat.  We exited the park (did not pass go, did not collect $200) and went straight to Jimmy Buffett's Margaritaville.  I had a cheeseburger in paradise and it was delicious!  It was nice and cool in there and for the first time in days, Carissa perked up and danced her little butt off to "Volcano" by Jimmy Buffett.  She was the only one in there dancing and that was okay.  After we had a great meal and a fun relaxing lunch, we headed outside to the City Walk.  We were planning to go back into the park because we really hadn't done anything there but ride one ride and look at the Harry Potter town.  However, the girls found a really cool fountain in the sidewalk and Carissa ran through that and got soaked.  She had a blast!  And while she was doing that Maleah decided to get a hair wrap in her hair.  Everyone had so much fun and then it was time to get on our bus to get back to the resort.  So basically we spent a whole lotta money on Universal tickets and then spent the day in the free City Walk area.  Oh well.

Carissa after she finished her dance at Margaritaville.

Hogwarts!!

Jason and Silas at Margaritaville.

The next day we flew home.  We had a great vacation with the Coopers!!  But we were so glad to get home so that we could relax! 

Here are some new pics of the wonder boy himself, Silas Cooper.  He is doing amazingly well.  He is the happiest best baby in the world.  He goes with the flow no matter what.  He rarely fusses and basically he is just always happy.  He says "Mama" now.  He isn't crawling and is barely rolling over by himself but he can do it, he just doesn't want to.  He doesn't sit up by himself but he almost can do it.  He is more like a four month old than an eight month old but that is a-okay with me.  That is what he is supposed to be!

Silas in the hotel room at Disney .

He loves his bath time!!

Getting ready for bed.

The most recent picture of our boy.

He is so happy! This was taken at Great-Grandma

Rose's 83rd birthday party at Uncle Timmy and Aunt RaeAnn's.

Maleah was so happy to start second grade.  As a craft project before school started we made the teacher a box of goodies (thank you pinterest for the ideas!).  We covered a wooden box with school-themed scrapbook paper and then filled it with goodies like soda and chips.  The tag read "Soda-lighted that you are my teacher!"  We also put a little soap bottle in it that read "Soap it's a fun year!" and a lotion bottle that said "Let's have a smooth year!" on it.  There was also a chocolate bar that was tagged "It will be a sweet year with you!" on it.  She made up extra chocolate bars and passed those out to other teachers in the building that she loves.  She had a lot of fun with that.  So far, second grade is going great.  She loves her teacher and her classmates.  I hope the whole year goes great!

The gift box for her new teacher, Mrs. Greenwood.

First day of 2nd Grade!

Maleah with one of her best friends, Peyton Rose.

Maleah with one of her other best friends, Erica Weidner.

Well, I feel like I have so much left to tell you but that is going to have to wait for another day.  I promise that I am going to start updating this blog weekly again now that school has started and our lives are back into a routine.