My little Coop

So I need to do a little update on Cooper. I missed my first monthly update at 9 months because he turned 9 months the day we left for Utah for Christmas. He is now 10 1/2 months. I have been a little behind. His stats at his Dr. appt were 17 lbs 13 oz. 28 3/4 inches long, still sporting a little head :) Ian and I love this stage, his little personality is just coming out. He is a happy little guy. You gotta love this little boogery nose face. :) We do, because that is all we have seen this past month. He has been teething and getting all four top teeth at once, so he has been a little less happy, but you can't blame him! 3 of them have popped through and we love his little toothy smile now. Some things he has been doing lately is he really started crawling up on all fours at 9 months when we were down in Utah. He can give us "5", and loves to clap! This past month he has really started cruising around on the furniture and standing up to anything he can get a hold of. This is a result of that. He doesn't have much balance, but has no fear, so he has bonked his nose quite a few times and has gotten a few bloody noses already. And you can see the binky ring, he has become really attached to it, and his blanket, which I think is nice. You can hand him his blanket when it's time to sleep and he will just melt into your arms. With his new found movement, he is getting into everything! He loves going somewhere he knows he shouldn't. He loves his brother and sister, and loves to try to play with them. He also loves his dad. He can say DaDa (which he says the most) and also BaBa and MaMa.

New Fireplace

After being down in Enterprise and talking with my sister, and doing a lot of blog stalking. My new passion, well it kind of always has been what I am really interested in, is decorating and home improvement. I have always really loved HGTV, and their shows like Designed to Sell. With buying our older home, we have lots of projects that we can do. We did a lot at first, and kind of got burned out a little. But there is so much more I want to do, and more things I am dreaming up. If only I had the money I want to do them all. But I have learned lots of little easy tips that don't take a lot of money and I can do them myself, and I don't have to wait for Ian to help me.
So here is my first little "project" that I talked Ian into letting me do from the before to the after, and a little in between.

Cleaning out the nasty firebox that hasn't been used for many many years.

Getting ready to spray paint the doors.
One of the reasons I wanted to do this is because some of these tiles were broken and coming up. When we went to take them off, we found another layer of tile, but they were more intact.
This was mostly my project, which was really hard for Ian :) But he did help me by taking up these tiles while I spray painted, and then with the cutting of the tile.
We had to smooth out the brick surface so it would be flat for the tile.


Then cut and lay the tile which was a first for us. I had a different idea of how we were going to lay out the tile, but Ian really wanted to lay it at a diagonal, which makes it look a lot cooler, but consequently harder cuts. It turned out beautiful I think.

I layed the mortar mostly by myself, Ian helped with the clean off. Again...really hard for him. Then I grouted and sealed it.
Nothing too fancy, but it just looks updated now. We are really happy with it.
So stay tuned, I have more projects in the works.......

Crazy Hair Day

Malia had crazy hair day at her school right after we got back from Christmas break. She knew exactly how she wanted me to do it. This was it. She wanted me to braid it the night before so it was all wavy and then put elastics in all wierd. I think it almost turned out more cute than crazy, but she was really pleased.

Other fun stuff

So this is going to be the rest of what we did in Enterprise after Christmas. I have many more posts I want to do, but have been waiting until I get this one done, and for some reason haven't had the motivation to finish this. I don't know why because we had such a really good time, and usually we stay so long I am ready to get back into real life, but I didn't want to leave this time.
The day after Christmas the guys went to Brianhead to Snowboard. (The girls got to go shopping for a little bit in St. George.)
Ian, and my brothers Mical and Rand.

This was Ian's war wound he got from trying to do a jump off a car on the mountain.


I think it burned through several layers of skin, and is still healing.
Then Ian decided that I needed to shoot his guns. So we went down to the farm for a little target practice.






The guys did their annual golf trip again, and to get the kids out of the house, we decided to take them to the church and let them try out some Christmas presents.





Another thing we did all together was go bowling. We met the guys after golfing and it was really fun!





We love Uncle Colten!

On New Year's Eve we all went sledding up to the reservoir where it had frozen over. It has been a long time since I have seen it frozen so much. We have old home movies when I was about Malia's age ice skating on the ice. We got the old skates out and tried again, but only we got video pictures. Here is my sister and I in the caboose of our train.

The train started turning.....
And made it the rest of the way backwards.



Gunner was in his own little world, and was doing his own thing, I had a hard time getting a picture of him, because he had no fear and just kept going and going.

Hottie!

After a fun New Year's Eve and day filled with lots of junk food and many many games of Blokus, Bang! Risk, and Rook, we headed home.
We made the 16 hour trip in one day, and again the kids did surprisingly well. Till next time!................