The End of Summer

So the end of summer is here. School started on the 27th, so I had to teach for three days--it felt like a whole week. Everything seems to be going well so far; it seems as though I have a good group of kids again. Of course, they are on their best behavior for the first week. I'll wait to make the call until about mid September! It's nice to be back at work so that I have a schedule, but I already miss being able to go out and about whenever I feel like it.

Here are some recent pictures to close out the summer (with the weather we've been having the last couple of days--60's, summer is gone)...

Trying to keep up with my garden this year was tougher than I thought. I thought that Cooper would be old enough to just play outside and I could do my thing...partly true, except that he wanted to get into all my things:

He always started with clothes on outside, I promise!

This is after we got back from our vacation...I swear, I picked all of the zuchinni on the plants before we left! Either Cooper is really small or these zuchinnies are huge. I'll let you decide.

Vacation

Cody and I went on vacation to California--It was great! Grandma Corki was kind enough to watch the Coopinator for the 5 days we were gone so we could have some time to ourselves. We did quite a bit, in short detail here it is:

• Flew into Oakland, went to the Great America theme park
• Drove around the Bay and into San Francisco and across the Golden Gate Bridge--All I could think about was the intro to Full House!
• Drove north to Vallejo and went to Discovery Kingdom--6 Flags
• Drove all the way down Los Angeles--toured around Hollywood, Beverly Hills, and Santa Monica. This part was really fun for me, however, there were no celeb sightings. :(
• Went to Magic Mountain--6 Flags in Santa Clarita. This was by far the best theme park. Some of the rides were absolutely crazy!
• Drove down to San Diego and toured around--went to La Jolla Beach. This beach was the definition of a "California Beach" except that it was only about 75 degree and everybody was still swimming, crazy if you ask me.
  

That was in short detail our vacation. It was really a lot of fun. With how busy life gets, it was very nice to catch up with each other again! We rented a car to do all the driving--a Chrysler Sebring convertible. I'm sorry, but I don't think the whole convertible thing is for me. I will remember the rats that I had to get out of my hair forever, so painful!

Here are some pictures from our vacation--

Ya, we were way under dressed--it was freezing at the Golden Gate Bridge!

This is the opening to the Santa Monica Pier. By the way girls--Santa Monica/LA would be a great place for us to have a girls weekend (or week)!

On La Jolla Beach--How Californian are we?! What dorks :) Funniest story ever--we were driving around La Jolla, a trendy beach town with the top down in our car. Cody had taken his shirt off, regardless of the 75 degree weather, to try and fit in at the beach. As we were driving, a pleasant local driving past us yelled, "PUT A SHIRT ON!" to Cody. I about died!

Friends & the Zoo!

Cody was out of town all last week for work, so Cooper and I decided to make a couple of trips to keep us occupied. On Tuesday we went to Seattle to visit the May's and Heinz's. On Tuesday night Tami and I loaded up the screaming children and took them out to Sammamish where Stacy, Derek, and Evie live. It was soooo fun to see all three of the kids run around together! Cooper was the youngest by about 5 or 6 months, but he was the same height as Jada and Evie. Those two little girls are just the cutest things in the world! It was also great to see the different parenting styles in action. I realized I probably should work on not yelling "NO!" at every single thing! Oh well, what works for some doesn't work for others...at least I try. :) It was super funny at the end of the night--the little kiddos were definitely getting tired and tying to tell their mommies that it was time to go. We ended up singing the Itsy Bitsy Spider about 45 times, but it kept them so entertained! Even Cooper was starting to try the hand movements! Stacy, I didn't get any pictures of him with Evie--did you?

This is Cooper with Jada. Future romance???

On Wednesday Tami and I took Jada and Cooper to the Woodland Park Zoo. Cooper had a blast! I was curious to see if he would really know what we were doing or if he would be able to really see the animals. He sure did though! He would just stare at the animals in amazement, it was so fun to see. After we saw a few of the animals we went to the Zooasium (I think that was what it was called). It is a place where kids can go run and play around. They had really loud music that Cooper loved--they even had maracas for them to shake around. We also go to go into the petting zoo and pet the goats. I really enjoyed getting to experience the zoo with Cooper--I might have had more fun than he did!

Cooper and Jada again--hanging out of the log waiting for the petting zoo to open.

Cooper staring at the goats.

Cooper loving the music at the Zooasium and shaking his maracas like a crazy man!

When we got back home to Yakima it was like Cooper had grown up so much. I don't know why, but he seemed like he had developed so much more. He was making more sounds that actually sounded like he was talking, he was more coordinated in some of his actions, and he was understanding so many of the things I was talking about. I don't know if it was because he was around Jada and Evie, who are older and more advanced than he is, so he was trying to keep up with them. But that doesn't make sense either, because he is with older kids at daycare everyday too. It was just the neatest thing though to be able to see such growth in a short amount of time.

Our second trip of the week was to Wenatchee to visit Grandma and Grandpa Brownlee's house. I definitely had more fun than Cooper did there because I got to go shopping with the gift card my parents got me AND we went to dinner--El Porton--Yum Yum! We went to dinner for a very special reason--We were celebrating the fact that my mom is done with her cancer treatments!!! She went through chemo and radiation like a freaking SUPER STAR. No offense to any other women reading this, but my mom is DEFINITELY the strongest woman I know. It was like the treatments didn't even phase her and I don't know if I ever heard a complaint out of her...well, maybe about the loss of hair :), but that's it!