Catching Up To Do

The girls with Grandma Debe & Papa Butch.


The girls with Nanny.


Bailey, Cooper, and Campbell ready for St. Patrick's Day.


Cooper asleep in the car.


Campbell in the car.

It seems the past 2 weeks have become a blur. With St. Patrick's Day, Spring Break, and Easter all rolled into one week, I'm not sure we've caught our breath yet. So here are the latest happenings.

1. The media room is painted.
2. The new furniture has all arrived.
3. Cooper's PT Conferences went very well, she is ready for Kindergarten (as soon as she learns to tie her shoes.)
4. The St. Patrick's Day parade was freezing cold, we were considering doing green Hot Chocolate, instead of green beer.
5. Cousin Bailey was able to spend 3 nights with us during Spring Break.
6. Chad was invited to eat dinner with the Men's K-State basketball dinner and watch the picks for the NCAA Bball tourney.
7. We traveled to Herington quite a bit, and was able to enjoy some time with Grandma Debe, Papa Butch, Uncle Pat-Pat, and Nanny. We also are able to visit Colgin and decorate his stone for the holidays.
8. We traveled to Omaha/Council Bluffs to visit Grandpa Mike & Grandma Re-Re for 4 days. We had a great time and Cooper played with her other cousins. I helped Papa demolish the spare bathroom, so we are anxious for the return visit to see the new look. We colored Easter eggs, had a delicious dinner, did some shopping, and watched K-State basketball.
9. Campbell has a little head cold & cough, so we are nursing her back to health.
10. We enjoyed an indoor Easter egg hunt with Bailey at Grandma Debe's house. The dinner was delicious as well.
11. Finally back home and back to the grind. Cooper is looking forward to this week at school as Friday is Wacky Hair day. I'll be sure to post pics.
12. Slowly the house is getting back into order. Late hours for me, but well worth it.

I think that's all for now. Here are some photos of our recent weeks.

House Projects - Almost Complete!

Today is a successful day! For about a month we've been working on some house projects and today we finally see the light at the end of the tunnel. Our house has 4 levels, the lowest being the media room, third is family room, 2nd is kitchen, and 1st is bedrooms. So I got a wild hair and decided to change things up a bit. Being home all day each day really makes you long for an organized and well put together fun house. So I was looking to do 2 things. 1. Find some office space for me and all my stuff. 2. Get new family room furniture (ours was 8 years old but still in good shape so Jason from work was glad to purchase the sofa and couch for his new pad).

The media room is the basement (no windows) and was finished by the previous owners. Not a terrible job, but not the best either. It wasn't painted though. We would have gladly painted, but in order to paint, we needed to fix dry wall, sand, mudd, tape, etc. Not our cup of tea, luckily we know a guy Tom. Tom is a painter and good friend. He got started on the media room on Tuesday. So with 2 days of mudding, sanding, priming, etc. He said tomorrow the paint goes up! I'm so excited. We're doing a dark brown and lighter brown color on the walls, our furniture down there is dark brown leather couch & loveseat. We're accenting with the big print that is the wine label cover. Chad is really excited to get his "man" lounge finished up. We had another sofa down there but I moved it up to the family room, as to make room for my office space. So I'll put my new desk and etc down in a small space in Chad's media room. Where my stuff is out of reach of little fingers. Maybe I'll get some work done, or atleast more exercise going up and down the stairs.

The family room now had a goldish color sofa in it and I wanted an oversized chair and ottomon to compliment this sofa. It's a sleeper sofa and/or the guest bed. Finally after shopping and looking we found the perfect one. Today it was delivered. It goes very well with the sofa and is big enough for us and the girls and we can stretch out and get comfy. It is a print/paisley design but not too contemporary and not too floral. It has a lot of goldish and some hints of red/blue/green in it, which goes well because our walls in the family room are red. Not fire engine red, but dark red. We also had our tv mounted on the east wall, but decided to change things up and got a new tv and had our media guys come and mount it on the west wall. It really opened up the room alot. Underneath the tv, we found a dark wood all purpose cabinet. It's tall (about 48") and holds all my photo albums/scrapbooks, wine books, audio cds, and kids movies. We also found two nesting end tables. Dark wood and triangular in shape, the medium one to go by the couch and the small one to go by the oversized chair. Those were also delivered today, along with a big square brown leather ottomon w/ four drawers in it to go down in the media room to hold all the other movies.

So now, the fun begins. A little bit more rearranging and patience as the paint drys and we'll be able to put everything together again. We are really looking forward to having the house back in order. I'll post some pictures as we get closer to completion.

Cooper made Michael Beasley's Mom's Blog!

Ok, everyone Chad and I are so excited. Cooper is on Michael Beasley's mom's blog. I know this is silly, but she is so proud of herself and to think we aren't the only ones out there who think she is cute and adorable. So anyway, check it out for yourself. You have to scroll down quite a bit and then you'll see her picture. Thanks Lil' Mike's mom for making our Lil' red's dream come true.

http://blogs.kansas.com/kstated/2008/03/07/mama-sayz-0307/#more-225


Hopefully this link works.

Snow?

Yes, as I look out the window the weather is quite deceiving today. The sun is shining and yet it is snowing at the same time! The temperature is 23 degrees and the wind is blowing to make the wind chill 13 degrees! How can this be? Did the weatherman not see the calendar today. It is March 7th. Oh well, just me wishing Spring was here.

Pics w/ Blake Young

Cooper with Blake Young (a cardboard cutout) before the game.



Cooper having Blake Young sign her jersey.



Cooper is all smiles after Blake signed her jersey.



Cooper with Michael BEAS-A-LEY (a cardboard cutout) before the game.



Cooper with Bill Walker (a cardboard cutout) before the game.

For Cooper - It's All About Blake Young

Well Cooper has her first official "celebrity" crush. Now I must say this little girl has a few things still to learn, but I was very proud of how she just pushed herself right down there among those big kids and went right up to "her man" and got his autograph. She even professed her "love" and told him she would miss him next year and that he was her favorite player. Ahhhhh!

For those of you who don't know who Blake Young is, he is number 2 on the K-State men's basketball team and this is his senior year. So Tuesday night was his last home game, so we took Cooper to watch him play one last time. She has liked Blake Young for a long time. It was a late game and Cooper was tired, but she stayed awake and waited patiently for him to come out after the game. K-State was playing Colorado and pulled out a victory that night.

The rest of story goes something like this. Chad had bought Cooper a K-State jersey and put Blake's number on it, so Cooper of course wanted him to sign her jersey. Also in preparation Cooper wanted to make Michael Beasley a card. Michael is number 30 on the team and is the freshman all star this year. He loves SpongeBob Square Pants, so Cooper drew him a very nice card. While waiting for Blake Young and the rest of the players after the game, Michael Beasley's mom came out. Chad had told Cooper that she might have to give her card to Michael's mom as EVERYONE wants to get Michael's autograph and he'd probably be very busy. So Cooper got Michael's mom's attention and asked her if she would give Michael her card. His mom replied sure, is it private? Cooper was a bit perplexed and so Chad said no. His mom read the card and loved it and said she needed to take a picture of Cooper so that Michael would know who gave him that card. Needless to say Chad was more excited than Cooper. Michael's mom has a blog and we're hoping maybe Cooper makes the site.

So finally out came Blake Young. He was signing autographs left and right and ended up going past Cooper. So Chad told her to go under the chains and go up and ask him for his autograph. Which she did no problem. She had just gotten Coach Frank Martin to sign her jersey so she was excited. Blake graciously signed her jersey on both sides as she requested and she talked with him and smiled the whole time. It was a great moment to witness.

After meeting Michael Beasley's mom, getting Coach Frank Martin's autograph, and getting to meet and get the autograph of her favorite player Blake Young, Cooper was a very happy little girl. It was well worth the late night. She took her jersey to school the next day to show her teacher. She tells everyone that story.

I'll post some pics a little later.