Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

One of the last pictures of the Bolton family of four taken on Christmas Eve - Cooper is 4 and Reid is 16 months old. Again, life has gotten crazy busy around the Bolton household as we prepare for the fifth member of our family to arrive. Lots of drama surrounded the few weeks prior to his birth, which I will include in a separate post specifically about his special birthday.

Cooper's Christmas break started a little before any of the Evans clan arrived from Kentucky. What's better than a babysitter? Why, spending the entire day with Mommy in her office at work. Luckily it was a slow day at work so I had lots of time to spend with him. He spent nearly 8 hours at my work and built an entire city out of tongue depressors, gauge, baby formula, samples of detergent, noise makers, etc and drove his cars around it. It was a pretty big construction, and his behavior was most excellent.

Last year Cooper was a little overwhelmed by all the presents. This year we decided to open all the Bolton presents on Christmas Eve. They watched us on Skype. What did we do before Skype? Anyways, Cooper had asked Santa Claus this year for a vacuum cleaner (he has one at school that he plays with a lot) and a cash register, but there was no need for Santa to bring them because Gigi got them for me!

Reid liked the paper. The first present he opened was a truck and trailer that had buttons to push on it. He exclaimed "Whoa!" as he opened it. After that present was opened, he didn't care too much about the other ones.

Cooper and his little Dyson.

Cooper and his cash register.

We got all dressed up to go to the Christmas Eve children's service at Church. Last year Cooper had really enjoyed the Christmas Pageant, and we thought he would enjoy it more this year and we were right. Reid is usually too much of a wild man to go to church, so we weren't sure how he'd do. Here's me and my boys.

Dad and his crazy boys!

Our family of four - and soon to be five - as I'm 37+ weeks in this picture

The Evans grandparents join in - minus Uncle Taylor who was taking this picture

Mimi, Papaw, and Uncle Taylor

When Cooper woke up in the morning, this big pile of loot was waiting for him.

And this was waiting for Reid

Because, again Reid is sick for all major holidays, he woke up with a fever. That didn't stop him though from going straight for his brand new baby stroller.

Reid got a baby stroller, ramp for his cars, dump truck, ice cream set, and light up toys.

After Cooper had thoroughly checked out his new soccer goal, lego sets, board games, baseball and glove, remote control Mater and compass, he headed over to check out Reid's presents (since he's a little slower to open them). He thought some of them were pretty cool also.

Cooper can read well enough to figure out who the presents were for so he could pass them out.

He got a bat cave from Mimi and Papaw that he liked a lot. He also got a Nerf basketball goal that hangs over the door that he liked a lot as well.

Playing with new toys!

Holding little Reid who didn't feel too well.

Cooper and Reid got a big plastic sled from Mimi and Papaw for Christmas. One of the funniest things happened the day after Christmas when Cooper piled all of the new toys into this sled, called Reid to come in, and pretended they were Santa and Mrs Claus (you can guess which one Reid had to be). Cooper would yell, "On Dasher and Dancer and Prancer and Vixen. On Comet and Cupid and Donner and Blitzen." Then he would distribute the toys randomly throughout the house to all the "kids." Then he'd load them back up and do it all again. Little Reid just followed him along!

Then came the big Cats versus Cards basketball game. Dad was at work and Mom was at home, but I was nice and dressed the boys equally in blue and red. Cooper doesn't look too pleased.

Then time to close out the wonderful year that was 2011! We got our hats and our noisemakers and celebrated the end of a spectacular year and the beginning of an even better one. Of course, we celebrated around 9pm.

The last picture of the Bolton family of 2011!

Well, not before a couple of silly ones.

And one with Gigi! Yes, Mom and Dad did make it to midnight. Happy New Year!

Two Months Rolled Into One

Life's been a little crazy around here - crazy how things creep up on you. Not only is this month's blog post two months rolled into one, I (mom) am also writing it three months later. You'll have to forgive me since I've forgotten a lot (hence it's a good thing I keep a blog), but I'll hit the highlights. Halloween was the highlight of the end of October. I was scheduled to be on call as the second back up person and Dad was scheduled to work late, so we weren't too sure how much Trick or Treating was going to happen. Cooper had asked to be a police man. Reid, who was 14 months old at the time, didn't care what he was going to be. I tried to pick something to go with a policeman that was still a little babyish. Reid also loves dogs and barks (ruff ruff) at them as they go by, so it was an easy decision to have a policeman and his K9 pal.

Cooper got to wear his costume to school that morning for a Halloween party. They had a little parade and got to show all the big kids their costumes. Needless to say, it was easy for him to get ready that morning.

Luckily, I wasn't needed for back up call, so I got to the boys and got them home by 6pm. Neither boy wanted anything to do with dinner, so we put on our costumes and by that time, Dad got home. Because Reid gets sick on all major holidays, he also had a fever on this one too. A little motrin, and we were out the door. I forgot to mention that we had our first snowstorm of the year a few days before Halloween. There was still some lingering snow on the ground - I'd never done trick or treating with snow on the ground! Reid (complete with pacifier in tow) was just learning to walk, so he lagged behind as Cooper led the way through the neighborhood.

Here we are trick or treating. I even decorated my baby bump.

Reid didn't participate much in trick or treating, but Cooper hit up about 10 houses before he slipped on some ice on someone's front steps. It was cold outside so it was easy to talk him into coming home to pass out (and eat) some candy. Luckily Cooper didn't notice how quickly his candy disappeared this year (aka Mom ate it).

They boys really do love each other and this is a spontaneous hug I caught on camera.

With a new school comes new friends, and with new friends comes birthday parties. Cooper's friend Bridget M (remember Pugipt?) had a paint your own pottery birthday party. It was really fun to see him interact with his classmates. He truly is a ladies' man.

Fall soccer was winding down as well. This season's team was pretty pathetic - meaning the three of us pictured above were the only consistent people who showed up week to week. They had a professional photographer there a few weeks to take team photos, but they never called our team for a picture. I think they kept waiting for more kids to come, but they never did. Jack, Imogen, and I were the main force of the team, so the parents took their own photo. This particular week, the three of us battled another team that had 9 players. They rotated groups of three so that we could play 3-on-3. Despite no subs or rest, our white team killed theirs! Cooper was still quite the soccer superstar, improving this year with scoring and defense. Oh, this game our coach didn't show up either!

Fall weather means jumping in the leaves that Dad rakes.

Reid @ 15 months.

Cheesy Reid.

I found out that Kentucky basketball team was going to be playing in a tournament in Connecticut. I bought two tickets and Cooper was my main man. We headed out early one morning to Uncasville, CT to Mohegan sun to watch Kentucky battle (or blow out) Penn State. Cooper and I had made signs before that we were excited to hold up.

The arena was pretty small and pretty empty. Our seats were three rows behind the Kentucky bench. Not too bad for a four year old's first Kentucky game! He cheered his little heart out and was eager to hold his sign up during the timeouts.

The game was broadcast locally in Kentucky delayed and live on ESPN 3. I caught us up on the jumbo-tron coming back from a time out, so our families were able to see our big blue spirit.

Our biggest event of November was our surprise trip to Kentucky. The McGuire family (Mimi's family) had been planning a surprise birthday party for Nanny (my grandmother who lives in Georgia) for her 85th birthday which was actually in January. She was planning to come to Kentucky for Thanksgiving with Aunt Debbie. Most of the other members of the McGuire family live in Kentucky. So we schemed for months to plan a Thanksgiving trip to Kentucky without Nanny finding out. We packed up the kids plus the 33 week pregnant Mom and drove through the night to Kentucky to stay in Louisville. The kids were great during the trip! We stayed with Jeff's grandparents before they headed out to Florida for a Louisville football game. The day before Thanksgiving, Mimi, Papaw, and Taylor came up to Louisville to have an early Thanksgiving dinner with us plus Nana and Papa. On Thursday, we headed over to Grandmother's house for Thanksgiving. We posed for some cute pictures in Grandmother's back yard.

With Nana.

The day before Thanksgiving - playing a silly game where Papa would put stuff on the ceiling fan and I'd try to guess where it would fall off when he turned off the fan.

Playing basketball with Taylor.

We managed to keep the secret! Saturday, we headed out to Mt Sterling to surprise Nanny. All four of her children were there, plus the majority of her grand and great-grandchildren. There was a professional photographer there to take pictures. Here's the Evans family.

And the McGuire family - Mimi, Nanny, Steve, Debbie, and Dana. We left that afternoon and drove through the night again back to Boston. Again, the kids were great!

December rolled around, and it was time to celebrate my best friend Kaya's birthday. Her mom picked me up and took us to an indoor water park. It was a really fun day!

Time to put up the Christmas decorations! With each passing month, Cooper really gets into each holiday. Our house was spooky for Halloween, covered in Turkey's for Thanksgiving, and he could hardly wait to put up the Christmas decorations. Reid could hardly wait to take them down! Most of the ornaments were placed on the upper half of the tree - otherwise Reid would yell "ball!" as he took them down and threw them.

The early December highlight was definitely Cooper's school Christmas play. Jeff and I both took off the morning portion of work so that we could go. The link to the whole 20 minute play is below. Cooper was assigned the role of "friendly beast" or more specifically, the donkey. As Cooper said, not the donkey that Mary rides on, but the "other one." He even had an important line about giving baby Jesus hay for his bed. He had practice the songs, both a mixture of religious and Santa songs at home for weeks, so it was fun to see all his hard work in action. All the kids were pretty well behaved too!

And a few videos:

http://youtu.be/vmCLG3rrABM -

Reid and Cooper decorate the Christmas tree

http://youtu.be/YFM1KBEf5qg

Cooper's Christmas Play