Happy Birthday Cooper!!!

Cooper is 2 Years Old!! I cannot believe how fast he has grown up!! Here are some things all about Cooper at 2 years old:

1. Cooper's favorite cereal is Cinnamon Toast Crunch. He also loves pancakes drenched in syrup

2. Cooper's favorite activity is basketball by far. Nate has season tickets to the Fort Wayne Mad Ants basketball team, and Cooper treasures every time he gets to go. They have those balloon bangers that make noise and he is an expert at those. He bangs those and cheers on the basketball players like a real fan! He will sit on Nate's lap the entire game and just focus on the players, the ball, and watching it go in the basketball hoop. He is just passionate about the game!! At home he will practice throwing balls and catching them with me and Nate. He is really, really good at both catching and throwing for being just 2 years old!

3. Cooper's favorite song these days is the Sunbeam song. He loves to sing this right before bed. I will hold him and will bounce him up at the "beam" part of the song and he just giggles. He also loves me to make up songs. He will tell me "Cooper and Mickey-Mad Ants-basketball song" and wants me to sing a song that involves Mickey Mouse, the Mad Ants basketball players and Cooper all playing basketball together. So I just make stuff up to a common tune. He loves it!

4. Cooper will sing "Yeah Yeah" (2 different notes) out of nowhere sometimes. It is the cutest little singing voice ever. Definitely something we will remember about him at 2 years old.

5. Cooper adores Jaxton. He is just so enthralled in him. He wants to be just like him. He wants to do everything that Jax does. Sometimes when I snap pictures of the two of them, a lot of those pictures just happen to capture Cooper looking at Jaxton, to see what he is doing. He just adores him to pieces.

6. Cooper's favorite character is by far Mickey Mouse. He loves to watch Mickey on TV, sing about Mickey, and hold his stuffed animal Mickey. He was Mickey for Halloween and likes to wear the sweat pants from his costume to bed. He calls them his Mickey pants. He wears them with his Mickey sweatshirt that Grandma Hutchinson got for him.

7. Cooper is a very picky eater! He has certain foods that he will eat and eat and eat, but anything out of his comfort zone, he will just not touch. He is very stubborn about trying new foods too. His favorite foods are peanut butter sandwiches, milk, chicken nuggets, crackers, bananas, cheese, and cinnamon toast crunch cereal. If I make a casserole or a main dish that looks unique to him, he simply will not touch it. He will not even taste it!! We can bribe him with a treat after or with crackers or anything if he will take a bite or two, but it does no good. He simply will not touch it. He is the most stubborn little boy I know! Needless to say, he doesn't eat much. Has a good size head, with a skinny little monkey body underneath his clothes because he really doesn't eat much! I do make sure he eats decently and I'm sure that he will grow out of it soon...silly little boy!

8. Cooper loves Nursery at church. Just a few months ago, he would cry when going into the nursery room. But now, Jaxton is not in his class anymore. He doesn't seem to notice that, and now for some reason, he loves his class. He goes right on in and sits down with all his "friends." He really enjoys it. He loves to sing in nursery and loves to sing the same songs at home. I think he is impressed that I know the same songs he learns in his class!!

9. Cooper loves to ride in Daddy's truck. He just feels so big and important whenever he gets to ride in Daddy's Simplx truck. He can recognize the Simplx logo on Daddy's other things, like magnets, business cards, and papers, and he always associates the logo with Daddy's truck. He loves to sing about Daddy's truck too!

10.Cooper has learned to pray. He says such sweet prayers. He will fold his hands in front of him. He tries super hard to keep his eyes shut, but just can't do it most of the time. He has to see everyone else closing their eyes. He will bless everything he sees and never misses a member of his family. He does not know when to end his prayers, so with prompting, he will say, "Name-Jesus-AMEN!" It is just to die for listening to him pray.

Cooper, we love you so very much! You are so special to our hearts!! Happy Birthday!!!

Construction: January 24

January 24, 2010

Framing the main floor of the house

This is the kitchen/hearth room where our kitchen table will go

This is the master bedroom
This is looking at the back of the house, the walkout basement and the main floor being framed

This is the basement. You can see the main set of stairs coming down. In the very back, there is a set of stairs coming down from Nate's "business garage" into his future Simplx office.

Framing the main floor

Construction: January 22

January 22, 2010

Building up the basement wood burning fireplace

Dentist Field Trip

We took a field trip to a Pediatric Dentistry here in Fort Wayne. The kids really had a lot of fun playing with all the equipment and tools, and pretending to be dentists themselves! The staff have the day off on Friday, but 2 kind ladies came in just for our group of kids. They were so friendly and helpful. Jaxton will be going to the dentist in a couple of weeks, so this was really helpful for him to get familiar with the dentist office!

Here, Jaxton is the dentist in the Dentist's chair. He is taking a look at his friend Koby's teeth

They are showing the kids the little hose that they squirt in peoples' mouths. She is squirting it directly into the vacuume.

The kids all get to feel how the tooth polisher feels as it goes around and around on their fingers.

Jaxton is looking at himself in the dentists' mirror

The kids watch the big stuffed animals as they get their teeth brushed. Then, the stuffed animals actually squirted water out at the kids, showing them how to spit! They loved it! They each got a goody bag with a toothbrush, a sticker, and some other fun dentist goodies! What a fun trip!

Construction: January 21

January 21, 2010

Basement Framing Begins

Back of the house / walkout basement walls

Looking out of Nate's future Simplx office window/door

Basement framing

Floor on top of the basement

Construction: January 16

January 16, 2010

Finishing the cold storage under the porch, ready to frame...

Construction: January 15

January 15

Building the porch and cold storage underneath the porch & working on garage floors

Smoothing out concrete garage floors

You can see the steam coming up off of the concrete because it is so cold out! 12 degrees!

Construction: January 13

January 13, 2010

Pouring the basement concrete floor. They have several giant cement trucks out there. Somehow they have to heat the concrete since the temperature outside is about 12 degrees!

Construction: January 12

January 12, 2010

Finishing up the basement walls

January 8 Construction

January 8 2010

The basement walls looking from the back and the right side of the house from Hardisty Road

The basement walls looking inside the basement from the back corner

Our Woods!!!

This photo is looking at our property from the back. If you look closely, through the trees, you can see the big yellow tractor working on digging the hole for our house. That tells you how much space we will have with our almost 5 acres!!!

Looking at our property from the main road (Dupont/Leo Road)


Here is our house under construction with our neighbors in the back ground

Here is the tractor that has been digging a hole for our house!!

This is looking from Hardisty Road

Construction: January 7

January 7, 2010

Basement walls are being poured with concrete during a very snowy and cold day!

Day 1 of Construction

We are doing it! We are building a house! We can hardly believe it is happening! We have finished all the designs finally, and now it is so fun to see those plans on paper put into real life! We purchased a 5 acre plot of land on Dupont/Leo Road right across the street from Cedarville Elementary School, whcih will be the boys' school in a few years. There are four 5 acre lots in a row across from that school. Ours is the last one that was available and it lies on the corner of Dupont/Leo and Hardisty Road. The 5 acres happened to be less expensive than a subdivision plot that 1/2 an acre. So of course we wanted to have all the space we could. Here are some photos of the very first day of construction!