Cooper's first Halloween!!!

Tonight was Cooper's first Halloween!! Mom had gotten him the cutest turkey outfit and I couldn't resist dressing him up and showing him off... We went to Uncle Dave & Aunt Cindy's house and then headed over to our good friends Deb & Myron! We had a great time!! Cooper did really good (ie SLEPT) 90% of the time, then he woke up and was less than impressed with his costume! Here are some of our pictures from the night's events!!!

Getting ready to go trick-or-treating!!!

Cooper geared up and ready for candy at Dave & Cindy's house!

Aunt Cindy was so excited to have a mini trick-or-treater!

Visitng Deb & Myron!!

We had a great night all around! We're excited about doing these things with Cooper for many years to come!

PRAISE THE LORD!!!

Just a quick update... today Matt & I went to see Dr. Ginter, an audiologist in Goshen, to follow up with Cooper's hearing test that he didn't pass in the hospital... well... today he PASSED with flying colors!!! She tested both ears and everything came out clean and perfect! We figured he would be OK, but it's such a relief to actually have it over, done with and behind us! Praise the LORD!!!

And because he's so cute... here's a couple new pictures :) not that I'm proud of my son or anything...

This is my Grandpa........I mean Uncle Matt!!!

So Matt was a Grandpa today for Ethan!!! Ethan & Jadyn had grandparents day and with all their grandparents out of town... Kim & Roger recruited Cindy to be Jadyn's grandma and Matt to be Ethan's grandpa for the day! Below are pictures Matt took of his day with Ethan along with his comments about his experience.  The boys had a good time together!

Ethan was sooooooo excited to show me his classroom.  

This is his table where he sits during his kindergarten class. 

Ethan and Uncle Matt!!

He showed me his lines that they were learning for the week.  

He is becoming quite the little reader.  Way to go buddy!

Here is where Ethan gets papers or work to take home.

To the bottom left of the picture you can only see the eyes but these are the eyes of the letter "N" man.  That's the letter they are currently working on.  He told me all about it.

This is Ethan's favorite game.  Its a game that resembles connect 4 but their is only 9 slots, you place the round piece on the tale of elephant and pull down to shoot it into a slot.  It was amazing... as soon as we sat down to play, all these kids started showing up and wanted to play.  This game obviously is HUGE in the kindergarten world!

This is where Ethan sits during story time.  

The classroom.

This is us enjoying our halloween snack.  

We enjoyed trying to make letters out of our pretzels.  

Those "E's" are tough to make.

Ethan thanks for a great Grandparents day!!!!

Another birthday

One birthday I forgot to mention that was also yesterday is our puppy Vince! He turned the big 1!! So here's to VINCE! (haha I know you're every bit as excited as I am!)

This is Vince the first day we got him... 7 weeks old! Notice the grass? yeah, that was last January...

This is Vince now... still a puppy inside, but in a bigger and beefier body! I think he's up to 15 or 16 pounds!! What a whopper :) And yes, that's a frisbee around his belly. This is how he was found - and don't worry, it's a common occurence! :)

Charlie didn't get any lovin on his birthday because it happened to be the day Cooper was born! Sept. 9!! He turned 3 that day. That's also my friend Jeni's birthday! All these duplicate birthdays are making it much easy for me to remember these important days! :) Hope everyone is having a good day!

Jadyn's 9th birthday!!!

So with Kim & Roger, Mom & Dad gone... poor Jadyn was celebrating her birthday with no parents or grandparents! We had talked before the parents left about her getting her ears pierced and I told her I'd take her... soooo today was the big day! Going out with a 9 year old is a trip - she makes me feel old :) We had a lot of fun. Here's a photo journal of our little adventure!

We started with lunch at Panera... here is Jadyn with her strawberry smoothie! It was the least I could do since they didn't have her potato soup! She was in shock that they didn't have HER soup on HER birthday. What a punk :)

This is her proving to me that she could shove the whole last bite of her sandwich in her mouth. It about made me gag but she looked like a chipmunk afterwards, which made me forget about the gagging and made me laugh! What a goober!!!

So when we got to Claires to get her ears pierced we ran into a dilemma because I wasn't her mother. Darn it! After a little convincing (only slight huffing & puffing) and the manager checking with another store, we finally got permission to get her ears done! YEA!! I was all flustered by the time we got to that point so I forgot to get my camera out when she was actually getting her ears done... but this is RIGHT afterwards... she's still even holding the Claires bear. Jadyn was pretty pumped! She was really brave and she said it really didn't hurt very much. She did great and was so excited about her new sparkles!!!

This is her being REALLY impressed with me still taking pictures... :) she loves me!

Right outside of Claires... since she wasn't getting stared at anymore by everyone in the store... Jadyn did what she knows best... posing for the camera!!!

See the new additions? She's pretty excited! We already showed mom & dad on the webcam so they're in the loop too!
After I took Jadyn back to mom & dad's house - they were getting ready to leave for a movie. Jadyn was pretty excited and had a great day! HAPPY BIRTHDAY JADYN!

New Cooper pictures & our fur babies!!!

We gave Cooper his bath this weekend and he was so stinkin' cute I just had to post a picture :)

Here's Cooper yesterday cheering on the Colts at Grandma & Grandpa's house!!

Before Matt & I had Cooper, we had fur babies... Charlie first then we added Vince to the mix about 1 year ago... actually 1 week before we found out we were expecting Cooper!! So here's a little blog for our fur babies because they don't get much blog lovin' these days! :) They're doing so good with little baby Cooper!! This is a pleasant surprise for both Matt & I because we were geared up to get rid of them the moment they did one wrong move around him... and they're doing great! We got Charlie, a havanese, after Matt & I were married only 2 months. He has been camping with us, joined us for our family Christmas celebrations, had puppy play dates with his buddy Brutus and has been on countless road trips with us - he was our first baby. Charlie has taken a backseat as our little baby and basicaly ignores Cooper. We got Vince, a mini schnauzer, last January because we felt Charlie was lonely and needed a little brother knowing in the back of our minds that hopefully soon they'd have a big human brother! Vince can't seem to get enough of Cooper and is trying to figure him out everyday. Both dogs know their baby boundaries very well... if they hear mommy's "don't even thing about getting near him" tone - you can bet they're no where near their big brother! They have the fear :) Just how I like it! It's amazing though - at the end of the day, whoever is not holding Cooper gets bombarded by the pooches and they both find some way to sit on us - no matter how uncomfortable they are!

Anyways, enough yacking about the pups, here are a few pictures of them from the other night...

Charlie sleeping on his chair... yes, "his" chair. He sits there when he's either done with us, tired or bored. He is such a grumpy old man... and he's only 3 years old!

Good 'ol Vince. He'll make himself right at home... what a love bug. He craves attention!

Tag! I'm it.

I was tagged by Kim to give 8 answers to the following questions... hopefully my life is interesting enough to come up with 8 for each one!!

8 Things that happened yesterday:
1. I took a shower before 10am!!! (huge accomplishment with the little one!)
2. I stuffed, addressed and stamped Cooper's baby announcements (5 weeks later...)

3. I did 2 loads of laundry
4. I changed about 50 diapers

5. I went to Fort Wayne to watch Alli play volleyball!
6. I got a bad sweet tea from McDonald's - very disappointing
7. I saved $4 off a pack of diapers!!!
8. I got to witness the madness of all 3 of the new cousins together for the first time - what a great time!

8 Favorite Places to Eat:
1. Papa Vino's
2. Olive Garden
3. Q'doba
4. Panera
5. The Vine
6. Yats (I miss this place so much!)
7. Jo Jo's Pretzels
8. The mexican place on 17 - El Maguey? yummy black beans!!!

8 TV Shows I love to watch:

I'm changing this category... 8 TV Shows I love to TiVo :)
1. The Office

2. Grey's Anatomy
3. Desperate Housewives
4. 24
5. My Boys
6. Private Practice
7. Iron Chef America
8. Time Warp - I know I'm a dork, this is a new show on the discovery channel where they blow things up, smash them, etc. and film it with a high-speed camera then play it back slow motion - it's WAY cool.  like I said, I'm a dork!

8 Things I am looking forward to:
1. Hanging out with Matt & Cooper tonight
2. Christmas!!!
3. Matt & I's monthly date night without the babe
4. Thanksgiving - lots of family time!
5. The day Cooper sleeps through the night

6. Getting through Cooper's first audiologist appointment
7. The election being over and no more negative ads
8. Watching my baby grow

8 Things on my wish list:
1. Sleep
2. For Cooper to stay healthy and happy!
3. Safe travels for Huffmans & the parents in the next few weeks
4. Good health this winter

5. To be somewhere warm beach sometime in the near future
6. For Matt & I to be the best parents we can be
7. To get involved - in what, I haven't decided yet. 
8. For world peace :) haha

People I tag:
1. Mom (Sarah) - yeah, I know Kim already tagged her, but I'm tagging again because she hasn't done this yet!
2. Talia

3. Whitney

4. Kelly

Time to get busy bloggers!  Keep it going!

Fashion Farm 2008

So Friday night the Bontrager family took our 3rd annual trip to the Fashion Farm pumpkin patch in Ligonier! Cooper & Tristan (and Katy & Jacob for that matter) got to experience it for the first time AND it was Katy's birthday!! Happy Birthday Katy!!!

We started going a few years ago and now it's become an annual tradition. Crazy, madness, running through the pumpkin display, then the hay maze, then the corn maze, then finishing off with dinner at the little restaurant there - it's always a crazy fun time! Here are a few pictures and a video of what all went down...

Daddy pushing Cooper through the fantasyland...

Cooper had a great time watching the back of his eyelids...

In the corn maze... Addison getting scared by mean 'ol daddy! Man she can run fast when she wants to :)

Tristan loving on Grandma!

And last but not least... spaz of the night goes to Jadyn. This was a classic moment.

And because I absolutely can't help myself... check out this rare shot I got of Cooper! He's little Mr. Serious and I FINALLY got a shot of a little grin he gave his momma this morning!! His smiles are far and few in between right now but are so incredibly precious!!! His whole face just lights up with such a small cute grin :)

4 weeks already!!!

I can't believe it's already been 4 weeks (yesterday) since Mr. Cooper Riley came into our lives! We have learned so much already - like being peed on isn't an uncommon occurence, cleaning up poopy diapers isn't the end of the world and you really can live on less sleep... sometimes :)

Here are some new pictures of the babe. He's growing bigger every day! I'm doing a lot better with my health and have been able to get out & about a lot easier which has been fantastic for Cooper & my sanity sake!

Maybe it's coincidence, but the first time he wore his Colts outfit last Sunday our boys had the biggest comeback EVER!!!! Go COLTS!

Aunt Katy got Cooper this shirt - it's SO TRUE. Feed him and he's a happy boy!

This melts me every time. He could just sleep on my shoulder ALL day. Unfortunately I get nothing done, so eventually I have to put him down...

So what has everyone else been up to these days? I'd love to hear updates!!

Snug as a bug!

It's amazing how such a little person can keep you SO BUSY for an entire day!  During some of those brief (precious) moments when he sleeps throughout the day, I can actually get things done!!   I've discovered how wonderful baby slings can be and how handy they are to help me get stuff done... 

Anyways, Cooper is snoozing right now and I couldn't help but notice how cute and snug he looked in his sling!!  The picture is a little fuzzy, but that's what I get for using a camera phone :)