More Cooper Christmas- Henry.

When we got back from Cleveland, we just spent a couple days hanging out. I never wanted to leave the house, so i didn't even go see the lights at the Marion Fairgrounds. I just wanted to stay at home and play with my new toys. June and Sadie had fun playing together. There was only one booster seat for the both of us, so we had to take turns eating.

Luckily, Sadie is ver generous with her cheerios and offered to share with anyone who was willing.

June took her up on the offer.

Aunt Girl and I continued our tradition of decorating a gingerbread house. The best part about this year's house is that it came preassembled and mama didn't have to spend 2 hours trying to glue the pieces together with frosting while simultaneously propping them up with tuna cans.

While I decorated the house, June scarfed down more food.

The grown-ups managed to get us kids to sleep for a few minutes and tried to enjoy a nice meal.

And finally, we got to open presents. When mama and papa and "Unkie" Adam and Aunt Katie added their presents, it got really out of hand. Lucky for us, most of the presents were for us kids.

Sadie was excited for the action to start.

PawPAw helped June unwrap a present and got a pretty bow as a hair accessory.

Then she decided she wanted to get to the tree and started climbing the presents.

Papa had to wake me up from my nap so I wouldn't miss Christmas. I was a little out of it, but perked up as soon as i started opening presents. Mama was a little embarrassed because I was very excited by the thrill of the presents. Unfortunately, that meant, I didn't think much about the presents themselves. I'd open a gift, toss it aside, and ask for my next present. Hopefully I'm not the only kid in the world like this. Mama made up for it by insisting I wait my turn to open my presents. It was hard for me to understand that not all of the presents belonged to me.

June tried to stay out of the way of the madness, so she crawled under a table.

I was so excited because I got a remote control car that flips over.

June gave it a try, but apparently it doesn't run on drool alone.

This was the end result. Mama lost me a couple times n the mess, but we all made it out alive.

Before bed, we tried to get a group shot. Sadie is holding her new dolly. June is holding her favorite present- a paper bowl.

Then the girls changed into their matching Christmas jammers and tried to feed each other fuzz.

Two pretty girls with two pretty dolls.

On Christmas morning, Aunt Girl and I built another house. This time we used stickers.

I was very proud because i made it look just like the one on the box.

I got this George kaleidascope in my stocking. It's relaly fun to play with.

Also in my stocking- a half pound of solid chocolate santa. Mama debated about giving me a little at a time, but knew that would ultimately end up with her eating the entire thing. So, overcome with Christmas spirit, she decided to just let me eat as much as I could (after I took off my white shirt, of course).

I made a pretty good dent in Old Saint Nick before I gave up.

We had a great week with Nama and PawPaw! Thank you for all the wonderful toys and we can't wait to see you again!

Merry Christmas!

We hope that everyone enjoys a very special, happy and safe Christmas this year.

We were very happy to have the chance to spend such a long time with our Nama, PawPaw, Kuncle Adam, Aunt Katie, Sadie Sades, Aunt Girl and Mister Anthony.

Our Christmas presents arrived early and let's just say we got quite a haul. Of course, June's favorite was the paper bowl.

We tried to get a pose of all of our matching pj's, but there were three kids in the house who were too wound up. We promise the full update when we get to the Seibert's. Watch out Ney, we're on our way!

Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!

Parsons Christmas-June.

While mama and papa were out risking their toes to the cold, we were back at GG and GG's house staying warm and toasty and getting ready for Christmas!

I was really excited to get the party started!

All of the grandkids waited patiently for the adults to get downstairs to the presents.

Henry was really excited!

Henry got a bunch of fun toys and I got to see them for a few seconds before Henry insisted I get away from his new toys.

Aunt Girl got a new pillow. Henry tried it out and "fell asleep."

Sadie also liked her presents-especially the pretty wrapping.

Finally, all of Team Parsons gathered in for a big family photo. Things certainly have changed in the past few years!

This morning mama hadn't humiliated me in a while, so she dressed me up like Santa Claus. The cutest santa ever!

Sadie thought it was really funny.

We had a great time at our GG and GG's! Thanks for having us!

Who dey?

This weekend mama and papa got a great Christmas present from Uncle Adam and Aunt Katie. They got tickets to the Bengals-Browns game in Cleveland.It was a great day for a game. It was 15 degrees with 35 mph wind gusts. Mama kept talking crazy about how she never really feels alive unless the temperature is under 20 degrees.

So she must have certainly felt alive at this game.

To keep warm, they took paper bags filled with newspapers to put their feet in. It worked until the bags got wet and ripped.

Despite the fact that they all kept their faces wrapped up, they all still came home with pretty good windburn.

In the end, even mama admitted that it was pretty cold and they were glad to get home to a warm house.

And even better, the Bengals actually won! 3-10-1 baby! Thanks for the awesome Christmas present Uncle Adam and Aunt Katie!

A nice picture-Juner.

Mama got some grief because she didn't get any individual pictures of me when we got our family pictures taken last month. So she got her camera out today and tried to get a good picture of me to get printed.

Take a look at some of the good ones and leave a comment with your vote for the best. (Some need to be cropped of course.)

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I was okay with having my picture taken until Henry turned on the ceiling fan.
Then mama took away my toy lamb and I got mad.Henry decided he wanted in on the picture.

By that time I was hungry and done with pictures.

This is supposed to be my vacation. Can't you just leave me alone?

We've really been enjoying ourselves at the Cooper Retreat Home. Yesterday, mama didn't get out of her jammies until almost 4pm. Henry never got dressed and just went back to bed wearing what he wore the night before. Today we were a bit more productive. Mama took her pictures and she, Henry and Grandma made the first 3 small batches of cookies. They made oatmeal raisin cookies, no bakes and mama's favorite coconut chocolate treasure bars (we think that the Cooper's call them rainbow bars). Henry was a big help with the cooking. He layered all the ingredients for the bars and measured out the sugar and oats. He was very good at keeping the sugar tidy, but got a bit messy with the oats. Luckily Jazzy was here to eat most of his mess off the floor. The cookies must have been a great success because they were all gone by this evening thanks to papa and Mister Anthony.

I cheered up when I got back to my natural state of eating. Mama didn't want me to get my new dress dirty, so I had to get stripped down to just my tights and shoes. It's a good look.

This afternoon, mama and Grams Crackers left us alone while they went down to C0lumbus to go shopping. They must have had fun because they didn't come back until way after my bedtime and brought our cousin Sadie back with them. Mama was also very encouraged about the trip to New Orleans because I went down for a nap and to bed after just a bottle and without her. Looks like I'm getting left behind.

National Air and Space Museum-June.

Yesterday, we had plans to visit the zoo, but we woke up and it was rainy and below 40 degrees. Instead we visited the National Air and Space Museum located outside Chantilly, Virginia. (For all of mama's old colleagues, not only were we in Chantilly, but we we even drove by the Vienna lab.)

We didn't know this museum existed, but Miss ndrea said it was well worth seeing.when we walked into thehanger, we saw the world's fastest jet propelled aircraft. This plane set the world record for the fastest flight from LA to New York (1 hour and 4 minutes). After it set the record, it was immediately flown to Dulles Airport and given to the Smithsonian.

This is the Mars Pathfinder prototype. Henry said that there's a little car on top of it that can drive into caves, but that it's not moving now because it doesn't have any batteries.

This German missile has wood fins

We got to see the Space Shuttle Enterpise! It was huge! Henry said it looked like Big Jet from Little Einsteins.

Mama was really impressed, especially when she considered how small this space shuttle looks when it is strapped to the rockets that launch it into space.

This is the capsule that brought the Apollo 11 astronauts back from space. Mama told PawPaw about a computer she saw that had 123 kilobytes of memory. Her camera has 4 gigabytes. PawPaw said that the calculator on his watch is more sophisticated than the computers that helped send those astronauts to the moon. It must have been very cool to be alive when that happened.

We don't know how relevant this is to space history- but there was also a replica of the mother ship from Close Encounters of the Third Kind. This means something. This is important.

This is a good shot of the views inside the museum. This museum was built outside of town to house all of the planes that were too big for the museum downtown. The Air France plane behind mama is the supersonic Concorde. It flew at twice the speed of sound. The Smithsonian wanted this plane so badly, in 1989 they got Air France to promise to give it to them when it was retired in 2003.

Roscoe Turner was a very famous air racer in the 1920s. He flew stunt planes in movies for Howard Hughes and was known for taking his pet lion Gilmore everywhere with him. (Coincidentally, the Smithsonian also has Gilmore preserved in their archives.) We hope Roscoe is related to us.

There was a section on experimental aircraft. Besides the backpack helicopters, we liked these teeny tiny airplanes that were designed to be driven on roads as well as flown. This one was even designed to look like a car and was painted "Buick Blue."

I had a great time on the elevated walkway, even though it was high enough to scare mama.

We were very glad that we stopped to check this museum out. Thanks for the tip Miss Andrea!

We spent the rest of yesterday driving back to Marion. We hit a pretty big snow storm on our way, but luckily it stopped snowing about halfway across Pennsylvania and didn't get icy until we got north of Columbus. Henry and I tried to be good in the car, although I kept dropping my blankie and crying for mama to pick it up until she actually buckled one of the loops into my car seat strap. Henry was a very good boy and watched movies all the way home until mama and papa told him at 11pm that it was time to go to sleep. We got to the Cooper's at 12:30 am and were both up until almost 2am. We spent today recovering in our pajamers and trying to catch up on sleep.

We were very excited to find Christmas presents under the tree, but Nama said we couldn't open any until Christmas. Mama says she's been like this for years. Henry's eyes welled up with tears and his lip quivered as his voice shook and he said, "But it IS Christmas." Nothing. Not even my funny Christmas hat softened her. Maybe if we publicly call for presents on our blog, she'll change her mind. Not likely.