Mega catch up post- June.

We're just going to get this done. 2 weeks. One post. Luckily we haven't been doing much.

Aunt Molly got us these awesome plates for Christmas.

Mama's doing her best to be creative with our meals before she covers our plates in peas.

Henry thought the edamame comb-over and cheese bow tie was hilarious.

On Day 4 (hundred) of our blizzard entrapment, mama let me help her make cookies. (Notice that it's the afternoon and I'm still wearing jammies. Things were getting pretty low.)

I was really good at using the rolling pin.

A snowman, please. On the matter of Christmas, we did turn off the lights outside on MLK Day and mama took down the tree on January 20th. She said she wasn't going to do it until the big kids were at school. It went much faster without help. But I'm regularly asking when the tree is coming back and we're all still listening to Kenny and Dolly. Give me a call and I'll sing you all of the songs.

Mama came across this in a magazine. Take that, all you denim shirt unbelievers. Mama looks pretty smart for holding on to her 15 year old denim shirt. Now she just needs to find a sparly tank top to wear under it.

While mama was reliving her high school wardrobe choices, I was lining my animals up at Santa's house. There's a girl inside the window and all of the animals took a turn walking up to the window and ordering "1 ticket, please. Fwank you." Then they lined up in front of the bear and said good bye.

Georgie took Aunt Jenni's winter blue advice and put on her velour sweat suit. And it has ears. Adorable.

The next step in mama's blizzard madness was the mop of hair on his head. This is is Justin Beiber impression.

When your hair is longer than your mom's, it's time for a new 'do.

He was very patient and mama promised him a sucker, so his hair turned out looking good. this might be mama's best cut. When he got his sucker, he ate it under the table, so I wouldn't see him and throw a fit.
,

Sweet George remains the most pleasant baby ever, despite the fact she's not sleeping well. We're trying to transition out of swaddling, and it's hard for her to not kick and flail all the time. That's sort of her thing. In this video (again, we're all in jammies in the afternoon), Henry and I do our best to make her laugh.

Blizzard!- Henry.

On January 9th, the state started putting out warnings that snow was coming. Since it had already snowed on Christmas Eve in South Carolina, we were pretty pumped that there was a second snowfall and we were actually around to see it.

Ever skeptical, mama waited up until 1am, not believing that it would snow.

But the weather proved her wrong and it started coming down.

All told, we ended up getting almost 5 inches (far short of the 10 inches they said we'd get).

Thank goodness we didn't get 10. At the mention of snowfall, everything starts closing. First, doctors' offices, then the government, and finally schools. I think they canceled through Wednesday already on Sunday night.

Mama was SO pumped to get everyone outside. She bundled us all up (it was already 36 degrees) and threw us out the door. June was ready to express her opinion that she moved south from Wisconsin for a reason. Unfortunately for the rest of us, June was only speaking in the language of ring wraiths.

Georgie also doesn't care for it, but her defense to the cold is holding her breath and looking terrified.
As the only Turner kid to have experienced winters as they ought to be past the age of 5 months, I was willing participant. But my mind was focused on the the efficient removal of the fluffy white stuff.

June lasted about 3 minutes outside.

Georgie lasted 3 minutes and 15 seconds, because it started to sleet on her.

Mama and papa didn't let the girls' sour moods ruin their fun. They found an old diaper box and hit the slopes. (Mama wasn't willing to spend the $7 on a sled that no one would use.)

Next up- mama. I went down with her once, but managed to get snow on my face and lost both shoes, so I refused to try it again.

Mama wanted me to walk around the neighborhood with her, but I didn't want to trudge through the snow, so eventually she left me behind in search of kids that would play with her. She had a good time watching people sled down the really steep hill in front of John's house. Eventually, she borrowed Mister Tony's snow shovel and shoveled our driveway, then went to help shovel theirs. She bribed me with the promise of no nap to come back outside with her. I cleaned off everyone's cars and even participated in a few snowball fights (on the condition none hit my face).

We loved having the snow. A make-shift plow made it through our neighborhood on Monday night. But also on Monday night, we got about an inch of freezing rain. So the snow was very crunchy from there on out. Good thing we shoveled on Monday. We didn't get up the guts to brave the big hills in the neighborhood until Thursday. And by Friday- school was canceled all week- we were getting pretty stir-crazy. In South Carolina, the school districts are county-wide. And half our county is in the mountains, so we had no hope of any school all week.

Mama's new rule of thumb- one day of school canceled for every inch of snow.

Straggler- Mama.

I forgot to post this in with the rest of Cooper family Christmas, but here's Henry and PawPaw hard at work-

-playing Angry Birds on the iPod. (If you're not familiar, it's a game where you catapault birds at pigs. And they're angry because the pigs stole their eggs.) It's not complicated, but it's terribly addicting.

Last leg of the trip- Henry.

Before we headed back to South Carolina, we decided to take spend a few days in Indiana. Papa hasn't been to Aunt Jenni and Uncle Jim's house since we moved from Wisconsin.

Georgie bested Uncle Jim in a staring contest.

Papa inspected Evie's eye after a lot of bossing a tattling led to someone getting poked.

June, of course, refused to participate in anything.

I reluctantly ate my supper so I could have ice cream after supper.

Annalise poo-pooed her orange potatoes but ate them anyway for her ice cream.

While we were there, we got to go to Evie's school for lunch. I was so pumped about carrying my own tray and hanging out with the big kids. Thanks for having us, Tallers!

All about Georgie- Mama.

Pardon the jumble of unordered pictures. I'm still trying to dig out from my blog vacation, plus I decided to undertake the task of turning the blog into a bound book for posterity. And it is taking a lot of work.

This post will be all about Georgie.

Sweet baby George wasn't everyone's favorite over vacation. As you're prone to do with the third kid, it never occurred to us that she didn't care for sleeping in a new house every 3rd night. She wanted her bed at home. So for the entire duration of our month-long vacation, she was up at least 4 times a night. The only place she slept well was at GG & GG's, and we think that might only be because it was 100 degrees in there and it was the first time she'd seen mama in 5 days.

Once we got home, our "broken" baby settled back into a routine and is back to sleeping wonderfully. One short nap in the morning, a long nap in the afternoon and down to bed at 8. And she normally sleeps until at least 4 or 5am. We even promoted her into the bunkhouse with her brother and sister so now I can read my Harry Potter in peace with the lights on.

Before we left for vacation, Georgie dabbling in rolling over and did it 5 times in a row. Then she refused to do it for another month. (Maybe that's because she never touched the floor!) Now that we're home, she's rolling all of the time. But only from her back to her belly. Then she cried until someone comes to tip her back over.

The next big thing is chewing on those adorable toes.

Boy, I love those chunky thighs.

Now that we're all sleeping again, everyone is in a much better mood. Especially the happiest baby in the world. She laughs when someone walks in the room, when June dances for her and had a huge giggling fit when Henry emerged from a bath wearing only his race car underpants. I also had to give up on nursing one day before her nap because she couldn't stop laughing and spitting milk everywhere.

The New Blog- Mama.

I know this is lame, because everyone else changes the look of their blog all the time, but a new look for the blog ws kind of hard for me! Our blog(s) have had the same look since they started. That that was 5 years ago next week.

But times are a changing and ever since we switched over to The Turner Five, I've had some formatting issues. So this afternoon, I had to delete the blog and start over from scratch. The good news is that all of the old posts were restored. The bad news is that my old green blog template is gone. Such is life.

We hope you enjoy the new look of the blog. All of the archiving and links should now be working correctly. And I will get working on customizing the sidebar so you can take a look at the blogs we like to follow.

Getting Goofy with Aunt Girl-Henry.

Aunt Girl and I have a good time together. One night we got a little goofy with the camera.

What is that behind Aunt Girl?

Now mama is goofy too!

Georgie remained serious as always.

Now the bug has spread to Pawps!

Junie would make a goofy face but did pose for a picture with her new light.

A Very Cooper Christmas- June.

After we wrapped up Seibert Christmas, we headed down to Marion for the Cooper Christmas (why do I feel like I was just there?).

Grams got an inflatable "Holly-copter" which we insisted on having inflated all day long. Flying it was my favorite guy- "Santa Fwause." On this vacation, I spent most of the time telling everyone I was Frosty the Snowman, mama was Santa Fwause, and Georgie was one of my reindeer.

They sure love each other.

Mama's glad she didn't have twins. (Check out those bibs on Dasher. They were Henry's when he was a baby and made mama cry a little.)

Dash now outweighs Georgie and it doesn't look like she's going to catch up with those rubber band wrists and big, round feet. I think Georgie is going to be a starfish, just like me. (Mama just realized this week that I've only gone up 2 shoe sizes since my first birthday.)

We decided to turn back the clock and celebrate "Christmas Eve" with the traditional Christmas Eve viewing of Jurassic Park. On "Christmas Morning" we opened presents. Sadie shows off her new skirt.

I really like my new horsie stick.

Especially when PawPaw showed me how to ride it!

Henry loves his new globe!

In another Christmas tradition, the kids got to decorate a gingerbread train with Aunt Girl.

With 3 kids of age, it's getting pretty crazy trying to keep everyone happy and the train in one piece. Crazier still was Henry's insistence that the train be decorated EXACTLY like the one on the block. Try telling that to a two and newly three year old who just want to throw candy on it.

Georgie was not allowed to decorate this year, so she had to watch from her chair while airing out those chunky thighs!

On New Year's Eve, we headed to the Columbus Zoo to see the WildLights! It was really crowded because it was almost 50 degrees. Aunt Katie, send us the pictures, especially the one of me on the carousel horse!

After the zoo, we went back to the Turner's house and the grownups went out to a movie while Grams and PawPaw watched the kids. Grams is really funny, because she got the babies laughing really hard!