A trip to North Carolina

Todd has been so busy studying for his Boards that I decided to pack the boys up into the car and visit my brother and his fam in Charlotte.

The drive there was awful. An 8 hour drive ended up taking 11 and both boys were so ready to get out of that car. I was too.

The nice thing was waking up the next morning and the kids immediately started playing outside in their pj's. Fisher was so excited to see his cousins!

The kids spent a ton of time playing outside. The weather was beautiful although it did not feel like the end of October.

Fisher and Chandler got along better than I anticipated. They had their moments but that is to be expected with spirited little boys their age.
They spent a lot of time playing in the dirt.

I did not edit most of these pics. I would have lightened this one but I was too lazy.
Chandler told Katrina and me during this time that Fisher was riding him. :)

We got a good laugh out of watching both the boys trying to fit in to this car.

We tried to give them some quiet time every day watching a show or movie. Katrina saw that Fisher is not capable of sitting through a whole show. He is always doing something.

It was fun seeing Emery's cute little personality. She loved Fisher's pads and had me put them on, take them off, and put them right back on about 5 or 6 times.

Cooper also was quite fond of Emery.

So much that I saw him give his first legitimate hug. This was in the first hour of seeing her.

He also loved trying to take things from her such as her stroller.

She was not a fan of this.

He never gave up trying to win her affections and even started trying to say her name.

Fisher and Emery got along great. They shared a love of coloring.

Cooper liked Chandler's bike.

I thought Cooper looked so cute (I feel like I keep using that word but it is too late to come up with anything more original) when taking his nap one day. You'll notice he sleeps with his blanket in his mouth. That poor blanket smells so nasty from all the sucking he does on it.

This section is a bunch of Cooper pictures. He loved playing in the little car although he only seemed capable of going backwards.

Playing in the flowers and the soccer ball.

When he wasn't outside, he was staring longingly out the window.

At 16 months he seems to finally have grasped the concept of sippy cups. Before we had to give him drinks straight from a cup. He's now hooked on the independence of giving himself a drink.

He successfully ate using utensils for the first time. Now he obsessed with using them.

In this photo he was laughing over all the birds that were flying in the sky. He loves looking for birds and airplanes.

All the kids spent a lot of time playing in the planters.

Chandler even made himself comfortable in the planter among the flowers.

One day we walked to a neighborhood park. I pushed Cooper while Katrina pushed the double stroller with her kids and a cute little hitch hiker. (There's that word again.)

The kids loved playing on the little spinning thing. I am too tired to think of the name.

We had the whole park to ourselves but of course the kids all wanted to play on the same slide.

Cooper's favorite thing to do at parks is climb up the slides.

I like this picture of Fisher. Sometime I look at him and am blown away by how old he is and how big he is getting.

Cooper showing the teeth in one of his more attractive faces.

Brothers. I still can't believe we are going to have three of these little dudes. What is the next one going to look like? Will he look like his brothers?? Will he have the same big personality? I can't wait to meet him even though we are not ready for him at all.

Another one of the boys.

On Sunday afternoon I took a snooze on the couch and Katrina kept the boys entertained by making cookies. (I am glad I took the nap as Cooper decided to wake up from 3:30-5:30am that night and I had to drive back to Louisville the next day.)

Fisher had fun with the frosting.

He loves helping with any kind of baking so this was really fun for him.

Uncle Steve came in at the end to see what a mess the boys had made.

The final product.

Katrina and I went shopping on Saturday while the babies slept and the boys helped Uncle Steve (and Dad in Chandler's case) in the yard.

Fisher had fun beating up his uncle.

On Sunday we took a walk to kill some time before bedtime. We lined up the kids on their wheels and headed out with our pregnant bellies. We looked like a bunch of Mormons. :)

We saw some horrendous Halloween decorations and this was Fisher's impersonation afterwards. Seriously. Right before this he said "Do I look like a scary Halloween decoration?"

Steve had this thing with seeing me and Katrina bump our bellies together so we finally acquiesed. We are around 4-5 weeks apart so it will be another duo of cousins close in age.

The last meal together the morning we left.

When I set off to drive I hit a ton of rain and found out there were severe storms in Charlotte and Louisville that day. We had rain for about the first three hours but after that it was nothing but a beautiful drive. We made it home in 8.5 hours which was wonderful compared to the 11 on the way out. (I was not looking through the camera lense when I took this pic in case you were wondering. It was a hold the camera in one hand and snap a shot of the beautiful trees without aiming. The picture does not do justice at all.)

The boys were troopers. Here we are at a gas station having a little break from driving.

This picture uploaded sideways for some reason. I took a couple pictures of the flowers in Steve & Katrina's yard and wanted to throw them in on this post since they are my NC flowers.

I love Chandler in the background.

I liked this one even more since he was chillin' in his chair in the planter. I can appreciate a boy who likes sitting among beautiful flowers. :)

As excited as I am for another boy I am starting to think I will never be able to use any of my floral pics for a little girl's room.

It is time for me to go to bed.

Thanks Steve & Katrina for such a fun visit and letting us come in and tear up your house and invade your space. It was a fun time!