One Year Ago Today

One year ago today we woke up earlier than Trey and Dillon have ever raised their heads and headed to the Nashville airport. We spent the day in airports and airplanes. We headed towards China to meet and bring Coee home. What a trip. What a year it has been!

Coee is a very very active little girl, always in to things. But that is another whole post all by itself. She talks A LOT and is putting words together to form sentences very well. She has never met a stranger, except for Santa Claus. I don't think she will be sitting on his lap this year.



She is a girly girl. She loves purses and new outfits. When I put a new outfit on her, she heads to my bathroom saying "irra!" (Mirror) "irra!" She loves to look at herself and her new outfit in the mirror.


She was a flower girl at my cousins wedding last week. She went down the aisle in a wagon, being pulled by the "senior" flower girl and the ring bearer. She did very well. She danced ALL night. She had a great time at the reception. Cake and dancing. (She seriously loves cake...dances when she hears the word cake.) Her rendition of the Happy Birthday song goes like this: "Happy Birthday woo hoo. Happy Birthday woo hoo. Cake!"


Coee got a jump on the season and decorated cookies the day after Thanksgiving with her Meme, brothers and cousins. She really liked the icing. The cookie was simply a dipping tool.


This girl is true to her heritage. She seriously gets on a natural high when she eats Chinese food. We took her out to eat last night. This is her finishing up her THIRD bowl of egg drop soup. She was giddy; lauging, saying "hewo" to everyone in the restaurant, screaming. Hyper.

It has been an amazing year. Terrell and Dillon have brought up the blog over the past week and "relived" our trip. I've heard many laughs and giggles coming from the computer from both of them.

Me and my brother

Coee loves to play outside with her brothers. A few Saturdays ago, Trey was playing in our pile of rocks which are left over from building the house. Coee was there with him and he thought she needed some boots to play in the rocks. We hunted down the boots that we have bought for her for this winter. They are boys boots with light up footballs, baseballs and soccer balls. They proceeded to play in the rocks for quite some time. Too cute.

Oh my - Am I behind

Hello! We are still here. Boy, do we have a lot to catch up on!! Trey and Dillon have been practicing and playing football 3-4 days/week since late July, so that has taken up a lot of our time. Coee did great at the hour and a half practices- much better than I expected. We took toys and food and drinks and more food, and I only had to chase her across the field during one of the very last practices. She loved it and it was actually nice to have that down and outdoors time built in to our week. I do better with structure so I am now having to readjust to having some free time during the week. It's not easy, on anyone.

Coee is great. She is saying just about anything you ask her to and is even putting two and three words, as well as families, together. We say the word "Caitlin" and she proceeds to list off Neil, "Nonya", "Paigse", Morgan and Leo (the dog). She knows they all belong together! Her last baby tooth pushed through over the weekend. She is loud and talks non-stop, sometimes saying the same word over and over and over again (for example; mommy!) She loves to go. She does not love the church nursery. She is quite independent. When we got home one night, she was hungry. I was putting things away in the refrigerator so the door was open. Before I knew it, she had the "loney" (balogna is one of her favorites-yuck) and cheese out and was putting it on her little table. She fixed her own snack!

Coee's First Fourth of July

Coee experienced her first Fourth of July, which is always marked by a golf cart parade through Terrell's parents lake neighborhood. This year was bigger than normal, probably around 150-200 people. After the parade, we all gather at the pavilion and have yummy homemade ice cream and desserts as well as games. Unfortunately, this is the first year that we have walked away without any bragging rights (unless you count Jill's "most egged" award after the egg toss contest).

Kendra, Paige, Coee, Jill, Carson and Cameron.

Our "float" entry. Don't overlook Terrell's COOL hat!

Trey and Dillon are silly-stringing the retiree spectators.

The "Grand Poo-bah" making his victory lap.

An apple with Dillon

Coee loves apples. You can literally just hand her a whole apple, and she will eat it until it is almost gone. I found her and Dillon having an apple snack on the couch on this day. She thinks that she is one of them. She an Trey have even started fighting "like brother and sister." It usually starts because he is trying to protect her ( a bit of a mother hen) and she doesn't like it. She even grabbed him by the nose with her sharp little finger nails once and gave him a bloody nose.

Trey and Dillon continue to love her with more passion and compassion than we ever expected. Dillon even recently told a friends mom "Life is not worth living without Coee."

Fun Day at Meme's

We went to Meme's house for a fun day last week. She invited all of her grandkids and told the "big boys" they could bring friends. We ended up with five nine year olds; Ethan, Baily, Dillon, Trey and Landon. We spent a large part of the day watching them riding the tube. We also put up a huge water slide, had corn dogs, snow cones and funnel cakes. It was a really fun day. (As we say over and over; poor kids. They don't get to do anything fun. :))

Tubing

They liked the rough waves.

Tristan and Coee having lunch.

Great Grandma's Girl

Coee's middle name is Catherine, after my maternal Grandmother ("Grandma"). There have been many many times that I have wished that Coee could have met Grandma, and Grandma could have met Coee. I know what she would have done. She would have sat and watched her with her hands over her mouth. She would have held her and rocked her, and loved her. She would have made those noises she made playing with Trey, Dillon and Ethan. She would have LAUGHED at her, because she is really funny.

Tonight, we went to a 50's Classic Diner event at church. The choir sang music from the 50's through the 80's. The Blues Brothers were there, as was Elvis. We had cheeseburgers and hot dogs and COKES in the old fashioned GLASS bottles. Coee decided she wanted the last of Dillon's so we let her turn it up for a "swig" - as Grandma termed it. Grandma always had glass bottled cokes in her refrigerator. There is no telling how many cokes she drank in her life time! When Coee turned that bottle up tonight, I so wished that Grandma could have been here to see her namesake do what she did so many times in her life. It brought a tear to my eye, and does again as I type.

We miss you Grandma!