Cooper Stephen Jeppesen

My dear, dear sister, Michelley, had a baby boy last Thursday!! It feels so unreal to me…I am DYING that I am not there with her and there to meet her little Cooper!

At the Zoo

Angela, Carolyn and I usually make it to the zoo twice a week. It’s really a win, win, WIN situation (“The Office,” anyone?) because all three of us love it!! Angela loves animals…I think she especially loves the birds because we can get closer to them and they are all over the place. My favorite is when she sees the elephants because I love watching her sign “elephant.” Carolyn loves the animals as well, of course. It’s fun because we have been learning a lot about animals in our preschool and it’s fun to actually go see the animals and talk all about what we know about them! I love the zoo because it’s fun getting out of the house, seeing and learning about the animals, and getting a little more exercise in. Win, win, win! Haha...
Carolyn usually likes to switch off what doll or stuffed animal she wants to bring to the zoo. She wants to be sure that all of her toys get a chance to see the animals. The “Look"! Usually Angela can be seen doing this throughout the whole zoo experience (or really anywhere or anytime)...maybe you can tell how adorable I think it is by all of the pictures.

She can also make other cute faces. Here she is mesmerized by (or afraid of?) the gorillas...

Sleeping after a long day of seeing animals....

"Hmmm.."

Happy little girl...

We love it when friends join us on our zoo visits!! This usually happens once a week because we have some friends with zoo passes. Here is Carolyn with one of her bestest friends, Kaylen…we love it when she comes with her mom and brother to the zoo with us!

The two girls watching the polar bear play in the water

This past week we had a special little treat: we went to the zoo with the cousins! We had so much fun with them!!

Janeil took this cute picture of Angela (thanks, Janeil!)...

Look! In this picture Angela is not the only one making the pucker face...Carolyn is joining in. Should I be worried about my girls?

Cute little buddies...Carolyn loved holding Anna and Katie's hand throughout the day!

We can't wait to get back!

Campout

Last week Andrew had a couple of days off of work so we thought camping would be fun, but it ended up snowing all weekend. That didn’t stop Daddy from taking his girls camping, however, he just used the Family Room for the camp sight :) !

We told "scary" stories before bed (you know, stuff like Grizzly bears sharing the berries they collected to all of their animal friends in the forest :)

WAY too Cute!

Carolyn will often call for me or Andrew by putting her hand up to her mouth and singing "Ahhh..." like she sees Giselle calling for her animal friends in the movie, "Enchanted." Well, little Miss Cutey Angela started doing this a couple of weeks ago!! SO CUTE! Here is a picture of Angela and Daddy singing to each other with their hands up to their mouth like Giselle! Angela is also starting to be our signing babe. Her favorite sign would definitely have to be "dog" :)

Carolyn's Favorites

(Whenever Andrew goes out of town, I always find myself blogging a lot :) This one is a long post and really for Carolyn to read when she's older! If you want to see more pics and stuff, just skip down to the Easter posting under this one :)

I love how each and every day in my life revolves around favorites...it always seems to be the topic of discussion around here. When meeting someone new, Carolyn needs to be able to at least get down the basics..."What is your favorite animal and color?" These things are important. Who would have thought that when seeing anything orange, excitement would break out as we reflect how excited Uncle Al and cousin Katie would be to see their favorite color...this goes for just about everything.

Here is a list of some of Carolyn's favorite things:

• The color blue
• Alligators! While at the zoo last week (another favorite thing of Carolyn's...and Angela's) we were looking at the alligators. It was quite an exciting day at the zoo because on that particular day the gators were swimming around (not in their usual sleepy mood). To our great enjoyment, one of the alligators came close to the glass window and started chomping down its jaws. I heard two kids beside me exchange words of fear, "Scary!" Carolyn thought differently, however. She took a good look at the big teeth chopping down and exclaimed, "HOW CUTE!!!" Only our little Princess Carolyn could find alligators so cute.
• Favorite Care bear: Grumpy
• Favorite Books (her favorite books are always changing, but this is the list for this week): Care bear books; Panda Bear, Panda Bear What do you See?; Goldilocks and the Three Bears; Fancy Nancy at the Museum; Safari Animals (or, really, any book with alligators, lions, gorillas and polar bears); Curious George; "Booty and the Beast" (how she says it..); Cinderella books...etc, etc...really the list could go on for a long time..we love reading together.
• Favorite Princess: Cinderella
• Favorite Foods: Chocolate (but it has to be the right chocolate - like Recess Pieces (sp?), watermelon, pretzels, cucumbers, brocolli, hot dogs, pears, vanilla ice cream, oranges, grapes...I wouldn't call her a picky eater, but those are probably some of her favorites right now.
• Preschool...I love that she loves it so much! We started school together two weeks ago and I planned on having it as an every-other-day thing. However, she started asking me for it everyday (yeah :) so now it's part of the daily routine! I love it; it just feels like I'm playing "house" while doing it!
• Friends! Carolyn just loves her little friends. Today at church she saw her friend, Micah, and ran and gave him a big hug. She looked at him all sad and said, "I miss you." If she goes a day without friends, she'll tell me how much she misses them.
• Puzzles...her favorite one right now is a Cinderella one her grandma gave her.
• Birthday Parties
• Angela. Carolyn and Angela are such sweet little buddies. Sure, sometimes we have to be reminded to be soft, but they love each other and have so much fun playing.

Easter of 2009

We had such a wonderful Easter! We woke up Easter morning and the Easter Bunny had come! Both Angela and Carolyn had a fun time looking for their baskets and eggs. We will, however, have to tell the Easter bunny to only bring toys and such next year for Carolyn. She tried some of the candy she got from him and announced that it was "yucky" (even chocolate; she usually atleast likes that!) We love our little healthy eater. Here are some pictures of my sweet family right before going to church.

Giving Daddy kisses....

We were lucky enough to have Chris and Janeil's family come over for dinner and fun after church! Here are the older girls in the traditional Hardy "Funny Bunny" hats! Yes, we are keeping the "Funny Bunny" song and hats alive!

The Famous and Traditional Egg Roll!!!

Three years ago Andrew made an egg called the "Jannie Killer" that won the whole egg roll competition at his parents' house so now, of course, he has to make it every year. Basically, it's an egg he tries to make as ugly as possible (he was mad that this year's "Jannie Killer" turned out looking quite nice) and writes "Jannie Killer" on it. I have never been able to defeat the egg in the past...but, not this year! My "WINner" egg rocked!

Even Angela joined in for the fun! (Notice her cute little shoes...I love them!)

And - who won the Egg Roll?! Drum roll please.....CAROLYN!! She beat everyone with her Lion egg!! Here she is on the last roll...tongue out and full concentration on winning :)

Way to go, Carolyn!

EASTER EVE!!! The day before Easter, we dyed eggs!

One hour after the girls were finished dying their eggs....

Okay, so maybe it wasn't an hour....but, Daddy did spend a lot of time making all of his easter eggs perfect. I love my husband...he's one of a kind :)

The day before Easter we also went to the Rec Center close by for an Easter Egg Hunt. It was pretty crazy (small area and lots of kids).