What does Cooper think?

- Friday, July 29, 2011

We are still settling into our new place and we are LOVING it! While we spent a few saturday's ago moving C stayed with Molly, very good friend of mine. Later that day my mother in law, Lynda picked him up and brought him home to us and I will never forget his face! He was both confused and excited! Obviously he doesn't understand the situation, but I know he knows that this is a new place. A place to run from room to room and a whole room dedicated to just toys! Freedom! When we brought him inside we said "Look at your new house" and in order to make him feel right at home we led him to his toy room! His face lit up! This is not an exaggeration! He did not know what to look at or what to touch first! So precious to show our son the home that we have created for him to grow up in! I think Cooper approves what do you think?



This and That

Labels: - Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Random thoughts of the day!

*Cooper slept in his crib for the first time since Feb. (easier for him to be in pack in play in the pool house) and he slept from 9:45 until 8:30 this morning and he DID NOT wake up once! Wow I really can say I had a great night's sleep!

*I miss Ellie Mae, my sweet dog that is living with my parents until we get a fence.

*I ordered a super cute Life Planner @Erin Condren.com, I need another planner like a need a hole in my head! Oh well it's super cute!

*I bought Cooper some Converse shoes, he wears size 5! Holy moly he has big feet!

*I am getting super excited about another school year! I always get this way...it's because of the school supplies! A few weeks into school the school supplies isn't fun anymore.

*I had so much fun catching up with my HS girl friends last week, hoping we do it again soon!

*My mom and I are going to Canton this weekend with Molly and Jane :) Hopefully I can find some treasures for our house!

*Cooper is taking a nap so now I must indulge in my new obsession, Pinterest! I love all the cute, original ideas and the yummy recipes!

Hope everyone is having a great Tuesday!

Lots of Love,

Bronwyn

Welcome home!

Labels: - Thursday, July 21, 2011

The Gray family is now residing in a new location! We packed up and moved out of our love shack (aka box in mom and dad's back yard) a week ago.


We successfully moved everything into our new home last Saturday thanks to the help of great friends! I do mean GREAT, because it was HOT HOT HOT! Summer heat in Texas is NO joke! While we sweated our booties off Cooper was in the comfort of an air conditioned home with our friends Molly & Cyrus and their sweet lil guy Beckham. B & C played all day and gave us a chance to nail down the fort here...I am so thankful to them for keeping Coop all day! Love my friends!

Saturday afternoon we put boxes into the correct rooms and by that evening we slowly began to unload. Sunday we continued to unload boxes and made a trip to the fabulous Benbrook WalMart to buy groceries and what not. I am so not a fan of Wally World I am more of a Target girl, but this location was clean, organized and not loaded with "People of WalMart" thank goodness :) By Sunday night our new place felt a little more like home. It was so nice to put Cooper down in his own room, kick back and watch tv in my bed in my own room. It's the little things!

This week Cooper and I have been waiting patiently on repairs to be made! Little things like window adjustments, tweaking of ceiling fans, paint touch ups, etc. This weekend we plan on hanging pictures and making our new place feel even more like home. Here are some pictures of our new home minus the pictures and wall decor.


One view of the living room! Notice Josh kicked back in his recliner!

The other view of the living room...hall and bedrooms on the right.

Kitchen and dining room, our bedroom is in the archway to the left of the picture!

The other side of the kitchen, you can barely see Cooper's playroom on the left, the laundry room out to the garage and then the door closest to the oven is the pantry.

Dining room looking very bare!

The master bedroom! Finally a room to myself, I mean ourselves :)

Opposite view, door out of bedroom leads into kitchen and then our bathroom is to the right!

Cooper's bathroom! Boyish but still neutral thanks to PBK!

Other than my bedroom this is my favorite room in the house! Cooper can play and mess this room up all that he wants! It is in a perfect location, it is in between the kitchen and living room! We can watch him/listen for him while we do other things in the house!

I have not shown our Cooper's room, our bathroom, or the two guest rooms because well they are not ready to be shown! Stay tuned more pics to come!

Moving on

- Thursday, July 14, 2011

We are down to the last few nights in our love shack and I must say it is bittersweet! I DID NOT think I would be sad at all about leaving our very small temporary home but I kinda am!


I am looking forward to living in a house that is quadruple the size of the place/room we are in now. I can't wait to have a closet again! The majority of my clothes are in an extra closet inside my parents' house, and a very small selection of my clothes are in a cabinet that I share with my hubby. My winter shoes are in a box in the garage and my summer shoes are in a pile in the bathroom. :( I cannot wait for Cooper to have his own room again! It has been VERY difficult living around him while he sleeps. I am thrilled to have a spacious kitchen so that I can cook again! I will be happy to have more than one tv around! Josh and I like a lot of the same shows, but I miss watching tv in the bedroom while he hangs out in the living room! I am pumped about Cooper's playroom! For the last 5 months he has been playing with the same bunch of toys because we just don't have the space to pull everything out! The last two things excite me the most...having a washer and dryer and a good air conditioner!!! I don't have to walk very far to use mom and dad's w & d but it is such a pain to haul all our laundry over there and then decide where it's going to go once it's dry. All of us Texans are VERY aware of the awful summer heat and boy is it HOT in our "house" by the end of the day! The window unit is working so hard to beat the heat and the high setting is not strong enough! The blinds are down the curtains are drawn and the fan is on high, we've done all we can. The sun sets right into the door and it feels like we are sitting on the sun, especially in the bathroom! I cannot put on my make up or blow dry my hair in our bathroom after 11am, it's too hot, miserable!

With all that being said I am so thankful that my mom and dad have allowed us to live in their backyard since the end of Feb. We cooked dinner together, spent many nights chilling on the back porch with a beverage, spent many weekends swimming and laying out, etc. My parents enjoyed play time with Cooper and my mom loved rocking him to sleep each night! I got emotional when we moved out of our house 5 months ago and I am emotional about leaving now. I just got used to being close to home again! Enough of the sadness! We are so excited to start yet another chapter in a new home in a new town.

Caught up in the drama

- Thursday, July 7, 2011

Just like millions of other people I have been glued to the tv (ALL DAY long) for the last 6 weeks watching the Casey Anthony trial. It is a good thing that Cooper is too young to understand because I could not resist keeping up with every second of testimony. The trial has consumed me and like many others I felt like I was a member of the jury. I listened to witness after witness trying to keep an open mind about Casey Anthony. It was VERY hard to keep this point of view because of the lies she told. Anyone who kept up with this story knows that she created an entire web of lies! It makes me sick knowing that she could continue life for 31 days knowing her daughter was missing or worse, dead! If Caylee meant everything to her,which she should have, Casey should have stopped everything and alerted someone in order to find her baby girl! But she didn't and to me that showed guilt! Why do liars lie...to cover up or to hide the truth! I was irritated each day of the trial because of the lack of expression/emotion from Casey. She was listening to testimony involving her dead daughter and her face was stone cold, I would have been in shackles if that were me!! I was also disgusted with the way she sold out everyone in her family in order to save herself. All this being said my opinion is that Caylee died and Casey knows exactly what happened. Casey's "grieving" behavior was bizarre and to me and it doesn't make sense! If she was a good mom than she would have done EVERYTHING in her power to protect her little girl!! I would love to know what caused her to react the way she did...but I am sure that will remain a mystery!


As the verdict was being read July 5 at 1:15 pm I was sick at my stomach! When I heard the clerk read not guilty, not guilty, not guilty to the major charges I was stunned to say the least! I with everyone else in America was expecting her to be found guilty!

At first I was very angry with the verdict! Are you kidding?!! If she didn't kill Caylee who did? I just know that it had to be Casey! All the evidence pointed to her! Now as I look back at all the facts the prosecution wasn't able to indefinitely tell when, where, why and how. I didn't want to believe it myself, but it's true! 1st degree murder is a HUGE charge and I understand that the juror's wouldn't want to convict an innocent person. If they did not have proof that she murdered Caylee they simply had to follow the rules of the law and aquitt her. The prosecution did a great job, however they were not able to prove that it was indeed a homicide and or that Casey had anything to do with it. I wish that she would have been charged with neglegence, child endangerment, purgery or something that could have been proven!!

I am glad that we can all have our own opinions as to what happened but I believe some people are taking their anger too far! I wish the passionate public would step back and give the Anthony family their privacy...death threats, really? How awful! We need to pray for peace and comfort! I also think it is funny that many are jumping on the bandwagon after not knowing all the facts. You cannot assume she killed her daughter just because she made bad/odd decisions. She could have, but the facts were never there to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. We were not the jurors in this case and we do not have to like the outcome or agree with it, but it is not going to change! We were not in that courtroom each and every day and we have to respect their decision because it was based on the law!

It is hard not to judge, however the only one to judge us is GOD! Casey Anthony will answer to him one day and I will leave it at that no matter what I believe.

Let's follow the treasure and search for gold...

- Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Cooper turned one last Wednesday June 29th, as you all know and we couldn't wait for him to share his birthday with friends and family! I have been planning the special party for my one and only for a few months now and was so ready to just have fun and celebrate! Check out his awesome invite. My friends Jenn and Molly have an Etsy shop (oneperfectparty.etsy.com) and they created the invites, thank you tags, Cooper's smash cake and some adorably delicious cookies!



We stuck to the pirate theme and boy was I glad! There was a TON of cute pirate stuff to use for favors/decorations!

Jenn's mom, Melinda made Cooper's precious lil shirt!

This was a sweet banner that I made to show Cooper's growth each month for his first year!

The fun pirate ship water/activity table my mother and father in law gave to Cooper early so that he could share it with friends at his party!

Ice chests ready to go...LOTS of water, capri suns and soft drinks! Fun treasure ice chest to add to the pirate theme of course...thanks to Oriental trading!



Even a fun pirate flag flying high above the yard!

The yellow and red inflatable was a pirate ship mister that was fun for the kids!





These are the precious cookies made by Molly... (oneperfectparty.etsy.com) Every single cookie was gobbled up, did I mention we had 4 dozen plus all this...

This was Cooper's own personal cake aka smash cake. Made by Molly as well! He was feeling awful at his party-due to his one year shots, so we had to save the cake for another day. But isn't it adorable?!

Yes cupcakes too! Made by my mother in law! Good thing it was a holiday weekend because we definitely couldn't have eaten all those sweets in one day! (Although we did eat all the cookies)

This was another sweet treat that I almost forgot to mention. Chocolate covered marshmallows! They were made by my sis in law Amy! They are a lil taste of heaven!

Birthday boy's chair!

Hot dogs and chips was what's for lunch!

And of course fun goody bags for all of Cooper's guests!

Playing before all of his guests arrive!

We had a balloon artist come to the party...Bensballoons.com

Boston requested a T-Rex.

Hadley asked for a puppy. Madyson got a mermaid that was so cute, but I didn't get a picture :( We had all kinds of balloons made in the hour he was there...swords, parrots, princess crowns, etc.

Carrson the pirate!

Carrson and Dylan having a pirate fight!



Sophia having a good time!

It was a wonderful party and Cooper is so lucky to have so many amazing people in his life! Thank you to all of our guests for coming and for the sweet gifts! He had a great time and we hope you did too!

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