A small boy and LOTS of Autumn leaves!

Photos of Cooper in the front yard playing in the leaves.....

Comings and Goings....

We have had a lovely warm yet busy Summer here in Michigan. In mid-July Maria arrived from Dubai via New Zealand for 3 weeks, then at the beginning of August Jac jetted in from London with Hugh joining her for the last 2 weeks followed by Mother & Dad for a very short visit last week. All of a sudden it is October and the leaves are turning and the nights are getting chilly.... where did the Summer go???? Here are some of the things we have been up to....

On July 21st I had the final step of my 5-year journey through bureaucracy - the ceremony in which I got my US Citizenship! (now, no nasty comments from kiwis please like someone made when I did the Michigan quiz on Facebook.... you really don't have to worry, I don't have to forfeit my NZ citizenship or hand in the passport).
Usually the ceremony takes place in a courthouse, but once a year (starting last year) they randomly select people to 'take the oath' at a baseball game!! The news report is here, the photos are here.... We had an official picture taken on our way out of the stadium when the game was almost over - I think I look relieved, Jamie looks extremely happy and Cooper looks tired! For those sporting buffs, it was cool that the Detroit Tigers actually beat the Seattle Mariners that night!


The next day Maria of Arabia arrived and we greeted her with bran muffins and hot chocolate. The following evening was the 2nd Annual River Cruise raising funds for the Cancer Society. Funnily enough Maria was present for last years cruise as well! We took our neighbours with us as well and here are some pics.....


I booked tickets for 'A day out with Thomas' when Jac was here. Cooper took the day VERY seriously (check out his face in most of the photos!).

These are the cool flowers that arrived from Jac after she left....

We had a very short visit from Mother & Dad - Dad was only here about 3 days! Cooper was especially happy to see them again! We had yet another cool BBQ on the patio on the Sunday night they were here. (Thanks to Mother for the photo!)

Fresh Organic Veges all Summer long

I've been meaning to post this for ages. I think I mentioned last Summer about the Bay City Farmer's Market on Tuesdays and Thursdays where we get most of our veges during the Summer. Well one of the vendors there is a CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) farm and so this time last year we signed up for a box of random veges each week along with garden flowers and organic eggs. The farmer brings the box from the 'Garden Gate Farm' to the market every Thursday and Cooper and I walk down and pick it up. Here are the contents of the box from a couple of weeks ago. The taste of the vegetables reminds me of back in the old West Melton days when Dad had a huge vege garden and Mother had the chooks (chickens) for our fresh eggs. Jac & I used to be mortified whenever people came to visit and Mother would send them home with a couple of cabbages, a bunch of carrots and some broccoli. Such an embarrassing thing to do (until you are an adult and have to do your own shopping!!).
PS: FYI Jeremy the farm only uses heirloom seeds!

Latest train layout

Here is the updated train layout - with special thanks to Poppa Smith for making it so that any train can get to any place and rejigging the rails in less than 45 minutes to achieve this;

and also to Christopher M who is now 10 and donated his Thomas collection of trains and rails to Cooper - essentially doubling the size of the Island of Sodor in the Train Room!

Sequel to the Bat Problem

Remember the issues we had with bats over the past 3 years? (See previous post here...). Well this year we hired 'Critter Man' to come and deal with them. This involved about a dozen visits, extremely long ladders and 2 days of a 'man-lift' to get him up high enough to inspect every square inch of the house, fill in holes and gaps (they can get in though holes less than a centimetre in diameter). In several places he put one-way traps in place so that they could get out to get food but not back in, thus necessitating them finding alternative permanent residences!






You can imagine the excitement from a small boy as we watched him from various windows as well as from outside. He was also very helpful in also trimming some branches that were scraping the roof on the 3rd floor the last day he had the man-lift and the guys from the city were very happy to have to only deal with the already-cut branches. Here they are with their tricky mulching machine which Cooper was of course very impressed with!

News update : (

Dear Everyone.
As some of you may know or have wondered, we have been lying low since early 2008 and have been rather less social than previously due to a multitude of tests & investigations for us both between Feb & Nov 2008 followed by several rounds of IVF between December 2008 and July this year. The process has been hugely difficult both physically and emotionally (way more so than we could have ever imagined it would be). We have not done a lot of things we would have liked to as up until now this has been priority No. 1. So apologies to everyone we haven't been in touch with, to all the friends we wanted to have to come and stay over Summer, and for not getting down-under to visit this year.

The reasoning for presenting this info. in this rather public forum is two-fold: explaining what we've been up to for the past 18 months or more and requesting respectfully, that questions about a sibling for Cooper be held off unless the situation changes (in which case of course we will let you know).

For the few family and friends who knew about this situation already, thank you for all your love and support during this difficult time.

J & V xx

PS. The above-noted difficulties stress to us all the more, how blessed we are with Cooper who came about in the 'routine' way.

The Sabbath Boy

For quite some time Cooper didn't like wearing new clothes at all, even clothes that he had worn several times (but thankfully not his everyday clothes). So every Saturday morning, getting ready for church was quite a drama. So what I've been doing for the last year or so is to get Cooper to put his clothes out himself on Friday night and the next morning he lies down beside 'The Sabbath Boy' and we swap the clothes over! Here is the Summer boy (and his special shoehorn!).

Cooper Singing

Cooper has finally started singing but usually it is in his bed or in a different room to where I am. Finally I managed to catch one of his songs.... This one is The B-I-B-L-E (preceded by what sounds like "would you like me to sing it again? 3 and 4" - probably Aunty Maria the music teachers influence of 'counting in' before starting a song!), other favourites are the ABC song and the Bob the Builder theme song - which he seems to know ALL the words for.

Autumn in Michigan

The leaves are turning and we had our annual visit to a pumpkin farm after which I had to make some pumpkin soup. I decided to roast them first and thought they looked like something out of a food magazine when I was taking them out of the oven!

Back soon!

Sorry for the lack of postings of late - we have had a busy Summer here in the USA. Updates are being created in draft and will post later in the week.....