golf tourney

 we had the annual st. jude classic this past weekend and it was chocked full of fun as always. i actually finished up frame work early so i had three days off before to get my cooking done {which is my fav b/c i love getting in the kitchen and whipping up yummy recipes}. I don't get to cook as much as i use to b/c the frames a somewhat become a full time job so i enjoyed making homemade pizza's we grilled out on Thursday to kick off the festivities and chicken dip, fireside dip, mac and cheese, potatoes, and italian pasta salad for the rest of the weekend. Y U M. We love getting to hang out with all our our family and the boys love seeing their cousins and all the family friends that came out. It really is like a family reunion of sorts. The boys spent most of the time upstairs in the bouncer until they realized that Ms. Bobbi and Mr. Jimbo would let them "swim" aka dip in their fountain to cool off....

and the very special treat of the weekend {besides seeing all our friends and out of town family} was uncle Ed's band JD highway played at mr. p's hot wings friday and saturday night.  Roger and I got a sitter for both nights to hear them jam. Saturday was extra fun b/c the rain came and cooled things off so we even got up to shake a leg and we ran into Grizzlies' Mike Conley, love a celebrity sighting...

Roger and I sweating it out Friday NIGHT, still cold ones and friends made it a F U N night!

 Of course the golf was great. it ended up going into a playoff and I got to see the finish at #12, so once again it did not disappoint and raised lots of $$$ for St. Jude !

The boys enjoyed watching some golf after their dip :) and Airey even got a players OB ball! He still carries it around....

G O O D T I M E S....until next time
Cheers!

summer fun

The summer has started off right....we had a fun trip to visit terry and whitney in jackson the 1st week out of school and spent it doing what you do in the summer....visiting family, hanging on the lake, doing some fishing and spending time with the fam. Uncle Terry took Airey and Campbell out to catch lots of fish. We have two little anglers on our hands :) We had dinner over at Kevin and kim's new house one night too. On our trip to jackson we got to stop in and see Papa Pete. He was so excited to see us and the boys....funny story..... we left with a orange teddy bear, that we are not quite sure is legit, haha...but it made Campbell's day and thats all Pete wanted to do :) We enjoyed catching up with him and airey was obsessed with hearing about everything in his room.

We have been doing a lot of catch up with our friends this summer. We had the Pattersons over for pizza one week and went to cook out with the johnstons the next week. we had family and friends over for memorial day. that was a fun day for all the cousins to play :). 

The big news in the Cole household is Campbell is OFFICIALLY Potty Trained! He was SO easy to train and it literally was all done in a week..(I count my blessing every night) He is loving the freedom of being diaper free and being more like Bra Bra. They even have tee tee races, lol. Here is a shot of him free bird on the plasma car, he loves his undies so much he goes anywhere in them...literally even out in the front yard...ughhh.....B O Y S

Airey has been all INTO golf these days and is obsessed with hitting his clubs all afternoon. He also still loves baseball and to practice his Southpaw skills with Daddy. He recently was in the playroom playing catch with Roger and said "Wait Dada...lets have a game: Dada you be the Ump, Campbell the pitcher and Ill be the Hitter"....but first we have to "pledge the allegiance"...Rog said he went over to our singing snow globe and pressed it to hear Jingle Bells and said everyone put your hand on your heart and look at the flag....HAHA...Roger replied "where is the flag" ...Airey "right there" into to the blank wall. Gotta love a kids imagination! We took the boys to a Redbirds game a couple weeks back and he literally was enthralled in it all so that fact he remembers the whole ritual DOES NOT surprise us one bit.

Another big celebration was Gigi 79th birthday! I mean COME ON...does she look a day over 60, i beg her for her secrets to the fountain of youth all the time, lol. Really what amazes me more than how she looks is how she acts. She has more energy than me. I swear the woman works 4 hours a day in her award winning yard and still has time to meet up with friends and family and be the entertainer of the party. I hope one day to be like her and I know that will be a tough job! She is the complete love of mine and my boys life. We are super lucky to have her in our lives and be so present and and amazing with my boys. Very few people in life can saw their grandmother actually play and literally run around with their children. We love you Gigi!!!!

As for Mom and Dad.....

Roger and I have been lucky to squeeze in a date night here and there and recently got to go to Iris which was soooooo delicious, i have dreams about the Brussels sprouts salad and strawberry explosion. Our trusty babysitter Hannah is back for the summer so we are hoping our date nights will be weekly again soon! 

airey finished prek-3

we are just so proud of sweet airey and finishing his 1st official year of preschool and passing with flying colors. It was so great to see the report card aka: Early Childhood Assessment from 1st semester and see how much he grew and learned until the end of the year! Airey's teacher Ms. Claire taught kindergarten at St. Louis for 5 years and his assistant teacher Angela has been teaching preschool for years. We are so lucky to have such accredited amazing teachers at St. Louis.
Airey's milestones:
-learned to write his name
-knows the days of the week
-his birthday
-his full name
-counting past 10
-recognized his numbers
-can connect dots of number and letters in order
-left handed and holds his crayon correctly
-assemble puzzles
-know all his shapes and colors
-he can recognize almost all upper case letters and 1/2 of the lower case.
-1st semester he only knew the sound for letter "b" now he knows 10 sounds

And unlike my very first report card in the teacher assessment comment section" I quote...{and I quote this because my mom saved this report card in my baby book and never lets me live it down, haha....} "Sarah Ella is a sweet child but really has a problem bossing all the other children around"  I haven't changed a bit.....lol
Airey teacher comments:" Airey had a fantastic year in 3K. His letters and sounds are really coming along and he tries SO hard for us! You have such a super sweet boy and we are so proud of him" awwwww makes a mama tear up! We are so proud too!
We had his and of the year program that Pops and Kitty got to come too.  It was such a great, fun little concert they did for us! Airey was front and center and actually sang and participated this time vs. Christmas program, hide the face game :) They played a slide show at the end of the program of pics through the year and gave all the parents a copy! Such a fun memento. We also had his end of the year family picnic with pizza and even a ice cream truck. We snuck Campbell out of MDO to go with us too. What a fun memory. What a big boy we have, its just amazing! Thank you God for sending us this precious Child. All the glory is yours.

a look new /a new promise

i really really want to start blogging more so what better way than to get a new facelift to motivate me, i mean thats what works when i want to work out (i.e. new running shoes= i wanna run) so lets hope it sticks. this blog one day I want to print out and give to my boys on their 18th birthdays as a scrapbook/baby book and chronicle of our family's shenanigans ;).

Over the past month and a half we have been busy {which goes with out saying} Easter, Chattanooga, Atlanta, Mothers Day....So the boys are finishing up the school year soon and i can not wait to get airey's 1st pre-k assessment! He is such a smart lil guy, so i know his official report card with be all AAAA's... Campbell doesn't quite get a report card yet but the book his MDO teachers made for me made my heart melt with his pics throughout the year and references to Double Trouble and I love my Mammy, etc.. speaking of Lovies ... Roger and I decided the easter bunny was going to take Airey's Lammy "to a new baby to live with" in exchange for a basket of goodies. Well i wasn't as prepared to say goodbye to the lovie that he or I loved so much. I bought Lammy when I was 5 weeks prego and it was the very 1st purchase I made. Roger and I slept with Lammy in the bed with us until he was born and Airey has slept with him 4 1/2 years since. I went up that night at 1am to get him and when I pulled it out of his little sleeping hand {a image ill never forget} my heart broke a little: one, because i realized I was taking something he loved SO much and two: because it meant i didn't have a little boy anymore. Well i smelled it and held it to my face for an hour and sobbed like a baby while Roger consoled me. I put him in a box and hope one day when airey gets a little older he can come for a visit. The dentists said it was time b/c the thumb sucking needed to go and so we decided well if we are going to break airey we might as well break campbell. I bought this Malva stuff you paint on their nails and it DID the trick. I have two thumb free boys! I took lots of pics of them sucking their thumbs and especially Campbell {he looked so sweet!} so honestly it was the best thing and they both did UNBELIABLY great! A little tears on day one nap and bedtime but after that it was done....Kids are always more resilient than we give them credit for {thank God for that}.

easter was super fun i think we went too 1,237 egg hunts all of which were SUPER fun for the kids especially with numerous Bunny Sightings! We hosted our Annual Cole Boys easter egg hunt on Good FRiday. We added a crawfish boil this time which was a huge hit! It was a day of good memories made with friends. my brother and fam came into town the rest of the weekend and we ate and drank and relaxed.

last week roger and I made it to two of the grizzlies playoff games. GROWL towels up! What an exciting adventure for our city and the Griz, we all BELIEVED. They payed the OKC Thunder tight and it went to a game 7, unfortunately we lost ,but what the excitement did for the city among all the flood drama was amazing! I cant wait until next year!

This weekend we took the boys to a redbirds game and the boys got to meet the players before the game and get autographs. I use the term "meets "Loosely... airey hid behind rogers leg and threw his hat to the players, lol. The redbirds won and a great time had by the coles {even the the root beer float i took to the face}. We have also enjoyed the Shelby farms new playground a couple times! Baby Georgia had a fundraiser walk for the March of Dimes at the grounds and we were speechless at the ridiculously fun playground! We had to go back that next week. If your in Memphis you and your kids NEED to go for a visit. Well i better wrap up I know this post is already toooooo long. Pics to come later (Mac is full....aka about to have to buy a new computer...sigh...)

Take care xoxo,

The coles

5 years...

i had to blog about this before i forget all the amazing details....

well in October i started working on a big surprise for my hubby. we had already planned a trip to Napa and Carmel to celebrate our 5 year anniversary, but i wanted to make the trip memorable. we had always tossed around the idea of renewing our wedding vows at our 10th anniversary, but once i saw the pictures of where we were staying i knew it was the perfect place to do it. well i kept it a complete secret for about 4 months and the only one's who knew were the resort and the seamstress Sue Ann Ising that actually took the train of my dress to recreate a new fun summer dress to renew my vows in. It turned out after 8 fittings to be the perfect dress. i cried when i put it on...after Sue Ann and i started tossing around ideas I had to let a few folks know so i could get some opinions etc and my little secret staff kept mums the word through the whole thing. (Thanks to you and you know who you are!) The next thing was finding the perfect minister and photographer and figuring out just how i was going to spring this on him and more importantly how I was basically going to pull the whole thing off without him getting suspicious. Well the people at The Carneros especially Brooke, their staff wedding planner, made it easy breezy! They found me the perfect Irish Catholic Reverend, the perfect photographer and florist...all which didnt get done until about 3 months before. Rev. Dalton called and chatted with me about 5 or 6 times and made sure he felt he knew us and our family well. He was just amazing...i now wish i had someone to video all the meaningful readings(he read from our first wedding) and all the wonderful prayers he had for us. More about that later....The photographer Megan Clouse was my culprit in handling the surprise! She had the idea to deliver a note to him and she would get his face on camera so he could have time to process the whole thing! She was right...he was so overwhelmed and emotional but confused too...haha. the note was done by a great gal on etsy.lettergirl.com. Basically it said "Marry me.... again....love, your bride"

By the way i feel i'm purging tons of info so excuse the incoherent parts, haha i have two babies about to wake up and i want to finish before i forget it all :)

I was "at the spa" he thought getting a massage,but really i was in hair and make up and changing into my dress that i had shipped out earlier...btw it didn't arrive until 2 hours before....sweating bullets!!!

roger knew he was to be ready at 4 for drinks before we went to our nice anniversary dinner and to toast at 4:30 the day/ time we got married so that part went off without a hitch....except a minor button breaking before i left for "the massage" that i sewed on really quick.

well as my hair and makeup were finished and I was all dressed, my bouquet arrived and Meagan came to get the note from me to take down to Roger at our cottage....when i saw Megan i LOST it....i teared up and my heart heaved out of my chest....it was like getting married all over again....so i began the walk to our cottage and saw Megan around the corner and i knew Roger had been surprised and was waiting on me in the backyard...happy tears streamed down my face and that 100 yard walk seemed like a mile...i was so anxious to see him and see his face and just KISS him....

I walked in and we saw each other and it was almost more special and meaningful that day than our wedding day...tears were streaming down both of our faces and we just fell into each other arms for what seemed like forever....Megan and Rev Dalton gave us a minute to say something to each other before we started the ceremony and i told roger how happy i was as his wife and how happy i am as a mother to our amazing boys and we both said things to each other very intimate and meaning full that i will keep private and just for us....but we both cried again...Rev. Dalton then asked us to walk up to him and as we walked to think of the last 5 years, and of the journey of our marriage, and our two precious children, and how we have come to this place today.... he walked us through the day we got married and read the readings and prayers and then he asked we remember the day each of our boys was born. first he talked about holding Airey in our arms for the first time and then of the day Campbell was born and knowing our blessing of another healthy child, and of course Roger and I lost it again....we touch rings and he blessed our marriage once again and he asked us to repeat vows to continue to show each other affection and love even in the hectic times and reminded us both that the best gift we can give to our children is to let them see us love each other every day in how we spend time together and how we spend time with them as a family and lastly to remember to put our marriage first and the rest will take care of itself. that if we nurture this sacrament God has given us that we will be the best mother and father to our boys that we can be....we closed with another first kiss and then walked again down the stairs as husband and wife. We cant thank Reverend Dalton,Megan and all the staff at The Carneros that made that amazing day happen. Everything was so perfect and we are so lucky to have each other

.....Much Love, Roger and Sarah Ella