Chicago and Cooper's birthday

We just got back from a wonderful trip to Chicago. Matt's younger brother Cory and his wife Lindsay were visiting from Virginia with their new baby (born the end of Dec) and they were blessing the baby there in Chicago so we decided that we would fly out and see them and meet "baby Owen". It was so wonderful to see them again since it had been a whole year since we last saw them, and little Owen is SOOOO cute. Below is a picture of TJ with Owen. Owen actually looks quite a bit like TJ did when he was a baby, so that's fun. It was great to be there with the family and to catch up with everyone. We were also able to share some fun news that Owen won't be the only little one around this year. We are actually expecting our third baby on September 11th. I'm not super excited about the due date, but as my doctor said, better a due date than a birth date. Hopefully I can be induced at least a day or so before that if I haven't gone on my own. We are probably not going to find out the gender, so that will be a surprise, but we are really excited (although I'm not excited to be getting a big belly already).

Here's a picture of Grandpa Evans (Matt's dad) and Cooper. He is SUCH a great grandpa and the boys just adore him. We are sad that we only get to see Grandma and Grandpa Evans a few times a year now, but we enjoy being close to my family, so I guess you can't have it all, right?

Below is a picture of the 4 boy cousins all within a year and a half of each other, and we live within 30 minutes of all of them. Collin, Luke, Seth, and TJ. I have a picture of them together when TJ was about 6 months old, so it's fun to get little snapshots of them through the years. It will be fun to see them grow up together. TJ definitely enjoys being around his cousins, that's for sure.

Below is Cooper on his 2nd birthday. He is so obsessed with balls right now, so I knew I had to do that for his birthday cake. I kept asking him if he wanted a baseball or a basketball, and he would reply "Soccer ball". I really didn't want to do a soccer ball (because of the design on the ball, nothing against the sport), and I thought maybe he didn't realize what all the balls looked like, so I showed him a picture of the cake pan box of a baseball and a basketball and asked him which one he wanted, but he found a soccer ball and pointed to it, so I bit the bullet and decided to at least try. I was pretty pleased how it turned out, and he seemed to love his cake, so it was worth it. It's hard to believe that he's already 2 years old. Boy how time flies.