Meet Cooper

Giving Jackson lots of kisses this morning!

Guarding our door from all the workers doing the siding on our house!

We love his spotted tongue!

John's new best friend!

We adopted Cooper from Adopt A Golden Atlanta. He is a 2 year old Golden Retriever (mixed with a little something else). He is already potty trained and is so well behaved (well, at least so far!). John has been waiting many, many years for this moment to come and we all could not be happier with Cooper! Jackson has been playing tug of war with him and his doggy toy rope (I did not teach him this & it is so cute!). He LOVES to kiss on Jackson and Jackson loves to point out Coopers eyes, teeth, nose, and so forth :) Jackson lights up when we are coming down the stairs and see him :) Jackson has also tasted Cooper's food a few times too ;) Yuck! He is a pretty laid back dog for the most part ESPECIALLY considering they were banging on our house all day long replacing our siding! He only barked a couple times and it was mostly at the workers (which I liked b/c that means he wants to protect us from strangers). He has been sitting at my feet while I type this, which he does often around the house. We are so proud to introduce all of you to Cooper and I can't wait to post more about him.

Photography Class

An owl from the Memphis Zoo

Baby Halle :)

sweet Aubrey!

catching the water at a stand still

learning how not to use the flash inside

Maureens beautiful flowers!

Dextr's beautiful flowers!

I just finished a 6 week long photography class here in Dallas. I now feel so much more comfortable with my camera. My camera is a Cannon Rebel Xsi. We paid a pretty penny for the camera and I really wanted to get all I could out of it! I LOVE taking pictures in general and especially of Jackson. I can't wait to take some of our little girl when she comes! I now know how to change my shutter speed, choose my film speed, and play with the apeture (all terms I knew nothing about before!). I still have a lot to learn, but at least I am on my way! I have also started to edit photos too...making the color brighter, cropping, softening the photo, and retouching imagages. Here are some of the pictures I took with my new found passion!

It's a GIRL!!

Busy, Busy, Busy

John, Marshall, Russ, Justin, Wade, Trinidad, and Steve Mann on a fishing trip last weekend out in Jacks Creek, Cohutta Wilderness.

Our trip to Memphis this weekend for Opa's birthday!

At Jumpit's with some of Jackson's friends!

"SUPER J"!!!

Fixin' the lawnmower with Dad!

Checkin' out one of our many caterpillars!

Spending time with Grandma when John and Grandpa were out of town

We got to visit Tom and Ashley's a few weeks ago too! Despite this picture (he was ready to go to bed!) he had so much fun playing with them and all their dogs and cat too!

1 1/2 & Easter!!

He did a much better job at Grandmothers collecting eggs!

Visiting Great-Grandad!

Four generations of Ballard boys!

Can you tell he was excited about his Easter basket?!?!

playing in Grandmothers backyard

Megan swinging with Jackson

Aunt Dot helping Jackson with his bubbles!

Some of the Ballard family for Easter

Dressed and ready for church

This is when Jackson was waiting until they blew the whistle at our church Easter egg hunt!

Some of our friends from Sunday school and their kids!

18 month check-up:

Weight: 26 lbs 8oz (50th %ile)

Height: 33 inches (75 %ile)

I can't believe Jackson is a 1 1/2 years old! It's even crazier to think in just 6 short months he will be 2 and he will have a brother or sister! He is saying so many new words and really understanding what we say now. He LOVES to play outside with his bubbles, car, and grill! John takes him down to see the ducks almost every night after work. We have also begun putting him in "time-out". It seems to really work. Most the time even with the threat of it he will stop misbehaving! I have to admit it is hard to listen to him cry and 60 seconds (1 min. for each year a child is) seems like a lifetime!

We had a very busy and fun Easter weekend. We had our church Easter egg hunt on Saturday morning and Jackson put one whole egg in his basket ;) He was waaaaay to excited about the jumpy moonwalk things! He had a blast jumping in them!! Then we went to visit Grandfather at the nursing home. He looked great and it was so good to visit with him. On Sunday we went to church and then off to Grandmothers for Easter lunch and Easter egg hunt!

Grandma's Birthday

We had so much fun meeting Grandma and Grandpa for my mom's birthday dinner! Jackson was fascinated with my mom's blue tooth ;)

Jackson and Liam

Just having a snack and watchin' some T.V :)

I love this one, b/c I can hear them both grunting to get in at the same time ;)

mmmmm grilled cheese!

reading some books!

Jessi watched Jackson for me while I got my hair done the other day. As you can tell the boys had a very good time together! Thanks agian Jessi!