Pack It In!!

With Ben working six days a week this entire month, his one day off is Saturday. So this Saturday we packed in the activities! We had our ward Christmas Breakfast, and Santa paid a visit. Then we went sledding with our good friends the Earls. Followed by dinner at Trolley Square and lights at Temple Square with my cousins and their families. It was a great day together!


We're working on an arranged marriage between Charlie and Emma Earl! A few weeks ago she came home from school and said "I am in love with Charlie." "He has a very cute face." Love it!



My Boys!!

At Temple Square there were these two big trees just totally ablaze with awesome orange and yellow lights. The picture doesn't do it justice!

Packing it in worked out this day!

Happy Happy Birthday Charlie Dear!!

Mr. Charlie-Boy turned Seven on December 1st. Pretty amazing how time flies!

Charlie on his actual birthday.


We had a great time a few days later, with lots of cousins for his birthday party. The guests included:
Cousins: Gracie, Susie, Rosie, Max, Maddie, Alyx, Ethan, Braden
Aunts/Uncles: Lynette and Jared, Bret and Laura
Grandma G also came! Thank you everyone for coming!!

Minute to Win It-Shoveling Snow game-the kids were pretty funny to watch shaking their heads trying to get the cotton balls off their nose!

Make a wish!



At 7 years old Charlie loves:
School-he's quite a good reader now, working his way through chapter books
His friends at school-I hear the most about Marcus, Sawyer, and Israel
Lego's-been having quite a fun time building his Lego's starwars collections
Skiing-he chose to get ski boots for his birthday and less toys
How To Train Your Dragon
Putting up Christmas decorations
Playing with cousins and friends

He also is:
A healthy eater-his choice for birthday dinner: Salmon and green beans and almost didn't even want to eat his birthday doughnuts on his birthday or his cupcake at his party

Still sweet to his Mom, although gets a little too cool to say hello or hug his Mom when I help at his school.

Still loves soccer although he's on break from it during the winter.

Top Reader in his school class for reading the most minutes.

Gets awards at school for "Always paying attention and knowing the answers."

Really good at his math homework and he likes to have homework.

Still my early riser!

We love you Charlie!

Happy Halloween! Over a month late....

Eleven Years!

How we celebrated 11 years married!
All together, with our two beautiful boys.


Last year for our tenth Ben and I went to Las Vegas, alone, for a great little get away. This year I strongly felt I wanted to just do something together as a family.

I have never been to Arches before. It's awesome! Awesome I say. I noticed in the parking lots that Utah plates were very rare. I saw Tennesee, Texas, Washington, Oregon, lots of California, and a few others. I think sometimes we take for granted the awesomeness that may only be a few hours drive away for us. People come from all over the country to see these! There were also lots of people from other countries too. We loved it.

Just a little brag moment for our little Andy, who has been potty trained for several weeks. I worried when we started our Delicate Arch hike that he wouldn't be able to hold it the whole time. We even brought a pull-up for emergencies. Ha! He made it the whole time no problem, and not once on our trip did he have an accident. SA-WEET! What a good little Manny-man.


Day 2 was tiring! He slept a good 45 minutes or more bobbing around in the backpack.


Charlie is a rockstar hiker and I started calling him my mountain goat because he was so good. He liked that a lot, and started saying, "I'm a mountain goat, eee-awww." Ha ha! We reminded him that a donkey says eee-aww not a goat. So funny!


Ben found some fun off-road trails to four wheel drive on, the scenery was gorgeous. This hole looks a lot smaller before you get to it. I was a little worried we wouldn't fit, but then I climbed out and saw it was fine.


Now if this isn't a perfect "Backcountry Ben" photo then I don't know what is!

First Grader!

Charlie is loving first grade! He thinks eating lunch at school is pretty cool, and he's also rocking the reading biz! His good buddy Sawyer from kindergarten is in his class and I had the fun privilege of helping settle the kids in on their first day for lunch, and watching them giggle and talk together excitedly made me happy.

These guys are my favorite.

It doesn't get any more real than this! Welcome to the Cook household!

Tradition!

As our little family grows up, we're trying to establish some family traditions for holidays that are just our own.

I am loving our July 4th tradition!


Our good friends Melanie and Jerry (yes, I still like to say "Ben and Jerry" this and that) host a neighborhood breakfast every 4th, and we ride our bikes up, have breakfast with our great neighbors, then we ride our bikes just over a mile to the parade.

I love that we have something active and physical along with our tradition. We would've done it three years ago but at that time Andy was only a few months old and unable to ride in the bike trailer. So this is year two!

Last year the sirens made Charlie cry, and Andy didn't care too much one way or the other about the parade.

Finally this year, we all enjoyed all of it and there was no crying, well amost. I like parades and if you combine good ol' love for my country, toss in a little nostalgia from my youth, and the fact that sirens also can have a very sad connotation, it is probably no surprise to those who know me well enough that parades actually make me almost cry a bit too. I usually try to hide my goober-ness beneath my sunglasses or blame it on the bright sun in my eyes! Shhh....

Happy Fourth of July!

Beach boys!

I have a little catching up to do on the blog because of my prior frustration with uploading pictures to blogger. Today it seems to be working pretty well, phew!

In March during spring break we headed out to San Diego and split a beach house with Ben's Mom Anita, and his sisters Laura and Heather and their cute families. We totaled 7 kids and 7 adults!

It was SUCH fun. Our beach house had great ocean views and was really nice!

Our first dinner on our first night!

We made Gracie a mermaid. The kids LOVED playing in the sand.

Grandma's are special.

It just DOES NOT get any better then this:


We visited Sea World. Within the first 10 minutes of arriving Andy split his chin open but all is well now!

Then one day in Disneyland!

Here we all are on the way into Small World!

Charlie loved Buzz Lightyear ride, Small World, and the Winnie the Pooh ride.

Andy seemed pretty happy the whole time and didn't fuss the entire 11 hours we were there!
He even had a special moment with his Fairy Godmother:
Andy chillin' with the girls Maddie and Rosie, waiting for fairly like things:

I thought of the Beach Boys at this moment, "Two girls for every boy!" Gotta love California!

It was such a fun trip, the kids were great, the beach house was perfect. Lots of great memories! Thanks to Ben's family for being so awesome and doing fun things like this!! I loved it.

My bliss:

And then, a few weeks later, I turned thirty.

And that's all I have to say about that.

Our little Cricket

We brought home our newest family member on Saturday!
Meet Cricket. She's our 11 week old Yorkie puppy. She weighs about 2 lbs.

Her first night she was so quiet and good. I was shocked. I expected her to cry all night! She was quiet as a mouse. She's been an absolute doll and seems to love us already. The boys just love to see her and she's really cuddly. What a cute little creature!


Ben said "I'm glad you talked me into it."

He loves her too!