Not the Waffle Iron!!

During the Christmas Break disaster struck...the waffle iron quit working. Right in the middle of cooking too I might add. Mendis is always making waffles for breakfast so whenever the kids are home they can count on at least 1 waffle breakfast. Lucky for all of us I got 2 crock pots for Christmas so I quickly traded one in and got a new waffle iron so the tradition lives on...whew.
So in my defense of the cooked breakfast thing here let me explain my view. Yes Mendis is usually the one who cooks breakfast because I prefer cold cereal. Really I do. WAY less fattening and after 28 years + of cooking I can't get real excited about rustling up yet another meal. Also I don't care for milk so I like to have cereal so I get some milk in my diet somewhere. Either cold or hot but cold is easier. If not cereal I love yogurt and fruit so as a result Mendis can usually be found making breakfast. He's not such a fan of the breakfast I like. Win win

Gingerbread Challenge of the World!

Every year on Christmas Eve we have the Gingerbread championship of the world. It started as a way to keep the kids entertained while I made dinner etc and has grown to a full blown day long event. All the kids and I make our own so we have a whole village by the time we are finished. Over the years we have had a train and train station, walmart, churches, castles, Australian home, igloo, you name it. Last year we had a chocolate bell everyone had to incorporate into their designs so we need to do that again next year.

What a dang mess:

The trash talking usually starts days ahead of time and gets heated by the time we are done. Some people (Hayden) take it pretty seriously. This year Hayden did another football stadium. He spent hours getting everything just so. Jeff made a castle with tons and tons of candy. Christina made a Mediterranean villa. I stuck with a traditional house. The humidity was not our friend this year because things started collapsing early on. Even the graham crackers got soft by that night. Hayden was pretty torn up when the humidity made the tootsie roll supports collapse on the stadium. We were just hoping everything would make it to the annual gingerbread house shooting fest. Every year on New Year's Day we take them all out to the hills and shoot them up. We get 22's and rifles going until there is nothing left. Way more fun than just pitching them in the trash.

Hayden's Pirate Stadium:

Christina's Villa:

Jeff's Castle:

My house:

Out with the old

After much anticipation we finally replaced the tv! We were one of the last holdouts left I think. Our old tv wasn't even a flat screen and I'm not sure what size it was...pretty small compared to the huge tv's everyone else seems to have. We all wanted to get a new one except Mendis. He just didn't feel the need. Turns out the prices of led/lcd tv's finally started to drop to make room for the new 3D tvs so we took the plunge. Merry Christmas to us! HD is so amazing we are still in awe. 55 inches of tv bliss!

Christmas Letter 2010

Greetings from the Coopers

We hope this finds you all doing well this Christmas season. Hopefully we all have the chance to catch our breath after the hectic year. Seems like it never really slows down. We have been busy with the usual stuff. We spent alot of time watching Hayden play football, basketball and baseball. Thank goodness we enjoy running around watching him play because we did alot of it. Not only did he play on the high school teams he played on an AAU team this year too for basketball. In football they went to state again so that was fun. The day after the state game Mendis, Jeff and I flew to Orlando and went on our first cruise to the Bahamas. We all were there to celebrate Mom & Dad's 50th anniversary. We had a great time and are now scheming to find a way to go on another one!

This summer we went to Park City for our vacation. We loved just getting away from it all for a few days. It was actually the first time we had been there and just fell in love with the place. We spent most of our time watching movies and relaxing which is just what we needed. We went to the Manti Pageant in June. That was fun to see again because it's been years since we had been there.

Probably the biggest relief of the year was Hayden getting his Eagle Scout badge done in time. He finished it with a day to spare even! We'd like to think he can coast now until graduation but we know that will never happen. Hard to believe our baby is 18 and a senior on the way out the door. He plans on putting his mission papers in this spring. Jeff is enjoying life up at BYUI in Rexburg. He takes joy in getting good grades and is still an adrenaline junkie. I think the ice and snow will slow him down a bit now until it thaws. Christina is in her second year of teaching 5th grade in Provo. She loves it and the kids just love her. Ashley and Benjy just had their 2nd little boy last month. They named him Cooper Mendis and he looks just like Rees. Rees is still running circles around us. We love being Grandpa and Grammy but we could use some more energy. Mendis is still as busy as ever. He has tons to do at work running both the engineering and operations departments for the power company. He spends most nights and all Sundays at church. Between work, school and Hayden's games he finds a sliver of time to cut weeds that never quit and watch the Amazing Race and the Biggest Loser with me. I am still the office manager at the eye Dr office and working in young women's.

Life is full but apparently that works for us. We have no idea what is would be like to be bored. Hopefully we don't find out next year when we are empty nesters!! Have a great new year everyone and Merry Christmas from the Coopers.

My Christmas Project

I had such fun working on my little Christmas project this year. Every year I try to make something special for the neighbors and friends and family but sometimes thinking of the idea is the hardest part. This year I decided I wanted to make truffles. There were days when I wondered what I had gotten myself into but I got it done with plenty of sanity to spare..I think. I just worked away between basketball games and got 'em ready to go. They looked so cute all packaged up in the special little foil boxes I found. I have been sampling all the time so I have to admit I am a little sick of them.
I took pictures of them and made a photo key so everyone could tell what in the heck they were eating. Yeah I am odd but oh well. I have a great idea for next year already!!

Towel Art

So anyone who has been on a cruise or a Disneyworld hotel knows the fun of towel art I like to call it. The housekeeping staff makes such fun animals out of your towels. We loved finding them there. Funny thing is we all got different ones. Grandpa tried to catch them leaving them in our rooms but never quite did it.

The Monkey!

The lobster!

Probably our favorite with Mendis' sunglasses on!

THE Cruise!! UPDATED Pics

The big day finally came. Mendis and Jeff and I flew out to Orlando to celebrate Mom & Dad's anniversary with the whole fam on a cruise. We were pretty darn excited. It would have been lots more fun if the rest of our family could have come with us but we made the best of it. Here we were setting sail for the big adventure!

We sat in the same section of the dining room so all 20 of us could be together for dinner. Thank goodness we did or we wouldn't have seen much of the rest of the family. Here is mom really getting into the song during dinner. Now you must understand we were all flinging our napkins around but only she is in the picture having fun. Hey Carolyn & Brent...party poopers. Dad's got a menu he's busy.

The water was just gorgeous. The pictures hardly do it justice. The blues and greens were amazing but don't let it fool you...it was cold.

We hung out with mom and dad. You can see we wore them out!

After the siesta we did a walk around the private island we were on for the day. It was called Coco Kay. It was a blast. So relaxing. There was a BBQ for lunch. We loved this part of the island and wished we had found it sooner.

Here we are on the nature trail. Very lush!

Mendis and Jeff went Kayaking. Looked like they had fun. We so regret not getting jet ski's for them but we thought we would spend more money in Nassau the next day. Darn it.

Mom and Dad got a paddle boat. Mendis and Jeff thought it would be fun to pretend to ram them with their kayak. I don't know if it was that or the angle they had to sit in that made it a very short trip for them.

Here's our boat:

That night was the "Anniversary Party" at dinner. We all dressed up which was perfect because it was formal night too. I gave a little blurb about a roll of pennies. 50 pennies some shiny and bright some sort of looking like they had been through all kinds of stuff and how that was alot like marriage. Every year had memories and they all added up to 50 cents no matter what they looked like. Of course I got choked up and couldn't do it justice.Oh well. Here they are looking at the picture book I compiled for them of all their years and our family through the years.

The whole gang:The "Original" Davy Fam

Here is Nassau from the top of a hill by the Governor's Mansion. There's Atlantis the big resort in the background. We didn't get to it so now we have something to do if we go back!
Poor mom and dad we drug them all over town with us that day. They were troopers. We loved the queen's steps but it was quite a hike up all the steps to the fort. I was sucking air.

This is a cool picture not only because that's Jeff down there looking over the fort wall but you can see all the cruise ships in the port for the day. There must have been 10,000 tourists there with us apparently. I couldn't tell where they all were hiding!

We had conk fritters for lunch. It was a pricey meal but we were so glad we did it instead of going back to the ship or doing something we could just do at home. Wish I could have tried them but they are shell fish so I stayed clear. Didn't know where the hospitals were and didn't want to find out.We did lots of shopping but didn't find the best shops until just before they closed. Loved them. Wish we had more time and that I had lots more money. We had a lovely carriage ride around the town that night before we went back to dinner compliments of mom and dad.

I like this pic of Nassau that night just before we left port at midnight:

We tried to not eat a ton for dinner to save room for the midnight buffet the last night. It was a good theory. We just ate lots twice. The Midnight buffet:We went to the show that night before dinner too and we enjoyed that. Here's the party going on during the midnight buffet. Believe it or not it was the first time we were poolside the whole time. I didn't think mom and dad were poolside folk.

It was a very cool trip. We loved our first cruise and would definitely go again. Didn't see much of some of my family which was a bummer since we don't see each other much anyway but I think everyone had fun.