Christmas

There were lots of good memories made this Christmas Season! We were rather late getting started since our winter break didn't start until Dec 22 this year. So it made Christmas quite hectic I thought. We decided one night to have a Cooper taco night. We invited the whole family and we got everyone here but the Idaho kids! We even had Stacey & Terri down from Cedar City so that was super fun. Ashley's family came out from Henderson and Christina had just gotten here from Utah as well. We had a yummy feast of tacos and I made the now famous Cranberry cake with hot butter sauce. Oh my gosh it is good. I got the recipe from the OPD Christmas party a couple of weeks before. After dinner we sang Christmas carols and the guys did some Christmas errands before they joined us.

 Coop wasn't much into singing so played cars with Grandpa!

 For Christmas Eve this year we did something totally different. Instead of feeling sorry for ourselves for only having a grand total of 5 people for dinner we had a fondue since that only works with a small crowd! If the oil had stayed hot it would have been fabulous. It kept cooling off which really annoyed me but it was still fun. The chocolate fondue for dinner was of course the family favorite.

 Christmas morning dawned bright and early at around 8:30 ish. We had a lovely sleep in for the first time on about 20 years since that's how old Hayden is. He insists on a early start each Christmas morning. Not this year since he was in Chile! We got up and made the traditional sandwiches for brunch.

The tree wasn't bursting at the seams with gifts for the first time ever.

We opened presents just the three of us

 This was last year. Quite a difference huh...

 So after a nice relaxing brunch Christina and I went off to shower and get ready for our skype session with Hayden. I was right in the middle of shampoo rinse repeat when Mendis started yelling that Hayden had been trying to call us for 15 minutes!! I threw some clothes on and ran out there wet hair and all. Sure enough he had forgotten about daylight savings time and had been calling on our computer. This was the screen we saw...

Poor Hayden. I spent the first 15 minutes in a panic trying to call and text everyone who was supposed to come skype with him and praying they would get there before he had to go. Luckily he was on for about and hour and a half so there ended up being plenty of time to round everyone up.

Love these fun glasses he showed us! Wow he hadn't changed a bit. It was so fun to see him and talk to him. He sounded the same and he looked the same! Just a little older.

That's Jeff listening in on the cell phone since we didn't have the premium skype to conference call. Now I

wish I had thought about getting that!

And here is Hayden in Chile with us on the computer. How cool is that. We had such a great visit. It was a little hard to hear sometimes since I am partially deaf and Coopers aren't the quietest whispers haha but it was so fun that everyone could run over and visit with him. Loved it when he and Charlie talked spanish too. What a fun Christmas day we had. 

The day after Christmas we decided to go to go to Vegas and spend our Christmas $$. We spent the afternoon running around the mall with the crowds and then we thought we would spend the $$ mom and dad gave us at the Winn Buffet. So when we got there there were people every where. The line for the buffet was two and a half hours long so we thought we might try Caesar's new buffet instead. It as only 2 hours so we really saved there!! We got seated at 10pm and the line closed behind us. They stopped serving at 10:30 and we had to be out the door by 11 so we scarfed in our dinner. Christina and I were in quite a panic to see everything and pick and then cram it in while we could. As a result we just loaded up the table and ate ourselves to crammed full. We had a really fun time but I can't imagine how fun it would have been if we hadn't been rushed!!

A couple of nights later we had Alisha and Ashley out and we had a tea party for us girls. We watched "The Inheritance" which is an awesome movie and had real homemade scones and clotted cream from England! (thanks to Carolyn's Christmas gift) Wow was that ever fun. We even got out the teacups and had a huge assortment of herbal teas. We had a blast that night and a good cry during the movie haha!

Another epic Christmas!

ReeS's BiRthDaY ParTY!!

Ashley & Benjy (read Ashley) decided since Rees's birthday would not actually be during the Thanksgiving holiday for once it would be the perfect time to have his first friend Birthday party! Yeah! Love birthday parties especially when I am not in charge for once. I just got to show up. They had it at Run plus Fun in Las Vegas which as you can see by the pictures is a big ol' play place for the kids to run around in and enjoy at the top of their lungs. Well maybe you can tell anything about the noise level by the pictures but trust me on this....very loud! But yelling and screaming aside it was so fun. Shannon from work was there with her daughter so I had someone to hang out with while Ashley was hostess.

It was hilarious trying to keep up with the boys. I couldn't even get a non blurry picture until the end because they were busy running around constantly. Here is the birthday boy having a small break.

 Cooper was in heaven and preferred to just play by himself thanks. He just ran from thing to thing as happy as a clam.

 Rees was racing with Shannon and Lexie on the big slides. I really likes the slides because it didn't involve crawling around as much on my hands and knees. I swear I pulled a muscle that night ( read LAME here).

Cooper enjoying himself some more.

Rees locking Cooper out of the fun zone.

Can you see Rees hiding in the ball pit? I can see one eye peeking out.

 Ashley made a super cool Batman cake for Ree's super cool batman party. The kids loved it! Brought back memories of all Jeff's Batman cakes. In fact the Batman face was from those years. Too bad I lost his chest insignia over the years and Ashley had to improvise. She did a great job.

King for a day opening his presents on his throne. The party room was pretty amazing. Where was all this in Overton 20 years ago when I needed it??

Ashley even made a BatMobile pinata that was awesome. The kids beat that to death.

It was a super fun party. Hayden would have had so much fun playing in all those tubes and things with the boys! I am amazed that Ashley got all that together so well being pregnant and sick, yuck. It will be hard to top this one. There's a challenge for you Ash!hahaha

So now Rees is five years old. Hard to believe how fast time is flying by. We love you Rees and Happy Birthday big guy!

Thanksgiving

I guess if I am going to print out 2012 I better get up to date soon. This year is speeding right along. We did have a wonderful Thanksgiving this year. We got to have everyone of our kids home with us that are allowed to be here haha. Hayden was the only one missing. Jeff & Rachel arrived pretty late Tuesday night. They brought Tori and Dreah with them from BYUI. They are my nieces from Tennessee and we were so excited they could come for Thanksgiving this year. We started off our holiday the next night after work with a trip up to Cedar City for a family taco fest at Grandpa & Grandma Cooper's house. It was fun to see Stacey& his family, Rob & his family, and Charlie & Alisha all there too. We met up Christina there on her way home. Going to Cedar meant that there wasn't going to be homemade rolls etc for Thanksgiving but I didn't care if no one else did. It was a fun night visiting with everyone.

 We had a little time to kill while we waited for our feast Thursday to be ready so the  kids went 4 wheeling. This was a first for Dreah for sure and maybe even Tori too! They got nice and dusty so we made them eat outside. Nah not really. The weather was so nice we decided to eat out on the patio. Plus our neighbors were gone to it was really peaceful out there for once so we took advantage of it.

 Jeff was a big help getting rid of all the turkey skin! We pretty much ate it all between the two of us!

Group Photo time.

Dessert time! Hhmmm which one to choose...

We had to gear up after all because all us girls went into Vegas to go Black Friday shopping. We left about 9pm and got back about 4am. It was so fun. We hit up Target first then we did Kohl's. The checkout line there was horrendous though. We were going to go to H&M but it didn't open until 4 so we decided to call it a night. Or a morning. We went through the drive through at Burger King and went home. The girls in the back seat slept all the way but Christina kept me company on the drive. It was so fun but the deals were kinda weak.

 Friday Jeff had a ton of correcting to do for work. He is a TA at BYUI and has to grade and record papers every single week. Lucky for us he brought that week's worth down to do.

We also played a killer game of Croquet while everyone was here. It was nice to get outside and do something. We missed Hayden and his trash talking game though!

Friday we took a hike too. We took everyone to the Valley of Fire for a little hike. I love this one with the little slot canyon and stuff. It's my favorite.

I am not giving an explanation on this one. Tori & Rachel!

After our fun afternoon hike we had Ashley and the family out for dinner and games.We played Kinect games with everyone. I got it at black Friday so we were anxious to try it out.

While the kids were all home we even decorated the whole house for Christmas which explains the Christmas tree behind them already! That's a nasty little chore that is good to get over with!
It was so fun to have a full house this year for Thanksgiving. We had alot of fun together and got alot accomplished together too.

Veteran's Day 2012

 This was a fun Veteran's Day for us. It was weird having everything take place on Monday so our timetable was a little off. Mendis' birthday was Sunday so we had a two day celebration instead of everything being on Veteran's Day. We always start off with grape juice and Egg on Toast which never disappoints! Love that stuff. Then we troop on down to Mendis' parade. This year Rees and Cooper were here with Ashley while Benjy had to work. It was so cold too that day but it didn't slow us down too much. The boys really got into the candy throwing during the parade. They got so much candy they couldn't begin to eat it all even though Cooper tried. 

 We met up with the Coopers in our traditional spot in the island by Maverick. I am not sure why we always set up there because nobody ever performs there because it's on the curve of the road but sure is convenient. SO after the parade we headed home for a relaxing day. Mendis took the boys down to the river for a rock throwing session. Cooper wanted to get right in the river of course. They threw rocks and dirt clods into the river until there was nothing left to throw.

 Then to complete the outdoor extravaganza they hit up the sand box. It is so fun to watch them play with the boys old trucks. They need a little tlc but they work! It was a fun day. Of course we had tacos for dinner with the Cooper Clan for Mendis' Bday too.