Christmas Success

We caught the reaction of Amy opening her christmas present on video...Enjoy!

The Annual Nerd Herd Christmas Extravaganza

We had an absolute BLAST this year at the party. Thanks Kimberly & Nelson for letting us trash your house. Don't forget to notice our beautiful yuppy sweater wear for the evening. I will have to explain myself in pics below....don't worry, it was thrown "mormon" style.

" Wine....I mean, rootbeer and crackers anyone?"

We had a rootbeer tasting party. What a cheezy, but oh so funny blast! Picture perfect Jess & Luke

The party hosts in our sweet evening attire. I can't say I felt very cute at the party. Then I looked at the pics....nope, not so cute last night. But we sure did have fun.

Notice Levi. What a hottie (I'm not hittin on your man Becca. I promise). How come you can't find those kinds of sweaters in the store anymore?

We were all sick by the end of the night from drinking to much rootbeer.

Me and my hubbie.

Below is our white elephant gift exchange.

Here is Becca & Levi with their fabulous prizes. Yes, Becca (once again) picked one of the best presents....this one labeled "Making Love Work." It came with a video, guidebook, and oh yes, cassette tapes. Levi came home with a 750 piece puzzle. He doesn't have to go back to Law school til mid January, so he'll have plenty of time to put it together. Let's hope it has all the pieces!

Do you think Dylan's present will fit? Laura is now going to be able to play the NSync game.

Grape juice for me (which I will actually get to use, yeah!) and Bryce will workout his figure back to shape with Kathy Smith workout from I think, 1992. That is, if he can find a VCR to put it in.

You don't want to know what Jess came home with. I will give you the name though. "Jolly Pecker" is now the new family member of the Cook household. Congrats Jess! Luke is holding his holiday collection of Pezz dispensers.

Do you like their hats? I LOVE Nelson in this picture. Can he have made a better face wearing the hat? Kimberly also will now get to smell like the dollar store brand of Obsession for men.

Jody's kids will be excited that she is bringing home a quacking alarm clock. I wonder how long she'll keep that thing. You can't tell but Brian is holding a framed picture of Edward Cullens. I wonder if he is as obsessed with Edward, as much as the all the girls in the room are. He seemed pretty excited when he opened his present. jk. Brian.

As you can see, we had a great time. That is not all that was done at the party though. We took some sweet group shots in Kimberly's studio. To check those out go to www.tiltphotography.com/blog Hopefully those of you who couldn't make it will be able to come next year. We missed you!

My Daily Dose of Sunshine

I went to Tilt Photography this week to get Levi's pics before he get's any bigger! Of course, he marked his territory during the shoot followed by many different episodes of spit up. Gotta love the baby picture day's huh! They turned out pretty cute anyway. Thanks for doing them Kimberly! And thanks to V. for the cute outfit!

once again...Levi showing his tricks

The last video I put on of Levi doing this wasn't very good. So here it is again. Levi will be 3 months old on Sunday!!! The last 3 months being prego goes by SO slow. Then you have the baby and it feels like time get's put into turbo or something. I have completely enjoyed him since the minute he was born. He truly is the sunshine of my day. He LOVES to smile and talk to anyone who will give him the attention. Forget about any of that though, this is what makes Bryce proud.

Preschool Christmas Program

Kenz had her program today. She did a great job at singing a ton of songs they had learned throughout the year.

After the program, she thought it would be funny to put her stuff on ME and take a picture. Do I look like Rudolph? Me and my girl! Do you know how to teach kids to "smile" with their REAL smile? I'm up for suggestions.

Kenz and Carson singing "Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer"

More action shots of the singing

Aren't they adorable? Here she is with her 2 preschool buds Morgan & Carson. Notice, the only one looking at my camera is Kenzie, the other two happen to be looking at their mom's cameras while they take the picture. We train our kids right, don't we!

Charlie Brown Christmas House

This is our wonderful house all lit up for the Christmas season! Do you like the look? Bryce spent all of this time putting up the lights but NEVER plugged them in before. When he got done hanging them, he realized most of them don't work! Our kids like it and that's all that matters. Hopefully they don't look at all the festive neighbors to closely! It makes out for a good laugh anyway. Every time I pull up at night to house I can't help but giggle, which usually turns to a belly laugh!

FHE Christmas Party

This year Bryce's parents threw quite a Christmas bash on Monday night. They invited a bunch of people with at least 20 kids or so. Santa came and all the kids ran down stairs......at least everyone but Cache. All Cache was interested in was the train that was upstairs. He sat in the front room by himself watching the train go around and around. It's so cute to see how boy and how girl little kids come when they are born. To bad we discovered this fasination he has with trains AFTER we finished Christmas shopping!

After bribing Cache will candy, we got him to sit on Santa's lap....just enough time for a couple pics and then he was back upstairs and in front of the train.

If you know McKenzie at all, you know she is a talker! A lot of times to much of a talker! I don't think there is a shy bone in her body. Here we are trying to get a picture taken. All she can do is keep talking about everything she's done this year, this month, today, yesterday, what she wants for Christmas......Santa finally just looked at me and I took the shot. She didn't even hear me in the back ground saying "smile sweety, look at mommy sweety, there is still a long line of kids that need to see Santa McKenzie...."Santa sure does have to come with LOTS of patience! :)

He sung them a bunch of songs and also read them a couple stories. It was really cute.

During the holiday season I often wonder, where did this whole Santa thing come from? How come the whole world has become part of it? We make our kids believe that there is this magic man who visits each one of them at their own house on Christmas Eve, he's really fat and comes through a chimney (we don't even have one of those) to bring them presents. It's become such a big thing that EVERYONE has to play it up. I think it's really fun, but it is kinda messed up. Same with the tooth fairy and the Easter bunny.

Truly the "City of Lights"

Above are some of the lighted things. The parade lasted a good hour or so!

Bryce, Cache, Me & Kenz waiting before the parade

Aunt Trisha & Dylan

Abby, Ellie & McKenzie

Our little bundle of joy bundled for the festivities

So I have talked about all the fun stuff Spanish Fork has to offer to families. Most of you who live in Utah have visited Spanish Fork during the holidy season to see the "Festival of Lights". This year I found out that they have a light parade. We thought it would be a fun festive thing to do with the family so we bundled up the kids and met up with our cousins. I was SO impressed! For being a podunk town (or so I thought before I moved here), I couldn't believe how well they did. We will plan on making this a regular tradition! It was so much fun!

I wanna be a ROCK STAR!!

Forever Kenzie has been telling us that she wants to be a princess when she grows up. She also wants to marry Daddy. She is still sure that she will be marrying daddy, but the occupation has changed. Lately (I don't know where this came from) Kenzie has decided that she wants to be a "Rock Star" like "Miley Cyrus". She has always loved to sing, but this rock star thing is new. I find her singing in her microphone all the time. She also tries to bob her head "like a rock star" every time music comes on. As parents, do you help your kid achieve their dreams as a "rock star" or not??? That's my question. Here is a video of her talking about being a rock star.

Levi's Acrobatic Talents

At 8 weeks old, Bryce already has Levi doing tricks!

Levi at 8 weeks

Levi turns 8 weeks tomorrow. It goes by SO fast. I guess now I have to graduate from "weeks" and start calling him a 2 month old. So sad :( As least he get's cuter everyday.

Reflection of Life

Today I went to my old bosses funeral. Chuck Warner was his name. He was my boss at Collision Safety Engineering for 6 years. He was such an amazing man. Knowing I would be going today, yesterday I was reflecting on the influence he had on the people who knew him. As well as the accomplishments he had achieved in this life. He has successfully created a multi-million dollar buisness, he had his PhD, he had 11 children, he was so strong in the gospel.....and he was an amazing teacher. He was a professor at BYU for quite some time before he started CSE (his company). He also always found time to play. He loved the outdoors and was always up for an adventure. When thinking of all his accomplishments, I thought about how he had influenced my life. He always pushed me to work hard. He also always believed I would be able to finish a project and make a deadline. He was hard to please at times, but when I came through he made me feel so proud. He truly cared about me as an individual, even though I was just his secretary. He had so many Christ life attributes. It really made me wonder where I stand and my influence on others. What am I doing to make a difference in other peoples lives? I came to the conclusion that I really have a lot of work to do. I can be of help to others more than I realize. Watching someone pass into the next life is always a good time to reflect on how short this life really is. There is so much for us to do in this life of good for our families and friends as well as our society. I hope that I can be a better more Christ like example like he was to me.

Still a princess everyday!

McKenzie has a friend Morgan that lives down the street. The other day they were playing in her room quietly, and when they came out they looked like this. Both of them STILL (it's been over a year now that McKenzie has had the obsession) love to dress up any time they are together.

Our Handsome Little Devil!

Before Church last week I couldn't help myself but to take some pics of Cache in his new suit. He is like his Daddy, he LOVES new clothes so he was strutting his stuff around the house, and I had to capture it!

Trick or Treating

Here are the kids right before we went trick or treating. This was Cache's first year trick or treating and it was hillarious! He didn't quite understand why anyone would want to put the candy in the bucket. Eating it was so much better. Until he realized that he was getting ALOT of candy and couldn't eat it fast enough before he got more. Then he just started a system that went like this...candy in right hand, new candy in left had get's transferred to right hand - right hand candy goes into bucket. Left hand candy gets opened up until next house where it will be tranferred to right hand and old right hand candy to bucket. When we got home, there was a ton of opened candy barely touched as he didn't have much time to eat it before he got more. On top of everything else, we got to run down the sidewalk and stay outside for a VERY long time. He was a happy little boy! As for Levi, Bryce asked me why in the world would we put him in a costume when he wasn't even going. I answered "for all the people who come here to trick or treat". He still thought it was ridiculous....men just don't understand ;)

Pumpkin Carving

Here is our pumpkin carving extravaganza. As you can see from our blog, we had the best fall season ever. It seems like it was jam packed with fun activities.

The Annual Wadley Farms Bash!

Our little Levi at 5 weeks old

McKenzie & Lily

We had so much fun at the halloween party! Thanks Jess and Sasha for inviting us again.