All I want for Christmas

Dear Santa,

All I want for Christmas is my husband back. Now don't get me wrong he has not gone anywhere physically, he is still around. He still sits at my dinner table every night, he still walks next to me when we walk down the street, he still sits across from me on our date night, and sits next to me in the movies. But for a year now he has been very distracted, when I am asking him questions he gives me very delayed answers, he many times does not hear me when I am talking to him, when we are driving in the car he has a hard time keeping his eyes on the road, when we are on vacation he does not pay attention to the wonderful sights that we are seeing, when we are watching television in the evening he is not watching, when we are the childrens performances he has a hard sitting still. When we are out to dinner, I am usually having a one sided conversation. So Santa, I have a plan to get my husband back, on Christmas Eve when you come to visit my house to leave presents for my wonderful children I will leave my husbands Iphone inconspicuously under the christmas tree where you can casually tuck it away inside your coat and take it back to the North Pole. There will be no trace of where he can find it and he will never know that you have taken it. I believe that this will break him out of his Iphone zombie state and my husband will return. Thanks for all your help this year.

Merry Christmas,

Angie

PS~ I am sure there is an app for this!

I Love Fall

Fall is my favorite season. Even though we don't have pretty fall trees, I still love the smell outside when it starts to cool off in the desert.


We had a great Halloween!!!

Macey was a gumball machine

Gage was a fireman

Kelsey is a sassy witch

and Porter was a terrifying werewolf!!!
Connor had a church fireside that night and was not able to go trick-or-treating, we were really proud of his choice.

Our Fun Summer

We had a very busy fun summer, I am sad to see it end. I have truly enjoyed not having any school schedule to have to follow and enjoying all the summer getaways we were able to go on. We started off our summer in Pine AZ. you have to go early in the summer because it gets so hot. We went with my sisters and my parents, it was so much fun, with cooking outside, eating smores, kids playing in the tree house, walking down to the candy store, and cousins getting to play together for three full days!!!

For our anniversary I surprised Tyson with a 4 day trip to Chicago. I had him convinced that we were going over night to Sedona. So on Thursday he came home from the gym and I had everything all packed and ready to go. He was really and truly confused because his calendar was full of appointments for that day. I had to explain that they were all pretend, and that I had set everything up!! We had a great time. We happened to be there during the "Taste of Chicago" which we thought was extremely overrated. It is where a lot of restaurants set up booths down by the lake and you can buy tickets and taste their menus to see if you like their food. We ended up spending 24 dollars and walked away from there hungry. Friday night our good friends Kenneth and Shelley Lawlor met us at our hotel. This was another BIG surprise for Tyson. They live in Missouri so we don't get to see them very often so I thought it would be so fun to spend a few days with them. They knocked on our hotel room door and I let them in, Kenneth walked in and said "hey dude, whats up?" and Tyson just stared at Kenneth, it just didn't register for such a long time what was going on.
The highlights of our trip were : the water tower, visited the american girl store, ate chicago pizza, and Garretts Gourmet Popcorn (yum!), ate Ghiradelli hot fudge sundaes, visited the Science and Industry Museum, our room had a view of the Chicago River (so cool), rode the Elevated train, ate at Potbellies subs~ twice (this was my favorite thing we ate the whole time)!!! and visited Navy Pier.
We were sad to leave the Lawlors as they are going to be living in Missouri for a few more years. We hope to see them soon.

In July Connor turned TWELVE!!!!!! He is a priesthood holder and everything!!!!! (I am blue). We celebrated his morning with pancakes, strawberries and whip cream. I took him and a friend to lunch at Pei Wei, where we met my sister Colette who shares the same birthday as he does. He is a wonderful kid, here are twelve fun things he did this year:
1. Played his last year of soccer (so he says).
2. He traveled to Rocky Point and loves to bargain with the mexican people selling things on the beach.
3. For Christmas he got a cell phone (his parents are CRAZY)
4. He watched, shouted, hollared and was disappointed when the cardinals lost the Super Bowl. (he still feels they were cheated out of winning.)
5. Traveled to Florida for our family vacation
6. Played flag football and his team came in second at the tournament
7. Has been talking about playing tackle football for the whole year (yikes!)
8. got to pet an alligator
9. started babysitting for his siblings (yea!)
10. ran in his first race
11. ran in a race with his Grandma and his Mom
12. Got a RC car, and loves racing it with his dad and his uncles

We spent the 4th of July in Greer with the Cook's. Greer is beautiful and so relaxing. We took a really long walk to the candy store and Gage and Ava just couldn't make it, they both fell asleep just before we got there. We drove into town for the parade, but had to drive home before the fireworks so we could be back for church in the morning.

We celebrated my birthday with going to dinner with the Fosters. I always appreciate these two food guys letting me choose where I want to eat one day a year~thanks guys!! I had to put this picture on because this is what Tyson and Lance talked about the whole time at dinner. Now, don't get me wrong its all good, it had been a long time since I had seen Marcee so it gave me a chance to catch up with her.

Last minute stuff before summer started

We attempted to try to potty train Gage, but so far it has been unsucessful. But he is so cute on the potty!

Macey Graduated from Preschool, thanks Miss Judy, we love you!

The girls had their dance recital at the end of May aren't they beautiful? Kelsey danced to Grease and Macey danced to Thriller by Michael Jackson.

Ahhh ITALY

Tyson and I spent 9 days in Europe the second week of May!!! We had the very best time! We flew over to Barcelona Spain and spent two days touring the city. I loved it and it turned out to be one of my favorite stops that we had. There is a street called the La Rambla which has street performers, outside cafes, and yummy gelato shops along it, it was so pretty. We also loved the Guell park, it was designed by a man named Gaudi, he was an architect in Spain that had a strong influence on the city. My other favorite building was the La Famaglia which is a church that Gaudi started back in the 1800's and is still not finished they are guessing that it will be finished around 2028~crazy!

We then boarded our cruise boat and headed to Malta. This country was awesome, it was more mid-evilish. Lots of history, beautiful churches, and we had the yummiest food I have every tasted in my life at one of the sidewalk cafes. The gardens were gorgeous and the views were breathtaking.

Our Next stop was Napels, Italy. We were surprised to find that on our walk to the train station Naples was very dirty. We took the 45min train ride to a city called Pompeii. Back in 79AD this city was covered in ash from the eruption of the volcano that they had built their city next too. In the 1700's archeologists found the city still covered in ash. They were able to uncover so many buildings, it was really cool.
This is Tyson and Lou reinacting the duels that would have been seen in the amphatheatre of Pompeii.

After Pompeii we got back on the train and went down to Sorrento, this was a charming Italian city, so quaint and fun. We had lunch here at a yummy pizza place. We then took a ferry boat ride to the island of Capri. We only had around a half an hour here but it was really fun. We found some really fun necklaces for the girls and I found the best gelato of the our whole trip~it was watermelon~yum! We then got back on the ferry and took it back to Napels where we got back on the cruise ship and were so tired from our fun day of sightseeing.

The next day was Rome. This was my favorite of all our stops. We started with St. Peter's square, and Peter's Basillica. The Basillica was amazing, the architecture and the carvings were incredible. We then headed to the Vatican, it was not what I expected it was more of an art maze than a church to me. We walked through more halls than I can count, we saw amazing art, sculptures, tapestries, furniture and learned so more about Michaelangelo than I would have ever imagined. We finally wandered our way through the maze and made it to the Sistine Chapel, which was really cool. After the vatican we jumped on the subway and made our way to the Spanish steps, we walked through the streets and found the Trevi Fountain, jumped back on the subway and came out to the breathtaking Colessum. This by far was mine and Tyson favorite thing that we saw. It was enormously huge and just awesome (in the literall sense), it only took eight years to build, from 72-80AD. Which is really incredible because its enormous. Tyson listened to the walking tour that they offer and there were some interesting facts, there were more than 100,000 animals killed in the colessum in 5 years. They brought in a whale and filled the Colessum with water. From the colessum we could see the Forum which was amazing. We then got back on the subway and took it to the train station where we boarded a train and took our 1hr and 20min ride in the hot, stinky trains of Italy. (the best expression I heard was from Kristen Seare when she said, I will be glad when we won't be surrounded by the smell of smoke and B-O!)

The next day was Florence, awwwe Florence. This started out being such a nice day, the weather was great we got sprinkled on a little and it was overcast and not hot, which always makes everything prettier I think. We saw the David which was sculpted by Michaelangelo, it was incredible, the detail was phenominal!!! We then went to the Duomo which is a famous church and it was huge and beautiful. After a VERY long lunch (2and1/2 hrs), we shopped for awhile then headed back to the train station, we stopped at Pissa on our way back to the cruise ship. Pissa was my second favorite city even though we only had 35min there. We rushed to the leaning tower of Pissa and took lots of pictures and marveled at the structure, then met up with the rest of our group who had gotten lost and had taken the scenic route to the tower and then we ran back to the train. We had a lot of tender mercies that took place that helped us make our train, such as the train was late and so forth (a good but long story, so maybe another time). But, we all safely made it back to the train and continued our journey back to the cruise ship.

After our big adventure in Pissa where we almost missed our train (which would have meant that we would have missed our boat) and created stress and exhaustian Tyson decided that he had had enough of that kind of excitement and needed a low key day. So we hung back from our big group and explored Nice, France with the Daniels. We took the bus into Nice and then rented scooters and toured old town Nice, we shopped in the fun market places and ate a yummy lunch. This was a short day so we then headed back to our boat and enjoyed a leasuirely afternoon on baord the ship.

We flew home the next morning and arrived home 16hrs later completely exhausted. I have never had jet lag before and let me tell you it is brutal!!!! But, this trip was soooo worth it!!!!

Fun In The Florida Sun

For the last few years Tyson has earned a trip with the company that he works for, we usually spend it as our time to get away alone but this year we decided it would be fun to bring the older kids. So in April we headed to Florida with Grandpa and Grandma Cook. We had such a wonderful time. We took a red eye flight to Miami and the kids did GREAT! They all slept except for Porter and Tyson. When we arrived at our hotel we were blown away with how nice it was. We lucked out and our awesome travel agent pulled some strings and got us a one bedroom two bath suite with a beautiful view. So the kids were able to sleep in the large living room area and we slept in the bedroom. I actually got SLEEP! As soon as we got there we headed out to the beach. I am a beach bum! There are few places I love more than the beach, I can lay in a chair and watch my kids play in the water all day and never get bored BUT, my husband is not that patient. So, we stayed out at the beach about an hour or so and then headed back to the pool area where there was a fun slide. Tyson went down the slide and hit his elbow so hard it cracked it open and I sware I could see bone. It was disgusting, he was a stinker and would not go to the hospital to get it stitched up so we went to Walgreens and bought some first aide stuff and glued it shut. (I don't recommend this to anyone, its been two months now and it is still bugging him, silly boy!)

Luckily that was the only big incident that we had all week. We played at the beach, swam in the pools, ate lots of food, had yummy ice cream, and hung out together. One night Metlife hired Chicago to come and sing for us! It was AWESOME!!! we had such a great time, they were probably my favorite group growing up so that was really fun, we took the kids and made them dance, they had a good time. One afternoon we took the older three on a catamaran and they got to go snorkeling. Our captian was awesome he let each of our older three kids drive the boat on the way back. Macey went with Grandma and Grandpa Cook on a duck bus ride, then at the end went in the ocean. Macey had a good time, Grandma and Grandpa said it wasn't the most fun they have had. The last day we were there we went on an air boat ride and saw alligators. This was my favorite thing we did. After the airboat ride they had an alligator show and the guy let Tyson come in with the alligators and he got to sit on its back. It was really fun! We were really excited to come home and see our little Gage, he had a great time with all the family and friends that helped watch him while we were gone. Thank you to all of you.