The Cooley Clan: January 2010

January 29, 2010

Waiting for the oil to be changed in our 2004 Honda Pilot...

Doin' a little hip wiggle....

.....and a little waggle

...wiggle and a waggle some more!
This is a cute hip action-habit she picked up a while ago.

Mom and Aleah........waiting......

Ice Fishing

Richard and an older retired guy (Bill, from Hill AFB Outdoor Adventure Program's volunteer like Richard) went to Willard Bay to do some Ice Fishing on Saturday, January 23rd, 2010. They both didn't catch anything, but they are out right now trying to get some salmon. I sure hope they bring home some yummy fish to grill!....and I sure hope that Rich doesn't fall through the ice like he did last weekend...he fell in up to his thigh! I just say a prayer every time he goes out there now! He will take Qaiden out tomorrow, Saturday, January 30. for a father-son activity! We'll see how they do and post some photos if they catch anything.

A little side note: Richard stood up in church the next Fast and Testimony meeting and shared his testimony about his almost falling through the ice completely but because of prayer, he was protected. He doesn't often share his testimony, so when he does, I REALLY tune in and I think it helps the kids to hear him do it!

January 20, 2010

Martin Luther King Weekend

Jacob wearing his Taekwondo outfit...he LOVES doing Taekwondo at Tiger Crane Martial Arts, taught by Master Oliver and located at Body Worx Gym just down the street off Sheperd Lane! He is also showing off his new braces as of January 13th.

Girls have fun sitting and eating together!

Boy's (especially Mr. Q) are being silly at the table as usual!

Tuesday, January 19th was a Quality Teaching Day so the kids had off Monday (Martin Luther King Day) and today. Monday was fun for the kids because Jacob went to Conner Mee's birthday party at the Kangaroo Zoo all afternoon. Rachael and Qaiden had fun on the Wii. For me, it was a WORK day (laundry, cleaning, organizing). I spent about 4 hours organizing my food storage room and inventorying all of it so we know exactly what we have and how many. It looks sooooo good and is sooooo organized now...YEAH!!! On Tuesday, we just played! The kids played off and on with friends, rode bikes, etc. I spent all morning on the phone with insurance stuff...BLAH! Luckily in the afternoon, I was able to have a little fun with the kids. Then, when Richard got home from work, Rachael asked if we could go out to dinner since we hadn't been out as a family for dinner in quite a while (this is because they have a tendancy to act wild at the restaurants). When she asked that, I was about to say NO, but realized that the kids eat free at Garcia's Mexican Restaurant in Layton on Tuesdays and Sundays. So, we decided to give the kids a chance to show us what good manners they have now. It was actually really nice to sit and visit and eat together as a family. None of them were wild....YEAH! We'll have to do this again but not often. We are trying to save up for our Disneyland trip this summer!

January 13, 2010

Gymnastics Begins

January 13, 2010...Rachael has been wanting to take gymnastics for a year and a half now and we decided to let her take at Flips Gym in Bountiful. She LOVED it the very first trial day (January 6th)! It costs $60/month, but it's for 1 1/2 hours each Wednesday from 4-5:30 p.m. There are 3 girls in our neighborhood/ward that attend as well and so Chaya Anderson and I alternate picking the girls up after school each Wednesday, and the other mom, Cecilie Wall's husband picks them up afterwards on his way home from work. It works out really nice that way! Rachael and her friend, Tori only need to master 2 more skills and will move on to the Intermediate group...we'll keep you posted how Rachael is doing as time goes on!

January 3, 2010

HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!

Rachael and Aleah play with Rachael's "Pet Shop" toys.

Rachael and Luke

2010
This year is going to be the BEST!!!
We each made a time capsule and wrote down our goals for this year...we'll open it December 31st 2010 and hopefully will have reached those goals!!!

New Year's Eve

New Year's Eve 2009 we had some friends/neighbors come over... The Mee Family(Scott, Jilane, Cody, Nonnie, Conner, and Sophie) and Mark & Elizabeth Stratford (their kids stayed home) came over to our home for games. The Mee kids and our kids went over to the Mee's home to watch the movie, "The Dog that saved Christmas". After the movie they came over to our home about 11:30 p.m. and we got ready for the New Year. We banged pots/pans and had the kids run through the snow without shoes on! It was fun for them! We then came in and let Jilane and Scott do the Guitar Hero World Band Tour on the Wii. Jilane did the drums and Scott did the guitar. I think they had a lot of fun! We didn't get to bed till 2 a.m. and so we slept in the next morning!

CHRISTMAS MORNING!

The family is wearing their new slippers they woke up to find outside their bedroom door Christmas morning...it is complete with their new PJ's (Rich-plaid pants/black slippers, Charise- Hello Kitty pants/mary-jane slippers, Jacob-snowboarding pants & shirt (which he hates wearing) and monkey slippers, Rachael-snowman nightgown and cute knee socks with fur (which she threw a temper about because she didn't have slippers like everyone else (we ended up finding some blue and white stripped slippers the next day at the BX on Hill Air Force Base for only $4)), Qaiden-Where The Wild Things Are PJ's with the same monkey slippers as Jacob, Aleah-brown with pink spots top/bottom and ping furry slippers, Luke-stripped PJ's with a penguin in the top left corner that says, "Just Chillin'" on them.

Dad and the kids hand out each of the gifts to the family members. They always look forward to this part of Christmas in which they get to help be daddy's little ELVES!

SANTA CLAUS did come...and he didn't bring any lumps of coal (WAY-TO-GO KIDS)!

Christmas Eve

Aleah's wearing her new PJ's...isn't she a cutie!

WHERE'S ALEAH??? There she is!

One of our family traditions is for each of the kid's to leave a shoe by the fireplace with a big carrot inside as a snack for the reindeer to eat. In turn, the reindeer leave in place of the carrot, a little gift of some sort. Reindeer LOVE carrots....well, Aleah ATE 3 of the 4 carrots left, and so they had to be replaced with new ones for the reindeer!!! Here she is hiding behind the Christmas tree so nobody would see....what a little sneak!!!

CHRISTMAS EVE 2009 was memorable because my brother, Stephen (Stevie) flew up from Ventura, California to spend it with us. He came up on Wednesday and went snowboarding Christmas Eve with his friend, Taylor. When he got back, we ate Turkey Divan served over rice, salad, and rolls. After we ate, we went to the Apple Tree Retirement Home in Kaysville, Utah and sang to a lady, Minnie (who we heard loved flowers) and so we gave her a pretty pot of red Gerber Daisies. Then we sang some carols to a man named Donald who was hard of hearing, but they told us that he liked to have pictures of all his family around him, so we got him a picture frame to display them all. We were going to sing to Janine (who liked frogs), but she was still not back, so we left her a snowflake small balloon on a stick and a small bean-bag frog. We hope she liked them and hope they all enjoyed their Christmas! This visiting/singing at an old folks home is our yearly tradition that the kids really look forward to. When we got home, we opened up 1 gift...we each got new pajamas. So, we went and got them on and did the nativity poem of "What God Wants For Christmas". My mom gave us this box kid nativity set a couple of Christmases ago. Each of the children got to open a box with one of the figures in them. In the 7th box is a mirror, in which we realize that God wants US for Christmas...he loves us so much that he gave his Son, Jesus Christ to us. I hope the kids realize that this is what Christmas is all about. Afterwards, the kids went to bed. Rich, Stevie, and myself stayed up a little later playing our new game, Bohnanza (Bean game from Germany). It's a really fun game!!! Stevie won!

GOOD NIGHT...

Jacob's Oral Surgery

December 23rd

Since we met our deductictible for our Federal Blue Cross/Blue Shield health insurance for this 2009 year, we decided it would be a good idea to get Jacob's oral surgery done. He had to have a "spare" tooth (which was located in the center of his two front teeth but was under the gums and couldn't be seen) removed because he will be getting braces at the end of January 2010! So, the surgery went well, but he was pretty swollen for 4-5 days (as you see in the picture) and had to eat softer foods for a while. He was pretty tough and did VERY well!

Funny Kid Moments!

December 20, 2011- We were all in the kitchen making gingerbread and I had just taken out the first batch of the gingerbread boy and girl. As I attempted to scrape up the girl on the spatula, she was too soft and started to fall apart as I quickly placed the mangled mess on the brown paper bag! Qaiden pointed to the messed up cookie and said, "Ladies first!" and "Mom killed her!" It was just so funny I changed from being really upset that I had ruined the cookie to laughing so hard at the random funny comment! I keep telling the boys, "Ladies first", and I guess it is sinking in!

November 2011- I like to recycle plastic containers and so I had just washed out one of them and placed the plastic lid on top the toaster (near the sink) to dry. Jacob went to put some bread in the toaster and while in there, the lid melted! Just a little while later as I was getting dinner prepared, Qaiden sat on the stove counter right next to the hot stove top. I told Q to get down off the counter but he was slow to obey. I had turned off the stove, but one of the burners was still hot and so as Q sat there, his coat was lying on the still hot burner and his inner part of the coat melted. I was a bit angry with him for not being obedient and was pretty frustrated. At this point, I turned to the boys and said, "Ok, and the winner for the 'NO-BRAINER' award goes to...drum roll please...QAIDEN!" I changed from being angry to laughing because of how funny my own comment seemed to me! ;) (Sometimes you just gotta laugh at yourself!)So, whenever we do something stupidly funny, we call it the NO-BRAINER award! It's become quite funny to see some of the silly things we do each day!

May 25, 2010- As the kids got ready for school this morning, I asked Rachael if she remembered to get a leotard for Gymnastics today after school. Qaiden overheard and said "...it's NOT Aleah-tard, it's a Rachael-tard! And I would wear a Qaiden-tard!" Ohhhh the silly things that kids come up with!

Jan 20, 2010- I was in the middle of winding the cord of our kirby vacuum cleaner while singing 'Ring around the rosies a pocket full of posies, ashes, ashes we all fall down'...and Aleah just standing there all the sudden dropped to her bottom without bending her knees (looked a little awkward). It was just one of those moments that made me laugh because it was so unexpected!

Who Is... Richard LeRoy Cooley II

With much pushing and proding from Charise and a little from her Mom, I am attempting to briefly answer the question "Who am I?". To begin, I was born to wonderful parents, Richard LeRoy Cooley and Leah Tryon on October 16, 1970 in Little Rock, Arkansas. I am the 2nd eldest of eight children... Nichale, myself, Rodney, Roger, Oralea, Tawnya, Andelaura and Gayla. I moved to Mesa, Arizona when I was about 3 years old and lived there till I was 9 years old. In the summer of 1980 my family moved to Carthage, Missouri where I spent the most important and influential part of my childhood. It was during my time in Carthage that I finished grade school, Junior High and High School. I graduated from Carthage High School in May 1989 and shortly after entered the MTC (Missionary Training Center) in Provo, Utah, January 1990. I served an honorable mission to Brasilia, Brazil. Shortly after my mission, I enlisted in the Air Force and was Active Duty for 9 years. My time on active duty in the Air Force was spent in San Antonio, TX (Lackland AFB) for basic training, then I went to Technical School in Dever, Colorado (Lowry AFB) after which I moved to Hill AFB in Clearfield, Utah. I was afterwards, stationed in South Korea (Osan AFB) and was there for 1 year. Then I cross-trained from Munitions (otherwise known as "Ammo") to Computer Maintenance and went to Buloxi, Mississippi (Keesler AFB). My time as an "Active Duty" enlisted member ended in Anchorage, Alaska (Elmendorf AFB), where I met and married my wonderful wife, Charise Alithea Nebeker. Her father worked as the Chief Auditor at Elmendorf AFB and was just around the corner from the Headquarters bldg. where I worked in what was called the RAOC - pronounced rock - (in the basement of that bldg.). We met in June, 1997 at the LDS Singles Branch at the Maplewood Chapel in Anchorage, AK and dated till she went back to Ricks College in Rexburg, Idaho. Charise came home for Christmas and we got engaged January 1, 1998 and got married that summer, July 18, 1998 in the Salt Lake City Temple! It was a VERY special day for me! We lived there in Anchorage till 2000 and then moved in to Charise's parents home (10411 High Bluff Dr., Eagle River, AK 99577) for 10 months to save money for school. Thanks to Charise's parents we were able to save a substantial amount for school, which eventually was used as a down-payment on our 1st home. We had just had our 1st baby, Jacob LeRoy, August 26th, 1999 and then we were blessed with a baby girl, Rachael Anne on March 9th, 2001. We moved to Logan, Utah, May 2001 so I could go to school at Utah State University to finally finish my degree in Electrical Engineering that I'd been trying to finish for quite some time and which was VERY difficult to do while working in the military and moving around a lot. I also transitioned from Active duty to the Air Force Reserves shortly after arriving in Logan. I got my Bachelor degree December 2003 and got a job working with the government on Hill AFB as an Electronics Engineer six months later in a three year internship. We moved closer to the base in May of 2004 soon after our third child was born; Qaiden John, April 6, 2004. I was fortunately to get commissioned as an Officer in the Reserves about a year after starting work at Hill AFB and just before going back to school to get my Masters of Engineering in Electrical Engineering. It only took me a year and a half. I am currently a Captain in the Reserves and work as an Individual Augmentee (IMA) in the 508th ASW, which is an Active Duty unit. Our 4th child, Aleah Reese was born on my wife's birthday, February 28, 2007, in Layton, Utah and we had our 5th child, Luke William on September 19, 2009 at Davis Hospital and Medical Center in Layton, Utah as well. Life is going well for my family and we are grateful for ALL of our blessings!!!