The Cooley Clan: July 2009

July 21, 2009

Rachael's Girl Scout Troop 2103

Rachel earns her BROWNIES certificate

Lesli Rosanova in the background and Melinda Johnson's father who was a teacher at Eagle Bay for a few years. Each of their daughters were in the troop as well.

Rachael, Melinda, Makaila and Rebecca Hacking, etc...

Kelly Henderson (in blue) was the helper and Paulynn Hacking (in red) was the Troop Leader.

Aleah kept eating all the hot dogs and chips off of other people's plates left on the ground! What an OINKER! ;) Our cute little piggy!

Tim and Virginia (Jinny) Allred with Addie, her son (Jayden) and other daughter.

Aleah is in red!

Thursday, July 16th was the Girl Scout Troop's potluck BBQ and Campout...We brought a watermelon and roasted Hot Dogs over the firepit, had pasta and green salad's, chips, watermelon, etc. Afterwards, Rachael stayed overnight in the tent her leaders set up in their backyard. She had a GREAT time and that was the first time she slept over at anyone's besides her cousins! She sure is growing up fast!

Yuba City, CA Reunion LUAU!

The whole group at the Luau

Rich and Charise

As you see in the photo, it was REALLY hot in that garage even though Nan had fans blowing. So, don't mock Rich's matted down hair!

Great Decorations and food!!!

Gary and Linda House were my friend, Melissa's parents who know live in Ogden, Utah

Suzanne?, Tami and her mom, Cathy Tingey

Cathy Tingey was our Stake President's wife from Yuba City, CA. My dad was a High Councilman and our family knew the Tingey family fairly well and I actually remembered her daughter Tami as well. It was sure nice to see those old familiar faces again!

JULY 11th... This Luau was held just down the street at my friend, Nan Smalz' home...and it sure was a HOT day as you can tell from the picture! We had a nice time visiting people my family knew when we lived in California!

July 8, 2009

Saturday at Seven Peaks

After the water park, we drove back up to our home (1 hour north) for our 4th Annual Neighborhood BBQ where we had a yummy dinner about 8 p.m. We got home about 9:30 p.m. and gave the kids baths for church the next day and then went outside where we watched the Oakridge Country Club fireworks...which we can see by sitting by our driveway...they were REALLY GREAT this year and the kids had fun with their POP ROCKS that I bought them to celebrate the 4th with...we then finished setting off the rest of our fireworks that Cheryl/Dan and we bought! What a GREAT 4th of July weekend!!!!

Aleah, Qaiden, and Mom at least got to have fun on the LAZY RIVER!

Qaiden and Aleah ride the Alligator...YEEHAW!!

Logan, Rachael, Ashlynn and Payton

LUNCH TIME

Aleah on the LAZY RIVER with Mom...since that's about all I could do!

July 4th, we had FREE tickets given to us for Seven Peaks Waterpark in Provo, Utah. Chantel's old Bishop from her ward while attending BYU is a part owner of this water park and so she was able to give us tickets. We were going to use them when we all got together for our June family reunion but because of the nasty weather, we had to cancel that part of it. Instead, we invited Cheryl and her family up for this holiday. So, we left in the a.m. and drove down there to spend the day soaking up all the SUN! It was nice and hot and the kids sure had a lot of fun...everyone got to go on the several slides, EXCEPT pregnant Charise!!!! I asked a ton of lifeguards just to make sure and each one said they were VERY strict that NO PREGNANT WOMEN ARE ALLOWED DOWN ANY OF THE SLIDES!!! I only have 9 weeks left, so I guess I couldn't hide my belly. So, all I could do was to watch the babies, tubes (so nobody stole them), and go down the lazy river, and do the wave pool. It was still a nice day but I was a little dissappointed about not being able to go down the slides.

Friday's Family Hike

When we got home, we had our BBQ and the kids had fun playing in the muddy ravine down the street! Later that night after the adults played a game of Hand and Foot, we roasted smores in the firepit in our driveway and set off our own fireworks! It was a lot of fun.

Take a look at this picture of Aleah all SOPPING WET!!!!

What a cutie pie!

After a short hike, we went down near the pond itself and had fun cooling off in it and some actually went all the way in....Aleah (2 1/2 years old now) wanted to wade in like her sister and brothers, so she walked in and just kept right on going till under completely and would have drowned had we not been right there! (It was pretty scary at the time!)

Qaiden and Logan

River leading in to Farmington Pond

Jacob

Short Hike fun

Rich on the bridge

July 3rd, my sister, Cheryl and her family came up from St. George area to spend the 4th of July weekend with us. We went on a hike up near the Farmington Pond in the morning after a breakfast of waffles and fruit.

After putting the kids to bed,we sat down to relax and watched the movie, "Confessions of a Shopaholic"... which was rather a cute chick flick! It sure was a very nice Friday!

Hogle Zoo Day

After a fun summer day, WE HEADED HOME ALL WET!!!!

Aleah loved the egg!

Qaiden pretends to be BITTEN by the Croc.

For someone who doesn't like spiders AT ALL, she seemed to favor his HUGE one!

Jacob thought the Turtle was cool!

After lunch, we got a popsicle and headed over to DiscoveryLand to let the kids play for a while. They had a fun time there probably the most! At about 2:00 p.m, it started to get cloudy, but we decided to go over to the kids animal show so the kids could touch some of them. It started sprinkling and then it turned into a downpour at about 2:45 p.m. Rich ran on ahead with Aleah and I stayed to have the kids touch the animals...we ran to the car after that DRENCHED!!! It was the biggest and hardest downpour I've ever seen!!!! It was really fun nonetheless and we were glad we were able to enjoy the sunny weather at the Zoo before mid afternoon!

We enjoyed looking at the Elephants, Giraffes, Bears, the Red Panda, the Amur Leopard, (the Tiger must have been sleeping), as well as all the other cool animals, birds, etc.

We also saw the Madagascar exhibit with the creature you see with the long tail...I forget what it's called now!!!

HISSING COCKROACHES...how cool to see them up close...Rachael thought so too...

July 2nd our family took advantage of their annual FREE Military days at Hogle Zoo in Salt Lake City since Richard had that day off. We packed a nice picnic lunch and got there about 10:15 a.m. We saw the bird show there which was really nice, and saw the rare Sea Eagle as well as other neat birds up close and swoop down right above our heads.

Summer Fun at the Park!!!

Aleah didn't want to come out of the Tree House when it was time to go home :0)

Jacob taking Aleah down the slide

Tire Swing time...

June 2009...we try to go to the park for a picnic lunch at least once a week and let the kids play...this is the Castle Park in Kaysville which is one of their favorites!

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!!!