Life is crazy

Here is a little update from the Cook household!


The past few months have been a whirlwind! Petey has been working SO hard in his classes this semester, and I'm very proud of him! He had two finals yesterday (he studied for days for his physics final!) and one more final tomorrow. I CAN'T WAIT FOR HIM TO BE DONE!!!!! It will be so nice to have a stress free Christmas break with him. School work has been taking him away from me an awful lot lately. I'm still working at Lee's. I've had a few interviews recently, but nothing has come of them yet. It's hard to find a 'real' job in Logan! It probably doesn't help that I still don't know what I want to do for my career ;) We'll see what happens...

For Thanksgiving this year we spent the day with Petey's family. There was lots of yummy food and good company! After dinner we met up with my parents and headed to Wyoming to watch Tanner's Thanksgiving weekend basketball tournament. I was so happy that Petey and I could go with my parents! Since Tanner is going to school in Wyoming, we haven't been able to see him very often. The Central Wyoming basketball team has had an awesome season so far! Tanner had quite the crowd cheering him on! My parents, Petey, myself, my aunt Mary, my aunt Diane, and three of my cousins also came. The Central Wyoming Rustlers won both of their games during the tournament. We were able to take Tanner out to dinner and spend some time with him. Man, I miss that boy!!! He has just started his mission papers, and I'm soooooo proud of him!! The Rustlers basketball teams current record is 11-2!!

I am getting extremely excited for Christmas!!!! Christmas is my favorite time of the year and I love spending some quality time with my family during it. It will be Tanner's last Christmas before he leaves on his mission, so this year will be extra special!Tyler and Jennie are expecting their first baby, so come next December there will be another addition to our family! We'll be spending Christmas with my side of the family. We are having a family party on the 29th and I think it will be bittersweet. All of the girls in the family will be going through my Grandma Saunders' jewelry and  picking out an item to keep for ourselves. My Grandma loved jewelry! This will be the first Christmas without her :(  It will be nice to have the whole family together to spend time with my Grandpa and remember. I've hardly bought any Christmas presents yet...I need to get on it!!!

Perhaps the biggest news to report on is that.....we will be moving to Hawaii for three months!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! For Petey's major he has to do an internship before he can graduate. He applied to numerous companies, but was hoping that Chevron would hire him. Last week Petey was offered an internship from his second choice. He kept telling me that he wanted to hold off on accepting the offer just in case Chevron worked out. Three days later, Chevron called and offered Petey a summer internship in HAWAII! When Petey showed up at my work and told me where we would be going I freaked out!!! I still can't believe it! We will be moving to Oahu. The town Petey will be working in is Kapolei (I have zero idea on how to pronounce any of the towns!!) We are so thrilled for this opportunity!! While Petey is working, I hope that I can find somewhere to volunteer in Hawaii to keep me entertained...if I can't find anywhere I guess I'll just have to spend all of my time at the beach :) I'm kind of nervous about how everything will work out, because we have no idea where we will live, we'll have to find an apartment that is furnished since we won't be able to bring anything but clothes, we won't have a car, and living expenses/food are WAY more expensive in Hawaii! I'm also kind of sad because Tanner will be going on his mission sometime next summer, and I hope that I'll be able to either fly back to Utah for all of his mission activities, or I won't fly out to Hawaii until after Tanner has left on his mission. Petey probably won't be around when Tanner leaves for the M.T.C., which is a bummer! I'm also sad that I probably won't be around when Tyler and Jennie have their baby. I'm also very scared for the likelihood that I will have to fly to Hawaii by myself!!! For the past few years flying has been an issue for me, and I can't imagine being on a 7 hour flight freaking out by myself :( I'm really close to my family, so I'm sad that I will miss out on things next summer, but this is such an amazing opportunity!! My parents really want to visit us while we are living there and I hope they can! We'll take all the visitors we can get! One nice thing is that Chevron will be giving us a moving bonus to help us make this big move!!

No we'll just have to suffer through a cold Logan winter before we have a 12 week vacation in paradise!! I'm not really sure what will happen once we get back because I'll have to find a new job, and we aren't sure what we will do about our living arrangements in Logan...we have a LOT to figure out! We are very excited for what the future holds, and we can't wait for May!! Life is crazy!!

Girls Weekend in St. George

This past weekend I was able to go to St. George with the girls on my mom's side of the family. Its been an unwritten rule that you have to be married to go on the trip, so I can finally go! I wasn't able to go on the last trip because I was still in school, but now that I've graduated nothing was going to keep me away! There were 17 of us who went down for the weekend! My aunt Leslie was in charge of finding/booking the rental house this year...and WOW it was a beauty!! The house we stayed in could sleep 25+ people! The house had an amazing pool, hot tub, water slide, and basketball court!

Our first day in St. George we ate at the 25 Main Cafe. I had their fettuccine and it was delish! We did some shopping at the outlets and the we went to the house to get settled in. For dinner that night the group split up and went to different restaurants. After dinner my aunt Leslie thought it would be fun if we went to The Narrows. By the time we arrived to The Narrows the sun had already set and it was getting pretty dark. No one was planning on going to The Narrows, so we were not prepared! I was wearing flip flops, my mom was wearing sandals, and my aunt Diane was wearing wedge heels! A couple of us were able to use our phone as flashlights, but when the came to the section where you basically had to suck-in and walk sideways...I was done. The sky was darkening even more and being in between rocks that close was claustrophobic! My mom and I decided to turn back. I scraped my knee on one of the rocks, scratched my wedding ring, and got thorns in my shoe haha! Even though a lot of us didn't finish, it was still a crazy experience! Below is how narrow the canyon gets!

After out little hiking adventure we decided to stop and get some ice cream before we headed back to the house to enjoy the hot tub! A couple of days before our trip we got an email from the owner of the house saying that the next door neighbor is 'crazy.' He said that he suggests people to be out of the pool by 10pm, but if we are quiet we could stay in the pool/hot tub longer. About 8 of us got into the hot tub around 9:45pm (there were about 6 other women outside just talking on the lawn chairs.) Around 10:30 my mom and I went into the house to shower off. After we went inside the crazy lady came outside onto her balcony, which overlooks the pool/hot tub and started filming the group! A couple of minutes later the rest of the group decided to come in as well. I wasn't outside for this part...but apparently as the rest of the group was coming inside the CRAZY lady yelled "That's right, go inside! Nobody wants you here!" She went on to say that we were renting the house illegally, that 4 other families around us didn't want us there, to go home to our daddies "you teenie boopers", and she said she was going to make our vacation miserable. My great aunt called the crazy lady 'princess' and the crazy lady then called my 70 year old great aunt the B word!! She also said that she had called the police and that they were on the way to our house. 

When the other girls came inside and told us what was going on, my mom and I were in disbelief! The girls sitting outside on the lawn chairs could hardly hear us, so I don't know how in the world we were making too much noise for the crazy lady to stand! And honestly...it was 10:45pm on a FRIDAY night! Who knew a group of mothers and grandmothers could make so much noise? I was the second youngest on the trip and I'm 23! The police did end up coming to the house and I couldn't resist taking a photo, secretively of course . 

The police officers said that when they get a noise complaint they don't even consider it unless they can hear noise down the street...they couldn't even hear anything when they were outside our house! The police officer said that its a $500 fine if we were taken to court and found guilty of making too much noise (? I don't know all of the legal terms haha). The group explained to the officers how the crazy lady was the one making the noise and that she was threatening to ruin our vacation and how she called my great aunt a horrible name. The police told us that St. George City doesn't have a curfew, just that there can't be any unreasonable noise and any unreasonable time. The officers told us that they didn't think anything was going on and one of the officers even said we could go back outside if we wanted to. They told us to not let this lady ruin our vacation. The officers then went back over to the crazy lady's house to let her know that she couldn't mess with us, and if she did, there would be consequences. At first we were all angry, but then we laughed about the situation until 3am! My cousin Nicole even wrote her a nice letter (we didn't actually give this to her)....

The next morning we went out to breakfast at Kneaders and then went back to the house to play in the pool. As soon as we starting to play outside the crazy lady turned on her central vacuum and ran it for the 3-4 hours we were outside at the pool. The humming sound was a little annoying, but I'm sure it had to be more annoying for her! We just laughed and continued to have a good time! After our pool time we all decided to get ready for dinner. After I showered, I went back outside to sit and read a magazine by the pool. I was the ONLY one outside making NO noise when she turned on this horrendous awful music through her outdoor speakers! I just ignored her. After about 15 minutes she went out onto her balcony and said, "This is my FAVORITE song, I'm going to play it again!" She turned the music back to the first awful song (all the songs were awful, but the first song was the worst). I just laughed at her. This lady is ridiculous! That night we went out to dinner at Red Robin before we went to Tuacahn to see Hairspray.

 Before the play my mom and I were walking around when we witnessed the cutest proposal! Out of no where a flash mob started dancing to the song "I Think I Want To Marry You." The flash mob continued and at the very end of the song a guy proposed to his girlfriend! She had no idea that he family was all around her and that they got everything on video. It was adorable! My friends Desiree and Laura also happened to be going to Hairspray that night, so I was able to see them for a little bit! 

I had never seen the play or movie Hairspray before Tuacahn! I loved it! The acting was great, I was laughing throughout the while thing, it was a beautiful night, and to top it off I got to sit next to my mama :) After the play we went back to the house and just talked until 3:30am again! We wanted to go out into the hot tub...but we didn't want to provoke the crazy lady even more. The next morning a few of us sat by the pool  and talked...after about 30 minutes the crazy lady turned on her vacuum AGAIN! We all just started clapping and laughing. This lady is wacko! As we all left the house for good we honked our horns as we drove away to give her some farewell noise. We ate breakfast at The Egg & I, before we all headed our separate ways. Our car ride was always a good time with my Mom, Aunt Cindy, Aunt Mary, Chris, and Julie. They make me laugh so hard :) I wish the vacation could've been longer, I really enjoy spending time with my family, especially my mom!! I look forward to next year!!!!

The CRAZY lady's house!!

Maybe we'll have to stay in the same house next year :)

Long time, no blogging

I haven't blogged in forever! Our summer has been a bittersweet one. Here is a recap.

I blogged previously about some of our hardships, including my Grandma Saunders' passing, the stress over the lump in my leg, ad stress over money.My cat also disappeared too :( I'm still struggling with the passing of my Grandma. She was such an incredible woman, whom I deeply miss. I've never had anyone close to me pass away before her, so I'm still trying to cope. Petey has been amazing through all of this! I'm so lucky to have him!

During the summer Petey worked at Lowe's and I continued to work at Lee's. Lowe's kept cutting Petey's hours because of low sales. There were some weeks where he was only scheduled 15 or less hours. He picked up every shift he possibly could and we somehow managed to survive! I'm still at Lee's but I've started to look for another job. I'm a college graduate and I want a job that reflects that. I worked extremely hard for my degree and I hope that I'll be able to find a job that better suits what I want to do with my life.

We did many fun things during the summer, like going to Disneyland (!!!), attending several Salt Lake Bee's games, went to plenty of movies, spent some time at my Great Grandpa's cabin, I finally got to walk at my graduation/commencement! We went to Lava Hot Springs with my mom's extended family, Petey's older brother Brian got married, went to The Living Planet Aquarium, spent a lot of time with family, hiked to Stewart Falls, had many lazy days, my little brother moved away to college,  we celebrated our one year anniversary, Petey had his 24th birthday, and we were able to go to Payson Onion Days (which I love)!!! Here are some pictures of our summer:

(How do you smart bloggers get your pictures all cute and organized? 

As you can tell I don't know what I'm doing! I need lessons haha)

I now 'officially' feel like a grad!

Love you Grammy!

 

Happy One Year Love!

Great Grandpa's Cabin

Salt Lake Bee's Game

Brian and Megan's Wedding

Happy Birthday Husband!! 

The Living Planet Aquarium 

Bridal Shower for my girl Sady!

Willow Park Zoo

Hike to Stewart Falls

Stewart Falls

Payson Onion Days!

Now that Utah State has started up again I won't be seeing much of the husband (boo!) I kind of wish I could be in school so at least we could do homework at the same time! Instead he does homework, and I'm bored haha.Tomorrow is the Utah State vs. University of Utah football game, which should be intense. Go U.S.U.!! I'm going to try and blog more regularly. Hopefully the blog gets more exciting ;) Until next time....

California! And an update...

  I'm finally going to blog about our California trip! We got home from California about a month ago, but life has been crazy. The past few weeks have been really busy and kind of hard. I blogged before about the surgery I had, and I have some good news to report! When we went to my check-up the Dr. told us that the tumor was benign! It was such a RELIEF to hear that I'm fine!!! The only thing that still kind of worries me is that during the operation the Dr. hit a nerve, which he said could take up to a year to heal. I'm not in near as much pain as I was a few weeks ago, but I can still feel pain when I walk. The section of my leg affected by the nerve damage is also numb, kind of a weird feeling! Even though the nerve damage was unexpected, I'm so grateful that the biopsy results came back benign! We've also been really lucky that I'm still on my parents insurance. With the ultrasound, surgery, and biopsy we racked up nearly a bill of $2,000. Luckily though, all Petey and I have to pay is $160! Thank heavens for insurance!

                  In some sad news my wonderful Grandma Saunders passed away the beginning of June. She truly was an amazing woman who taught me so many things. She was so creative, compassionate, loving, caring, spiritual, funny, inspiring, and an amazing cook! She had been declining the past few years due to her Parkinson's Disease. She was in so much pain (the week before she passed the nurse at her care center noticed her knee replacement had separated from her knee, causing excruciating pain). She was able to get morphine doses to help her manage the pain. Petey and I were able to go down and visit her before she passed away. She was truly an amazing woman and I'm so lucky I had her in my life. My family moved to Spring Lake when I was 11. We first lived with my grandparents for nearly 2 years until our house was finished being built next door. I'm extremely grateful that I was able to live with/next door to my grandparents for so many years! I've become really close to both of them since I saw them nearly everyday until I moved away to college. We know that my Grandma is in a much better place and we're grateful that we'll be able to see her again someday! I love and miss her!

June has been a crazy month for my Saunders side of the family with a baby blessing, missionary farewell, my Grandma's funeral, and a wedding. We're hoping life will slow down!

And now.....on to California!!! I usually try to explain every little detail, but I'm going to try and control myself or else this post will be forever long. WARNING: There will be a billion pictures. 

Day 1: My parents drove Petey and I to the airport where our plane left a little before noon. I've never really had a problem flying until this day. I was so freaked out on the flight. I hate the take-off feeling it makes my stomach go crazy! We hit a little turbulence on the flight and I was freaking out! The flight was under 2 hours, but that was long enough for me! Once we landed in the Long Beach Air Port (which is really ghetto), we picked up our rental car. We we're surprised at how nice our car was! We got a 2012 Chevy Sonic. After that we checked in to our hotel. W-O-W our hotel was sketchy! There were ants crawling all over the bathroom, a couple spiders, the bed was rock hard, paint had peeled off in certain spots on the wall, and it looked like there was mold in the bathroom. I was horrified at first, but the hotel was really cheap and in all honesty we weren't going to be spending much time there. Our hotel was 3 blocks from Disneyland, and that's all we cared about. After we settled in we decided to grab some Cheesecake Factory, delicious! After that we settled in for the night.

Day 2: Our first day at Disneyland!! Petey loves Disneyland just as much as I do! We went to Disneyland for our honeymoon last summer and we went again last month. I'm perfectly happy going at least twice a year :) We rode all of our favorite rides: Indiana Jones, Splash Mountain, Space Mountain, Thunder Mountain, Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, Tower of Terror, Screamin' California and the new updated Star Tours! We had a busy and hot day, but so much fun! We did have an *oops* moment our first day at Disney. We forgot to pack the sunscreen, so we had to buy one in the park. Big mistake!! The bottle of sunscreen cost us over $15! We won't make that mistake again :)

                                               

Best corn dogs ever!!

I got a pin from Town Hall that
said 'Just Graduated!'

Day 2: This was our second day at Disneyland! Petey and I decided to wear our Aggie Game Day shirts this day. It was fun to walk around the park hearing random people yelling "Go Aggies!". On this day we did our favorite rides again, got delicious corn dogs again, rode some of the kiddie rides (we had a 3 day hopper pass, so why not ride the kiddie rides?), but we were most excited for that night to watch The World of Color!

                           

We got Fast Passes to The World of Color so we could have a good seat. We got to our section over an hour before the show started and it was already packed! The show was absolutely amazing! The show was my favorite part of the entire trip. You can find videos of The World of Color on youtube. It was so beautiful  and made me feel like a child again (I love how Disneyland can do that!). For those of you who don't know, one of the reasons this show is so cool is because they project scenes from Disney movies into the water, so you're watching video clips on the water. So cool! LOVED IT!

Day 3: This day was our Hollywood day! We decided to go to Madame Tussaud's Wax Museum. I've been to the one in NYC and it was so much fun to take pictures with these life-like wax figures! Although admission is a bit pricey, we had a blast!

         

After the wax museum we walked around the Hollywood Walk of Fame for a little bit. It was really not outside, and that section of town was really annoying with  people trying you to go into their store, or buy their cd, or whatever. One guy kept asking us to buy his cd and when we told him no thanks, he responded "come on, it aint drugs"...haha after that I was ready to get out of there. That night we ate at The Rain Forest Cafe and the then walked around Downtown Disney. I bought a Minnie Mouse shirt for our last day at Disney.

Day 4: This was our last day at Disneyland :( but we got to use our Magic Morning pass, which allows you to get into the park an hour before it opens. I was really excited :) The first thing we did was get pictures with the characters and take some in front of the castle! We waited literally 2 minutes for a picture with Mickey, which is a miracle. 

     
   

We went on a few rides and then I asked Petey if we could go and wait in line for the Princess Fantasy Faire. The Princess Fantasy Faire is where you can go take pictures with 3 Princesses. I know it's really lame, but I've always wanted to do it! Petey waited in line for over an hour with me to get my pictures! He's such a good boy ;)

        

We had a fun filled day of running around going on our favorite rides for the last time, doing things we've never done before at Disneyland, like going on certain rides, going inside the castle, watching the Aladdin musical, and that night we sat on the curb of Main Street USA and watched the parade. It was a great last day!! I know we will be back soon!

Day 5: This was our Sea World day! Driving to San Diego and back in one day was kind of a pain, but totally worth it! We loved going to the shows and watching the animals! 

After our day at Sea World, Petey wanted to drive down to the U.S. /Mexico border. It was kind of strange how close you can get to the fence and know that the different sides of the fence represent 2 different kinds of life. Petey served his LDS Mission in Tijuana, Mexico. We were able to get so close to Mexico that Petey was pointing out McDonald's he had ate at, and buildings he recognized. I don't have a passport or else we would've spent a day in Mexico. I know we will visit there some day! While driving we saw a ton of U.S. Border Patrol, which was also kind of eerie. We stopped on some dirt road so I could get a picture of Petey with Mexico behind him. 

Day 6: Day 6 was supposed to be our nice beach day, but that day was the coldest day of all. Even though it was cold we still wanted to go to the beach! We picked up some Subway meals and headed to Corona Del Mar Beach. It took us a little while to find it (it's the same beach we went to on our honeymoon), but eventually we did! We sat on a bench overlooking the ocean and ate our subs. It was cool this time we went, because the tide was low and we were able to climb around on some of the rocks and we couldn't get to last time. After climbing around we walked along the beach to the pier where we watched a sea lion having a ball. I started to get a really bad stomach ache after about 2 hours at the beach, so we drove back to the hotel so I could rest. That night I felt a lot better and we ended up trying a local Italian restaurant in Anaheim called Carolina's. It was DELICIOUS!!! It was reasonable pricing, and our meals came with cheese sticks and ice cream! I got a chicken alfredo calzone, and Petey got their sea food  pasta. It was so good! I was also able to talk Petey into going to the Cheesecake Factory to pick out some cheesecake for dessert later that night. Here here are some pics from the beach:

Day 7: Universal Studios was our last stop on our Californian vacation. Petey was really excited for Universal because the new Transformers ride wasn't officially open yet, but they were letting people go on it for 'test runs' so they can work out the kinks before the grand opening. Petey was hoping that we would be able to go on it...but first the studio tour! I've been to Universal Studios before and my favorite part was the studio tour, so that's what we did first. It's really cool to drive through movie sets that I recognize. The props and buildings they use for the movies look less real when you're actually looking at them in person. There are also a few bumps along the way of the tour getting too close to King Kong, Jaws, and being in an earthquake! Below are some pictures of the How the Grinch Stole Christmas set, the Psycho set, the War of the Worlds set, and a picture of the Water World show we watched.

Shrek 4-D, so fun!                      

We WERE able to go on the Transformers ride and  it was awesome!!! Not a lot of people knew you could ride it, which was nice because we were able to just walk on!! Petey was so happy we were able to go on it! After Universal Studios we headed back to our hotel. That night we went in front of Disneyland and watched the firework show! It was the perfect ending to the perfect vacation!

Once we got back to Utah (I had a few freak-outs on the plane ride back too haha), we were able to watch Tanner graduate from Payson High School!! We are all so proud of him!! Great job Tanner!

So ya...there is our trip ad an update in an nutshell!