Crazy Life at The Warner's

So we are mostly back to good health and Avery had his stitches taken out yesterday and life is cruising along. I just realized that Christmas is right around the corner. Good thing my shopping is done and the tree is up. We put the tree up the Friday after Thanksgiving and Kayla was here with Chelsea helping her decorate. The girls had a blast. Kayla said her mom only lets her do a little decorating and then she has to go to bed. She was so excited that she got to help with all of the decorating. I usually decorate the tree in the living room, but I let Chelsea and Kayla do it this year. It looks great. The two of them did a great job. I don't like the snow really, but I sure love it on the Christmas lights outside. I hope that the storm we are getting this weekend will help cover the deer and trees in my front yard. We are going to the Bell Concert at the Conference Center tonight because we couldn't get tickets to the Tabernacle Christmas Concert next weekend. They did the tickets different this year and it was out of my hands. You had to register online and then they held a random drawing for them. Syndy Lambert gave Mark and I two tickets to the concert, but that means the kids can't go. Mom had gotten these tickets for tonight so we thought it would be better to take the kids to something. I love the concert because it really gets my Christmas season started. I love Christmas time and the spirit that you can have when you ponder the real spirit of Christmas and what Jesus being born has meant for all of us. We love all of you and think of you often, but especially at Christmas when we all remember what love is about.

So on Saturday of Thanksgiving we had Avery in the Instacare. He was running a fever and said his throat hurt. You guessed it strep. Then Chelsea told me her throat hurt too. Avery stayed home on Mon and Tues and Chelsea was home on Tues and Wed. About Wed. I ended up on the couch. Mark kept telling me I had hurry and get better. I couldn't keep anything down. It just went right though me. Well finally Mark told me that he was surprising me for our Anniversary and Brandon and Julie were coming on Friday night to stay with the kids. He told me we were going to The Homestead. Finally at about 3:00 Friday afternoon I went and took a shower and got ready to go. It was fun, but I still wasn't feeling terrific. It was really pretty because we had a bunch of snow dumped in the mountains. On Saturday we got up and went to Park City for a little shopping and when we were almost ready to come home Austin called me to tell me Avery had a hole in his nose. He was sledding with Brayden and another boy that was there was snowboarding and the board flipped up and hit Avery in the nose. Brandon took Avery to Instacare (again) and we met him there. He ended up with five stitches and no broken nose (they took x-rays). Austin is also running a fever and I'm sure it's from all the Cooper Thanksgiving fun. Several of the Cooper clan have been sick.


I guess even though we are all a little under the weather that tomorrow Mark and I have been married for 18 years. I think that is a big accomplishment. I love Mark more than I did 18 years ago and I am still glad I made the choice to marry him. We have a "little" bit of craziness at our house with all the boys, but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

We had a great time planning, making and eating the traditional Cooper feast. We went to mom's on Wednesday when Wendy was there and pretty much spent the rest of the weekend with each other. On Thursday we did some of our "Black Friday" shopping on line, that was a first. I had most of my shopping done already so I didn't get up early and go shopping at 4:00 am. The kids had the West Valley parade so I went to that and caught up with the girls for breakfast and shopping the rest of the day. I found this really fun thing at Tai Pan. They are called Skookies. You make cookies, personal pizzas, brownies and tons of other things in these little cast iron pans. We made brownies and pizzas in them. The best part of "Black Friday" is going through the ads over and over and over and over again. Jeff said it was way to much of course, but we still do it. We have to get our game plan for the next day. On Saturday we watched the "BIG" game. The game made me nervous, of course, but it turned out the way I wanted it to. Then Sunday, because we haven't eaten enough by now, we had birthday dinner for the November birthdays. It was a great weekend with family. I am super lucky to have the great family that I have. We of course missed Stacy, but we at least got to talk to them on line.

Well several weeks ago we cleaned up the leaves. If you notice the "big boy" won't play in the leaves anymore. Just look for him in the background. If was really fun. The dogs even got in the middle of it all. Avery took the pictures of the dogs and they just sat there. I was amazed at that. We don't like cleaning up the leaves, but playing in them first makes it better. Later that night we left a present on Travis' backstep. He said he wanted leaves for the garden so we took them over.