Aloha

Aloha! Cord and I finally made it to Hawaii! A trip we (OK, I) have been wanting to take since we were married! It was worth the wait and more beautiful then I could have imagined! I am so glad we got to go, it was a wonderful week!

We spent the first day on Oahu. We went to Pearl Harbor then cruised up the east side of the island and found this beautiful, quiet beach where the pic above was taken. I want to go back and stay here, I loved this beach!

We made it to the Polynesian Cultural Center and to the temple grounds. The temple there is closed for renovations for the next 18 months! But the visitor's center and grounds were still open and it was beautiful there.

Then we flew to Maui where we spent the rest of our vacation on Kaanapali beach.Beautiful sunsets and the water was always perfect, day or night!


I tried to capture some of the beauty but the pics just can't to it justice!

Zip lining was a ton of fun!

Here is some video of a couple of the jumps! The first one is Cord coming across! I had just gone and then didn't get the camera going fast enough to catch his jump but you can see the line bouncing! That was the steepest take off so you could get a good jump off of it, it was our favorite one! The second video Cord took while crossing the line. He's so talented, I would have dropped the camera for sure!

It was a great time to go to Maui because it's the time of year when all the whale's are there! They were everywhere! We could see them from our hotel balcony, and when we were just hanging out on the beach or driving down the coast! If we were watching the water, we could always see a whale somewhere. We went out on a boat so we could get a closer look. We saw a lot of mother's and calf's. It was amazing, one of our favorite things we did!

We went to a Luau, snorkeling (we swam with sea turtles, another highlight), drove half of the road to Hana, and ate at some great places! But we did have a moment or two to relax and swing in a hammock and lay by the beach and soak up some sun!

Oh, and I can't forget our fun ride that got us around Maui - No car seats!!!

We did miss our kids, it would be impossible to stay away any longer then we did! Mahalo to Mom and Dad and Nadene, Spencer, Chelsea, Melissa and Meagan (yes, it took all those people to take care of our kids while we were gone!) for taking care of everything for us!

It was a great trip, can't wait to go back! Aloha!

Christmas Time

We had our Robison family Christmas party last week. It's always fun to see everyone and get caught up again! This year, Santa was able to stop by for a visit!

When I got home I was telling Cord I needed a new camera because all my pictures were blurry! He looked at the camera and said "well, it helps if the lens is clean," and wiped a big smudge mark off! So I'm bummed about the blurry pictures, some of them were so cute!

Coy has been telling us for a couple of months that she wants a beagle puppy for Christmas. We told her we just weren't ready for another puppy right now so she should ask for something else! So what does she say when Santa asks what she wants? "A beagle puppy."
Sage changes her mind from day to day what she wants. Just before coming to this party we were at the store and she was playing with a Hanna Montana camera by the check out. So that's what she asked Santa to bring her!

Dane was very cute sitting with Santa! He wasn't afraid to climb on his lap but he wouldn't look at Santa. He just said over and over "truck . . .truck . . .truck!"

We had a talent show and Coy and Sage sang "Don't ever forget to Pray"

They did a girl cousins dance!

Spencer showed off some of his cool dance moves!

Then Dane helped Grandpa clean up!

Sage got to visit Santa again at pre-school. She still asked for the camera but she also added that she wanted a new bike! (she got a new bike for Christmas last year!)

More fun at the pre-school party!

And . . . We had snow!!!

They even cancelled school on Thursday and we had a snow day! Most of the snow came Wednesday and it was melting fast by Thursday!

But we had fun while it lasted!

Merry Christmas everyone!

Deck The Halls!

We had fun getting everything ready for Christmas this year! (It was fun, right Cord?) When Coy sees the first lights of Christmas go up in the neighborhood, she thinks we're going to miss everything and pushes us every day to get the lights up! Every year when we're putting up the outside lights, Cord says "I am NOT doing this again next year." But there he is, year after year, hanging from the rafters and sliding down the tiles to get them up! We love you for it!

We still can't resist a fresh cut tree from the mountains! We like to make it a family trip to go find one, but this year Cord picked it out on his own while on a hunting trip!

Our ward had an Enrichment progressive dinner on December 4th and dessert was at our house! This was a big motivator to get everything ready for Christmas! It was a great night, all the homes we went to were in our neighborhood so that everyone could walk from house to house. I wish I had taken pictures when there was about 50 women crammed in my house! It was great!

On a Tai Pan trip a while back I found these cool lanterns for Cord to hang in my kitchen (he's such a great sport with all my projects, I just have to lock the children in another room while he's doing the project to protect their ears from the profanity). Anyway, my Mom had this great idea to hang these big ornaments from it (and I was able to do that on my own, no profanity involved). It turned out great, lots of fun!

Thanksgiving

This year for Thanksgiving we went to Kim & Derek's new home. They just moved in and there was plenty of room for everyone to cook, eat and roam around! For the past 2 years, Cord has taken over the role of making the pies that his Mom always made. This year he made 2 Pecans, 2 pumpkins and 1 cherry, all with crust from scratch! I took these pictures last year when he made his first pecan pies! They are absolutely the best pies ever! I have to also add that he bought a wheat grinder and makes his Mom's wheat bread all the time! We rarely have to buy bread from the store! I say all this knowing it makes me look terrible! I'm the one that should be doing this, right? But he's great at it and he loves it. I only do things in the kitchen because I have to, there's no love there!

Kim & Derek's new home!

We took the rhino up to play!

Sage is a farm girl at heart! She loves riding the horses and playing with the kitties!

Thanks for having us Hafen family, can't wait to come back!

November 21, 2008 Big Day!

OK, I'm playing catch up now! Better late then never, right? November 21st was a great day for quite a few reasons! The fun began with a midnight showing of Twilight! I am so glad I have friends and family that are always ready for a crazy adventure! Even though we had bought our tickets early the line was out the door to get into the theater. We had to hang out in the cold for a while but we made the most of it with some good laughs! And it was late enough that just about everything was funny! Thanks girls for this memorable night! I don't have as many good things to say about the movie itself but at least the company was good! New Moon should be better, they have a new director! Ya wanna do it again?!!


After catching a few hours sleep I got up to get ready for more fun and excitement! Cord and I were celebrating our 10 year anniversary! Nadene stayed in town to be our babysitter so we had the whole day to ourselves! Another big event of the day was that Sportsman's Warehouse opened up on our side of town! I unfortunately didn't get a picture of us at this joyous event! So Cord had Sportsman's Warehouse to be excited about, I had Twilight and our anniversary to top it all! What a day!

This picture was taken by Sage standing on the counter! It's our prom pose!

10 years earlier! I love you Cord, more now then ever before!

The day ended with a stay at Mt. Charleston.

Nice Buck!

Cord got a nice buck on the very last day of his hunt! He had hunted a few weekends before but he just needed me and the kids to go with him to bring him some luck! It worked! He got this nice 29" 3x4!

He was with my Dad and Casey the weekend before when a storm had come through and it was cold - temps in the teens! Are you warm now Dad?

Cord usually has a few funny stories to tell when he gets back from a hunting trip. He told me one about a morning that the 3 of them headed out on the Rhino. Casey was riding in the back. They had gone through a gate and Cord had assumed that they would leave the gate open so he kept driving. About 20 minutes later, my Dad got out to open a gate and when he came back he said, "where's Casey?" So they turned around and didn't find Casey until they got back to the trailer. Casey had got out to close that first gate! After yelling and probably throwing a rock or two to try to get their attention without any luck, he hiked back to the trailer.
And on another trip a few weeks earlier, my Dad got out to close a gate. He was behind Cord, so Cord wasn't watching him but after a minute of him not returning Cord turned around to see him lying in the dirt. Cord asks, "what happen, ya fall down?" My Dad doesn't answer, just gets up, brushes off and gets back in the Rhino. Then he answers, "no I was just having a little rest in the dirt."
The weekend we went up with Cord, I told him I was not opening any gates for him because I would either fall down or he would drive off and leave me.

Coy had fun driving the Rhino!

Funny story when Coy was driving . . . I was in the passenger seat with Dane on my lap. We stopped for a minute to wait for my Mom & Dad to catch up with us but they weren't coming so we were driving backwards down the road to try to find them. Dane got a very concerned look on his face, looked over the door at the ground and then turned to Coy and said "Co, whad ya do?" He must have thought she really messed up our Rhino!

Trick-or-Treat

The kids got to dress up early this year and go to the Fall Festival at Coy's elementary school.

Coy & Sage fishing for pirate treasure


When I got Dane into his costume, he ran around the house yelling "punkin, punkin, punkin"!



Coy won a liter of pop in the ring toss game!

The pig races were a hit!

On Halloween night, Seth, Erica and cute little Haven came over and went Trick-or-treating with us. We made it about half way around the block when the kids decided their buckets were full enough and we headed home to devour the candy!

Cord was able to start work a little later that night so he could join in in all the fun!