Goodbye Grandpa

Today Jared's grandpa, Perry Johnson, died from complications related to surgery and old age. We are deeply saddened by his passing. However, our faith in God's Eternal Plan gives us joy in the knowledge that he will be able to be reunited with his wife, Lola, who died several years ago. At this time, our thoughts and prayers are with Jared's mother, Janet. Grandpa Johnson is her father. The pain and sense of loss that she is feeling right now must be unbearable.

Janet, we love you so much and want to do all that we can to ease your burden. We will be here for you as long as you need us.

With all our love,

Jared and Suzie

In Loving Memory

In Loving Memory of

Brian Collings Cooper

14 Feb 1953 - 19 Jan 2010

Dad, we love you and will miss you so much. Your positive attitude and dedication to your work and family will always be an inspiration to us and our children. Thank you for all of your love and support. We will do our very best to honor your example by giving to our family and neighbors and living the gospel the best that we can. God be with you till we meet again.

Love,
Jared and Suzie

New Blogging Fun

20 Jan 2010

I'm a little frustrated with blogger right now. They are messing up all of my video posts! Grrrr. Oh well. I spent most of the day learning how to make the cute little animations that you see to your right. Aren't they cute?!? The first one links to a scrapbooking blog that I set up so that I can share the digital scrapbooking stuff that I make. If you click on it you will see a kit that I made up last week. I listed the kit on DigiFree (a scrapbooking freebie search engine) and I've already had over 50 downloads! The other link is to my recipe blog. When I find or make up a particularly good recipe, I post it there. If you have a recipe request, please let me know and I will post it. Here's some scrapbook pages I made of Ralphie.

Going Out To Eat

19 Jan 2010

So we had a pretty hard day today. Jared spent all day at his hearing listening to people talk about how they don't think that he's a good doctor. Then, on his way home, I had to call him and tell him that his dad had quietly passed away this morning before he'd even left for work.

He felt pretty beat up and so I suggested that we all go out to eat at his favorite restaurant and just take some time to eat and relax. It took us about 30 minutes to get there and then we sat down for another 30 minute wait for our table. It was nice to have time to talk about the day but Holly started getting kind of upset as it got closer to her bedtime and then Derek stepped in a fountain and got his pants all wet. After 40 minutes of waiting it didn't look like we were any closer to getting a table and the kids had pretty much completed their transformations into hungry, whiney time bombs. Jared suggested to me that we might do better to just leave and cut our losses. Tyler was listening in and respsonded with the following:

"You know, the Cooper house is empty right now so we don't have to wait for a table and I've heard that all the food there is free. Also, while you're waiting for your food you can watch TV or play a game. Maybe we should just go there for dinner. Plus, they have my favorite food, peanutbutter and honey sandwiches."

We might not have a job in a few months, but we will always have the cutest, best kids ever!!!

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P.S. We will probably get the outcome from the hearing sometime this week or next week. We hope its this week. Thank you for your prayers.

Ralphie's Progressive Haircut

13 Jan 2009

Ralphie needs haircuts. When his hair gets too long then it gets dirty really fast, takes forever to dry after his bath and gets tangled and matted in just a few days. The problem is that cutting it takes forever. I tried some clippers once and he really freaked out so I decided that it might be easier (and probably faster too) to just cut it by hand with scissors. I use the width of my fingers to judge the length and just go all over his body. Since Holly is such a busy body lately, I had to do the cutting while she was napping. This meant that the entire grooming process was slowly completed over four days.

Before (hairy and slobbery)

Middle (tee hee - doggy clown pants)

After (sleek and trim - and sleepy)

Back on the Job!

12 Jan 2010

So, I've been slackin' off the blog for the past two months and I feel sorta bad. So...to make up for it, I thought that I'd post these little gems. Watch them in order.

Snow Day!

20 Dec 2009

While we were in Utah for Christmas, Jared and the kids went sledding at Grandma and Grandpa James' house. They both had a lot of fun.

Everything was going just swimmingly until Tyler decided to start a snowball fight. However, Kevin was easy to defeat, so it was still a great day!

Riverwalk Boats

1 Dec 2009

Right after Thanksgiving we took the kids on a boat tour of the Riverwalk. They loved it.

Funny, Funny, Tyler

28 Nov 2009

Not to be outdone by his younger brother (see previous post), Tyler came up with some good quotes of his own today:

While we're driving on the freeway Tyler started yelling from the back seat, "Dad! Dad! Look at that cloud! It looks like a flying hamburger with a patch over it's eye! It really does! Do you see it?"

While holding up two ticket stubs from our boat ride on the riverwalk Jared said, "Hey Tyler, these can be our new scripture bookmarks." Tyler replied, "Are they scented?"

Happy Thanksgiving

26 Nov 2009

So our orders to Minot are on hold, but we are still thankful for many, many things. We are most thankful to have the fullness of the gospel and the influence of the Holy Ghost in our lives. We love the Lord and we know that he is sending us blessings even though we are so worried for our future. We go to church, read our scriptures, say our prayers and pay our tithing so we know that everything will be okay.

Tonight we were having family scripture study and after a verse or two of First Nephi Derek said that he wanted to take his turn reading. So he opened up his Bible and after a lot of effort to find a scripture that contained both a "3" and an "H" he quoted this to us in the most serious little three-year-old voice he could muster, "And it came to pass that Nehi and Mefi saw an angel, and Nehi and Joseph Sniff saw each other...and they killed each other and then...and then...and then they killed them and they were both all dead."