We love you Grandpa Cook!

On Thursday the 21st of August 2008, my grandpa passed away of a major heart attack after a day of driving around visiting friends around cache valley, one of his favorite activities. Kira already wrote a great blog in his honor and she found some great pictures of him. I probably will not o as well, but I really just want to show how much we will miss him.
In my entire life, I have never met a tougher, grittier man than my Grandpa Cook. He was by far the hardest worker I know, and I learned so much listening to his stories of his times in the forest service and all of the great projects that he worked on that helped to shape Cache county into what it is today. From his love of the outdoors and his time in construction and his time in the forest service, possibly no other person knew so much about the canyons and rivers and general areas around Cache Valley. However, the greatest thing I learned from him was the great love that he had for family and friends. No one could leave him without getting a sincere invitation to come back, and he was amazing with kids, even Anna who hates all men. Funny, fun, and loving, and always telling the best stories about his life... That is how I will always remember him. I will miss him very much until I see him again. He will always be loved and remembered in my home.
Holding Anna. I think nobody (girl or guy) won her over as fast as he did.

Obviously, he is telling one of his stories. His amazing experiences give great examples of how we should all try to live our lives.

He gave so much to his family, showing so much love to my Grandma and everyone else in his life.

He had an amazing memorial and funeral and is buried now in the Hyde Park cemetary with his family.

Anna playing games with my dad at the funeral. Maybe my grandpa was there helping my dad along, cause this was the best play time he has ever had with Anna.

So, tonight was FHE and Kira and I had a goal setting for the semester and Cupcake Decorating party and later we are going to watch a movie! This post is just an undate before we continue our grand night together! Anna will join after her nap, too.

We began the night with a stop at a new place we had never been. The bacon on my burger was good and the strawberry shake was ok, but the prices were high and the selection small and the food overall was mediocre. Probably not a place we will go twice.

Us in the car!
The conclusion of our tic-tac-toe with frosting on cupcakes game. Tie!

Our two plates of cupcakes... Kira's on the left and Tim's on the right.

Kira's cupcakes look way better than mine.

My cupcakes. Mostly little messages about Kira.

We got playful after the game. See my pile of frosting on the little one?

We had a blast! It was so cool! Our best FHE so far, I think! we have had so much fun lately, and it will keep on going!

Book Review - Twilight

After months of being hounded by every female in my family, I caved and broke open the cover of Stephenie Meyer's Twilight Series; the first book, of course. I was on my little vacation to California and found myself alone whilst the rest of my family slept in, all together in the living room. Across from me on Neal and Angie's shelf, I saw the first three books of the series, and I gave in to my boredom, picked up Twilight, and I read... and I read... and I read. I completely understand why women are so drawn to the story that Meyer has put together. She has somehow found a way to make a book enticingly descriptive and picturesque, and perfectly romantic for every female young and old, and at the same time keeping the book devoid of conflict and exciting encounters until the last few pages. Even near the end, right when I thought I was going to get a seriously manly portion of violence and fighting, Meyer somehow evaded the action sequece, and moved on to the conclusion. Though I found such an ending highly anticlimactic, I found myself, all in all, entertained by the first book, and I think I will continue reading the series. As my wife explains it, "The last book was the original story she had in mind, and she needed the first three books to set up the storyline." That sounds exciting!

I am writing now in anticipation of the great week that we are going to have. My family is coming to SLC and we are all going to have a big party this week, prepping for school to start on Monday, so I am taking a few days off of work and partying with Kira, Anna, and the rest of the gang! It will be great!

We are, of course, members of the fun time club, and we are ready to have some fun!

Wicked is such a cool ride. Not quite so intense as X2, but the line is WAY shorter. We will have a WICKED awesome time!

And we are going to a Bees game, finally! We have wanted to go for 2 years! It will be a buzzz!!!!

I will write more later about what we actually end up doing.

And Kira is super hot. like really.........yummy. To know more about it, check out her facebook wall.

So the last time I made a blog, I was somewhat short with everyone, but I have been informed by my seriously awesome, sexy wife that she really is upset that I am not sharing my emotions online and she is. So, in this blog you may expect the bland, sharable emotions and random thoughts that come to my mind as I power my way through life with the two most amazing girls on the planet (pictures provided below) and whomever else decides to join us on our adventure.

These are the girls I was talking about, and this is a very good view of all of the fun we have together. This has been quite the summer, as you will see from the California pictures that I will post, and the summer has ended WAY too soon. In a short week, I will be back to school on my way to graduation. Ya'll have started reading this just in time to hear about my senior year, and it will be a dooosey!

So, to start off my blog, here is a look at the biggest trip this family has taken, from the guys point of view.

So, I knew before we went on our trip that Kira was dying to read the new Stephanie Meyer book, and we had to get a couple of other things for our trip, so I made plans with Kira to go to the store on the way out of town and pick things up. However, I did not mention the book, and I secretly made plans to get up before everyone else and sneak to the store and buy the book and everything else and leave it in the car for Kira to find when she got there. So, I went to Wal-mart in the morning and got all the stuff and searched high and low for the book, only to not find anything! I even know who the assistant manager at the local Wal-mart is now. So, I left dejected, thinking my plan would fail, but I thought as a last-ditch effort I would check Smiths on my way home. I strolled into Smiths, and right at the from, I found The Host. Not what I wanted, but it would do for now. I walked around the table and there it was... Breaking Dawn.... She was going to love me. Went home, left the books on the car seat, and went inside with the stuff.

"Where did you go?" asked Kira, usually angry when I go to the store without telling her because usually there is something that she wanted that she didn't tell me about.

"Walmart," I replied, "I thought it would be faster if I went while everyone got ready. I had nothing else to do."

"Oh, " she said. I could tell she felt like she had missed something she wanted badly. "I was going to see if they had the book so I could read it on the way to LA."

"Oh, I looked. Walmart didn't have it," which wasn't a lie. "Nowhere else is open right now. I'm sorry, Kir."

"Its ok."

All I could think about was how excited she would be when she saw them, and she was, as you can see from the pictures. My plan worked out perfectly.

We stayed in Primm at Whiskey Pete's on the way there.

I won some money on the slots, so then I went to roulette to play a little and I lost five, so overall I lost 2.75.


This never happened.

So, in California we did a lot of fun things, but I have to say that my favorite part (And I knew it would be) was the beach. I love the beach! I love playing in the water. Water could be the coolest toy in the world! So, here are pictures of us playing in the waves. I only wish we could be there every other day. That might be enough to satisfy me.

Our little family standing at this little overlook by Laguna Beach.

Battles with the waves. We would swim just before them, then they would let us ride the top of the wave into the beach.



My hot wife, Kira and I one the beach. The time with her was amazing! By far my favorite thing about the vacation. This one and one other are tied for my favorite California pictures.
Anna was not a fan of the sand, but she loved the beach and she has always loved being outside!
Badly burned and exhausted from a day at the beach, this picture shows how much fun we had. This is my other favorite picture.

All us Adults standing in front of the most intense ride I have ever been on, the X2 at Six flags. The line was two hours, and we were all dying in the sun from our beach sun burns, but it was cool.


Lets just say that the mist machines might have been our favorite ride at six flags.

Oh, and I saw a Bentley in the parking lot. CRAZY!

So, on the day that we went to LA, I navigated and it just happened that we took Santa Monica Boulevard, not knowing that we would pass the temple. It was cool.

Of course I had to choose the Donald to get my picture taken with.

On the way home, we stopped in Saint George to find food, and we drove past the temple there we took this picture on the move.

So, thats our little vacation. I suppose I will be doing more blogs, but probably not as many as Kir. Hope ya'll enjoy.