Sad Heart...

My paternal Grandma died Christmas night this year. It was sudden and VERY unexpected... heart failure during her sleep, she was healthy, working, very active and only 71!! I am in complete shock... still not sure i really believe it... and we have already driven all the way to Nebraska for the funeral and back. The saddest part is that we were not very close. we sent Christmas cards and maybe one other correspondence during the year. I regret that. Why was I not more diligent? Our story of course is very complicated and there are several people involved... but in the end I am a grown woman and should have done more... The complicated part is the fact that my parents divorced when I was about 5 and i lived with my mom and you can imagine the rest. ( i already see the opinions that have rubbed off on Alex that are my own although i am trying very hard not to that too much) So sad how that happens... Anyways... i got her Christmas card 2 days after she died... she didn't write anything extra in it... just signed it "Grandma ****" That made me sad, i am afraid she was mad at me for not keeping in touch more... I didn't write anything extra in my card either. I just sent pictures.

At the funeral I noticed a few things... she was very loved and everyone's friend. My dad, I learned, was supposed to spend Friday with her for Christmas. My aunt and cousin had been with her on Christmas day and spent the night there... when she didn't get up in the morning, they found her... Therefore my dad was VERY sad... he did not at least get her last Christmas with her. That broke my heart... mostly because i know they are all hurting so bad... since they were much closer to her. I noticed that my dad's wife is really part of the family... i saw her tears flowing more than once. I realized that my dad and his wife really love one another... i guess i never thought about it before... not sure why. They have been married for probably 20 years at least! It was refreshing...

The whole thing is just very sad... i had to erase her name from my address list... I will never go to her house again... or see all the pictures she had on her walls or see how much she loves her kitty-cats. She will never send me a letter again, telling me all about what my cousin has been up to. My sister, April had the video half done that she always sends G-ma after Christmas of the kids. just not right. I didn't even know her birthday until the funeral.

What was nice was being "forced" to drive out there for a day... we were able to see everyone... my dad's side and then we stayed with my other grandparents (mom's side). Everyone was able to meet Anthony and see how much Alex has grown and how delightful they are. Too bad Grandma didn't get to meet Anthony before...

I definitely plan to communicate more this year.

Christmas Photos

Here are the Christmas pictures that I took of the boys! I think they turned out wonderful... Since it is really so hard to get them to look at the camera at the same time AND SMILE! :)

They are such cute little guys! When i printed them for my family for Christmas, they made me fill out all these crazy releases saying that i owned the pictures and that i took the pictures, yada yada yada... boy does that make one feel good! :)

Merry Christmas!

For those of you stopping by for the first time... Welcome! We have several blogs that we keep, feel free to explore and read as much or as little as you'd like! Here's a list below.

http://cookfamilyadventures.blogspot.com/ - This is the one you are at... It was the start of tracking our adoption... but has grown to a miscellaneous Family blog.

http://cookfamilyadventuresinkaz.blogspot.com/ - This was our blog when we traveled to Kazakhstan the first time to adopt Alex. This is a really big blog with tons of pictures.

http://cookfamilyadventuresinchina.blogspot.com/ - This is the blog that will follow us to China to adopt a daughter or two... there is a little bit there now, but it will be a few years from now that we will actually get to go to China.

http://cookfamilyadventuresinkaz2.blogspot.com/ - This is the blog to follow our second adoption from Kazakhstan. We traveled in July to Uralsk Kazakhstan to adopt Anthony! This blog is private and you will need to email me for an invite.

http://cookfamilyadventuresinmexico.blogspot.com/ - This is mostly photography from our trip to Mexico for the Baja 1000 race. We did visit an orphanage while we were there and we met our sponsor children.

http://teamgodspeedbaja1000.blogspot.com/ - This is my public blog about our race in the Baja. Other team members belong to the blog and can also post things on there about the trip.

New-ish Photos...

These photos are already a month old... But so cute...













Snow Portraits to come soon!!

Alex and Anthony!

Here's my beautiful boys!

Anthony Graham Cook!

Introducing Anthony Graham Cook!!!!! He is ours!!!

New Family Member!

This will hopefully soon be Anthony Graham Cook!!

Spring is My Favorite Season!!!

We have been doing a lot of gardening lately! Last summer we re-did our landscaping and it included 3 new raised brick garden beds. So we spent many hours this winter decideing exactly what we were going to plant and planning the layout and how we were going to grow all that we wanted in those 3 small beds! The beds are 18 feet long and about 3.5 feet wide. They sit about 1 to 1.5 feet high, perfect for sitting on as you work! We have been really excited to see what we can grow in there! We discovered a Trellis system that we think should be the best, but we will see what we think after this growing season is over! We plan to grow as much upward as we can since we don't have a lot of ground sqaure footage! I hope it works! And... Yes that is my computer you see out there... we garden like nerds! We have to make sure our layout is exactly what our plan specifies! We spent hours building an excel program that has our layout with pictures of every plant and vegetable, when you click on the picture it takes you to a tab that details out that vegetable. Its Awesome! Jerry designed it!

Tons of flowers are blooming now and they are all so beautiful! Every Spring I go around taking pictures of all my beautiful things in the yard! What i will do with all those pics, I don't know, but I love preserving the beauty like that! Here is my Spring house photo... I think this one will go in our photo album for the judge in Kazakhstan!

This is the stream of my pond... Every spring i have to rearrange the rocks alittle to make it flow like i want... Well... this spring i found a leak in the spring, so after i fix that i will post a picture of the stream with water flowing in it! The pond is looking lovely though, there are already tadpoles in it and the water lilies are growing too!

My Star Magnolia, it smells so heavenly!

Construction Equipment...

Here are some cool shots from our visit to the auction in Florida.

Last Days in Costa Rica!!

I can't believe we leave Tuesday already! It has been so beautiful here... even with the rain... i just wish we had been more prepared for rain... but we were not since it is supposed to be the dry season. I did not get to use my various camera lenses as much as I had hoped, but i did have fun taking pictures anyways! I doubt that i will post again, but if i get some really amazing photograph of something before we leave i will probably have to share it with you all! So here are a bunch of pictures from the last few days... There is a sunset picture over the ocean each night we have been here at the beach.

Friday...

We decided to rent a car so we could visit some of the less crowded beaches up and down the coast. We got an SUV a little bigger than the 4-runner. It is a Hyundai, i think... it is a diesel!! Many of our normal gas cars here are diesel, because diesel is cheaper here and they get better gas mileage! funny huh? and the best part? you forget it is a diesel, you can hardly hear it and you don't smell it!!

I had 3 amazing shots of the sunset i had to share!

This was the giant grasshopper that landed on my chest as i was walking back to the car... after i took his picture! He is about 5-6 inches long!!!!!!! He scared the woogies out of me! I screamed... and all the little people on the street turned and had to see what was going on!

Saturday...

Sunday...

This is a shack that we saw today! We couldn't believe it... as they say... location location location!

This is the beach we went to today before returning the car. We swam over to the island, it was cool over there... but we didn't stay long, the tide was coming in already, and it was hard swim with Alex on top of you!!

Playa Tamarindo!!

Here are a couple last pictures of the mountains before we got to the coast!

Playa Tamarindo mean Tamarindo Beach. That is where we are now.

The beach is beautiful... but the town is a little rediculous with touristy stuff. and roads in town are awful... so strange! The highway into town is really nice and new. Alex was so happy about the beach, that when our bus stopped to drop off some other people, he burst into tears because he wanted to go to the beach so bad!! We finally got to our hotel, and by then he was so tired and hungry that we ate and made him take a nap before we went to the beach. But the beach was lovely! Jerry and Alex went out and jumped the waves!

The sunsets are beautiful here!

MonteVerde, Costa Rica!

Finally our new hotel has internet! We spent the last few day (including my 32nd birthday!!!) at MonteVerde. On of the most amazing places on earth. Definately one of the most biologically diverse!!! Enjoy some pictures of MonteVerde area! Oh... it was still raining there... but the last 2 days we finally got SUNSHINE!!!

On our last full day there in Monteverde we went into Santa Elena the town nearby and walked around, we found the Orchid Garden. They have over 500 of the 1600 species in Costa Rica in their Garden. Only about 125 species were blooming now though... This one blow is the smallest orchid in the world... See the little flower? It is right next to my diamond!! Isn't it small!!!!? They actually gave us magnifying glasses to look at the flowers with... there were quite a few that were very small! This flower was actually about done blooming, soit was not looking so good.