The Wilcox Family

I've been thinking a lot about 2008. It was a good year. I thought I'd go through month-by-month. January: Chris turned 9 with a rip roaring party. We played carnival games and had a good time. February: Hmmm. March: Spring break. Bridger Bowl and Bozeman. The kids learned to ski and Mike and I tore up the slopes just like we used to. Okay, no black diamond runs for the mom, but those blue and green runs were fun! April: Easter? May: Picked up Emily from the U and began Summer preparations. June: Chris and I went to Caldwell, and the girls went to Camp. We always have fun with Grandma and Grandpa Garcia. Grandpa sets up a shooting gallery in the back yard and we perfect our aim with BB guns. July: A very fun camping trip including hiking to Mystic Lake and river rafting. How can I forget the camping spot right on the roaring river that kept us awake, or lulled us to sleep. August: Mike went to Tuba city for 3 weeks and took Emily to school. I guess that ord...

Here's the Christmas card pic. I sent out over 150 cards this year, but I didn't have enough photos, so some people didn't get one, sorry! Merry Christmas! PS still snowing! :0)

It snowed again today. I got the snowblowing done in a jiffy. I think it is one of my favorite things to do, kind of like mowing the lawn, there's great satisfaction in a job well done. Temps are dropping again, looks like it's gonna be a white Christmas! Hooray!

  The temperature dropped below zero on Friday and it began to snow. It snowed all day Friday and Saturday. Consistently, but not a lot. We got about four inches. The high on Sunday was about 10 below zero, and yesterday I think it heated up to 3 below zero! Anyway, after church on Sunday, Mary and I went out to tackle the driveway. We put on our ski pants, goggles, hats, gloves, neck gaitors, we were ready for those subzero temps. Because we had driven on it and the temperature is so low, the snow was packed down and sounded and looked a lot like styrofoam. I used the snowblower first and she chunked the snow off the driveway, then we switched. It took us about an hour and a half. (We do have a big driveway!) Anyway, as the snowblower ate up the chunks of snow it turned into a fine powder that blew all over us. I had icicles hanging off my goggles--good thing I was wearing them. I'm sorry we didn't get a picture of both of us covered in snow outside, but this is t...

Here we are all spruced up for the Park's Martial Arts Christmas party. Yes, my eyes are closed in the group picture, but don't those boys look nice? Chris has so much fun at this annual party--the food is good, there's a DJ so he can dance the night away, and the raffle prizes are fabulous! This year Chris won the singing contest, he sang Jingle Bells, the prize was a Tae Kwon Do hitting paddle, which I'm sure has a technical name, I just don't know it. He won a beautiful set of four coffee mugs which he traded for coat hooks. I won a candle warmer set and a lotion dispenser. It was a lot of fun, but a very late night, especially when church starts at 9 a.m. the next morning.

Every week when I do Christopher's laundry, I do one of the bravest things I've ever had to . . . reach in those pants pockets and check for items that don't need to be washed. Ew!

We had a nice Thanksgiving. Emily arrived at the airport around 11 a.m. and we actually remembered to pick her up! We had our turkey at 12:30 p.m. and served buffet style. These were two changes to our regular routine. A) eating early; and 2)buffet. Eating early freed up our entire day, and the buffet made it easy to eat only one plate of food. Yeah for us! I can't believe I didn't even get the camera out all weekend.

In August, I believe it was the 29th, Mary and I went to Red Lodge to participate in the last 5k event of the Summer. It was a lovely day. We both had good times. I forgot my camera and didn't think I'd get any pictures, but there were quite a few people up there that we knew. Okay, Mary, who knows at least 1 person everywhere we go, knew quite a few people up there. I just knew a few. I planned to meet with Megan Peterson, a girl I visit teach, she's a true blue, die hard, runner. I thought I'd see her at the start and finish. However, unfortunately for her, she'd been down with a GI thing for the week and she ran with me the whole way. It was nice to have company. Mary stayed with us for about 2 minutes then took off. She found a friend, and they walked for awhile, until Megan and I caught up to them and then she took off. I think she finished about 5 minutes before I did. Not my best time, it was fun and uphill for the first half which made a nice downhill for th...

Emily went to the game. Lucky her, we couldn't even watch it. She kept us posted with texts and called during half-time and at the end of the game. She's so sweet. Here she is pre-game with friends, at the game with Sarah, and the scoreboard at the end of the game

Tuesday night the cat came in around midnight. I didn't see her all day Wednesday and didn't think anything of it. Wednesday afternoon Mary found Kitty in her room and brought Kitty out and boy oh boy, was she angry. I caught a quick glimpse of her eye and could tell it was swollen. She darted under my bed and stayed there until 3 a.m. I took her to the vet today and this is what she had in her eye. The stick on the left, not the quarter. Thankfully she still has her eye and though the vet had never seen anything like it before--it was vertically under her lids, there isn't any eye damage. Kitty had to be sedated for the stick removal. We are lucky to have saved the eye, and I'm sorry I didn't do an emergency run to the vet last night. If Kitty every comes out from under my bed, I'll post a picture of her. Yes, this adds another $100+ to the monthly vet bill. When it rains, it pours!

The bandage came off today and he licked his paw for 45 minutes. I called the vet and they had me take him in and get fitted for this collar reminiscent of "Monsters Inc.," minus the sock incident. Although, Ruff does have his share of sock incidents! He gets to wear this lovely collar for seven days and we have now spent $100+ on the dog this month, not including food. The things you do for love.

Ruff licked on his paw all weekend and I took him to the vet this morning and he had an abcess! He has a bandaged front paw and is so sad about it, he wouldn't even look in the camera! Antibiotics for one week and the bandage comes off on Wednesday.

Mary was invited to winter formal. I don't have pictures of her with her group or date yet, they went to Xela's house for dinner and the gathering. I'll post them tomorrow. The dress is very sparkly and I couldn't capture it very well, thus the close up of the fabric!

Emily and her roommate Sarah at the TCU game. They even rushed the field at the end of the game! Go Utes!

I have set my settings so that you may comment even if you don't have a Google account. I don't know if that is a wise thing to post because if some Tom, Dick or Harry is Blog hopping, I may get comments I don't want. So, feel free to leave a comment. Also, I'm pretty excited, I went out and bought a photo printer. Now I can print my photos at my leisure and not feel overwhelmed scrapbooking 900 photos of Israel, or Christmas! :0) It is very cool, the picture quality is great and I can print from my card, my camera, or the computer. And--I'm a thinker--cause it will print Mike's pictures and the kids pictures too. It won't recognize my phone card even though it is an SD card. I did have some pictures I wanted from my phone. I'll have to work on that. I have an adorable picture of Ann and Mary in hairnets from when we went to the Cannery in Boise in 2007. Chris wants me to put out there that there is a movie called "City of Ember" tha...

Mike and Chris were Ghost Busters! I was a ghost and Mary's got the proton pack. We had The Incredibles visit us! Totally wicked! Ann was Cleopatra. We had only a few trick or treaters this year. About 30. No pranks were played on us this year and our jack o' lanterns were all intact Saturday morning.

While we were away, Chris should have tested for his red stripe, but there was some confusion, and Grand Master Park allowed Chris a special testing time administered by Grand Master Park himself, and Frank. Chris was pretty nervous to be tested alone, but he did a great job demonstrating his knowledge and was indeed awarded his red stripe belt. Two more belts (red and then black stripe) until a Black Belt! Will it be one year, or less? Good job Chris!

Mary turned 17 on October 29. Who can believe that? Mike was able to be home early and he frosted and applied the sprinkles on the cake. I still can't believe my little Mary Grace is 17. Where does time go?

Autumn is here and for a while we had some beautiful color in the front yard. I tried to capture the vivid reds and oranges, but nothing beats seeing it in real life! Come visit next October! Autumn also means raking leaves and there is always the dilemma, should we rake them mid-fall or wait until they all fall? We raked mid-fall and Ann was annoyed that they kept falling even after she had raked and piled her section. There's always next Saturday!

There were cats everywhere, in every city. I couldn't resist. That cute one in the bottom left hand corner was named John.

Here we are after a swim in the Mediteranean! In front of the bus, the driver's name was Moses. Before hiking Masada. Floating in the Dead Sea. That's me in the pink suit. These pictures are from my camera. My battery kept dying, so I only took 200, compared to Mike's 900!

On the Sea of Galilee On the shore of the Mediteranean, Tel Aviv With our lovely host, Kaye Hanson Outside the BYU-Jerusalem Center Mike and I had the opportunity to travel to Israel and tour the Holy Land. It was amazing to see the sites of the old and new testament. Michael took hundreds of pictures and I'm so glad he did because it will help us remember what a wonderful time we had. We spent every day sun up to sun down seeing things, reading from the scriptures and learning the history of Israel. It was fun, we felt safe, and I'd recommend a trip to the Holy Land to anyone. I'm so glad we were able to go.