Brigham's BIG days!

The week of December 10th - 16th was a really BIG one for Brigham!


We went to the court for finalization of Brigham's adoption on the 10th. What a cool experience!


Saturday, December 15th landed us at the temple. He was so good and looked like an angel!



The following day, Sunday, Dec. 16th Jared blessed Brigham. Again, what a sweet experience and a great end to a busy and wonderful week!

Cook Family Cruise!!!

December started off with a WONDERFUL cruise adventure with the adult versions of the Cook Family members. It was such a great opportunity to have uninterrupted time with Mom and Dad and all of the siblings. We miss the daily contact with you already!

We cruised on the Norweigan Spirit and left port in New Orlean.

Day One: At Sea

Day Two: Roatan, Honduras

Jared gave me my birthday wish and took me windsufing. It was so much fun even as amateurs! Jason, Sally, Travis, & Ashlee also came along on our excursion!

Day Three: Santo Tomas De Castilla, Guatamala

We had so much fun biking in Guatamala. We headed to a waterfall to swim, had fresh fruit smoothies, got pastries from the local panaderia, and then headed to a local beach (if that's what you can call it - no sand and cement louge chairs). The best part were our little Guatamalan tour guides. What awesome boys!Day Four: Belize City, Belize

Scuba Diving and coconut eating filled our day. That is, once Jared was able to pry the coconut open!

Day Five: Cozumel, Mexico

This was the laziest of our port days. Consisting of souvenir shopping and snorkeling / hanging out one of the local beaches.

Day Six: At Sea

Day Seven: Fly home as fast as we possibly can.

We missed Brigham so much and were so thrilled to see how cute he was!

Well, there's the abbreviated details. Hope you enjoyed them.



Thanks again, Mom and Dad, for an awesome trip!

Basement Construction Completed - Yeah!!!

We are THRILLED to announce that after 9 dusty weeks of construction. Our basement is now complete. Minus most of the furnishings as decorations. Although you can see that Jared's got the most important part already set up! :)



At the beginning:

At the end:

Brigham LOVES Daddy!

Aren't they the cutest boys you've ever seen?

Yum Yum!

Brigham had his first try at cereal the first week of November. Surprisingly, he really has liked it from the beginning.

He now eats rice and oatmeal cereals and will probably start veggies very soon! Yipee!

Happy Halloween

Happy Halloween, I wish you!!!

(Says our little Master Yoda)

Halloween was so much fun this year! We really had a blast carving pumpkins and Brigham really enjoyed sucking on his pumpkin and playing with the newspaper underneath them.

Allyson's, Brigham's, & Jared's pumpkins!
We had a super fun Halloween party with the Rose family! Always full of food, fun, games, and prizes. Thanks, Mom! We also really enjoyed taking Brigham around Omniture for their Trick-Or-Treat. I've never seen a business more decked out than this one! So much fun and everyone loved seeing Brig!
We hope you all had a fabulous holiday! We love you!

Lobster Hunting with my brothers!

This last week I took off with a couple of my brothers on a "manly bonding" adventure of lobster hunting! Take a look at the first post from last year to see the First Annual Lobster Hunting Extravaganza (LHE). So, here's what went down on the Second Annual LHE...

Last Sunday afternoon we took off from Lehi and met up with Travis and his spacious RV in St. George. We arrived in Long Beach California late that night and boarded the boat (hereafter referred to as "the ship" ;) ).

That first night we were lulled to sleep by the continuous, yet often violent, vibrations of the ship caused the bear-like snoring of one our ship mates. Ok, maybe "lulled to sleep" is not quite accurate. I guess it was more like lulled to madness. Fortunately, Travis's work partner, Jason, was bold enough to convince our snoring ship mate to move his quarters to the rear of the ship so the other nights were blissful in comparison.

The lobster diving this year was AWESOME! I've never seen so many bugs in caves and crevices. The first night dive I bagged 4 bugs!

See, look how tired Jason is after not sleeping that first night. He couldn't even keep his eyes open for the picture!Our ship captain was an old Scottish/Irish sailor (and believe me, he played the part). Each day he played his bagpipes to "bring down a blessing on the hunting for the day."
Each day was about the same routine. Eat, dive, drink hot chocolate, dive, eat, dive, nap, dive, eat, dive, dive. Now, for Holly and Dad's sake, let me try that with "a little more feeling."

(Read with feeling) Each day was about the same routine. Eat, dive, drink hot chocolate, dive, eat, dive, nap, dive, eat, dive, dive. Much better. :)

After 5 days of being away, coming home was THE BEST!

INVITATION TO ALL: Start preparing now for the Third Annual LHE.

4 months and counting!

Well, apparently we've been blog slackers lately! Sorry about the major lull.

It's been a busy summer and fall. Life with Brigham couldn't be better! He is such an angel baby and has now been sleeping through the nights since around mid-august (at about 2 1/2 months old). We feel so lucky to have him as part of our family and in our home.

I'll try to make a quick synopsis of the best things of the last few months so you don't have to read forever.

Mid-August we went down to Lake Powell. We were a little worried about how Brigham would do down there, but we were pleasantly surprised when he continued sleeping through the night while we were there. We were also happy to see that he wasn't completely miserable in the life jacket that he had to wear while on the boat. Don't get me wrong, he didn't love it, but he dealt with it surprisingly well.
Brig looked like such a stud in his sunglasses! What a cutie pie!

He also didn't seem to mind swimming in the lake with Daddy. Thank goodness for baby sunblock!

On Labor Day we got to spend the day with Jared's brother and sister-in-law, Jason & Sally, and their one-year-old. We had a great time at the Hogel Zoo.

The latest big developemental step for Brigham has been that he's started rolling over. (Although he's only done it a handful of times so far.) His first roll was from his back to his tummy and was on September 16th. We were so shocked and thrilled to see it!

This picture was taken right after he rolled over for the second time that first day! He was so proud of himself! Isn't he handsome!

We've also taken the leap and have hired out a company to come in and finish our basement for us. Construction started the last week or two of September and should be done by Thanksgiving. We are so excited to see how it all turns out and to have it all finished!

As of this week it is now sheet-rocked. Yipee!

Well, that's about all for now. We are really excited for Halloween to come along and to dress Brigham up for the first time. What a huge smile and a happy, happy kid! Stay tuned to see what he'll be for Halloween!

We love you all!

Two Months Old!

Wow - Another month has come and gone. We just can't believe it!

Obviously, the main attraction at our home this last few months is our little Brig! He is still as cute as ever and has the sweetest smile as you can tell. It has been so much fun to see him learn and grow so fast!

This last month he has become so much more aware of everything around him. His eyes are always so wide and full of curiosity! He has also starting smiling and is discovering a plethora of new noises that he happily tries out during his wakeful times.

Here's our little guy "all tuckered out" after playing hard with his little gym.

He has recently slept through the night! (That was such a blessing!) Obviously it hasn't continued, but he continues to sleep longer and longer hours at night.

Brigham LOVES his Daddy! He smiles so readily for him and gets so excited when he sees him. We can't wait for the day that he can sing "I'm so glad when Daddy comes home." Mommy practices it with him, but we think we're probably still a few years out on that one. :)

Here's Brigham and Daddy at a picnic on Jared's lunch hour on Pioneer day. Brigham loves being outside!

Brigham's two month appointment landed him weighing in at 11# 6 oz and he's grown to a glorious 23 1/2 inches long! What a big and healthy boy.

Brigham didn't like getting his shots at the doctors office. Luckily, he only cried while they were poking him and stopped when they handed him off to Mommy. Aren't those bandaids sure were cute on those little legs?!?!

Brigham has really started to enjoy getting hauled around in the Baby Bjorn. He get's lots accomplished with Mommy when he's in it. He's already been exposed to cleaning toilets, working in the garden, and making zucchini bread. Look at that funny little smirk - do you think he's going to give us a run for our money?

We love our little guy and just can't believe how much he's already changed. What a blessing he is in our lives!

We love you all!

One Month

Well, we can't believe that a month has already passed since Brigham joined our family. We have loved having him around. (Even with his fussy moments and all! :)

He really has been a joy! We feel so blessed!

Here he is: 4 weeks old!

We also had to include the picture from the 4th of July. Brigham had two outfits for the holiday. This one and a darling overall outfit. What a lucky guy!

(By the end of the day, he had spit up on both of them - oops!)

The Next (& BEST) Adventure of Our Lives!

As promised in our last post, the next adventure of our lives has officially begun, and boy are we excited! On May 31st at 10:33am our little baby boy was born! Many of you know Allyson and I have been going through the adoption process with LDS Family Services for quite a while. Our second weekend in the UK our case worker emailed us saying she wanted to talk to both of us as soon as possible. We saw the email at about 7am UK time so we had to wait until that evening before we could call and talk. (One of our first posts on this blog was our trip into downtown London. That was our attempt at distracting ourselves for the day so we wouldn't think too much about what the call with our case worker would bring.)

Needless to say, we were absolutely thrilled (that is to say, ecstatic, elated, excited, gladdened, joyous, jubilant, overjoyed) when we found out that a birth mom had picked us to be the parents of her little baby boy! The birth mom, Katie, dropped off a Tonka truck filled with clothes and a teddy bear to our case worker (Kris) to announce that she had selected us.
Then the waiting began...

Kris told us to email Katie about once a week, which we did religiously. The only problem was the weeks went by and we didn't hear back from her. We didn't feel like we could announce to our family until we were sure it was for real. After about 3 weeks we finally called Kris and asked her if she had heard from Katie. Kris was kind enough to call Katie's case worker so she should encourage Katie to write us. We were so relieved when we finally heard from Katie!

We could hardly wait to tell our families, so we quickly put together a slide show of The Top 10 Things We'll Remember Most About England. (Of course, the announcement was number one.)We waited until we were on a call with as many as we could before emailing the slide show so that we could hear reactions. (Unfortunately, we missed many of your reactions - sorry!) We wish we could have caught all of the reactions on tape!

Then, of course, the waiting continued. But this time many of you joined in!

We continued to write to Katie throughout our stay in the UK and when we returned to the US we met with them in person several times before the baby was born. We've really felt blessed to have Katie come into our lives. She and her family are wonderful and we feel so privileged that she chose us!

Now, onto the real reason you've come looking on the blog...baby pictures!

Little Brigham Jared Cook was born on May 31st weighing 6 pounds, 9 ounces and measuring 19 inches long. We know he is the handsomest baby alive! :)

Katie and the baby stayed in the hospital on Thursday and Friday and were discharged on Saturday. They stayed in a hotel Saturday night to have a little extra time with the baby away from the doctors and nurses. The placement took place Sunday at noon at LDS Family Services in Centerville. What an incredible experience! At the time of the actual placement the case workers asked Katie if she was ready. Katie held the baby so close and kissed him on the head. Tears fell from her eyes onto the baby's head. She stood and carefully placed the baby into Allyson's arms and told him how much she loved him. She kissed him on the head once more and then, with her parents, had to leave. We felt so much for Katie and her parents. We know this was not an easy thing for them and continue to pray for them. On the other hand, we are absolutely thrilled to have Brigham in our home! We have felt an instant love for him and just can't get enough!

The last week has flown by. Every moment has been so precious, and man, is this baby loved!

Brigham is an absolute angel! He wakes up once or twice a night, takes a bottle and goes back to sleep. He hardly fusses at all when we change him, burp him, or even bathe him. Allyson and I have been on cloud nine! Can life get better than this? What a blessing!