Sunny Saturday

Today is absolutely gorgeous! Allen is at work today, which stinks, but other than that what an amazing day weatherwise. I'm blogging quickly while Penny is resting after our walk. We got to play in the park together for a little bit. Too bad there's a leash law in Quincy. I would like to be able to let Penny run around in park. There's almost never anyone in the section of the park right in front of our house, and for the winter the park has been closed to vehicle traffic; but I guess I don't want to take a chances. She gets to roam free around the house most of the day anyways, and for the better part of that she spends it lounging in front of "her" heater.

Quick shout out to our friends Jessie and Alex. I don't know why we didn't blog about it last Sunday right after the fact, but last Saturday night we went to their awesome apartment and had a great time hanging out and meeting new people. They have this game called "Lips" which is kind of like karaoke. It was a great time!

Also quick shout out to our friends Brian and Bobbi. Congratulations to Bobbi for getting the job at the hospital that she really wanted.

I'm going to start posting the titles of the blogs in the forum for comments. If you want to comment on a specific blog (going forward...) just go into the forum where it will listed.

Hope you all are enjoying your Saturday.

Wahoo and Root Beer Floats

Friday night at the grandparents house = AWESOME FUN! We had a really great time tonight at Grandma and Popop's. We played Wahoo, which is a board game similar to Trouble, but a lot more fun. I've played this game with Grandparents for a long time, and you might think that it wouldn't be as much fun as a grown up, but it definately is! PopPop and I were on a team. We beat Allen and Grandma, but barely. It was a nail biter! We also had the best root beer floats made from the homemade rootbeer they sell at The Mark Twain Dinette in Hannibal. It was really nice to get to spend some time with them. We love you both so much!

Also, on a side note, if you ever eat at the Mark Twain Dinette DO NOT EVER order the Mexican Tenderloin Sandwhich. DOES THIS LOOK LIKE A SANDWICH TO YOU? It's a plate of chili and cheese with a tenderloin hidden somewhere in there, plus it was cold. BIG DISAPPOINTMENT, big waste of money. :( Seriously, we paid more for this plate of chili than we did for Allen's regular yummy tenderloin. It was soooo cold that the cheese wasn't even melted.

Decisions....

Well we went to look at a house to rent in Palmyra last night. My boss from my high school job and her husband redid the inside of a two story house, It's a 2 bedroom house with a laundry room , computer room and a giant backyard for $550 a month. Everything in it was brand new. Windows, carpet, lighting fixtures, cabinets, linoleum, etc. We loved it, but it just wasn't the right timing. The owners were willing to work with us, but they are wanting someone in the house by the beginning of March, PLUS it didn't have a refrigerator or stove in it. It just didn't make any financial sense for us to do it. I'm very proud of us though, because it was a big decision that Allen and I made together, and we made the right, responsible choice. Even though the house was amazing ( and I'm a little sad ) it makes more sense for us to rent in Quincy as close to our jobs as possible. One other decision maker aspect of the house was the fact that there was not central heating and air. We will keep you updated. We've decided that end of March and April is going to be our searching months. If you hear of anything good opening up, let us know! :)

Some people have been wondering how to leave comments on our blog. Well, I think you have to click on the "0 comments" link and then click on subscribe. BUT that's kind of why we created the forum, so you don't have to register. At first I had the privacy settings for the forum where you had to register a user name and password, but I've changed that so that you can post as a guest.

Some more CHEESE! :)

So be honest, how many of you rolled your eyes when you read Allen's blog? It's ok, I'm not mad at ya! :) Allen suprised me with this post. I just wanted to let you all know that while it might have been a teeny bit on the cheddary side, he really does tell me things like that all the time, and I love him with all my heart, and I don't think it's cheesy because he's always sincere. So, the picture of the cheese is only a joke.

I love you soulmate

Amber I love you with every fiber of my being. You are the greatest thing that has ever happened to me. God has truly blessed me by allowing us to find each other. You are as vital as breath. I can not live without you nor do I want to. I need you sweetheart. I want to be a perfect person and make you happy always. I know I have a long way to go but you are my encouragement. You make life worth living. YOU ARE MY PILLAR. I love that we are so much alike. In the aspects of our personalities that we differ, I want to me more like you. You are the best person in the whole world and you have the biggest heart. I'm so happy I get to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you so much babe. -Mr. Cooley

Snowflakes

What an amazing thing snow is. It always fascinated me as a child. I loved trying to cut paper snowflakes, but I don't ever really remember having snowflakes explained to me like this before:

http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/primer/primer.htm . I don't know if you've ever truly studied a snowflake in real life, but if you haven't, you should. Never could something so tiny, make it so clear that we are the small ones. Love you all. Be careful in the snow.

Penny's First Blog Post

"I has snow on mai noze!"

Some people...

There are some people in this world that REALLY scare me. I'm not talking about terrorists or serial killers. I'm talking about the people that are considered by the majority to be "normal" and sane. They are lurking among us, hundreds and thousands of them! It's really scary stuff. Take for example the people that try to wash their cars when it is 6 degrees outside! Or how about the person that tried to wash their car at 6 am when it was 0 degrees outside? Ummm...yeah....

At Allen's gas station, it actually happened! (The pic is just a googled pic, but it makes the point.) No these people aren't international terrorists, but they are domestic terrorists of intellect!

Finally Friday....Sort of....

THIS EGG IS EXACTLY HOW ALLEN AND I FEEL AFTER WORK SOME DAYS!!!! FRIED!!!!

It's finally Friday, but who really cares when you have to work on Saturday, huh? Trying not to be negative, but sometimes people are just sooooo DUMB! Allen has some real wackos that come in his store all the time, and I just never know what to expect next with my job. I know we just had a super great long extended weekend last week, but I'm already looking forward to a vacation! I've posted a topic in the forum...What do you think is the most relaxing thing in the world?

Finally found it!

Ok, so we had to use Caleb's memory card to take some pictures on Christmas. I took it home and then I couldn't find it. I told everyone it wasn't lost, I just didn't know where it was, LOL, turns out I was absolutely right! It wasn't lost, it was IN my purse the entire time. LOL. Anyways, I uploaded the pics and some of them are pretty funny. Most of them are of Allen and me. Charlotte had the camera. Click on the new pic in the side bar to view the rest of em. These are just a few of our faves. -Mrs. Cooley

Never enough time...

Penny says it all right here!

Well, this past weekend was wonderful. It was so nice to see Allen's parents and Matt and Nicole again. We had a great time, but there's just never enough time. Penny loves going too!

We played Apples 2 Apples, which suprisingly is an excellent, entertaining game. Both sides of the family love playing this game!

So, it was back to work on Tuesday, ehh...such is life. We have three months and one week to think about moving, our lease is up on May 1st. We really hate to give up the location, and we're still weighing our pros and cons. If we can't find anything better at a reasonable price we might end up staying. Who knows! We'll keep you updated.

Penny got some jewelry today! :) It's her rabies tag and a collar. She looks sooooo cute! She's a little model isn't she!

Well, that's all for now! Love you all! -Mr. and Mrs. Cooley

Warm summer breeze!

Sending warm thoughts to everyone. Don't you wish you were in this picture? Ugh. I get weather updates on my phone. 10 a.m. I received one that said the temperature outside with wind chills felt like -27 degrees! Brrrrrr!!!!!!!! We decided to go ahead and turn up the heat just for today and tonight. We have two space heaters, but it was still soooo cold! We talked to a couple of our friends whose heating bills are just as high as ours are , which makes us feel a little bit better, but not really because it's pretty rediculous to pay as much as we do and still have a chill in the air. I guess I shouldn't complain though. We really are alot more fortunate than a lot of people. We are still going to be looking for a new house to rent very shortly. Our lease is up in May, but our landlord likes us a lot, so we might be able to do it a little bit earlier. In fact we are going to ask him if he has anything else. We really love our location, but the house is very old and not insulated at all! There are only three heater vents in the whole house! And only one tiny closet!!!! There is NO storage place in this house at all. We have stuff just sitting around because we really don't have anywhere to put it! These are things we did not think about when we moved in. The location was so wonderful and it was cheap enough, well, kinda. There were several things we didn't think about. It's a learning experience. Now we are a little bit more sure of what we are looking for, and we can take our time finding something.

Tomorrow night after work we leave to go to Sturgeon to visit the family. I'm excited about it, and I know Allen is REALLY excited about it. Neither one of us have to work on Monday, so we won't be coming back until Monday evening. We probably won't be posting until then. Hope you all have a great weekend! Love you all! -Mrs. Cooley

IT'S BACK!

Ok. We are admitting it. We're just putting it out there, no sense in hiding it. We're American Idol watchers! It's back, and we now have a reason to watch TV again. That's all. -Mr. and Mrs. Cooley

Blood, Puppy Dogs, and Treadmills

Should have listened to his wife!

So, serious!

Still working hard!


Finished! LOL At my picture frame on the wall w/o pictures in it!

I'm sooooo proud of my hubby! He did such a good job! I walked on the treadmill for the first time. It's really nice. Right now, as I am typing Allen is working with Penny on the treadmill. She is doing an amazing job! I can't believe how quickly she is picking it up! At first she didn't know what to think about it at all, but right now she looks like a pro! I'm really impressed. She's a pretty amazing little puppy. Allen is really great with her too. He has taught me alot about dogs! -Mrs. Cooley

Treadmill and my love for my wife

Well we finally got the treadmill up last night. Amber will be posting some pictures later I think. It took us longer than expected because, like an idiot, I cut my hand pretty good. I was trying to cut some ties off the handle with a box cutter. They just wouldn't cut. I got aggravated (no surprise there) and started going at them all crazy like. Amber was like your going to cut yourself. Not 5 seconds after that, I cut the tie and the box cutter came racing towards my hand and punctured me. I started bleeding all over the place. I broke two rules. Rule number 1: Its an old boy scout rule. Always cut away from yourself. Rule number 2: Most important rule. Always listen to your wife. lol

I've been trying not to get so impatient and frustrated when I'm doing these sort of things. Last night I did really well, but at times I was still short with Amber and frustrated that things didn't go perfect. Amber took it in stride and complimented me that I did really good on keeping my cool. She is my best friend and I love her with all my heart. She makes me want to better myself. She takes everything as it comes. We are diffantly yin and yang on this aspect, but I want to be more like her. She is the most amazing person in the world and I'm so blessed that we found each other. She truly is my soulmate. I LOVE YOU AMBERSUE COOLEY!!

-Mr. Cooley

Perfect Poem

Caleb wrote the sweetest poem in the whole world for us. We asked him if we could share it with you because it's so great. He said yes, so here it is:


SOMETHING BEAUTIFUL

Written by: Caleb Downing
He loves her
She loves him
No lies there
Enjoying life without a care
All I ever hear is
I love you and I love you too
They are soul mates and I know it’s true
Love doesn’t come in a bottle
Love doesn’t come in a box
Love comes from the heart
Something beautiful



It brought tears to both of our eyes! Thank you Caleb! What a special poem. -Mr. and Mrs. Cooley

Friday Car Troubles, Saturday night fun, and Weight loss

(Playing Texas Hold'Em. We lost...)

Last night we went to our friends' house in Hannibal, Mo. Bobbi and Brian had "game night". It was a great time! Today, Allen is at work, I'm cleaning house, and tonight we are going to pull the battery out of my car to take it to O'Reilly's to get tested. Friday morning when I went to start my car to go to work , all I got was a click. We tried to jump start the car, but that didn't work. More than likely it's not the battery, but we are going to check out the easiest cheapest possible problems first before we have a mechanic look at it. !SIGH! Car troubles are no fun. Good thing we have two cars!

Tonight we are also putting up our new treadmill! YEAH! :) I'm really excited about it! Having the treadmill will be good for both Allen and I, no excuses not to exercise. Good for Penny too! We're going to train her to walk on it, so when it's raining or really cold she can still get a good walk in. It's funny because my family has notice me losing weight, but Allen's family has noticed him gaining. I'm still getting used to the cooking thing. Don't get me wrong, I have a lot of great recipes available to me, but sometimes it's hard to get portions right. Allen has a pretty ravenous appetite, and if the food's there he will eat it. So, I'll have to work on portion control when cooking. We have definately cut down on our fast food intake, which has helped. Allen stopped drinking regular soda about two weeks ago, which is also going to help. We're going to try to nix soda drinking whether regular or diet all together. We'll be letting you know how it goes. Hopefully, you will be able to start seeing results! I'm thinking about making a separate blog page to track our progress. If I do, I will be sure to post a link on the side bar.

-Mrs. Cooley

"Be who you are and say what you feel because those who care don't matter and those who matter don't care." -Dr. Suess

The First Post

Thanks for visiting our blog! As mentioned on the side bar, we have decided to create this blog to help keep our family and friends up to date on the every day going ons of our life together. Sometimes, well, probably usually, there won't be anything too exciting to report; but our plan is to keep this blog as up to date as possible. We love you all so much, and we want to keep in touch. With everyone's busy schedules and sometimes the distance between us, we figured this would be a neat, fun, and interactive way for us to stay connected, in addition to the emailing , phone calls, and visiting. Some posts may be from both of us and some may be from just one of us. We may or may not have anything interesting to say, but we definately encourage your comments. If you have a blog that you use, or someother social networking account that you would like us to put a link up for everyone else to have access to let us know. Also, if you're curious what our thoughts are on anything, topics of discussion for blog posts are always welcomed! -Mr. and Mrs. Cooley

"What greater thing is there for two human souls than to feel that they are joined...to strengthen each other...to be at one with each other in silent unspeakable memories." - George Eliot