The Cooks

Sadie has lost yet another tooth. This is her second top tooth and fourth tooth overall. She separated it from herself this time with a combination of punching and flicking! She is one tough little cookie. She was pretty excited to put it under her bed and get a little treat from the tooth fairy. The tooth fairy (who has been known to take an evening off before) did not dissapoint this time. Sadie was the proud recipient of one dollar and enjoyed spending it at the dollar store on presents!

-Chris and Katie

Labels: Katie

The Cooks

A heifer is $500, but you can donate a lot of different things, like a flock of geese ($20), a water buffalo, etc. (sorry, no french hens or turtle doves). The charity seems to check out from my own research. Carinne had a great time starving and working at the "third world country" camp she went to. I personally think it would be a great idea, but either way.

You can look on www.charitynavigator.org you can see how they compare. They are just behind the top charities in terms of operational efficiency (like Doctors Without Borders and Oprah's Angel Network) and ahead of a lot of the old ones like American Cancer Society. The rank the same as the Lance Armstrong Foundation. They are typically ahead of local United Way charities.

So no guarantees but it was on the brain with Carinne's recent trip. If everyone agrees with the idea of a donation, we could always donate to the charity of our choice or the Church's education fund, etc. Let's just figure it out in the next few days.

Bret

Happy Holidays everyone! I am so excited for this time of year and wish everyone a great season. I just wanted to see what we are doing this year for gift exchange. I know that Bret had mentioned donating money for a heifer instead of doing the exchange. We should make a decision on this soon. I think the cost was $500(Bret if this is different, please let us know). If we do the exchange here are the givers and receivers.

Giver-Receiver
Tyler-Lizzie
Bret-Whitney
Dana-Tyler
Zach-Bret
Katie-Dana
Lizzie-Zach
Whitney-Katie

I don't know who is going to ultimately make a decision on this. If anyone feels strongly one way or the other, please let me know.

Love to all, Katie

Here are the last of my selection of photos from the many taken in Greenville. These show Bret's family at their 10-acre building site, Carinne doctoring a horses eye and Jacob Julianne and Nathan at dinner in Reno.




The Cooks

Here are more photos of Thanksgiving at Bret's and Debbie's. These include Olga and Carinne with pies, Jacob the cowboy, McKenna playing cello, Jacob kissing Bret, Olga and Carinne on the Gator while Carinne feeds animals.

Here are photos taken during out Thanksgiving visit to Bret, Debbie and kids in GreenvIlle. This batch includes, Carinne feeding cows, Kaiah playing her harp, Bret freezing ice cream, Debbie working on Thanksgiving dinner, Kaian plying basketball and our group at the hot springs -- a concrete box of hot water built by the Chinese railroad workers a century or more ago. More will follow. This program seem to allow only so many at one time.

Dad/Grandpa







The Cooks

Here's some pictures of California snow and Santa.