The best of times and the worst of times

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way...

-Charles Dickens

As I look back over the last year, this quote from A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens comes to mind. In so many ways, this year has been fabulous. We have watched Jackson grow from a tiny little baby to the bumbling little toddler he is now. We have spent a year missing Steven, our brother, brother-in-law, friend and role model. We have had the hope that comes with a new job and a new apartment and city of residence. We have had the disappointments that come when things don't go according to "our plans". We have seen the hope that a new child and a new nephew can bring and the despair that comes when you pray and pray and ask for answers that just don't seem to come. I have sat and laughed and laughed at Jackson learning to crawl and walk and giggle or play with his Daddy and clap his hands. I have cried because sometimes things just seem to be too much. This last year has truly been the best of times and the worst of times.

Here are a few more details about my best and worst of times.

December 13, 2010 marked one year since anyone has seen my brother-in-law, Steven Koecher. We don't know what happened and unfortunately, we still don't have any answers. I think the lack of any kind of closure is the hardest part. My father-in-law said it best when he said, "We're stuck between hope and grief." There have been two "potential" sightings of Steven, but nothing that has ever been substantiated. I've spent the last month putting together a book of memories for Rolf and Deanne. I loved reading all of the wonderful memories that family and friends sent to me. The pictures reminded me of happier times. It's strange to believe that when those pictures were taken, we had no idea what life was about to throw at us.

The anniversary of Steven's disappearance was made more difficult by Josh Powell's accusations that Susan Powell and Steven ran away together to Brazil. As far as we know, there is no connection between them that the family or the police have been able to find. Go here to read Rolf Koecher's press release. The website http://forsteven.com/ is the official website that has any new information and background for those of you who don't know Steven. I just wish we had some answers. After having my own little boy, I cannot imagine the grief that Dallin's parents, Rolf and Deanne are going through. They have been such amazing examples of strenth and faith. I only wish there was more I could do. We miss you Steven.

Jackson is one of the bright spots in my life. I cannot believe that he is already one year old! He has grown up so fast. It feels like yesterday that we came home from the hospital with my tiny little baby. He keeps us busy and we are honestly loving every minute of it. After he took his first steps a few months ago, he decided that crawling was a lot more fun, and quicker, than walking. Just this last week he has started gaining confidence in himself as a walker. He gets a lot more bumps on the head and little bruises on his knees from falling, but he is a determined little guy. He gets so excited when he's walking to you and then gives you a big hug-which I have decided is the best thing in the world. Here are a few pictures of my little boy. We love you so much Jackson!

We threw a party for Jackson's first birthday in the middle of a blizzard (we didn't plan that part). It was fun to have some our families there to celebrate, as my cousin so aptly said, not that Jackson is one, but that we managed to keep him alive for a year. Jackson did a good job showing off for the family and opening his presents. Jackson loves balloons, so we made some balloon animals for table decorations. Before we took them to decorate, Jackson and Daddy had a pretty intense sword fight. It was so cute.

Jackson's favorite part of his party, by far, was eating his cupcake. I made a cake for the family and let Jackson have his own cupcake. We took his shirt off, because we have a lot of experience with how messy he can, and typically is, when he eats. It's a good thing too, because he promptly picked up his cupcake and stuck it, frosting side down, onto his chest. Then he got it in his mouth and really went to town. He also picked up some ice cream like he was holding a snowball and thought he was in heaven. It was fun to watch him enjoy himself. Such a cute, albeit messy, little boy.
Here are a few other pictures to update you one our life. This is mostly for grandparent's sake. Enjoy!

This was Jackson's first experience with Santa Claus. I think he liked him ;-)

On the Saturday after Thanksgiving, we went to Evanston, Wyoming to cut down Christmas trees with Dallin's cousins. We made a day of it and had a great time. We found a great tree and are loving it here at home. Jackson has been surprisingly good about avoiding the tree and the gifts under it (knock on wood). I'm so excited for Christmas with our little man. Kids make almost everything more fun.

Jackson loved sledding!

Jackson also really liked playing in the leaves. Fall is such a beautiful time of year.

Jackson got snow clothes for his birthday. This was the first time he was able to get all bundled up and play in the snow. It was funny. Jackson just patted the snow and played. The face he is making in this picture cracks me up. What a ham.

Strictly speaking, we're still Aggies. Jackson just doesn't know it yet. ;-) He does have a USU shirt though...

I love my life, the good and the bad. What life would be complete without the good times and the bad. Without the harder times, how would re recognize the beautiful moments?

Happiness is...

I've decided to immitate Dallin's cousin, Stephanie, with a theme she had going a while ago on her blog. The theme is "Happiness is..." I've realized that there are so many things in my life that make me happy. A lot of these things are things that Jackson has taught me, or is continuing to teach me, or has reminded me of. So, here is my first installment in my own "Happiness is" collection.

Happiness is getting your driver's licence (or pretending you have it).

Remember how excited you were when you first turned 16 and went to the DMV with your mom to fill out the paperwork to get the long coveted driver's license. The freedom, the permission slip into the adult world, the coolness factor, and did I mention the freedom? I remember going to the DMV with my mom on my birthday and leaving feeling like I was on top of the world. I'm grateful that it will still be a while before Jackson get's his "real" driver's license and I'm the mom taking him. I'm also grateful for my tender moments when just riding in a toy car can give a little boy such complete joy. I want to be more like that. This is also one of my very favorite pictures of Jackson that I just had to share.

On a sidenote...

Jackson is walking!!!

He took his first "real" steps this last week.

Let the craziness begin :-)

Halloween and Fall Fun!!!

I have never been one to enjoy Halloween, except for maybe those days when my dad would dress up and scare the trick or treaters on our front porch or the days before I was diabetic and enjoyed eating myself sick on candy (to be truthful, I usually ended up throwing some of my candy away because I would wait too long to eat it all). I must say that my opinion of Halloween has dramatically improved since having a baby. My opinion of gore and scary movies has stayed the same (very negative) and I still have flashbacks of Dallin jumping out at me from the backseat of my car two years ago, but how can anyone look at this cute little polar bear and not like Halloween at least a little bit? I must say Jackson made the cutest polar bear I have ever seen.



Not only was he the cutest polar bear I have ever seen, but the coolest polar bear I have ever seen too.

We had a ward Halloween party which also doubled as Trunk-or-Treat and a chili/cornbread/pie cook-off. Dallin and used Lisa's (Dallin's sister's) recipe to make some great cornbread (which unfortunately only took first place in our books) and Dallin made a beautiful apple pie from some apples we brought back from my parent's house. I am proud to admit that Dallin won the "Overall Best Pie" award. First place! What a wonderful husband I have. We were so excited. I wish I would have taken a picture of the award winning pie. We also won one of the costume awards. Jackson, as you can tell from above, was a polar bear and Dallin and I were his zookeepers. We wore white and khaki, shorts, tall socks with boots and sandles, sunglasses, and even put sunscreen on our noses. We won the Most Original Costumes award, or something like that. We had a lot of fun passing out candy and hanging out with our friends in our ward. Good times.


On Friday, we also had a Halloween party with some of Dallin's cousins. We had soup and breadbowls, dipped carmel apples, and watched Ghostbusters. That's about as scary a movie as I like them. ;-) We had a lot of fun getting together with family. It's great to live so close to them. Brian, Stephanie and Charlotte came straight from a Halloween party, that's why they are dressed as The Incredibles. The rest of us weren't just party poopers. And Jackson was already asleep, otherwise he would be livin up the party too.


We've been able to do a lot of other fun things together this fall too. Here is a list of just a few of them.


We went to Red Butte Garden. It was beautiful. I loved seeing the trees that had changed colors and all of the beautiful flowers. It is such a fun place to go. We had a great afternoon there.

One morning, we also hiked Ensign Peak bright and early. We left at 7:00 or so. We packed Jackson up there in his handy hiking backpack and had a great time. It was a beautiful view. We also took Dallin's little backpacking stove and made hot chocolate and instant oatmeal when we got to the top. It was so much fun and I have the pictures to prove it.

Jackson obviously liked the hot chocolate, as you can tell from this picture.

We also went to Gardner Village. I had heard that they had some fun Halloween witch displays. Was that ever an understatment. It was crazy! They had witch displays everywhere and they were incredible. Unfortunately, the kids in West Jordan were off track, so there were a billion kids there and it was a little too crowded for us. Maybe next year we will plan our trip a little better. I still enjoyed seeing all of the fun witches.

Pseudo 1 year old pictures revealed

Jackson will be turning one next month, believe it or not. I really wanted to get some good pictures of him for his one year birthday. I also realized that the weather in November is probably going to be less than "picturesque". So, a few weeks ago, my sister Brittany took some pseudo-year old pictures. I think they turned out great. Here are a few of them. Thanks again Britt. She's basically amazing. We sure love our little munchkin.

All Grown Up

The last few days, I have really had something on my mind. It all started on Friday when we had a church meeting for stake conference. Jackson was all wound up and we ended up taking him out to the foyer with all of the other "crazy" kids. Jackson has always been a pretty social little boy. There were two other boys, around two and three, who were out there playing with eachother and driving their little cars. Jackson immediately wanted to be part of their little gang. He crawled right over to them and tried to play with them. He even finangled a way for one of the dads to let him play with another car. He sat on the floor with them and stood up by the little table they were playing by and just laughed. I'm pretty sure he's convinced that he is a big kid now. He loves being mobile and being able to get into anything, and everything, he wants to. I have been asking myself where my little baby has gone. When did he go from this....

and this...

To this?

And thinking about this got me wondering about other things. I realized that 11 month olds aren't the only ones with this problem. Why are we all so focused on being "grown up"? It seems like way too often that we are all saying, I can't wait until I'm done with college, I can't wait until I'm married and don't have to play the dating game anymore, I'll be happy when I have a baby, I really just want to have a house, or my life will finally be complete when I find my "real job".

I've realized that living only for tomorrow makes us miss a lot of today. There's a quote from Thomas S. Monson that says:

If we live only for tomorrow, we’ll have a lot of empty yesterdays today.

It's sad how true this is. I have realized this as I have watched my little boy grow from a newborn who relied on me for everything to a little boy who is almost a year old and wants to do everything himself. I have committed myself to take the time TODAY to enjoy life's little pleasures. Tomorrow will come with it's own set of joys and trials. It's today that we need to take the time to enjoy. Otherwise we might miss moments like this....

and this.....

and this.....
I've learned over the last year as our family has had some hard experiences that you never know when it will be too late to enjoy something or more importantly someone. That's why I've decided to stop living for tomorrow and to start living and loving today.

Isn't life a wonderful thing when you take the time to actually pay attention to it?

Meet the band

It's amazing how much music can change your mood and match the way that you are feeling. If you are having a bad day and just can't express in words how you feel, chances are that there is a song somewhere out there that can say it for you or a song you can bang out on the piano that will help relieve some stress. If you are in a great mood, there are probably thousands of songs that have an upbeat rhythm to match your skipping and singing. I love seeing (and occasionally being) the person that is singing at the top of their lungs to music in their car.

Over the years, my taste in music has grown and metamorphasized. I have grown to like contemporary and beebop music from high school, punk and pop music from roommates, classical music from playing the piano, country music and some oldies music from going to school in a town where those are the only stations you can get on the radio, and last but not least jazz music from marrying a jazz musician. Jazz music has been the most recent addition to my eclectic musical taste. I have realized that Jazz music can be fun, or calming, or relaxing, or awe inspiring. The more I have learned about Jazz, the more I have come to admire Jazz musicians. I cannot believe the talent it takes to be able to improvise and just go with the flow of the music. It's amazing.

I, however, am lucky enough to be married to one of those talented, amazing jazz musicians I was talking about. A few months ago, we helped organize a jazz night out on the grass at our apartment complex. We had food, drinks, friends, and great music to help enjoy the beautiful summer weather. Some of the members of the band formerly known as The Koecher Quartet came down to jam out and share their talents. It was so much fun. We're hoping to do it again. Meet the band....(notice that they were playing on the basketball court :)

Jake Coleman on the guitar. Jimmy Williams is in the background of this picture. He's also an amazing musician and one of the head organizers of the event. We couldn't have done it without him. Thanks a ton!

Ben Watkins on the keyboard.

Scott Allred on the drums.

Dallin Koecher on the bass.

And the honorary member Cameron Wood on the tennis racquet. He jammed out on his tennis racquet for probably half of the concert. It was so cute.