26-23 Cougars in OT!!!

Wow what a game!!! Well for those that watched they know, and those that missed it, you missed out! The Cougars held a 20-6 lead for much of the game, but nearly collapsed then they gave up 14 in the fourth quarter letting the Utes tie it up. But in dramatic fashion as usual, the Cougars ended up getting the last laugh with Max Hall splitting two defenders and firing a laser to Andrew George for the winning touchdown in overtime, Now known as the "George is still running" play. The game had the high of a blowout, the low of almost blowing it, and the thrill of overtime, it was great fun. We were so glad that we could even make it since less than 24 hours before Jane and I were pretty much on our deathbeds. We have never thrown up so much in so little time. But we got healthy enough to go to the game and it was worth it. Aaaand as I predicted all season long, BYU even broke out the 1984 throwback uniforms in honor of the 25h anniversary of the National Champs. They looked pretty awesome, wish they wore them all the time. Yes, we rushed the field. In 2007 when the Cougars won on the infamous "Magic Happens, 4th and 18" play, Jane stayed back and didn't rush the field with me, but this time she was all over it. She even got smushed when some of the players came by. It was a party and a half and we had a great time. And now I have to shave my mustache...too bad. Go Cougars!!!

Oh and PS I tried to take the most disgusting and creepy picture of myself as possible just so everyone knows.

Rivalry Week and...Moustaches.

So finally the big game that we have all been waiting for is here. For those of you that don't know, I currently write for BYU's newspaper, covering the football team. A perfect job for the Cougarfanatic that I am. This week is the Utah game. With both teams having identical records, and nothing to play for other than bragging rights, this game always brings the most hype of the year. Needless to say we are excited. Even Jane, the up and coming Cougar fan is gearing up for the big weekend. She even made Cougar cupcakes this week (although my original suggestion was simply cake, which I prefer...) My stories are always on BYU's newspaper website, byunewsnet.com and occasionally they get posted on Cougarfan.com We all know my lack of love for Utah, so I am hoping for a good showing this year. A lot of leaders on the team are seniors so we hope they come out fired up and dominate. In other news, November has apparently become Movember...the month where you grow a moustache. I was recently informed of this so I had a delayed start, about a week ago, but it is coming along nicely. Jane is greatly opposed to this idea, but with other friends in on this, I can't back out sheesh. The professor I work for referred to it as a "molestache." Clever. Anywho, it is disgusting, but funny, and I have a goal to keep letting it go until December 1st. Happy Thanksgiving, and Go Cougars.

Cougar Run and College GameDay

As most of the Cox family does, Jane has been running these days. She ran in her very first 5k ever, the Cougar Run, homecoming weekend at BYU. After months of training, running up and down our neighborhood and valuable training tips from Dad, Jane not only reached but surpassed her goal. Basically she would like to be the fastest in the family, but since we have a "running snob" in the family, i.e., Joanne, she settled for a time of 26:57! Her goal was 28 minutes, but was worried she would have a hard time even finishing under thirty. I knew that she was going to blow her time away and sure enough she did. Now were looking for her to do another race, Dipsea anyone?

In other news, for those Cougar fans that didn't know, ESPN College Gameday come to Provo for the first time ever last week. The game didn't go so well, I won't even get into that, but the GameDay show was awesome! A few friends and I went to the show early and shoved our way up to about the tenth row of people so we were right in the action. Maybe you saw us on TV in the crowd. Lee Corso totally screwed us and didn't pick BYU, a move that payed off for him in the end, but Kirk Herbstreit did as well as Lavell Edwards of course. Cosmo was there and interrupted the broadcast with some unplanned antics on the stage. Apparently the ESPN producers were not thrilled with his actions but it made for some great TV as he stole the show. It was a blast to be there for GameDay and probably a once in a life time thing. Glad we went!

Nuggets the Fish

So we all know that I have been trying to wear down Jane on getting some sort of furry animal, e.g., a cat or a dog. That is far from happening but we are taking the necessary steps to get there. For an object lesson in a presentation I had to purchase two goldfish. The presentation went fine but we were left as caretakers of the two fish. We decided to name them Denver and Nuggets. (I have no connection to Denver, or the Denver Nuggets team, just thought it was funny.) However Denver didn't make it more than two days. Nuggets on the other hand is still going strong. He/She (do we really know how to determine that on goldfish?) is somewhat "Nemo-ish" in that Nuggets has an interesting back fin. Instead of dividing into two parts like this > Nuggets only has the top half of that so it looks more like this \. Maybe this is why Nuggets is still alive, he/she is a fighter! We are getting attached so hopefully Nuggets makes it a while. Oh, and yes Nuggets lives in an old water pitcher because we didn't have a fish bowl, and we are too cheap to buy one. Nuggets seems content with that.

In other news, I recently took a trip to San Diego to cover the BYU-SDSU football game. It was alot of fun to sit in the press box and have the full media experience. I was able to go and interview players afterwards and wrote the game recap for the BYU paper, here is the link.
I also got to hang out with my best friend Josh and meet his lady friend. Of course there was surfing and In-N-Out involved as usual. Sorry to Tami that I didn't make it to Temecula to the party or whatever it was, and that I also neglected Jo and Mark for the most part as well...the ocean and college football was the first priority...But we will see all of you at Christmas for a raging party and a half.

Super Dad!

Well I figure as the one child who saw Dad the most during this latest adventure that I would write a quick update. Obviously we all know that Dad just had coronary bypass surgery (six bypasses) a little over a week ago. Everything went great and Dad is making a speedy recovery. In fact, it seems he is making a record recovery! All of his nurses and doctors have been so impressed for one, that he looks as good as he does. We all already knew that. But he hasn't had any problems and is recovering very fast. He had to get up and go for walks with his nurses while he was in the hospital and he was much faster and went much further than they expected him too. Each time he went for his walks he went further and further too. He must have been nicknamed speedy by the nurses. He was out of the intensive care unit in less than 24 hours which is very impressive. Dad left the hospital at noon on Tuesday, just 4 days after the surgery! Now he is back home, and Mom is his full time nurse now! (way to go Mom) Not that he really needs a full time nurse because he is up and around walking and talking and doing things as he normally does, just getting tired a little quicker than he's used too. It seems that just a week after his surgery Dad is doing great. He goes to physical therapy during the week and he is days ahead of the schedule...Most patients walk 6 minutes on the treadmill and Dad is doing 12 and moving on to 15! Way to give it the Cox kick dad. Anyways the main reason for this post was to have a picture for visual confirmation that Dad is doing great and getting back to normal, and as you can tell his spirits are high and he is goofing off as usual. Way to go Dad!

Back to School

Tomorrow is the first day of school. It used to be that this was more exciting when we were younger. We would get new school supplies, backpacks, clothes, shoes and a new teacher and classmates. Now we get new books which drain our wallets, specific classes for specific majors, classes are less fun with no recess or nap time, and there seems to be a lot more work. But the feeling is still the same. 98 percent excited 2 percent scared, or 98 percent scared and 2 percent excited, who knows? I would say I am more excited than scared because I am finally getting into the classes that make sense for my major and actually apply. I have also been getting bored these last few weeks of summer with not a lot of work to do, and no more vacations. Jane is in her last semester of class before she student teaches this winter and then she is all done! She is excited, but pretty nervous to be on her last leg of college before a "real job." So in preparation for this coming school year we have made some investments to make our time at BYU a little more enjoyable. First and most importantly Jane has recently purchased her very first BYU sweatshirt! While I wouldn't quite call her a superfan just yet, this is big step in the right direction. Prior to marrying me, her only piece of BYU fan gear was one shirt, and it was RED! Who does that? But since our marriage she has come a long way . . . staying for all of the quarters of a football game (even arriving early), standing in line to get good seats for basketball, and she even went to the Cougar Kickoff and met some of the players. The other big investment is a new desktop computer. Jane's laptop finally gave up the ghost after numerous times to revive it we found a sweet deal on a computer at Wal-Mart. Now we have two working computers so school will be much easier not having to go to labs, or my worst fear, having to share mine with Jane! Anyways school will be another adventure as we are getting closer to graduation. We are excited for another semester!

Schow Family Reunion

So we have recently returned from a bunch of vacations. We took a quick impromptu road trip featuring our new car to San Diego to go camp at the beach with Mark and Joanne. The drive went just fine with the new car except for the fact that Jane can't drive stick and we left at 11 PM and we drove ( I DROVE) through the night. I made it to Barstow until I had to pull over and take a short half hour nap. We made great time, although tired we enjoyed some sun and some nice waves. Jane and Joanne now have proof that their husbands can actually surf. After that short weekend we headed out on our next vacation, the Schow Family Reunion to Flathead Lake in Montana. Another long road trip but we made it and had so much fun. A week of boating, tubing, water skiing, wakeboarding and alot of relaxing. Jane had a fun time having me meet and get to know more of the extended family. We lost out in the Rook tournament, but we made up for it with our win in the group games we played. Who knew Nick could fit that many marshmellows in his mouth? Well some of us did . . .And who knew I could be so flexible. I payed the price later as I am still feeling the soreness. But good job team. Anyways, it was so much fun and we all had a great time, thanks family and Grandma for a great time! Here is a short video on a few of the things we did . . .

Yosemite Video

Ok here is the video. Sorry if you feel as if you are not featured enough. I know Cox's enjoy the spotlight.

New Car!

So Jane and I decided to take a step into adulthood and reality and bought a car. It is a 2005 Kia Spectra5. I know, I know, fellow car guys and what not I know what your asking, You, a Kia? I was very skeptical myself, but after driving Hondas, Chevys, Scions, Toyotas, Nissans, this Kia won me over. It looks nice and its fun to drive, handles very well, gets great reviews and best of all it was cheap! It still has a year and half of full coverage factory warranty and just 49k miles on it. Hopefully we have it for a long long time. The car buying experience was slightly scary, but it was good for us.

Coming Soon...

Just letting everyone know I am working on a video from our trip to Yosemite and it will be up either tonight or tomorrow.

Anything Worth Doing is Worth Doing Well

Today is Father's Day and I figured that I would talk a little bit about Dad. I thought I would first say that the usual thing when we talk about Dad in our family is to bring up the stories that make us laugh. Here is a recap of such stories: Rolling down the hills in Yosemite, tripping and bloody knees, eating rice cakes with ants, forgetting the words to choir numbers, the convertible in Hawaii, and my favorite the wetsuit on backwards. I am sure there are many more stories that can be added to this list. We also should acknowledge what a hip dude Dad is. Through out Dad's life he has built hot rods and raced up and down the roads of California, added nitrous oxide and drove noisy cars that would make Fast and the Furious enthusiasts jealous. He has run races and up and down trails that most people half his age would likely pass out on (including me). Most recently at the age of 70 has gone 130mph in a supercharged truck. How many senior citizens do you know that can say that? And of course we all know of the current project, which will send our "seasoned speedster" to 250mph plus! We can't forget that our dad is also an accomplished actor in which he uses the stage name, "Edmund T. Cox." He has so convincingly portrayed Elvis, And as mom has always said, "Dad can fix anything." As hilarious and cool as those stories are I think we all have at least one story in which we remember our Dad doing something that makes us remember why he is such a great father and been such a good example to us. Me being the baby of the family many of you siblings would refer to me as having it easy, or being spoiled. I may or may not admit to this, but I do like to think that as great as our dad is, I got him after he had 8 times to practice being a dad until it was my turn, so in a way, maybe I got the best version. I also got to have him all to myself for part of my life. I will always look up to my dad for the many good principles he has taught to me and the rest of the family. Many by which have come through his example of being a righteous priesthood holder in our home, and a good man.
I always knew that Dad took good care of us and that we were his number one priority, despite the many other obligations he had. One of the things that will always remind me of this and that I will never forget is an experience I had when I was around 12 or so. I remember one day coming into Mom and Dad's room for one reason or another. It was early in the morning, probably before school, and as I walked in and was about to open my mouth I saw dad one his knees praying. I don't know what it was for, if any special reason or anything, but I know that I saw a man that was diligently and earnestly in prayer for the well being of his family. I had seen Dad pray before but not like this. I stood there and I watched him for minutes and minutes and just thought about how my Dad loves and cares for his family. After what seemed like forever of just watching Dad he brought his prayer to a close and I scurried out of the room before he noticed I was watching. That thought has stuck with me always when I think of my Dad and the good man he is. From building a hot rod, running a 5k, and most importantly caring for his family, Dad has always done everything at no less than his best. Many of us kids have kids of our own, and someday will have our own and we can thank our Dad for many of the traits we possess and values that hold dear and that we will teach to our own families. I look forward to when I can sing songs like "Tommy Toothbrush" and "Reiter Reiter Rumkin" to my own family and work to be a Dad like mine. Between 9 kids and coming close to 30 grandkids we have a Dad that really has lived up to his old saying, "Anything worth doing is worth doing well." Thanks Dad for being the amazing dad you are, Happy Father's Day, we all love you so much!"

Nature! Right in our own backyard!

So following our first camping trip, Jane has become a hiker and nature lover apparently. We discovered the Rock Canyon Trail right next to our house. Saturday we got up early and decided to venture up the trail and explore something new. It turned out to be a beautiful hike up into the canyon. There was a little river that went along most of the trail and we stopped to throw rocks in it numerous times. Jane quickly discovered that boys have an obsession with throwing rocks, especially into things like rivers or lakes, but mostly the rock throwing is the main fascination. I managed to stop several times over the course of our hike in order to investigate several different rocks and occasionally sticks. There was a lot of fire rings and places to camp along the way, nothing official but we are thinking of taking a little camping trip up there now. The trail was pretty rocky for most of the way and entirely uphill. We probably went about 2 miles up and up until we reached a gorgeous little spot that in one direction overlooked Provo and the canyon, and then behind it looked down into a valley of trees and the river and the mountains.
All in all it was a successful adventure to something we didn't know we had right in our own backyard and we look forward to doing it again!

Zion National Park

Here is a brief recap of the events of our camping trip to Zion National Park . . .

A New Hobby

Finally school has ended for this semester . . . for Jane anyways. I am still going to spring semester, just taking a few classes to try and speed up my graduation. Speaking of graduation, last week we had some of our family members graduate and had lots of family to visit. It was fun to have nephews and nieces in town to play with (mostly nephews!). But now that Jane is freed up from the stress of school she has decided to take on a new hobby based off of one of her favorite new tv shows, cake decorating! While she will work up to the glamorous cakes seen on "Ace of Cakes" and "Last Cake Standing" she decided to pick up a little cake decorating kit from the store and try it out. Her first creation was a race car cake . . . not that I had anything to do with that. Take a look at the work in progress:

She made the frosting from scratch and used the kit's many different color combinations to get that race car red she wanted. It turned out to be much more difficult than expected to get the exact shape, but maybe some sharper knives would make it easier? She learned a few tricks from reading books and watching her shows on how to get the frosting to glide on nice and smooth. When it came to the fine details, like the wheels and tires and headlights and other trim, I was given the task of painting those on. However, once I was given the frosting painting tool thing (You can tell I don't know the technical term) it was hard to give it back to Jane. But after we were all finished we were quite pleased with our work!

It might not be as professional, but hey, at least it resembles a car!

Goodbye Liz, Hello BBQ!

So let me just start off by saying, I just forgot the password to get into our own newly created blog. After attempting to remember it and input many different variations I gave up and just clicked the embarassing "forgot your password?" link. After many tedious steps here I am back in action. Last week we said goodbye to our missionary, Jane's old roommate and best friend Liz (the just under 5 foot one). She is going to the Seattle, Washington mission and just entered the MTC. We are already guilty of trying to accidentally find her at the temple. Our route to get home conveniently drives right past the MTC and the temple, although it techinically doesn't make a lap through the parking lots, we seemed to end up there. So far no sighting. Liz will be great missionary and hopefully bring some sunshine of the gospel to rainy Seattle! Liz just missed out on or weekend BBQ this past Saturday. We decided since a lot of our friends were parting ways for the summer we would have a BBQ to send people off for the summer in all of their various directions. Some are going home, some are getting married and some are just staying put. The weather had been great up until about Wednesday when someone decided to be funny and make it dump close to a foot of snow! It was halfway through April are you kidding me? Luckily it had melted by the time of our party. We grilled a roast and chicken over a charcoal grill, with nothing for seasoning but rock salt. Sounds weird, but soooo delicious! Thanks to our friend Isaac for enlighting us to this delectable treat. It was a big hit, even though it took a little longer than expected. But it was so much fun to get together with all of our close friends one last time before everyone heads their separate ways for summer. Anyways, enough for here, its finals week! Maybe next time I will remember the password . . .

Jane doesn't do it and I have free time . . .

So here is the thing. We love to go and look at our family and friends blogs and see what they are up to, although usually it just turns into stalking in order to get the latest gossip. With that being said, we figured it would only be fair to let everyone else in on what we do with our lives. However, our life is relatively boring. We both are in school, and when we are not there we are here, a giant semi-empty house that we are living in until its owners come home from their mission. (A totally sweet deal). But when something exciting does happen, maybe, just maybe, we will let everyone know. And the fact that Jane does most of the blog looking, you'd think that she would be the one to do the blogging and what not, but that is not the case. I am going to go ahead and volunteer myself, since at the moment my schedule permits me to have much more free time than her. I could spend it going running or pumping iron, but really who does that? Okay so lots of people do, including my brothers but mostly my physically fit sisters and "can you believe their that old?" parents. I will get to that, but for now let's just take it once step at a time.