The Pete and Vickey Codella annual greeting

Written by Vickey on January 1, 2012

2011 was a fantastic, crazy, and wonderful year for our family. We hope 2012 finds you all well and happy.

Here is a short review of what we have been up to the last 12 months. Photos follow the text, if you make it that far.

Pete

• Applied and was accepted to the Executive MBA program at the University of Utah. He is doing a great job!
• In February, he decided to take down a wall in our master bathroom. Those of you that know Pete well will not be surprised to know that he re-tiled and painted the whole bathroom while he was at it.
• Continues to run Codella Marketing successfully.
• Is an exceptional husband and father.
• Went on a field trip with Dominic’s kindergarten class to Utah’s Hogle Zoo.

Vickey

• Went to the American Heart Association Ball with Pete (he was one of the volunteer organizers).
• Got a ticket to and attended “The Little Mermaid” at the Tuacahn Theater in St. George for her birthday (thanks Madeline and Pete!).
• Organized a Snow Family reunion at Eggett Park in Bountiful and enjoyed being with her extended family for the first time in a VERY long time.
• Became a curriculum coach for the Davis School District.
• Went on a field trip with Ellie’s 3rd grade class to see the tulip gardens at Thanksgiving Point.

Ellie

• Got to spend one week with her best friend from Las Vegas, Olympia.
• Became a 4th grader, started piano lessons, joined Young Astronauts (a science program at school), played on a soccer team for the first time and sang in the school choir.
• Got a ticket to and attended “The Little Mermaid” with her mom and grandparents in St. George for her birthday (thanks Grandma and Grandpa Codella!).
• Rode horses in Elkridge, Utah at Rimrock Ranch (thanks Dan and Paula!) and in Washington, Utah (thanks Tessa and Emma!).
• Jumped off the high dive at the community recreation center pool for the first time.

Dominic

• Started 1st grade, played on a soccer team for the first time, rode a horse and hiked to Delicate Arch.
• Became an expert Wii and DS game player.
• Survived a scary and awful bout with cellulitis. It’s a long story.
• Discovered the world of Legos.
• Went to Lagoon twice and found out he shares his mom’s love of roller coasters (much to his dad’s chagrin).
• Also – Dominic proved his independence in a solo trip to Arctic Circle to buy himself an ice cream cone (you can read about it here).

Family Highlights

Knowing family vacations would be sparse (at best) while Pete was in school, we surprised the kids with a trip to Disneyland in April during spring break. We had loads of fun, ate more than we should have and decided that the next time around we will schedule a few beach days in-between days at Disneyland.

In 2010 my little sister married the love of her life, Kevin. Last June, we were able to spend a week in Moab with the Snow family celebrating their marriage. They renewed their vows in a wonderful ceremony and had a catered dinner for us that evening. We laughed, played, hiked and enjoyed being together as a family.

We took two trips to Cedar City to visit Grandma and Grandpa Codella and see how they were progressing on construction of their dream home in New Harmony. It has gone from a huge hole in the ground to a lovely home over the past 18 months. The construction site made for a great Easter Egg Hunt with the cousins.

We also stayed with Matt and Jamie while we were in southern Utah and helped break in the new (gigantic) pool Matt built in their backyard. What a blast!

We visited and were visited by many of our family members and good friends.

Thanks to each one of you for making our lives rich and full. We love you all!

Pete and Vickey Codella

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We are fortunate to live in northern Utah. There are many things we really like about our neighborhood and proximity to jobs and loved ones.

Something we didn’t know when we purchased our home here last summer is that we’re in the over-the-mountain-down-the-valley wind tunnel.

We have endured two very powerful windstorms here in the past five days. You can watch some video footage I shot of the storm on Thursday on YouTube.

On Thursday last week about half of our neighbors lost their shingles and fences. Some lost windows and large play sets with play houses, swings and slides. Windows shattered. Play sets vanished into quick air.

My wife saw a canoe in a pine tree just down the street. A friend of mine this weekend was able to remove his kids’ large trampoline out of the top if his neighbor’s tree. These things just don’t normally happen.

The weather pros said we had 106 mile-per-hour winds in our area. And the wind blew from 2 to 10 a.m.

Yesterday we only had a one-hour sacrament meeting at church. The men spent the rest of the day out in the neighborhood cleaning up and hauling debris to the dump or one of several makeshift dumping grounds.

I’ve lived through a tornado and hurricane in Houston, Texas in 1983. What we endured as a family a few days ago was every bit as dangerous and crazy as a hurricane or tornado.

And the school district didn’t even close school on Thursday. They did on Friday, however. It’s a good thing because most in this community didn’t have power Thursday or Friday.

I do have something to be grateful for, however. The wind bent our 2-car garage door into our garage, folding and pushing it up against the back of our truck. So, after filing an insurance claim at 6 a.m. on Thursday for at least a half-dozen needed property repairs, we got a new 2-car garage door on Saturday.

Can I tell you how much I love this new garage door? I never knew I could love a garage door, but it’s true!

It’s so quiet that it no longer signals to those of us inside the house that someone has arrived. Not even our dog can hear it, get excited or bark. He doesn’t even know the car is here until people walk in the door to the garage.

The opener on the wall by our door came with a motion sensor AND tells you the temperature of the garage. How cool is that? I love that whenever I walk out the door, the lights turn on automatically.

And we now have a transmitter in our room that tells us whether or not the garage door is down. If not, we can just push a button and close it from the comfort and warmth of our bedroom.

I love that the garage door is now insulated and wrapped twice in steel to prevent another buckling from a crazy windstorm.

I love the smell of our new garage door. I love the panel of windows at the top and the natural daylight they let into the garage.

I just feel so giddy and happy and safe every time I go into our garage.

So, thanks to the December 1st windstorm and our homeowner’s insurance, along with some unexpected cash out-of-pocket at Christmastime.

At least I can now say, “I love our garage door!”

My dad, Peter Codella, at his new home building lot in New Harmony, Utah on April 23, 2011.

I wrote a couple articles for Father’s Day this year.

You can check them out at Modern Mormon Men and Today’s Mama.

I’m so grateful for the example of fathers in my life, thankful for all they’ve done and made possible for me in my life, and in the lives of my family members.

Love ya, dad and dad-in-law!

On May 25 I accompanied Dominic and his kindergarten class on a field trip to Hogle Zoo.

We left the school at 9 a.m. and stayed at the zoo till 1. Everyone brought a sack lunch for food.

Each parent was assigned a few kids to chaperone. Dominic and I explored with his friend, Atiba. I think we walked past all the animals at least three times. And I think I was calling out one of the boys’ names at least every other minute. We had a challenging time sticking together – so many fun things to see and explore.

Dominic loved seeing all the animals and pretty much knew the names of each of them. He was a little afraid of the large animatronic dinosaur, and Atiba was scared of the snakes and spiders, but other than that they were completely enthralled.

If you’d like to check out the photo album I’ve shared on Picasa, you can see all the photos here.

You may have noticed the long hiatus from publishing on my family blog. It’s not due to a lack of things to write about as much as it is the ease with which I can update family and friends on our happenings using Facebook.

Isn’t it interesting how status updates and microblogging like Twitter, even blogs like Posterous, have made blogging so simple and easy?

As part of my commitment to better preserve our family experiences, I’m one of the new contributing writers on the blog Modern Mormon Men. I look forward to sharing on that site what it means to live in this day and age, be a Mormon, husband and father.

I hope you’ll join the conversation with me on Modern Mormon Men, and thanks to my friend, Ken Craig, for hooking me up with the opportunity to contribute there.

For our annual update we’ll get right to it with the year’s highlights:

• Vickey received her master’s degree in education in May
• We purchased and moved into a home in Bountiful, Utah in June
• Eliana started third grade and Dominic began kindergarten in August
• Pete had deviated septum (July) and hernia surgery (April) and got braces (June)
• Eliana had her tonsils removed during April’s school spring break
• Vickey’s three siblings each got married and purchased new homes this summer
• Pete and Vickey celebrated their 11th anniversary with a trip to San Jose in June
• Pete’s dad retired, his parents moved from upstate New York (where they lived since ‘83) to Cedar City, and they’re building a home in New Harmony, Utah

Dominic

Dominic is five this Christmas. He’s very interested in Santa. He’s slowly learning how to be a good student and friend in kindergarten. He loves playing video games. This fall he practiced and competed in wrestling through a program with the high school wrestling team. Now the rest of the family are beneficiaries of his recently acquired wrestling moves. Dominic is all boy and keeps things active and interesting for our family.

Eliana

It’s hard to believe Ellie is nine now. She’s an excellent student (and dare we say teacher’s pet?). She’s a good little reader and is known as a friend to everyone in her class both at school and church. Like her mom, she’s very considerate and mindful of others. Eliana has made some good new friends in our neighborhood and this fall even got to make a trip on her own to Henderson to visit her BFF, Olympia (who also spent a week with us in Bountiful this summer).

Vickey

Vickey continues to work as a special education teacher and department chair at South Davis Junior High School. She’s glad to have received her master’s degree and have her schoolwork behind her. She worked all summer to get us unpacked and organized in a place of our own. She teaches the six year-olds at church in primary.

Pete

Pete’s public relations consulting practice continues to grow. He’s also teaching classes on social media for University of California, Irvine online and in-person in the continuing education division of the University of Utah. His speaking and consulting this year has taken him to New York, Florida, Illinois, Minnesota, Nevada and California, as well as around Utah. He works with the 13-14 year-old guys at church and enjoys being involved in scouting again. He also sings with the ward choir and participated in a singing exchange in October with a local Episcopal church choir.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year

At this time of year we’re happy to focus on the birth of the Savior and give thanks for His gift of immortality and the opportunity we have to return to a loving Heavenly Father.

We’re so grateful for all we have – mostly family, friends, faith and a blessed, comfortable life.

We wish you a very Merry Christmas and most wonderful New Year!

We’ve had trouble this fall with Dominic getting warnings and sent to the think tank (time out) in his kindergarten class. The kid just likes to talk and has lots of energy – and no patience. So, he’s learning to respect others when they’re talking and his teacher when she’s teaching. (She’s so patient!)

Last month after several consecutive trips to the think tank we decided to try incentivizing him with a bowling trip. He had to earn seven stars, one for each day he didn’t get sent to the think tank. It took him a few weeks, but he did it.

Below is a short video of our trip today to Orchard Lanes in North Las Vegas (or watch it on YouTube here).

Dominic has agreed on his next reward — a trip to the South Davis Recreation Center to go swimming after he earns 10 stars. We’ll see how long that takes.

Last week Eliana’s school hosted a dance recital for the students who have participated in the after school dance program (that would be Ellie).

She was so excited to show us what she has been working on every Monday after school.

She even suggested one of the numbers, Popular, from the musical Wicked.

Here’s a video from the school performance.

And here’s a link to the video on YouTube.

On Mother’s Day we enjoyed a perfect Sunday morning with a good cooked breakfast followed by church services. After lunch we decided to go for a family walk. The weather was just great but our walk became quite an adventure.

We had walked past a neighbor’s home around the block. The kids saw their horses and begged to go in. Since they were out and had previously invited us to drop by to let the kids pet the horses, they neighborly invited us in.

I said I’d stay on the sidewalk with our dog, Tank, while the kids saw the horses, but they insisted Tank and I also come in. I kept Tank on his leash for five minutes or so until they again insisted I let him roam around the fenced yard.

I was hesitant to let Tank roam freely because they had a small poodle-like dog and a black lab and I just wasn’t sure what might happen.

Sure enough, about five minutes later Tank came running over to us with a bloody ear. The black lab and he were going at it on the other side of the garage and their dog got the best of Tank.

About a one-inch chunk of Tank’s right ear was hanging loose with blood dripping everywhere.

So, our Mother’s Day afternoon was spent rushing Tank to the emergency veterinarian and paying $430 for him to be knocked out and sewed up.

At least we got to squeeze our Mother’s Day roast and potatoes dinner in between the time we dropped him off at the vet and the time we had to go pick him up with his newly stitched up ear and plastic cone around his neck so he couldn’t scratch his ear.

The cone comes off on Wednesday. At least that’s what we’re planning, but who knows.

And the neighbor did come over and graciously offered to pay for the vet bill. We split it with him.

That morning the kids and I surprised Vickey with four tickets to the Fourth of July Stadium of Fire concert by Carrie Underwood at BYU’s football stadium.

So between the concert and fireworks tickets and the vet bill, Mother’s Day this year became our most expensive ever.

But that’s okay. Vickey’s worth it. And despite his crazy personality, Tank is too.

For a while the kids were really beside themselves watching Tank bleed all over all of us and himself. Eliana asked if we were going to have to put him down. It took several times of Vickey explaining the vet would have to put him to sleep temporarily to stitch him up but that Tank would not die.

Ellie cried many times that afternoon. She’s an expert crier.

Dominic was concerned, you could tell, but I didn’t see him crying.

Then again I was pretty much focused on tending to Tank.

Gordon was a great help as well. He applied pressure to Tank’s ear until we were able to get it bandaged up and get the dog to the vet.

It was a crazy Mother’s Day.

Today Dominic, our four year-old, had to be put to sleep. No, like you put a pet to sleep, but sedated with anesthesia so some dental work could be done.

Vickey had him at the dentist in November/December for an exam and then an appointment to fill some cavities. But Dominic wouldn’t sit still for the dental work. Even with Novocain and laughing gas, he couldn’t stand the drill.

And who can blame him? I think being a dental patient is an unnatural experience. (No offense, dentist friends.)

Since Vickey’s teaching junior high school, the job of taking Dominic to the dental office to be knocked out and worked on fell upon me.

The anesthesiologist had me hold Dominic’s legs and arms while he gave him a shot in his hip. A nurse also distracted him with a jar full of toys. But once the shot happened Dominic started screaming and trying to hit and kick all of us. That kid sure doesn’t have a very high threshold for pain.

Within just a couple minutes Dominic fell asleep and was carried into the dental chair where his work is being done as I type. He has seven cavities that are being filled. I think he inherited his mother’s teeth, or at least oral bacteria.

All this to preserve baby teeth? Good grief!

And, although we have insurance through Vickey’s employer, we’re still out of pocket a heafty sum for this little procedure. Health care is certainly expensive.

So, back to the title of my post: What to do while your kid’s unconscious?

It is weird, as a parent, knowing your child is unconscious. It’s the first time since we’ve had kids that either of them has been totally unconscious.

Dominic was kind of in and out when he broke his left femur, but even when they put a cast on him he wasn’t knocked out with anesthesia. And yes, that experience was far more traumatic for me as I was there trying to console him while he was in so much pain. Then I had to deal with the police and social workers in Henderson who assumed, incorrectly I’ll add, we were guilty of child abuse. That was quite an ordeal (which you can read about here if you’re interested).

Rather than fret and worry, which I’ll leave to Vickey, I brought my work with me and have been very productive while they’re working on Dominic’s teeth.

In fact, I just took a call from a new client to make arrangements to begin our work together. Good. Now we can pay for Dominic’s dental work!

I’m sure the rest of my day will be spent caring for a sleepy, perhaps grumpy four year-old. Won’t that be fun?

And since he’s been fasting since last night at 10 a.m., I’m certain he’s going to want to eat something, a lot of something, at some point today.

Shortly after we arrived today, the pediatric dentist’s 7 a.m. patient was carried out by her father, still pretty sound asleep. It’ll be interesting to see how sleepy Dominic is after the procedure.

I’ll let you know how it goes.