Holiday Scenes

The Birdhouse + Christmas + lots of kids (cute ones I might add) = LOTS OF FUN!

This is Courtney and Carter playing video games in their 'fort' on the third floor. I got such warm fuzzie's seeing their masterpiece because I myself was a fort master extraordinaire.

Clark + Jonah = Two Cute Towheads

Brianna and Cork performed a puppet show for all of us, and it was so cute. The best part was them imitating Tricia and Dan and correcting each other what was next on the script.

Bowl of M&Ms + Edge of the Table = Clark's enjoyment

Birdhouse Closet + Birdhouse Jacuzzi Bath = Sound Sleep for the Clarkster

Comfie couch + Cartoons = 3 Happy Boys

Shoooooooooter! Come out come out wherever you are! I have some oranges for you! It was really just a ploy so Clark could tug on his fur and lovingly gouge his eyes out, but Shooter graciously endured Clark's attention and then would run away as fast as he could.

We gave Courtney and Carter soccer goals for Christmas, so naturally we had to try them out...and show off our soccer skills...what soccer skills?
It was discovered that Tricia can't really kick a ball, and while I can kick a ball, power does not equal good direction, and Dad's shin + Dan's toe = bruise for Dan. Tanner was the only skilled adult in the group. We never tried it but I think Tanner, Courtney, and Carter could have beat myself, Dad, Tricia, AND Dan.

Tricia and I gave mom and dad a puzzle of the birdhouse. It was my wicked awesome idea, and the company who did it for us was great. It was quite difficult actually! Dad gets sole credit for the sky, Tanner the chimney, Mom the white fence, and myself the front doors and posts, and Tricia the trees on the left and more posts.

Did I mention that we had fun?

Merry Christmas!

We really didn't have high expectations for Clark and his Christmas skills when it came to opening presents and acting excited about the whole affair, but we were pleasantly surprised. He was very intrigued by all the giftwrap when we came down the stairs, and he got really into pulling out his presents in his stocking. I think his favorite gift was of course...new pacies!

He stayed awake during the whole present opening and had fun the whole time particularly playing peekaboo with dad through the glass doors.

We all received wonderful gifts from eachother and our family members and just being with family made it all the better!

Christmas Eve

'Twas the night before Christmas when all through the birdhouse,
Not a creature was stirring, not even a M-word
(we aren't allowed to say the name for fear they may come back)
The stockings were hung on the banister with care,
plus Clark's adorable one made by Nana was there!

The birdhouse looked great thanks to Nana's hard work!
Nativities and angels decked each room and nook
The tree was beauty and the aroma even greater,
It seems every year we say the tree's never better!

Clark was decked out for the Christmas to come
With green pacie cuz I don't suck my thumb!
And reindeer pjs that fit as snug as a bug
and stories by Daddy before bed in the tub
(yes, he slept in the jacuzzi bathtub the whole vacation...it looked quite comfortable actually).

Happy Christmas to all and to all a good night!

New York Day 2

On Day Two, we decided to see the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. I was excited because while I have been to New York numerous times, it has been about ten years since I have been to Liberty Island. You can't walk up into the statue anymore, because they decided it was just too crowded and too much of a hazard. But you can look up into it from below. It was a nice day and the New York skyline was beautiful. We enjoyed ourselves and I even bought Clark a Statue of Liberty pen that lights up and that he can chew on, and I bought Tanner and I matching hot chocolate mugs. We even stopped off at IKEA on our way out of town to grab a few last minute stocking stuffers for our kids. It was a great trip and I had so much fun with the other women: Joni, Jene, and Amy. Kudos to Joni who is 7 1/2 months pregnant and walked all over town like a champ and also Amy who is newly pregnant and despite what we termed a 'quick throwup stop' just outside of DC was good to go the rest of the trip! I am especially grateful that 4 women can talk for 7 hours straight each way and keep the driver awake with lively conversation!

New York Day 1

For Christmas this year, Tanner and 3 other law student husbands gave their wives a trip to New York for two days and tickets to see the Christmas Spectacular featuring The Rockettes at Radio City. Actually, us wives planned the trip while watching our husbands play intramural football one night, but they all thought it was a great idea. We had so much fun! It was fun having a girls' trip with no children, but also a little strange. I think we all looked frantically around a few times for our kids before remembering it was just us! And there were a few phonecalls to mom from potty training children, and we all had to smile as one of the wives would exclaim "YOU WENT POOPY IN THE BIG TOILET!!! GOOD JOB!"

We drove up early on Wednesday, and we were in the city by 2pm. We walked everywhere, saw Times Square and Rockefeller Center. We watched the Saks Fifth Avenue Snowflake Show...TWICE! and saw the beautiful windows at Bergdorf Goodman. My favorite was the Gingerbread window. The detail was incredible. The Christmas Spectacular was absolutely AMAZING. It was worth the trip just for that experience alone. After the show we walked down to see the decorations at Macy's. We got a lot done that day and we all fell into bed exhausted that night. At one point during the evening, one of the women said to me "I have seen other cities at Christmastime, but I have NEVER seen anything like this!". Amen to that. Hopefully this sample video and these pictures capture the feeling of what it was like.

Jamestown Stroll

Worlds Collide

Last year, a family moved into the Williamsburg ward. Their last name was Becker. We were able to figure out that they are the parents of Brittany Becker, a friend and a fellow library security guard at BYU. She married Dan Jagoda, also a friend and library security guard. We hung out a lot together, bonded about being the two successful relationships that came from working at the library, and attended each other's weddings just a few months apart. This week, Dan and Brittany came to Williamsburg to visit her parents all the way from China. It was like one of those dreams where people from different places and times in your life get all mixed up and are seemingly in the wrong place and know people that they shouldn't know... but this was for real ... and much cooler! Dan is currently studying and will be beginning an internship when they return in January. It was so much fun seeing them. We played on Saturday night, and today we went to Jamestown settlement together.

Back To Back Champs

Tanner and the rest of the Hands Team won their second straight intramurals flag football championship last night. It was another epic battle filled with ups and downs and one amazing finish. The final score was 28-20. Tanner had some uncharacteristic struggles with the kicking leg as an extra point attempt was blocked, and a field goal missed wide left (questionable call I'm told). He did, however, manage to pull down a game-tying touchdown reception with time expired in the first half. The defense held tight in the waning minutes, blocking an extra point attempt and holding the opponents to two consecutive three and outs and an interception to wrap up the game. Everyone made an important contribution and the team was relieved and thrilled that they were able to defend their title. In three years they amassed an overall record of 19-1, with two undefeated seasons and back to back championships. It will forever be one of the highlights of Tanner's law school experience (with maybe some actual school experiences filtered in here and there).

Unfortunately I missed the championship game ... again. Last year I was visiting Tricia, this year I was at Melanie's. I didn't plan it on purpose ... it just happened that way. I was sad I didn't get to experience it with Tanner, but he gave me the play by play over the phone after it was over so that it felt like I had been there.

The Three Year Old and The Floppy

For once, I was well prepared. I had backed up all my files from our computer, because it was clear that it was only a matter of time before it froze forever ... and it did. Never Fear! I thought. I have my files all backed up in case I should ever need them! Then Christmas comes along, and I realize my address list was on that computer. Feeling quite pleased with myself that we had such foresight and was therefore saved from the gruelling task of building our address list again, I grabbed my backup floppy disks and headed to the library. The file was on the first disk I put in and I immediately began updating the file. The plan was to email it to myself, and then save it on our laptop at home so now we would have the new and improved version on the computer we currently use. Everything was going so well, and I thought how glad I was that I had it all in excel format so it would save me hours of time preparing my cards. As I was fixing my list, a pregnant woman with her 3 year old daughter came into the computer lab in the library. The little girl was making all kinds of noise, which I was okay with because I am a mom and I know that it is difficult to sometimes keep your children quiet in quiet places. The woman sat down at the computer next to mine, and it seemed she was just quickly checking something. I had just finished updating the file, and I hit SAVE. The computer was making it's usual grinding noise of saving, and I had the thought of how much better CD-Rs and Flash Drives are for saving work, when my entire computer shut down. I sucked in so much air in my moment of shock, I almost coughed. I quickly looked around to other computers to see if everyone else had lost power ... and then I saw THE FACE. That little three year old girl looked at me with the guiltiest look I have ever seen in a child. The mother had not noticed a thing, and if she had, she certainly wasn't acting like it. She had turned off my computer...and to make matters worse, when I pressed the same button to turn my computer back on, she started giggling. I thought about saying something and then thought better of it. Instead I resorted to giving this little girl the nastiest crusty I could muster ... as if to say "I dare you to hit that button again". While I was waiting for the computer to boot, the mother and her daughter left. I inserted my disk so I could email my list, and the box came up...

Floppy disk in drive A: is not formatted. Would you like to format it now?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! It was an experience straight out of the book "To Say Nothing of the Dog". It was as if this little girl and her mom were sent through the space-time continuum to do whatever was necessary to stop me from having a completely stress free Christmas. The timing was too perfect ... everything was just TOO coincidental to be coincidental. It probably wasn't the original plan because it was assumed that I would not be prepared with a backup disk. But when it turned out that I was prepared, an incongruity must have occurred in the system, and drastic measures had to be taken to stop me.

After trying numerous things to no avail, I depressingly ejected my disk, packed up my things and headed home. I felt like crying, which is pathetic, but to be so close to having everything be so easy and simple ... to having NOTHING was disheartening. I thought on the way home about how my experience resembled the book I just finished, and I started to laugh, out loud, in the car. It was either that or cry.

Thankfully, it wasn't as bad getting my addresses as I thought it would thanks to my sister-in-law Stephanie, my sister Tricia, and the BYU Alumni directory. Now, back to my stress free Christmas.

A Perfect Errand Day

I don't know about the rest of the world, but it seems like everytime I go out to run errands, I either miss one of the places I was supposed to go or I forget something at a store I was supposed to get. It always seems like I end up wasting more time by trying to do all my errands at once and missing half of them, and then having to do even more errands the next day and going to places 2 or 3 times. Tonight, I planned out all my errands with EVERYTHING I needed to pick up at every store so that I didn't miss anything. I did not want to get home and realize I forgot to buy the glue to make the Christmas cards or the sticky stuff to glue the rearview mirror in our beloved Monte back up. When I got home, I figured out I had gone to 4 different stores all across town and remembered EVERYTHING...shocking! Although, I will have to go back to Wal-Mart since they didn't have some of my photos in on time, but that was their fault not mine, so it doesn't make me feel bad. I felt so good after I got home, that I now want to wish everyone A Perfect Errand Day this week!

"24"

For those of you who are familiar with the show "24", each episode is one hour of one day where everything goes wrong. The one day is 5 1/2 months on television. That is how my "24" felt. Each hour was a full episode, and what was only really just one day, felt like 5 1/2 months. It started with...

"Excuse me, I think I am going to go to the bathroom and throw up."

That's never a good thing. I was just delusional in thinking that it would just be a one time thing. I felt better for about five minutes...maybe...and then I knew it wasn't over. I pretty much spent the night in the bathroom. Clark even got in on the action at about 1:30am when he decided to wake up and not go back down. I was trying to get him back to sleep by bouncing him in my arms in front of the warm fireplace/pellet stove, when my stomach decided it was time...again for the 4th time. I had to put my crying child on the ground, and crying turned into screaming, while I booked it for the bathroom. It was very sad, for both of us.

We needed to leave for the airport at 6:30am, and I think I ended up getting a restless two hours sleep, and when I awoke, it started all over again. Melanie could not have been a better sister to me during my time of need. I cried on the way to the airport, so tired, so weak, and so worried that I would not make it through the flight with Clark on my lap without my stomach striking again. Melanie did not want to leave me and she said she wished she could come with me on the plane. I wished she could too. Luckily a very nice couple sat next to Clark and I and entertained him for most of the 1 hr and 15 min. flight. I was able to make it through the flight and when we saw Tanner as we came out of the terminal, I cried again. I said "I have never been so happy to see you!" He said "Come on, even more than on our wedding day?" I said "I don't know, it's a toss up."
He took care of me the rest of the day...and almost 24 hours from the moment it all began, it was over. It was awful, I'm glad it's over and I'm still alive...just like Jack Bauer.

Clark the Climber

We took the cushion off the chair in the living room to give Clark some extra padding in his playpen bed while we are here. It didn't take long for Clarkie pants (that's my nickname I use when I am telling him to stay away from getting into things he shouldn't....it's lame I know) to figure out that without the cushion, the chair was climbable. I was informed of this new development when I suddenly heard a "BANG" followed quickly by a "WAHHHHHH" from the living room. After being consoled, he eagerly got back up on the chair and turned and looked at me triumphly, and I couldn't help but being so proud of him. If we could just work on his dismount, that would make me even happier.








NOTE: My child does not normally wander around with his shirt off displaying his prominant abs of steel, but he had just had messy breakfast and we were trying to isolate the banana smearage to just the kitchen.

Spaghetti Face

Clark was a huge fan of Mel's spaghetti last night. He recently began eating from a plate successfully without dumping everything off of it. However, when he has eaten everything off the plate, he usually picks it up and looks under it to see if there is more food underneath as shown below.

Everyone else had finished their dinner, so we cleaned up while Clark finished his feast.

Cue the wet wipe bath.

1 year checkup

Clark has his one year checkup on Thursday! Tanner and I thought he would have slowed down a little bit since he seemed like he was getting a little bit lighter to carry around. But, apparently our muscles must be getting bigger because he is still growing in every direction! But he is proportionate! Here are his stats:

Height: 32 inches (97%)
Weight: 28 lbs. (97%)
Head Circumference: 20 cm (97%)

Clark and I are visiting Melanie and Spencer in Connecticut this week while Tanner battles it out with finals at home. Melanie and I decided Clark needed a better haircut than the puny one he got the other day at the barber's. I thought he might look younger with a shorter haircut, but we actually think he looks older now! wahhh! My baby is growing up too fast!