Clark's New Ride

Some of you already know that last Monday we bought a new minivan. It is a Toyota Sienna and we love it! I should have taken a picture earlier but didn't and now Darren has my camera. So I'll post a picture later. Anyway, it's a great car. The story I want to post tonight is the sale of our Geo Prism. I looked on the Kelly's Blue Book website and found that for the condition and miles of our car I could sell it for $1800. We priced it at $1200 or best offer so that it would sell fast. Darren said if I sold it, I could decide what to do with the money. So today I contacted the local papers to put adds in the classifieds and I also put a "for sale" sign in the car itself. This week I planned to drive that car around and park it on the street at work so it would be more visible. Tonight I drove it to Albertsons to pick up some chicken for dinner (it was cheap chicken Monday). A couple met me at the deli counter and asked if I was the one selling the car. I said I was and they said they were interested. So they met me at our house about an hour later, test drove the car, and offered me $1000 for it. Darren and I had already decided that we would accept that if someone offered. So I sold my car in one day. And that's my story.

Deep Copper

A couple of weeks ago Kristi came over and helped me paint the kitchen. A few months ago we took the wallpaper down and it has been that way ever since - which means it wasn't looking very pretty. So here is what the new phase looks like. When it finally warms up and dries up enough outside we will do the cabinets and trim. More on that later. Darren and I attempted to change the outlets to white but found that it's more complicated then we thought. We figured the old ones would have to do for now.

















Kristi on top of the fridge. She looks like she's having fun, doesn't she?















Finished product
















Another finished product

Space Derby

I am supposed to be doing taxes right not but the software is not working as it should (actually it's probably me not knowing what to do with it on our Mac). So I have to wait for Darren to help me and decided to make good use of my time by updating my blog. I have a lot of pictures for blog entries so the next three entries are new. Make sure you check all of them out :-) You never know what you might miss.

Thursday night was Kevin's first Space Derby at pack meeting.



















Here are Darren, Kevin, and Ethan sanding down the rocket.















This is what Jake was doing during the rocket making. He was more interested in dinosaurs at the time.














Putting the finishing touches on the rocket.















Getting ready for the rocket to fly. Darren and I often take turns going to Kevin's functions because Jacob is at a difficult age to take to some of them. Darren usually goes to pack meeting but decided he wanted a break from this one. That was fine with me because it was my turn to go. That is, it was fine with me until I got there and realized this was almost as much a dad event as it was a cub scout event. I was the only mom helping a scout. There were moms there watching but it was the dads that were involved the most. Then when they told me his rocket wasn't ready to fly I did not know what to do. I hadn't done anything with making it, that was all Darren. So I didn't know what it needed. I had to borrow a pocket knife from one of the dads, look at someone else's finished rocket, attempt to make some notches in the bottom and borrow a piece from another scout to make the rocket ready. We did get it done and Kevin's rocket won both times it raced. So it all worked out in the end. But we will know at the next derby, Darren must be there. And in all fairness to Darren, he didn't know it would be such a dad event, either.



















Kevin and his winning rocket.

















Kevin's rocket "in the air". His opponent's rocket didn't even make it far enough to be in the picture.

Miscellaneous

Below are some miscellaneous pictures I have taken recently to use on my blog but have never added them. Since they don't really go with any other pictures, I have just combined them.















Our beautiful blooming Christmas Cactus.















The serving bowls my parents brought me back from Costa Rica. They worked great when we had taco soup.














Kevin and Jacob doing their morning ritual - watching cartoons in my bed. Ethan requested that I take this picture so I did it to humor him. But it is cute.

Snow

You've all seen Darren's blog and the many winter photographs he has been taking. In fact, he's out right now doing some more. Here are my snow photographs. I know, they don't compare to his but it's the best I can do.



















Darren shoveling snow. Look how much snow we have shoveled from our driveway this year. It's almost as tall as Darren is.
















This is the flower bed by our front door. I love this spot for early blooming flowers because it is against the south side of our house and is the first place the snow melts completely. In the past four winters we have lived in this house the crocuses start popping up in late February, early March. I don't think it's going to be as early this year.















Ethan and Kevin like to come out and "help" us shovel the driveway. They get the shovels out for about two minutes and move snow around, then play in the snow. Here Ethan has made a bed in the snow.

















Kevin's bed in the big pile of snow next to the driveway.

















All the boys on the sled at Snowfest (see Darren's blog for more info/pictures on that).

Our Sunday morning/early afternoon

This year we get to go to church at 2:00 pm. I've never done that before, and, to be honest, it's not my favorite time to go to church. But it does leave a lot of time in the mornings to do things. We are still trying to get our routine worked out. Darren and I have decided to try and put Jake down for his nap at 11:30 or 12:00. So yesterday morning I wanted to put him in the bathtub and get him all ready for church before his nap. That way we could wake him up right before church and he would be ready to go. His hair was looking really long and unkempt. I decided to get out the clippers and cut his hair before I put him in the bathtub. He's not the most cooperative kid at getting his hair cut. In fact, he hates it. He had tears rolling down his face and all the hairs that fell onto his face stuck to the tears. I had Kevin take some pictures but he didn't get very close. When I was two thirds of the way done the clippers broke and I couldn't get them to stay together long enough to finish. About this time, Darren woke up from his nap ( or maybe Jake's screaming woke him up?). He tried to fix them, gave up and went to Walgreens to get some new ones. Then I held Jake while he finished the hair cut. By that time there was hair all over the bathroom , Jake and me. I put Jake in the tub while I worked on Ethan's hair. His haircut went much quicker. Just as he as getting in the tub with Jake, he noticed something in the tub that wasn't supposed to be there. Lets just say Jake had done something in the tub that would have been easier to clean up in his diaper. I quickly pulled Jake out of the tub which caused a lot of water to get all over the hair on the floor of the bathroom. We got the tub cleaned up, new water put in and kids back in the tub. Then tackled the bathroom mess. It turned out to be a not so relaxing Sunday morning/early afternoon.

Utah snapshots

We went to Utah for the Bartholomew Christmas party last weekend. ( I know, Christmas is over but this is when Ben could be home on leave from Iraq and Andy was home from his mission. We didn't know Andy was coming home a month early when we planned all this.) Anyway, here are a few snapshots from the weekend.
















Kevin and Ethan showing off the Pokemon game Andy gave them. Just as a warning, if Kevin asks any of you to play it with him, he will win. No one knows as much about Pokemon as Kevin does unless maybe Jared. (Mitchell, I'm guessing not Hawes. But maybe Jared Hawes knows just as much too. :-))



















Ben and Jenna taking a nap together. Ben woke up when I was taking this picture but he humored me and "went back to sleep" for the picture. They look cute together, don't they?
















The kids showing off the presents they got from the present game.



















I tried several times to get a good picture of Jenna because she was being really cute playing with a ribbon and crawling around in the wrapping paper. But she just woudn't hold still long enough to get a focused shot. This is the best I could do.
















Darren, Jake with his new truck and Ethan with his new dinosaur.

Rexburg Temple Open house

This morning at 7:00 am we had tickets to go to the Rexburg Temple open house. When tickets first became available they were gone within the first few days. We didn't get any at that time. But because of the high demand of interest in the open house, they opened up more time slots early in the mornings. Since we didn't have a printer at the time, Tracie helped us get some tickets. So this morning we finally saw it and it is beautiful. I was afraid Jacob would be trying to get into everything but he was actually scared to be put down. Either Darren or I had to hold him the whole time. And he's a heavy kid, especially climbing several sets of stairs. But I think it was a great experience for the kids. How many opportunities do you actually have to tour a temple? Not many. At church yesterday they said they were going to put out 30,000 more tickets so if anyone is interested go to www.lds.org to get tickets. (And actually, they didn't even take our ticket this morning. I don't think they will turn anyone away that doesn't have a ticket. A co-worker of mine went with her daughter without tickets and they got in without any trouble.) The open house runs until Jan 26 and then the dedication is Feb 3, 2008. Last week I also had an opportunity to be an usher at the open house. I stood by the baptistry door and made sure everyone went in and out the right doors to keep traffic flowing smoothly. Darren gets to be an usher later this month. We didn't take any pictures because you can't take them in the temple and we had to park at the stake center down the hill from the temple. So even to take a picture by the temple we would have had to have gone back to the stake center to get the camera and then march up the icy hill early on a cold January morning to take a picture. We'll just have to do it when it gets a little warmer.

Bringing in 2008

Happy New Year everyone! We brought in the new year with a great group of people. Here are Ethan, Tracie, Jeff, me, Jon, and Kristi and Darren is behind the camera.
















Darren really wanted to have a make out contest at midnight but no other couples wanted to participate. So here are Darren and I making out.

























































And New Years Eve also happens to be Kristi's birthday. She blew her candles out the first time but had her eyes closed. So we relit them and had her pose again so we could get a good picture.

Christmas 2007

Here are just a few pictures of Christmas morning. After I was looking at the pictures we took that morning I realized we didn't get any of Darren or I. But we were both there and had fun too.



















Jacob with the animals the Santa and Mike and Kim gave him.















Jacob and Ethan's Santa stuff.















Kevin's Santa stuff.















Ethan checking out his monster truck.



















Ethan showing off his monster truck.




















Kevin showing off his pokemon toys.

Happy Birthday, Ethan!

Ethan's birthday was Friday. We decided to just have a family party. He chose to go bowling and eat dinner at McDonald's. Afterwards we went home for cake and presents.















Ethan blowing out his candles


















Showing one of his presents














He got some markers and a large pad of paper. This is one of the rare moments everyone gets along and plays together moments that Darren caught on camera.


















The artwork

Kevin's Christmas program

Kevin had his third grade Christmas program on Thursday. It was mostly just singing Christmas songs but they had one mini play. Kevin was a toy soldier. All he had to do was march.

Snow day

Last Saturday the boys and I were out doing some errands and on our way home we passed the park. There were some kids sledding on the hill there and they started begging to go. Normally, I wouldn't take all three kids sledding by myself. Darren was doing the Idaho Falls Christmas bird count. But the boys caught me in just the right mood and we went sledding. It was actually pretty fun and their friends from across the street were there, too. Here are a few pictures of the day.



















Ethan posing in the snow



















Ethan and one of the boys across the street going down the hill.


















Jake in all of his snow gear. The mittens are hard to get on and that's why they look kind of funny.




















Kevin just coming down from the hill.

Mischief

This is what I found when I got out of the shower today:

Santa

Last night at our ward Christmas party, there was a special visitor. Of course, you know when they say that that it is Santa Claus. This year the activities committee wanted everything done in one hour. So as soon as the prayer was said and people were standing in line for food, they called the primary kids up to sing and the other brief entertainment followed. Then Santa came and they wanted families to go together to get through it faster. That was fine with me because I prefer shorter lines to visit Santa and I wanted all my kids in one picture. Jacob clung to me the whole time we were in line and wouldn't let me put him down. I thought my back was going to break by the time it was our turn. Because of the way he clung to me I thought he would cry when he sat on Santa's lap but, surprisingly, he didn't. Oh, and the party was done in one and a half hours.

Christmas Decorations

For family home evening last week we put up our Christmas tree. The rest of the decorations slowly went up throughout the rest of the week. Now the only thing left are the outside Christmas lights. I bought them two years ago and we still have yet to use them. But I am very determined this year. Here are some pictures of our decorating:















The nativity set. For some reason baby Jesus keeps ending up on the roof.



















Last year when we were in Utah after Christmas, my mother in law, Pat, was getting rid of some of her old Christmas decorations. She let us go through and take out what we wanted. This advent quilt was in there and I consider it a treasure. It is now my favorite Christmas decoration. There are pockets on each square to put treats, scriptures or whatever you want in them. Only a few of the pockets have treats right now but by the time the dates come around they will have something in them. It is now the second day of December so the kids are catching on to this one pocket a day thing. (We do have to keep the bottom pockets empty until that day, though, or Jake will get into them.)



















Kevin and Ethan decorating the tree. They did it almost all on their own, even the star at the top. Again, though, the bottom branches are pretty bare thanks to Jake.