Christmas wrap-up

I doubled the batch of Christmas cookies and had our neighbor's kids down to decorate. Having friends to help decorate was nice because they lasted longer than normal and I only had to decorate a few when they gave up.

We went to Temple Square on a Tuesday night and it was so nice not to feel like sheep being herded around the buildings. The kids did well despite cold temperatures and an onery mom!

We made our annual neighbor gifts---180+ suckers. I love when this task is done..it's so much work.

The kids made these soda can snowmen for their gifts to others. Pretty cheap and what kid doesn't want their very own can of rootbeer? The picture doesn't include their candy corn noses.

Chrismas Eve presents from Grandma Carlson. This is Katherine's first nightgown and she's in love. I'm pretty sure I will not be able to buy pajamas from now on.

We have proof!

We had to document this moment in Kyle's life. Not many of you know but Kyle is a very creative, artistic kid. This traits manifests itself when Kyle dresses for bed. He has quite a few matching pajama sets and refuses to wear a complete set. He pairs buzz with star wars, spongebob with power rangers, christmas with Incredibles. I asked him one night why he cannot wear a matching set and he replied, "I want it to be rainbow!" Well, that settles that.

Ginger Bread Paradise

Here we are preparing for Christmas by decorating our annual GingerBread House. First of all I'm a super concentrating in this picture because as it does every year, the roof falls off because the icing isn't holding and you'd think they'd figure out that they need to make the angle of the roof less steep. DUH!!!



Katherine got to decorate the christmas tree and took the responsibility quite seriously.


Finished Product

Reflections

The boys entered the school's reflections contest this year. Josh entered a picture of the new giraffe family at the zoo and Kyle drew a picture of flowers. Joshua won honorable mention and got a medal. Kyle was upset he did not win anything but was consoled because Caleb smiled at the scarecrow Kyle colored outside his Kindergarten class.

Harvest Floor

I might be going slightly crazy but I had a blast canning food this summer. I started on peaches a few years ago and slowly added peach jam and grape jelly. This year I canned peaches, pears, plum jam, spiced plum butter, apple butter, apple sauce, apple pie filling, dried apples, grape leather, grape juice, grape jelly and helped my mom can 80 pounds of chicken. I know I'm nuts but it was so worth it. The kids love the fruit so much better than the store and I have tons of gift of preserves to give out for Thanks and Christmas. Jeff loved the applesauce because he had it as a kid and the canned chicken is sooo good and easy for enchiladas and soups. The biggest downfall was very sore muscles and what I now call "harvest floor". If you see the picture of the counter top after grape juice just imagine what the floor looked like. Holy Cow! You don't feel like mopping because the next day it will look the exact same. Jeff was very understanding.

You might be wondering where you put food storage like this in a condo. Well, on top of my kitchen cupboards works well and we have more in our room. It's so beautiful isn't it?

A New Perspective??

My neighbor dropped by to show me some art work the kids did while she was watching them last week. She asked me if I had taught him perspective and I said, "Huh? What's perspective?".
She showed my this picture Kyle (a kindergartener) drew and explained that perspective is drawing different sizes of objects to show distance. I looked at the picture and I was blown away. She was right. Kyle drew this little racquetball scene and even the racquet is smaller than the racquet in the forefront. I was amazed that he knew to draw the person before drawing the net.
My paternal Grandmother was an amazing artist and so many of my Clark cousins inherited that talent. In my immediate family only my younger sister was blessed. I'm beginning to be convinced more and more that Kyle was blessed with a talent. And I'm not just saying this because he goes through more computer paper than a print shop. You should see this kid's Huge folder of pokeman cards he's invented. He draws his little creature and makes sure he has a relevant name, gives him all these powers and numbers. It's amazing.
(by the way, I don't know who Rod is. It must have been a piece of scrap paper at my neighbor's house.)

Happy Halloween

Katherine was a Cat, Kyle was a skeleton, Josh was a karate ninja, Caleb was a baby skeleton, Mommy was Al Borlin, Daddy was a party pooper.


We gave Caleb a dum dum to keep him happy the last few minutes and this is how he fell asleep. He slept that way for 10 minutes.

At this house the kids wouldn't take their eyes off the statues. You never know when one could reach out and get you!

Pumpkin carving joy!

Oink Oink

Can you guess what we're all sick with????????






By the way---Swine flu/Shmine flu!! I know some people have suffered with this virus but for us we were lucky and it was Wimpy, Wimpy, Wimpy.
I guess it still could bite us in the butt but we'll cross our fingers and believe that we're done.

Happy 6th Birthday K-dog!

Kyle got to have a birthday party with friends this year and he was so excited. He decided on a pirate theme. We had a cannonball pinata (soooo not worth it to make at home), Treasure Chest cake, Pin the flag on the treasure map, and a treasure hunt. Josh was a great help and Katherine felt as big as the guests. We loved that we had to convince him to invite some boys. Kyle is quite the ladies man and keeps finding new girl friends at school. I love it.

Daddy's Home

I asked Kyle if he was excited to see Daddy and this is what I got.

Joshua would not take his eyes of the hallway the passengers come out from.

Still Watchin'!!!

Caleb wasn't nervous after not seeing him for 3 weeks.

Last fishing of the season

Everyone deserves cool uncles like our Uncle Brad. He took the kids fishing at Salem Pond while Jeff was away. Joshua is one determined focused kid and finally caught a fish before we had to leave.

Golden Onion Days

It's that time of year again. The annual Golden Onion Days/John C. Clark Family Reunion over Labor Day weekend. It sure was fun this year with the new sisters in law. The Davidsons were in charge this year and our theme was Clark Chefs. All the activities centered around cooking and food.
The first night we had an un-etiquette dinner. No manners allowed! We ate fettuccine and corn on the cob with no utensils and drank kool-aid out of bowls. Boy did the kids get into it!! (and by kids that includes the leaders Uncle Patrick and Grandpa)
Sarah must've thoroughly enjoyed teasing Patrick.

Here are the kids drinking their punch.

Go Grandpa!!! You should've heard him chuckling!

Me eating my Pasta and Anna Lisa devouring her corn. Caleb was wondering where his was.

We made a candy Train with a scary conductor!!

Grandpa read Stone Soup to the kids and we made it for lunch. Brad and Carrie slept with the kids in a tent and here he is carrying Katie back-too cute. The parade was not rained out this year and was a lot of fun. We also had a chili cook off where the kids judged. That was cool to see the kids take it so seriously. They also tasted chili they'd never eat at home!! The only down side was that the stomach flu hit and stopped some of the celebrations but we still had a blast. Can't wait until next year!!!

Flag Football

We threw a back to school Flag Football party for Josh and his friends. I had more than a few parents thank us for wearing out their boys on a Saturday. We had so much fun we plan on doing it again in October and pick up again in spring. Good clean fun!

Katherine couldn't be left out.

Filling up our cooler with ice and Gatorade.

3 First Days of School

Here is the kid's first days of school. Josh started first, with Kyle one week behind him (kindergarten), Katherine started the next week in our neighborhood Joyschool. Can you tell who was most excited?????

Gotta love 9 year old boys. He was super excited but it's not cool to smile for MOOOMMMMMY any more. We tried everything to get him to smile but he wouldn't crack.