First Day of School

First day of school Pictures. Josh is now in 5th grade and has the most amazing teacher.
Kyle had a rough start to first grade. He was worried on the first day about knowing what to do during lunch. You can see how happy he was while I was trying to get a picture. Then the LOVELY LOVELY new principle decided to a fire drill on the first day. Kyle never needs coaxing to come up with a new fear. This put him over the edge. It took us two weeks of coaxing, tears, talking to his teacher to help him feel safe. I'm glad we got over that. He love school now and is enjoying it.
Caleb has found a new game to play with his brothers and sister. He thinks it's pretty funny to see them upside down.

Bear Lake 2010

For those of you who don't know my Clark family very well you need to understand something. Clarks and Glovers do not spend much money. Let alone on leisure. This year we decided to spend our reunion time at Bear Lake instead of my mom's house for the Payson Onion Day celebration over Labor Day. We used to all squeeze into my Mom's house (some of us would sleep in tents in the backyard these past few years) because we are all married and have a lot of people there. We would go to the parade, booths and enjoy our hometown celebration. It has always been a fun tradition.

This year we branched out A LOT and sprung for a rental house right by the lake. We had a seven bedrooom/three bath/huge kitchen/enormous deck/ping pong room house for 3 nights. The huge yard had a trampoline, fire pit and a gorgeous view of the lake. I have loved the labor day celebration and camping traditions but who am I foolin'? This was waaaaayyyy better. We all had our own bedrooms for privacy and a huge kitchen so we could all cook together. I'm pretty sure we'll never go back to our old get together. My mom kept prompting the grand kids with questions like this, "Do you like this house? Do you like the lake? Do you think we should come back here next year? Do you think we should stay here longer next year?"
Do you think she liked it? Your secret's out Grandma Clark!


Our kids wasted no time breaking in the trampoline. Uncle Patrick sure enjoyed springing the children's tooshies from underneath.

Patrick and Sara picked the Theme "Battle of the Sexes". Here we are playing the game of the same name. I'm pretty sure you can imagine how much laughing and competition was stuffed into this kitchen. We didn't get to finish the game so it is still undecided if Men or Women rule.

Jeff and Morgan are channeling their inner-woman.

We had a great night at the fire pit with singing and popcorn. Well, the popcorn wasn't that great but it was sure fun trying to get it to pop without starting on fire.

Here we are all enjoying the movie "Diary of a Wimpy Kid". You should've heard Grandpa chuckling.

Our kids couldn't wait to get to the lake. They quickly realized the lake was too shallow and would not be good for fishing. They enjoyed playing in the sand for a few hours before bed time though.

We have been working with Caleb in physical therapy for a few months and who would've known that mini M&Ms were the trick to help him pull to stand.

Throwing blocks off the deck to Uncle Patrick was a great motivator too.

Grandma brought the funnest crafts for the kids. She got more than she bargained for in Kyle though. That kid is turning into such an artist and the bead animal crafts kept him (and Grandma) very occupied.

This is the view from the Deck. AAAAAHHHHhhhhhhhhhh

Uncle Morgan brought plenty of yard games and our boys were in heaven. Josh loved the game until the last day when we were playing in the wind. He was so frustrated that the birdie was UN-controllable. Where do these boys get there competitiveness? (One guess is the stud in the orange shirt!)

I'll work on posting the pictures from our lake day later. I've had enough for now.

Summer Activities

For some reason blog spot is not showing the pictures when I download them. It is just showing the mumble jumble of words and characters that computer engineers understand. I don't understand where to put the text between the pictures or how to arrange the order. I'll just write a synopsis of all the pictures up here and you can decide which pictures they go to. Some of the pictures we took on a day trip to BYU. We saw the paleontology, bean and art museums. Katherine was very nervous standing by the big stuffed bear. If you look closely at the picture of the kids in front of the sprinkler sculpture you can see Katherine's favorite funny face---crossed eyes.
We visited our cousins in Logan over Savannah's birthday. We played at a splash park and had a cool birthday cake made out of doughnuts. Victoria found out the hard way why you shouldn't run into Joshua's head. They crashed into eachother playing and she knocked out one tooth, loosened another and bled quite a bit. You can see the evidence of her fat lip. I felt so bad for her. She was very good about it and didn't complain hardly at all. If Josh had the same injury I'd lose my mind with all of the whining and complaining. Go Toria!!! We celebrated the 24th with fireworks too.
Joshua earned his bear months ago but because of baseball in the early summer we couldn't make it to any pack meetings. I was so proud of him and can't wait to see how he enjoys webelos.
The picture of Katie and I Jeff snapped when we were having an argument about bed time. Katie would say "ONE BOOK" and I'd say "GO TO BED" over and over again. She thought it was hilarious.
The picture of the ping pong table is from a day we spent in Payson helping Grandma with her yard. She needed a lot of top soil shoveled into the sprinkler trenches and had asked the young men to come over and help. Joshua was mesmerized by the older boys and spent the entire afternoon observing them. He also worked for hours along side them and earned 25 bucks from grandma. Woo Hooo!

Nothingness

I am posting today out of frustration. I hate having bad days and it seems I've had too many for my own good lately. Some venting might be nice. Jeff would probably appreciate me using this to complain over corralling him for the night. I'm pretty ready for school to start and give my two oldest boys the stimulation they need. I admit I will be quite sad because that means it is time to usher in colder weather and I find myself hating the cold more and more each year.
A lot of the kid's friends have moved away from our condo and it's hard to find friends for them to play with that I approve of. If we ever get a house in a nice neighborhood I might just have a heart attack from joy. I know that a house will not get rid of all my gripes but most of the people that tell me that have a house and it's hard to feel much comfort coming from them. I hate being stretched to the point of breaking and it seems I feel that way at least every two months. I think the Lord sees me as the stretchiest rubber band on the planet because he seems to think I need more and more and more.
I'm finding it so hard to lose my last 10-15 pounds so I can get back to my Weight Watchers Lifetime Member weight when my life seems to be so tumultuous.
How did Job do it? Maybe he was obese from dealing with all the stress and pain he dealt with. Just Kidding. I'm sure he was close to perfect and I'm glad I wasn't his neighbor. I'd hate to be around someone like that who's life completely and utterly fell apart and never showed any signs of cracking. Don't we all crack at one point?

I hope you allow me this forum to complain a little about my life and not judge me too harshly. Sometimes you just gotta scream. AAAARRRRRGGGGHHHH AAAAARRRRRGGGGGGHHH
I think I deserve two screams!

FHE on Temples

We took the kids to the Timpanogos Temple for Family Home Evening. We talked about the work we do in the temple and showed the kids our wedding picture and our temple recommends. We then gave the kids the camera and let them each take pictures of whatever they found beautiful. Can you guess who did the first three?

Who took the next three?



Okay.......who took these last four pictures?




I found it very interesting that the kids' personalities came out in what they thought was beautiful. Kyle took at least 10 of just flowers and colors=He loves art! Katie took the next three=I guess she's too young to really decide why but I love the random shots. Joshua took the last four=It makes me smile because Joshua always watches people. Whether he's at the library, school program or baseball game he's always observing others. He took a few shots of the building and then took the rest of his family. I love the last picture of me with my sweetheart. My mother in law always tells me that a person's smile is different when someone they love is holding the camera. I guess that holds true because we look so happy!

Silver Lake

What is wrong with us??? We have been fishing twice in the last month. Jeff and I never went fishing as children but we have made some great friends that have taught us many things about enjoying Utah's outdoors. Valerie has taught me to can so many things that our family enjoys and how to gut a fish. Thayne teaches us how to fix things and untangle fishing lines. They've taken us camping with them and take us on their motorcycle and four-wheeler adventures. Our kids love spending time with their 4 girls too.
Here we are fishing in Silver Lake Reservoir. After driving 3 very very SLOW miles up a potted, rocky, dangerous dirt road we came upon this gorgeous spot in American Fork Canyon. We were here over 4th of July weekend and there were not that many people there at all. Our kids got to pile in the back of their pickup truck and drive across a creek. (Jeff rode in the back with the kids and I'm sure he lost some of his hearing from the kid's excitement) We drove past the reservoir to a campsite and had a picnic and then took Thayne's new GPS system and found a Geo Cache.

Here's Kyle's second fish. He caught three that day in about 1/2 hour. Josh and Katie were dissapointed they didn't catch anything but they sure had fun. I still have not mastered the art of taking out the fish hooks so Thayne helps us. One of these days I'll figure it out.

Kate (as she wants to be called now) didn't catch a fish but was sure happy to hold this one. Just look at her hair. Where is her mother???

Caleb sure enjoyed his picnic lunch. Especially the Carter's cheetos. That face is so cute I could kiss his lips off.

We got to eat the fruits of our labor Monday the 5th. I guess Josh was the only one of our family that ate the trout but it was well worth it.