Birthday Celebration

Today we celebrated my dad's 61st birthday! It's the first birthday he has been able to celebrate with Clark.






Time to enjoy the yummy cake!



Clark having fun on Grandpa's new camping table.

Sunny California

Right after we moved back to California, Clark's sunglasses had fallen out of the car and I had ran them over, totally smashing them. Since then, I've been looking for some replacements. I don't know if it's been the extremely warm weather we've had lately or if it's just the change in products at the stores, but Babies-R-Us is finally selling glasses. And they had a good selection.
What do you think?



What amazed me about this picture is the expression that Clark and I are sharing. I often feel like Clark looks like a carbon copy of Clint and that aside from thin hair, he doesn't have too many characteristics from me. I guess this picture proves things wrong. :)

Oh, and just so you know, Clark picked out his glasses. I tried several pair on him, and this was the one pair he liked and didn't immediately rip off his face.

Here Clark is in front of the lake by our house. I walk around it most days and it has been particularly gorgeous this week.


This was right before I bought the sun glasses. He desperately needed them that morning.

Blue Teeth And Fun With Clark

A few weeks ago I went to Target to get some fat sidewalk chalk and was told that it was a "seasonal item" and that they didn't have any, but they did have regular sized, multi-colored chalk so I bought some for him.

I had sent Clint out to play and this is how the two came back:




Clark loves to get into this little closet in our house. Since organizing it was low on the totem pole I had our aprons on the floor of the closet. Clark liked pulling them out and running around with them, so I decided to put one on him. Sorry some of the pictures are a little fuzzy.

Christmas 2010

What a pleasure we had this year to be so close to family that all we had to do was drive the few minutes to either of our parents' houses in order to spend this wonderful holiday! No expensive plane tickets, then spending hours traveling, sleeping in unfamiliar beds, and worrying about how Clark was going to manage with naps and the excitement. We were able to sleep in our own beds and didn't have to worry about disrupting Clark's schedule too much. Who knew a kid's nap schedule could so heavily rule your life! Enjoy the recap!

This is a video of Clark stacking Coke cans. When we showed up at my parents' house that night, he wasn't able to stack them. By the time we were ready to go home, he had mastered this skill. He's done some stacking with some small blocks at home, but nothing this heavy. He was so very proud of himself! Pay attention to how he even got excited when he missed once.



My family has always opened presents from each other on Christmas Eve and then Santa comes Christmas morning! I love this tradition and it makes things SOOO much easier when having to share our attention between our parents. We also twist Thanksgiving and do a family reunion/Thanksgiving on the Saturday after Thanksgiving allowing Clint and I to spend Thanksgiving with both families and not having to eat ourselves sick. :) So we spent Christmas Eve at my parents and Christmas morning at Clint's mom's house.

Many Christmas Eve's though, Clint's mom, brother and grandma have given us the pleasure of joining us at my parents' house. Sorry I don't have good pictures of them from Christmas Even because most of the pictures that night were of Clark. :)

I thought for sure that Clark would have been more into the unwrapping of the presents, but he was more interested in the playing with them.




Christmas morning at Clint's mom's house.




Uncle Jack opening his present.



Clint wondering if his guess is correct for his big present:


Yes it is!!!





With moving into this new house, the last month we've spend a lot of time trying to find a place for all of our stuff. We went from a house that had another bedroom and WAY more storage, to a smaller house here and no storage, so we've done lots of selling, free-cycling, and throwing away. With all this organizing, Clint has really been wanting one of these tool boxes. Almost every day before Christmas Clint said, "I really wish I had one of those nice toolboxes." or "You know what would be nice? One of those toolboxes." or "I could do, [this, this and this] if I had one of those toolboxes." Every time I had to keep from smiling and offer helpful tips to keep him patient, like, "Maybe we can save up and in like 20 years we'll have enough."

Here are a couple more pictures. One is Clark with one of his presents, one of Clark and my dad and one of our dinning room tables before dinner.




I have to apologize to everyone that I didn't get a picture of. I was having too much fun handing out presents or enjoying the celebrations to get pictures of everyone. My brother thankfully took some great shots of Clark for me. So don't think I didn't love you, I either didn't have a picture or you looked terrible in it and I don't feel like publishing bad pictures tonight. :)