Christmas 2009

On Christmas Eve, I was telling Clara about how Santa would come that night. She started crying and said, "All done Santa." I started explaining to her that he would leave her toys and that he would come while she was sleeping so she wouldn't have to see him. After a few minutes of "discussion," Clara said, "All done Santa's lap." Apparently she's more traumatized than we though. Of course both Jeremy and I were laughing the whole time.

Christmas Eve, we had a live nativity put on by all of Clara's cousins. Clara was a sheep. We had a hard time convincing her to put on the ears, but once she did, she excitedly said, "Sheep, Baa." It was pretty cute.Christmas morning brought lots of fun gifts for Clara. She walked out of her room and I showed her what Santa had brought (without using his name of course.) She didn't want to have anything to do with them at first. So we fed her some breakfast and as soon as she was done with that, she was very excited to go see her new toys. I guess she just needed a full tummy. And once she started, there was no stopping her. She loved all of her gifts. There wasn't a single toy that she didn't want to play with immediately. And she even loved the clothes. Grandma Beck gave her some princess PJ's that she wouldn't let go and was so sad that I would let her keep them on....

Her favorite gift of all though is a tea pot set she got from my brother. She hasn't put that one down yet. It sounds like you are actually pouring water out when you tip the tea pot. She loves it!

Get Away

Thanks to Jeff and Emily for watching Clara while Jeremy and I went on a 2 day (one night) get away. We started our little excursion by watching The Blind Side. If you haven't seen it yet, GO! I had heard great things about the movie, but I was still blown away with how good it was. Not only does it have a great story, but the characters are well developed and draw you in. I was crying through pretty much the whole movie. Jeremy even leaned over once and said, "It is weird that I almost cried?" I LOVED it.

We then headed to temple square to recreate one of our first dates. I had so much fun looking around the church history museum. I always feel the spirit so strongly as I read about the prophet Joseph Smith. I know Joseph Smith saw God and Jesus Christ. I am so grateful for the huge sacrifices Joseph Smith made so that I could have the gospel in my life. He endured countless hardships and even sacrificed his life so that the world could have the true church on the earth today.

Next was a very yummy dinner at Red Lobster thanks to my wonderful friends in Boise who sent us a gift card to Red Lobster as a graduation gift for Jeremy. Jeremy had never been to Red Lobster before, so it was a great place to go for dinner.

We then were able to check into the Anniversary Inn. It was amazing. They had complimentary cheese cake and sparkling cider in our room. It was so nice to just relax and be with Jeremy for the evening. We rented some movies and watched them. Our room was fantastic. Jeremy ended up taking 50 pictures again. I love watching him become so excited that he wants to take pictures of everything. We were in the Swiss Family Robinson room. Our bed was in the tree house above Jeremy's head in this picture. We also had a waterfall as our shower. It was so fun!Jeremy and I slept in the next morning and just relaxed. It's always so nice to be lazy in the morning. I haven't been able to do that since we had Clara! After having a lazy morning, we were able to attend an endowment session in the Oquirrh Mountain Temple. We then headed over to the Draper Temple and did a short sealing session.

We decided to cut our get away short at that point because we wanted to be home before dark. The weather was awful and I didn't want to be stuck driving on black ice. We had seen 6 - 7 accidents that day, we we were so grateful to get home safely.

We had a fabulous break and it has been hard getting back to real life again. Thanks again Jeff and Emily for taking care of Clara. We LOVED getting to spend so much time together. It was a wonderful 2 days.

Yay for Jeremy!

This post is to announce to everyone our excitement! Jeremy finished his last final on Thursday this week. I can't believe that he's actually done with school! We've been celebrating by playing our new Wii that we bought with Jeremy's Christmas bonus from work. Congrats Jeremy, I'm so proud of you. Thank-you for working so hard to finish school. I know it wasn't your favorite thing to do, but I'm so glad you stuck it out!

I also made Clara a Christmas dress this week. I've decided to never make a velvet dress again. It is very difficult to work with. The dress took me twice as long to finish just because of how hard it was to keep the 2 pieces of velvet lined up long enough for me to sew a seam. But I love how long it is. Here are the pictures of Clara in her new dress. I wanted her in the dress to show it off, but boy is it hard to get a good picture of a never still 2 year old!

2009 Christmas Letter

This year has been a year of many ups and downs. We started this year by being unemployed. Jeremy finally got a job in March at Chargeback Guardian. He still works there, and it has been a wonderful company to work for. They are willing to work around his frequently changing schedule, which has been blessing for us.
We had had the opportunity to take several family vacations this year. We drove to California for a Zachreson family reunion. We finally made it to Boise to visit friends of ours. It was their first time meeting Jeremy, and I was so glad that Jeremy got along with them so well. We attended the Beck (extended family) reunion since it was held in Salt Lake this year. Another small vacation we had this summer was Jeremy's first annual immediate Beck family reunion. We were also able to go visit my grandparents in Montana this year.
Jeremy has been working very hard at both work and school. He decided to take an internship at Richter 7, which is one of the best companies in Utah for the field he's studying. It's an unpaid internship, so we are hoping it beefs up the resume enough for him to get a good job. But all of Jeremy's hard work has paid off. He'll graduate from UVU in graphic design by the end of this month. We are all looking forward to no more homework!
Sarah keeps herself busy raising Clara, babysitting, and tutoring. She loves getting to be a stay at home mom so that she can watch her little Clara grow and change. She also loves watching Addi, and is looking forward to babysitting Addi's new little sister when Addi's mom goes back to work after her maternity leave. Sarah also tutors both high school and college students in their math classes. She's had the opportunity to tutor Calculus this year, which is something new to her. She never taught it, so it was fun going back and relearning it. She has found a new love of Calculus.
Clara continues to grow and change. She is definitely the source of entertainment in our house. She loves to learn. She has learned all her letters this year, as well as numbers 1 - 12. She also knows all the basic colors and shapes. She gets so excited when she sees different shapes. Her favorite thing to do is dance and run fast. She'll come up and ask me to twirl her. When I do, she never grows tired of spinning in a circle. Even when she is so dizzy she can't stand up, she'll get mad at me if I stop twirling her. She will also come up and ask me to sing. As soon as I start singing, she'll start dancing. Her favorite song to dance to is Give Said the Little Stream. She'll also want me to join her in dancing anytime she hears music. Her favorite movie is Cars. Whenever a song comes on during that movie, I have to sing the words to the song (even if I don't know them) and dance with her. She also loves to run fast. We play "go" in our house a lot. That is where we run from one end of our little apartment to the other over and over again. However, Clara also wants me to run fast with her in the middle of grocery stores, at the library, or any other place with lots of people around.
We hope your year has been as wonderful as ours has been. Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Love,
Jeremy, Sarah, and Clara Beck

Santa Claus is Coming to Town

So Clara now knows who Santa is. I don't think she quite grasps the idea that he gives presents, etc. But whenever she sees a picture of Santa, or Santa on TV, she gets really excited and says, "Santa!" So I thought there just might be a chance that she would sit on Santa's lap this year for our Ward Christmas party. No such luck. So here is another hilarious family photo that we will laugh about for years to come. After she got off Santa's lap, it took her a long time to calm down. She loves looking at pictures of herself, so I decided to distract her by having her look at the camera. Well, when we got to the pictures of Santa, she started crying and said, "All done Santa." We were one of the first people to get to sit on Santa's lap. People who didn't know we had already gone would come up and ask Clara if she wanted to sit on Santa's lap. She would start sobbing and say, "No no no no." It made me laugh. Poor kid wasn't getting any sympathy from her Mom, and where was her Dad anyway? She knew she had to wait for him to get out of the Church with that crazy Santa in it.

Other funny things Clara has done this week. We were leaving a store when Clara told me she was hungry. Since we were already in the car on our way home, I told her I would get her something to eat at home. She responded by telling me the store was hungry. I think she thought that if the store was hungry too she might get to eat there instead of having to wait to get home. Same type of story: Clara was telling me she was hungry. I was in the middle of a task and so I told her that I would get her something to eat as soon as I was done. (Which really meant that I would help her as soon as I got to a point where I could.) She brought me one of her blankets and said, "Blanket hungry, Mom." Maybe if it's the blanket that's hungry I might feed it sooner?

And the count down continues for UVU. Thursday is Jeremy's last final. By the time I write next week's blog, he'll be a college graduate! Ok, so maybe an almost college graduate since we have to wait for the diploma to arrive in the mail before I can officially say that, but he'll be done with every thing he has to do to be able to graduate!

A Whole Bunch of Nothing

There wasn't a whole lot to report on for this week. Clara decided to put her Elmo bucket on her head. I found that amusing. I find that most of my days are being filled with things that Clara does to amuse us. For example, she is starting to copy things that we say. Jeremy was calling for me, and Clara decided to call too. But she said, "Sarah" instead of Mommy. Jeremy also got slightly frustrated one day and in an exasperated tone he said, "Ugg!" Clara repeated it with the exact same face and tone of voice. It was so hard for me not to laugh. I have also been having a hard time getting Clara to try new foods. I'll have a tiny amount of the new food on a spoon/fork and say, "Just try it." Clara will now bring me her food and say, "Try it Mom." Now I know how she feels because I definitely don't want to try her pre-chewed food. :)

Jeremy only has 10 days left of school. Just 10 more days of getting Clara ready for bed myself because Jeremy has homework. Just 10 more days of feeling guilty if I leave Clara with Jeremy because he won't get as much homework done. Just 10 more days of Jeremy not getting to play with us when he gets home from work. I am sooooooooooooooo excited!

P.S. In case you were wondering, Jeremy's favorite picture was #2. It was the clearest and he kind of liked us all not looking at the camera. That's the artistic point of view for you. :) My favorite was #3, but it was blurry. So my next favorite was #1, but the we couldn't tone down the bright sun shining off our faces. I also really liked #5, but it was too grainy. So we left it up to our wonderful readers to decide for us. I did put up picture #5 as our family picture on our side bar. But that will not be the one we print for our Christmas letter as it really is too grainy. We are going with our viewers 2nd choice (and my favorite) of #3. Thanks for all your votes.

Thanksgiving

Jeremy and I drove to Rexburg for Thanksgiving weekend. Before we left, I attempted to make Clara some bows. When we brought those other bows home for her and she loved them so much, I though, "Why not make some myself?" So I finally found the clips at Sally's Beauty Supply. (Thanks for the tip Keri!) And was very excited to come home and start making them. The first 2 took me about an hour to do as I was trying to figure them out. But then the other ones only took me about 15 minutes for each pair. Thanksgiving was a wonderful break. I brought our camera, but failed to take any pictures. Clara was the only kid there, so it's a little awkward taking pictures of just adults... Oh well. We were able to play LOTS of games. I never got tired of those. Luckily, Jeremy had just a little bit of homework, so he was able to play with us most of the vacation. That was something Clara and I weren't used to, and we both enjoyed getting to spend so much quality time with Jeremy.

On our way home from Rexburg, some friends of ours called and asked if we wanted 2 tickets to the BYU vs Utah game. We jumped on those and drove straight to the game. Clara had never been to a football game before. The first time the crowd erupted, Clara started crying. I figured that once we got into our seats, she would calm down. She didn't. She buried her face into my chest and held on to me for dear life. She cried for about the first 10 minutes we were there. I wasn't about to leave the game for her, nor did I wanted her in constant fear for 3 - 4 hours. So I was trying my best to get her to calm down. I showed her the big TV (both of them.) I tried explaining to her that the people weren't yelling, they were clapping and saying, "Woohoo!" I finally remembered how much she loves for people to run fast. So I told her that there were people down on the grass that were going to run fast. She finally unburied her head long enough to watch them run fast. The crying stopped, but the uncertainty was still there. It wasn't too long after she started watching that a punt took place. As the players got into position, I told Clara that they were going to kick the ball. Finally, she got excited and loosened her death grip. After the punt, she clapped with the crowd, and the fear was gone. Thank goodness! We were then able to enjoy the rest of the game. Thanks Michael and Colette for the tickets! Here is a picture of her clapping, and as you can tell, she was still a little nervous in this picture.Yesterday we had some great friends be willing to spend about an hour with us at 2 different locations to take family pictures. Thank-you so much Aubs and Aaron! Jeremy and I spent hours looking at all the pictures and can't decide which picture to get printed. He has his favorite and I have mine. I told him that since we couldn't agree, I would post some options on our blog and let our viewers help decide. So please vote for your favorite family picture below. Choose wisely since the one you pick will be our family picture on our blog for a year! Which is your favorite, #1, #2, #3, #4, or #5?

Picture #1

Picture #2

Picture #3

Picture #4

Picture #5

Mark's Wedding

Jeremy and I were able to attend the sealing of a dear friend of ours. Most of my friends know him as "Little Marky." I am so excited for him and Nylia. It was a beautiful ceremony. I left with that newly married feeling myself. I am so grateful I have Jeremy for a husband and want desperately to be the best wife and mother I can be. This life really is all about families and their ability to help each other make it back to our Father in Heaven. Thanks Mark and Nylia for inviting us to be a part of your special day. We felt honored.Here are some other random happenings for the week:

Clara was sitting on my lap this week. She turned her head up to look at me and said, "Love you Mom," without any prompting on my part. It melted my heart.
I then replied, "Love you too, Clara." Clara thought that was funny for me to add the "too" on there. So now she says, "Love you too" all the time, even if no one said 'I love you' first.

Clara was playing with her Little People during sacrament meeting. She was having her Little People lay face down on the bench while she was making chomping noises. Clara then turned to me and said, "Girl eating bread. Yummy bread." I love how her little imagination is taking off.

Firsts

We had our first snow fall of the year this week. Most other neighboring towns had their first snow fall a few weeks ago, but for some reason it never snowed at our house until this week. All day long, Clara kept wanting to make a snowman. She was so sad when she discovered there just wasn't enough snow to build one. She sure had fun tromping through the snow though!Clara received some new bows for her hair. As soon as she saw them, she had to wear all 4 new ones at once. I'm glad she likes them so much!
Another first for this week is a new recipe. I love homemade soups. With the cold weather, I figured I should try out a new soup recipe. Jeremy loved it, which is a big success as far as soups go. So if you are wanting to try a yummy warm meal, here's the recipe:

Sausage & Spinach Soup

5 Tbs unsalted butter
1/4 lb fresh mushrooms, washed, dried, trimmed, and diced
1 scallion, chopped
5 Tbs all-purpose flour
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups milk
1/2 teaspoon salt (optional)
black pepper (preferably freshly ground)
ground nutmeg (optional)
1/4 lb cream cheese, softened and cut into cubes
1 cup grated Swiss cheese
3/4 lb fresh spinach, washed, trimmed, cooked, and chopped
1/2 lb Italian sausage, cooked and crumbled

Melt the butter in a large saucepan. In it slowly sauté the mushrooms and scallion until tender. Add flour and stir just until flour is cooked, a couple of minutes. Whisk in first chicken broth and then milk, stirring until thickened. Add salt if desired, pepper, nutmeg if desired, cream cheese, and swiss cheese; stir until melted. Then stir in spinach and sausage. Heat and stir very gently. Season to taste. Serve hot.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Clara loves to wear hats. We got a few cute pictures of her trying some on this week. I've posted them for your viewing pleasure. :)

StarFall

Clara loves the website starfall.com. That is where she learned her ABC's. We now do a lot more than just look at the letters. Tonight we found this: http://www.starfall.com/n/puzzle-shapes/baby/load.htm?f. When we did it, I had to laugh at Clara's reactions.

I will try to explain Clara's reactions so that you don't have to follow the link if you don't want to.

So as we were watching this page, Clara said, "Baby clean." The baby's face never gets cleaned, so she got mad when it was over and the baby wasn't clean. Clara still loved it, so we watched it again (she requested that we did.) The next time we watched it, she got mad that the baby isn't using a fork. She said, "Mom baby fork hiding? Find it." She got mad at me for not finding the baby's fork! (And yes, she still mentioned that the baby needed to be cleaned.)

The third time we watched it, Clara could predict what was coming. Notice that it says, "The baby wants to eat." When I asked her what was next she said, "Baby tummy hungry."

I'm amazed that Clara can use alternative words already. This isn't the first time she has done that. She tells me something and if I don't understand she is smart enough to tell me using different words. For example, we were visiting a relative's house. So I was talking to the mom and Clara had been playing with the other kids in a different room. Clara left them to come and talk to me for a few minutes. As she was leaving me she said, "Play kids, Mom." I didn't understand the word 'kids.' I always repeat back to her what she says, so when I said it incorrectly, Clara thought for a few seconds then said, "Play friends Mom." I understood that one and was so proud of her to recognize how to use different words to mean the same thing.

Temple

Clara was having issues when I was trying to do her hair for church. So I dumped all her rubber bands out. She had a blast playing with them and let me do her hair without any more tantrums! Cute story: We decided to take Clara to the temple grounds yesterday. She was so sad when we showed up and she couldn't go inside. So we distracted her by asking her what color the temple was etc. She then was talking about the temple like crazy. She would say things like, "Big temple," and "white temple." Out of the blue she then said, "Happy temple." I was so impressed that she could tell the temple was a happy place even if she couldn't go inside. It melted my heart for her to recognize that without me talking to her about it.

Halloween

What a weekend. Clara ended up loving trick or treating. I tried to get her to say trick or treat through out the day so that she could say it that night. She wasn't very interested at all. However, at the ward Halloween trunk or treat, she realized that if she said it, she would get candy. She loved carrying her bucket around and saying "tick treat." After the ward Halloween party, we drove up to Taylorsville to visit Grandma and Grandpa. We were discussing something and Jeremy said "trick or treat" somewhere in our conversation. Clara started clapping and saying, "yay," really loudly. The one downfall is that she didn't like having to carry her bucket too far. We were lucky enough that she would pass it off to us. However, a few times, we weren't paying attention and she just left it on someone's lawn as we passed by. But as soon as she saw us heading for a door, she would grab her bucket again, put it on the door step and wait patently until she could say "tick treat."

So now on to all the pictures. I always take way more pictures than necessary, and then I have a hard time narrowing it down. So even though it might not seem like it, I really did put just a few on compared to all the ones we took (there were over 50.)

We colored our pumpkin on Friday this year. I kept trying to wait for a time that Jeremy could be home to do it with us, but it never worked out. Clara LOVED getting to color her pumpkin. She kept hugging and kissing it after we put it on our door step. Silly girl.Jeremy decided to dress up as Mario again this year (mainly because we were too lazy to come up with a different costume.) When he got his hat out, Clara had to wear it. (She loves to wear her Daddy's hats.) So during the day, Clara was baby Mario. For trick or treating though, she wore her costume from last year too. But it seemed to fit her a lot better this year.All her Beck cousins came to Grandma and Grandpa's too. So I was able to get all the families and their costumes. I loved Pooh, and he loved his Piglet! And Clara especially loved Elmo. She kept trying to touch Elmo and follow him around.

English....

So Clara has picked up the phrase, "not working." If her colored pencil breaks, she says, "working, fix it." She always leaves the "not" off anytime she wants to say "not working." So now that Jeremy has been home a lot less, she asks me frequently throughout the day, "Daddy home?" I've started to tell her that "Daddy is working." She finally put two and two together. So today when she asked, "Daddy home?" I said "Daddy's working." She then said, "Daddy fix it?"

That really got me thinking about how confusing it must be to learn to speak English. There are a lot of words that mean totally different things even though it's the same word. Just as another example, Clara has been learning to take turns. She'll even say, "Mommy's turn," "Clara's turn," "Addi's turn," etc. She is so good about taking turns I love it. But today at the grocery store, she was helping me push the cart. I said, "We need to turn this way." Clara got a confused look on her face as she thought about that one. Poor little Clara.....

goodbyes and Pies

Addi's mom is expecting her 2nd child anytime this week. So she is on maternity leave for a while. That means this last week was Addi's last week to come and play for a while. Clara was sure nice to her this week too. They kept giving each other hugs and making each other laugh. It was like they knew they wouldn't be spending time together for a while, so they make the most of it.I also decided to try to put Clara's hair in braids this week. I think it turned out pretty good. Clara is at the point where she has enough hair that I have to do it every day. However, there is so much new hair coming in that her hair never seems to look good. Oh well.Also this week, I needed to make some pies. Clara wanted to help, and was so proud of herself. She kept saying "pie" really loudly and excitedly when Jeremy asked her what she was doing. It made me laugh. After she got down, she kept saying, "Mom, pie, Clara help." I can't believe how much she talks now and how she puts sentences together.

New Skirt

I spent quite a bit of time on this skirt. The pattern labeled it as easy, but I would have to disagree. It took way longer than I expected it to. But I was VERY pleased with how it turned out. Part of what took so long is that I decided to lengthen the skirt from the pattern. It told me exactly where to shorten/lengthen so I figured it would be a breeze. It really wasn't too bad, but it definitely took me a lot longer to measure and place the pattern pieces than I thought it would. Oh well. I wore it for the first time to church yesterday. I love the way it fits, looks, and even feels. The pattern had me cut some pieces against the grain so that the skirt has an off-centered look, which is why I liked the pattern so much to begin with. I still can't believe I was able to make an entire skirt for the amount on a gift card. What a great birthday present.

Here are the pictures:

Front:Back:me wearing it so you can see the length:

Funny Story

I didn't want to wait until Monday to post this moment because I know I'll forget it by then. Before I get to the funny part, let me give a slight background. Clara has started to color on walls, so my new rule is that if she wants to color, she has to color at the table. With this new rule comes the wonderful game of watching colored pencils fall to the floor. I'm not sure what her fascination is with it, but she'll drop the pencils one by one onto the floor and watch them intently. When they are all on the floor she'll say "Uh oh." So as I go to clean them up, I explain to her that she needs to be careful with her pencils. If she drops them on the floor, they break. (The tips break off and then she gets mad that her pencils aren't "working.")

So here's the funny story. Clara is in the kitchen today coloring as I'm in another room folding laundry. I hear the sound of pencils dropping and after a few have fallen I hear Clara say, "Careful Mom, careful." I had to start laughing. I guess she was very careful at how she watched them fall......

In our Lives

As I was thinking about what I was going to post this week, I knew I had to do a post about how I know that God is in the very details of our lives. I have had a wonderful week where I have gotten to see the Lord's hand so very much in such small things.
For example, I have a shirt for Clara that I thought would be perfect to wear with some overalls. But since we have no money, no overalls would be bought - even from a thrift store. However, this week a friend in the ward gave me a bag of clothes for Clara. In it I found the exact pair of overalls I was drooling over.
I have also lost several things this week that Heavenly Father helped me to find in ways I would have never have found them on my own. Like having a contact go down the drain, but get stuck on the drain stop so that I could actually get my contact back! Since I wear hard contacts, I saved myself from the $70 dollars to replace the one contact, let alone the Dr. visit fee that I would have to pay since my prescription is 8 years old.
I also lost a hair clip of Clara's. Those things are really tiny. I figured it fell out when I put on her pull over sweat shirt. I realized it was missing in the parking lot of Wal-Mart. I figured it was gone for good. But I found it the next day in her car seat!
Our internet quit working this week. I knew it was a problem with our computer and not with our internet provider. But I followed a prompting to call our provider anyway. They weren't able it fix it for me, but they led me to an area in my computer that I could then fix it myself.
I recently used a birthday gift card to purchase a skirt pattern that was 40% off. Even 40% off, it was still kind of expensive for a pattern. Even though I need a new skirt, I couldn't seem to justify that expensive of a pattern. I LOVED the pattern and Jeremy tried to get me to keep it. But I figured if I could find a cheaper pattern, then I could get it and the material to make me a new skirt. So after having the pattern for a few days, I decided to go look for a cheaper pattern. I went to a different fabric store to look for patterns this time. When I walked in, I saw that the brand name of my pattern was only $3.99! (That price is about 85% off ) I looked for my loved pattern and found it! I then returned the pattern to the other store and got material there. After all was said and done, I was able to get all the supplies for my really cute skirt all for the same amount as the gift card!
I know that these are seemingly small things, but to me, they were important. I know that none of these things would have happened this week without faith and prayer on my part and miracles on the Lord's part. I am so grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who watches out for each of His children and is waiting to bless them. I know that He blesses us everyday, but most of us are too busy to notice that the small gifts we get are from Him. I encourage each of you to look for the tender mercies in your lives. The more you look, the more you'll find.

Happy Birthday Clara

Clara turned 2 yesterday. I can't believe how fast time flies. She is now old enough to understand what presents are and loved saying the word. She also now knows what a birthday is and loves to say that word over and over again. She loves getting to blow out candles, and keeps saying "again." Clara's favorite character is currently Nemo. So I thought, how hard can making a Nemo cake be? Turns out, that with all the many skills that I posses, cake decorating is NOT one of them. I'm sure that with more practice, I will improve. It all started with the cake not coming out of the pan like I had hoped. It came out in pieces, mostly due to my inexperience. But I thought, that's nothing a little frosting can't fix. However, after a huge container of frosting, I could tell there was no way I could actually serve this cake to anyone. So instead of having cake at her big family party, we had cake with just her, Jeremy, and I. It tasted great. I learned that the cupcake cake idea that I did for her first birthday is about as creative as I can be with a cake. I also relearned that Clara really doesn't like cake. She ate all the frosting off her cake and then left the cake to be thrown away. So the good news is that I don't have to waste making cakes with Clara. She can always have ice cream for her birthday dessert. (Which is what I ended up doing for the big family party we had.) Clara also loves books. I didn't realize so many people knew it until her birthday rolled around. Almost everyone gave her a book, and Clara loves them all. So to end this special birthday post, I will include some of my favorite pictures of Clara we took in the last 2 years. And since I know all of you are curious as to how my cake actually looked, I will put a picture of it here. Just so you know, Clara thought it was a pizza. When Jeremy saw the cake he asked, "What is so wrong with it?" What a good husband I have.