Beck Family

Lots of Fun

2012-01-31T12:55:00.002-07:00

We've had quite the full week. When I went to buy Clara a shirt, she decided she didn't want one, but that she would rather buy one for her best friend Adilyn so that they could match. We ended up taking the girls to McDonalds that night in their matching shirts.

The next day, Clara's preschool went to Jump Around the Town in Orem. Clara sat on my lap for most of the time, but she FINALLY warmed up for the last 30 minutes.

Also this week, our wonderful friends, Rachel and Scott got married! We attended their wedding "reception" Friday night. They had so many fun things to do. Clara's favorite was the dress ups. She even got Jeremy and I to dress up with her.

I didn't get any pics of the bride and groom because I was expecting to get LOTS on Saturday at the temple. But Clara woke us up very early Sat morning with the sounds of vomit. So even though we were still able to attend the sealing, we couldn't stick around for pictures. So here is the only picture I got of the bride that whole weekend:

Our anniversary was also on Saturday. Jeremy and I were so happy to celebrate our wedding anniversary by attending a live sealing for some close friends! Congrats again Rachel and Scott!

Dress Ups

2012-01-23T09:51:00.002-07:00

Usually Clara will only dress up in her Cinderella dress. But this week she branched out and became a ballerina and a bride!

Family Day

2012-01-16T11:22:00.002-07:00

On Saturday, our family spent the entire day together. We started the day by driving to the Jordan River Temple, which is the temple where Jeremy and I were married. I loved getting to share with Clara the wonderful memories I have of that temple. We showed her where Jeremy proposed, where we took some of the wedding photos that she LOVES to look at, and we even took her in to the waiting room so that she could go inside the temple. It was truly a fun day.

Then, on Sunday, we were able to celebrate my two nephew's birthdays. Hyrum wanted a Spiderman cake and Jed wanted a pinata. My sister did an amazing job on the cake and the kids had a blast with the pinata!

Clara loves her cousins. She often calls them her "brothers," Caden, Bradley, and Hyrum. Today Clara surprised me and wanted to draw her name and her cousin Jed's name on a balloon and then she drew pictures of both of them. I'm so glad that Clara loves getting to play with her cousins (even if they are mostly boys) as much as she can.

My sweet Clara just being silly.

Fun Filled Week

2012-01-09T13:03:00.000-07:00

We started this week by getting Clara a new bike. She LOVES it and actually does really well riding it around our neighborhood.

We also celebrated Eric's birthday with an adult only dinner. We tried to go to The Cheesecake Factory, but they don't take reservations. So we showed up at 4:30 on a Monday thinking we wouldn't have to wait too long. We were wrong. They couldn't seat us until 8 pm. So we walked to a near by Olive Garden, still weren't happy with the wait time, so we walked to Red Rock and got seated right way!

Clara also had a field trip to a fire station this week. I got to dress up in a fireman's suit, which was really heavy! Then all the boys got black fireman hats, and the girls got pink ones.

We ended our week by getting to attend Cameron's ordination, and birthday party. It's always so amazing to me to see such young boys (and girls) be making such huge decisions in their life. I'm so proud of Cameron (and all my nieces and nephews) for continuing to make good choices with how they want their lives to turn out.

We went for a family walk and Clara was very disappointed when she realized we weren't walking to a friend's house. 2 teenage girls were walking towards us about then and Clara asked me if we could go to their house. I told her, "No, because we don't know them." "Well, we just have to ask them their names then."

Free Zoo Day

2012-01-02T13:37:00.000-07:00

The Hogle Zoo has free admittance the last Wednesday of the month for the 4 winter months. So my sister and I took our kids to the zoo this week.

I especially loved how even the oldest kids crashed on the way home.

Also this week, Clara was trying to move our count down to Christmas thing, which was hanging on a stocking holder. She accidentally pulled the stocking holder down off the shelf and it hit her right in the eye. After her injury she said, "That's dangerous!"

Christmas Week

2011-12-27T10:51:00.000-07:00

We started our Christmas week by celebrating my friend's 30th birthday by going on a wagon ride to see the Christmas lights at Thanksgiving Point. She was visiting from out of town, so I don't get to see her that often anymore. We were so excited to be able to spend her birthday with her. Since we ended up going on the wagon ride so late at night, Clara was the only kid in the group. So she got to wear antlers and roast marshmallows, thanks to a wonderful staff who felt bad Clara had to wait so long.

After the wagon ride was over, we went to go look around. We found some really cool ice sculptures and some of Santa's reindeer!

Christmas Eve we got to spend at Jeremy's parents and all of his siblings (and their families) were able to be there! Clara got to help with the program.

We all got matching shirts (the one Clara is wearing,) and grandpa got a cool gift that had a cut up water noodle around it to protect it. The kids had fun playing with all those pieces!

We also had a cousin gift exchange that night and Clara LOVES her princess dress up doll and tent.

And of course, then there was Christmas morning:

Clara got an apron for Christmas along with the stuff to make cupcakes. Clara had so much fun getting to make those. She kept asking and asking when she could make them, that I let her as soon as I knew we would have enough time. She even did the eggs all by herself and didn't get a single shell in the batter!

Fun Week

2011-12-19T11:00:00.001-07:00

I was able to have a girls night out this week with some great friends. Thanks Jeremy for watching Clara!

That same night, Jeremy took Clara out so he could buy his new iPad, which he has been saving months for! I'm so proud of you babe! Anyone who knows Jeremy will know what a huge feat that was for him. (I have yet to be able to get a picture of it because it's always with him!)

On Friday night, Jeremy and I were able to go see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas concert, guest starring Jane Seymour and Nathan Gunn. It truly was a magical night with getting to hear a beautiful program, getting snowed on while INSIDE, and getting to meet Jane Seymour!

Also this week, we went to go see the lights on Temple Square. Clara loved getting to see all the pretty Christmas lights. She also insisted on seeing the statue of Jesus while we were there too.

Clara is getting to be such a big girl. Clara can now make her own toast and juice!

After asking Clara a question, she said, "I don't know, my thinking is broken."

I've also decided to continue with my picture blog. Jeremy really likes it, so continue to check there for a picture every day!

Random Things

2011-12-12T11:22:00.000-07:00

I get to watch my sister's kids every Monday while she helps out in her kindergartener's class. Usually this little girl is down for a nap, so I was pleasantly surprised this week to for her to not only be awake while I was there, but to cuddle with me too!

I found our Nativity like this:

Apparently Clara created a natural disaster of some sort!

I made Clara a new dress this week. I had already gotten some material and things because her other dresses are getting too small. My daughter LOVES to wear dresses and has a melt down when I make her wear pants. She'll probably get some more dresses for Christmas.....

Clara hates loud noises. She doesn't like it when I vacuum or blow dry my hair. So as I was blow drying my hair one morning, she came up to me and said, "You make me crazy AND you make me nuts!"

As we drove past and ice cream shop: "Are we going to the store where the ice cream lives?"

A small conversation between Clara and I: C: "Say 'Hello', Mom." M: "Hello, Clara." C: "No, say 'Hello MOM!'" M: "Hello, Mom." C: "I'm not your Mom!"

Clara enjoys playing hide and go seek. She's finally getting old enough to play it correctly too. We were playing it as a family yesterday, so I decided to hide in some good spots. One time, it took Clara and Jeremy quite a while to find me. When they finally did, Clara said, "I thought you were gone by a wizard!"

Ward Christmas Party

2011-12-05T08:29:00.001-07:00

We had 2 ward Christmas parties this year. We held an adult only one Friday night and then the family one was Saturday morning. Both had meals served, and I "got" to be on the committee that helped put it all together. The adult dinner was very formal. We were served dinner on real plates. We had a program that inspired us to have the true meaning of Christmas this year and always.

Then came the clean up... We washed dishes for 2 hours after the even was over. At least we were washing with good friends and had a blast visiting with each other as we had 2 washers, a rinser, 2 driers, and 1 person putting the clean dishes away/bringing the dirty dishes to the washers. Although I brought my camera, I forgot to take any pictures. It's a shame too because the tables were beautifully decorated in white and silver. We had matching nativities, candles, stars, book-type things that told the story of Christ's birth from Luke 2, jars with cherries at the bottom, and Christmas lights strung all around. It really was beautiful.

Then came the family Christmas party. It started at 8 am, which was early considering we didn't get done washing dishes until close to 10pm the night before and then we had to go pick Clara up from the babysitters before we could go home and get ready for bed.

We were served pancakes, muffins, little smokies, and milk. Luckily all on paper goods so that the clean up was much faster than the night before.

They also had a game where the kids got gifts. Santa then read 'Twas the Night Before Christmas and every time Santa said the word 'the,' the kids passed their presents. When the story was over, which ever present the kid had in their hand, they got to keep. Clara got a yo yo and was very excited about it.

And the kids got to sit on Santa's lap! Clara was so excited to do it this year. She kept telling people that when she was a baby, she cried when she sat on Santa's lap, but that this year she was going to not cry and be a big kid. She did just that too. She went right up when it was her turn, climbed on, and answered all of Santa's questions!

Clara's response after I asked her how she got so smart: "I just ate a lot of food."

I often catch Clara reading her scriptures. I love it!

Clara had gotten Chocolate all over her face and she wasn't letting me take a picture of her. (Look how mad she is in the first pic.) But then for some reason she changed her mind and gave me the best smile ever!

Clara was watching me get ready one morning and was asking me lots of questions, like if my contacts hurt. So when she asked, "Did you go potty in 16 years?" I assumed she was talking to me. Wasn't sure what she meant, but answered her yes. She then got mad at me, "No, it's a story about baby Jesus!"

Side note: My picture blog is almost done for the year. I only committed to doing a year, but I'm toying with the idea of continuing. But I want to know what my readers think? Is it fun for you to read, or is it merely a self-indulging blog?

Thanksgiving Week

2011-11-28T13:10:00.001-07:00

My brother came into town this week, so on Monday, I unpacked all the rest of the toys and organized the toy room. (I didn't have any toys unpacked that 7 and 9 year old boys would want to play with.)

We then spent everyday doing something fun. Tuesday we went to the dinosaur museum and Cabela's.

Wednesday we went to a huge park in PG and were there for 4+ hours!

Thursday was Thanksgiving, so we spent the day at my sister's eating! I made little penguins out of olives, carrots, and cream cheese. The girls were so excited to help me.

For desert we made turkeys out of oreos, frosting, candy corn, whoppers, brown (plain) m&ms and red (mini) m&ms.

Clara even ate Thanksgiving Dinner, which is something that I was not expecting.

My favorite part of Thanksgiving week was listening to all the cousins play so well together!

Friday we had to say good-bye to my brother and his cute family. We had so much fun with them! After they left we still hung out with my family since my sister was here visiting from school. We went to a bike part that the kids loved playing on rather than actually riding their bikes on.

It was so windy that we left earlier than we wanted to because of how cold we all were. Clara was so happy to have me carry her while she cuddled inside my coat with me.

Then when we got back, I had the kids dog-pile on my sister just to "warm" her up, and make her feel oh so loved!

Saturday was a nice day to just relax after having such a fun weekend. I did put up the Christmas decorations though and Clara has been asking if it's Christmas ever since.

Overheard Clara say to Jeremy: Dad I'm crazy every day just like you!

We had the missionaries over for dinner this week. Clara asked who the missionaries were and I explained that they were young men who told people about Jesus. Clara was so excited to get the door with Jeremy when they knocked. But she came running in before any of them, sobbing. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, "They aren't with Jesus!"

We got out a Little People nativity set for Clara to play with. All day long I can hear her pretending to be the angel and say (very loudly): "Hey everyone come and see! Jesus is born today!"

First REAL Snow

2011-11-21T12:49:00.001-07:00

So we've had a few days of snow, but it never stuck to the ground. So when Clara and I woke up Saturday morning, the first thing we did was go outside and play in it!

Clara asked me to show her how to make a snow ball. I did, and then gave it to her. She then threw it at me!

Next we built a snowman. It ended up being a little bit taller than Clara.

Clara decided that she wanted the snowman to have hair, so she covered it's head in dirt.

After the snowman was done, but shoes were soaked. So I came inside and watched Clara play by herself in the snow. I was amazed that she already knew just want to do: make a snow angel and eat snow!

By the end of the day, all the snow was gone and our poor snow man was on it's side. (But his remains are still in our yard!)

New Hair Cut

2011-11-17T16:29:00.001-07:00

I am so sorry that I'm writing this post so late in the week. I've found that I don't spend nearly the amount of time on the computer as I used to. I personally think this is a great improvment, but it does mean that when I have time to sit down at the computer, I'm checking emails and things rather than taking the time to write my blog.

I got a new hair cut this week. It was a spur of the moment thing. I was at my neighbor's house, who was having a mutual friend cut her hair. They talked me into getting mine cut. (I had been thinking about it for a while, but hadn't made any decisions yet.)
Before:

After:

Since I was getting my hair cut, Clara wanted hers done too. She loves her long hair, so I had my friend give her just a trim. And of course, Clara needed before and after pictures too.
Before:

During (I love how excited she looks):

After:

Instead of doing funny Clara sayings (because I forgot to write any down and have thus forgotten everything,) I'll do funny Clara moments caught on camera.

A friend showed Clara how to "slide" down the stairs and now that's the only way she'll go down the stairs.

Clara was looking in the mirror and asked me to look in it with her. She then wanted me to take our picture, so this is a mirror shot! Not bad huh!

Clara said, "Look Mom, this 'Y' is upside down! That is so crazy!" And then she laughed and laughed about that.

Clara just looked funny to me here....

Random

2011-11-07T17:06:00.001-07:00

This was the weather the day after Halloween. I was amazed that this came after a night of trick-or-treating without needing to wear jackets!

I went to a meeting where we talked about traditions. I saw this and took a picture in hopes to make it myself one day. We'll see if I ever get around to it though.

Clara walked out of her cousin's bedroom and said, "Look at me, I'm a cowboy!"

I thought it was funny that Clara would rather turn around to get a crayon each time rather than just pulling the box out of the drawer and setting it on the table.

Clara cries a lot when I tell her no. Because of that, I frequently find myself asking her to find a smile. One day this week she responded by saying, "My smile is not working."

Clara went to use her toilet and found that a friend of hers had not flushed from when she used it early on in the day. After a small melt down from Clara, I flushed the toilet and then told her she could now use it. She started crying and said, "But I want a lot of water!" (Since the toilet was just flushed, it was in the process of filling back up.) So I said, "It's getting more water now." Clara: "I don't see it." Me: "Well, it's filling up, that's what happens when you flush a toilet. First all the water leaves the toilet, and then it slowly fills back up so you can use it again." Clara: "I didn't know toilets did that. That's interesting!"

Happy Halloween!

2011-11-01T13:31:00.002-06:00

Clara got to go to 3 different Halloween parties this year. The first one was for preschool. I didn't get a picture of all the kids because (even though I showed up early to be able to do just that,) one had left early because he wasn't feeling well, another one took his costume off, and the others just didn't want to stand for a picture. So here is a picture of Clara and her cousin right before I dropped them off.

Next came Jeremy's work party. The employee's families are invited to dress up and come trick or treating. People decorate their cubicles and some go all out!

My favorite was the row of cubicles made to look like the Wizard of Oz!

Here's Jeremy's cubicle, along with our entire family in our costumes.

I loved getting to visit Jeremy's work. I rarely get to see things he does. However, as we walked around the building, it seemed like every sign that was hanging up was something he designed. It was great to see so much of his work.

Jeremy brought home his decorations from work and we used them on our house.

And finally, the big night itself. We went trick-or-treating with my sister and her 5 kids. Clara was so excited to show off her costume to everyone. The person answering the door would say a general comment about all the costumes and Clara would come running back to me and say, "They loved my costume!" One or two people didn't comment on the costumes so Clara piped up and asked, "Do you love my costume?" She would then become ecstatic when they said yes.

Left to right: Cinderella (Clara,) Winnie the Poo (Kaycee,) Cowgirl (Adanya,) Bear (Hyrum,) Yoda (Jeffrey,) Ghost (Jed.)

Also notice how far away the girls were from the boys. Kaycee didn't like her brother's faces all pained and would freak out if they even looked at her, so we had to make sure she didn't know they were close by....

Odds and Ends

2011-10-31T10:40:00.000-06:00

We spent most of the week doing Halloween stuff, but I did want to include some non Halloween things we did.

I realized I never took a picture of our backyard with all our fun play things. We were able to get the slide and swing set for free. It's now the favorite spot for several neighbor hood friends and I often find my back yard with about 5 kids in it!

Our neighbor always wants to play with Clara too and I love that. Since Clara had spent most of her time at the neighbors so I could finish unpacking, I decided to let this little neighbor girl over as much as I could this week now that I was settled. They play so well together and were so excited that the paints were unpacked!

Clara asked if she could play with something and I said no. Her response: "Thanks for telling me no."

"It smells like banana potatoes."

Said to a complete stranger: "That's a nice red shirt you got there."

I was standing at our counter making a peanut butter sandwich for Clara, who was waiting patiently at the table. Clara then asked, "What kind of knife is that?" Me: "A table knife." Clara: "But this is the table and that's the counter!"

New House Finally!

2011-10-24T08:50:00.000-06:00

I know that all I've posted about lately is our new house, but hopefully I'll have other things on my mind now that we're moved in and unpacked!

This last week has been so exciting, exhausting, stressful, and sad all at the same time. We moved in last Sat, spent every day unpacking boxes, and cleaning our old apt. I can't believe how empty that place looked our last day there. Thanks to all those that came to help us move and clean. I am so grateful I didn't have to do it all alone!

We finally got all unpacked on Saturday and I'm so excited to finally have a clean house! So this is what my living room and kitchen look like now - including our new furniture for those that wanted to see what we picked out.

We've also been celebrating Halloween around here. Clara has been wanting Halloween decorations for a long time and since I didn't want to have to move a pumpkin, I told her she had to wait until we moved into our new house. Clara was ecstatic when I brought home a pumpkin and let her color it. She was also excited when I let her pick out a few Halloween decorations from the store.

Our pumpkin has 4 different faces on it and Clara likes to turn the pumpkin periodically during the day so that everyone can see all the faces.

Fire Station Open House

2011-10-13T09:27:00.001-06:00

I'm posting early this week. We get to close on our house today, something I didn't think would happen this week. So that means we get to move this Sat. I know I won't post on Mon because we won't have internet at our new house yet... So I wanted to keep my loyal readers informed of our happenings before I leave the internet behind for a few days.

A fire station located near our apartment was having an open house yesterday. So I went with my neighbor and I think I had more fun than Clara did. They let the kids run a water hose.

They passed out a fireman's badge and hat.

Then they had all these demonstrations, most of which taught about fire safety. They showed us how to use a fire extinguish as well as how to tell if it's still good or not. They showed us what putting water on a grease fire does.

Some of the demonstrations were just cool. Like when they showed us how they use a fire hose.

Or when they showed us how they would use the jaws of life to extract some one from a car. (I also learned that the 'jaws of life' is a name brand that is used in place of the actual name of a product. Kinda like Kleenex.)

They also had different stations where the kids could practice fire safety. They had a trailer full of water vapor, but told the kids it was smoke. They talked about how you crawl to an open door when there is smoke in your house.

Here are the girls after they found their way out of the smoke trailer. Clara was scared at first, but Emry showed her just what to do.

Also this week, we stopped by our friends who were in the middle of trying on Halloween Costumes. Clara was ecstatic when she got to be a dragon.

Happy Birthday Clara

2011-10-10T08:59:00.003-06:00

Clara turned 4 this week and we had a very busy week celebrating! We ended up having 3 parties for her, and she loved every minute of the attention.

We started last Sunday with a party for Jeremy's side of the family. I love that I have a daughter that gets so excited by any present. She genuinely loved every present she got.

Then came her actual birthday on Tuesday. She got to wear her birthday hat officially and was so proud to do it. We were able to celebrate before Jeremy left for work that day and Clara played with her new Polly Pockets all day long!

Yesterday, we had a birthday party for my side of the family. Once again, Clara got so excited opening all her gifts. I love that I have such a content little girl.

Clara is not a big fan of cake, but LOVES ice cream. So we got a little creative in how to arrange candles for her to blow out!

Clara LOVES stickers right now. One day I decided to let her decorate me with stickers, which she thoroughly enjoyed.

While Clara was pretending to be a king, she informed me, "Call me sir because sirs are boys that are handsome kinda like a prince. And you are my lady."

"Mom, when I show you my muscles, say 'Ohhh'." She then put her arms up in the air while clenching her fists. I obliged her by saying "ohhh, you have such big muscles." Her reply was, "That's why I'm 4."

After discovering Clara had a slight fever this week, I had Clara lay down on the couch and get comfy. Clara then announced, "I'm just hot from all the sun in here."

"Momma, when you grow up like me, then you can play with me."

Our new neighbor across the street is from Ghana. When Clara saw him, she said, "He sure is black!" She spoke it loud enough that those sitting next to us started laughing, so I have no idea if he over heard or not.

"I like flies, but they are too small to hug!"

Long Week

2011-10-03T23:06:00.000-06:00

We've had a very long week - especially as it pertains to our new house. Things aren't getting done like they were supposed to, but after some prodding, it is coming together nicely again. The plan is to have the house finished on Thurs and inspected on Fri so we can close the following Wed or Thurs! Wish us luck....

This is what our basement looks like now though, so at least it's been painted!

Clara was so excited to show me a smile she made out of little people.

Clara walked up to me and said, "I'm the best eater in the whole world." This is hilarious to anyone who has ever offered her anything to eat.....

Clara was making a fish face and asked me to guess what she was. "Are you a fish?" "I'm not just ANY fish, I'm a kissing fish!"

Clara and I were having a conversation and after she made a comment she asked, "Is that the right English?"

Clara and I were stuck in very slow moving traffic when Clara asked what I was doing. "I"m trying to drive, what are you doing?" "I'm just sitting here, but it is NOT my favorite thing to do!"

While watching the Mormon Tabernacle Choir sing on TV, Clara said, "See all those black suits? That means they are boys."

Chuck E Cheese B-Day Party and Concert

2011-09-26T08:06:00.000-06:00

Clara was able to attend a birthday party at Chuck E Cheese. There were only 3 girls there - the birthday girl and 2 friends. But I loved the smallness of that. I loved that we went in the middle of the day so it was pretty dead. It made it VERY easy to keep track of all 3 girls. Thanks Emry for inviting us to your party!

We then came back to the apartment complex and played games. It was such a fun day.

Jeremy won two free tickets to the REO Speedwagon/Styx concert. So we dropped Clara off with Aunt Melissa and headed out to the Usana Amphitheater. It was very interesting. Jeremy loves Styx, so we went to see them. REO opened and played for an hour and a half. They really aren't that great of entertainers. I was so annoyed with the lead singers comments by the end of that half hour. Then Styx came out and it got much better, but they only played for an hour. I still think it was so weird that the opening band played longer than the leading band.... Oh well. We really enjoyed that last hour!

REO Speedwagon

Styx

(Jeremy took TONS of pictures of the band performing but most were blurry so I resorted to finding pictures on the internet.)

Clara and I were at the library this week and saw this picture. Clara asked me what the picture was of. I didn't answer her. Instead, I asked her what she thought it was. Without hesitation she said, "Maybe it's a picture of those 3 bears and that girl."

A conversation: Clara, "Is it time to move to our new house yet?" Me, "Not yet. We can't go to our new house until we sign a lot of papers that say we have the money to buy the house." Clara (after bringing a notebook of paper from her room,) "I will write those words because I want to help get our house." Me, "It doesn't quite work like that. The people building our house has to be the ones to give us the papers to sign." Clara (said with extreme disappointment,) "Ohhhh, but I really want to help!"

As we were driving home from the concert, Clara announced from the back seat, "Melissa doesn't have any kids. She needs to buy one."

Chilean Independence Day

2011-09-19T12:53:00.004-06:00

Jeremy's birthday was this week. I got him something that he's been wanting for a very long time - a wireless router. As you can tell from the expression on his face, I surprised him!

Also this week, our friends came to play games with us and ended up bringing a birthday gift for Clara that we let her open while they were here. To say she loves it is an understatement. She got it Friday night and I've had to force it off of her ever since! Just look at those bright eyes and the way she's holding her hands!

Chile celebrated their independence day this week. Since Jeremy home teaches some Chilean people, we were invited to a huge celebration filled with food.

Clara's favorite part was running around looking at all the things in the yard.

And she sat and watched those chickens a lot too.

Clara's new dress has a poofy slip to go under the dress to make it poof out. Clara keep's calling it a poopy slip. "Mom, I need the poopy thing to make my dress more poopy!"

We were driving through a construction zone and Clara announced, "I can't believe there are so many machines out here!"

In a conversation, Clara said, "I had friends over yesterweek."

Clara wanted to play outside when we were at a BBQ. But she kept taking her shoes off and their yard isn't one that you can run around with no shoes on. So I told Clara, "If you take your shoes off again, then you can't play outside anymore." "Ok, Mom, I will remember to not take my shoes off."

At dinner the other night, Clara was talking about something (I don't remember what anymore) and said, "This is magical! But not really.... But it is, but not really. But actually it is!"

Happy Birthday Jeremy

2011-09-15T07:34:00.002-06:00

Just wanted to wish my wonderful husband a happy birthday! May you have a great day and be spoiled by everyone! :)

New House

2011-09-12T19:38:00.003-06:00

Our house is coming along great. The basement was framed this week along with getting our front yard done!

Our neighbor called me this morning to inform me that they were pouring our patio. I went up a few hours later in hopes the cement was still wet enough to let Clara put her hand print into our patio. I was so disappointed that it was already dry!

Also this week, we were invited to an outdoor movie. We watched Rio, laughed, visited, and even got to see inside the school where our nieces and nephews attend school!

On Labor Day, we celebrated both Jeremy's and Jeffrey's birthdays. I love that my family is close enough now to spend birthdays together.

We also got a plate of cookies left on our door step. We found out later that they were from our friends who recently moved from Logan to Springville. We are sooooooo excited to have them close enough to hang out with again!

And last, but not least, we were invited to attend a bbq in the neighborhood we'll be moving to. It was fun to get to know a few couples who we'll live close to in a month!

9/11

2011-09-11T12:44:00.002-06:00

I can't believe it's been 10 years since the twin towers fell. I still get teary eyed as I think about all the men and women who died that day. Civilians who couldn't defend themselves. And I can't help but cry as I hear the messages left on answering machines from the people on flight 93 who called to let their loved ones know they took a stand against terrorism and died saving stranger's lives.

There is a song that I love whose chorus asks, "Where were you when the world stopped turning on that September day?"

I was on my way to work. I was listening to the radio when a caller asked the dj if he knew anything about the plane that just hit the world trade center in NY. They immediately cut to a song so they could check it out. I remember thinking what a terrible tragedy that a plane "accidentally" ran into a building. I was at work before they ran any kind of a story. So I didn't find out until 2 hours later when my 2nd class of the day came in and informed me that a 2nd plane had hit, that a third plane had crashed into the pentagon, and a 4th plane had crashed in PA. I dropped all lesson plans that day and just visited with my students. I was amazed that these high school students took such care in the news of the world. I don't think I cared about worldly events like that when I was in high school.

The next period was my prep period, so I ran home and grabbed my radio. I brought it back to school and for the rest of they day, I just had my classes listen to the news and we talked about their thoughts and feelings. Some were so scared that a plane was going to come to UT and kill them. Some talked of getting even. Some of those did join the military and have joined in the war on terrorism. It was the first and only time I put math lessons aside to be taught a different day. I still feel the feelings I felt that day. I remember feeling guilty that I felt relieved to live in Utah. I remember wishing I could help in some way - I donated blood.

So where were you when the world stopped turning? I would love to hear your story!

Mini Golf

2011-09-05T12:13:00.000-06:00

I was able to take my niece and nephew miniature golfing this week. It was the first time they had ever been, so it was quite the experience. Turns out it's really easy to hit a golf ball really far with just a putter......

After we played mini golf, the kids got to pick out a ride to ride on. There were several rides there that I figured would be more age-appropriate, but they both really wanted to ride in the airplanes. Poor Jeffrey couldn't ever figure out how to make his airplane go up!

Clara was standing by me and tried to put her head under my shirt. When I asked her what she was doing she said, "I want to get into your tummy." When I told her she couldn't she said, "But I did it before." "No you didn't, I wouldn't have let you." "But there is a picture of it!" Realizing she was referring to a picture of me being pregnant with her, I then had to explain the difference between then and now.

Since Clara can't put her head into my shirt, she has started to try to fit into hers.

We had another meeting this week with our loan officer. When I told Clara we needed to go to a meeting, she asked why. (She is now officially in the 'why' stage and is starting to drive me nuts!) I then explained that we needed to go to the meeting so we could see if they would give us money to buy our new house. So when we walked into the mortgage company, Clara announced to the receptionist, "We need some money so we can buy a new house." Everyone in the office started laughing. And one loan officer even gave Clara a quarter to help buy our new house. Now Clara thinks we just need a quarter to buy our house and is wondering why we haven't bought the house yet.

Busy Week

2011-08-30T10:27:00.005-06:00

Other than buying a house (as if that wasn't busy enough,) we also had some fun things happen this week. Thanksgiving Point always does $2 Tuesdays for the month of August. So my sister and I took our kids to see the dinosaur museum this week. It was crazy busy (just look at the line to get in,) but the kids had so much fun.Also this week, Jeremy and I were able to go on a double date to see Pirates 4.Clara is becoming quite an artist. She LOVES to paint and draw. She gets frustrated when what she draws doesn't look like she wants it to. She also experiments with mixing colors together and tells me things like, "Did you know that pink and blue make light purple?" all the time.Clara wanted to go outside to play. So I sent her out and a few minutes later she comes back in and wants her rain coat. I told her it wasn't raining so she didn't need it and she then told me that it was going to rain soon. I looked outside and there were quite a few dark clouds, so she was right! She picked our her rain coat and hat and headed back outside. It did end up sprinkling a little while she was out there.

New House

2011-08-30T09:58:00.006-06:00

Sorry I didn't post yesterday, which is my usual day to write our weekly post. I was busy getting pre-approved and signing a purchasing contract for a new house! It took hours and hours, but we are now officially under contract! This has all happened pretty fast. We've been "looking" for a couple of months thinking we wouldn't do anything until May(ish.) But on Thursday, when I went to go look at a friend's new house, she showed me the house next door. I thought it looked great and went home to see the other plans for the building company. I fell in love with 2 (my favorite being the floor plan of the house that was already built.) I figured I would book mark them and look at them again in May. Well, Jeremy saw the house as we helped our friends move in and we ended up putting an offer in that night (Saturday.) We were pre-approved and our offer was accepted all yesterday morning. So yesterday afternoon I signed the contract. We are having a few things done to our brand new home before we move in (like getting the basement finished,) so it will be about a month before we move. I'm actually really grateful for that so that I have time to let that all sink in. I'm desperately going to miss our ward. But I'm surprised that I yet to have buyers remorse. I think it helps that Jeremy is so excited when he normally could care less about things like that.

Jeremy got some pictures of the main floor, so for those of you who are curious, enjoy the pics!Coat Closet in Entry WayKitchenPantry (which is Clara's current favorite part of the house. Every time we go see the house, she runs for the pantry and pretends it's her castle.)Oh yeah, and the best part about this house is that it is RIGHT next door to our friends! So we know we already love our neighbors! (Who also happen to have a girl who is 2 months older than Clara!)

Mini McCleve Reunion

2011-08-22T09:44:00.002-06:00

Several of Jeremy's cousins who live in Utah got together this week and had a BBQ. It was so much fun to visit with all of them, especially since we didn't get to go to the big reunion in AZ this year.Clara has been doing this to her chair and then saying it's her castle or palace. She gets so mad at me every night when I have her put it away. She's made it everyday this week so far!Clara has been into telling stories lately. She wants me to make up stories and then she makes up one to tell. Usually mine are about princesses and things, so I was a little surprised when she told this one.

In case you can't understand her, this is what she said:
"Once upon a time, Clara went into the woods. And one time a scary witch went to her. Then.... then the ghost came. But it had a lamp and it flied around me and it scared me so much. Somebody turned it off. The end."

Clara wanted to be just like me on Sunday. She wanted to wear her hair like me. She even wanted to wear a necklace and a bracelet like I was too. When she was done looking like me, I thought she looked way too grown up!

Clara and I were reading a magazine together and there was a picture of a bear. Clara said, "Look at the big dog!" After I explained to her that it was actually a bear, she said, "Did you know that bears are kinda like dogs?"

Clara wanted me to try on her church shoes. After showing her they wouldn't fit, she said, "You are the big mean lady and I'm Cinderella. See, they fit me perfectly!" A little while later, she wanted me to put her shoes on my hands. After doing so, she said, "You are a beautiful donkey!"

Family Reunion

2011-08-15T10:19:00.007-06:00

We had the John Beck Family reunion this week. We had such a fun time getting to visit with family. Clara and her cousins spent a lot of time playing in our tent. I have no idea what was so exciting about it, but every time I turned around they were playing in it again. It made me laugh. These kids also loved taking turns sitting in an inner tube. We had a lot planned while we were out camping. We had treasure hunts, word searches, family history moments, fishing, swimming,a talent show, and games (can you tell it was cold at night.)We even had a campfire and roasted smores. Clara's favorite was putting the entire marshmallow in her mouth to eat it.We had several prairie dog holes through out our campsite that we had to be very careful not to trip on. With that came several sightings of the little critters.And this I just thought was funny. Clara wanted to sit by grandpa and enjoy the view!On Sunday, we had a family dinner with the other side of the family. Clara has the best cousins anyone could ask for. She loves playing with all of them!I was also able to see The Help this last week with some friends. I loved the book and was very worried that the movie would disappoint. However, I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and thought it did a great job of capturing the feeling of the book! So much so that I can't wait to read the book again!

Clara abruptly woke up from sleeping in the car and said, "I want the giraffe." Since I was slightly confused, I asked her to repeat what she said. Her reply, "I want to buy a giraffe for a pet."

Clara drew a picture this week with 3 people in a big blue circle. When I asked her what she drew she pointed to the corresponding person in the drawing and said, "This is Clara, she is falling into the sea. This is Daddy, he will catch Clara and save her. This is Mommy, she is scared because Clara is falling into the sea."

Sunday morning, Clara and I were looking into the mirror together. Clara announced that she had yellow hair, so I asked her what color my hair was. She said, "Brown." So then I asked what color Daddy's hair was. "It's just pokey up hair."

Family Week

2011-08-08T13:33:00.007-06:00

To make up for last week, I took TONS of pictures this week and had a hard time narrowing it down. On Thursday this week, I was feeling like we desperately needed some fun family time. It had been way too long since we had done anything just the 3 of us. So we headed out to take Clara miniature golfing for the first time. She could see this bridge from hole 1 but we didn't get to actually cross it until hole 11 or so. She spent the first half of miniature golfing asking when it would be time to cross the bridge! She finally got the gist of using the club to hit the ball and would position her ball close to the hole like this and then use the club to hit it in. There is also an arcade there. While we were looking around, some nice college students decided to give Clara their tickets. When we looked at the receipt, it was over 1,000! So Clara got to pick pretty much anything she wanted. Here is Clara with all her loot.On Friday, an old college roommate stopped by to visit. I had so much fun visiting with her. I used to watch her little girl every day while she went to work. This is how I remember Addi And this is a picture of her and Clara from Friday. I can't believe how fast kids change!Addi has a little sister who is completely adorable! I sure loved listening to Brooklyn talk and play with the older girls!Saturday was also a family oriented day. We started our day by attending the temple. I forget how much I love going to the temple with Jeremy. We try to go once a month, but that hasn't been feeling like enough lately.After we got back from the temple, we decided to take Clara swimming. We all had so much fun. I'll let the pictures do the talking this time.....

Clara tried to tell me a joke. She had just heard it and what she heard went something like this: "Why was Mr. Cookie sad? Because he was feeling crummy." When relating the joke to me though, Clara said, "Why was Mr. Cookie crying? Because he was grumpy!" I laughed pretty hard at how close she was to getting it right, but not close enough for it to make sense to anyone else.

I told Clara that I liked her sparkly toe nails. She replied grumpily, "There's nothing on my toe!" So I pointed to her toe nail polish and said, "Here's the sparkles." Clara, not wanting to be wrong said, "No! Don't show that!"

Clara came up to me this week and said, "I miss me!"

Clara announced that she had a dream. When Jeremy asked what it was about she said, "Me, Clara and Mommy."

Pictureless

2011-08-01T15:56:00.004-06:00

Sorry about not having any new pictures, all the ones that were decent went on my picture blog. Click here if you really want to see some pics from this week.

Here is a little conversation that I had with Clara this week.

Clara: "Mom, I want a REAL baby. Please can I have a real baby to play with?"
"That's up to Heavenly Father."
"But how can I ask Him?"
"In your prayers. That's why we pray so that we can talk to Heavenly Father."
(Said as Clara looks at the ceiling) "But He's too far up."
"He can still hear us."
(After a few seconds of intense thinking) "With His ears?"
"Yes, He can hear us with His ears."
"Ahhhhh, I will ask Him!"

Long Week

2011-07-26T10:15:00.006-06:00

I've been so busy this past week, which is why I'm posting on Tuesday in stead of Monday this week. I didn't get a lot of pictures because it wasn't necessarily playful busy. But I did get some!

On Wednesday this week we got to attend a birthday party for my niece who turned 10. We had a lot of fun in the water! Apparently the water was colder than Jeremy anticipated! :) And then they played a game where the looser had to get a bucket of water dumped on their head. Who knew that could be so much fun!On Thursday I turned in some coins that I had been saving since I was 12. I was able to purchase my mother a GPS to help her out as she drives around her new place.

On Friday I drove a moving truck for my sister. I met my Mom at her new house and she and my sister, Emma, watched Clara along with Clara's 5 cousins while I hitched a ride to Tremonton and drove the moving truck back down to their new house. It was a long day, but a fun adventure.

Saturday was spent unloading that truck and then helping put beds together, hooking up a washer and dryer, unpacking and putting away all the kitchen stuff, and many, many other things. I'm tired of moving and I didn't even have to pack it all up! The sad thing is that after I left on Saturday, they weren't even close to being done unpacking.

Monday I offered to take all the kids so the adults could stay behind and get a lot of unpacking done that otherwise couldn't go so fast with having to take care of kids and unpack.

Jeremy and I took our nieces and nephews to the discovery park in PG. (Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of that.) After we exhausted ourselves in the heat, we headed to a McDonalds for lunch. The McDonalds had a play place so we spent a couple of hours there too. And then we headed to a splash park. The kids had so much fun getting all wet, especially on such a hot day.

Clara was trying on some shoes and I asked her if they fit. Her response was, "They're just size!"

Baseball Games and Day Camps

2011-07-18T07:59:00.006-06:00

We had such a fun week. We were able to attend at baseball tournament for a nephew. I don't remember the scores very well, but he barely lost his first game and won by a land slide in his second. Great games Cooper! During those games, Clara got to figure out how to eat sunflower seeds. And she got to wear a beautiful sun hat!Also this week, I took the girls in our ward who are ages 8 - 11 to a cub scout camp for a stake activity days. The girls had a blast. They made boats and raced them in rain gutters by blowing on the sails. They got to shoot BB guns and bows and arrows. They got to race in a boat and they made bracelets.Clara rarely lets me do her hair these days. I was able to bribe her into letting me do her hair yesterday by putting in these "sparkly flowers."

While we were waiting for the baseball game to start, Clara asked, "Is it time to shout for the game yet?"

Cooper's grandpa came to watch the baseball game and sat next to us. He was wearing a hat (I'm horrible with names of hats, so the best way I can think of to describe it is a manly sun hat. It had a brim, but was definitely not a cowboy hat.) He came over and patted Clara's head to say hello. Afterwards, Clara looked up at me with the happiest eyes and said, "The cowboy patted my head!"

Clara fell out of a toy wagon while we were playing outside. After asking her if she was ok, she said, "Yes because my brains are still in my head."

After saying a slew of nonsense words, Clara announced, "That's how you say it in Spanish."

A few weeks ago, we were playing outside and a little boy wasn't listening to his mom. Clara mentioned that he was a bad boy. I explained to her that he was a good boy, but was just making bad choices. I didn't think much of that until this week Clara got into trouble. After my short lecture was over, Clara looked at me with hopeful eyes and asked, "Am I still a good girl?"

Relaxing Weekend

2011-07-11T15:05:00.002-06:00

So after an extremely busy week, we had a wonderfully non-eventful weekend. But I still wanted to post about Clara's funny sayings.

Clara used to love getting her picture taken, now when I get the camera out, she runs from me. So I took this as I was holding her down, forcing her hands away from her eyes.....

As we were walking around the museum in Libby, I pointed to a mounted goat head and said, "Look Clara, it's a goat." "No, that's just a head."

As I'm typing this, Clara keeps marching around the room singing (as she is banging toy symbols together) "Scripture power is safe from sin!"

Clara smelled a wild daisy by touching it to her nose and said, "It smells soft."

Randomly said this week: "I'm trying to think, but it's not working."

I was telling Jeremy that I wasn't feeling well. Clara piped up and said, "Sorry Mama, I can't help you."

Clara has developed the 'talent' of telling stories. This is the one she told us at the dinner table the other night. "Once upon a time there was a girl named Clara who had a monster in her closet. She got really scared so she looked in her closet and the monster scratched her. Clara ran away screaming."

This next one isn't as funny, I just wanted to record it. I tell Clara stories about Christ as we sit through the Sacrament on Sunday. Yesterday I had Clara tell me one and she said, "Once He was a baby, but then He grew up and got on the cross. Then some angry guys hurt His hands."

Toad the Wet Sprocket

2011-07-08T22:51:00.004-06:00

About 6 hours after getting home from Montana, Jeremy and I headed to a Toad the Wet Sprocket concert. It's a band that Jeremy really likes and we ended up getting our tickets for free (thanks Eric!) So we went. The band announced at the end of the show that they would be hanging around to mingle with the crowd after the concert. So were were able to get all of their autographs!My favorite part was definitely meeting the band. They were so friendly and personable!
Drummer Randy GussBass Dean DinningsGuitarist Todd NicholsLead Singer Glen Phillips

Montana

2011-07-08T22:09:00.010-06:00

Right after the Stadium of Fire, we drove all night long to Montana. We made it to our destination at about 1:30 Sunday afternoon. We had so much fun visiting with family. I always bring home so many pictures of Montana. It's such a beautiful place.

Monday morning we went on a hike as an entire family. The kids loved it I loved the scenery! That night we had a firework show. We had some glow sticks that Clara loved using to pretend to be a bug.My brother lit all the fireworks.Clara decided to take all the credit for it (she kept taking a bow.)We ended the night with sparklers. Those are always our finale for our family.We also went to our local museum. It's a hodgepodge of old stuff from Libby's history. Clara loved running from one thing to the next. This was the first fire "truck." This is an old drum in their Kootenai Indian section. I had seen this huge frying pan all growing up. What I never knew was that it was originally owned by the church I attend! The rest are pretty self explanatory. There are many cool things to do at the house I grew up in. We had fires in our outdoor fire pit, played badminton, and just had fun playing on the 6 acres of forest.The last thing we did was visit my father's headstone.As much fun as it was to be home and get only 4 hours of sleep a night because there were at least 3 games of monpoly going each night, I'm so glad to be home!

Stadium of Fire

2011-07-08T21:45:00.005-06:00

For those of you who don't live here, the Stadium of Fire is the local firework show. But it's more than just fireworks. A top entertainer comes to perform, many people are honored, and the firework show is put to music. It's amazing. This year, Brad Paisley performed. I LOVE Brad. I own almost every album of his (I have 8 out of 10.) Jeremy took over 100 pictures too...... So you are lucky I've narrowed it down to only 6!

The show started with a fly by from air force jets and then parachuters. Then came a lot of local talent followed by David Archuletta. Then came wonderful Brad. He is such a good entertainer. I sang a long to every song - there were only a few from his newest album that I only knew the chorus. It seriously made my week.The fireworks were amazing. They last so long that I was wanting them to be over! They actually had fire too. It was so hot that I could feel the fire from our seats at the very farthest corner from it!

Random

2011-07-04T08:13:00.003-06:00

Clara played in the sprinklers for the first time this week. I've tried to get to play in them before, but she was always too scared. The fear is obviously gone now!We got Clara a new sleeping bag this week. She LOVES it, but we have a very hard time getting it back into the bag it came in. So I decided to sew some elastic at the bottom of it and now it can stay rolled up without too much effort!We got to watch a 3 month old baby this week. Clara had so much fun taking care of Issac.

And the funnest thing that I've gotten to do this week is have lunch with some old roommates. Jenny was in town from AZ and made all the phone calls. We had a very yummy pot luck lunch and visited for almost 3 hours. Some how it still wasn't long enough. It still feels like yesterday that we were all living together and happy as can be!Our kids had a lot of fun playing playing together too.When the littlest one woke up from her "nap" I noticed that she had gotten into my sock drawer while she was supposed to be sleeping.

While we were watching Issac, Clara asked if he was our new baby. I told her no. (Issac's older brother is Clara's friend Jared.) Clara thought about that answer for a few seconds and then said, "The baby is Jared's, but we can borrow it!"
Clara called me over by saying, "Look at the beautiful statue I built."

Birthday Celebrations

2011-06-27T08:45:00.004-06:00

We had such a great week. My sister came down to go house hunting. They even found a place on day 2, so they could relax and have fun the rest of the time they were here. We had so much planned though, that we didn't spend a whole lot of time with them. It's a good thing they are moving in a few weeks so we can spend as much time as we want with them!

My birthday week started Thursday night with Jeremy and I going to a work party. They fed us dinner, had a hula hoop contest, a limbo contest, and had entertainment. The Nashville Tribute band played. It was a blast. It was also fun to visit with and get to know the people Jeremy works with and talks about all the time. He works with a lot of great people.

Friday we dropped Clara off at a neighbor's house and we headed out for an evening without kids. We finally got to see Thor, something Jeremy has been wanting to see for a long time. We then got a dinner we could eat in the motel room. It was so nice to just relax and remember how much we like each other. I'm amazed at how life gets in the way of just sitting and talking to each other.

We came home on Saturday and spent a little more time with my sister before we headed to the rodeo. We saw quite a few of Jeremy's relatives at the rodeo too. I had some great birthday surprises while I was there too. I won a $10 gift card to a local grocery store, Jeremy caught a T-Shirt that was thrown into the crowd and he gave it to me, and just being able to watch the rodeo was the best birthday gift ever. I love rodeos and it had been way too long since I'd been to one.The half time show was pretty cool too. All the still shots we got were way too blurry, so here's a video.

Clara loved getting to wave at all the horses after the rodeo. She was so excited to see them up close.

While we were at the rodeo, Clara leaned over to me and said, "I want a baby cow." I told her no. "Please Mama, I really want one!"

Grand Reopening

2011-06-20T10:55:00.002-06:00

We happened to stop by Wal-Mart at their grand reopening (after doing some remodeling.) They were having some fun free activities outside, but I had forgotten both my camera and my phone. So I didn't get any pictures of Clara bouncing on the blow-up trampoline thing or pictures of her doing a bean bag toss. However, everything else she did got to come home with us. Here are the pictures of her loot:

face painted like a butterflyballoon kitty, cotton candy, and a pot of sunflowers that she got to plant herself!My sister and brother-in-law got great news this week. He FINALLY got a job in his field of study after graduating 2 years ago! And the even better news is that they are moving to Utah! When I moved here 14 years ago, I was the only person in my family to live here. I figured it would be that way for forever. But my brother moved here a year ago and now I have a sister moving her too! I LOVE having family so close!

Clara is growing up way too fast. I walked into the living room and found her like this. She seriously looks more like a lazy teenager rather than a 3 year old.Clara has been saying the nicest things to Jeremy and I. She'll randomly stop playing, come over, and say, "You're the best mom ever." She'll say to Jeremy, "You're my best hero, Daddy." It seriously melts our hearts.

Clara hasn't said too many new and funny things this week. I think the funniest one is when we were visiting with Uncle Eric and he told her he would find her the barrel of monkeys. When he found them for her, she said, "Good job, you got them!" It made him laugh.

Just after giving Clara a banana this week I heard her say, "Look, a great big smile." I turned around to see this:

Full Week

2011-06-13T12:59:00.008-06:00

We had such a fun week. Last Monday we got to go swimming with our neighbors at his parent's house. Clara was extremely scared of the water at first, but by the end she was even swimming without her ring, just her floaties!Then on Tuesday we played all morning at a friends house. They have a very fun backyard and Clara was so sad to leave. But I was able to lure her away by telling her that I would take her to a new park. My friend had told me about it and I'd been wanting to take Clara. Since my friend lives right by it, I thought today would be the day. Clara was so happy as soon as she saw it, she giggled and asked if that was the park we were going to. When I said yes, she screamed, "Yay! I love that park!" She ran all the way there.It was so hot outside that day that we left the park to go to the water park. Clara had so much fun here. They have a lazy river, which Clara was in heaven just floating in. I didn't take my camera, so I got this picture off their website. This was Clara's favorite place to play. Both halves of the pirate ship had water slides. At first she would only go down them on my lap, then she got to where she had to hold my hand, and then she was going down them all by herself. I loved watching her run from one slide to the next. It seriously made my week.Friday we went to the carnival for Summerfest. (Our city's annual celebration.) We started out at the craft section and Clara got to make this visor for free. (She won't wear it anymore though because she thinks she can only wear it on rides.)After we made her visor, we headed over to let her ride some rides. She was so happy to ride the merry-go-round. She was a little scared at first, so I held onto her back. At one point I let go and she realized that she could hold on all by herself. She then told me that I had to get off the ride and wasn't very happy when I told her I couldn't until the ride was over because it wasn't safe to jump off a moving ride.But her favorite ride of all was the boat ride.

Saturday morning we went to a niece and a nephew's soccer games. They were so much fun to watch. After the games, we headed to the Summerfest parade. We were all ready to go when Jeremy had some last minute business to take care of before we could leave. So this is Clara waiting patiently for Daddy to come.Clara met a new friend and danced with her as we waited for the parade to start.Clara's favorite part of the parade were all the princesses (both the ones pictured and all the royalty for the local pageants.)She would wave emphatically at each one as if they were actually waving to her. It was so cute!After the parade came a firework show. Clara loved it and giggled through most of the show. There were quite a few people around us who mentioned that the highlight of the show was listening to Clara ohh and ahh.

I helped a friend shorten some pants this week. She changed her clothes in Clara's room and left the pants she wore over in the room while I figured out where to have the new length be. Clara came out of her room and said, "Thanks for the new clothes. I can wear them when I get bigger!"

On our way to our friend's house (with the big backyard) I was naming all the people who we would get to play with. I mentioned that they had a baby named Thomas. Clara said, "Thomas is a train, not a baby!"

We walked to a park to play this week. Clara was asking if we could go to the new park. I told her no, that we were walking to a different park. Clara was disappointed and said, "I thought you said we were going to the new park." I replied with, "No, I said we were going to a park, not the new park." So now Clara calls our local park the "a park."

Softball Game & Birthday Party

2011-06-06T15:25:00.003-06:00

I wasn't able to get any pictures taken, but my sister came to visit me this week! They were here for only 1 night. Her husband had a job interview in the area. I really hope they get something soon! I think it would be awesome if they lived closer!

We got to attend Ashlyn's softball game this week. We had so much fun watching her play. It was pretty cold, but well worth the time spent.Clara also was invited to a birthday party. This is her friend giving Clara a hug after she opened Clara's gift. While we were at the park, Clara found a new friend. They played pirates together for almost the entire 2 hours we were there. I love that Clara has so much fun playing with both boys and girls.

We were out for a walk this last week when Clara said, "I can hear a bird! I can't see it though. There's a mystery outside Momma."

Clara announced to me, "Excuse me, my bum burped."

Clara informed me that she was growing. "You're right, Clara, you are growing everyday." "But I'm not big enough to go to the temple yet."

I was telling Clara that we would get to go play at a friends house at 7 o'clock. Clara response was, "Yay, we get to go to 7!"

I was informing Clara that if she didn't come inside then she couldn't eat the toast that she wanted. Clara said, "We don't eat ghosts, silly Mommy!"

Memorial Day

2011-05-30T08:29:00.002-06:00

I volunteered to watch some neighbor's kids overnight this week so they could get an early start on their Memorial Day weekend. Clara had so much fun getting to sleep over. They got to watch a movie right before bed to help settle them down. Then they all got to sleep in the same room. We all had so much fun.Saturday we spent with Jeremy's family going to 4 different cemeteries in the area. We then had a family BBQ which included good food and fun jump roping.We ended the evening by having an adult only dinner to celebrate John's birthday and retirement. Congratulations John, you are an amazing example to us and are so proud of your accomplishments! We stayed outside so long that both Jeremy and I got a sunburn. Mine was minor, but poor Jeremy is still hurting. These pictures don't do him justice.

We've been so busy this week, I didn't write down anything Clara said, so here's some that I remember...

Randomly Clara came up to me and said, "Mommy, I'm growing so big!" "That's right Clara." "But I'm not big enough to go to the temple yet."

As we kept going from one cemetery to the next, Clara said, "I want to go to a park that has rocks with no letters on them."

Old Friends

2011-05-23T11:29:00.001-06:00

When I was single, I lived in an apartment complex called Alta. I loved living there. As a matter of fact, I moved from ward to ward all through college, until I found Alta. I loved it so much, I didn't leave until I got married almost 4 years later. Not only did amazing people live there, but our Bishopric and their wives touched all of our lives forever. This last week I was able to spend some time with a lot of those former friends. Even though we don't see each other very often, all the friendships are still strong and we all have a great time together. It was wonderful to see a softer side of Stu, who was beaming with pride and showing us pictures of his little girl who was 4 days old. I loved getting to visit with Bishop and Sister Hawkes who remember all of us and continue to know us better than any of us ever realized, and who are always very quick to compliment and encourage. It was especially fun to see all the moms and dads and Clara LOVED playing with all the other kids there, even though she had never met most of them. I was able to get pictures of the 3 former roommates who were there.Jeremy also got to play with Clara some at a park. Clara loves her dad and can get him to do just about anything - even if he really doesn't want to. :)Speaking of getting Daddy to do anything, Clara decided to give Jeremy a "haircut." She calls it a haircut, but really it's just combing your hair and then trying to make you look pretty. So here Clara gave Jeremy some long hair so he could be beautiful. Hopefully he doesn't get too mad at me for posting this picture, but I love it!Clara had a field trip to the library this week. She loved story time. We'll have to do that a lot this summer.Clara also had her last day of preschool this week. She was able to "graduate" with all her friends. She loved going to school and can't wait to go back after summer is over.

Clara is obsessed with things that start with the letter C because Clara starts with C. She usually puts the C sound repeatedly before saying a C word. For example, it's C-C-C-Clara or c-c-c-cat. I figured she was actually putting the sound with the letter when one day she said "C-c-c-can't! Mommy, can't starts with c!" I knew she had figured that one out by herself because no alphabet book is going to have a picture of a "can't" to represent the letter C. I was beaming with pride until the next word out her mouth was "C-c-c-friends!" I then said, "It's f-f-f-friends, not c-c-c-friends." Clara then said, "Yes it is c-c-c-friends! Friends starts with c AND f - both of them!" Well at least she recognized the f sound right?

Clara came up to me with wet hands and said, "I will wash my hands on my dress because I'm Clara." Not sure how those two things relate.....

Clara has a friend named Taylor and lately, every time they get together, they hold hands. One day while playing with Taylor, Clara came up to me with a very sad face and said, "Taylor won't hold hands with me." I had to explain to her that boys like to play with cars and trucks sometimes and don't always want to hold hands. I don't think she really comprehended why they would rather play with trucks.

Field Trip to the Grocery Store

2011-05-16T11:32:00.003-06:00

Clara's preschool class got to go see all the departments in a grocery store. The kids had so much fun and so did I!Clara has the best imagination ever. She found a walnut (our neighbors across the street have a walnut tree) and part of a bird's nest - which she thought looked like a blanket. Clara cared for her "baby walnut" for days. She would put it to bed, wake it up, feed it. It was pretty funny.Here Clara is "wearing" my hair. Clara loves to play with and stroke my hair. One night I decided to use my hair like a wig for her and Clara loved having long hair. Jeremy thought it was funny enough to take a picture.

We were driving home when Clara saw the moon out the car window. She must have been watching it for a while because she said excitedly, "The moon is coming with us!"

Clara got to bring home a helium balloon from her grocery store field trip. The next day, the balloon was on the floor - instead of floating in the air. Clara said, "Oh no! The balloon lost it's power!"

Our DVD player was acting weird this week. So I opened it up and looked inside to see if I could tell what was wrong. I was able to fix it and put it back together. When Clara's movie was working again she said, "You're a great fixer, Mama."

It's pretty rare that I get to shower before Clara gets up in the morning. I always tell her when I'm going to take a shower so that she doesn't freak out too much when she notices I've been gone for more than 5 minutes. So one day I said, "I'm going to jump in the shower now." Clara said, "We don't jump at home." I'm glad she's been listening to where she can and cannot jump!

Extension

2011-05-09T21:17:00.004-06:00

We found out that Jeremy got a 1 year extension on his job. Along with that came a very unexpected raise! We are so happy to know we have employment for at least another year!

Not too much else has happened this week, so I'll just dive right into the funny Clara moments for the week. I have to add this picture of Clara. I put it on my other blog, but I didn't have any new ones of her and this one makes me laugh so hard I thought I might as well have it in both places.

I looked down and noticed some food on my pants, so I said, "Oh no, I spilled." Clara, who I didn't even know was listening said, "That's ok Mom, sometimes that just happens."

Clara is always trying to figure out how new words fit into her world. Clara was listening as Jeremy was telling me a story and in it he explained how in Spanish, El Papa means The Pope. Clara piped up and said, "Like the bear!" We were a little confused until she explained, "Like Po, the bear."

We were eating ice cream with some friends and Jeremy told them that Clara was a fan of ice cream. Clara responded, "I'm not a fan!"

Jeremy and Clara always have the craziest conversations. One day, Daddy and Clara were naming lots things that would be funny if they fell like rain. Clara said, "If it rained fruit snacks, then we could buy them from the sky."

In the same rain conversation Jeremy asked Clara what would happen if it rained trucks. Clara said, "Then they would bonk our heads."

Exciting Week

2011-05-02T11:00:00.006-06:00

Clara was able to attend a field trip to Provo's airport. It was so much fun for the kids to see all the different airplanes. They even got to see a helicopter land and an airplane take off. I still didn't have my camera back from the shop, so I'll have to put pictures up when I get them from friends to took some for me.I got my camera back the same day as Clara's field trip and I have been having so much fun taking pictures with it. I am very impressed with the service. They even updated our software for us, so the delay is MUCH faster than what it used to be. We LOVE having our camera back.

Friday we got to hang out with a few friends from the ward where Jeremy and I met. The bishop's wife graduated from UVU and they had an open house for her and invited all the old college students to come. We love that family and love getting together with them.

My brother picked up the key to his new apartment Sat morning. If you are wondering why I would care about that at all, his new apartment is in my same complex. We are going to be neighbors and I couldn't be more excited.

After my little brother got his key and VERY briefly looked inside his new apt, we drove to Twin Falls to see my niece get baptized. Clara was so excited to see Adanya's baptism and to see her cousins Jed and Hyrum. Isn't my sister's family so beautiful?We had so much fun playing with them all weekend. Clara loved all their dress up things.And we loved getting to play games. Clara also got a Strawberry Shortcake blanket while we were there, which she loves! Thanks guys. The trip was way too short as we came home Sunday after church.

When we got home, I was talking to some friends and they mentioned that Osama bin Lauden had been killed. I was shocked. We turned on the news right away to see if it was really true. Words can't describe the feelings I had as the news sunk in. I didn't think this day would ever come. I'm so grateful to so many who put their lives in danger to be able to bring justice to those families who lost loved ones 9 1/2 years ago. I'm still slightly in shock.

Overheard as Clara was playing with a stick: I want to go to the glass slipper ball. You can't because you are a stick, not a glass slipper.

Clara went to the temple grounds with me when I took 2 girls who are between the ages of 8 and 11. As soon as we got to the temple, Clara said, "The temple is HUGE!"

As we were all walking around the grounds, Clara kept saying to those 2 girls, "Follow me girls!"

When I told Clara she was cute, she said, "No I'm not, I grew up!" (Apparently only babies are cute.)

Easter

2011-04-25T14:57:00.006-06:00

Happy Easter! The Easter Bunny comes on Saturday at our house. He came when we were all sleeping this year because of how crazy our Saturday was. It was so much fun to see Clara so excited when she woke up and we told her the Easter Bunny had come to our house. She ran around so fast we didn't get very many good pictures.After Jeremy left to go to work, Clara and I had some time to kill before we needed to leave. She decided to take her Easter candy and make it "snow" all over our carpet. Clara and I were able to meet up with some friends at a local grocery store that was having an Easter celebration on Sat. The Easter Bunny was there and Clara was so excited to get to meet him. When we finally met up again as a family, we headed to Kohls to spend some Khols cash that had been given to us and that expired that day. Jeremy found this hat and tried it on. Clara then really wanted to wear it and even asked if we could buy it. We bought her some play-doh instead. She played with it for hours. She had us help her write her name and then she wanted us to make a Clara. If you notice, the play-doh Clara has a flower in her hair just like the real Clara.On Easter Sunday, we headed to Jeremy's parents' house for dinner and the annual Easter Egg Treasure Hunt. Clara had so much fun running after the other kids. She really didn't care they beat her to all the clues. It was a happy day.

Sunday morning before church, I told Clara the Easter story and explained to her that was the reason we celebrated Easter. I showed her pictures of Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane, on the Cross, and then resurrected. We then talked about what resurrected means, and explained that even though the Easter Bunny is fun, we should think about our Savior during Easter. She listened quite well (better than I thought she would anyway) and when I was done, she said, "That was a great story. Thanks Mommy!"

Conversation with Clara: Me: "You are a cutie pie." Clara: "I'm not a pie!" "You aren't? Well then what are you?" "I'm a crazy kid."

Clara LOVES Tinkerbell. One day, Clara came up to me with a very worried look on her face and she was flapping her elbow frantically. When I asked her what was wrong, she said, "I can't hear something, because I don't have a bell in my body like Tinkerbell does. I want to have a bell in my body!"

Clara and Jeremy have some very funny conversations. Clara mentioned to him that she was hungry or something and Jeremy said, "You can eat a computer." Clara: "No, try again." "You can eat garbage." "Keep trying." "A phone?" "Try again." "Fruit sacks?" "You got it!"

Carl Bloch

2011-04-18T09:13:00.003-06:00

Our camera still isn't back from the shop yet. We've been using our cell phones to take pictures, but that just isn't the same. Jeremy has the best pictures on his phone, but I always forget to get them off before he leaves for work..... Thus I have to do a pictureless post today. If you REALLY want to see recent pictures I've taken, see my picture blog.

We were able to go see the Carl Bloch exhibit on BYU campus of FHE this week. I was amazed at how many stories Clara actually knew of the Savior and could tell me the story behind a lot of the paintings we saw. Some the the greatest things (other than the paintings themselves) was seeing where his paintings are hung. Most of his paintings of Christ were done for kings and so they hang in castles. If you haven't had a chance to see this exhibit, go see it! It ends May 7, so there's not a whole lot of time left. There are also ipads to rent (or you can bring your own) which allows you to hear more of the history and things of the paintings. We didn't get those, but I almost wished we had. The line was just too long.... You do need a ticket to get in - unless you want to wait in a long standby line. However, those tickets are free. For more information, go here.

Clara didn't have preschool this week since it was spring break. That also means I didn't have nearly the amount of tutoring appointments that I usually do. We were able to get outside a lot more. Clara's favorite thing to do is draw pictures with sidewalk chalk. She'll spend hours coloring up our sidewalks. I think there's hardly any space left out there. She also loves to have me play tic-tac-toe with her. I guess Curious George played it and she's been wanting to play it ever since. I'm amazed at how good she is drawing the playing board and her x's and o's. We're still working on the logistics of the game, but she's actually catching more than I thought she would.

Jeremy was told this week that most likely he'll be hired on for another year. A year is better than 6 months! But nothing is official yet, so we'll just have to wait and see. We just might be at another job in a month. I can't believe how quickly these last 6 months have gone. Jeremy loves this job and is so happy there. We really hope things work out for him to work there longer.

Bean Museum - Again

2011-04-11T08:31:00.004-06:00

Clara's preschool went on a field trip to the Bean Museum. When I told Clara we got to go, she was very excited. She kept talking about how she wanted to see the shells again. However, we picked the wrong day to do. There were multiple field trips that day and the place was packed. I had brought a friend's kid with me since she has just had a baby. And that kid likes to venture out on his own. I was pretty stressed the whole time we were there, afraid I was going to lose her kid. But with the help of all the other moms, we never lost him for very long!Right after this butterfly picture was taken, my camera fell and now it puts horizontal lines in the background of all our pictures. I was so sad. We did some calling and it won't be too expensive to fix, so our camera is in NY right now (or at least en route) and will be gone for about 2 weeks. Which means for the next 2 weeks, all the pictures I take will be with my phone. They aren't the best quality, but I'm grateful I have something!After the Bean Museum, I decided to take Clara to the dinosaur museum. It's close by the animal museum and Clara was sick the day everyone else went. Most of the pictures I took here had horrible lines. But this one wasn't too terrible.We visited some friends this week and the girls decided to help Clara become a cat. She LOVED the mask.
And I forgot to write down the funny things as Clara said them, so I can't seem to think of a single thing this week. I know that's the highlight for a lot of my readers. Sorry to disappoint.

Very Random Happenings

2011-04-04T17:54:00.003-06:00

The best thing about this week is when I was able to attend a conference lecture with Jeremy. They invited a descendent of Hyrum Smith to come show us some family heirlooms and talk about some family stories. It was amazing. I saw the clothes that Hyrum was martyred in, including the pocket watch he was wearing that was hit by a bullet. Also was the box that the Gold Plates were first hid in. I also saw Hyrum's sunglasses (who knew that sunglasses existed in 1844?), his rifle, his sword, and Lucy's footstool. It was an amazing presentation and I got to hear stories that I had never heard before.

With the weather getting warmer, we've been going outside a lot more. Clara was so excited to see that some flowers had grown in our front yard. She insists on both of us smelling them as soon as we walk outside - EVERY time we go outside!Clara loves to try and ride her bike. Her feet still can't reach the pedals for the entire rotation. Her solution is to have her friends do the work while she goes for a ride!

I was unloading groceries from the car and Clara insisted on carrying the gallon of milk. I let her try, and wasn't too surprised when she quickly put it down and said, "Mom, I'm not strong enough." I then picked it up and let her carry something else. Clara then said, "Mom, you have lots of muscles and are so strong to carry that milk!"

Clara came running inside from playing outside and said, "Mom, there are a lot of birds who are calling for their Mom's. They are lost!" Sure enough, tons of squawking birds were across the street!

Clara and I were having a discussion about wolves. At some point in the conversation, I asked her if she liked wolves. Her response, "No, I don't because they are kinda really scary."

I was getting Clara dressed one morning when she said, "I'm cold AND freezing. Both!"

And lastly, for your viewing pleasure here are more pictures that Clara took all by herself!

Clara - again

2011-03-28T08:42:00.000-06:00

Before I get into another lengthy post about Clara, I did a crafty thing this week. Jeremy's sister asked me to make some I Spy bags for her. I thought they turned out great!Why do most of the pictures I take are of Clara? I really hope my readers don't get too bored with all the Clara stories and pictures. I know I'm one of those annoying moms that tell everyone how cute their child is. But she really is my pride and joy. She can be the biggest challenge and my biggest source of pleasure all at once! She is growing up way too fast and I keep trying to find ways to slow her down. Any suggestions?

Clara sure does love her daddy.Clara will turn ANYTHING into a desk so she can "go to school."Clara being "Super Bunny."To go with that super bunny, Clara LOVES to jump.Getting Clara to bed is always a production. One night she decided to not put her arms in her sleeves and ran around like this for a little bit.

Clara ran and beat me to my chair when a client came over for me to tutor. She then said, "I'm going to help this boy with his math!" She looked at his book and said, "This 1 equals this 3."

Clara usually says the exact same prayer every time she prays. She always says, "Dear Heavenly Father, thank-you that I can go to sleep, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen." So at dinner, when she was asked to say the prayer, I tried to help her say a prayer that had to do with the food. In the middle of the prayer, Clara said, "Hey, it's not your turn to say the prayer, it's my turn!"

I caught Clara jumping on her bed. So I told her that she couldn't jump on the bed because the bed could break. Clara's response: "But Mommy, little girls like to break beds."

Clara had a cup of juice out and I wanted her to put it in the fridge so the juice wouldn't go bad. She was in the middle of doing something and didn't really want to put it away. Clara then said, "I have an idea. I will put the juice right here (in the middle of the floor) and then I can put it in the fridge when I'm done. Is that a good idea?"

Jeremy has a touch screen phone, I do not. Clara loves to play with both of our phones. Clara brought mine to me one day and informed me it was broken. I quickly tried to figure out what she had done to break it. To my surprise, my phone was working just fine. When I told Clara that it was working, she said, "No it's not, see." She then swiped her finger over the screen and said, "See, it's broken. Let's get Daddy's phone, it will work."

Clara and I were hopping around the room pretending to be bunnies when she said, "That's great hopping, Mom. Good job!"

Clara slammed her finger in a door this week. She was crying a lot and I was giving her finger kisses trying to make it feel better. At one point I said, "I'm so sorry that your finger is hurt." Her reply was, "It's not your fault, it's my fault."

I caught Clara picking her nose. I told her to stop and explained she should use a tissue. Her response, "I'm just trying to get the boogers out."

St. Patrick's Day

2011-03-21T15:42:00.003-06:00

I was in charge of teaching Clara's preschool this week. I threw a St. Patrick's Day party and Clara has pretended to be a leprechaun ever since. She is now obsessed with finding pots of gold and rainbows.I showed Clara the program Paint. Clara is now in heaven and spend hours a day "coloring on the computer."This is one of her works that I was very impressed with. She remembered the colors of the rainbow in the right order and was able to color it herself!I often sneak into Clara's room at night just to check on her. I'm not sure why I do it. I don't do it every night, but most. I love to give her forhead kisses as she sleeps. I know, I'm crazy.

Clara ran up to me and said, "Mommy, I want you to see this teddy bear." She then held her teddy bear up high. Not knowing exactly what to say, I responded: "That looks like a very soft teddy bear." Clara: "Thank-you!"

All About Clara

2011-03-14T09:19:00.004-06:00

It's been a week - and this up and coming week is even better. But the great thing about my picture blog is that I take A LOT of pictures, so I still have things to post from this week that didn't make it on my picture blog. It just so happens that they all have Clara in them....

Clara came up to me and insisted that she wear a bib while she paints so that she "doesn't get all messy."I found Clara like this one day after she had been quiet for a little too long.The first thing Clara does every morning is ask me to wrap her up in a blanket. I love how snugly warm she looks.We have a tree out front that Clara always tries to climb. Look at that face of satisfaction and bliss when I finally let her climb it.Clara says the Pledge of Allegiance every Tuesday and Thursday in her preschool class. I love that she can now say it all by herself. (And yes, she can say it all by herself. For some reason she decides to get shy when I pull out the camera.)

Funny stories for this week:

Clara and I love to take walks. One day we walked by a bus stop and Clara really wanted to go sit on the bench. I let her for a little while, but I was afraid of a bus coming and thinking we wanted to get on. So I told her it was time to keep walking so that a bus wouldn't stop for us. That was a huge mistake. Clara LOVES busses and when she found out that a bus would stop for us if she sat there, it was really hard to get her off that bench. I started explaining to her that we needed money to ride the bus and I didn't bring any money with us that day. After pondering all of this she held out an empty hand and said, "I brought pretend money." I then said "Great, we can pretend to ride the bus." "No, I want to ride the real bus." "Sorry honey, the bus driver won't take pretend money." Clara very sadly got off the bench and walked next to me.

On that same walk, Clara was running far ahead of me. I explained to her that since we were walking on a busy road, she needed to stay close by. With all those cars, she could easily get hurt. Clara then said, "But if we get hurt, we can pray and Jesus will help us."

Clara almost always draws a picture during church. She uses it as a "map" as we walk home. She looks at her map, finds where we are at on it, figures out which direction we need to go next and then proudly announces "This way!" I then have to follow her in that direction. It makes me laugh.

p.s. Happy Pi day to all!!!!

Friends!

2011-03-07T09:03:00.006-07:00

My favorite part about this week is having my friend Danielle come visit me. I met this girl my freshman year of college and became fast friends with her. We always lived by each other until she got married. Soon after her wedding, she moved back east (where both her and her husband are from.) I haven't seen her in 7 years, so she's never met Jeremy (or Clara.) She came out to visit her sister who is now attending school in Utah. Danielle and Erin (her sister) came over for dinner last night. They could only stay for 2.5 hours and the time flew by. It was so hard to see Danielle go, knowing it could very well be another 7 years before I see her again. She is one of my most favorite people in the entire world. We chatted and giggled like we were still 18 and in our first year of college. Well, I guess the things we giggled about changed. We giggled over kid stories and husbands rather than crushes and crazy roommates. Oh Danielle, thanks so much for taking the time to see me on your VERY brief stay here. And thanks Erin for being willing to stay as long as you did! It made my entire week!Clara no longer sleeps very well. Once she falls asleep, she sleeps great. But she's been falling asleep around 11:30 or midnight and then waking up at 7:30. I've even tried to not give her a nap during they day in hopes she'll fall asleep sooner at night, but the only thing that has done is create a VERY cranky Clara (not one that will go to sleep.) So I was very grateful yesterday morning when she wanted to "sleep" on the couch at 10 am. She ended up actually falling asleep! She slept for about two hours and was the best she's been for our 1 pm church!

I need to be better about recording Clara's funny moments when she says them. I keep forgetting what she says. So it's just one for this week. (The only one I remembered.) Clara loves to "read" the hymn book during church. Yesterday she was "reading" hymn #276, whose title starts with a C. Clara said in a very low grouchy voice: "Number 6 is a bad guy. Number 7 is a bad guy." She then changed pitches to a sweet high pitch and said, "And number two is a princess. And C is a prince and you will marry the 2." She then carried on an entire conversation with those numbers and letter. Oh what an imagination, I love it.

Bean Museum

2011-02-28T10:36:00.005-07:00

Clara and her friend Taylor were able to go the Bean Museum this week. Taylor's mom had never heard of it before, so it was great to show her a free place to take her kids. Clara was a little nervous at first, but then after I told her that the animals wouldn't move, she was running around all over the place.Jeremy also brought home this 3x5 card of something he designed for work. I know lots of people ask what he exactly does. Mostly he designs a lot of random things that only the people he works for will ever see. So here is an example of that.

Miracles

2011-02-23T22:13:00.003-07:00

A miracle has occurred for me today. Someone I love very much went blind about a month ago. He was able to see an eye specialist today who will be able to restore his sight in one of his eyes. As I've thought about this person living in a world of permanent darkness, I couldn't imagine what he must be thinking and feeling. We have fasted and prayed on his behalf all month. I am so overcome with relief and gratitude that I needed to share it with you. I know this person will receive his sight because of our faith in the Savior who truly can heal the blind. I am so grateful for the power of miracles in our lives. They occur every day and if we will but look more to God, we will be able to see them all around us.

New Dress

2011-02-21T12:46:00.006-07:00

I've been in a funk lately. I'm not really sure what's wrong - other than I have no desire to leave my house. I just want to sit around and do nothing all day long. I haven't even done my tax returns yet and usually I have them done by Feb 1st.

Anyway, to try to help me get out of my funk, I decided to do a project. Hancock Fabrics is having a sale on their special occasion fabrics. So Clara and I walked there and she got to pick out some material for her dress. She wanted it sparkly. I figured she would pick pink, which she says is her favorite color, but she found this purple instead. I decided to get some black velvet for the bodice. Clara got to carry the sparkly purple material around the store as I looked for the velvet, thread, zipper, etc. When we finally got to the counter to get the material cut, Clara happily placed it on the counter, thinking we would pay for it. I told the woman how much fabric I needed and she started to cut the sparkly material first. Clara started crying and said, "You're not supposed to cut it, that's my dress." The woman and I started laughing and after I explained to Clara what was really going on, Clara was instantaneously happy again. Clara has been so excited about this dress. She watched me the entire time I was working on it. It was cute to have such a great little helper. So here is the final project.I think it turned out well. I let Clara try it on to make sure it fit. She was so excited she kept dancing around and around. Just look at that face. I think she likes it!She then insisted that Daddy be a prince and dance with her. I love it when Jeremy indulges Clara and dances with her.Clara loves to have picnics. She spreads out her blanket so carefully and then we all have to eat the food she fixes for us.Clara loves the camera. Anytime she notices me take a picture, she insists on seeing it on the camera. She loves to have me take picture of the two of us. I can't tell you how many of these pictures I have.She also has wanted to take pictures of me by herself. Most of the pictures come out like this:or this:but every once in a while we get a picture like this:

Clara woke up this morning and wanted to wear her new sparkly dress. I told her that it was just for Sundays. She had a funny look on her face and insisted that it was Sunday. I explained to her that today is Monday. Sunday is the day we go to church, and since we just went to church yesterday, it was going to be a long time before it was Sunday. She said, "But the sun is here today so it's Sunday today."

Happy Valentine's Day

2011-02-14T13:35:00.002-07:00

We have been celebrating Valentine's Day a lot here. Clara had a party for pre-school, a party for play-group, and then Jeremy and I had our day to celebrate. Clara has loved every minute of our celebrations. She loves hearts and the color pink, so this is her holiday. The funny thing is that she has yet to eat any of the candy she got. Instead, she digs through her valentines and colors on them. Hey, I'd rather her do that then eat the candy, so no complaints from me. As a side note, Clara loves this spot on our computer desk. It's become her chair and anything we place on it soon gets pushed off to make room for her. I have no idea how being that cramped is comfortable, but whatever makes her happy!

Also this week, we decided to have a family slumber party in our living room. I remember doing this as a kid and loved it. I think Clara is a little too young still since she really did think it was play time not sleep time, but at least she had fun. We watched a movie and ate snacks, and all slept out in the living room together. Tons of fun and I can't wait to do it again.Instead of doing random Clara sayings this week, I figured I would throw in these randoms things. Enjoy?

As I was looking at different news articles on line, I found this article entitled World's most Romantic Hotels. The interesting thing about this article is that the only hotel listed from the US is in Montana. It's even "close" to my hometown. (Close for MT is within 200 miles....) That brings up a random fact about me - I love reading news articles online. I will spend well over an hour each day just reading random articles. Thanks for letting me share!

So I mentioned on my other blog about teefury.com. It's a favorite site of Jeremy's that sells only 1 T-shirt, but changes every 24 hours. He makes it a daily habit to check out the shirt for the day. Usually it's things he loves - Star Wars, Video Games, Comic Book Heroes, etc. But I was shocked when this was the shirt of the day. It was the first one I was excited about! :)

Tea Party

2011-02-09T08:15:00.002-07:00

I just realized that I never posted on Monday. Oops. So here's my post for this week.

I find it's getting harder and harder to post on this blog. With my daily picture blog, I don't have very many pictures left for this blog. I also don't want repeat things because I don't want my readers to get bored. So I find I'm neglecting this blog. I guess I'll just have to make more of an effort because both blogs are very important to me.

So the only thing I have a picture of for this week (that's not already on my picture blog) is a fun little tea party that Clara and I had together. I had to take a picture of the table. Everything you see on it was placed there with a purpose. We had music playing on the CD player. And that boot with Abby Cadabby in it is actually a candle that was lit with a pencil. The tea pot has water in it and the coffee pot has juice. I'm sure Clara is quite confused why it's called a tea party when she's never had one with tea. And to top it all off, we both had to wear bibs - to keep our clothes clean, of course.

Clara's funny moments:

As I was doing dishes, I overheard Clara saying this:

"You have to take turns."
"But I had it first."
"No, I had it first."
"If you can't share then you can't play with it."

Clara and I were driving in the car when I stopped at a stop sign. Clara said, "S T Zero P says 'Stop.'"

"You're right, S T O P does spell stop."
"No, Zero comes next. S T Zero P is how you spell stop."

A very sad Clara came up to me (while Jeremy was working) and said, "My Daddy is lost."

Clara considers herself a big girl, which is great in a lot of ways. But she insists that she is a big girl and doesn't need to sit in a car seat - that's for babies. I explained to her that she's 3 years old and she has to sit in a car seat until she's 8 years old. I then talked about birthdays, getting older, and counting from 3 to 8. I thought that was the end of the conversation until a week later, as we were walking to the car, Clara had a sly smile and said, "I'm 8 years old!"

I've been working with Clara on learning our address. After having her repeat it several times, I told her that was our address. She looked at me and said, "A dress?" I explained to her the difference between the words dress and address, explaining that an address is where someone lived. Clara's response: "We don't live on a dress, we live on earth!"

We had the opportunity to stop by Jeremy's work this week. As we were leaving, Clara was very sad that Daddy couldn't come with us. She was crying as we left the parking lot and she said, "I love my Daddy." I said, "I love Daddy too." Clara's response, "No, I love Daddy." She's done this once before too, apparently we both can't love Daddy, so she does, not me.

Happy 5th Anniversary

2011-01-31T21:44:00.004-07:00

I can't believe Jeremy and I have been married for 5 years now! We celebrated by spending the weekend in Salt Lake City. We dropped Clara off at Jeremy's parent's house Thursday after work. We ate P.F. Chang's that night and then were very happy to just relax in our motel room.

On Friday, our actual anniversary, we decided to just enjoy the little shops that downtown Salt Lake had to offer. We found this great little cafe to eat breakfast. It's the longest running restaurant in Utah. It opened in 1919! They decor hasn't changed very much. They still have coat racks attached to every booth and almost all of their chairs have come from Venice. It was fun to read all about it in their menu.

After breakfast, we headed over to temple square and visited Jeremy's sister who works there. She always acts so excited to see us. She's pretty busy, so we don't get to visit for very long, but I love getting to say hi to Melissa when I'm at Temple Square.

We spent our entire afternoon looking at all the little shops. We found a Scottish shop that Jeremy loved. I'm so glad that he loves his Scottish heritage.

Friday night we had tickets to the Jazz game. Our seats were almost at the very top. I have a HUGE fear of heights, but usually stadiums don't bother me. For some reason, I had a hard time with this one! Even sitting in my chair made me feel unbalanced. When we had to stand for the National Anthem, I started crying. I was so scared. I felt like the biggest idiot, and of course, Jeremy just laughed at me. I seriously wondered how I was ever going to get back down those stairs to go home. Luckily, I slowly acclimated to the height and right around half time I realized I had relaxed enough to just sit and enjoy the game. I'm happy to report that the Jazz won 108 - 100!

The next morning, Jeremy and I headed to the Draper temple and did some sealings. Then it was time to pick Clara up and head home. As much as I enjoyed being child free all weekend, I was sure excited to see her again. Thanks John and Sharon for watching Clara for us!

Zoo

2011-01-31T21:26:00.006-07:00

The last Wednesday of the winter months is free admission day at our local zoo. Some friends of mine and I took our kids to take advantage of this. We had so much fun together.

The first animal we saw was an elephant. Clara kept explaining to me that Elephants have looooong noses called a trunk.The giraffe's were Clara's favorite animals that we saw. For days she kept telling me how giraffes have long necks, long tails that are black and white, and they eat trees. She would laugh when she said that they eat trees and then say, "That is so silly." I'm not sure if you can see it or not, but in the picture is an upside down pine tree. Those giraffes kept eating all the needles.Clara got to ride on a carousel. She and her friend were very excited to ride it, until it started moving. Then they were both pretty freaked out. At one point both were crying, but as you can tell, they eventually just sat and stared. The funny thing is that when the ride was over, Clara cried and cried because she didn't want to get off.One of the friends who came with us has a name that starts with J and he stood in front of the juvenile gorilla. Clara then wanted to stand next to one. But when she got up there, she was very disappointed that there wasn't a gorilla with a C for Clara. So she picked to stand next to the baby one.We ended our trip to the zoo by playing by this big elephant. Clara was so thrilled to play with a "toy elephant." Sure glad I didn't have to bring that toy home!Funny Clara moments:

Clara and I were riding in a car with her friend Taylor and his mom. Taylor roared like a lion and Clara responded by saying: "Taylor's crazy just like my Daddy."
Clara was helping me clean the bathtub. I keep sponges on a high shelf above our toilet. I needed to grab one and couldn't quite reach, so I stood on the toilet and got it. Clara then said, "That's a good idea to use the toilet as a stool." Thanks for your approval kid!

ummmmm

2011-01-24T14:45:00.003-07:00

I have a goal to post every week, but nothing too significant happened this week.

My brother-in-law is trying to become a Utah certified paramedic. He brought my sister to Salt Lake today to start applying for things. So I met up with them in Salt Lake for lunch. Jeremy even got to come! I even brought our camera so that I could take a picture and not have a pictureless post, but I forgot to actually take a picture..... Oh well.

Clara was sick on Saturday, so Jeremy and I didn't even gate a date night this week to post about.

So here is a post to let you know that we are alive and well and had a completely normal week.

The Hunger Games

2011-01-17T09:27:00.005-07:00

I've been engrossed in reading The Hunger Games series. I started it last Monday and had all 3 books finished by Friday morning. I neglected way too much this week, but I'm grateful I started reading them when all 3 books were done so I didn't have to wait to see how it ended. I have to admit that I don't do well with violence. I heard these books were a little violent, but after reading the first one, I thought: "That wasn't so bad." The violence got worse with each book, but by then I was hooked. I'm grateful that I have a husband who is willing to let me cuddle up to him in the middle of the night when I would wake up from my nightmares. :) But over all, the series was good enough for me to be engrossed in every page of all 3 books!

Clara gave her first talk in Primary yesterday. She did such a good job and I was so proud of her for not being scared at all. Clara was so excited to get to talk into the microphone in primary that at 10 am, she wanted to go to church right then. We don't have church until 1, so it was a very long morning trying to keep her patient while we waited for church to start. I put more information on my picture blog, so click here for her talk and a picture.

More funny sayings. (I might make this a weekly thing because Clara is constantly making us laugh.)

Clara loves to "read" things. A few days ago, the shampoo bottle fell off the side of our tub as she was running to wash her hands after she went to the bathroom. After it fell, she said, "Oh no. I'm sorry." I told her that it was ok, just pick it up and put it away. As she picked it up, she said, "This says, 'This makes your hair smell good, with liberty and justice, amen.'"
I was wearing a shirt that just has words on it. She came up and read: "This shirt needs to go to Chuck E Cheese." She then instructed me that I needed to either take the shirt off or go to Chuck E Cheese.
Clara saw me curling my hair for church yesterday and wanted me to curl her hair. After her hair was done, she proudly announced that she was curly Shirley. (I have no idea where she has heard that - definitely not from me.) The entire rest of the day, anything she played with was curly Shirley just like her - including a belt!

Potty Training Reward

2011-01-10T11:37:00.005-07:00

We were finally able to take Clara to Chuck E Cheese this week as a potty training reward. We tried to take her last week, but our car was iced in. There was seriously no moving it. I felt so bad for Clara. She was so excited to go and was even buckled in her car seat waiting patiently for Jeremy and I to get the car unstuck. When all our efforts failed, we had to have her go back inside. Luckily, she was understanding.

So we finally went last Monday. Jeremy had that day off for New Years. Most everyone else was back to work and school that day, so we had the entire place to ourselves until the end. It was great!Here are some funny things that Clara has said this week too:

I walked out of the bathroom to find Clara eating her new Book of Mormon that I bought that day! When asked what she was doing, she said, "Eating my scriptures."
"Why are you eating your new scriptures?"
"Because I'm hungry."
(trying so hard not to laugh) "Are you supposed to eat books when you are hungry?"
"No."
"So why are you eating it?"
(said as Clara rubs her tummy) "Because it feels good."
One night at dinner, Clara announced (out of the blue) that she had a family. I asked her who was in her family. She replied that she didn't know. I then told her that Mommy and Daddy are in her family. I asked if she had any brothers and sisters. She said yes and I corrected her by saying something about how brothers and sisters were kids like Clara, and Clara was the only kid in our family. She then said, "I have brothers and sisters in my heart.
Just before I put Clara down for her nap yesterday, I read her Polar Express (she chose that book.) After about 1/2 an hour, Clara was still not asleep and I heard suspicious noises. When I went in to check on her, I found her like this. When asked what she was doing she said, "I heard Santa's bells and wanted to see them."
Clara announced, "My teddy bear is sick. He needs to take a nap in the living room.""I need to make my teddy feel better. He needs to eat something." So what does she feed him? A pencil! (I also love that this bear is as pink as it gets and Clara insists it's a boy.)

Happy New Year!

2011-01-03T19:43:00.007-07:00

Jeremy and I brought in the new year by attending Provo City's New Years Eve Celebration. Jeremy designed all the signs and banners that were used, so it was fun to look around at all his hard work. (We also got to get in free!) Here are some of the signs he designed:There were lots of things for little kids to do, but there were also long lines to be able to do them. Clara loved dancing to the live bands while we waited in all the lines. She also got all the kids around her to join in.I loved how everything was free once you got inside. Clara got a flower balloon.She got to ride a train twice (and would have gone again and again if we had let her.)They had a photo booth there with things you could use to dress up for your pictures. Clara loved the crown! Jeremy loved that the pictures had his design at the bottom of each set.Since we were in the mall, Clara went and sat on all the kiddie rides that are normally there. She refused to leave those. But at least there were always benches nearby so Jeremy and I could sit down!We ended our time at the mall by watching fireworks. This was the first time Clara hasn't been scared to death of fireworks. It was so fun watching her clap and cheer for each one.The new year has brought on a new class for Clara in our church. We explained to Clara that she would no longer be in nursery at church. We explained that because she was a big girl, she got to be in Primary. She was so excited to go. She kept asking me all morning when she got to go to Primary. Our ward meets at 1, so it was a very long wait for her. She was so excited when she came home with her crown.Also with the new year, I've decided to try something new. A friend of mine encouraged her blog readers to do something called project 365. It's where you take a picture every day and do a journal of pictures for each day of the year. It seems like a daunting task to me, so I'm not sure how well I'll do. But I also think it would be so much fun to do and be a great journal (as long as I can keep up on it.) For those who are interested in looking at that blog, the web-address is: http://sarahspictureblog2011.blogspot.com/ Wish me luck!

Christmas

2010-12-28T10:03:00.004-07:00

Sorry that I'm posting on Tuesday this week, but we were traveling home from Christmas yesterday.....

First of all, we have been doing a lot of this lately:The first day brought lots of accidents, but unlike the other times I've tried to potty train her, she was so excited to wear underwear and had a great attitude. So I kept at it. There are still lots of accidents, but we have made vast improvements this week. So hopefully in a few more weeks we'll be diaper free!

As we were packing for our trip, I packed all our gifts up that had been placed under our Christmas tree. Clara was so sad. Even after explaining to her that we were taking them with us and would open them at Grandma's house, she insisted they stayed under our tree. She finally gave the OK on packing up the gifts when I told her we would put them under Grandma's tree when we got there!

Thursday morning, we left to Idaho to have Christmas with my Mom, littlest sister, another sister, her husband, and her 5 kids. Clara LOVED baby Kaycee. Every time Clara saw Kaycee, she would ask to hold her. Clara always said, "Baby Kaycee likes me," whenever Kaycee smiled. It was pretty cute.Christmas was so exciting for me this year. Clara is at an age where Christmas is so magical to her. She loves everything about the Christmas season - lights, presents, Santa, stockings, the whole bit. So I couldn't wait for Christmas morning this year. I was not disappointed. Clara loved all her gifts and wanted each one opened immediately. She would play with her latest gift until the next one came along. But her favorite gift was a backpack that we got her. As soon as she saw it she started screaming, "A backpack, a backpack." She kept jumping up and down so much that we couldn't get a decent picture of that excitement. If you look closely, she has the biggest smile behind that new backpack.As much fun as Christmas is, it's great to be back home too. Hopefully everyone had a great Holiday!

First Haircut

2010-12-20T08:55:00.006-07:00

I decided to give Clara her first haircut this week. It's been a struggle to comb through it in the mornings due to lots of knots. I've been trying to cut Clara's hair for weeks, but she just cries and says, "Don't cut my hair!" So I got her excited by telling her she got to wear a "Batman" cape. She hopped right up into the chair then. I also put on a movie in our portable DVD player to distract her and help keep her still.

Half way through the hair cut, Clara realized what I was doing. She started crying and said, "Don't cut my hair Mommy." After explaining that since I've already started I would now have to finish, she said, "You are not supposed to cut hair, just paper!" I then had to explain that it was OK for Mommies to cut hair, but not little girls.

When the hair cut was over, I let her run around in her "Batman" cape.Here are the before and after pictures as well. I ended up cutting off about 6 inches.I teach 3-4 year olds at church on Sundays. They always say the funniest things. But last Sunday was one of the funniest things I've ever heard from them. I had one of them start pulling at his underwear as if he had a wedgie. He then kept saying (over and over again,) "I have a candy cane in my bottom." My teaching partner finally took him out of the room to find his mom. Whether or not he actually had one, I'm not sure, but his mom did mention that he likes to sneak candy canes. Thus he must have thought his underwear would be a great hiding place - until it wiggled into a wrong spot.

Lights at Temple Square

2010-12-13T10:26:00.004-07:00

Jeremy and I decided to take Clara to see the lights at Temple Square this week. Clara's favorite thing to do this time of year is look at Christmas lights, so we wanted her to see so many all at once. She was in heaven. We didn't get very many pictures of her because she kept running from one thing to the next. That turned out to be quite scary since there were a ton of people at Temple Square doing the same thing we were. But here are our favorites:Some cute sayings of Clara:
1) Yesterday, we walked out side and Clara saw dark clouds. She said, "Where's the rain?" After explaining that it had already rained, she said, "Rain needs to come out of those clouds right now!"
2) While visiting Temple Square, Clara saw some lighted Christmas Trees inside a building that wasn't open. She said, "Let's go in that building." I told her we couldn't because it was locked. "Should we find the key?"
3) We drove past Chuck E. Cheeses on our way home from something else. When Clara saw it she said, "Let's go to Chuck E. Cheeses." I told her that we couldn't do it that day because we needed to get home. "Should we go to Chuck E. Cheeses first and then go home?"
4) One of the things Clara said in her prayer last night: "Thank-you that Daddy can be so silly."
5) Clara came up to me and said, "I want to go to the math store."

Ward Christmas Party

2010-12-06T12:59:00.002-07:00

This last Saturday was our ward Christmas party. My expectations of Clara being excited to sit on Santa's lap were not accurate. She's been talking about Santa and gets so excited to see one that I thought for sure she'd be more than happy to sit on his lap. However, she didn't want to do it. There was so much wiggling that the pictures are blurry, but oh well.Clara does love the candy cane she got from Santa though. She doesn't want to eat it, but holds it everywhere she goes. When we ask her where she got it, she tell us the name of the person who last handed it to her. When we remind her that Santa gave it to her she says, "No he didn't!" It makes us laugh. Why do I get such pleasure out of torturing my child this way?

Random Thoughts Thursday

2010-12-02T14:33:00.002-07:00

I figured this was pretty random, but funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80entLldZOg

Thanksgiving (finally)

2010-11-29T14:19:00.003-07:00

Even though I brought our camera, I failed to get it out and actually take pictures on Thanksgiving. We has such a fun time that I didn't want to interrupt to take a bunch of pictures. We spent Thanksgiving weekend with Jeremy's family. It was great to see Mike and Genevieve from out of town. We spent every day of Thanksgiving break with the Becks. We played several games, saw the movie Tangled (I highly recommend it,) and of course, we ate and ate.

A couple of days before Black Friday, Jeremy and I decided to use some money he got as a bonus on Wii Fit Plus. As we were looking through Black Friday Ads (another Beck Thanksgiving tradition,) we found Wii Fit Plus for a great deal at Target. So I had my first Black Friday experience this weekend. I hate shopping and crowds, so the thought of both at once has me in a panic. But I put my fears aside for saving a few bucks and woke up at 2:45 am to be at Target by 3:05 am to wait in line until 4 am (which is when the store opened.) It was 10 degree weather and I thought my toes would freeze before the store finally opened. I was shocked to see a man try and rip a big screen TV out of a woman's hands. I was even more shocked to see the woman able to defend herself. It was crazy enough that store security had to come break up the fight. Crazy! But I did get our Wii Fit. I came home and went straight to bed. The first thing Jeremy did that morning was get it set up. He LOVES it. Clara loves to "play exercise" with us too. She'll march and run with us. Jeremy loves it so much that we took it everywhere with us this weekend. All his family got a chance to play it. I do have pictures of it being played, but I have a feeling that no one would be happy if I posted those pictures. :)

Another thing I did this week was finish all my Christmas shopping! Everything is wrapped (except for one last gift I'm waiting to come in the mail) and under the tree. I love having Christmas shopping out of the way!

Clara has discovered how much fun playing in the snow can be. She wore her snow pants for the first time today and LOVED not getting as cold. This girl will just walk around in snow. She tried so hard to make snowmen, but so far our snow is powder and I can't get a ball of snow to save my life. She gets disappointed, but quickly moves on to something else. I think Clara would spend the entire winter outside if I let her!

Thanksgiving?

2010-11-22T14:22:00.005-07:00

When I picked Clara up from preschool this week, she looked like this:I wished I had brought my camera so that I could have gotten pictures of both the boys and the girls. They were all adorable in their construction paper costumes.

That's about all we've done so far to celebrate Thanksgiving. Christmas time comes so fast. We've already started the Christmas season in our house. On Saturday, we went to a Christmas Expo with some friends. Clara had so much fun looking at the Christmas trees. She truly loves Christmas and I have very high hopes for her actually wanting to sit on Santa's lap this year.

At the Christmas Expo, Clara got to meet Cinderella. This booth was advertising a company that sells princess dresses. This company also puts on birthday parties. Clara had so much fun looking at all the pretty dresses, shoes, and other princess accessories.

Clara also got to go fishing at the Christmas Expo. She was disappointed in the candy she got both the times she fished, but at least she loved getting to hold her little stick.

We ended our Christmas Expo experience by letting the kids play in this play house. The adults would take turns watching the kids while the other adults wandered about the shops. It was perfect. Clara had a very hard time saying good-bye to that play house.

I had such a fun time at the Expo, that I couldn't stop thinking about Christmas. I decided early Sunday morning (I had woken up at 5 am and couldn't fall back to sleep because I couldn't stop thinking about Christmas,) that I would put up our Christmas tree a little early this year. Clara got to help, so most of our ornaments are at the bottom of our tree, but she had a blast. She would open box after box trying to find everything there was to find to decorate our house for Christmas.

Here's a picture of our finished product. Clara played with that Nativity the whole rest of the day. I would also find Clara just staring at our Christmas tree. I love seeing Clara's eyes sparkle as she talks about Christmas.

I have a Christmas bell that I put out every year as part of our Christmas decorations. Clara found it and hasn't stopped ringing that bell. Every time she rings it, she shouts (as loud as she can) "It's Christmas time, it's Christmas time!" I love it! (Luckily I haven't gotten sick of it yet, but I'm sure that will come.)

Fire Safety and a New Job

2010-11-15T08:44:00.006-07:00

Jeremy started a new job today. He was offered a position working for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints. He interviewed for a different position with the church about 6 or 7 months ago, but didn't get that job. However, they kept his resume on file and when this job opening came up, they offered the job without him ever having to go in for an interview. We are very excited about this opportunity. It's a full time position, but it will only last for 6 months. So we'll probably be looking for a job again in 6 months, but we think these next 6 months will be great for our little family. This is a graphic design job, so any connections we can make will help us for when we need to job search again. This position will also look great on a resume, which is a great bonus as well. So wish Jeremy luck!

Clara's preschool class visited a fire station this week. (Sorry that most of the pictures are blurry - it's hard to take pictures of constantly moving kids.) The kids started their tour by watching a fire safety video. Clara thought that was so cool - getting to watch TV on a wall (the video was projected onto a wall from a computer.) They then got to go look at all the different kinds of vehicles at the fire station. They talked about the ambulance, red fire truck, and yellow fire truck and what each is used for. Clara kept running from one thing to the next. I was also very impressed with our "tour guide." This fireman was so great at talking on both the kids' level to keep their attention and to all the adults. It was a great little field trip. After seeing all the trucks, they all got to practice their fire safety. The fireman had all the kids doing stop, drop, and roll with him as well as crawling beneath the smoke to the door, and all the other fire safety things little kids should know. At the end, all the kids got their own fireman's hats. Clara thinks hers is too big and tries to get Mom and Dad to wear it all the time, but refuses to wear it herself. Clara LOVES puzzles. She always has. I think it's because she sees Grandma and Mom doing puzzles together quite a bit. That is also what they do as a gathering activity in her class at church. So when Clara got some birthday money in the mail a few weeks ago, we took her to the dollar store to spend it. We weren't too surprised when she picked out a puzzle. At first she tried to get a 100 piece puzzle, but I was able to talk her into a 24 piece one instead. It only took her a few times and she can now put that puzzle together all by herself. I was shocked. I really thought it would take her longer. But when I was helping her the first few times, I would talk about matching colors and things. She now even teases me by showing me two non matching pieces and asking, "Do these pieces match?" Clara asked me if she could wear my pink coat. Her pink coat is now too small for her, and she has been sad about that since the weather began to turn cold. So when she really wants to wear a pink coat, she'll ask for mine. I love how silly she gets when she wears Mommy's really big coat.One day, I was doing some cleaning while Clara was happily entertaining herself. I overheard her say, "Oh, I don't fit," in a very disappointed voice. So I decided to try and help her. When I walked into the room, this is how I found her:How did she ever think (or even want to) try to fit under the couch?

Trials - literally

2010-11-08T13:23:00.005-07:00

I just got back from a trial where one of my former students was a defendant. A few months ago, I was watching the news and was surprised to see a former student's mugshot. Especially when this student came in to my classroom to visit me almost every day. High School was really hard for her, and apparently so was the rest of her life. I couldn't stop thinking about her and the situation she is currently in. I know she doesn't have a lot of support, so I started doing some research. I was looking for where she was exactly and how to send her a letter. I finally found all the information I needed and wrote her a letter. I wasn't sure what would happen from there. Since I wasn't married at the time she knew me, I wasn't even sure she would open a letter from some one whose name she didn't recognize. But she did. She also wrote me back. We have exchanged a few letters and I decided to attend a hearing of hers. It was quite the experience. But I am so glad that I went. I know that my role of a teacher will never be over. Even though I only taught for 7 years (and it's been almost 4 years since I quit,) I know that my role as a high school math teacher will never really be over. For those curious about the case, click here. (Ashley is my former student.)

A humbling thing happened this week: Jeremy has been called to serve on our Stake's High Council. With that call came Jeremy's ordination as a High Priest. Those events have consumed most of our waking thoughts this week. We are very excited that Jeremy will be released from his current calling (Elders Quorum President,) but are feeling some sense of inadequacy and a little fear of the unknown. For those who are not of our faith, this means that Jeremy has been given some extra responsibility that usually doesn't happen to someone his age. However, we see our lives being blessed by our willingness to serve the Lord and we feel a strong sense to not disappoint Him.With Jeremy's new calling, we decided that we needed to get him a new suit. He hasn't had a suit for over a year. So we headed to Burlington Coat factory to hopefully find a suit in our price range. We were successful! We were also able to find Clara a coat for the winter for a great price. Clara loves her new coat. I had her try it on in the store to make sure it fit. She wouldn't take it off. She wore it all the way home (in near 70 degree weather.) She also wouldn't let me take it off for her nap. So when she woke up from her nap, she was pretty sweaty. But at least she likes it right? The coat came with matching snow pants, so we're almost all ready for winter. We just have to find her some boots. We looked at some boots while we were at Burlington, but didn't find any at the right price for us. Clara was so sad that she cried as we left the store. Several hours later she came up to be complaining that her feet were cold. I went to put socks on her, but she said, "No socks, how about boots?" She cried again when I told her we didn't have any boots for her to wear.

Halloween

2010-11-01T09:37:00.008-06:00

Halloween lasted all week in this house. The only day we didn't celebrate Halloween was on the actual holiday! In our family, dressing up as ghosts and goblins doesn't fit into our appropriate Sabbath day activities. :)

On Monday, we decided to color our pumpkin. Maybe I'll be adventurous next year and have Clara carve a pumpkin, but I think she's still a little young for that big of a mess. Daddy drew in the eyes, nose, and mouth and Clara got to color them. When she was done, she said, "Let's put it outside because everyone wants to see my pumpkin. I decorate it so pretty!" So outside the pumpkin went.On Tuesday, we celebrated a friend's birthday. On the way home, which was way past Clara's bed time, we stopped by the grocery store to pick up a few needed items. While we were there, it started snowing. It wasn't very much, but it was snowing. Since Clara was not in the best of moods, the store clerk tried to help by asking Clara if she liked the snow. Clara responded with a forceful, "No!" The clerk then started to talk about why she liked the snow and mentioned getting to build a snowman in her list of reasons. When Clara heard that, she immediately got a smile on her face and said, "I want to build a snowman!" The whole way home I kept trying to explain to her how there needs to be a lot of snow to build a snowman. I told her the grass needed to be completely covered, etc. However, she would not let up. So when we got home, we built a mini snowman with the snow we did have and she couldn't have been more proud.After Halloween was over last year, I bought Clara's Halloween costume for this year on clearance. She was obsessed with witches, so I figured I was safe in purchasing a witch costume. About a month ago, I started talking up witches so that she would want to wear her costume. However, the more I talked about it, the more she wanted nothing to do with witches. So one morning, I decided to get out the witch costume and let her try it on. It worked. Clara fell in love with the costume. She then wanted to wear it every day. It was then difficult trying to explain to her we had to save it special for Halloween. So here is Clara as happy as can be after she tried her witch costume on for the first time.On Thursday, Clara celebrated Halloween at preschool. She was taught how to knock on a door rather than just open doors. She was taught to say trick or treat, and then say thank-you. That is when Clara really got into the spirit of Halloween. She loved getting candy. (She doesn't like eating the candy, but she loves getting it.) She also got to decorate a mini pumpkin. She has carried that pumpkin around everywhere. It has gone to to the bank. It's gone outside to play. It's even been the recipient of many hugs and kisses. It makes me laugh how much Clara adores that pumpkin she got at preschool. Here is a picture of Clara with her preschool class.On Friday, we went to Central Utah Gardens to look at the entries of a pumpkin carving contest. We went with our friends Taylor and Jared and their families. I loved getting to visit with the moms and Clara loved getting to run around with her friends. They have speakers throughout the garden that were dressed up as ghosts for Halloween. Clara loved getting to see all the little ghosts as much as she loved looking at all the "happy" pumpkins. For some reason, Clara calls jack-o-lanterns happy pumpkins. It makes me laugh. Clara is obsessed with happy pumpkins and loved getting to look at all of them. Here are the pictures of the winning pumpkins. The pictures below the pumpkins shows what it looks like lit up. The pumpkin on the right is Jack Sparrow, if you zoom in on the night picture, you can really see it better. I was very impressed.Saturday brought lots more trick or treating for Clara. We started the morning with trick or treating at a local grocery store. Clara was so excited that she gave me a great pose before we left. I LOVE the foot!In the afternoon, we headed to our ward trunk or treat. Since it was pouring rain, it was no longer a trunk or treat, but became an inside table or treat. Clara still had a blast and loved looking at all the other costumes. I think she ended up enjoying that more than getting candy!We finished the night by trick or treating at Grandma and Grandpa Beck's. Aunt Melissa and Uncle Eric were there as well. They couldn't get enough of their little witch. Clara even demonstrated how to fly on her broom, which I finally got a picture of! I love how she flies with her broom backwards!

Long Week

2010-10-25T09:27:00.008-06:00

It was a very long week without Clara. I was able to get some major cleaning done though, which makes me feel so happy. I LOVE a super clean house.

On my way to work one morning, I missed a turn. So I pulled into a parking lot to turn around. Just as I pulled into the parking lot, I heard some very strange noises coming from the car. So I pulled into a parking space and left the car there for the day. I was able to get a ride to work with someone who drives the same way I do. Jeremy used his lunch break to pick me up from work and drop me off at the car. I waited for a tow truck, and got a lift to our mechanic. Turns out we just needed a few belts and a new battery. Our mechanic also lent us a car for the 2 days we had to leave our car in the shop! I was so grateful that our car died in a parking lot so it wouldn't be on the side of a road, or that I would have to push it anywhere. I was also very grateful that it broke down on the way to work so that I would have the necessary rides and not be stranded with a car. I was also extremely blessed that our mechanic lent us a car for free so that I wouldn't have to figure out rides and things for the next couple of days either.

We bought the new Beauty and the Beast DVD a couple of weeks ago. Clara had been watching it non stop, but she didn't watch it for the whole week she was at my Mom's. So on Saturday (just after she got home) I was a little puzzled when she crunched her cheeks up, smiled and said, "I'm speechless." It took me quite a while to figure out what she actually said. When I did figure it out, Clara said, "Just like Belle." I then understood the strange facial expression. I couldn't stop laughing. I wanted to share that cute moment with all of you. So here is the quote from the movie:

And here is Clara's interpretation:

So just like everyone, I had to take quite a few videos before I got a decent one. So this next video is my favorite, but it's sideways! I was disappointed when I realized that you can't turn videos like you can photos. However, it's so cute that I couldn't pass up posting it.

Sunday was our ward Primary Program. For those not of our faith, it's where all the kids in the ward do the "sermon" for our church. In our ward, they have the oldest nursery kids be a part of our program since we have TONS of toddlers, but not very many older kids. So the littlest kids are asked to memorize one word. This year, the kids in Clara's class were asked to memorize a word to complete the sentence: "I can be like Jesus by being......." Clara's word was thoughtful. Well, she can't make a "th" sound yet, so she got up and said, "oughtful." That would have been fine if it didn't sound so much like "awful." So our whole congregation thinks Clara can be like Jesus by being awful. But at least she said her part and wasn't scared at all! Here is what she looked like, all excited to go say her word into the microphone at church.Later that night, Clara wanted to get a picture of her. She asks for this quite a bit. So Jeremy got out the camera and took her picture. When Jeremy showed her the picture on our camera after he took it, she noticed that I was in the picture with her. She then wanted a picture of Mommy, Daddy, and Clara. I personally think it turned out great.I finished substitute teaching on Friday! The teacher I've been going in for was cleared to go back to work today. I'm so excited to get to be a stay at home mom again. The extra money was nice, but it's even nicer to stay home. I did some figuring. School has been in session for 40 days now. The real teacher has been there for 16 of those days, I've been there for 20, and other random subs have been there for the other 4. I think it's crazy that her students know me far better than they know her. But it was nice to be able to do so much math! :)

Those of you still reading this post are the ones who really care how our family is doing. This is a very long story, but here's a short version. Jeremy was talked to by his bosses last week. They feel like Jeremy isn't as creative as what his portfolio lead them to believe. They gave him a week to improve. Jeremy has been frustrated with this company since day one. So when Jeremy went in to work today and was told that he wouldn't get paid for the entire day's work, Jeremy talked to his bosses and told them he was done. His bosses were surprised and said that he had improved a lot and would like him to stay. But Jeremy mentioned that he still wanted to go. So keep us in your prayers that it won't take us 7 months to find another job. Jeremy did keep his part time job and will be able to continue working at that. So with him working 20 hours a week, my tutoring and the small amount of money we were able to save this last month, we should be OK for a little while.

Living Planet Aquarium

2010-10-18T15:14:00.005-06:00

On Saturday, we decided to use some free passes to our local aquarium. It's not a very big aquarium, but Clara loved it and isn't that what is most important?

Clara's favorite thing there was a boat. They have it set up in the Utah area and it's used to tell about Utah's marshlands. I know, Utah's a desert, but apparently some marshlands exist here too. It took us a lot of coaxing to get Clara on this frog. When she first saw it, she was scared to death of it, even though there were lots of kids climbing all over it. It was right by the boat, and since we spent A LOT of time on the boat, by the time we were ready to leave the area, Clara had warmed up to it. I also think it helped that she saw every little kid walking by stop to sit on the frog to get a picture. She would still only get on it if Dad was there too.Some of the coolest things there were penguins, a big sea turtle, and the petable (is that even a word?) sting rays. Unfortunately, the penguins and sea turtle moved too much to get a non blurry picture. So if you want to see those, you'll just have to go to the aquarium yourself. Jeremy was the only one brave enough to pet the sting rays. Clara loved watching them, but would not put her hand in that water. I blamed my fears on gross slimy water.Jeremy was in charge of the camera, and whenever he is, we get LOTS of pictures. So 80 plus pictures later, I've narrowed it down to 6 for the blog. I think these ended up being the neatest things with the best pictures. I've never seen a red and white star fish before. I thought it was beautiful.As far as the rest of the week goes, I'm still subbing. A week ago today was supposed to be my last day, but the teacher I'm subbing for had surgery. Her Dr told her that her knees weren't healing like they were supposed to, so it could be Nov 1 before I get to stay home again. I cried a lot this week because of that. I hate leaving Clara at a babysitter. We have to wake her up 1 - 2 hours earlier than what she's used to. She would cry every morning we would drop her off. It made me so sad. I thought I was all done having to do that, but I'm not. Best case scenario now is I just have to teach every day this week, and then I'll be done. Worst case is me having to work this week and next.

When I called my mom in tears, she offered to help out. So last night, Jeremy and I drove as far as Tremonton, UT and put Clara into my mom's care for a week. Clara was so excited to go to grandma's house all by herself. I've talked to my mom a few times today already and Clara really is having the time of her life. I miss her terribly though. I guess I'll just have to use this week to get caught up on house cleaning and things since I don't have a 3 year old to take care of when I get home.

Random Thoughts Thursday

2010-10-14T16:52:00.003-06:00

I have never done a Random Thoughts Thursday before, but I have a few things I want to share that just don't fit anywhere but a random post.

Why is it so hard to make dinner every night? (Even when you have a planned out weekly menu?)

Why does Clara insist on having every door in the house shut. And if she wants it shut so badly, why doesn't she just close it herself?

How is it that I can be so grateful that Jeremy has a job - two jobs in fact - and still feel so frustrated that we don't have any benefits?

Why does typing, "Health Insurance in Utah" into a search engine allow several agents to get my information and then contact me about selling me health insurance?

Why do no individual health insurance plans offer affordable maternity? The ones that do offer it have a separate $7500 deductible. Who can afford that?

Why do finances make me want to never have another child?

Football Games and a hurt foot

2010-10-11T17:20:00.004-06:00

This week, I'm teaching the joy school that Clara attends. Clara is the only girl with 5 other rambunctious boys. It's been quite the experience for me. One day we were "dancing" and since boys do not dance like Clara does, her foot got stepped on at some point. After everyone left, she told me that her foot needed a sock to be better. I promptly got her a pair of socks, and she informed me that she just needed one. So I put her foot in the one sock, and she happily played for the rest of the day without complaint. I thought it was funny to have her wearing just one sock.This week has been so much fun. Jeremy got his first real paycheck at the end of last week, and so this week we got to sit down and talk about finances. After doing that, we found out that we have enough money to start buying some things that we've been needing for a long time. So on Saturday, Jeremy got to pick out several new shirts, pants, and socks so he has more of a selection for work. Also on Saturday, Jeremy and I got to order new glasses! We have both been needing new glasses for years, and I can't wait to be able to see again!

Also on Saturday, as Jeremy was leaving Graywhale (his favorite store,) the clerk offered him 2 tickets to that day's BYU football game. We got the tickets 1/2 hour before the game started, so we missed the 1st quarter by the time we got there. But we had a blast. I LOVE BYU football. Doesn't this picture just make you want to stand up and cheer? When we got to the stadium, Clara saw the cougar statue and asked what it was. We told her and then asked if she wanted to take a picture by it. She excitedly ran up to it to get her picture taken. However, once she was by the face, she was very leery. She still let us get a picture of her, but you can tell she wasn't too happy about standing next to that claw and mouth!Clara was very scared of all the noise, but also very interested in the game. Here's a picture of her sitting on Dad's lap, scared, but having to see what was going on.In the end, BYU beat out San Diego State 24 - 21. Since it was such a close game, there was LOTS of noise. Even though Clara didn't get a nap that day, I was still shocked that she fell asleep the last 30 minutes of the game - which had the most noise. She didn't wake up until I stood up to leave.

Happy Birthday Clara!

2010-10-04T21:46:00.005-06:00

Today my little girl turned 3. I remember when I could hardly wait until she turned 3. It seemed like 3 year olds had the best personalities - they could do lots for them selves, but still did lots of very cute things. Now my little girl is there. I hope she stays this age forever. (She'd have to out grow her tantrums though....)Clara was so excited to see all her "surprises." (That's what she called her presents.) The first gift she opened was a Barbie, so for the next few days she kept hoping she would find a prince for her Barbie Princess. It was pretty cute. She'd look at me and say, "Should we go find the Prince now?" It made me laugh.

We had an extended family birthday party for her yesterday. She oohed and ahhed over all her gifts. Even the clothes she got brought on gasps of excitement. I was so pleased to hear her thank every one and be genuinely happy for each of her gifts.

We then had her open her gifts from my side of the family and from Jeremy and I on her actual birthday. She loved all her gifts so much that she wanted to show the camera all her loot.I can't believe how much Clara has changed in a year. Here's a picture of her from her 2nd birthday. She not only has so much more hair but so much more vocabulary, imagination, and personality. As I type this, she is happily playing with all her new toys. I'm getting to listen to her talk as she plays. That is my favorite past time these days - listening to Clara play by herself when she doesn't know I'm listening.

Happy Birthday sweet Clara, may you have many more birthdays to come!