Kristy & Ryan

36 Week Ultrasound

2012-01-13T15:47:00.000-08:00

Here is our little guy at 36 weeks.

At the last few doc appt's that I have had, he has consistently been measuring 'big'. So after my last appt, she scheduled an ultrasound to just see if she could get a better idea of size. She said the due date was probably right, but that he just might be a big baby. I didn't think we would be having another ultrasound so I was pretty excited that we got to go see him again. Unfortunately, at this point, we couldn't really see very much. The poor little thing is just smooshed in there, all rolled up in a little ball. It looked like a very tight squeeze. This was the best photo that we got. It is a profile shot of the left size of his face, with his nose pointing up. He has his hand in a fist resting on his forehead. All of the other photos just look like black and white blurs so I'm not even going to post them.

After doing her measurements she told us that he looks the size that he is supposed to be right now. It is hard to estimate weight from an ultrasound but she said she thinks he is about 6 lbs 3 oz right now, and I shouldn't have anything to worry about. I guess we'll see in a few weeks. :)

We can't believe he will be here in just a few weeks. The time has flown by. My whole pregnancy has been great. I really don't have anything to complain about. In the last couple weeks, I have definitely been feeling more uncomfortable, but nothing compared to some horror stories I have been hearing lately. For some reason, women have just been feeling the need to tell me about all the things that went horribly wrong at the end of their pregnancy. Like one girl that got some head to toe itchy rash and had to be induced early. And one girl that broke her tail bone during labor. My friend go ring worm from the hospital. Several epidurals didn't work. Holy moly, don't tell me these things when I only have a few weeks left.

I feel pretty good during the day when I am up and moving around. It's at night that everything starts getting uncomfortable. My back has hurt pretty bad a few nights and my side muscles feel like they are getting ripped off by my belly when I lay on my side. Good thing Ryan has been a good sport about having 10 pillows on our bed. I've also been getting more heartburn at night when I lay down. Not too bad but just enough that its annoying. I haven't swollen up too much from water retention. Its mostly just on days when I am on my feet all day that they get pretty sore and swell up some. Nothing like I have seen on some women though. The other day, I got home from a long day, took off my shoes and said to Ryan "woah, Ryan, look my feet are swollen!" Teasing me he said, "Holy cow! They look like elephants feet." I like to give him a hard time so I said..."Do you realize that you just referred to your pregnant wife as TWO large animals, within ONE sentence?" LOL. We had a pretty good laugh at that. Sometimes I do feel like a floating blimp, but there's not much I can do about it so I just roll with it. :)

Can't wait to see our little baby in just a few weeks! :)

Baby Room

2012-01-02T20:43:00.000-08:00

We are making progress on little Diesel's room finally. Its not done, but we're getting there. This past weekend we got it painted and finally got everything organized. We painted over the hideous lemon yellow that was in there and made it a light brown. I HAD to get rid of the yellow but I didn't want to have to repaint when we move out. I still need to hang a few more things and add some finishing touches but we are almost ready for baby D!

Before. Ugly Yellow

After. :)

Lots of clothes already

And Lots of diapers! Friends and Fam have totally hooked us up.

Free Kiddie Kandids

2011-12-29T20:21:00.000-08:00

Tonight we ran to the mall to exchange a pair of pants for Ryan. As we were walking by Kiddie Kandids, the lady inside snagged us and said, "Hey can I do a free maternity photo for you?". I'm thinking ...yeah right, nothing is 'free', she's going to try to sell us on some package. So I told her, no thanks, I didn't really get ready today and I'm in my Nike's, a t-shirt and a pony tail!!! Not really feeling up to portraits right now! lol. But she didn't have any appointments and must have been bored. She convinced us to just go take a few for fun and for free. It was actually pretty fun. We didn't have anywhere else to be so we were just rolling with it. I wish I would have looked cuter for the pics but free is free and she gave us a free print of the one we picked.

Here are a few of the ones she took. The quality is pretty bad since I just saved the thumbnails on the proof website. But I wasn't about to pay 100$ for fully copyrights to my ponytail. :) But its ok, I guess it documents the everyday life of a pregnant woman. "I'm going comfy and this is as good as its going to get for today."

That one's pretty cute actually :)

Sweet Nike's!

And awesome pony tail!

Aww. Presh. lol. This is the one we picked for our free one.

Hahaha!. We were laughing pretty good at this. That is Ryan with a Santa sleeve on.

And... the classic baby belly heart.

World Preemie Day

2011-11-17T19:12:00.001-08:00

Today is National Prematurity Day. I didn't know that until today when I saw something about it on facebook but I have actually been thinking about little preemie's a lot over the past week. I am 28 weeks pregnant right now. Ryan was born at only 27 weeks! So this past week we have been talking about when he was born and what it was like. I am very grateful that my little guy is still in there cooking away, but it is reassuring to know that if something were to happen at this point, he would have a good chance at survival.

We pulled out Ryan's baby book to look at the photos of when he was born. It was kind of neat (for lack of a better word) to see what my baby looks like right now at 28 weeks. I know he is in there, kicking away, and that he is the size of a 'head of cauliflower' (and who in the world decided that all baby sizing needed to be compared to fruits and veggies, lol), but its amazing to see those photos of Ryan and know that my baby looks about the same right now. :)

Here is baby Ryan at 27 weeks. He only weighed 2 lbs 12 oz! He was just a little guy.

10 Hours old. 2 lbs 12 oz. 17 1/2 inches.

Here he is 2 days old with his Mom and Dad. You can see how tiny he was. He fit in the palm of his Dad's hand.

9 days old. This photo is really dark, but you can see how teeny tiny his little bones are.

It really is amazing to think about how much of a miracle baby Ryan was and how many odds he overcame to make it. This is a little journal entry that his Mom wrote in the back of his baby book...

"Ryan was born three months premature. Before I gave birth I was told that he didn't have a very good chance of living. They told me about all the diseases he would probably have and how hard he would have to fight to live. But he did so well from the moment he was born. He flew to Primary Children's Hospital in a helicopter 20 min after he was born. I only got to see him for a minute before they took him off. I was so afraid that he would die before I ever got to to see him again. He was so beautiful and so small. The next day I got to go see him, and he was doing well . All the tubes they had in him made me nervous. And his tiny little body was fighting as much as it could. After only ten days he could breathe all on his own."

And just for fun, here are a few pics that I found in his book that I thought were just too cute!! :)

Ryan's bike that he got for Christmas '84

He's been a lifelong handy man!

His tool bench that he got for Christmas '86

And here is Ryan today, at 6' 7", with his own little baby boy at 27 weeks old.

Happy Halloween

2011-11-04T20:19:00.000-07:00

Bailey the Giraffe

When I went home to CO a few weeks ago we did a few photos of Bailey in her giraffe costume for her first Halloween. She loved her little Giraffe outfit. So cute!

Adventures in Registering

2011-10-31T14:25:00.000-07:00

Last week Ryan and I went to Target to set up a baby registry. Ryan was exactly super duper excited about it but let's be honest, neither was I after my overwhelming experience at Babies R Us. Ryan has been really busy lately and it seems like every Saturday has had something going on that he needs to be at. So I told him, he didn't have to go to both places to register with me, but I wanted him to come to one. He picked Target. Good choice.
I went to Babies R Us one afternoon while I had some free time and thought it would be a piece of cake. I thought it would be like registering for wedding stuff. You just go down all of the aisles scanning whatever is pretty and whatever you think you want for you new house. Well...registering for a baby is more like figuring out what you 'need' as opposed to what you 'want'. And once you get in the thick of the millions of foreign baby products in babies r us, you realized that you have no idea what you really need.
I'm pretty sure I looked like a deer in the headlights most of the time. Luckily, when we were there a few weeks earlier, my sister pointed out a lot of the items that she recommended and said were 'must haves'. But its a lot harder when your standing there in the aisle looking at 15 different bouncers, trying to weigh the pros and cons of each. Which ones have auto bounce, which ones play music, which ones have vibration, which ones aren't battery-only operated. Do I really that giant contraption that looks like a space contraption, that swings my kid in every possible direction and probably feeds him too?! Try looking at the wall of pacifiers. Seriously, there's like 100 options! Don't even get me started on the bazillion options they had for pumps and baby monitors. ey yiy yiy!
Needless to say, registering at Target was much more enjoyable and we did have fun. They have a nice contained limit of 4 aisles, and more 'fun' things like toys, blankets, and cute little teeny tiny shoes.

Poor Ryan.. :) He did have fun picking out some stuff, but I made him pose with the scanner so I could have a photo. He is a good sport.

Here is me scanning my belly, because that little guy in there is the only thing that I really want to register for. :)

Here is Ryan saying 'Do babies really need ALL of this junk?!' lol.

I told Ryan we could go get ice cream after. We ended up using a gift card that we had and getting a whole bucket of coldstone to stick in the freezer instead. It is so much cheaper that way! And lasts a lot longer.

Baby Diesel

2011-10-25T16:20:00.000-07:00

...and no that is NOT his name. That is our nickname for him for now so we have something to call him besides 'it' or 'the baby'. I knew people would give their opinions about baby names, but oh my gosh people...for real?! I am so surprised at how little tact some people have. "Just remember, if you name your kid this or this, he might always say, what were my mom and dad thinking." or "Hmmm, yeah....I don't really like this or this name. Maybe you should name him this because I like it" ... Seriously?! Gotta love all of the oh so helpful people that share their advice and opinions with you just because you're pregnant. :)

But we do have a few names picked out that we both really like, and I'm pretty sure we have one that will probably end up sticking.

Aside from the name :) .. things are going great getting ready for Baby Diesel...yes.. Baby Diesel.
At my last appt the doc said everything was looking good and he was right on schedule. Here are some pics from our 20 week ultrasound that I don't think I ever posted (I'm 24.5 weeks now)

I know I'm kinda partial since I'm his mom and all, but I just think he's so cute already. :) I love this little guy.

Ryan has been great about helping me with things while I'm preggo. He has taken over cleaning the shower/bathtubs/toilets for me so I don't have use the nasty cleaners. He's the best! I still do most of the laundry but Ryan is building me a sweet washer/dryer stand to raise the machines. Our laundry room is super narrow and I'm already having trouble bending over to get the clothes out of the machines since they are front loaders. I can't wait until its done! It is going to be awesome.

We are starting to get his room all set up. We got Ryan's office moved out of the room and set up downstairs. I still want to paint the walls. The nasty lemon yellow color that was on the walls when we moved in is just not doing it for me. I probably should have painted before put furniture in there, but I'm still not sure what color I want to do yet.

Here's the crib and furniture that we got for the room.

Ugh... that yellow is so hideous!

He even has a small stash of clothes already! Mostly from my mom and sisters. :) That's about 2 whole days worth for a baby, right?

Carving Punkins

2011-10-22T13:40:00.000-07:00

This weekend we went over to Jessie's house to carve some pumpkins for Halloween. We went to a cute little pumpkin patch that is in the neighborhood behind ours to get our pumpkin. Some guy has a little farm in his backyard full of corn, pumpkins, veggies and a bunch of chickens running around. We live in a funny neighborhood. You would never guess that random houses have farms and horses. The other day, I was on a walk and saw through some bushes that in the backyard of one house, there was a bunch of cows and sheep running around.

We picked out the cutest little round pumpkin.

Here is our pumpkin all carved up.

Bailey looked way cuter during her trip to the pumpkin patch!!..

Love this little girl!

Progress

2011-10-16T19:45:00.000-07:00

A few photos over the last few weeks of my ever expanding belly. :) I can't wait 'till this little guy is actually here!

Baby On Board!!

2011-08-31T15:46:00.000-07:00

We are so excited! We went to the ultrasound today and found out,

We are having a...

BOY!!!

It was so fun to see him up there on the big screen, seeing everything wiggling around. He was definitely awake and moving around but we weren't getting very good views to see if it was a boy or girl. Finally she found one of the bum and said 'oh here we go, I think we have girl!' She labeled it Girl Power and pushed print, but she said she wasn't 100% positive. (oh great!) So we were excited wanted to see more pics.

(It's all wrinkled 'cause we dug it out of the garbage)

It was funny because as we were walking into the building Ryan was saying how if they said it was a girl, he would still kind of wonder if they really got it right. Not because its a girl, but because we are finding out earlier than normal (17 weeks) instead of 20 weeks and sometimes they can be wrong at this point. It is obviously much easier to positively identify boy parts than girls. :)

To get a better view, she kept pushing with wand to get him to move into a different position.

Well...Turns out she was wrong because she kept looking around and then said "oh wow! It's a BOY!", "what, you just said it was a girl?" "NOPE, it is for SURE a boy!! I am 100%"

So here is the BOY PROOF. A clear shot of the bum, right between the little leggies. lol. A little mini Ryan in the works! (breathe...breathe.......jk)

Here are some other pics...

hmmm..no idea!

This is his head facing us, and he's chewing on his little fingers :)

(or at least has them by his mouth)

This is face, tilted horizontal. You can see the eyes, nose and mouth. It looks like a skull.

Here's one little leg. Thigh on top, bent at the knee, with its foot and toes going left on the bottom.

I still have my 20 week ultrasound in a few weeks so we'll get more pics then. Yay for Baby Boy Clarke!

So far, this little guy isn't taking up too much real estate, which is ok by me. I'm excited to get a little baby bump but I'm sure that will come and explode soon enough.

17 weeks.

I have had an absolutely wonderful pregnancy so far!! I couldn't ask for anything better!! I have not been sick AT ALL!! (besides the lovely cold I've had the past few days). But I have had ZERO morning sickness, nausea, throwing up etc! Its amazing. I feel completely normal still. In fact, I didn't even know that I was pregnant until I was almost 12 weeks along! I had some congestion for a while, which i just thought was allergies (which I've never had before) but I guess thats pretty common for 1st trimester. I pretty much got through my whole 1st trimester without even knowing it! I haven't had any cravings or weird things happen yet. Knock on wood. A few cooked vegetables haven't tasted so hot to me but that's it. I still only get up up once, maybe twice in the night to go to the bathroom. Oh but my skin has pretty much freaked out, dang hormones, I think I would almost rather just be throwing up. :) But I still can't complain. My sister kept a baby journal that kept track of all of her 'happenings', so I have been keeping one too. Every week it's pretty much the same. "still feeling good, not many changes, still the same" lol. The updates tend to consist more of what I bought him that day. :) "We bought you a crib today" or "We ordered a recliner today" Or what adventures we took him on like camping in Idaho, swimming in st george, or visiting Grammy and the fam in CO.

This little guy is already spoiled. Grammy has completely spoiled him!! She already got him a stroller, car seat, a bumbo, diapers, toys, handmade blankets, maternity clothes, all sorts of fun things! Got some baby books from Gma and Gpa Hugentobler. He got some toys and a blanket from Lindsey and Jared and Alisha Matt and Bailey got him a changing table and some toys. He will be loved for sure! Here is little Bailey today after she found out she gets a new little boy cousin... :)

Yay for babies! :)

Mini-Ryan will be here February 9, 2012!!

Busy weekend:: bonfires, rodeos and grandpa's house.

2011-06-21T16:17:00.000-07:00

We had a very fun and busy weekend. On Friday after Ryan called me and said, 'I've been thinking its Thursday all day today, but its friday! Let's go do something fun.' So we rounded up some people and went and had a bonfire up by Squaw Peak. We made tinfoil dinners and roasted hot dogs for dinner. I'm not normally a fan of hot dogs. I don't really think during the week, 'hmmm what should we have for dinner? how about hot dogs'. haha. But there is just something about campfire hot dogs that makes them yummy.

Eating hot dogs around the campfire :)

Poor Sarah...We almost put the poor girl into the labor! Her baby is due in just a few weeks and none of us thought of what a dirt road might due to her. The only thing we had thought of was 'are there bathrooms up there for a preggo woman?'. Nope. She's a trooper I tell you what.

Anyway, as we were heading up the mountain, the main paved road turned into a dirt road, and as we hit the dirt she pretty much screamed from the backseat. The seat belt had tightened around her belly and jiggled the poor little guy inside. So we crept along super slow since there were tons of bumps and ruts in the road from water run off. We finally came up with the idea of opening up my sunroof, and she stood with her head out of the roof. It worked like a charm! Her legs absorbed all of the bumps and little Austin stopped doing somersaults in her belly. Phew!

On Saturday we went to the Strawberry Day Rodeo in PG. It was kind of a lame rodeo actually, to be honest. It was better last year. But it was still fun to go. We were sitting right next to the gates where they keep all the animals and where they riders come out, so were pretty much entertained the whole time with the little ponies and watching the bull riders coming out after riding. They looked like they had been run over by a train. I'm not sure that is fun to do. They did a fireworks show at the end which was scaring the daylights out of all the horses! It was crazy. They were all running in circles trying to get out and piling up on top of each other. It looked like a big 'ol pile of horses.

Then on Sunday we me the fam up at Gma & Gpa Clarke's for dinner on Father's Day.

Here is Ryan with Gpa Clarke on the the bridge in his backyard. He was showing us how high the river is right now compared to what it normally looks like.

This is the river that runs through their backyard. Isn't it pretty. They have their own little forest back there. That river going through the middle is normally a fairly small stream, but with all of this flooding this year, it is pretty high.

I should have gotten a pic with Ryan and his Dad. Oh well...next time. :)

Sand Dunes - Little Sahara

2011-06-20T19:59:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago we went down to the sand dunes for Memorial Day weekend. We rented a Rzr so Mandy and I would have something to ride. We keep telling the guys that we just need our own little bikes. I think they think we are going to hurt ourselves. Ha. Although I don't think the girls are the ones to worry about. Ryan and Jamie were riding in the rzr dinking around like guys do. Ryan was driving and it caught an edge on the asphalt by accident and it tipped over on its side. It scratched the plastics down the one side and scraped the roll bar. Nothing they will even fix after we return it. Needless to say, we had to pay the very hefty damage fee. Ouch! Better than a broken leg I suppose.

We had some crazy weather over the weekend but it turned out to be pretty good. It was raining when we left the house, nice when we got there, cloudy all evening, then it rained ALL night (luckily no one got wet in the tents), nice the next morning, after breakfast we had a hail storm (so we sat in the truck for an hour and watch a movie), then after that it cleared up and was nice.

Here is Ryan and Jeff getting some big air

Nitro Circus in Vegas

2011-06-13T13:59:00.000-07:00

Well, last weekend we had a very random, spontaneous few days. On Friday, our friend JP said he might be getting some free tickets the the Nitro Circus show in Vegas on Saturday night. We said, sure let us know and we can plan something for tomorrow. He ended up having to work on saturday so we just forgot about it. We just went on having a normal saturday, going to the grocery store, we drove out to the lake, cleaned the house etc. Then at about 2:00 we were just chillin on the couch, bored, and Ryan thought "i wonder if JP could still get those tickets?" A few minutes later, JP called us and said he put tickets on reserve for us waiting in will call. We looked at each other and said..."well, why the heck, grab the keys and lets go, we have to hurry!"

So we started to head out the door and then we realized, 'wait, are we driving back right after?, are we staying there?, should we camp out in the car?' I ran upstairs and took literally about 1 minute, threw a few clean t-shirts, a toothbrush, and a few blankets in a backpack and ran out the door. Guess we'll figure it out as we go! :) There's a walmart everywhere right?

Then we thought.. "who is fun enough and spontaneous enough that they'll just pick up and leave with us right now" So we called Jamie and Mandy. They didn't answer but they called back right as we were at the I15 south exit. We changed lanes and jumped on the north one and told them, "throw some stuff in a bag, you're going to vegas with us!" When we got to their house they looked at us like, what, are you serious? lol. Yep! So they grabbed a few things and we headed for Vegas. We got there, got our tickets, and found our seats about 5 minutes before the show started. Good timing. :) Turn out Colt was down there too, just a few rows in front of us. Random.

The show was really cool. These guys are crazy! They were jumping coolers and barbie cars off an 8 story ramp, doing double back flips on their dirtbikes. Travis Pastrana even did a back flip with some random girl from the audience on his bike, and then another one with 2 little kids on his bike with him. Crazyness!

Here's the video of them jumping the barbie car. hahaha. and not landing it. :)

We ended up just getting a room down there so we didn't have to drive back. It turned into quite the fun little weekend vaca. we went to dinner at Wolfgang and did a little shopping.

This was at some crazy expensive store. We were all trying on funny hats and stuff but I only got a pic of Ryan.

When we were at the mall, we were running around trying to find the restrooms. All of the signs kept saying Restrooms: near the runway. We finally found the restrooms but thought "Runway? what the heck? there is nothing in this huge open space but couches. weird." A few minutes later, all the lights dimmed and that huge 'fashion show runway' that is in the pic started coming up from the floor! It is all hidden beneath the floor and then they do fashion show shows a few times a day, with the clothes from the stores in that mall. Pretty nifty right!

It turned out to be pretty dang fun for an ultra random weekend. We were wishing we had thrown in our swimsuits though! The weather was awesome and our hotel had some sweet swimming pools! Next time :) I'm sure we'll come up with some more random weekends.

Moab

2011-05-18T20:27:00.000-07:00

Ryan's Grandma just got home from her mission in North Carolina, so we went to visit her in Moab over the weekend. She took us all out to dinner at Moab diner. I forgot to take any pics of us with Grandma but I got a few of the hike that we went on. It sure is handy to have a Grandma that lives in Moab that literally has this in her backyard...

Visiting my little Bailey

2011-05-16T15:08:00.000-07:00

I got to see my cute little Bailey a few weeks ago. She is getting so big and cute.

Vail Vacation

2011-05-16T14:14:00.000-07:00

This post is dedicated to Lou. :) Because now I know that you actually read my blog. I think you are one of only 3, so that makes you a very important member of my fan club. :)

A few weeks ago, I drove out to Denver to visit my fam and help my Mom while she had some surgery. Since it was 85' the day before I left, I didn't bother to check the weather for the next day, and I packed my bag full of shorts and flip flops. We woke up the next morning to inches of snow!! My Dad sent me a text that said, 'leave early, its supposed to snow in the mtns here'. I thought, Really?, How bad could it be?, it was 85 yesterday!. We'll I got caught in a snowstorm in the mtns, they closed I-70, and I stranded in Vail for the night!!. There was no chance of me getting home that day.

Yeah...there was a little snow piling up...

Mom and Dad were great and got me a room for the night, which I'm sure wasn't cheap since it was it was day of, in a place like Vail. I finally found my room after: getting funny looks from the valet man when I told him I was going to park my own car, passing a group a women in fur coats that were waiting next to their mounds of luggage on a gold luggage cart, a lobby full of oriental siblings carrying armani bags busy on their iphones (do you really need armani when you're 12?), mistaking the hotel Spa door for a hotel entrance (why is the spa door in the parking garage?) but yes I dropped myself into the middle of the spa in my flip flops and bright hawaiian no-wheels-bag-so-i-have-to-carry-it bag (how dare I forget my ugg boots!), and lets not forget the fact that I jammed myself in the door leaving the spa because I had my giant bag on one hip and my big ol camera bag on the other hip. ohh..the memories. LOL.

I got into my room and all settled in. Might as well have a fun night if I'm stuck here. I stocked my mini fridge with the diet mtn dew Ryan put in the car for me and found a bathrobe in my closet.

Luckily I'm smart enough to know that living in Utah and Colorado, this is how you pack for a road trip...

So I put on my gear, grabbed my camera, and went on a little adventure outside. The hotel was right at the base of the moutain by the river and under the chairlift. I guess it better be a good spot if its next to the Ritz Carlton.

Weird...that's not even a b&w pic!. That's just how cold it was outside. Blah! Coldness just sucks the life out of everything.

This is the next morning, which was like a whole different season!...

Much better!!

Burrr...

I met some random lady named Kathy that was out walking around taking pics too so I hung out with her like an hour.

This one is for you mom. Because I know you appreciate this photo of 'the friggin expensive shoes that go everywhere from the oceans of mexico to the moutains of colorado' :) oops. sorry ma.

If only I had a swimsuit! I need to start keeping one in my car. I always seem to get myself into situations like this. My family's response to things I call home about is usually 'Only you.. things like this always happen to you'. ... And that pool was heated dang it. And an infinity edge. With 2 awesome hot tubs. Oh well, it wouldn't have near as fun without Ryan there anyway.

Maybe we'll have to come back this summer, because I'm pretty sure I could handle this in the summer time!...

That night, the snow stopped and it was like a winter wonderland outside

I just liked these orange lights. It looked like the hotel was on fire.

The next day it was warm again, silly weather. It was melting so fast, they had to shovel it off the roof so that I didn't fall off and bury someone alive down below.

Roads are finally open. Time to go see Mom (who is already in surgery by this time) and my little wiggles who is twice as big as when I saw her last.

Happy 80th!

2011-05-05T23:24:00.000-07:00

4 posts in one night. I am impressed by myself. :) Ryan is out on the town with his buddies.They all went to go see the movie Thor. That seems to be only time I actually sit down to post stuff on our blog :)

Happy 80th birthday Grandma Clarke!

Last weekend the family had a little birthday party for Grandma Clarke's 80th. Her kids and grandkids put together a cool movie of photos and favorite memories of her that we watched after dinner.

Grandma Clarke has been working on a book for the past few years, a history of her life full of photos and stories. She had it published and bound into a book that she gave to each of her kids and grandkids. It is awesome. That will be really neat to pass onto our kids one day, to see the life of their great-grandma.

Happy Easter

2011-05-05T23:11:00.000-07:00

This year we spent Easter with Ryan's family. We had dinner and hung out. It was fairly uneventful since there aren't any little kiddos to have an easter egg hunt.

Happy ~~Valentines~~ Easter!

Haha. I have no idea why they had this giant heart, but it was sitting in the corner of the family room :)

and our cute little easter bunny cake that Niccole ~~made~~ bought :)

And here is our 3rd and only other photo from Easter. sad huh! That's the worst group of holiday photos ever! Ah boy!

Yard work

2011-05-05T22:51:00.000-07:00

Yard work just seems to be never ending. Especially in this gigando yard. We can spend hours out there and then when you step back to look at what you've done, it feels like you've barely made a dent. It's a good thing its pretty fun for the most part. I like to do it. My favorite is mowing the back lawn with riding lawn mower. I'm not sure if i'm the most 'qualified' but I have fun. This week is the first week since last summer that I've been back on the mower and I was telling Ryan a few 'stories' from last year....like when I was going in reverse a wee-bit too fast and knocked over the neighbors garbage can, spilling everything all over his driveway. And the time I hit the drainage gully a wee-bit too hard and jiggled the front grill right off mower, and then before I knew it, ran the darn thing over and all the little plastic shrapnel got shot out from the blades and scattered all over the yard. Oopsie! OR.. the time the I got high centered on the metal water main cover thingy that was supposed to be buried even with the lawn but instead sticks up out of the ground. (Ryan knew about this one, 'cause he had to come lift the mower off :) )

What?! It's not my fault the contractor that put in the yard did a crap job!!

Speaking of crap job by whoever put in the grass, they also botched up the sprinklers pretty good too! lol. Im pretty sure Ryan has redone the entire system. Our latest adventure was yesterday. There is a spot next to the driveway, that doesn't even have grass might I add, that keeps flooding. Turns out someone buried the pvc pipes that connect all the sprinklers only 2 inches below the surface. Bad idea! So at some point one of the boys drove over it and cracked the pipe. We had to dig it all up and replace the pipes. The funny part was it was still leaking, but to replace the pipes the water has to be gone. It was like bailing out a sinking boat and all we could find to bail water was a little plastic drip pan that goes on the bottom of a flower pot. :) And right as I got to the last bucket of water, the sprinklers turned on and flooded the whole darn thing again. lol!

This is me emptying out the hole for the second time. :) hahaha

Dirty job :) good thing I married me a handy man!

And then....I planted a tree. A cute little shade tree.

There isn't much shade yet with those 10 little leaves, but in 10 years, that baby will be beautiful!

A walk in the park

2011-05-05T22:11:00.000-07:00

Check it out! Ryan and I went on a walk the other day along the river trail and I found 10 bucks! Lucky day!

Guys night vs girls night

2011-04-18T12:16:00.000-07:00

Girls night - Mandy and I went riding.

We went riding out by Utah lake and enjoyed the nice view of the lake and pretty sunset

Guys Night - Ryan went with a bunch of guys to the Showdown cage fights.

It's a pretty much no rules, kick the snot of each other, kind of fight. Like one guy put the other guy in a choker hold until the other guy passed out. Boys! lol.

I asked Ryan if he would have had as much fun that night if I would have gone with him. haha. That was a big fat no. Of course. I guess its just not the same going with your wife, as it is going with a group of 10 guys.

On a prettier note...

My tulips are growing!!!

I planted a bunch of tulips last year up at the rental house and they survived! :) We don't really have any flower beds or good spots to plant flowers so I just stuck them in places. Like around the trees and anywhere there was dirt instead of grass.

There was only one spot that was kind of an 'oops' planting. There was a spot next to a tree in the backyard where Maddie dug a huge hole a few years ago. That day, Ryan was repairing some dead spots in the yard and filled this hole in with dirt. Well, since I had extra tulip bulbs and I just happened to find this area of fresh dirt, I planted a bunch of bulbs there. :) But then...Ryan seeded over the dirt too. So now, there are a bunch of tulips growing up through the grass, that we can't mow. Oh well, its pretty! (i forgot to take a pic) We can mow it in a few weeks when the tulips die.

Oh look, a pretty dandelion with my tulips. haha.

Jazz game and 1/2 a mascot

2011-04-09T19:56:00.000-07:00

Ryan and I have been wanting to go to a Jazz game for a while but it never happened. Then, last week, a friend offered us some free tickets to the Jazz vs Wizards game. So as soon as Ryan got home from work, we headed out, grabbed some dinner at Cafe Rio, and then up to Salt Lake.

The first half was rather uneventful. I'm not sure how much I actually even saw. After I kept saying things like, 'did you know the camera flashes come off the ceiling?, oh look, thats where they park the blimp!, Hey look at that dudes funny hair'....Ryan was like, 'Uhh, are you even watching the game?!

Nope not really, I like to people watch.

I won't say the Jazz did...amazing, but it was still a fun game to watch. Although I think we saw more airballs than should be happening in an NBA game. Isn't that why they are paid millions of dollars?...To NOT shoot airballs!!?

The Jazz were down pretty much the whole game, but somehow managed to come back in the last minute of the game. Literally. There was 14 seconds left on the clock and the Jazz were one point up and shooting 2 foul shots. Which leaves them with a pretty good chance of winning the game. And what does mr foul-shot-shooter do? Airball! What the! Poor guy got booed by his own fans.

Needless to say the wizards made a shot with 4 seconds left and won the game in OT.

And here is the mascot...well...the "1/2" mascot. I think it was a little person, not a kid. He was kind of a mean little guy. During one of the breaks, the regular mascot did a little thing called 'mascot training' with the 1/2 bear. Well the little guy, pulled some random dude out of the crowd, and ended up kicking him in the junk. He thought he was funny. But the poor fan ended up face down on the court. Ouch.

Remind me not mess with the little guys at a basketball game. eee. :)

My World

2011-04-06T22:21:00.000-07:00

This man is my world :) Isn't he such a handsome stud? He is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I wish every girl in the world could have a husband as wonderful as Ryan! but I think I snagged a one-of-a-kind.

Crazy busy and colorful weekend

2011-03-31T21:34:00.000-07:00

This past weekend was crazy busy. We were going nonstop from one thing to the next. Busy but fun. We helped our friend JP move on Saturday morning, then we went down to Salem with Jamie and Mandi to the Color Fest, met the in-laws in Sandy to see the movie Unknown followed by dinner at Joe's crab shack, then we met up with Ryan's sister Melanie, she spent the night with us, and spent the day with us on Sunday.

Here is the color fest at the Hare Krishna temple down in Salem. It was crazy. There was thousands and thousands of people there. It's like a big food fight, but with colored flour. I went a few years ago but it wasn't near this big. There was a couple of bands there and there were people body surfing in the crowd pretty much the whole time. Its pretty fun to just walk around and throw a handful of orange flour in someone's face.

The crowd. Too bad you can't see any of the body surfers. This guy was smart to wear a bandana though. I'm pretty sure I inhaled way too much of that stuff. You had to make sure you kept your mouth shut or you get a whole handful of flour tossed in your mouth.

Not dirty enough yet....

Here is a dust cloud from all of the flour. It settled on the roof and and turned it pink.

Thats better

All of the little teeny bopper girls there seemed to just love Ryan. :) It was hilarious.One girl walked up to him and instead of chucking a fistful at him, she all off the sudden, oh so gently smeared it on Ryan's cheeks like the black paint on footballs players. We were like 'what the heck!'. It was hilarious. Then some other girl ran up to him and chest bumped him! LOL LOL! What in the world. Who are these people!? I know Ryan is a handsome babe magnet :), but I think the 'dust' they inhaled was getting to them.

On the way home, we stopped at Glades for a chocolate dipped ice cream cone. It's a good thing it's walk up joint! I'm pretty sure that those sweet orange eyebrows would have been kicked out of any restaurant.

See this pink color??..It doesn't come out of blonde highlighted hair!!! After a very colorful shower (it stained my bathtub purple), I washed my hair five times with major scrubbage!, and the pink would NOT come out of the blonde in my hair.

Apparently I'm not the only pink rock star running around this week. I've heard of quite a few other girls that were left with pink hair too! Hopefully it will fade soon. I'm not really diggin' it 6 days later!

Here is Ryan at the movie theater. It's a cool movie theater so I made him let me take a pic while we were waiting for his Dad.

Eating at Joe's Crab Shack with ma and pa Clarke, even though Ryan and I only eat runners, not swimmers. I got chicken strips. :)

So Excited

2011-03-31T20:39:00.000-07:00

I can't wait to see my little bugaboo this weekend! She is getting so big and so cute.

Happy little Wiggles

Bailey on her Blessing day - with the cute little bracelet we made her.

That is the same blessing dress that my 2 sisters and I wore on our blessing day when we were little.

Causin' Trouble...like usual

2011-03-20T22:02:00.000-07:00

I was just flipping through the pics on my computer and forgot about these. Back in January, when my mom was here we went to The Gateway to kill some time. We stopped at Sports Authority and ended up in the bike section. Apparently there was a big sign in there above the bikes that said..."sure, go ahead and take me for a whirl around the store!"

"Perfect! It's Just my size."

"Cruising through the scenic women's section. With my extra blingy reflectors!"

"umm guys...I am sooo not amused by this! You are acting like such children. I am so not stooping to your level."

(haha.. JK! My mom just happened to get this random beautiful shot of my funny face)

"well wait a minute...bring that on over here. That looks kinda fun. Maybe I could get into this new sport - retail biking"

"Ahh yeah! Diggin' my new ride!"

If you look in the background on the right, you can see the mini bike that Ryan has abandoned for a new ride.

"Wheeee! Check me out, I'm poppin' a wheeley"

"Test driving another one. One that apparently has headlights! Sheesh"

"Better try one more."

"Quick! Go faster! Take a left at Fishing. Security is coming!"

Unfortunately we didn't get it on camera, but Mom rode the unicycle and did a little urban-retail-biking. She rode down the the stairs on it and then hopped on top of a cooler and then over a tent. Go mom. :)

Just kidding. She didn't really. I guess I must just be in a silly mood. :)

Good times with the fam.

We almost had the chance to die!

2011-02-25T15:33:00.000-08:00

Ok...not really.. that's just a saying that's more of an inside joke with my family. But I did almost get us lost in the mountains last Saturday while we were snowshoeing! Yikes.

I've been itching to go snowshoeing this winter, but we haven't had a chance to go yet. So, last Saturday when it was raining down here in the valley, I knew that for sure there had to be fresh powder coming down in the mountain. We loaded up all of our gear and head up American Fork Canyon. Sure enough, once we were halfway up the canyon the snow was coming down fast. And beautiful! It was one of those perfect snowdays, where the sun is out, no wind, and the snow is falling down instead of blowing sideways.

The snow was coming down so fast that the road was getting pretty deep. My only thought was, 'sweet this will make for great snowshoeing'

We got to the trailhead and put our gear on. Ryan motioned for me to lead the way because I have hiked this trail quite a few times before but Ryan has never done this one. He even said a few times, 'are you sure you know where you are going?'. 'Oh yeah! piece of cake. I've done this trail like 4 times. Besides, its just a loop, everyone takes the same trail, and we'll just pop out at the same spot we started'. I neglected to tell him that I decided to hike the trail in the opposite direction that we have always gone. Usually we start by taking the path to the left side, I went right. Mistake #1. I figured, 'It's all the same loop, how hard can it be to stay on the same circle trail?'. Wrong. Everything looks completely different when you go in the reverse direction.

The hike started out really fun though. It was the prettiest snow that I have ever seen on that trail. I was so excited to get up to the top of the trail and see the valley full of fresh snow.

Pretty snowy mountain

Poor Ryan was extra sore from the gym the day before. He had gone hardcore on his legs and they were super sore. I guess I also forgot to mention to him that the whole first half of the trail is straight up hill (but that means the way down is all down hill!). So we just took our time and had fun dinking around.

Throwing snowballs

Making snow angels

Taking a break to enjoy the view

Now me taking a break to enjoy the other view :)

These trees looked a lot cooler than they show in the pic. Once again, all I had was my phone to take pics.

Taking another pic, because I apparently don't have enough yet.

Finally! The long lost valley that we were aiming for. It's all downhill from here. Or...at least I thought this was the valley? I looks a little different but I've always come at it from a different direction. And I'm sure it looks different every year with different levels of snow. Yes? I hope.Well there was only one path the crossed through the valley, so this was obviously the way to go. The snow was still coming down pretty good and was starting to cover up tracks from previous people on the trail. But we had just passed a few other groups that had come from the opposite directions, so we were just following their tracks.

Ryan was just making his own tracks and taking advantage of some fresh powder.

Well...we made it across the valley. I could have swore we needed to start going to the left, to loop back around. Why is this trail still going to the right?? and UPHILL?? ah crap!

But this is the only place there are tracks. This HAS to be it. So we kept going for another 20 or minutes thinking something has got to start looking familiar. NOPE.

We hiked a little more and I was like 'Ryan, something is not right! I've got a bad feeling about this. We are NOT supposed to be going uphill still.'

Then we noticed a wooden sign barely peaking out of the snow. I brushed it off. It said, some trail to the left and some other trail to the right in X miles. Too bad I don't know the name of the trail we needed to be on. Or even if the snowshoe trail that people take is the same as a summer hiking trail. There were tracks to the right, the uphill way, and that did not feel right. To the left, nothing. It looked like there was an old trail in the snow that had been covered over, but had not been used in a long time. But we had just passed several groups that were on the same loop. So where did the come from?!

So at this point, I kind of started freaking out. It was almost 5:00 and winter + mountains = its going to be DARK soon! Ah crap!...again. We should have been almost down to the bottom by now. I'm feeling horrible because I just dragged Ryan all the way up the mountain, saying I knew where I was going, and now I've gotten us lost. Great, now we are going to have to camp in the mountains and make a snow cave and we might die! ok ok.. a bit dramatic but that is how it felt in the moment. I guess we watch too many of the 'I shouldn't have survived' rescue shows.

We decided that even though we should be close to the other side, we would just turn around and hike back out the same way we came in. It might take a lot longer but at least we wouldn't be chancing hiking further into the woods while it is getting dark.

So here we are hiking back across the valley. Dang it bobby! And we were flying! I'm pretty sure we ran all the way back so we didn't get stuck in the dark...to be eaten by a bear. :)

Oh look, the same trail we were already on.

We got to the bottom of the trail and were completely exhausted! We are so glad to be off that stupid mountain! :)

I made Ryan do a 'Horray, we are alive' shot.

Wahoo! Let's go home!

It really is a beautiful place to go snowshoeing! If you just can figure out where you are going!

This day, I wish we would have just stayed at the bottom of the hill with the sledders. :)

Sunday Drive to Heber

2011-02-21T20:17:00.000-08:00

Last Sunday, we finally had some nice weather. We have been getting a little cabin feverish lately, so after church we decided to go take advantage of the nice day. We just didn't want to go sit inside for another afternoon. We headed out for a drive up Provo Canyon....and then kept going to Heber....and then kept going to Strawberry Reservoir. We were having a good time so we just kept going! I'm surprised we didn't up in another state.

Apparently we weren't the only ones out and about on a nice sunday afternoon. Deer Creek Reservoir was full of people ice fishing.

We drove around Heber, checked out the huge houses up on the hillside, and then stumbled across a little block called Heber Old Town. It was a bunch of the really old buildings from Heber that moved to this block (at least this that is what it looked like) and converted them to little shops. They had this old Jeep outside of a Jeep rental shop. I thought it was cool and wanted a pic so I told Ryan, 'go stand by the jeep', 'but there's a foot of snow, I'm in my church clothes and you have high heels on', 'hmm, you're right...oh well, go stand by the jeep, I want a pic'. Needless to say, I almost biffed it like 20 times trying to get there.:)

After driving around Heber for a while, I thought Ryan was going to say, 'ok let's go home now', but instead he said 'This is pretty fun today, want to drive up to Strawberry?'. I was Sure! lets go!. I love going on drives.One time during finals week at BYU, I needed a break from studying so I decided to go for a drive....I ended up in Logan.

Strawberry was also hoppin' that afternoon. It is a really popular place to go snowmobiling so quite a few people were out on their sleds. It looked so fun! I want to go snowmobiling.

Heading Home. I guess we can't drive around forever.

Valentines Weekend

2011-02-20T22:35:00.000-08:00

We had quite an eventful Valentines weekend. On Friday we hit up Texas Roadhouse for dinner with Jamie and Mandi, one of our usual stompin' grounds. On Saturday afternoon we hit up Sonic happy hour for some drinks and then headed up to the Living Planet Aquarium. Kind of a random weekend thing to do, but we wanted to go see the sea turtle. I guess we were going through Hawaii withdrawals or something. We learned that looking at sea turtles in Hawaii is way cooler than looking at a sea turtle in a tank in Utah. But we will take what we can get. It was pretty funny though, we were the only ones there without a stroller or little kids. People were looking at us like, 'Did you really come here just you two, like on a date'?. Well yes we sure did and we had fun! There were tons of weird little fish and creepy creatures...like that lobstery looking thing that hangs upside down, or those fish in the bottom right pic. They stay vertical like that but swim straight horizontally.

The penguins and the seahorses were pretty cool...

We learned something new about seahorses that we never knew..... The males are the ones that carry the babies and give birth. What the!? Not fair. :) I told Ryan that if he REALLY loved me, he would do that for me one day too.

And here we are in the coral reef with Nemo swimming right behind my head.

After the aquarium, since we were already up there, Ryan took me to go see the movie 'Just go with it' over at Jordan Commons. I had never been to that theater before. It is huge! It looks kind of like vegas on the inside with lots of little food places little cities. Pretty cool for a movie theater. I love my random adventures with Ryan.

I told him not to...

2011-02-15T11:56:00.000-08:00

But he did it anyway...

Ryan came home from work with some very pretty pink roses for me!

Even though I told him, don't waste the money.

But now that I have them, I might as well love them!

HAPPY VALENTINES DAY

Forever and Ever

2011-02-13T16:58:00.000-08:00

On January 15, 2011, Ryan and I were sealed for all eternity in the Provo Temple. It was an awesome, amazing, wonderful day. We had a ton of family and friends that came in town to support us. I love my Ryan more than anything in this world. We were just joking the other day that we fit together like a puzzle. We both have our strengths and weaknesses but he is perfect to me. We fit together like perfect pieces. I can not imagine a better man to spend my million years with!

A lot of the photos are on a different camera so I'll have to add those later.

Me and my good friend Sjanna from Colorado

My wonderful family

Ryan and his Mom

That afternoon, we had a big lunch party at our house. We did a fun taco bar. We were packed in our little house like sardines, but it was fun.

Grandpa Hugentobler taking a snooze with Annalynn and Travis. It was a big day.

Tony and cute little Cason

More pics from CO

2011-02-13T14:38:00.000-08:00

Merry Christmas :)

Bella loves hangin' out with colt.

Nap time. That's what vacation is for.

Mom's two favorites, Wiggles and Bella

Hangin' out with Grandpa

Colt made all of us girls picture frames. How talented is he!

Lou and J

Wiggles' first trip to wal-mart

Poor Ryan being tortured by us girls at wal-mart. Such a good sport.

Mom gave Colt a machete!? Say what?

Colt - the binky holder-iner guy.

Chillin' with Auntie Lou in my candy cane pants.

Bella's a good watchdog. lol

Grammy sure loves her little Bailey!

Tiling Mom's Kitchen

2011-02-10T20:55:00.000-08:00

We went to Colorado for a few days back in December, before Christmas. While we were there we helped them with the current home reno. project. We helped for the days that we were there but it was mostly Colton that did all the work. Mom made the most of his 3 week college break. We ripped up the vanolium/panolium/lanolium and gave the kitchen a little facelift.

Me and C cleaning up the wood floor before the tile goes down

Ryan and Colt putting down the first rows

Me.....sitting on top of the fridge.....in the family room.

Getting there

Almost done

Last piece!

and grout.

THE FINAL RESULT.

lookin' good!

Easiest Dinner Ever! ... and Yum!

2011-02-10T19:14:00.000-08:00

For dinner tonight we made German Pancakes with fruit on top. I haven't had German Pancakes in years. It was so fast and so good. I had fun decorating mine. :)

I was a fan of this dinner. It took less than 5 minutes prep time. It didn't stink up my house. (It makes me gag when you leave and come home and it still smells like dinner) And it didn't leave my kitchen as a disaster. Bonus. Plus it included cool whip. Major Bonus! And fat free cool whip tastes the same as regular cool whip! major major bonus.

The other day I was reading an article in a health magazine that said the five best fruits to eat are:

1. Blackberries

2.Strawberries

3. Oranges

4.Kiwis

5. Raspberries

This was also the article that said eating too many apples can make you fat. LOL. I'm not sure that too many people need to worry about that. I don't think I've ever heard any say, "I ate 12 apples today!" But I'm pretty sure eating too many apples still makes you less fat than too many french fries! :)

Christmas Day 2010

2011-01-28T18:05:00.000-08:00

This year we spent Christmas day here in Utah with the Clarke's. On Christmas Eve, we had a family party at Grandma Clarke's house. This was my first year not having Christmas with my own family. I definately missed them. It was different but it was fun. It's was fun to see what different traditions they had and how they celebrated. Every year, all of the kids get pajamas for christmas. We are still considered in the 'kid' category. :) Fine by me, we got pajamas...and a great 'compliment'. Shannon thought I could squeeze into teeny tiny pajama pants. LOL. I tried them on and they were like spandex on me! But at least she thought I was that skinny. I guess when everyone was younger, they all used to put on their new pajamas and have a little pajama parade. Nothing like a 'welcome to the family' like being paraded around in front of everyone in skin tight pajamas. Phew!

Another Clarke family tradition is playing Christmas songs with chimes. They have a set of about 30 pipe chimes, everyone takes one and follows along with the notes that are written out on a posterboard. It sounds pretty cool when everyone get on a roll.

Something I found funny was the process of opening presents. All of the cousins exchanged the gifts between each other. In my family, its a pretty organized process. We takes turns opening, one at a time, so we can see what everyone gets. Plus it makes opening presents last way longer. Its always sad when the gift opening is over and done! With the Clarkes, it was a 3..2..1..OPEN for everyone. I have to say it was an almost overwhelming-lost my breathe for a second,-wide eyed, kind of moment. I was not expecting this and in the blink of an eye there was wrapping paper flying EVERYWHERE, so in my mind I was like woahhhhh, what is going on!! Needless to say, it was over in about 5 seconds and I have no idea what anyone got. lol. oh well. Here's to new family traditions. :)

After the party we headed up to ma and pa Clarke's house to spend the night. We spenT the rest of the night watching a movie in their awesome theater room.

Here are some of our Christmas morning photos. Don't make fun of any of our sweet bed hair! :)

All the kiddos on Christmas morning, minus Bri who is on a mission over in Ecuador.

Their tree was the biggest real tree that I have ever seen inside a house!

yeah yeah, I got some jeans!...

....and a cute coat!

Ryan got a knife. A big 'ol Bear Gryll's knife. yikes. Don't mess!

Gotta love Niccole's facial reactions...a rice cooker for college!

sportin' some new penguin jammies :)

We got Ryan's dad a bunch of movie posters that he could frame for his theater room.

Our second Christmas together.

After making breakfast and hanging out for the day, we headed home so we could do our own little Christmas at our house. On the way home we stopped by the Maher's house (one of our surrogate families) to say hi. They asked us to stay for Christmas dinner and I first thought, no no we don't want to intrude on your family christmas. Then I thought, hmm...we have been out of town and busy for the last two weeks so all we have to eat at home home is probably mac and cheese. So we said, Sure! We'll stay. :) They are great.

We finally made it back to our house at about 10 pm.

Here is our little tree.

I got a 'little blue box' from Ryan :) Do you like my reaction?! haha

Seeeee...this is why you have to open presents one at a time!.. so you can get pictures!

Pajamas also courtesy of Ryan. love 'em.

Baaa-ling!!

I got Ryan a handgun safe. All of Ryan's gift this year revolved around guns and knifes. All of the

'you don't want to mess with me' and 'I'm going to survive like Bear' stuff. ha.

Another fun reaction caught on camera. saaa-weeet! My parents got us an ipad. woot woot. It's awesome.

Thanks Mom and Dad!

MERRY CHRISTMAS 2010 !!!!

Beautiful Babies

2011-01-27T20:52:00.000-08:00

In the last few months, we have had 3 new cute additions to the family. My sister Alisha had her baby girl in December, and my sister-in-law Lisa, had twins, a boy and a girl, back in August. They are all so cute and fun. I just wish we all lived closer so that I could actually see them.

BAILEY

Our little Christmas baby

TRAVIS & ANNALYNN

Great to have a handyman

2011-01-23T19:25:00.000-08:00

Yesterday we spent the day fixing things. I am so glad that Ryan can fix pretty much anything. He loves doing projects and working on stuff. When he was little, his mom used to buy him toys and electronics from the thrift store that he could take apart and tinker with. He wants another project to work on so yesterday I dug out an old big mirror that I bought from DI for $5. He's going to pop out the glass and build a big chunky frame for it so I can hang it on the wall.

We spent the morning yesterday putting new brakes on my car. Let's just say this was long overdue.

Ryan got a new tire for his dirtbike, so while he was out in the garage putting his bike back together, I wrapped myself up in a blanket and went out there to hang out with him. I also put in a request for a little bike for myself, something I can just putt around on. Maybe one day.

Maybe one day too, Ryan will get a big garage all to himself. For now, he is a good sport about all of my stuff that gets stashed in there. Yes that is a pink christmas tree and my living room lamps overrunning his manly garage. :) oops. Good thing he loves me. :)

Christmas Eve Snowboarding

2011-01-21T10:19:00.000-08:00

This year on Christmas Eve we went snowboarding with a bunch of friends up at Sundance.The snow was horrible because of all that December rain we were getting. So it was pretty hard and icy but it was still fun. And we even saw Santa on the slopes.

Birthday 2010

2011-01-20T22:51:00.000-08:00

I had an awesome birthday this year. I have to say, I really wasn't looking forward to it that much this year but it turned out to be one of the best days ever. For every birthday in the past, I've never once had to work or go to school on my birthday. Most of the time, I was already home for Christmas and hanging out with my family. This year, Ryan had to work AND I had to work. I started the day thinking it would be 'just another day'.

But my awesome husband was wonderful to me all day long. He called me at about noon and said he was getting off work early and coming home. Yay! I was still at work so I said I was going to wrap my stuff up and come home too. When I got home, I walked in the front door and I could hear the dishwasher going, the washing machine running, and the vacuum going downstairs too. He had cleaned the whole house, vacuumed the whole house, even the stairs!, laundry, had my candle burning in the kitchen, the works! Saaa-weeet! Ryan is always good about helping around the house but it was so nice to come home to everything done!

He also planned a dinner with a few of our good friends. We went to Ruby River for some steaks. Kelsie...here is your proof that you were there :)

We went back to our house after for some cake and ice cream. And since we didn't have candles, they improvised with what we had on hand...my kitchen candle.

We are grateful for good friends :)

Happy Birthday to me!

Another cute baby

2010-12-11T19:50:00.000-08:00

ME!! Hee hee. My mom was going through our baby photos this week to see if my sister's baby photo looked like Bailey. So she sent me a pic of me that she found....

Awww.. So cute :) Minus the pen marks, courtesy of Alisha. The best part is my rip curl mohawk! Ahh yeah. Man, those chubby little cheeks just never went away!
But I think little wiggles wins the cute contest... for sure...

Baby Bailey

2010-12-05T17:45:00.000-08:00

I'm an Aunt, finally! :) My sister had her baby girl today! Bailey Nicole! She is the first baby in our family. You better believe that Grandma is sure excited!

She's just a tiny little squidge of a thing with cute little skinny legs. She was 6lb 3oz and 19 inches long and perfectly healthy. And she is already being amazingly nice to her momma....only 4 pushes and 20 minutes of labor. That was sure nice of little Bailey. :) I can't wait to see her!!

Fall Odds and Ends

2010-11-05T21:28:00.000-07:00

Its been a very busy fall around here. Where does the time go? Not to blogging thats for sure. :) We've either been out of town every weekend or had something going on. Here are just a few of the things we have been busy with. .. Once again, almost all cell phone photos :) All of photos from our real cameras are on Ryan's computer, but I dont feel like bustin' that out, so these will do. ha.

We built a shed!! Completely from scratch. None of this Tuff shed business. Our's is way tuff-er! This baby could last through a hurricane or tornado. If we only had those in Utah. Maybe an earthquake.

Lovely Photo - I know

Ryan and Jamie spent a ton of hours building the shed. I helped where I could and as much as they would let me, but I guess there was just something about the idea of me balancing 10 feet in the air, on 2 x 4's, holding a nail gun, that made them a little uneasy. I did a LOT of yard work instead. I trimmed enough tree branches to fill a giant construction trailor, planted a bazillion tulips, and re-seeded the parts of the lawn that were dead from a bad sprinkler system (which Ryan has now completely redone). Mowing the lawn is also my job because I love to ride the riding lawnmower. :)

In exchange for all of Jamie's help on the shed, we did a little trade and I, or should I say Ryan and I, did Jamie and Mandi's engagement pics. Ryan used my other camera and came to be my second shooter. I taught him how to use all of the manual modes and he actually got some really awesome shots. He has a good eye. For these, I did NOT use my cell phone. Ha! But I am waiting for they day when they put a good camera in a phone. That would be handy.

Aren't they a cute couple! We love these two.

Callie and I also had a fun little Halloween photo shoot with her little girl, Evee, in her costume. We had all of about 10 minutes before she had had enough of that hay! She stiffened right up and her poor little head slid right down the hay. :(

Too cute.

A few weeks ago, I went to Denver to my sister, Alisha's, baby shower. She got so much stuff, I couldn't believe it. Probably becasue there are just way too many cute baby girl things!

My mom made all of these blankets! She is amazing! They are so cute. And...she already has some made, for the boy and girl for the next babies that come along from any of us kids. Take about one on top of it grammy!!

Frosting some really cool purple cupcakes

Yummy food

Our clothes line of baby outfits as decor.

Why buy decor when you can make it yourself? Besides its wayyy cuter than those darn pendant banners that are popular right now, that we have to photography all the time for work. gosh i hate those!

Lindsey and I got her the cutest little pink Nike shoes. So not practical but we just had to get them for her!

Coach diaper bag? Yes please!

The girls - I love my sisters and my mom!

Me and Bella-rooski - just because :)

We bought a new car a few weeks ago too! Our little Audi car was just not cutting it for Ryan. And, I'll be honest, it had way to many buttons in there for my liking. I really am not that picky about if my heat is exactly 71 vs exactly 72. :) Our next purchase will be a big 'ol truck for Ryan, but for now this is our in-between-er. We bought a 2010 Hyundai santa fe and we love it! great gas mileage. 100,000 mile warrenty, which I'm sure will go quick. We drove off the lot with 32 miles and it is skyrocketing quickly! Plus we get free car washes for life. 5 year stain warrenty on any fabric on the inside. And our favorite part of the car is that it has bluetooth in it and you can stream pandora through your iphone into the car speakers! How cool is that!

awww...that's what I'm taking about...Less buttons! :)

Last weekend we went to Detroit to see the twins. Ryan's brother Nick, and his wife, just had twins a few months ago and we got to go see them. We spent most of the time just at house, hanging with the fam and playing with babies. But of course it wouldn't be a Hugentobler family vacation if there wasn't a little elbow surgery right in the middle of the living room by Dr. Nick. You better believe it! We also went to an old authenic cider mill where you can watch them make fresh cider from apples. And of course we had to get some of the homemade cinnamon suger doughnuts that they are famous for.

at the cider mill. I love fall!

Here's the little twinners - Travis and Annalynn

Ryan also found himself a good little napping buddy.

2 sets?! These little twinners have aunt and uncle twinners, Melanie and Joel. How fun is that?

Well, I'm all blogged out for tonight. :) Plenty more to blog later!

Tired of Christmas!

2010-09-14T18:29:00.000-07:00

I know I know, I'm being a scrooge. :) I normally love Christmas but I've had christmas trees and and christmas crap all over my house for the past 4 months for work. BUT...I think this is the very last of it! wahoo! I've spent all afternoon wrapping presents and hunting for wrapping paper that is 'just the right green' - christmasy, but not cheesy, vintagy but not old, coordinating but not matchy matchy. Oy. Wrapping is not my forte.. trying to make them look o' so beautiful for one of our holiday covers. Lets just say something may hit the fan, if my idea is not approved. :) just sayin. ha! As the nature of the business goes, my whole day could be all for nothing, with a simple 'try something else'. ... sigh....

But I'm sure I will be back to loving Christmas by the time all the decorations start coming out... oh wait, thats like next week. :)

On the other hand I can't wait for Christmas because that when baby Wiggles will be here!! (thats what we call my sister's baby that she is pregnant with). Is she not the cutest pregnant lady ever! Look at the cute little baby bump! :)

Baby Wiggles...coming Christmas 2010.

ok ok... yay for Christmas!

Hawaii

2010-09-08T16:16:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Ryan completely surprised me with a trip to Hawaii for our first anniversary! How awesome is he?! I knew we were going to do something for our anniversary but I had no idea what or where. He planned everything and wouldnt tell me anything besides, 'pack warm'. I finally found out when we were at the airport heading to the security line. Ryan pulled out his phone and was flipping through the weather. I was looking with him as he said, its 92 in salt lake, and 90 in denver, and 95 at lake powell, its 80 in idaho...and its 85 in Honolulu all week!!! I was like.. what? no way! I was so freakin excited. Hawaii had never even crossed my mind. I would have put money on cali though.

The flight to Hawaii was not bad at all. It was fast and no stops. The flight back however was torture and exhausting. We had the red eye that stopped in portland first. I think I'm going to invent a plane with bunkbeds for red eye flights.

Hawaii was awesome! I think i still look at my photos everyday and wish I were still on vacation. It's funny though, one of the first nights we were there we were walking around the outdoor shops in Waikiki and past an art gallery that was full of awesome photos of Utah! Of Zions, and Canyonlands etc. Isn't it ironic that we'll fly half way around the world to see new things, and find beauty, when really people from all over the world are coming here to see the beauty that we have.

We did tons of snorkeling while we were there. We went at least once a day. We rented a car and found our own spots that weren't so crowded. We went to one spot, which was the best snorkeling by far of the week, where all the locals informed us this was a sketchy beach where homeless people hang out and break into cars. Whatev..I'll kick them with my fins and whack them with my snorkel! And I even mangaged to go a whole week wearing my snorkel mask and not get mask squeeze!! Major bonus!! Last summer my parents took us on a cruise in the Caribbean where we went scuba diving in Belize. Lets just say me and the scuba gear didn't get along that day. Let me see if I can find one of my mask squeeze photos from the dive...cuz I know you all want to see it again!! :)

Snorkeling in Hawaii.....

Well I could only find one pic from our cruise. Ryan has all the pics on his computer, but I had this gem on my cell phone. :)

tada! Don't be jealous. lol. And this pic is after we got home!. I need to find one from when we were IN Belize! This is what happens when your scuba mask is too tight and the pressure in it doesn't equalize. Just fyi! And it took about 3 months to go away. It was finally gone about one week, ONE WEEK, before our wedding. close call.

Here is one that I just found of my me at my bridal shower...just a few weeks before the wedding.

oh such pretty little monster eyes..Which i was called btw.. A little kid at the pool looked at me and said..'you look like a monster'. lol!!

Ryan just sent me some pics from his computer! lol. This is like live blogging. I would just go back and change it but I just don't want to so I'll just add them here. Viewer beware!!.. It ain't pretty...

Ughh.. I can't believe I am posting such nasty photos of myself! It makes my eyes hurt just looking at them.. Here is the conversation on gchat between me and Ryan while he was sending them..

me: hey can you send me the one you have on your phone i dont have a good one

raclarke1: i have a good one!

me: send it to me lets gross some people out

raclarke1: i just sent 2

me: oh...gag..that one looks painful .its making my eyes hurt!!!

raclarke1: um yeah now you know how i felt!!

me: lol!!

Anyway... That was a major tangent.. Back to Hawaii!! We did so many fun things. We went to a Luau, swam with dolphins and sea turtles, snuck into a few of the large resorts and used their beaches and cabanas, went shopping in the little hawaiian souvenier markets, (ryan is quite the haggler), ate dinner at restaurants on the beach while watching the sunset, went to the dole planation to see how pineapple grow, rented a car and drove around the entire island, traded in the rental car for a Jeep after the car broke down, got caught in a few random downpour rains in the mountains, lived in our swimsuits the entire time, ryan cut his hand on a piece of coral at sharks cove (sharks+blood=yikes), relaxed, Ryan buried me in the sand on the beach and a little girl asked if I needed help, played in the ocean, ryan picked me a fresh flower everyday for my hair, did not get a tan because we used too much sunscreen and took lots and lots of photos.. Here are a few...

Thanks for the awesome trip Ryan!!!

Happy Anniversary!!

2010-08-14T23:41:00.000-07:00

Ryan & Kristy - August 15th, 2009

It's official!..We are now an old married couple! :) ok not really but it is our ONE YEAR anniversary!! This has been the best year of my life and I have loved every minute of it. One year ago, I married the man of my dreams, everything I had waited for, for 26 years. Ryan is the best husband ever and I love him even more today than the day that I married him. I could not have asked for a more perfect first year of marriage. You always hear that the first year is the toughest and if that is the case, I am sure excited for the rest of my life.

About a week ago, I was thinking about our upcoming anniversary and just looking at this past year. I kept thinking of all of the amazing things Ryan does for me and how great he is. So I decided to just start making a list on my phone and I added to it whenever I thought of something throughout the week. Then I decided to email this list to myself so I could add it to this blog. Here are just a few of the wonderful attributes of my wonderful hubby!

He has never gotten MAD at me. Not even kidding. I could never thinkof a single time so I had to ask him..Have you EVER been mad at me?... Hmm, nope I don't think so.

He is ridiculously patient.

When he is asleep he snuggles up to my shoulder. I love it.

He is a hard worker and has drive to be successful

He kisses me goodbye EVERY morning

He never complains

He'll come home from a long day at work and make ME dinner

He's a good cook

He helps me put the dishes away. We have a 2 man system that we can empty the whole dishwasher in about a minute.

We've never had a 'fight', only minor annoyances but I'm pretty sure every time it's been my fault because I was grumpy.

He is never grumpy. (he is quiet in the mornings, but me..grumpy;) )

He is a handyman. Can build fix pretty much anything

He is active . Snowboards wakeboard surf dirtbiking

He tells me I'm beautiful

He likes big trucks and manly things

He has a garage full of 'man tools'

He let's me help when he's working on the cars and teaches me what the things are and do - like what di-electric is for.

He is quick to say 'i'm sorry' and apologize. Way better at that than me.

He does NOT snore...ever!

He says funny things in his sleep

He is strong and we like going to the gym together and going on walks

He is stinkin smart (hates the textbooks but I'm always amazed at what goes on in that head of his)

He likes to help other people

He sold his truck (his baby) to save for better things for his family.

I know he hates driving a car but he never complains about it. The only time he cursed the car was when the door hinges, that are annoyingly tight, snapped back and shattered the glass on his brand new iPhone.

He doesn't let things bug him. That's probably why he can fall asleep in 2 seconds and I stir for 30 minutes.

He calls me everyday from work just to say hi and see how my day is.

He does nice, fun things for me, like plan a surprise anniversary vacation

He's tough on the outside but tender on the inside.

He's so dang handsome.

I KNOW he loves me!

HE IS PERFECT!..FOR ME :)

Here's to the next year, growing old together, and eternity with my best friend!

Summer Adventures

2010-08-13T23:36:00.000-07:00

Summer is just FLYING by! I am so not ready for it to be over. :( But we have done a lot of fun things this summer.
I would try to blog a lot more but did I mention I hate blogspot! Everytime I think about blogging something, I am reminded of how not user friendly this program is. I love (not) how and you can click on a button and 90% of the time without fail, it will either do the complete opposite of what I was trying to do, or the button is just non-responsive. I'm excited for the day when they actually make a blog program that works easily with inegrating text and photos and doesnt jack up your whole post if you try to change one little thing.

Anyway, here are a few things...many more still on the 'to blog' list....

Des Moines, Iowa!

I went to Des Moines, Iowa with my mom to visit Lindsey and Jared. We wanted to check out where they lived and spend some time with them. All I have is my o so wonderful cell phone pics so I don't have any good ones. Pretty much these are all the ones that I sent to Ryan from my phone. Maybe one day I will get all of the good pics off of mom's computer. :)

Here are some things we did while we were there:
Saw Lindsey's classroom at her school she teaches at - Lindsey stuff Jared in a locker
Toured Jared med school - We amputated my arm and saw how a giant doll gives birth.
Found a few of the old bridges in Madsion County
Went to some cool lakes
Tried out a sweet paddle bike for the water
Got hooked on the tv show 'modern family'
Golfing
Went to the Zoo and got inside the wallabe cage
Took a little road trip to Ol' Nauvoo

Lake Powell !

At the end of July, we went to Lake Powell with the Clarke side of the family. So fun! Ryan's Gma and Gpa Clarke got a houseboat for a family trip. We drove down late thursday night (might I add we made it there in 3.5 hrs!...its supposed to take like 4.5 or 5 hrs). We hung out on the dock for about an hour before Ryan's dad got there with the boat to pick us up. It was dark and we had to navigate through 10 miles of lake powell canyons in the dark with nothing but a small spotlight. That doesn't do much other than show you the reflector buoys and giant islands that pop up all of the sudden when you are only 100 ft from them. yikes. He did an awesome job finding his way through the dark canyons!

Once we got to our houseboat, around midnight, everyone else was already sleeping, but they had set up an air mattress for us on the top of the houseboat in the middle of the slumber party line. It was too hot (over 100') to sleep inside (no AC), so all the cousins, aunts, uncles, and grandparents, lined up sleeping bags all the way down the boat. Pretty sure I haven't had a slumber party like that since like a 4th grade birthday party - well besides our Hugentobler family reunion 2 weeks prior. I suppose its a good way to get to know all of my in-laws very fast. :) But about 10 minutes after hitting the pillow, we are both still wide awake from the heat, the boat ride, still in our street clothes with unbrushed teeth (uck), the snoring orchestra begin. Neither one of us can handle snoring... Did I mention I married the perfect husband?!..He does not snore.. AT ALL! After we couldn't fall asleep, we decided to take our pillows downstairs and try sleeping on the kitchen floor (the only empty spot). Well that turned out to be like sleeping in gym sauna. When we started to sweat through our clothes, we decided to try the one last spot outside...the small space in between the bbq and the coolers, on the deck rug. Ahh.. peace and quiet, and a nice breeze. This became our new home for the next 3 days. :) We laughed as we talked about how spoiled we are with our cal king memory foam bed, ceiling fan and ac'd house.

Other than sleeping our weekend at the lake was awesome fun! It consisted of a lot of lounging, swimming, wakeboarding, sailing, paddle boarding, and the water weenie. Gpa and gma were rockstars and they even rode it. (gpa is 80!)

Ryan got attacked by a fish.. ok not attacked but he got a nice fish bite. lol. And then, since we didn't have fish hooks they tried 'fishing' by smacking the fish w oars and shooting them w bb guns.

Dinner w a view!! Good times at Lake Powell w the Clarke fam. :)

When boredom hits

2010-07-28T21:47:00.000-07:00

I was just flipping through some pics on my computer and found some funny pics from a few weeks ago. Poor Ryan is always on the receiving end of my boredom. Ryan was just sitting there, minding his own business, watching tv...but I got bored. My camera happened to be sitting on the side of the couch, so I went to town, teasing Ryan and taking a bazillion photos of him. He was a good sport. :) We got some funny ones, followed by a few '"get outta' my face" shots. lol.

Pre-photoshoot, minding his own business....

and...the results of letting the wifey loose with the camera...

Keeping Apple in business

2010-07-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

While I was cleaning out the office today, I noticed a stack of boxes in the corner....our iphone collection. eee.

I think maybe we have an addiction. :) Maybe they should start giving us a frequent shopper discount!!

I'm gonna be an aunt!!

2010-07-19T14:52:00.000-07:00

My sister Alisha just found out today that they will be having a baby GIRL!! I am so excited for them. She is the first of any of the siblings in our family to have a baby so it is extra exciting. This little girl will be so spoiled. :) I can't wait for her to get here. She's going to be a Christmas baby just like me. Alisha is such a cute little pregnant mommy.

Waterpark

2010-07-13T15:41:00.000-07:00

On Saturday, we hit up the Lindon waterpark with Jamie and Amanda for Jamie's birthday. It was smokin' hot here so it was a perfect day to be in the water. It was so nice to relax in the lazy river. While we were sitting in the jacuzzi, there were two boys about 9 or 10 years old swimming in there too. The lifegaurd asked if they were mine. Hello!!?...Do I look like I should have two 10 year olds?! Sheesh. She made me feel old. I sure felt old though when all of the lifegaurds were all like 17 and still look like little kids. They are the ones there to 'save' me? yikes! I told Ryan, 'Please don't drown because the scrawny little boys will not be able to pull you out of the water'. :) ha!

Ryan and Jamie had fun surfing on the flowrider. I decided to just watch. It looked a little brutal. Just watching everyone crash made me hurt. It is super hard to stay up on the surfboards.

Here are a few pics of all of the crashing going on. gotta love it.

29 for the first time

2010-06-29T16:02:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday to Ryan! (well...yesterday). Yesterday Ryan turned 29. We went to dinner at Texas Roadhouse with a bunch of our friends last night. Good times! If its your birthday, they make you sit on their saddle while they tell everyone in the restaurant that its your birthday. Our waitress decided to shout out to the restaurant that Ryan was 'turning 29 for the first time'! I suppose there is a first for everything. I told him it could be his birthday week so he could turn 29 again for the second time today.

Our poor little waitress had a rough night with all of us last night. Almost all of the orders were mixed up and apparently she couldn't hear us over the music because she placed most of the 6 oz steak orders as 16 oz steaks!

Don't forget the birthday cake...

I forgot to put the candles on the cake so he just got them on his piece. :)

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Today...

2010-06-18T18:24:00.000-07:00

Today... Ryan was fixing his helicopter because I accidently flew it into the kitchen cabinet and broke the wing..or whatever it's called. The spinny thing. While taking the old one off, he dropped the teeny tiny screw. After spending 10 minutes with our faces squished down on the kitchen floor we gave up and taped it together.
A few minutes later, I took a drink of my can of mtn dew. Found the screw!! It had fallen inside my can, and I almost swallowed it.
Ryan's response: "it's ok. I ate micromachines whole when I was a kid. You woulda' been ok! Lol!!"

Tracy Lawrence Concert

2010-06-08T13:27:00.000-07:00

On Saturday night we went to the Tracy Lawrence concert with Dave and Callie. I didn't really have any idea who Tracy Lawrence was but Dave got free tickets from a radio contest. You can't beat free so why not check it out. All I knew was that it was country music and even if the real show is horrible you are still guaranteed to have an awesome show from all the characters and rednecks in the crowd that have flocked to the same place. And boy oh boy were there some characters there. The guy that sat behind us had a t-shirt that said ... "Too many freaks, not enough circuses!" That pretty much sums it up. :)

Here is the concert security...

Hahaha.. the Eagle Mtn Sheriff's dept apparently needed horses and a whole fleet of rhino atv's to control this wild crowd. I mean, just look at all of these fans just out of control....

They had a fireworks shows after the concert that was by far the best that I have seen in years. It was even better than the Stadium of Fire fireworks. Yahoo for fireworks!

cheese :)

Happy Garden

2010-06-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

We have managed to keep our little garden alive so far. Yahoo! I would by no means say it is 'flourishing', but it's alive! I'm still trying to find that balance between starving them or drowning them. Apparently I was drowning those poor little things for a while until a friend gave me some gardening tips.

Here is one of our tomato plants. TADA!!

The flowers in the front yard however, well, that's a different story. I have managed to kill all of them. :( That is the hottest place around the house and I think they didn't get enough water. Oh well. At least we got a funny story out of it.

The other night, we were getting home from a walk and Ryan looked at the flowers and said, "oh boy those flowers aren't doing so good are they? They are all crunchy and dying". Then he pointed over at the other 3 pots of plants I have on the porch and said "But those look great! They are doing really good!" (I think he was trying to make me feel better). My response was, "uhh... yeah, 'cause they're PLASTIC!!"

Sad day. :) They are 3 plants that I got from IKEA for a work photo and I just left them on the porch for now. They are just some purple lavender plants that actually look pretty real or else I would not have left them out. Ryan didn't know they were plastic so why would anyone driving by?

But at least we know one thing...I am good at caring for plastic plants! :) Oh, the skills I have.

Spanish Fork Reservoir

2010-05-23T19:08:00.000-07:00

Today we went on another little adventure...Spanish Fork Reservoir. It is a man made reservoir up by the canyon. They stock it with fish so kids can go fishing and there is even a sand beach. I've seen it from the air, but we have never been there so we decided to go check it out today. It's no Florida beach...the 'beach' is a bit more gravely than white sand, and the fish were a bit less tropical - they were all albino. weird. But its still a fun little place.

Notice the jackets!!? June is almost a week away and this weather is not feeling summery at all :( Those people out in the canoe were much more brave than us.

The lake is right at the base of the canyon so there are tons of little hiking/atv trails around there. We went on a little hike up to Tip-Top Rock. (at least that is what I named it since it was at the tippy-top of the hill). The view was awesome! You can see out into the whole valley.

Hiking up the trail

It was much steeper than it looks in the photo. Holy burning bum muscles! We hit one part of the trail that was about 100 ft long, super steep. Ryan said, 'lets see who can run to the top the fastest. I'll even give you a 3 second head start. Whoever wins get a back rub'. Awww man... OK! He started to say ready, set, go for my 3 sec head start, but as soon as he said ready I just took off. Yes, I cheated ;) .. ha ha. or at least tried to. But...Ryan STILL won. dang it bobby!

Tip-Top Rock

Check out the view!

the reservoir

Aww.. Presh! :)

A nice lady was up there hiking and offered to take a pic for us.

Tibble Fork Reservoir

2010-05-17T11:14:00.000-07:00

After church yesterday it was so so so nice here! Finally. What is this this weather and where is summer? We decided to go on a drive and cruised up American Fork Canyon to Tibble Fork Reservoir.

Obviously we weren't the only ones with this great idea. The beaches were packed all the way around.

Here is one of my favorite photos of the day. Ryan is my bodygaurd. :) He was just walking down the steps but he looks like he's coming down to break something up. lol....'excuse me ladies, what's the problem down here?' haha.

The water was faa-reeeezing!! There is still some snow up that high and the run off is like icicle water. Yet, there was people IN the water. crazies.

Can't wait for summer!!!!

Our Everyday Life

2010-05-14T21:25:00.000-07:00

Well, I don't have any fascinating or wowing news to blog, like a trip to Hawaii (one can dream), but here are a few things that we have been up to lately.

Now that it is finally nice in the evenings, we have started going on walks around our neighborhood. We discovered that we apparently live right on the edge of a farm!, that is in the middle of a neighborhood! who knew? There are horses and cows like 100 ft from our front door! There are also roosters that cruise around the neighborhood. Where else can you live 5 minutes from downtown, 5 minutes from the mall, and....5 minutes from the farms.

Our new buddies.

We planted a little backyard garden.

Just tomatoes and snap peas so far. We wanted to do a small trial run first to see if we could keep them alive. And tada...we've had them for about a month, and they are still doing good! I guess we can get a few more things to add to our garden.

Ryan got a new toy...a ginormous remote control helicopter!

...and then we sold it and downsized to something a little more 'crashable'

Oh and let's not forget about my o-so-brilliant project idea with all of the super cheap frames I found at IKEA.

A few weeks ago I put a photo collage on our bedroom wall. I didn't want to worry about measuring each space for hanging nails so I just used the 3M sticky foam tape and just eyeballed the spaces. So much easier.

It turned out pretty good so I decided to do the same kind of thing downstairs by our front door. But I wanted to be able to take them down easily and replace the photos more frequently than in our bedroom. So here is my genious idea....Velcro! They would be super easy to hang on the wall, without measuring for 13 different nails, and easy to just pop off the wall.

Here is the end result...with my little helper too!

Tada...wonderful wall project complete. No more ugly brown plain wall. And then...at about 2:00 in the morning I woke up to a loud noise. My heart had pretty much jumped out of my body as I tucked under the sheets and just listened but didn't want to wake Ryan up. Then I kept hearing more little noises. And my imagination is running wild! Then I hear another loud crashing noise. Oh my gosh, someone is IN the house! So I woke up Ryan and said, I hear noises downstairs. I'm sure that is not what you want to wake up and hear. So he grabbed his gun and shut me in the bedroom while he went to go check it out. A little while later, I heard Ryan yell, "Its ok, come down here". So I came down the stairs to see Ryan with a little smirk on his face as he pointed down the hallway. All of my frames were 'melting' down the wall and some had crashed to the ground!! Stupid velcro! Sheesh...who's bright idea was this!? Apparently velcro is just not strong enough. All of that work and I still had to suck it up and just measure for all of the nails in the wall.

But it looks good now...and is STILL hanging! But I assume that will not be the last of my 'bright' ideas. :)

And, we got a new table. Something I don't have to build, or nail, or velcro :)

Alb-qer-que

2010-04-13T19:49:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, Ryan and I set off on a 9 hour road trip to Albuquerque. A surprise birthday visit for his friend Cameron. The drive actually went by pretty fast and went well until about 2:00 AM when we got confused by the googlemap directions. So we pulled over to a gas station where there a nice little Indian man filling up his car. We asked him if he could help us with the directions. In his Indian accent he told us to 'go down this road, and turn left, (as he pointed and gestured RIGHT with his hand.. hmmm). There will be a casino there and then you go to Alb-qer-que'. LOL! That became a joke the rest of the trip and we still call it Alb-qer-que. :)

We got there at about 3:00 AM and luckily Cameron didn't come running down the stairs with his shotgun to shoot us when he heard the front door open.

On Friday night we went to a Japanese restaurant where I'm pretty sure that the man sitting next to me consumed more food than the 4 of us combined!

Saturday we hit up the zoo! I love zoos.

This baby elephant was the most funny little guy ever! He couldn't figure out how to get off of that log. He rocked back and forth over and over trying to convince himself he would live if he took this 12 inch leap off the log! It was hilarious. When he finally managed to get all the way down from the log, he did a little roar and ran like the wind over to where his mom was and hid under her belly. so cute. He was like, Holy Smokes Mom!, that was so scary. gotta love baby zoo animals!

Kelsie and I even got to take a ride on a camel! They are huge and wobbley.

We took the zoo train over to the aquarium and botanical gardens. Turns out it takes the little zoo train about 30 minutes to make it there. ha..I think the snails beat us there. But it was a fun ride.

...On the train

...Ryan and Cameron laying across the train tracks

As part of the gardens, there was an area where everything was giant sized. I almost didn't make it in there because the dragon nearly ripped my head off!!

Rarr!

We rode the giant ant, explored inside the giant pumpkin, and climbed Moab mountain. At least that is what we named it. The 'moab mtn' is a maze that winds up the hill. I'm not sure why I decided that I just needed to climb it, but when I got to to the top edge, Ryan asked how I was planning on getting down. Well that's when I peeked over the edge and got my 'mwa-ha-ha' idea. The ground on the other side was much higher so I just barely had to swing my leg over and stand up. But.. Ryan didn't know that so I pretended like I lost my footing and fell 10 feet to the bottom. I even let out a little Ahhhh.. scream. Kelsie even managed to snag an action shot of the fall.

Ryan tried to come running to see where I was but unfortunately he was at a dead end of the maze and couldn't find me. lol. I waited for about 10 seconds and then popped my little up to see Ryan's 'deer in the headlights' eyes and said Here I am! lol. It was funny.

Here is Ryan being sneaky and getting in Cameron and Kelsie's nice castle photo. hee hee

And just a few more of us at the aquarium...

I said Yes!...

2010-04-11T19:19:00.000-07:00

One year ago today, Ryan proposed to me! And I said YES! I can't believe that a year has already gone by. Why am I writing about it now?.. Well cause I didn't have a blog a year ago duh. :) And I wanted to have that as an entry whenever I print out our blog book.

The beginnings of Mr. and Mrs. Clarke....

Ryan proposed to me on April 11, 2009. We went snowshoeing up the canyon to Stewart Falls. Little did I know what he had planned. I had invited a ton of people to come snowshoeing with us that day but Ryan had to back track my steps and UNinvite everyone that I had invited along. I am such a pain in the rear! ha ha.

Ryan came to pick me up that morning and I had no clue of what was to come. We had looked at rings but I didn't know he bought one. I was running a few minutes behind but I wasn't too concerned since it was just me and Ryan going now. Everyone else had suddenly BAILED on me last minute. Turns out we were in a hurry because Lindsey, Jared, Colton, Jamie and Ian were already snowshoeing up to the waterfall to set everything up for Ryan.

It was a perfect day, and perfect fresh snow.

Ryan bought a bunch of roses and had the helpers scatter them all over in the snow in front of the waterfall, and had rose petals lining the snow trail before you turn the corner to see the waterfall.

I was still confused about what was going on at this point when I saw this. I thought maybe we were interupting someone's romantic proposal. ha ha. But then... I knew it was for ME when I saw a few choice 'sneaky' people hiding in the bushes with a video camera up the mountain.

Look right in the center. :)

Once we got to the waterfall, Ryan got down on one knee, with snowshoes on and all, and proposed.

We had a fun hike back down the mountain. It was nice to have some time to still enjoy the moment and just soak it in. We even saw a moose. When I got tired of hiking with 2 dozen long stemmed roses in my hand, I decided to stick them in my backpack. genious.

After we got done snowshoeing, we took all the helpers to breakfast at IHOP for helping that morning.

That night Ryan took me to Chef's Table for a nice dinner. (with duck!)

It was a perfect day and one I will never forget! I love my Ryan. :)

Our first Easter

2010-04-06T20:37:00.001-07:00

Easter Morning....

This year was our first Easter together being married. It turned out to be a pretty fun first Easter! Even though we don't have any wee little hooligans, I thought it would still be fun to have an Easter egg hunt. Who says adults cant have just as much fun? After Ryan fell asleep, I filled a bunch of plastic eggs with jelly beans and hid them all over the house. But I didn't hide them too hard to find because: 1. we don't have that many good hiding spots inside our house and even less in our backyard area 2. I, myself, hate 'hunting' for things. One time when I was little, I couldn't find my Easter basket so I just gave up looking for it. I probably got some clues from mom later.
I put one egg on Ryan's nightstand and one on the floor too so when he woke up he would see them. He woke me up and said, 'Look! the Easter bunny came to our house!' .. lol. It was fun. He hadn't hunted for eggs in about 20 years so he was excited.

Check out my awesome hiding spots!

Here's the loot!

After our fun little Easter egg hunt, I made Ryan some breakfast. Look how chef-y I am! :)

Easter dinner was a whole other story. Colt, Ian, JP and JPs daughters came over for dinner. I made stuff all day long while we watched conference on tv.
This was the dinner line up:
JP's awesome smoked ham (he makes the best smoked meat!)
Ian's feta and prosciutto salad
Roasted parmesan asparagus
Cruncy onion mashed potatoes
Chocolate covered strawberries
Chololate dipped pretzels
and.. Jello Poke Cake... this was Ryan's request that I had never heard of before. But everyone loved it. You just bake a cake like normal, poke holes in it, and then pour jello over the cake. Interesting huh?

The Crew

The Grub

and the fun cake covered in chocolate strawberries.

Happy Easter!

R.I.P Little Black Jet

2010-04-06T15:28:00.000-07:00

It was a sad sad weekend. On Saturday, we sold Ryan's truck :( We decided we wanted to save some money and be responsible blah blah blah. Who does that? lol.. responsibility smonshibility. :) But.. it takes money to make money, so we want to get ahead while we can. How come when you get married all of the sudden you see visions of baby cribs, and college tuition, and retirement?! All at the same time!
But it was worth it. We'll be able to buy our own house soon, maybe a 3rd rental property.......and then maybe a boat..and a cabin by the lake. woah woah, I guess I'm getting a little ahead of myself but one can dream.

I feel bad that Ryan sold his baby. He LOVED that truck. But he was awesome to see him willing to give that up to make a better future for our family. He sure is the most amazing man ever!! But let's be honest, he won't last long without a truck so I'm sure we'll end up with another one sometime soon.

It's a good thing that the guy that bought it is moving to Alaska, because that would not be fun to see someone else driving it around town. Did I mention, I got teary eyed as I watched it drive away! I guess we've just had to many good times with that truck!! Here are some photos of the good times we've had with the truck to add to my memorial :)....

many dirtbike trips to the sand dunes

good times

The beast that could haul everything and anything

Lake Mead boating trips

driving around, honking the train horn and scaring the pants off people

taking it wake winching

shootin' stuff

our wedding getaway truck

...and many more good memories

R.I.P. Little Black Jet. We will miss you.:(

Before & After

2010-04-06T13:50:00.000-07:00

Here is another one of my random projects. About a month ago, I got the itch again to do another little weekend project. I like 'projects' :) I was looking on ksl to find a dresser or something that I could redo for our bedroom, and then I ran across this little guy....

Ugly right?! Scratched up brassy gold metal, and a white pleather seat with sharpie all over it! Looks like it should go to the dump!

Well I saw some potential in it, and for 20$ I thought it would be a cheap fun project.
I spent about 15$ in spray paint, $8 in fabric to recover the seat and $6 for a clearance lamp. I ended up having extra material so I made 2 little pillows and redid the shade on a clearance lamp with extra ribbon that I had in the closet. Those were super easy extras to make and I figured I could probably get more money reselling it if I had a 'set' of matching things.

Here is the end result...

The Vanity

and the lamp

I put it up for sale the day that I finished it and sold it the next day for $130!

The Lately

2010-02-17T18:31:00.000-08:00

I haven't been very good about keeping up on our blog lately so here are a few random pics of what we've been up to lately.....

Ryan got me some beautiful Valentine's Day flowers! I forgot to take a picture of them until today so they are looking a little bit wilted. :( But still pretty!

On Saturday for Valentine's Weekend, we thought we would take a romantic getaway to...

The Boat Show! :)

I wish I could say that this is the new boat that we now have sitting in our garage.

But I can't for several reasons:

1. Our garage is way too small

2. The boat was $90,000!

Maybe one day......

Another romantic getaway of Valentine's weekend.....

Shootin' some shiz up!

These are our poor targets. I found that head in a pile of debris that had already been blown apart. Apparently we have a lot of angry people around Provo that need to let their rage out and shoot stuff! I can't believe I touched that head thing but I thought the boys would get a kick out of it. We named her Wanda. That seemed like a crazy lady kind of name. The grossest (is that a word?) part was when I walked around the corner and almost steped on a smooshed dog that had been shot. Ewww. A dog! Gross!

And here are the remains of the poor laptop...

...maybe Ryan can still fix it!

He can fix pretty much everything!

Lasagna Soup

2010-02-02T19:24:00.000-08:00

I've been trying to find some new good, fun (and easy receipes) to try. I'm trying to expand my wifey talents and become a better chef. Ok... so 'chef' is a strong word and a bit exaggerated for my skill level, but hey, I can pretend right!?
So I thought I would start sharing a few of the successful receipes that I find. I figure there's probably a few of you out there that are looking for new ideas too. That have already been tried and tasted! Not something random from a cookbook with a pretty picture.
I got this receipe from Ryan's aunt this weekend in Moab. I haven't actually made it myself yet, but we had it at her house and it was soooo good, even though it looked disgusting when she was throwing everything in the pot. Hopefully its not just her magic touch. :)

Lasagna Soup

Combine the following ingredients in large saucepan:

1 lb ground italian sausage
2 cups onions, chopped fine
1 cup carrots, diced
2 cups mushrooms, sliced
2 tbs garlic, minced

Stir continuously until sausage is browned

Add following ingredients:

8 cups chicken broth and 2 cans (14 oz ea) Italian style diced tomatoes (mix slightly in blender if you dont like tomatoe chunks in your soup)
1 box uncooked masalda (or Campenelle) pasta. (you can really use whatever kind of noodle you want)

cook until pasta and vegetables are tender

add fresh chopped spinach (optional)

Top with Parmesan/Mozzerla cheese or the Italian 5 cheese blend bag.

EAT!!

**His aunt altered it a little so she could make it 'crock-pot style' Maybe it helps the flavors simmer?? Brown the meat. Once browned put meat and everything else (except noodles) in crockpot and a let simmer for a few hours. Great for sunday church days. :) Once you're ready to eat, boil the noodles and then toss them in the crock pot mix. top with cheese.

Ryan just saw me typing this and said..Oh that stuff was gooood! But I would add corn too. So there is Chef Ryans 2 cents worth!

Let me know if any of you try it.

{ We finally got our nightstands! }

2010-01-12T16:11:00.000-08:00

I am so excited! We have been waiting for 4 months to get our nightstands that we won from Ethan Allen back in October. They got delivered yesterday. We got the bed in December but apparently these nightstands must have been in high demand or something. It makes me want to decorate the whole bedroom! If only I had one of those magic money trees in the backyard. That would be wonderful! Maybe I'll start by getting rid of that horrible baby blue paint that is in there. :)

I love them!

And the best part was that they were free!

They are already coming in handy. I used them in a photo for work today!

Christmas around the country

2010-01-04T20:13:00.000-08:00

This year for the holidays we were lucky enough to hop to two different places to spend time with our family. We headed from Utah to Colorado on the 23rd and spent a week with my family for Christmas. Then we flew to Detroit, Michigan and spent four days and New Years Eve with Ryan's brothers and their families. It was a fun, relaxing vacation filled with a major overdose of pepsi and diet mtn dew.

The Fam! This is about as close as it gets to a Christmas card photo. :)

As part of our Christmas present, Mom & Dad got us tickets to the Avalanche hockey game. It's pretty much a Christmas tradition now.

Go Avs!

...another family photo

We pretty much just took it easy during the week and had fun hanging out.

Lots of Guitar Hero.

and Mario Cart. Doesn't Jared look cute in his jammies. This is one of my favorite pics actually. Who says you are ever too old to play with your toys in your pajamas on Christmas.

Christmas morning in MY new pajamas that Ryan got for me. AND...my new leopard snuggie, which I made fun of for so long but now I love! I even took it with me on the airplane, but don't worry, I didn't wear it like a snuggie.

Although..I have invented a new chic way to wear the snuggie and look fabulous at the same time :)

ta da!

and being 'dominated' in the snuggie. They think they are so funny. I need to learn to sleep with one eye open! Look what my family does to me. This is the year of the snuggie :)

Christmas Day

in our 'matching' jeans. lol. They weren't really! They were actually 2 different brands. But we had four different people ask us if we had matching jeans. ha ha.

There are no words for this.

The best surprise face ever! Dad is still counting. lol.

This was Ryan's present from me...an airtank for his train horn. oh boy!

Alisha and Matt

Lindsey and Jared

Colton

...and Bella. The cutest pup ever.

Here is the typical Christmas dinner photo. Either Lindsey or Jared magically pop into the background. Its amazing. I have no idea where they come from. They are either magic or sneaky. Haven't decided which one yet.

And what would Christmas be without a little charitable help from mom's little elves?

Painting the house.

I stayed in my pajamas all day on this particular day! It was awesome! I finally got dressed at 7:00 when we left to go to dinner with some of my friends.

Me and the best mom ever! (with bella and keela, our bird)

Wow.. this blog is getting long quickly! Too many fun pics to put on. Ok....

On to DETROIT!...

To put it lightly... Motor City = Dirty City :) It really made us appreciate the cleanliness of Utah and Colorado. But we had a lot of fun visiting.

Good food, good fun at Texas Road House

Nick and Lisa have an empty front room, which turned into the boys' playground.

Rolly chairs. Dog sledding. and a helicoptor pad.

Avatar 3D. What a good lookin' bunch!

New Year's Eve Breakfast

Little Jess in his party outfit.

New Year's Eve! Party on!

2010 is going to be a great year!

The other 3 days

2010-01-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

I only posted days 1-9 of the 12 days of Christmas before we left for Colorado.

Tenth Day...

A 10 minute back rub.

Eleventh Day...

Candycane Reindeer in the shape of an "11".

I gave them to him in the airport when we were on our way to Colorado. Airport treats!

Look at that busy holiday airport!

Twelth Day...

Well lets just say this wasn't the most creative day. I kinda forgot about it. Oops. So he got 12 kisses. :) mwaaa! But what gets better than that?

The 12 Days of Christmas

2009-12-21T22:16:00.000-08:00

I was trying to think of something fun to do for Ryan for Christmas and I decided that I would do the 12 Days of Christmas for him. And of course, me being the spontaneous person that I am, I decide to do this the night before Day 1 is supposed to start. Yikes. So, going into it I had no ideas or plans for the 12 days ahead. I pretty much just went day to day hoping I would think of something good. So far, it has turned out pretty fun!

Today was only Day 9, but this is what I have done so far.

On the FIRST DAY of Christmas, my true love gave to me....

One Bag of Goodies!

SECOND DAY...

Two Event tickets!

I reserved two tickets for a sleigh ride in Park City but he didn't get them until day 7.

I made him wait all week to find out what the 'event' tickets were for. Even when day 7 came, I still didn't tell him what it was until we were standing in the middle of a ski slope and 4 horses came trotting down the mountain. On the way up to Park City, we passed a sign in Heber that said.."Moto-X Event today, turn this way". I saw his eyes light up when he saw that sign and hoped he wouldn't be disappointed. :)

THIRD DAY....

Three Favorite Memories!

I wrote down three of my favorite memories of us. It made me tear up when I was writing these.

We have already had so many good times.

FOURTH DAY...

Four Pairs of Socks!

I had to throw something practical in there. Besides, who doesn't love getting new socks? That is one of my favorite things. Plus, he even got 2 bonus pairs that were waiting for him his sock drawer. lol. They only came in packs of six, but I could only wrap up 4!

FIFTH DAY...

Five Star Hotel Service!

Fresh sheets, turn-down service, chocolates on the pillow and even a towel animal!!

the good kind :)

Eddie the Elephant. A fun memory from our carnival cruises last summer.

SIXTH DAY...

Six pack of Henry's

One of Ryan's favorite drinks. We even had these at our wedding!

SEVENTH DAY...

Your 'lucky' "7" day....the Sleigh Ride

It was verrrry cold!

We got to Park City a little early so we hit up a few shops and tried on fun ski hats.

The horses took us up to the the log cabin restaurant for dinner. It was so fun. All of the workers were dressed up like cowboys and cowgirls and there was guitar player/singer that sang the whole time. It was a full wild west dinner..apple cider, chili, prime rib, chicken, potatoes...lots of good stuff!

Warming up by the fireplace

Did I mention they let me drive? :)

EIGHTH DAY...

Eight of the 'gr8est' (greatest) things about Ryan!

I wrote down eight things that I like best about Ryan and hide them around the house for him to find.

another one hiding in the tree.

He found them all!

NINTH DAY...

A night to be wined and 'nined' (dined).

I was trying to be clever.

I made dinner for Ryan. Steak, potatoes, asparagus, broccoli and a little martinellis.

I'm so romantical. Hee hee.

Tenth, Eleventh, and Twelfh Day... yet to come!