And Continued Again....

I should have just made this one really long post but I didn't. Instead you are getting several smaller ones. Anyway, for date night on saturday Luke and I went to a Jon Schmidt concert at the Thanksgiving Point Ampitheater. I must admit that the only reason that we went is because we are obsessed with the Taylor Swift/Cold Play song that he does. The concert was well worth the mile walk from our parking place and then the 30 minutes of standing in line even though we had already had our tickets. The lady behind us in line jokingly said that there must be only one person with a barcode scanner checking the 3000 people in. She was right!!!

Not only was the Taylor Swift/Cold Play song amazing in person but Luke and I laughed so hard our sides hurt when they then combined The Man from Snowy River Song with music from the Terminator movie. Then after that, they combined Phantom of the Opera with the 'Don't Worry, Be Happy' song. It was so funny.

Labor Day Continued...

So here is the rest of what we did on Labor Day Weekend....and the only "labor" part of the weekend. Saturday we spent the afternoon working in the yard. I had asked Luke to tear out the flower garden next to the driveway earlier this summer so I spent saturday working on putting that back together and Luke added a couple new sprinklers in the backyard where they were needed. Claire started out in the front yard helping me but once she discovered that her dad's job included playing in the water and mud, she left me to go help him. I should have taken a before and after of the flower garden but of course I don't ever think of things like that in time.

Labor Day Weekend - Part One

It is beginning to feel like autumn outside and life is starting to slow down again. I love summer and all of the fun that we have but it is nice when fall and winter roll around and life slows down a little bit. Friday night we decided to go to one last Bees game before the season ends on monday. We had a great time and Claire absolutely loved being there....or maybe it was the pumpkin cookies, licorice, french fries, and snow cone that she really liked. Just so you know, we normally don't let her eat this much junk.

Rilynn, Steph, Mom, Me, Claire


The game was great and we won. However, the best part of the evening was when Luke and I bought a thing of fries and ketchup for the girls to share and Steph was holding it for them. Well Claire is a really messy eater and Steph just isn’t used to that since Rilynn is a clean freak who hates to get dirty at all. Claire was really enjoying her fries and was covered in ketchup and Steph really got after her for being so messy and told her that she needed to clean off her face and hands. Claire just stares at Steph during the lecture that she is being given. So what does our little rugrat do next…well, exactly as Steph just told her to do. Claire leans over and wipes her hands and face off...on Steph’s jeans. It was so funny.

What happened to our baby girl??

I took some pictures today and realized that our baby girl no longer looks like a baby. She is a little girl full of personality and determination. We love her so much.



One year ago


Here are a few of our favorite things about our little sweetheart.

When Claire and I walk into Home Depot, she immediately starts looking around and calling for her daddy. I guess she has gone there so much with her daddy that she thinks he is there instead of at work.

She loves doing laundry and will start pounding on the side of the washer until I bring over a chair and a basket full of clothes for her to put in. Then she will sit on the chair and play until the load is done so that she can help me put it into the dryer.

At the grocery store, she thinks the lady behind the counter at the deli is playing peek-a-boo with her when she ducks behind the meat case to get something out.

She loves throwing away her own stinky diapers. In fact, she gets very upset if she doesn’t get to do it.

Every morning before I (Luke) leave for work I give her a bottle and tell her I love her and she waves bye.

Every time Luke and Claire walk in the back door, Claire will have her dad pick her up so she can pull on a chain that hangs there and say “toot, toot”.

When she saw Luke kissing me the other day she said really loudly, “eewww”.

She has a favorite pair of shoes and that is the only pair of shoes that she will wear.....pink and white sneakers. I will get her all dressed up for church with her sandals on and several minutes later she will walk over to me with bare feet and carrying her sneakers for me to put on her.



So this picture doesn't really have to do with anything but I LOVE the shoes. I saw them last night and just had to get them to go with her new dress. Apparently Claire likes them too. She found them earlier today in the shopping bag and brought them over so I could put them on. I love Target and the $8 shoes I got there!! Maybe I will be able to get her to wear somthing other than the pink and white sneakers.

The Happy Campers

So last week we had our annual family campout up at Mirror Lake with my brothers and sisters and their families. We normally have a blast but this year we happened to be there when Utah had record low temperatures. Lets just say we froze!!! And since we have a little girl who absolutely hates being covered up with blankets even when she is cold, we only lasted one night....and most of the night was spent in the truck with the heater on. We stayed the next day waiting for it to warm up and it never did so instead of spending another sleepless night in the truck, we headed home to our nice warm beds. Did we feel guilty about leaving...Yes and No. Yes, because we left before all the family showed up and we missed having fun with them. No, because it was windy and rainy and cold...and after we left we found out that it started hailing and there was frost on the ground the next morning.

Ron spent all day fishing and ended up catching three fish which he fried up for dinner to go along with the yummy dutch oven enchiladas we made.


Here's our happy but cold family right before we came home from Mirror Lake.


Rilynn, Claire, and Ben had lots of fun playing with each other and going on little hikes.


Luke and I didn't last long fishing but we still had fun.



Then earlier this week Luke decided that we needed to make up for our bad camping experience so saturday night we set up the tent in our backyard, made a fire in the fire pit, ate smores, roasted hot dogs (I don't even like hot dogs but I must admit that these tasted good), and had a great time watching movies all night long.
Claire even got to go fishing saturday night...so what if it was in the bathtub. She caught a red fish, a pink fish, and a orange fish.

Notice Claire's lack of clothing....lets just say the weather was alot better.


Mmmmm, look at this yummy smore.

Day at the Zoo

We went to the zoo yesterday. I wish I could say that Claire loved seeing the animals but that would be a lie. She did like looking at the fish, zebras, and monkeys but that is about it. It is funny how she could really care less about most of the animals but she couldn't take her eyes off of a little feather that she saw on the ground. She refused to touch the feather but we couldn't get her to go look at anything else. The other thing that she really liked was watching a girl get her face painted.

The best part of the day was when Claire saw this young girl sitting on the ground in front of a cage trying to take a picture of the animal inside. Claire ran up to this girl, got about a foot away from the camera and says "cheese". Then she did her fake smile. So some girl out there has a picture of Claire because refused to move until the picture was taken. It was so funny!! Why is it that the second I try to take a picture of Claire, she will turn her heard the other direction?
It was a great day!

Yes, that small black thing on the ground is the feather that had Claire so fascinated.




Rilynn and Claire thought the lion drinking fountain was pretty neat too.

Jordan is staying the weekend with us while my mom is out of town. Yesterday he looked at our blog and wondered why we don't have anything about him on it and then later that night he decided he wanted to make a post. So for those of you who know Jordan, you will totally understand what he wrote. We hope you enjoy his post.

Jordan The Runner

Hey everyone! This is Tina’s bro, Jordan, writing to you guys! The pictures you are looking at are pictures of me free running (and grabbing my official Mirror’s Edge Runner Bag). The Symbol on the corner of the bag is the mark in the popular Xbox360/PS3/PC game, Mirror’s Edge.

I have to admit that some of the pictures are a bit strange. But it was Tina that was in charge of the photos. She is still a great photographer, and I am still a great runner (even though I have never tried out for Track or the 5K in my life.)

The pictures of me on the brick wall are also pictures of me balancing while I walk toward the front porch to get my bag. The bag is great for carrying things (important, unimportant, etc.) and also for hikes.

Let me tell you how I got the bag.
To make a long story short, I came into GameStop looking for games. I came across the PC section and asked one of the cashiers if they had Mirror’s Edge for the PC. They had a copy of the game, and after I bought the game, I asked them if they had the official bags from the game, and they gave me a bag for free! THAT, my friends, is how I got the bag.

Well, I’m all out of things to say. Peace out!

Summer Fun

Yesterday I decided to take Claire to the swimming pool. Claire would stand on the edge and then jump in the water and have me catch her. It was really cute. We did that until my arms were tired. After awhile a little boy about two years old was standing next to Claire and his mom was trying to get him to jump in as well. Claire just watched and watched. Well, Claire is not a patient child at all and I think she got tired of waiting for him to jump into the pool. So what does Claire do? Of course she walks behind this little boy and with both hands she shoves this little boy over the edge and into the water. It was really funny and I am glad that the little boy’s mom thought it was too. She was laughing harder than I was.





Here are the pictures that I promised to post of the little playset we made Claire. A few weeks ago my brother asked us to go over to his house and teach him how to make enchiladas. After dinner we headed back home and during the three minutes it takes us to get home we had decided that we wanted to make Claire a playset with a slide. So instead of going home, we headed up to Home Depot and bought everything we thought we would need, went home and put Claire to bed, turned up the music in the garage, and spent the next five hours working on Claire’s playset. Luke and I had so much fun. We would have finished it that night (well at this point it was actually morning) but we had run out of wood and needed to make another trip to Home Depot. Finally we quit working at 2:00 in the morning and finished it over the next few days.

We made a ladder leading up the platform thinking that Claire would be able to use the ladder next year. Boy was I wrong!! Ten minutes later, she had mastered the ladder.

When I am watereing the garden, she will climb up all by herself and then I will hear her yelling “catch”. The silly girl isn’t afraid to climb the ladder but she needs me there to catch her has she goes down the slide. We love watching her play on it and play in the sand box that we put underneath.

113 Bottles of Jam Later...

When I don’t blog for awhile it is usually because nothing interesting has been going on to blog about. But this month so much has been going on that I haven’t had a chance to sit down in front of the computer for very long. So here is a rundown of our month…
1. Built a play set for Claire….I will include pics later since it turned out really nice
2. Luke ran the July 4th 5k while Claire and I cheered him on. We followed that with a parade, playing at the park and a demolition derby down in Delta.
3. Bees Game- My dad gave us tickets and so we all went together. It was the first game that we have been to this year and it was a lot of fun. We didn’t get any pics but going with Claire this year was a totally different experience than it was last year. Last year we held her the entire time and this year she refused to sit still for one second. Claire and Rilynn spent the game eating French fries, fighting over sippy cups, and running back and forth across the row we were sitting on. Luckily we were sitting in an area all by ourselves.
4. Home study – We finally had our home study and will soon be approved to adopt through LDS Family Services. We are really excited!!
5. Clark Family Campout – So we didn’t actually campout. We planned on it but late that night, half the family decided to go home so then we all did. But it was still a lot of fun.


Claire's favorite part of the campout was eating lots of licorice and climbing a hill and sliding down on her bum.

6. At the campout, Luke decides to run in the Farmington Festival Days 5k the next morning with my cousin. So early the next morning (still smelling like campfire and all) we went to the race and Luke did really well.
7. Bees Game – We had Luke’s work party at the Bees Game. This time we left Claire behind so we wouldn’t have to chase her around the entire time. Plus it was our date night so I didn’t feel guilty at all for leaving her behind.
8. Girls Camp – I didn’t get to stay the entire time but I loved every minute that I was there.
9. Draper Days – Luke decided that he wanted to run another race so we went to Draper Days and we spent the day with him running the race, watching the parade, hanging out at the park, and picking up our new couches.
10. Pioneer Day – This is my favorite time in July. Luke did the best he has ever done in the 10k. We got good seats for the parade and then spent the rest of the day at Cherry Hill playing in the water…it’s a tradition we do each year with the extended family.
11. Pioneer Day Pageant – Some of my Young Women participated in the pageant that was held outside behind the seminary building so Luke and I decided to go watch.

And of course it is during the busiest month ever that the apricot tree needs to be picked. My mom and aunt came over and we made 113 bottles of strawberry apricot jam…..Mmmm. So if anyone wants some jam, we have a freezer full of it.