Thursday, September 30, 2010

Taking 3 month pics

With my baby being 3 months old I wanted to try to get a more professional looking photo of him. I don't know that I love any of the shots, but they are ok. I may try again next week. It is a fun experience to take pictures. I just wish Clark was more smiley. I'm trying to get the perfect smile picture... it could be a few months before that happens though. Maybe if I didn't try to do it alone I would be more successful ;). Well, here they are...


Getting so big... Love the overalls :)

The best smile shot. Mhari is in the background... not quite what I was going for.


This is my favorite thus far. I just wish the smile one turned out better. Oh, and he looks a bit cross eyed... hmmm.

I guess you can't really go wrong with sleeping pictures. He really is so peaceful when he sleeps.

Here's the full length shot. So handsome ;)

Honestly, I can't think of much going on right now to blog about. I guess Mhari has been potty training so that's been exciting. She finally has figured it out and only has occasional accidents, Hallelujah! I can't say that there would be any appropriate pictures to share of this latest accomplishment though :). October is almost here and that will be a busy exciting month :)!!

Thursday, September 23, 2010

Clark Bar :)

Well, this isn't exactly what I mean.... but they are yummy and chewy too! (this is partly for Jeff who didn't know what a Clark Bar was :)).
One of our friends likes to nickname kids... let's just say she found a name for our sweet baby boy :).

He's still "baby" to us though. I can't believe he's 3 months old already! Time really does fly. He'll be all over the house before I know it. He's a sweet baby and pretty content in general. The only times he fusses is if he's tired, or hungry - see, pretty easy :).

Our little baby is just growing so fast. I weighed and measured him yesterday and according to my measurements he's 17 lbs and 26 inches long! Seriously so big! We'll get official measurements for his 4 month check up, but until then I think I'm pretty accurate ;).

Here's some photos to enjoy of our little baby Clark.

He is in 6-9 month clothes now. His shirt is so cute... baby shark!
He kind of reminds me of Grant as baby.





We just love those cheeks! He makes the funniest faces with his mouth and tongue too!

Tummy time. He can hold himself up pretty good for a few minutes now :).

His new favorite activity... sucking his thumb (or finger). I have a feeling this will be something that doesn't go away for a while.


He's too cute :)

It's been fun to have a little one around again. He's a good cuddler and starting to sleep really well at night too. All the kids just love him too! We love you Clark!

Sunday, September 19, 2010

Rough Days

How bad was Wednesday??? I have been trying to make it on my older pair of tires until after the Feburary Bar exam. Needless to say that did not happen. Three weeks ago my front tire went almost totally flat at school. I had no desire to change the tire. It was not completely flat yet so I drove the 12 miles home on the freeway. Next day got tires (cheap)... My back two tires were still in good shape. Surely they would last. Nope. Wednesday morning the car felt a little odd while taking Chica to school. I guessed it was a tire but continued on determined to get Chica to school on time. After having a low tire, a completely flat tire, ripping off my hub cap, and then extreme shaking in the car I finally stopped 100 yards shy from the school. Chica was only 5 minutes late to school. I then had to get two more tires (cheap)

Same day...driving home from the church in Gus to help Sharla clean out the Primary cabinets I seemed to have entered the garage quicker than normal and did not stop in time. The "animal killer" front end pushed a car ramp through the wall. It is about 1 foot wide and 2 feet tall. Below is the damage. It was such a great day I almost did not tempt fate and go to school...but I did.


Friday and Saturday was spent replacing my neigbor's fence. He bought the material and so far I have provided the labor. It can't be that hard, besides I got to wear my hat. Follow the progression of the pictures to see how it went.
Starting out. Small hole. Seeing how bad this might be.

Not too bad yet. Whip out the post hole digger looking to make some progress.

Ran into some old concrete from a previous post and had to use the sledge and chisel. I can deal with that. Going good so far. That is until I find the mother of all rocks at the bottom of the hole. It was a monster. What now???

Call the greatest home teacher, who happens also to have a jack hammer and ask to use it. Every man has his limits. I hit my limits when I know there is a jack hammer available. Grant decided to use my tools while I used the jack hammer. Good helper.

First stab at the monster rock. Chica jumps in to help spread out my nice pile of dirt.

Getting deaper....

One bag of concrete and 15 hours later (had to wait for the concrete to dry) I have a new fence. It is nice to have it completed again.

P.S. - I have determined every man needs a jack hammer. That and an amazing home teacher!
Jeff

Arkansas - Crater of Diamonds

The last adventure from the trip in Arkansas. We stopped off at Crater of Diamonds state park to dig for Diamonds. Supposedly they have found some good size diamonds here over the years. It is the 8th largets diamond reserve in the world. You pay to get in and then walk to the plowed field. Some people are quite serious about searching. We were not. We had plastic shovels and buckets from Walmart. They don't dig in the hard dirt so well.

Us staking out our territory for digging.

Talmage alone digging in the dirt with a real tool. Someone left a small pick by the sign so he picked it up and began to use it. Wow what a difference. $1 tools from Walmart were wearing out fast. Good job Talmage. I just hope the owner did not look for it while we used it.

Wee Chica...she did all sorts of things but I can't remember of anything helpful. She would wander some, play some more, and want better tools. She helped Punkin some by filling my sifter with dirt.

I showed Grant how to dig in the dirt with a rock...more effective for sure. He like to dig holes but did not sift for rocks too much.

Wee Punkin playing. She would fill my cheap sifting shovel continuously. It made sifting more difficult but she had fun.

We stayed for only 30-45 minutes and this is what we ended up with. Grant found the bigger white looking thing. I then added whatever else did not look like dirt. Despite our hopes and prayers of finding a huge diamond to make life more financially bearable (student loans and no job yet) we found nothing valuable. Maybe next time?

Jeff

Sunday, September 12, 2010

Walking in AR

While we were in AR we went on an evening walk on the "Big Dam Bridge" that goes across the Arkansas river. It is a great walking path that goes over the whole river and across the dam. Here is a picture of the edge of the bridge overlooking the dam.


This one's a little blurry... Jeff and uncle John walking ahead of us on the bridge.

The awesome sunset while we were walking.
Our family :)


Little Clark was being a cutie! He likes stroller rides :).



Sunday afternoon we went back down by the river and walked by the woods. We took a little path through the woods and ended up on a long detour. It was a good walk and the kids did really well on it. They enjoyed seeing all the great nature!
Here's a picture of aunt Nancy with Talmage, Grant, Sandra, Mhari, and Oscar.

What it felt like walking through the forest.

Mhari loved to walk Oscar. She did a great job too - bossy enough to get the dog not to drag her away (unlike Sandra, who was a bit too nice and Oscar would get away from her).

One of the pictures of the great greenery. Those leaves on that viney plant were bigger than the kids heads! Crazy!


A little overlook to a side river.

The view down the little river.

We really enjoyed the walks we took in Little Rock. It was great to be out in nature and enjoy the scenery!

Friday, September 10, 2010

Queen Arkansas

As part of our time in Arkansas we took a boat ride on the Queen Arkansas. It used to be a steam paddle boat, however it is now powered by 2 diesel engines. It moved really slow, but was fun to ride down the Arkansas river.


The kids liked to go to the front of the boat. I think they liked looking down to the water. By the end of the trip they discovered the back of the boat with the paddle wheel. They really enjoyed exploring the boat. A crew member did tell us that they were climbing where they weren't supposed to, so other than that it was a fun time.
Here is Mhari. She liked to explore too, but didn't venture quite so far away from us.


During the instructions from the captain he told them he was going to blow the loud horn in a few minutes and that people should cover their ears. The kids were listening and covered their ears right away. It was cute.

Here is Jeff with Mhari and uncle John with Sandra.
It was a long boat ride - almost 2 hours actually. The river was cool to see, but man sitting on the top of the boat got hot and we ended up with sunburns! By "we" I mean Jeff and I as you can see in our Family photo on the top of the blog. The deck that was shaded was reserved for a private party so we were stuck in the sun the whole time. It was definitely something different to do and hopefully the kids will remember riding on the boat for a while!

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

Welcome to Arkansas!

For the holiday weekend our little family took a quick vacation to Little Rock, Arkansas. Jeff's aunt and uncle (Nancy and John) live there so it made it nice to go and stay with them and spend time with family. We had a great time and the kids especially enjoyed themselves! It was nice to go on a trip where we didn't have to drive over 15 hours just to get to our destination! I must say Arkansas is very pretty! I guess we came when the weather had just turned nice again - yay for awesome weather!

Here is John and Nancy's house. We just loved it!

Here is the view from the front balcony.
Here is the view from the backyard looking back up to the house. They had amazing trees and plants! The kids loved all the nature!


Here are the kids enjoying the awesome stuff John and Nancy had for them to do. The boys got out the dog monopoly game and they also found Lego's, and lots of beanie babies!

The girls had baby dolls to play with and dress up! They just loved them!

Here are the kids in the backyard on the bench swing. The "forest" is behind them to the right. Grant especially loved exploring in the forest. The only problem with that is they have lots of poison ivy... I'm just glad Grant didn't find any! We didn't let him play in the forest after we heard about the poison ivy.

Here are the kids on the swing on the upstairs balcony. This was one of their favorite places to play!

Mostly they played there with their new beanie babies :). They lined them all up so nicely.

Here is Mhari trying to reach the kids on the upstairs balcony. It's a long way to reach little Punkin!
One of the other things the kids just loved was their dog, Oscar! He was so cute and fun. The kids sure had fun wearing him out!

Here is Mhari giving Clark a kiss. Just couldn't pass up sharing a cute baby picture. This was after church on Sunday.

Mhari really loved Oscar!

Daddy and Grant :)

Daddy and Talmage playing dog monopoly Sunday afternoon. Let's just say that Talmage did really well :).

That's just a taste of the fun times we had. I will be doing more posts to add about some of the other stuff we did. Thanks a ton to John and Nancy for letting our family come and stay! It was great to get away for a few days!