Opinion?

The other day I asked Dustin who he thought was the most romantic couple in literature or in history? (Besides us of course ;) )

And now I'm asking you, who do you think is the most romantic couple?

I'm a sucker for a good romantic story, so I'm a big fan of Jane Austen and since I have been reading some old classics I have read some pretty good romances that are hard to beat. 

Well, to be honest I can't remember what Dustin said, I'm not sure if he even gave me answer,  I think it became more of a discussion since, thanks to me, he knows a lot of the romantic stories, that we could actually talk about some of them together; he is good man for watching all these movies with me.

As for me? I honestly have hard time picking just one, but my first two that popped in my head was Jane Eyre and Mr. Rochester or Emma and Joseph Smith. 

 Last year  I read Jane Eyre and LOVED it, if you haven't read it you are missing out!

I really felt the characters were interesting and dynamic and felt more real than most characters in literature. I won't say any more because I don't want to spoil it for people who haven't read it, but it's probably my favorite book.

Then Emma's and Joseph's story has always melted my heart. Their marriage was far from easy and  not always glorious, but they were together through the thick and thin. I can't imagine what Emma went through with having child after child dying and seeing your husband get tarred and feathered and later killed.  I really fell like they had a good marriage and Joseph became a great prophet that he was because of Emma being by his side.

Anyway I would like to know who you think is the most romantic couple, and why?

Some other couples we talked about were:

Anne Shirley and Gilbert Blythe (Anne of Green Gables)

Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcey (Pride and Prejudice)

Emma and Mr Knightly (Emma)

Heathcliff and Cathy Earnshaw (Wuthering Heights) 

Margarete and Scarlett Pimpernel (Scarlett Pimpernel) 

And the painting on top I just did for fun, as I have mentioned before I've been working on my painting skills. 

Excercises

I feel like the last little bit  I haven't anything to blog about. Since we have been traveling so much I guess I just forgotten how to blog a normal day, and it doesn't help that nothing exciting has happened to the Clark family. 

Dustin is in the process of looking and applying for jobs, so he's been pretty busy doing that, and next week I start  private art lessons for a 11 year-old girl which I'm very excited about! I will be getting $25 a lesson! So now if I could get a few more students, I could make some money. I was nervous to tell them that price but Dustin said that's how much it should be and they can always tell me that's too much, so I told them that price and they said it was perfect! 

The other day I realized I needed to recharge with my art, I feel like I'm in a rut , and that I have been in this rut for couple of years now. So I decided to do some art exercises to help me recharge a little and do something fun. So I realize I take tooooooooo long in my painting. Drawing, I can do super fast and comes more natural to me, while painting has always been where I feel like I get stuck, and I really think my painting skills is what's making me not be the level I need to be as a professional artist. So late last night (because I couldn't fall asleep) I decided to just paint, and I made some rules for myself to push me. 1. I couldn't "draw" before I painted, I had to just start painting, and start very basic and just look at shapes, and than I could go more into detail later if I had time. 2. And that I had to do it for 20 minutes.

My focus was to do it more painterly, which means brush strokes, and looser which is something that doesn't come natural to me because I want to focus on detail too much which sometimes isn't the best thing, sometimes less is more. Also I made myself only have 20 minutes so it did force me to paint FASTER, which is something I need to work on.  

So this was my first painting, I did it 20 minutes, and I liked it for the most part, hate the hand, but my 20 minutes were up. 

This one,again, 20 minutes, I was focusing on shadows, and using sharp and soft edges to communicate form. (Sorry if this is art lingo) Also I'm excited for the next Batman movie to come out.

Than this one, I like the least, I got caught up in drawing and details too early that I made things worse, and Harry looks bad. This one was done 20 minutes as well.

And this is just a drawing because I was taking a break from painting. 

Anyway, not the most exciting post, but O well. Just letting you know I'm alive (more for my mom) and hopefully Thomas and I will finally get over our colds so we can be more exciting!

Emily and Scott Visit!

This last week Dustin's sister, Emily, and her husband, Scott came to visit. They came last year as well, that they had such a fun time that they had to come down again!

So of course we had to hit some major theme parks right???

So this last Wednesday we headed to Universal's Island's Adventure:

The Tower at the entrance:

Waiting in long lines, Thomas was a trouper, he waited at all the lines but didn't get to ride one single roller-coaster{ in a few more years little man}. At Universal they have this thing where they have child swap so you can all wait in line at the same time, than right before you get on the ride part of the party goes in a room with the child and waits till the other people go on the ride, than you switch, I love this feature because you only have to wait in line all together once, instead waiting in line twice separate times, makes it go by a lot quicker.

Love Thomas' long, wavy. blonde hair? 

The first place we hit of course, was Harry Potter World and drank a lot of Butterbeer. Dustin and I have found a good spot to get it. If you go through Hogshead instead of outside barrels, the line is WAY quicker and it's a fresher batch of Butterbeer (which makes a huge difference) so heads up if you ever go. 

Every Flavor Bott's Beans at Honeydukes:

After riding all the Marvel roller-coasters like the Incredible Hulk we were all in the mood to watch Avengers in the theaters that night, so that's what we did! I liked the movie a lot, but it wasn't the best movie ever made like every one on Facebook said. 

Than Thursday we headed to SeaWorld, and Scott and Emily were kind enough to take some pictures of us while we were there, we just got a few because Dustin had to go to work right after we got there. 

Than this last weekend I was planning on going down to the Keys with Scott and Emily, but Thomas had just had it with traveling and not having a normal schedule this last month that recently he's been more grumpy and waking up at nights, and both of us have this nasty cold that has worn us out that we decided to stay here, which I was very bummed about, but it turned out to be a good thing because this last weekend I also think I caught a 24-hour bug, so we would have just been miserable down there, so it was a good thing we didn't go. Maybe next time!

So we have been just chilling here this weekend and Emily and Scott are coming back today from the Keys and leaving tomorrow so we will miss them but we've had so much fun having them here. 

Being away from both of our families we LOVE having visitors!

So any visitors are always welcomed! 

Update on Thomas

I know I have used this picture already, but sadly to say I haven't taken any pictures since Dallas, so I decided to use Thomas' 18 months pictures.

Last week we had Thomas' 18 month check up (technically he's 19 months but we had been gone all month) and he grew a lot, height wise, since his last visit. He is now 35", they say Thomas is going be around 6 feet! I thought they were joking because dustin and I are on the short side so I was thinking our kids had no change being over 5'7". The general rule, but not always, a kid reaches half their height at 2 years, and if Thomas just only grows an inch in the next 5 months, he will be 3 feet, which means half of 6 feet! So we actually will have a tall kid.
So Thomas is tall, but still skinny, skinny. He only weighs a little over 22 lbs, I'm always worried what the doctor will say, but he keeps gaining weight so they think he's fine. He not really a big eater, and he never wants to stop to eat, he's always on the move.

Also this last week Thomas got his first kiss, O boy, I am in trouble. We went to a birthday party this week and he had two older girls holding each hand walking around and he had the biggest smile in his face, he really is a big flirt; he also sat by them for pictures and eating cake, like he picked that spot I didn't influence him.  Than with a different little girl they gave each other a kiss right on the lips, it was pretty cute I must say, wished I had the camera.

It looks like we are going to have a tall ladies' man in our hands.

Recovering

It's been a week since our trips and I feel like Thomas and I are still recovering. We both have been not feeling so great. Poor Thomas has had a fever, and a nasty cough, poor kid. So we have been hanging out in our apartment watching movies. Thomas' favorite movie that we have been watching a lot of, is Penelope. We also been watching a lot of musicals because Thomas is a big fan of music.  It's been fun taking it easy, but I am ready to get our energy back, and we will need it soon, because Dustin's sister, Emily, and her husband, Scott, are coming to town this Sunday; so that means theme parks, beach, and the Keys.
So maybe we will stick to hanging out our apartment a few more days, so he have a lot of energy for next week.

Dallas Trip

As I have mentioned before I'm back from visiting my brother and his family in Texas. Also I got to meet up with my parents there, so it was even more fun. There was a lot of talking, hanging out, and eating good food. It was sad to say goodbye but I also missed Dustin so I'm glad we are home again. 

One of my favorite things that we did was go to the Dallas Arboretum and they were featuring Chihuly's sculptures for the next few months. I was excited to see his work since I studied him a little in college, and WOW his work was AMAZING! My pictures don't give it justice, and I'm only showing maybe half his work on this blog, they were everywhere and they work so well around it's surroundings that the sculptures felt like they were part of nature, it was incredible, and most of them were huge. 

My parents with the grandkids.

This boat one was my favorite out of all of them, hence all the pictures. 

Thomas happy to find a puddle to jump in. 

Also in the Arboretum, they had these little houses that represent artists, this one is Seurat:

Van Gogh's:

And Monet's, which was my favorite, they also had Picasso's and O'Keeffe's. 

Also they had a Western section:

Than for Memorial Day we went to the lake to swim and have hamburgers and hotdogs. I didn't bring my swimming suit so I didn't get in the water, which I was ok with since I'm a pansy when the water is even slightly cold. So my brother Michael was a good sport and took Thomas out on the boat with his cousin Leah, I think he liked it, even when his face doesn't show it.

I had a lot of fun and I was glad to see my family since I haven't seen brother since I was 7 weeks pregnant with Thomas and I haven't seen Trixie, my sis-in-law since I was engaged, so it was a must needed trip.