Snap shots of December

Last week we got iced in for 4 days! So we had a long weekend so we played outside a couple times and did some fun Christmas crafts. It was crazy weather, at first I teased Texas for shutting everything down but it's different than Idaho, there was no snow so everything was completely ice so it was way more dangerous so I was humbled this past weekend.ha ha

1. We made a snowman craft. 2. We have had a lot of hot chocolate 3. We made some snow flakes.

4. We made some snow globes(Thomas LOVED the snow globes he carried those things everywhere) 5. Playing around 6. Making paper trees 7. Hanging out around the Christmas tree 8. The Nativity I painted this last year. 9. Thomas playing with his snow globe.

And Oliver being so cute and growing up way too fast.

Also this week Dustin got two caricature gigs and made some good money. So if we can have more of those that will be a nice second source of income. And we are heading to Rexburg in a week! I'm so excited! Anyway, there is a little update on us.

Christmas Card 2013

 The Clark's year in a small review: 

Dustin: Dustin accomplished a lot this past year, he finished his teaching certification the beginning of the year and continued to substitute teach until summer then decided to take the whole family to San Antonio and drew caricatures for the SeaWorld park down there. In the summer he also set up a few job interviews and got an art teaching position with his first interview back in the Dallas area! It was a great blessing to get a job so quick. Now he's teaching art at middle and intermediate school and making a difference to many kids there. He also has been doing caricature gigs on the side along with other art projects.

Jessica: Jessica's work load has doubled this past year. From having one boy to two little boys, while having her illustration and photography career pick up a little more. She was able to take an online art class this year from a PIXAR artist, Louis Gonzales, and learned a lot and continues to draw during her free time. She loves being a mother and having exciting adventures with Thomas and Oliver. She loved San Antonio and being close to SeaWorld but is glad to be back in the Dallas area near family and friends.

Thomas: Thomas is becoming a little artist himself. He loves to draw and paint, and he's pretty good at it. He can draw anything from self portraits to book covers. He loves his little brother, most of the time, and likes to wrestle with him and is his protector so you better not mess with Oliver. He loves super heroes especially Batman and Iron man and likes to pretend to be them. He also loves movies, playing outside, and going to the park. He's a good little helper for Jessica and a great big brother. And he will be a sunbeam next year!

Oliver: Oliver joined our family this past January and has been a great addition. He is one smart cookie and keeps Jessica pretty busy. He gets into everything and will be walking in the next few months or less. He loves waving good-bye and saying "baa baa". He is a little dare-devil and nothing seems to scare him. He's a huge momma's boy but loves to interact with anyone. He loves playing with Thomas but also likes to mess with him, being the smaller one doesn't phase him. It's been fun having him in our family.

We have been greatly blessed this year, and we are excited for new adventures next year.

And we want to wish you all a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

SNOW!

This morning we woke up to this:

I was one happy camper, since I miss having a white Christmas! And the crazy thing is, Wednesday it was 75+ degrees! I didn't think it would last and melt right away so I made the whole family come out to enjoy the fun. We couldn't do much since it was pretty much all ice but Oliver loved it and crawled all over the place and tried eating it too, that funny kid. Thomas liked it until he got cold, he didn't want to wear his gloves and when he finally let us put them on his hands they were already too cold for his comfort. 

What was also great was all the schools were closed so Dustin had the day off! Yeah I thought it was funny that everything was close because of the ice, we aren't in Rexburg that's for sure or school would still be going on, but I can't complain it was great having Dustin home; we stayed inside, watched Christmas movies, and I made cookies, and had hot soup for dinner. 

It was a perfect winter day! 

-And it never melted like I thought so we might head out again tomorrow! Got to enjoy it while it lasts here in Texas.

Gingerbread Houses

A couple of weeks ago, before Thanksgiving actually, we had Emily, Scott, and baby Carter come over for FHE and to come decorate some gingerbread houses! It was a lot of fun, we love hanging out with them.

There house/church turned out better than ours, our excuse was we had a three-year old helping us, ha ha, just kidding I really like ours. Thomas and Oliver had a lot of fun and I hope we do this every year.

Oliver @ 10 Months

This post is way over due, he's more like 10 and a half months now. 

What's new with Oliver:

He's a smart cookie, that's for sure! I pray he's a good teenager or I am in trouble. When he wants to do something, he does it, and he does it perfectly. For example, today I was at my in-laws and they have wood, and pretty steep stairs (we don't have any stairs because we live in an apartment so he's never around stairs) and I was busy doing something and he knew I was occupied and I couldn't stop him, he headed up the stairs and he was half way up there before I caught him, and that is the FIRST time he has even touched the stairs, he's always on the go.  I really think it will be a matter of time before he will try and climb out of the crib. He's cruising every where and he started to take one step to reach to the other furniture, and again, he does it perfectly and doesn't mess up or stumble. Sometimes I will watch him climb something and see how he's going to get down and he always finds a way and does it gracefully like his done it a million times, it's CRAZY!

He also LOVES to wrestle with Thomas, it's sooo fun to watch. But he also knows what buttons to push to annoy Thomas, it's kind of funny...

He loves to sing, he will sing with us in church and he will sing the tunes of some of the soundtracks we listen to in the car, like I can tell which songs he's singing.

He loves to dance, he doesn't do it often but he likes to bounce up and down.

He loves to wave bye and will say, "Ba, ba" and he can say "mommm" and "Daaa" but only if he wants to, and I guess the other day he said grandpa, Dustin's parents and sister heard him, but I wasn't there.

And when he doesn't want to eat his food he will hide it behind him in the high chair, so I think he eat it. So he can be sneaky....

He's a lot of fun, and I love his hugs and kisses, and I love that he's a momma's boy!

Christmas Tree!

I hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving. We had a great one! We took the kids to see Frozen, which I would recommend by the way, then we headed to my uncle's house with my brother and his family and it was great; and I'm pretty sure I have put on some couple of pounds the last two days, but it was totally worth it! I didn't take pictures, for some reason I never have desire to take pictures during Thanksgiving, I tell Dustin is the one holiday I just don't really care to take pictures; maybe because all the chaos before to get the dinner ready, then by than I'm starving that a I don't care about getting a picture of the dinner, then afterwards were all sitting around with our bellies hanging out and not wanting to do anything. Ha ha so no pictures.

Anyway... so I'm one of those people that usually waits till after Thanksgiving to start thinking about Christmas, but this year we kinda broke that rule, and it wasn't my fault, it was Dustin! So last week I got an awesome deal on our Christmas tree $18 at a second hand store, thanks to my mother-in-law-she was the one that found it. And when Dustin saw that we got a tree he wanted to put it together to see it, which led to putting lights on, which got the kids all excited, which led me to getting excited about putting on all the ornaments that I got last year in the clearance section after Christmas so I've never used them and have waited ALL year! So we ended up putting the tree up last Wednesday then waited till the next day to put the ornaments up because it was getting late.

It was so fun to watch the kids get excited about it, and Thomas was very excited to get a Christmas tree in our house and not just look at them at the stores.

While we were putting the lights on I was telling Thomas that the next thing was to put ornaments to make the tree pretty, and I told him that we have ornaments that are trains and airplanes, and next thing I know he was putting all of his toy airplanes and trains, and eventually any toy on the tree, so I don't know if he thought I meant toys or that he was too excited to wait for me to get the real ornaments out! Ha ha silly kid. I got most of his toys out, but we still have Spider-man in there somewhere.

The kids also had a great time playing in the box!

After all the decorating we had home-made hot chocolate and listened to some Christmas music.

Oliver has been pretty good about not messing with the tree he was interested in it the first day before we even had ornaments on, but he couldn't care less which has surprised me, since he likes to get into everything. Thomas leaves it alone unless someone comes over and he wants to show them the tree and moves things around.

Here's the tree and I love it! I feel like the pictures don't do it justice, but I LOVE IT! So I took a lot of pictures of the tree anytime the kids were wearing something cute, and I'm pretty sure I will keep posting pictures of my kids in front of this tree this whole month so that's just a heads up! I also have our entertainment/shelves all decked out cute I just haven't taken pictures yet! Anyway I'm excited for this time of the year it's my favorite, and this year we are heading to Rexburg for Christmas! I'm very excited I haven't had Christmas in Rexburg since 2008 and that was when I was single so it's been way toooooo long!

Snapshots of November

Lately I have lost some motivation to update this blog, so here are some few snap shots of this last month and what we have been up to:

1. Lately it's been really cold but for a while there it was nice cool weather so I would take the boys to the parks a lot, and Oliver loves to swing, and he goes down slides head first all by himself, he's our little dare devil.

2. One of the days in Dustin's school was crazy hair day, so Dustin dyed his hair black, and it was really weird for me to see his hair that dark.

3. Thomas has always been a cautious kid but now he's all over the park and going down slides by himself and climbing all over, it's been fun to see him.

4. There was a grand opening of a McDonald's in a small town near us so we decided to go there with Dustin's family and they had a face painter so the boys got their faces painted, Thomas was very excited about his Batman face and that was him being all serious and batman-like, what a funny kid.

5.Then this last few weeks has been so BEAUTIFUL here in Texas I couldn't get over how beautiful everything was I just wanted to take pictures all day.

Anyway, just a few updates, we are excited about Thanksgiving this coming week, but we couldn't help but put our Christmas tree up this last week... so pictures soon!

Thomas @ Three

Thomas at Three:

Favorite color is blue

Favorite super hero (at least the last few months): Batman

Favorite food: Pizza, Mac-n-cheese

Favorite Dessert: Vanilla Ice Cream 

Favorite toy: His LEGO batman and his batman car

Favorite activities: Loves to draw, paint, running around, going to parks, and playing with kids his age.

Some things he is grateful for (we have been doing a thankful tree this year): Daddy is #1 every time, mommy, Oliver, nursery, church, birthdays, batman cake, lego batman, Thomas S. Monson, daddy's work,  and Harry Potter.

 Measurements: I think he weighs 28 lbs , he was in the 25th percentile and 95th on height so he's really tall. 

Thomas for the most part is really sweet boy and you better not mess with his little brother, Oliver, or he will pretend to shoot an Iron man beam at you. He's always been a little eater till the last month he eats a lot and seems to always be hungry. He eats 2 bowls of cereal in the morning, and eats pretty good size lunch, like half a box of Mac-n-cheese, and eats a couple snacks a day, like an apple or bread or whatever I have in the house, then eats whatever we are eating at dinner time, so if you've been around Thomas at all you know that's a pretty big deal since he used to eat almost nothing, so I'm glad he has a bigger appetite now and I hope it keeps up.

He loves watching movies and if he has the remote he loves to pause it every second and look at the image and "analyze" it, it can be annoying but if I'm doing something else I let him do it. Dustin and I wonder if one day he will be a story-board artist. He loves listening to soundtracks with me in the house and in the car. His favorite is Batman Begins by far but he likes Harry Potter, Pirates of the Caribbean, Star Wars, Superman and he can sing the tunes to most of those songs.

He's really fun to be around and I love our little conversations we have in the car, I love seeing him learn a new word or concept and applying it in his life. I don't know how many letters or numbers he knows because he doesn't like me to quiz him but if he wants to he will say the letters but right now he's not that interested, I feel like he knew more the letters last year than now but than again he surprises me when he spells out things.

He is such a fun kid and I can't believe he's Three!

So I took these pictures the other day, one time in the morning but it was cold so we weren't out long, then that afternoon, and he insisted that he wore the Superman cape, so there you have it!