Black Friday

Today I attended my very first black-circles-under-my-eyes. You may know it as "Black Friday".

Darren and Dad picked me up at 4:30am. I knew there was a 4:30pm, but until today, I didn't know the "am" existed. I thought it was an old wives tale.

We went to Best Buy, dropped Darren off at the end of the line, which was something like a mile away from the entrance. Then Dad and I went to Sam's club. We thought for sure Darren was going to be a few hours, but we were surprised to see him walking to Sam's Club with big ol' boxes under his arms like 20 minutes later. Who would have thought, but Darren is quite the power shopper! ha ha ha!

Then we headed to Shopko to get my dad some nuts. Wait, that sounds weird....but it's true. On Thanksgiving Day my dad yelled out "I want those nuts!" and pointed to the Shopko ad. They had a three pack of peanuts for $3.99. My dad was convinced it was an amazing deal. So, off to Shopko we went. By this time it was a little after 5am. We got to Shopko, found dad's nuts (again, that sounds weird), and he said to Darren and I "Here, you guys go stand in line, I'm going to look around a bit" OH sure, give the rookie's the crappy job. Well, Darren and I walked all the way to the BACK of the store, thinking that was the end of the line. We were wrong, excruciatingly, painfully, wrong. The dang line wound around the entire perimiter of the inside of the store. The line ENDED at the cash registers, in the bad way....it was like a bad nightmare, but in reverse. Does that make any sense? So, Darren hands me the nuts he was holding and goes to find dad to tell him he's crazy. So now I look like the idiot holding four 3-pack cans of nuts, in a huge line of serious shoppers. I can't imagine how pathetic people thought I was. Then Darren came back and yelled "Dad says he doesn't need nuts". Well, some people live fine without them I guess.....

Anyways-----a few more stores, a long wait at IHOP (we watched the sun rise while waiting for our pancakes) and then a few stores after that, and I was home. It was 10am and I'd been up for 6 hours. I keep thinking my mascara is smeared, but I really think I just have bags under my eyes. We laughed a lot, got annoyed at bossy shoppers, and laughed some more. Overall, it was fun!

Now that it is officially the Christmas season, I figured we should get rid of all our pumpkins on our lawn. But, to just throw them away is so boring. I wanted to end the fall holidays with a bang. So I told Sam to haul the pumpkins up to the roof and throw them into the garbage can, which was on the street, and see if he could make some baskets. Our friends, Davis and Holly, came for the show. Very fun, I think I'm going to make it a tradition.





Sweet action sequence. I'm loving my new camera.









Tonight we had a Sweet Family gathering to assemble care packages for Sam's brother Rod, who is serving in the army, in Afghanistan. The packages were actually for Rod's entire unit. Let me tell you, when you ask the Sweet family to contribute towards a good cause, they go the extra mile for sure! Thanks to Fern for hosting the chaos, and thanks to Audrey and Jeremy for organizing the entire event, it was a blast!







Phew, I'm tired. Peace out.

3 Trips To The Store...Happy Thanksgiving!

It's become quite the tradition to do lots of cooking Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, so that things are less stressful on Thanksgiving day. This year was the Clark year, meaning we had Thanksgiving with my side of the fam. I was very prepared and had gone grocery shopping a week ago so I would be able to avoid the stores this close to Thanksgiving.

My brother Darren and his family were staying at my parents house so last night my mom, dad, Darren, Susan, Sam, and I all congregated in the kitchen to go over our "to do" lists. The first thing that needed to be done was clean up the kitchen from the dinner we just inhaled. So, amongst the cleaning, a big pot of sloppy joes went out to my parents patio table since there was no room in the fridge.

Everyone was jovial and happy, see?


The first item of business was the brining solution for the turkey. A big ol' vat of brining solution was made, boiled, and then set outside on the same patio table to cool so we could brine the turkey in it later that night.

We were a little worried that the turkey was getting too warm, so it was also sent out to the table.

Next on the list? Hmmmmm, well, Darren pouted a little and convinced my mom to make her scrumptious apple pie. So pie making we went. I decided that my mom should teach me how to make her pie crust so here she is giving me lessons. I guess I wasn't doing a very good job, judging by the look on her face. Ah well, practice makes perfect!


While we were in the middle of finishing the pie, we heard this huge CRASH!!!!!!!! The first thing we thought of was some dogs had gotten into my parents backyard and were eating the turkey! We ran outside, to find this:


Oh yeah, did you know you aren't supposed to place boiling hot pots of brine onto a really cold, glass table top? Well, consider yourself educated.

What a mess. The sloppy joes were thrown away, the turkey was still in its packaging so were were okay there. The brine....well, we strained it...


Yeah, that's glass. We strained it twice and got the glass out, but in the back of our minds we couldn't help but worry about the possibility of swalling some glass with our turkey dinner. So, off to the store we went to buy all new brining ingredients. Of course we had to go to two different stores because the first store was out of Vegetable Stock.

By the time we got the new brine going, it was close to 10pm and I still had two chocolate pies, yes you read right, TWO (much to Darren's disappointment) to make and a sweet potatoe casserole to put together. Darren then decided he wanted to make sugar cream pie. He made the pie while I started putting all my stuff together. Pretty soon smoke was pouring from my parents oven. We look inside and all the sugar cream had bubbled out of the pie crust and into the pan underneath. Classic.


We realized the Darren's pie crust wasn't deep enough. So we went back to the store, for the third time, to buy some deep dish frozen pie crusts and more ingredients for another sugar cream pie. Of course, we had to go to two stores to find everything we needed... Oh my. I went to bed at midnight, totally exhausted!

The nice thing about my family though, is we were laughing our guts out the whole time. It's like one big tragedy after another, but that's okay, it makes the experience better. So on this Thanksgiving Day, I have to say that I'm so grateful for my family. We don't fight or bicker or hold grudges. We love to be together as often as possible. The only thing that would have made this day better would be if my brother Mike, and his family, could have been here. One day!

Today I woke up on a mission. I had some rolls to make! I baked up a huge ol' basket of rolls for dinner today and leftover sandwiches. Yummers!


Once at my parents, I found out their turkey roaster had died (they were doing the ham in the roaster) so my parents got creative and did the ham on the grill. It was so good!


Dinner was amazing, Darren got a picture of all the food, hopefully he'll blog it soon because everything was definitely grubbin!

Here are some shots of the day:





Tomorrow morning I'm going along for the ride with my Dad and Darren for "Black Friday" Apparently they are picking me up at 4:30am. This could be my first and last experience with Black Friday. Not much of an angry mob/crowd type of person. Tonight Michael's opened their doors at 6pm so a few of us went and there was a huge line out the door when we got there. I asked Susan if this is what it's like on Black Friday and she laughed and said "it's lots worse on Black Friday" Good times.

Go UTES!!

If you are a Utah Utes fan, you are a happy camper tonight.




If you are me, you're just happy you got to hang out with some good friends tonight! I didn't get pictures of my friends, but I got pictures of some of the cute kids!

Jacee loves her gogurt! Check out those gorgeous eyes!


And here is sweet Jane. Jane, you can step on Cameron any time you'd like. It's good for his stomach muscles! ha ha ha!


Chad and Jill, I hope you aren't too frazzled after the rambunctious evening! Thanks for being awesome hosts, we love and miss you guys!!!

Not A Lot

Every day I'm mad because I haven't updated my blog, but there's not a lot to blog about....Oh wait, I get annoyed when people say that. There's always something going on!

First of all, what do you think is going on in this picture?


I had a helmet adjustment appointment this week for Cameron. His head is totally rounding out in the back. It's amazing to watch! I totally wish I would have been documenting it, week by week, from beginning to end. Then I'd put the pictures in a cool video where it flips from one picture to the next really fast. Wouldn't that be freaky to watch his ears re-align and his head round out? Freaky Deaky.



He is such a fun baby. He sleeps great, he eats like a horse (duh, just LOOK at him!), and he has no desire to crawl or do anything. I shouldn't complain, at least he's not into everything. He just like to sit by his brothers and hang out, it's his favorite thing to do.


The trampoline we have is from Sam's boss. It was her trampoline when she was a kid. It's totally thrashed so when the kids were jumping on it and and pretty much hit the ground, we weren't surprised. However, it DOES surprise me that they still like to jump on it. I know, I know, it's an accident waiting to happen...an accident that may involve stitches, but who am I to withhold such great memorable childhood experiences?

Here is Parker showing off the nice hole.





Remember the picture at the beginning of this post? Did you think Parker was crying or pitching a fit? You're wrong, he was sneezing. We had just raked the leaves in my backyard and we were sitting on the grass. All of a sudden Parker had a fit of several sneezes. I caught 3 in action. The one above and these two:



I keep laughing at these pictures. He's so funny!

Parker, I'm laughing WITH you, not AT you! Sheesh....


Now, just so Carson isn't left out...


Tonight Sam was at the store with the kids. As he was leaving, he thought he'd give the kids a thrill by running with the shopping cart. Cameron was protected with his helmet and his carseat. Parker was semi-protected sitting in the cart. Carson was hanging on the side. At one point Carson decided the ride was going too fast and hopped off, at full speed. Needless to say he ended up on his belly in the parking lot. Sam looked down, smiled, and without real concern in his voice asked him if he was okay. Carson stood up, didn't say a word, and headed to his seat in the van where he waited patiently to go home. Sam said he heard his palms SLAP on the pavement, but Carson was too proud to say anything.

Lesson learned? Yeah right. Is it too early to be scared about my kids being behind a steering wheel?

Catching Up

I just have a bunch of random pictures and odds and ends to catch up on so here we go.

I've been a bit frazzled with work lately. Friday morning my alarm woke me up and I noticed Sam was still sleeping, which is bad. He is usually gone before I wake up. I shook his shoulder and exclaimed "You missed your bus!". He said "no I didn't, I took the day off." I couldn't believe he surprised me like that! It was wonderful because he totally took care of the kids all day so I could just focus on work. What a great husband!

He took Parker and Cameron to the park and got a few shots:

I guess it was a little chilly....


My favorite picture, so typical! Apparently Sam wanted him to drop 2 feet to the ground and Parker had other ideas.


Artsy


I've been meaning to blog a few items Carson has come home from school with for the past month and I just kept forgetting! So, without any further ado...

This page was full of "Problem" and "Solution" puzzle pieces. This is how far Carson got:

Problem: "William wants to fly, but he can't"


Solution: "Climbed a tree, happy about his plan."


Problem: "Sad and bored, William got laughed at."


Solution: um, well, I guess once you are in a tree, bored, and being laughed at, you are at a dead end my friend. No solution for you!


Here's another gem. Carson brought his spelling test home this past week.

Don't you just hate it when you forget the "r" in 'shirt'?


I wonder what his teacher thought?

Sam likes to freeze Parker's toys in water sometimes. No rhyme or reason as to why, but it always makes me laugh. The other day he froze Parker's Ben 10 toy, 'echo echo'. It was sweet.



On Friday night Sam and I went to Tepanyaki with some long-time friends. It was so much fun, thanks to everyone who came and played! Let's do it again soon!


This here is Natalie. Natalie and her husband set Sam and I up on our first AND second blind date. Good thing they kept trying! I remember on our second blind date (long story), Sam was like 4 hours late because he ran out of gas. Natalie's husband, Neal, looked at me and said "This is quite normal for Sam. If you can't handle it, run away now." 10+ years later, I'm glad I didn't run!



I have some awesome pictures of everyone catching shrimp in their mouths, but because I want my friends to STAY my friends, I won't post them.

I've been having some fun with the picnik website:





Have a great week!