New TV, Temple Square and...Temple Square!

Due to the unseasonable slowness here at work, I am terribly bored. Then, I figured, updating our blog would be the perfect remedy to cure my boredness! So, off we go!

1) As a Christmas present to ourselves, we had planned on going Black Friday shopping for a new TV. Well, long story short, that didn't work out, so we were a little bummed...until our friends the Flanagans (Brady & Amanda) posted that they were buying a new TV for Black Friday, and were selling their old one for a mere $120. We jumped at the offer and got us a shiny, new/used flat screen TV for the best deal in the world! Thanks, the Flanagans!

They weren't able to find the stand to mount the TV onto a table, so we were left to find a solution to that ourselves. We went to Walmart with Mom C. but all of their wall mounts cost upwards of $100. We quickly said "Heck no!" and went back to Mom's condo to do some online shopping. Luckily for us, we found a fantastic deal on a wall mount on Amazon for only $30. We used my brother Brad's Amazon Prime account and got next day shipping for only $4. A few days later, we had our TV mounted to our wall (with some help from Dad P.) and are enjoying the heck out of it!

Oh, and we sold our old Moby-Dick-of-a-TV on KSL for $15. Not the best, but moolah is moolah...and it bought us some $5 Hot and Ready pizza for dinner last weekend!

We went from this...

...to this! Not bad, eh?

2) The Logan Clarks were in town the same weekend that we bought the TV for post-Thanksgiving/pre-Aubree's birthday celebrating. We got family pictures done on Friday (by Faith's sister, Juli...they look great!) and that evening we went out to eat at Sweet Tomatoes for Aubree's birthday. (Incidentally, her birthday is today...Happy Birthday, Aubree!) After that delicious excursion, we went to Temple Square to take in the Christmas lights. Stunning, as always. It was baby Aveline's first time seeing the lights; she was mesmerized by it all, and we were all mesmerized by her being mesmerized by it all. Good times!

Baby Aveline bundled up for the cold

The guy in the center was in Saints and Soldiers...Name's Corbin Allred. He played Deacon.

Of course, you know this strapping couple. I hope.

3) A week after our Clark Temple Square trip, we went again, this time with the Peterson clan. Before we went to Salt Lake we had a delicious turkey dinner. We all bundled up and headed out first to the Grand America to take in some window displays. It was mostly a kid-pleaser, as the series of 18 windows followed a story about this...penguin(?)...trying to find a star (the gaseous kind from the sky) that got lost in the Grand America. As a spectator, you're given a card to fill out before entering the 'exhibit,' where you put which clues to find the star went to the corresponding pictures. If that makes sense. Anyway, once you fill it out, you get a free cookie from the Grand's pâtisserie, La Bonne Vie. It was very délicieux!

Cookies! Nomnomnom!

After our trip to the Grand America, we hopped on Trax and headed over to Temple Square. I don't have as many pictures from this trip, as we went last year, but we did visit the Christus, as Faith's brother Tyler wanted to show his kids the famous statue. Unfortunately, the only good shot of the kids actually looking at the statue was little Jade...sorry, AnnTy! But it was a good experience anyway, and we felt the spirit. That's all we could have hoped for.

When asked who the statue was of, Jade replied "Jesus Christ." Pretty good.

It was a super fun night with super fun people. We look forward to doing the Temple Square lights thing again next year...probably twice! Maybe even thrice, since our little boy will be old enough to ogle the lights! Speaking of which...

4) We have officially named our baby. His name will be Nicolas Jacob Clark. The only family name is his middle name, of course. Nicolas just sorta came out of the blue but made the most sense to us.

Phew! That's about it. Hopefully we've whetted appetites for the time being, because...who knows when this'll get updated again?

Actually, Faith is done with school (like...done. Graduating. Yahoo!) at the end of next week, so maybe she'll have the ability to update more often. Until then...well, this'll have to do.

Some quick updates

Wow, it's been a while! I thought I'd throw in a few major life events (or, at least, major for us) that have happened since our last update.

1) A couple new nephews were born on the Peterson side. I'm awful with dates (I know, I'm a terrible uncle), so all I can say is that Hyrum Duncan Peterson was born at the end of August to GarBrit, and Franklin Clyde Peterson was born to AnnTy the first part of October. Moms, dads, siblings, and babies are all doing well.

Franklin

Hyrum

2) Faith and I celebrated our one-year anniversary on October 7, and, lucky for us, got to see some world-class entertainment by one of our favorite performers, Brian Stokes Mitchell, in celebration. He happened to be in town for BYU's Homecoming Spectacular and it was spectacular! He sang Make Them Hear You from my all-time favorite musical Ragtime, which he was in the original cast of. Brilliant!

Our nosebleed seats for the Stokes Mitchell concert. He's standing center stage, backed up by the BYU Men's Chorus.

3) We went to the annual gala for the Empress Theatre where we were presented with a couple of awards for our work last season. Faith got Best Actress for Maria in The Sound of Music, and I got Best Music Director for Little Women. Also, my sister Kylee was there and won for Best Ensemble Member in The Music Man. Yessir, it was a fantastic night to be a Clark!

Go Clarks!!!

4) I (Jake) was able to interview last week for a full-time position in my department at work...finally! They've postponed making the announcement until Monday the 21st, so we should definitely know by then if we're fully-benefited. Cross your fingers!

5) After months of anticipation, we FINALLY found out the gender of our baby, due April 15. The result?

Note: We do not own this balloon. Yet.

We still haven't picked a name, but have come up with quite a few that we like. We're super excited! We'll post ultrasound pictures as soon as we show our immediate families. We got some good shots of the baby's profile, as well as one crowd-pleaser of his foot. Stay tuned!

That's about it for now. There's more than that, but that's what you get when we get lazy with our blog. Hopefully we'll be better about that, but who knows?

Lagoon, Jake's birthday dinner, and pregnant!!

Jake's 24th birthday was Friday, August 5th. We'd been talking about taking a day to go to Lagoon, and it just happened to work out best on Jake's birthday. Yay!! Happy Birthday, Jake! It was fun while it lasted, but we were both super happy to go home after 6 hours.

That night, we redeemed a couple of coupons and got a $5 (tip included) meal at Ihop. It's nice to go out ourselves once in a while, since we never ever do it.

Saturday, August 6th, we peed on a stick!! Well, I did, anyway.

We were estatic! In the beginning of July, we felt like fasting about trying to get pregnant that month, and we both felt good about it. After fasting, I felt downright excited about it. But we didn't want to let anyone know that we were trying, just in case it didn't work the first time. I had been on "the pill" for a few months when we were first married, but I stopped taking it in February or March, and we weren't sure if that would make it any harder for us. I guess it didn't! I actually haven't even missed my period yet. I took that pregnancy test as soon as the box said I could.

We were happy it worked out, because we were having dinner with Jake's whole family, all except for Brad (*frown*), that night for his birthday! It would be awesome to tell them all at once. My family is all scattered across the valley, but nothing a few phone calls wouldn't fix. The only ones we told in person on my side were MombaDad and AnnTy. They were pretty thrilled. That means we'll be getting three new grandbabies in less than a year!

Saturday afternoon, we went to the Oquirrh Mountain temple. It was the first time we'd been to that temple since we got married. It was pretty awesome. We went to do sealings, but no other couples showed up for 20 minutes! So we did initiatories instead. I guess sealings are better to do on weekdays.

At the Clarks' place before heading out for dinner, Jake announced our expectancy, and Mom Clark jumped up and down! I guess that's what it's like when they get news like that! We had no idea! :) We spent the rest of the evening with the Clarks; at Noodles & Company, at Granny Clark's to tell her the news, at Arctic Circle, and at the Clark home playing Pandemic (which Jake and I quite like). So, there you have it. Last weekend. Not to mention my breaking the news to the Relief Society via the "Good News Minute." I don't have to say it, but - my news was the best.

Brittany and Jacob's birthdays

We had a dinner at the Grand Peterson's house on the 24th to celebrate Brittany and Jake's birthdays. They both got to pick something for dinner, and a cake, so there was plenty to go around. Brittany got a delicious german chocolate cake, and Jake had asked for an apple crisp.

Mmm!

After eating a whole bunch, we went out for fireworks!! Happy July 24th!

More of Penny and catnip

I like to rub Penny's tennis ball with catnip, and it makes her really playful. Here's a teeny video I took of her playing with her catnip tennis ball.

Penny's present

So, I was sitting working in the living room this morning, and saw Penny out of the corner of my eye, coming in from outside and jumping on our futon. What grabbed my attention was the live bird she had in her mouth that started flying around the room!! Thank heavens I wasn't on the phone with someone!! The bird tried getting out through our front room window, which was closed and I didn't get it open in time for it to succeed. It just collapsed on our window sill, and died after about 15 minutes. At which point, Penny became completely disinterested, and I had to call Juli to get her to help me to clean it up. (I don't do well with deceased critters.) It would have been more hilarious if the bird hadn't been wounded and left little drops of blood on the futon and floor.

Click here to see footage of our vicious kitty stalking the poor bird on the window sill.

SoM close, 4th of July, and all in between

Holy. Smokes. It's been a busy weekend. Since you're reading this, you probably want to know what I mean by that. Well... you asked for it.

Friday, July 1st

Not especially busy. Jake went to work, I had a normal day, and we did the show at night. The special thing was that we went out to Village Inn after the show for a slice of pie, as sort of a celebration that the show was closing, and to have some delicious pie. We found out that it's a heck of a lot cheaper per slice to buy an entire pie than to buy a couple of slices. But they were delish.

Saturday, July 2nd

We headed over to the Jordan River temple for our friend Bryan McNabb's endowment at 10am. I was worried about staying awake for the whole thing since we'd stayed up late-ish the night before, but we were asked to be the witness couple (it was our very first time!), and that kept us awake for the whole thing.

After the temple, we had the Sound of Music matinee, a brief shopping run in between for the two pot-lucks we were going to the next day, and the closing night. The difference between the two audiences was amazing. The matinee: dreadful. I believe I felt the love of theater, performing, and making people laugh being sucked from the marrow of my bones. The closing show: Awesome. We really closed the show on a wonderful note.

Check out these beautiful flowers Jake got me for the show close!

(via his mom and sister, who have excellent taste)

Sunday, July 3rd

We left the house at about 7am to pick Jake's Granny Clark up for Aveline's baby blessing in Logan. It was a loooooong drive. But it was fun attending a married student ward. It was my first time. And - the chapel was adorably teeny. With a really, really tall ceiling, for some reason. We had a pot-luck lunch at Travis and Aubree's house, which was delightful. There was so much delicious food; I wish I were eating it right now.

Aveline wore her mommy's blessing dress

4 generations: Greats G-ma & G-pa Lightner and Granny, Grandma Bev,

Travis & Aubree, and Aveline

After that pot-luck we headed back home to West Valley to prepare for that evening's pot-luck in Provo for the Peterson 4th of July get-together. We borrowed a mattress from Mom Clark, made a jell-o salad, and headed down. We thought we would be late, but we got there at least an hour before all the other Salt Lake Petersons. Faces were stuffed, tents were set up in GarBrit's backyard, fireworks were lit on the street for all to see, and fun was had by all.

Holy fireworks!

Vän kept us company all night

Monday, July 4th

After being eaten alive by the mosquitoes all night, we got up at about 5am to stake a spot out for the parade. I took the opportunity to take Jake on a little walk to the Allen's grocery store, about a 10 minute walk away from GarBrit's, for his Dr. Pepper fix. The parade was fun; there were lots of High School bands, minimal amounts of candy, lots of beauty floats, and political leaders of all positions.

Stuart had been looking forward to the police motorcycles

... wha... ?

Star Wars soldiers carrying flags

Llama fest!!

We cleaned up and headed back home to West Valley for showers and a nap. Then we went right over to the Clarks' for a delicious 3 meat BBQ! Chicken, steak, and bratwurst. It's what the founding fathers would have wanted. We played a couple of board games, Settlers of Catan and Pandemic to be specific, and watched the Magna fireworks from the Cyprus football field with the Wesemanns. Having those illegal fireworks legal now was pretty neat. There were plenty of fireworks to see long before the official show started.

Well, there you have it. Good thing all weekends aren't that busy.

Midsommar and Birthday Bash

Note: Midsommar pictures to come later.

Hello, blog followers. Thanks to things finally slowing down at work over the last few weeks, I (Jake) am able to contribute to our blog. Hopefully it's captivating enough.

Last Saturday Faith and I went to the annual Midsommar celebration with the Petersons. More information can be found by following the link, but if I understand it correctly, it is an annual shindig celebrated in Sweden (where Faith's dad and brother Tyler served missions) that welcomes the summer soltice. Essentially, a maypole is constructed and is decorated with random greenery. It is hammered into the ground and people gather around the maypole and dance around it, singing traditional Swedish tunes and generally having a good time.

From an outsider looking in, it looks like some kind of freaky cult ritual, but that's exactly what it is not.

After dancing around the maypole, we ate delicious Swedish open-faced sandwiches prepared by Ann and Tyler, as well as some Swedish meatballs and various salads. Amazing. We also had some delightful chocolate-dipped marshmallows for desert before we had to jet and go to the Empress for that evening's performance of The Sound of Music. It was attended by a good chunk of Faith's family, and my grandparents, who were visiting from St. George. (Review, by the way, can be found here.)

Then! Last night (Tuesday) the Clark side of the family went up to Ogden to visit with the Logan Clarks and celebrate a few birthdays (Travis, Brad, and Grandpa Lightner). A good time was had by all. We ate at the always-delicious Golden Corral. After stuffing ourselves silly, a balloon animal maker guy came up to our table and made some delightful balloon hats for the birthday folk, as well as a balloon flower for newborn Aveline. He was a hoot. Faith was dying from laughter due to some stylized wordplay from the gentleman making the balloon creations. On that note...happy birthday to Travis, Brad and Grandpa Lightner!

Great-Grandpa Lightner with Baby Aveline

Grandpa Lightner sporting his balloon hat
Travis, with his stylish balloon hat, and Baby Aveline

That's it for now! Until next time...

Penny and catnip

We finally got Penny something she could scratch on (we have no carpet in our house, so she's been concentrating on our furniture...) This cardboard scratcher thing came with a little packet of catnip to put on it. It's fun having a cat that actually cares about catnip for once.

Recitals, birthdays, and plays

It's been a busy couple of weeks!! First, here's an adorable picture of Jake holding his month-old niece Aveline:

Now, on with the updates. On June 4th, we got to go to Emma and Abbie's piano recital, where they both did a wonderful job (it sort of made me miss my piano recitals, but not enough to want to do them all over again).


That same day we got to go to Jade's second birthday party! She's getting so big, and far more advanced in her methods of transportation than the army-crawling stage that Jake knew her in. The birthday party was so cute, what with the farm theme and everything. It may be a tad early to say, but I doubt I'll have the ambition to make my kids' parties as themed as my nieces' and nephews' parties always are.

Jade playing with our ever so expensive birthday present. :)

Garret held the frosting-covered end of the "2" candle from her cake. How was she to know that she wasn't supposed to eat it!! Looks like a music note from this angle...

Adorable baby goat

Ridiculously pregnant goat

On the 9th, Jake and I got to see Abbie play the Scarecrow in the school's 2nd grade production of "The Wizard of Oz." It was so fun! I miss doing plays in elementary school. I think that was when it was the most fun. Something about lower expectations and simpler staging than when you're an adult. :)

"The Sound of Music" at the Empress opened last Friday. We have about another dozen performances to look forward to. It's a fun play, but it is exhausting!! We hope to have some pictures for you sometime soon. The Clarks and most of the Petersons have already gotten to see it. Even the Logan Clarks got to see it on Saturday!! We got family pictures taken on the 11th with the Clarks, and got to spend a bit of the evening, including a dinner at the Arctic Circle, with them before heading to the theater. It's too bad they live ever so far away!!

Our cat has been caterwauling up a storm for the past few days, so we think we'll have some pictures of kittens to post really soon!! At least we hope so... I don't know how many more nights of stuffing tissues into his ears Jake can stand, and it gets a little awkward when she's crying in our echoey house while I'm on the phone with a possible partner. On verra bien!!