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!!

Penny

So, last Friday was the Peterson Family Friday the 13th party where we enjoyed delicious food and watched "The 'Burbs." It was also our birthday party for Adam. It's always fun to see him since he lives pretty far away, and I don't get to see him weekly like I did when I first started college. To our surprise, Adam had brought a little present for us. And what an appropriate present to give on Friday the 13th: a black cat.

We had been expecting her, though, and have really been enjoying having her wander around our sparsely furnished house. She has adapted really well, and only cried through one night. But we had a rough beginning. We brought her home late Friday night, got her stuff set up in one of our spare bedrooms, and let her roam the house that night because we couldn't bear hearing her cry in that room all alone, especially since it echoes so much! We couldn't find her Saturday morning, or afternoon, and figured she was just hiding somewhere because she was in a new house with new owners.

We scoured the house, though, and could not find her!! We have very few things for her to hide behind, and we just couldn't understand where she had gone. We actually ended up thinking that she'd gotten caught in our air ducts and died. That was the only explanation, because we had looked everywhere!! We called Adam Saturday night, thinking maybe he could use his "owner voodoo" to find her. Not 3 minutes after he walked in the front door, he found her hiding in our top bathroom drawer. THE LITERAL ONLY PLACE WE HAD NEVER LOOKED. Turns out she was stuck there all day, and that's why she never came out. She doesn't go there, anymore.

It doesn't look like it, but this is a picture of her.

She likes to snuggle under our blankets during the day.

Move in, new niece, etc.

Hoo, boy, it's been a long time. Well, here are all the things that have happened since our last post:

* 4/13 - I finished my 8th semester at BYU! I got two As and one A-. Woot!

* 4/17 - Emma's 10th Birthday Party!! Double Digits!

Ann made the cake herself, flowers and all. Fancy!

* 4/23 - We went up to Logan with the Clarks to see Travis' choir perform Elijah. There was a quartet of famous singers to do the solos. I was glad to be able to see it. Such a great choir, holy heck!

* 4/24 - We had our very first Easter together!! We hid our eggs and filled each other's baskets and everything.

The bowl is for me to put the eggs in that Jake hid outside.

* 4/27 - Jake got off work, and we went to the Carl Bloch exhibit at the BYU MOA with GarBrit, Mom, Ann and her kids, and Ryan. I'm glad so many of us were able to go.

We drove the kids home. They were all really hyper when we left...

* 4/29 - We moved out of our old apartment!! MombaDad came in to help us pack, and though I thought we were just going to do half of it and get the other half the next day, Dad had other plans. He threw everything we had into our boxes, and loaded them into his truck. It only took two truck loads, furniture and all. We're gonna miss that little 400 sq.ft. studio... It was just perfect for us. As sad as it sounds, it was hard for me to finally leave it.

* 4/29 - We moved into our new house!!! Everything's unpacked, and it's so nice to have all the space.

* 5/5 - Mom Clark, Kylee and I went to this place in SLC to get pedicures! I hadn't had one in years, and I certainly had never had one that was so thorough and heavenly! Thanks, Mom!

* 5/6 - Aveline Elizabeth Clark was born! Congrats, Travis and Aubree!! Jake and I headed up to Logan on Saturday to see her, and she is just adorable. Wish we could see her more often. ;)

Jake's very first "for reals" niece!

* 5/6 - The Peterson family had a nice afternoon working in Momba's garden for her Mother's Day gift. I forget how satisfying it is to really get down and garden. I was sore the day afterwards.

* 5/7 - Mom Clark had us over for a dinner she didn't have to cook on Mother's Day. We love being able to just pop over and spend the evening with the family. It's so much easier now that we live 7 minutes away!

* 5/8 - We got to see Oklahoma! at the Empress with MombaDad, AnnTy, and their kids. It was pretty hilarious seeing the little boys completely conked out by intermission, though I had to smell Brody's smelly feet for the whole second half. Jake has never thought that he'd like Oklahoma!, and now that he has finally seen it, he gets the right to say that he doesn't like it. Maybe he'll tell you all about it on his blog. I thought they did a pretty good job of it. I genuinely laughed out loud.

* 5/9 - We were woken up by Ann and the boys at our door at about 9 am (but we had been awake for almost a half an hour already). She had bought us a whole slew of groceries!! And not only useful stuff like milk and cheese, but fun stuff, too! Like Doritos, ice cream and cookies!! Things that we only buy if we were under our grocery budget, and wanted to get something fun. We wasted no time, and Jake opened one of the bags of Doritos to take some for his lunch. Thanks so much, Ann! We love you!!

* 5/9 pm- We found that the room by our bedroom had its lights on, and the door was locked. Since we never go in there, I think it's from when Ann was here with her boys; one of them must have gone in, turned the lights on, and locked the door on his way out. We thought it'd be a cinch to unlock it, but it turns out it's one of those locks you actually need a key for, not just a paperclip or a butter knife!! We looked up videos and tried to unlock it with a bobby pin, but couldn't get it to work. We only finally got it open by using Jake's Subway card. Hope we can still use it!