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!

A very busy weekend

WOW, so last weekend was sooooo busy! Just a quick recap, because it'd be boring if I went into all the gritty details. Do notice that every "=>" signifies a change in location. :D

Saturday

=> After visiting Cyprus CU, we found out that will have to head back yet a third time before we'll be able to successfully open our joint banking account.

=> Jake stayed home while I popped out to Rachel Hammond's bridal shower in Salt Lake City. I've been excited about going for a while, not just because she was one of my favorite companions on the mission, but because the shower was in my neck of the woods for once. You can imagine my glee when I found out that it was the same day as the Salt Lake marathon, and it took me almost 20 minutes just to get from South Salt Lake to the Avenues. Also, sadly, I couldn't stay for the whole thing because of the next activity on this bulleted list:

=> Jake and I finally got out to the temple! Yay! We went and did sealings at the Salt Lake Temple. I'd never done it before, and it was the first time doing something in the temple with Jake since Thanksgiving. Loved it!

=> Jake and I got to see The Hasty Heart 4 o'clock matinee at the Hale for free (totally worth volunteering there every month or so). I had no idea what kind of play it would be, but I really liked it! I want to check out the movie version of it, too. Also, since every single actor on the stage had to have a completely different accent, and having this little dream of being an accent coach, I had lots of fun watching it.

=> I had to really buckle down and start studying the 170 study guide questions for my scheduled final on Monday. Thank heavens Jake was patient enough to quiz me for almost an hour before bed. It helped me a lot!

Sunday

=> We went to church.

=> We left church after the first two hours to go to Cassie Burton's homecoming. It was nice hearing a missionary fresh from the field. I have a soft spot for missionary stories.

=> Didn't get to do the mix'n'mingle after the homecoming because we had to stop by Tyler Koefed's place for me to review the rest of the songs I have in The Sound of Music. We usually don't rehearse on Sundays, but we had to make an exception due to lack of time... anyways, that's where Jake and I met our first chiweenie!! *sigh* I think that when we're ready to get a dog, we're probably going to try to look up a chiweenie.

=> Emma's birthday party!! Always a delight. We felt bad not being able to get her a present, and had an idea for what we could have done for her after the fact... Heck, we might still do it if she wants.

=> What a better way to finish up such a busy weekend with some more studying for my final on Monday. Thank heavens it's over, and I didn't bomb it. That's what I call a successful weekend.

Baby Shower & Sound of Music

Hello, all. It's Jake again. Maybe I'll be able to finish the post this time. We'll see. Alright, so let me reiterate what I mentioned in my former blog post - Faith is not pregnant. This baby shower was once more for Aubree, this time for the Magna folk. Unfortunately, Aveline (the baby) can't decide when she wants to be born, so the proud parents-to-be were not able to come down to Magna for the shower. Instead, we collected gifts and made a road trip to Logan to deliver them to Travis and Aubree. Faith continued her family's tradition of making a hooded towel for the newborn. It turned out fantastically.

Travis keeping track of gifts received

Aubree sporting the stylish hooded towel!

It's like Christmas, only not!

After the baby shower we went to a local place in Logan called Angie's where we all ate and generally had a good time. Aubree has been in and out of labor and the hospital three times this week, so we hope to have a brand new niece by Easter! Congratulations!

On that congratulatory note, let me take a personal bragging moment to say that Faith has been cast as Maria in The Sound of Music at the Empress! She is so excited to play the part, and I am equally excited for her! She was selected from more than a dozen auditioning Marias to play the role. She knocked them dead with her solo and cold read at callbacks.

Yours truly will be playing an evil Nazi named Herr Zeller. I was initially not terribly thrilled with the part, but am excited to go out of the box and play the evil guy for once. Should be fun. Ish. Anywho, the play runs June 10-July 2. Be there or be square!

We're still doing great!

Until next time...