Happy Happy Birthday David Dear!!

(okay you can tell I'm totally a Primary teacher - hah, yeah, 8-11 year old teacher - ahh the flashbacks!)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAVID!!!!

I know I'm a little late on posting this as we were actually in Italy on your birthday... but better late as we kind of celebrated your birthday all through December!!  I tried to spoil David for his birthday - I mean, come on, he's just the best husband ever and age 25 is a big one.  Although the best present could be Italy, I'm glad we did it in the US before too because we actually spent all day in the airport... we'll get to that later.  Here are some of the celebrations:

Bennihanas:
We went to one of our favorite restaurants a week before, David had a free meal, and it's so expensive but a lunch date between work was just great!!  We had our own chef too, such special treatment and the food is so fun to watch and so yummy.

Clark family party:
On the Sunday before we had dinner with the family and had David's choice of Enchiladas and peppermint ice cream!  So, it was great to watch the little kids be excited for David and have us all watch him open his gifts.  Here are a few pics from the evening.

I got david a sled, clothes, and some fun mario figures.  It's great as I said about Christmas, I love shopping for David.  He's mostly on my mind anyway so when I'm at stores I always think - oh, he'd like that!  So to have both b-day and Christmas, I had lots of options :)

Night out:
Monday night the week we left for Italy, I took David out on the town.... sort of.  I wanted to do the sledding activity but the snow wasn't working for me (the one day I needed it!!!) so we're doing that later.  We went to Red Lobster for dinner - and David hasn't stopped saying how great it was!  He hasn't been before, but loves seafood.  I loved watching him try and crack the crab legs and it was just fun to be together.  I think we both liked being there together the best.  It really was a great night for me and I wasn't the one turning older.

Hope you had a great day and have a great year being 25!!  You deserve it all.  I love you so much babe!

Christmas Traditions

So we put together a list of the Christmas activities we wanted to do this year!  And we pretty much got through them all :)  Well, there are a few we left for the Jan/Feb cold months...

• Christmas Utah - There's this great house, I think I mentioned last year, that has it's own radio station and as your sitting in your car you can watch the lights synchronize to the music playing!  It's actually pretty awesome and definitely would take some time and thousands of lights.  David introduced me to it and we did it for year 2 this year... we stopped by quickly on a Sunday night between other new traditions below...
• Gingerbread Cookies - neither of us had made these from scratch before, so this year was the year.  We found a great recipe that kept our cookies so soft and yummy - we actually ended up making a 2nd batch the next week!  I wanted to take them to the older couples in our ward, so we definitely did that and had enough to do for VT's, family, and both of our works!  Who knew we were such bakers?  But it was fun even w/out frosting, next year maybe.  David made me a surprise note to take out of the oven for the last ones, awe...

• Christmas Street - This is another tradition David introduced me to last year... You know you can find those great streets all decked out with lights, so we went and visited this one up in SLC.  It was a warmer night so I enjoyed not being too bundled and getting to walk around and decide what we'll do on our future home... in like 10 years :)

• SLC Temple Lights - We grabbed some hot chocolate (with lots of syrup - oh and I totally spilled all over my hands and burned them! owe!) and headed to temple square.  It was cold, fun to be out together, and just nostalgic to see those lights each year.  Love it!  We randomly ran into a lot of old friends, fun to see...

• Decorating our home - Yep! We finally got the tree up, the outside lights we did before the snow, and all the other fun decorations.  I just love Nativities and plan to get an Italian one soon!!

• Wassail, Sledding, Ice Skating - these were on our list but as we ended Christmas early to go to Italy - we're moving them to Jan/Feb :)

• Presents - we actually had Christmas on 12/20/2010 and opened our gifts to each other, first we celebrated David's birthday (more on that) and then we came home and opened presents to each other.  I loved being able to shop and buy anything for David this whole month - I always have to limit my spending on him because I could just find so many things (mostly food like mint m&m's etc) that he'd just love.  I was excited to watch him open presents.  We both loved what we got and just having our Christmas as marrieds :)

All of these have just been the best!  What a great first Christmas together as the Clark's.  I think we fit in all that we could before our Italy trip... the whole Christmas just came and went and even though we did as much as we could enjoying the season, I wish it was a bit longer.  I love the lights and color and just the happy spirit - and especially the music!  Well, on to next year and I'm sure Christmas will be around the corner before we know it!

Naughty Christmas Tree

We didn't realize how long it could take to put up a Christmas tree... I mean, I have done trees several times, but not for awhile.  And last year we had midget tree (4 feet!)...  We searched and got a good deal on a 7 foot tree.  And we decided to string our own lights (David seemed pretty confident, I wasn't that sure, but figured we could do it each year or try and string them good enough for a few years).


So after our Thanksgiving trip we got out all our boxes, bought our tree, lights, and decided to start decorating.


I unpacked the nativity while David started the tree.  After awhile we checked on each other's work and I started helping David.  The funny thing was that instead of spreading out each branch up and down and left and right.... he had each row flat and spread out flatly.  (Found out this is how his mom does it so that ornaments fit all through the tree)  I thought this was rather silly and so I helped "fluff" up our tree.  Even though I guess that is a style, we haven't flattened our branches yet.  I'd stick with it looking more like a real tree....  We both got poked and all that but finally got our tree all fluffed up.  Lights were for another day.

Next up we started the lights.  David began while I fixed dinner.  After over an hour I checked out the tree but there weren't lights on it yet??!?  David was doing great at trying out HOW to put them on and would put them on and then off and just would keep starting over.  So, after dinner I started over.  I got up a few branches and we realized that one of our new light strands went out!?!!?  And it was on the tree all integrated in the branches.  So there we proceeded for at least 2 hours trying to figure out what light bulb was loose, what fuze broke, etc.  We pulled in and out each light and tested with another one.  Oh my gosh - at that point we were about ready to box up the tree and go buy a pre-lit one!!  Forget saving $$ huh?  But we stuck with it.  We took off the strands and started over again.  Now the tree is almost ready except there's one section missing still since we only bought enough lights exactly for the tree.  I went and exchanged it today but found out it was a white cord - what??  I had no idea there was such a thing!

The frustrations continue.  Someday we'll win and you'll see our wonderfully finished tree, but for now you just see us struggling :).  But it's our First Christmas - and we love it!!!!!

A Warmer Thanksgiving

We spent our Thanksgiving holiday in Arizona this year.... We went from 2 degrees to 59 degrees in just an hour's flight!!  Yeah baby.  Poor David was a bit sad to leave the fun winter storms that closed down schools, work, streets - but we were lucky to get out and enjoy some sun while we could.

Tuesday was busy as we tried to pack, study, do work, wrap family presents, etc etc.  I worked till 12 noon on Wednesday when we got on our plane to AZ.  Everyone asked us about the security precautions, but we didn't have too many issues.  We already knew not to bring anything through security.  It's crazy though as we heard a man exclaiming - whoa whoa as he was getting the pat down.

Wednesday
Mom picked us up and we went home to help her with the Thanksgiving dinner she prepared.  We didn't know we were getting a full feast that night - but we did.  We ate late after Eric & Amanda showed up.  None of us were on the same page but we finally got it together and enjoyed eating and catching up.  We were pretty exhausted but watched some shows, or David did, while mom and I fell asleep.

Thursday
We slept in, had a nice egg breakfast, and then got ready for our next Thanksgiving feast.  I made the green bean casserole which I like contributing and cooking again so that was fun.  Easiest dish probably but I love it.  Eric & Amanda picked us up (all weekend, so nice!) and we drove out to Rebecca & Clarke's house - first Thanksgiving out there - and actually my first time seeing their home.  About due for a visit huh since they have lived there 10 years.  I saw some faces I hadn't seen in a long time, which was fun.  The kids were just great to see.  We had a big feast, desserts, and then Eric, Amanda, David & I played the Wii with Beck's kids.  Dad was watching our newest nephew and it was so funny watching how they all interacted, danced to the Madagascar music while playing and just funny stuff.  We left after awhile and went back to Mom's to do our last flip through the adds before Black Friday!!  We had a few ideas and finally set our route and hopefully get what we were thinking...

Friday
We woke up at 5:40 and got to Target by 6 am.  So the stores were open way earlier but we figured we could get what we needed and miss the crazy beginning rush right?  Oh yeah!!  So target we got a blow-up mattress and DVD's.  Then Walmart we really didn't get much but Mom did.  I had to really try and be patient but early shopping - sometimes it just doesn't work.  Honestly David saw my really cranky side - poor guy.  But it was his first time of many more to come hopefully!  I think it wasn't as crazy of a time but he saw some of it.  Next up we went to Best Buy and got a video camera!!!  Sweet!!!  we visited a couple other places for mom and finally got home to get ready for  - -  We took family pictures with my Dad's family at 11:00 am.  Yep, the vacation just got busier!  Pictures all over the yard with the full family all in black.  We love colors so it was hard to hold back on that, but oh well.  After that we went to meet Mom at Bennihanas.  David's family goes every year and he was missing it this time so I figured we could all try his tradition, which we love!  It was fun.  And then right after we went to a movie across the street - no way!  We crashed that night as we didn't have much rest yet during our vacation.

Saturday
Dad picked us up and we visited Briand's new home - gorgeous!  Then we ran errands with Dad & Diane - just a normal day in their life - but it was a fun bonding time.  We picked the meat up for the family dinner we would be having.  For the 3rd day we saw everyone again as we had Salmon and Steak.  Yum!!!  Nothing like Dad's steak.  It was nice to just hang out and be casual, as well as we gave all our Christmas presents out since we won't be around in a month.  We stayed up to watch a movie with the parents and then finally crashed again.

Sunday
We packed up and left at around noon.  We pulled into Utah's blizzard - seriously it ended snowing when we left and started up again when we returned!!  Ha ha huh?  David did home teaching - impressive!  And we just relaxed at home and ate what we could find.

It was a great weekend with lots going on.  And through all of that, not many pictures?!?!?  Strange and sad but next time I'll do better.  Thank you our Arizona family for having us visit, driving us everywhere, feeding us, and just spending time with us.  We love you!!