Greetings from Paradise

ALOOOOOHA!!

Matt & I are enjoying the heat & soaking up as much sun as we can while we're here in Hawaii! We are having a blast. I just wanted to quickly upload a few pictures. I have A LOT of blogging to catch up on when we get back. Enjoy!
Aloha!

So busy.

We are having so much fun & staying EXTREMELY busy here in Utah. Our family has been great! Luke LOOOOVES his aunts, his "papa's" & cousins. I'm afraid he'll never stop asking for "ager (adrienne) papa's house" once we leave.

Here are some things we've been busy doing:
-Interviews (Denver, Denver, Houston, Phoenix w/ Utah & Hawaii still to come)
-Jumpin' Jacks (twice!)
-Photoshoots up the wazoo! (8 so far)
-Holiday preparations.
-Getting ready for finals.

Thanksgiving was awesome. We spent it in Phoenix with Rachel & Charlie. We leave to Hawaii this week & we are very excited, but will definitely miss Luke. I'm not sure that he'll miss us though....he REALLY REALLY loves Matt's mom & little sister.
This vacation is FLYING by. I can't believe that when we come back from Hawaii, Christmas will be the next week! We'll be back in Cleveland before we know it. Fourth year is going by much too quickly.

I have some pictures I need to post. As for now, that's just a little update on us!

Time Out For Women

This past weekend my mom & sisters & I gathered together to have a little bit of a girls weekend. We spent two days at the event, "Time Out For Women," a conference put on by Deseret Book. Some of the speakers we heard from were Elder Nelson's wife (Wendy Watson Nelson), Sherri Dew, Kris Belcher, S. Micheal Scott & a few more. Also, singer Hillary Weeks & violinist, Jenny Oaks Baker, performed. Both did an AMAZING job & I can't wait to buy some of their music...maybe Santa will bring me some! :)
All of it was so inspiring & uplifting. These women were hilarious too! Some stories I laughed so hard that I cried! I can't wait to attend another Time Out For Women. Holly, Jenny, Me, Susie, Mom, Angi & Adalee
Here we are on day one. Although, we didn't feel complete missing our sister Mandy, who couldn't come down from Boise. We really did miss having you there!!!

Little Adalee was the only baby girl with us. I just CANNOT get over how darn cute she is!!! She is so happy, I could hold her all day.

The first night we spent it at my sister Jenny's house, she lived close to Salt Lake, that way we didn't have to get a hotel. We played our "favorite things" game. We all brought an item that is one of our favorite things, under $10 & then played a game where we kind of swapped. Everyone went home with something new. It was fun, we'll have to play again!

Day two.
Notice Jenny's cute scarf? That was my favorite thing I brought, I love it!

My two cute sisters, Susie & Jenny w/the babe.

For lunch on day two we ran across the street to the Olive Garden & had the worst experience! I never knew you could have a bad experience at the Olive Garden. Anyway, a long story short, we ended up getting about three meals for free-including mine!

It was a short weekend spent together as women, but it was a lot of fun!
I'm so grateful to be a part of such a great family, filled with so many amazing women that I love to be around. Thanks for such a great weekend girls!

And thanks to all the hubbies & babysitters for watching all our cute kiddos!

He's a funny kid.

This funny little boy really likes to get into things.
Lately we've caught him putting our tooth paste in his mouth & Matt caught him licking his deodorant. Gross! They were both in his mouth for a second. Don't worry I swear we usually put things up high & we don't usually let him get into the more dangerous things, that we'd have to call poison control. :)

The most recent one happened yesterday.
I jumped in the shower & I usually shut the door, turn on a movie & he's our little couch potato so he doesn't usually even notice I'm gone. I left the door open & I hear him come in & I could tell he was doing something. I peeked out & noticed the tooth paste was gone, again!
At first I yelled his name about 20 times & nothing. Then I thought, "I'll just hurry & finish up." And then the thought occurred to me, "What if he smears it all over the couch & carpet & everywhere!" Because he totally would. So I had to jump out of the shower, with soap in my hair, grab a towel & chase the little guy down!! He was already starting to smear in on the coffee table.
Boys.

Even though he can be a bit of a little rascal, he is still our favorite little guy & he is so much fun.
His most recent favorite words/phrases are cool, oh really, wow, cute, thank you mom, stop mom. He is talking so much. I starting making a list of words he says & there are well over 50! This boy is just growing too fast! He is so smart. I've noticed when we drive past our friends houses he says, "Lily house," "Parker house," or "Jason, Marilyn, Baby house."
Every day he does more & more that just amazes me of how smart he is!
He is now really getting into books, which we love! He's never liked them much until now. We'll sit and read books for a half an hour.
Many of you know that Matt was in Seattle for a few days interviewing. It went very well, he really liked it there. We were a bit lonely without him & Luke was very happy when his daddy came home. He loved playing in his suitcase with "T" & playing with daddy.

Luke & I leave in a few days to fly home to Utah & then Matt will join us the following week. We are very excited to be with our families for all of the holiday festivities for the next two months! We're excited for Luke to play with all his cousins, aunts & uncles & his four papa's (he thinks they are all papa's). I'm especially excited to meet my newest nephew Oliver!

Oh & we are also looking forward to our trips to Phoenix, Denver & Hawaii-while we're there.

Halloween 2009

We started a yummy family tradition this year. I think every holiday tradition we've started has to do with food. For those of you who really know me, I lOVE breakfast foods. We have brinner all the time around here. We decided to make some yummy pumpkin spice pancakes to eat each Halloween, for dinner. Mmmm they were good!

On Halloween evening we stopped at our friends house for a little bit. They did the cutest thing, they had a trick-or-treating pit-stop for people they knew. You could stop & warm up on your way trick-or-treating. They had hot apple cider, treats & all sorts of fun stuff. It was such a great idea. After that we joined some other friends to have pizza & watch a "scary" movie, but since all of us (at least me & Matt) are not fans of scary movies, we watched "Wait Until Dark." Unfortunately we couldn't finish it, since Matt had to catch a flight at 5am the next day.



We all decided to dress up the last minute as cowboys-lame, I know. But it was cute too, well with Lukey. He made such a cute cowboy.



And, I'll say, Matt makes a fine cowboy himself!



Hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

Automatic email

Hey everyone, I just set up automatic emailing. So, when I make a new post, you get an email. This way you don't have to check back every now & then to see if I've updated it or not. If you want me to add you (& I haven't already) leave me a comment so you can get the emails too!

Happy blogging!

Luke is going to be...

A cute little giraffe for Halloween.
Don't you love hand-me-downs?
I sure do.
Thanks to my sis Jenny (& Angi from last year, do you want that back? hehe).

We had a ward Halloween party last Friday. They set up a cute little backdrop & took all the kids pictures & then sent them to the parents. I don't know why I haven't even thought to take his pictures in his costume. I better get on it!

For the most part the costume was easy, it was the cute freckles on his face that were traumatizing. Happy 2nd Halloween baby boy!!!

Lily & Jake

Here are the pictures from my little photo shoot, that I did for my friend. I was very pleased with the result. I think we got some good ones. I had a lot of fun playing with & editing them.
My friend, Kat, got a very nice birthday present. A Canon Rebel EOS Ti DSLR camera. Ahhhhh...so while Matt & I are saving our pennies to get a nice DSLR, I used Kat's camera to get these shots. Thanks for letting me do this Kat. I had so much fun!

My absolute favorite of the bunch.

A day (or two) at the park with Luke's favorite (girl) friend.

My good friend asked me if I would take pictures of her two adorable kids. Of course I wanted to! I've been trying to get more and more practice as I am slowly learning all this photography stuff. The pictures turned out great!! I was so pleased. I will post some of them later. First I wanted to post a few darn cute ones I got during our little photo shoot of Luke & Lily.

Luke just loooves Lily these days. Her name is the only word he'll say with the "L" at the beginning. She bosses him around a little bit (she is the older one), "Luke push me on my bike" and he obeys her every word...it's actually quite funny & cute.

Here are some very fun pictures of both kiddo's & a look at their fun little personalities while interacting with one another.







Not sure what's going on here....but it looked so funny!



They are so cute together.










I think this one (below) is my absolute favorite!









I know this one looks a little weird, I just really liked his brown eyes. All the blue eyed kids stand out in photos, so I just wanted to point out Luke's big brown eyes.

the newest member of our family

Allow me to introduce...One of the last times we were home, Grandma Clark sent Luke home with this lovely dinosaur.
And just in the past month or so Luke has become obsessed with T.
It's actually pretty cute.
Thankfully, it hasn't gotten to the point where we have to take him everywhere with us.

T has to eat dinner with us, say prayers with us (Luke likes to fold his arms for him). When T gets a "bonk" Luke, mommy & daddy have to kiss T's head better. T likes to watch Elmo too. T sits in the high chair with a bib on & Luke feeds him & sometimes Luke gets a little frustrated when he won't chew & swallow.

Notice T's leash or harness?
Luke pulls T around & says, "Com'n T! Com'n!"

This is a fun age.