Wow…so it’s been a while…

 

I can’t believe it’s been so long since I’ve written. We just had a great Thanksgiving. We went to my hometown, had a great dinner with family. My sister and her husband weren’t able to be there as they went to Boston, but it sounds like they had a great time.

After sleeping in this morning, I went to town and after having lunch with my wonderful husband, decided to brave the crowds of black friday weekend shoppers. Wow, bad idea!  We have this event coming up on Friday, “Ladies Night Out” put on by the ladies of the church. Dinner is served by the men of the church, and ladies sign up to host a table. Each table has a theme and is decorated to match. Well, I decided I’d better get out and get some of my table decorations.  So I braved the crazy people at Hobby Lobby, Target and Wal-Mart.

Got home and my hubby is working on our new front window trim. It looks so nice. It’s nice having such a handyman around! Our house is really getting there, slowly but surely.

Here are some pictures since my last post.

Kelsi got married in August, and is now Mrs. Cole!

We got a new kitty, named Tiger!

  

Joan, my mother-in-law turned 50 in October, so to celebrate, we all went to Tanganyika Wildlife Park in Wichita.

We’ve had some beautiful sunsets this fall.

Our nephew Liam is growing up! He’s 4 months old already!

Squeak and Tiger are best buds…

We quickly coming up on our two year anniversary! The best two years of my life…

Will write again soon.

God has blessed us with a nephew!

After nine months of anticipation, our little nephew Liam finally arrived July 14, 2010!  Shaina’s water broke on last Tuesday night, and after 27 hours of labor, a c-section was done and Liam was here!  He weighed in at 8lbs 12oz, and was 22 inches long!  He is so precious and such a great addition to the Clark family!

Liam was born at 8:34pm, while his anxious family waited. Dave and I, Scott & Rae (Shaina’s parents) and Joan and Marc (Chris’ parents) waited in the waiting room…and finally they whisked Liam out of the operating room in the incubator to the nursery!  We all hurried to the nursery to get our first peak at him. I so wish Shaina could have been there with us, but she was in recovery for about an hour and a half. Chris got to come though…got to hold him and see him in the first minutes of his life. We all went picture crazy.  (As you’ll see in the pictures below.)

I’ve gotten to see Liam probably 3 or 4 times since he was born last week and he’s such an angel! He’s such a good baby…hardly ever cries! :-)  Shaina is doing well – getting around a little better every day. I’m so thankful that God has blessed me with such a great sister-in-law! 

Last night, we found out that little Liam has jaundice, so he’s had to have a bili-blanket. She texted me today that he’s doing much better!

Well, I’m gonna post some pictures. Enjoy!

 

Proud Papa!

Momma getting to hold Liam for the first time.

Uncle David…(I think he’s pretty fond of his sweet nephew!)

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Grandma Joan…

Aunt Tori & Uncle David with our little nephew!

Spring is here…and it’s Mother’s Day Weekend!

 

Today is just a beautiful day!! My parents are in town for the weekend. Mom and I started off the day early by going to the Buhler City Wide Garage Sale.  I was going in search of a coffee table. Alas, I didn’t find one that I liked, but we ended up getting one for Kelsi for $10!! What a bargain!!  But we walked around town for about an hour and a half looking and talking to people. It was a really good time.

Then, we went to Dillards’, cause mom’s in search of a mother-of-the-bride dress for Kelsi’s wedding.  She tried on a really cute one, but I don’t think she was sold on it. So she’s in Wichita looking some more!

After we all had lunch together at Bogey’s (such a great place – and it just has a “summer” feel to it. Then Dave and I went to Lowe’s, Home Depot and Stutzman’s Green House. I finally bought some beautiful flowers to brighten it up around here!!  Unfortunately the “soil” (if you can even call it that) around here is just sand. So I really doubt anything would grow that I plant in the ground. So I use pots and planters…I ended up getting some “Yellow Madness” petunia’s and some that are a lavender shade (not sure of their exact name).

 

I’m so ready for summer – and heat!!  I love this time of year when you get back into mowing the grass and being outside.

I’m very excited for Monday…Dave & I got the day off work. In an effort to prevent work burn-out, I asked for the day off so he and I could just get away for a day. He finally has the paint booth done in the garage and I wanted to just spend the day with him not working!! So we’re going to go to Wichita on Monday and go to Tanganyika Wildlife Park!  I was told that there are meerkats that run around your feet and you can pet all kinds of animals!  Then hopefully we’ll get to have a nice dinner somewhere and just enjoy spending the day together.  I’ll post pictures of our Monday date later!

I should also post some of the pictures of the paint booth!! I’m so proud of all the work Dave has done on it! He’s such a hard worker-and so ingenius! 

He’s already started painting…what a guy!

I wanted to make this picture a little bigger. This is a sunset we had a few days ago! So beautiful!  Our God is amazing!

Well, I can’t think of anything new as of now….the cats are doing well and becoming good buds!  Our little nephew Liam should be arriving in approx. 10 weeks!! SO EXCITED!! I want to spoil him rotten!

Kelsi is still in the process of wedding planning…her big day is Aug. 28…so that’ll be here before you know it!

And one more thing…I know I have at least one blog reader. If you read my blog, shoot me an email at tori_bri@hotmail.com. I’m just really curious to know if anyone actually reads it.  It’s fun to get my thoughts on screen!

Looking forward to the rest of this great weekend!

Saturday once again…

It’s early on Saturday – about 6:45 to be exact…Dave had to get up early to go to an I-Car training class in Wichita.  So after getting up to see him off, I’m back in bed blogging.

I have so much to do today. I want to go to town and get Dave’s truck and wash it as a surprise!  He washed my car for me…so I want to do that for him.  I have to wrap a wedding gift for a wedding I’m going to this afternoon. I need to run downtown to drop off some things and I need to run to Maurices and look at skirts – I have some “chips” that get 20% off any item!  Figured I should buy a new summery skirt. Then I have to get home and get ready for the wedding.

The wedding is gonna be fun! The bride and groom are two former co-workers from Lowen. I’m so interested to see how it is…she’s a very eccentric person – very artsy…so I think her wedding could be very different! Hopefully I’ll get to see lots of old co-workers.

I just love the warmer weather we’re getting. I want to mow the yard so bad…Dave says we need to do some yearly maintenance first on the mower. Last year, I attempted to mow our entire yard (almost 1 acre) with our push mower. I thought, “Hey…it’ll be a good workout!” Well, our mower kept dying on me and it took forever!  I keep telling him that it’s my goal to someday mow the lawn with our push mower. He thinks I’m crazy. Maybe so.

Dennis and Traci’s wedding is 3 weeks from now! So excited for them!  Dave & I actually had the priviledge of introducing them at our church small group.  One night, Traci was sharing about how she loves to ride motorcycles. It got me thinking that maybe we should invite Dave’s friend Dennis to small group. Maybe they could at least be friends. They’re both such nice people, why not?!  So Dennis came one night and I think they hit it off immediately! They are such a great match – God really has blessed them with each other!

Well, mom wants me to put up some new pictures…let me see if I have any interesting ones.

These are the Easter eggs I dyed at our Women’s Connection event at church a few weeks ago. I haven’t dyed easter eggs since I was a LITTLE girl! I remember we did it once at Grandma’s house.

Squeak – it’s kind of a blurry picture…

Our tree in the front yard – finally budding out and showing signs of Spring!!

Can’t remember if I’ve posted this one, but I love this picture! He’s my cat man…such a handsome guy…love him with all my heart.

Well, that’s about all I can think of posting right now. I’ll have more after the wedding today.  Congrats Steven & Traci!

The Kitters and Squeak

I’ve been wanting to make chicken and noodles for about a week now.  Things have just come up to where it never happens.  Well, I was determined to make them Thursday night.  Well, needless to say, our chicken was thawed incorrectly – and we didn’t want take the chance of eating it if it was smothered in bacteria.  So, somehow, it got left in the sink over night. I got up early this morning to thaw our NEW chicken…once in the kitchen, there it was. The old chicken (that had been left in the sink when we went to bed) was now on the floor!!  The cats had ripped into it and looks like they both probably got a good size bite!  It’s absolutely amazing to me the amount of mischief they can get into during the 6-7 hours a night we’re sleeping.

We definitely have our hands full when they’re inside together, but they’re so much fun…just wanted to post some pictures.

I guess I could include a little history of our cats.  The Kitters – who was originally named “Cat,” Dave found at his apartment on Ridgewood when he still lived in town. This was long before I was ever in the picture.  His side of the duplex was the northern most in the complex, and was basically on the VERY north edge of town. So someone probably dumped him – who didn’t want him – and Dave took him in.  He said that “Cat” would climb up on his roof and hang out. Kind of funny. But Dave got attached, and brought him to live in the country when he moved to our house where we live now.  When we recently had small group here, the kids kept calling him Garfield!

Squeak came to our house out of tragedy. We were headed to church on the morning of our one year anniversary, and we saw our other cat, Grayson, in the road. He’d been hit by a car and didn’t make it.  I’ll put up a picture of our sweet kitty Grayson.

We decided that we needed to fill that void pretty quick, so we headed to Wichita to the animal shelter! After looking there, we hadn’t found the perfect cat yet. Dave told me that he’d always wanted a black & white kitty, so I didn’t want to give up until we found one.  Next, we headed to PetSmart where, there she was!!  Sitting next to her sister “Serena,” there was our kitty. She had the prettiest face.

So we brought her home a week after we’d lost our G-buddy. So she’s been a Clark now for almost three months, and she’s so fun! After we brought her home, she started showing real sickness symptoms. She was sneezing ALL the time, had no energy, had wet eyes. So we took her to the vet where they said she had an upper respiratory infection – which they also said is common in kittens that come from a shelter environment.  So we nursed her back to health – and before you knew it, she was a spunky kitten again!

(We didn’t pose them like this, they did this on their own. They’re buddies!)

 

They like to wrestle too!

Nice Saturday morning…

Well, of course our four legged alarm clock woke me up early this morning. So after about an hour of trying to go back to sleep, I gave in and just got up. I’ve been in a mood to bake lately so I woke up and made some blueberry mini muffins for Dave this morning. These muffins are very nostalgic for me…believe it or not, I lost my first tooth in a Duncan Hines blueberry muffin. I’ve never made them as mini muffins, but thought they might go further if I made 36 of them – maybe they’ll last long enough that Dave can take some to work for breakfast this week.

If you want to make them yourself, here’s what the box looks like (and the muffins also!):

They’re pretty yummy I must say!

I am now eating my mini-muffins and drinking a mug full of hot tea. Tyler’s Ultimate is on in the background – this is how I love to spend my Saturday mornings while Dave is still asleep. Saturday mornings on the food network are great! It inspires me.  Maybe I should’ve gone to culinary school!

Last weekend, we went out to Stafford…since Dave’s dad passed away last August, I think he decided it was time to go out and go through some of his stuff. The day was full of memories for Dave and Ryan as they went through some of Robbie’s things in the basement. Old baseballs, pictures, tools, etc. We ended up bringing a box of pictures home…I’ve been loving going through the box. There happen to be quite a few pictures of Dave as a kid in there…I love looking at those photos! Since we didn’t meet until he was 27 and I was 25, I feel like I can finally have a glimpse into his childhood a little bit – makes me feel like I know him even better – plus he was such a cute kid – as were all the Clark boys – I love him even more.

These were some that I found. What a handsome kid! While in Stafford, he drove me around town for about 20 minutes…showed me where he played baseball as a kid, we drove down the alley behind his first house (peeking in the backyard), he showed me where he used to ride his dirt bike, showed me Mid-States where his grandpa and dad used to work. When we do stuff like that, I fall even more in love with my husband. I love hearing about his childhood!

While in Stafford, we spent most of the day at Joan’s (Dave’s mom) house. As long as I’ve been in the picture, she’s been working on her house…and it’s come a long way!! I took some pictures while there. Recently, she decided to build an interior stairway down to the basement. (Previously, you had to go outside to get to the basement.) But Marc has done a great job installing the new stairs. The basement has kind of become the new BIG project. There’s alot of work to do. The house when first built was actually 4 apartments. So it’s been interesting seeing how the separate areas have become one big house!

The kitchen is so nice!! I love the stainless steel appliances!

A guy who lives in Stafford has done the work in the dining room. This house was built a long time ago – so the walls were lath and plaster…the sheetrock looks great!  The opening into the living room is new – it used to be a small door, but was recently opened up…it’s so nice!

Looking down the stairs…

And back up the stairs…

This is what it looks like downstairs…notice the blue, green and yellow paint! Very colorful. Walls have been torn out, it’s been quite the construction project!

Spunky thinks he’s in charge…

Here in a bit, Dave and I are going to go to the credit union to talk to a loan officer about making some major improvements to the house. I hope everything goes well. Hopefully we can get our projects in order and get them done this spring when it warms up a bit more.

This afternoon, I’m going to go out to Jill’s house…she wants to show me the house and I need to give her a cd of the wedding pictures I took. Can’t wait to see her and hear about the honeymoon trip to Cozumel!

This blogging thing is really fun. I don’t know that anyone reads it, but it’s good to get my thoughts written. :-) 

Guess I’d better go get around and get ready! We have alot to do today!

It’s Friday!

The weekend is finally upon us!  It’s been a busy last few weeks. My good friend Jill got married to her husband Brett – so that’s been a highlight of the last month!

Today, we had a beautiful day – almost 50 degrees…sunny – makes me want Spring to be  here so bad! Dave has been working on plans for building a front porch on our house, plus also installing new windows (needed badly!!), and new siding. Our home was built in the late 70’s and is in major need of updating to be more energy efficient. And with the price of propane, we can definitely use a more efficient home!

We are sure enjoying our new cat, Squeak. Except she’s recently become our four-legged alarm clock, ready to wake us up every morning around 5:30. It’s starting to get a little old, but I keep telling myself it’s practice for when we have babies keeping us up…

She’s a real sweetie though. Her and the Kitters get along really well. They love wrestling and playing. But then they’ll calm down – Squeak will lay her head on the Kitters and then they’ll take turns licking each other. Maybe this is how they show affection?

Nothing else new around the Clark household. Just livin and lovin. We’re so happily married, it’s great! 

Will write more later.