random. stuff.

I feel like we must be experiencing the calm before the storm. I keep thinking I need to update the blog, and quite frankly we just haven't had anything real fun or exciting to blog about. Around here we have just been "hunkered down" trying to get through Clark's last few weeks of his semester and just take it one week at a time. So in a couple weeks we can all take a deep breath and then jump right into all our Celebrations... including not only Christmas, but this little guy is about to turn ONE... holy cow! And I've already started apologizing to him for having a birthday so close to Christmas... it's his first birthday and it's practically impossible to figure out a time to have a birthday party... sorry bud, this is the story of the rest of your life! But birthday party or not, this little guy is growing up and turning into a busy little toddler....




He's totally on the verge of walking and i'm again reminded of how thankful I am that we don't have nearly the amount of stairs to have to patrol to keep him from tumbling down!

but NOTHING within reach is safe!

more random stuff... when my parents left on their mission, my mom let me "babysit" a bunch or her stuff while they are away. One of those items is this little advent calendar that we've had out every year, at least as long as I can remember. Behind each number is a little minature ornament to hang on the tree. Funny how this calendar has survived years and years at my mom's house and yet only lasted 3 days at mine before one of the little ornaments has been lost and gone forever. typical. This advent calendar has also proved to be a torture device for aspen (and for me as well) since she askes me about 200 times per day if she can take out another ornament yet.... I can't imagine how painful it would be if it were one of those chocolate advent calendars... i think all the doors would be open and emptied by now. :)

and the random goes on... but isn't this little countdown calendar so cute?!? If you want to make one of your very own, you can check out more about it here or here. So fun. Also, note that we have in fact put our Christmas tree up... finally! Again, another hand-me-down from my parents that we've had for a few years now. We've contemplated every year about getting a new one and every year we end up pulling out the same one and just being grateful we have one less thing to buy around Christmas time. This year we weren't sure where a Christmas tree would even fit. We had to do some major re-vamping of the tree... as in only put up the top 2/3rds of the tree, since the whole thing was too big... but we had to use a hack-saw to chop of the base so we could still make it fit in the stand. Luckily for clark, despite what a pain it was, he's up for any project that gives him an excuse to buy a new tool from home depot!

also note, we only have 3 stockings on our fireplace (which I'm so happy to have a fireplace to hang the stockings on). I'm apologizing to bryson again, since it is in fact his second christmas already and I still haven't gotten him a stocking. maybe next year!

so that's all for now. I'm thinking in a few weeks we'll have lots to blog about including: aspen's christmas dance recital, and pre-school christmas show, clark's mom's graduation from nursing school, bryson's first birthday, and oh yeah... christmas!