Welcome to the Family!

This is my adorable new niece, Olivia, born to Jennifer and Jimmy on July 21st. Isn't she sweet? This is one of my favorite photos. Her older brothers are already protective and love to put their feet on her soft hair (just like Amber and Karli do to Rex...maybe they're related). I can't wait to meet her!

Today is a Wonderful Day

Today has been a great day! It actually started last night, when Adam and I got to watch a "grown-up movie" and then went to bed at the same time, with not a single child in the bed with us! I know, I know...it's a miracle, and it was only for a few hours (Amber does a spectacular 3 a.m. jump from her bed to ours), but it was grand while it lasted. This morning, I woke up early, ate chocolate and oatmeal cookies for breakfast, fed the kids, cleaned the house, and only had to scrub up one potty-training mess (is it sad that this makes me happy?) which was conveniently right next to the toilet and immediately before bath time, so it wasn't too bad.
Our wonderful friends Deanne, Sophie, and Truman came over for some chatting, playtime, and lunch after which all three of my kids magically fell asleep at the same time. Obviously, I'm catching up on some neglected blogging and scrapbooking, rockin' out to some old school John Mayer, and since I already have dinner planned, I'm thoroughly enjoying this day. I can't decide if it's great or pathetic that these small things get me all jazzed up...it must mean I'm a stay-at-home mom, he he he. I joke about it more than I should, probably, but I definitely couldn't ask for a better occupation!

All-American Boy

Rex is already three months old! I can't believe how quickly time is passing (oh, I sound like an old lady, don't I?). He is now wearing larger clothes and fits into these two adorable outfits. My friend, Diana, gave Rex the darling camo ensemble and I found the tres-American, Ralph Lauren overalls at T.J. Maxx for a great deal (good 'ol Ralph...my favorite designer of all time!). Rex's hair is decidedly blonde and his huge blue eyes (and his enormous smile that inevitably disappears as soon as the camera's flash fires) make him the quintessential American baby. He's a joy and we love having him in our family!

Olympic Aspirations

On August 8th, the opening day of the Olympics, Amber and Karli watched an episode of "Dora the Explorer" about teamwork in which all the team members won gold medals. Amber asked if she could have a necklace like Dora's, so I busted out the family-reunion-Olympics inspiration and made them each a gold medal out of some jar lids and ribbons. I had no idea they'd be a hit, but the gals still love them.

I think they like the medals even more now since we've watched several Olympic events together. Amber, Karli, and I particularly enjoy women's gymnastics and diving, while men's swimming and the genetic freakshow/phenomenon that is Micahel Phelps seems to be the entire family's choice for entertainment. He's fun to watch! I can't believe how easy he makes swimming look. I'll be thrilled if any of my kids make it to the Olympics, but I secretly hope they keep colligiate athletics as their ultimate goal!

It Makes Father Happy

After three years of living in ghetto-ville, both Amber and Karli have learned some not-so-choice phrases from the neighbors (okay...fine...some come from me and Adam, but not many!). Despite the rule I established for all children who enter my house that prohibits using the Lord's name in vain, Amber inevitably began saying "Oh my $#@" one day and naturally, Karli chimed right in as well. As I calmly tried to explain when it's appropriate to use the word God, I mentioned that it's Heavenly Father's name and it makes him sad if we say it in a naughty way. Karli said, "Dat make Heee Faddah sad?" ("That makes Heavenly Father sad?") and I said, "Yes, but whe we sing 'I am a Child of God', it makes Him happy" because Amber was thoroughly confused as to why we could say it sometimes and not others. Now, Karli uses this logic to explain every situation, but has conveniently omitted "Heavenly" from the phrase. Amber had an "accident" today (it's actually called peeing all over the bathroom floor when the toilet is one inch away from her...arrrrgh!) and Karli said, "Dat make Faddah sad, Amby!" When Karli ate all of her food the other day, she said, "See! I eat all mine food and dat make Faddah so happy!" She even uses it to describe happy or sad movies, respectively, and completely random events like getting a letter in the mail or spilling something on one's clothes. It's pretty hilarious.

A Founcy Zucchini

My sister, Allison, used to work for a Brazilian imports company and snagged this itsy-bitsy adorable bikini for Amber last year. While it is now strictly bathtub wear, she sneaked into her room and put it on all by herself yesterday so I let her wear it around the house for a few hours. How could I resist when she told me she wanted to wear her "founcy zucchini"? By the way, that means fancy bikini. :)

An Angel in Scrubs

Last summer when we lived in Utah, I experienced my first migraine and thought I was having a stroke. Since our insurance generally doesn't cover out-of-state emergencies, I put off going to the ER as long as possible while I waited for the phone call from McLaren authorizing the visit. They never called back, so finally when I couldn't see out of my left eye, I packed up and headed to AF hospital. The doctor there, Dr. Shelton, took great care of me and even gave me a CT scan to make sure I didn't have any clots in my brain.
After returning to Michigan and filing paperwork for a year, I found out that my primary insurance would cover part of the bill, but there was a hefty chunk left that my secondary insurance would have to cover. Of course, Dr. Shelton doesn't do business with the secondary insurance company, so I was left to pay for the rest of the visit. May I take a tangent here for a moment? I totally believe in paying for what I use, self sufficiency, etc. I didn't want to go to the ER because I wasn't sure that the visit would be covered, but I honestly felt like I'd have two kids and a husband who would be mother/wife-less if I didn't go (it was a really bad migraine!). That said, I knew I needed to pay the bill but we absolutely didn't have enough money to cover it (or even a significant portion of it). I followed the secondary company's suggestion and filed a hardship claim, detailing that my husband is a law student and we were just barely scraping by, etc. Yesterday, I got a letter from Dr. Shelton:
"Dear Mrs. Clark,
I have read your letter concerning your financial situation and I understand more than you probably know what that situation is like. I too went to Michigan, Wayne State University Medical School, and I know what it is like to have a family and not much money. When I was in Detroit many friends and church members took us under their wings and gave us furniture, food, and other necessities without asking for anything in return. These people knew that I was not planning to stay in Michigan. All they asked was that if I ever had the chance to help another family out like they had helped me, then I was to extend to them the same gift that I had received. What this means to me is that I have asked my billing company to wipe out the debt you owe to me. In exchange, however, I ask of you the same thing...If you or your husband ever have a chance to assist another family in need, please give them that assistance. If you do then I will consider this bill paid in full."
Obviously, I was so touched that I broke into tears. I'm thankful for the charity, kindness, and understanding of this doctor and I hope that we will be able to help LOTS of families in need because we have been so blessed in our educational endeavors. To all of you who have helped us in so many ways, thank you. Your kindness and generosity are appreciated more than you'll ever know.

Adam...Karli...Any Similarities?

The other day, Amber found this photo of Adam in the tub when he was a toddler. I can't believe how much Karli looks like him. Karli even thought it was herself in the photo. What a bunch of cuties!

Walk, Schmalk

Just when I thought I couldn't be surprised by anything else that takes place in our apartment parking lot, I saw this. The sad thing about this incident is that it is not the only one of its kind; we have recently discovered a whole gang of Rascal-ridin' Georgetown dwellers who are perfectly capable of walking around (I see them strolling easily to and from their power chairs that they actually park in parking spaces), but elect to let the Great State of Michigan pay for everything they use, including transportation. In case CATA was thinking about adding a bus route from one end of our parking lot to the other, they can rest easy knowing Medicaid has already solved the problem! I can't believe my eyes. In fact, I find this slothful transport so stunning that I sneakily snapped this picture through the window while I was washing dishes so I could share it with all of you (I felt so scummy, like a tabloid paparazzo). On the other hand, though, maybe it is a great way to save gas money. I mean, really...pride and self-respect are so overrated!

Mia Michaels' Protege

I always make the girls watch "So You Think You Can Dance" with me in hopes of providing a little inspiration and it seems to be paying off in terms of drama and creativity. And now, ladies and gentlemen, I present for your entertainment, Amber Clark's modern interpretation of "Beauty and the Beast" (she does the whole song, but I had to edit it so the clip would load).

Derrick Will Be So Proud

A few weeks ago, we had Derrick and Leslie over for dinner. Derrick taught the girls "Break the pickle...tickle, tickle!" and the "Me Chinese, me play joke..." hand game and rhyme. They laughed but didn't seem to think much of it. The other day, Karli came up to me and told me to "open the fridge". She had the whole routine down pat and it made me laugh so hard! She doesn't say the entire ending, but just says "pee pee in Coke!". I know, I know, I'm probably a bad mom to think something like that is funny, but her little voice is so darn cute that I just can't help but giggle.

By the way, does it seem like my kids are always nude? I take off their clothes before they eat so I don't have to do as much laundry...an example of laziness and exhibition...I guess I am a bad mom!

This Place Will Self Destruct

We lucked out when we moved to Lansing; thanks to Adam's valliant efforts, we moved into a brand new apartment that was cute, clean, spacious, and cheap in a convenient location. As our kids have grown up and exhibited their artistic skills in mixed media (read: jell-o, ink, spaghetti sauce, lotion, dirt, baby powder, nail polish, chocolate milk, peas, sunblock, red popsicles, and anti-bacterial hand gel), we've become increasingly worried that we won't receive any of our security deposit, because our lease says we'll be charged for "any damage incurred, regular wear and tear excepted". So just how much wear and tear is regular with two toddlers running around? As it turns out, we may have worried for nothing...

Last weekend while watching a movie, we heard a suspicious drip coming from the closet that houses the water heater and furnace. Upon opening the doors and being blasted with the dank smell of moldy drywall (wetwall in this case), we noticed the ceiling was soaked through and dripping onto the floor. That's right, we have another reason to love our upstairs neighbors: they keep their puppy in their utility closet and their pipes were "unattached". Along with wetness was moldiness, and of course, since it was Saturday night, no one was around to stop the drip. Finally, we tracked down the maintenance guy who brought over a 5-gallon bucket to catch the stray water and assured us the problem would be fixed first thing Monday morning.

Well, well, well...it's now been a week and not a single thing has been fixed (we've called to complain six times). The new maintenance man, Don, came over to inspect the situation and promptly tried to blame us ("Don't you use your exhaust fan? This is from the humidity in your house") and then explained that the drywall didn't need to be replaced, just "treated" with Clorox Clean-Up. Yeah, right, Don. I don't know the first thing about builiding, but I do know that you can't get mold out of drywall. Our bathroom ceiling (adjacent to the utility closet) is now being overtaken by mold and the plaster is turning yellow. The carpet outside said closet has been wet for several days and is developing it's own atrocious odor and interesting patterns of flora as well. The pilot light on our water heater keeps extinghuising, and I'm only one more cold shower away from having a complete breakdown. At least we won't have to worry about being charged for any damage done to the walls and carpet by our children. I'm glad we'll have an attorney in the family soon, because I smell a big, moldy lawsuit coming on if this problem doesn't go away tomorrow morning. Aaaaarrrrggggghhhh!

Greetings from Lansing

Yes, that's right, you are correct...we are still in Lansing. Here's an interesting twist of fate: we have buddy passes to fly to Utah on JetBlue Airlines, which means we have to fly standby and are always on the bottom of the list. Hence, we've been poised to head home for ten days now, living out of our suitcases while finding out right before we head to Chicago to board that the flights are all full. Yesterday, Adam was contacted by a dean at the school and offered a five-week internship with a firm in town that turns out to be an excellent opportunity to get some courtroom experience each week. There's no way in heck I'd want to be away from Adam for five weeks, so the kids and I are planning to stick around until August 12th.

Soooooo...I guess the girls can learn a few more bad words from the 'hood figgas outside, we can laugh a few more times at our ridiculous upstairs neighbor doing his daily walk of shame after he gets beaten up by his girlfriend, I can say goodbye to all of my friends again, and we can enjoy the adorable lightning bugs for a few more weeks! I always chuckle when I realize that Heavenly Father has a plan and there's not much we can do about it sometimes. This is a good reminder for me that I need to be more in tune with what He wants for our family. I am totally excited for Adam and the chance he has to put his skills to work in a unique environment and I am totally excited to be out of here for good. See you all real soon!

Los Idiomas de Juventud

I noticed last night that my girls have achieved the linguistic phenomenon described by Steven Pinker as "children spontaneously invent[ing] a consistent grammatical speech (a creole) even if they grow up among a mixed-culture population." For example, both girls have begun to use an "oye" sound instead of an "or" sound (to-moye-rrow, D-oye-ra, d-oye-r) and, to my utter disgust (sorry, all you Midwesterners!), saying "maaaaaahm" instead of "mom". Add to this the Ebonics that they've unavoidably picked up (a few days ago, Amber said, "What the hay-ell!?" just like the attitudinous multi-ethnic kids who lurk outside our door), and they are definitely in for it as far as accents and language go. Yikes!
I've also noticed my atrocious hybrid hick/blue collar (translated: Utah/Michigan) vernacular becoming increasingly grating to my own ears. Whatever will we do? A self-proclaimed linguist should never suffer from such cacaphony. I guess we'll just abide by another of Pinker's observations, that "rules like 'a preposition is not a proper word to end a sentence with' must be explicitly taught, therefore they are irrelevant to actual communication and should be ignored." Word.

Christopher Kimball, My Hero

He's edearingly dorky, yet nothing short of genius in the kitchen. He's Christopher Kimball, the founder of the public television show "America's Test Kitchen" and "Cook's Illustrated" magazine. While I've been a tepid fan of both for about ten years, I never fully appreciated the excellence of Kimball's ideas until I began using the recipes and methods his folks discover. The recipes are all wonderfully practical and produce the best results I've ever experienced. I highly recommend America's Test Kitchen for any recipe and/or technical information needs. You can sign up for a limited membership for free (which I have done), but I have a feeling the full membership would be well worth it! I received a free copy of the magazine in the mail three days ago and have already tried several of the recipes with grand success.

Betrothed

I was thrilled the other day when my friend, Elaine, let me know that her son Miles wants to marry Amber. Miles is one of the cutest, funniest little guys I know. Here's a picture of them at the Hawk Island Splash Park on Friday. I'm pretty sure Amber is smitten! Elaine and I have a secret plot to make sure they actually do get married; Miles can go on his mission while Amber goes to college, then they'll get hitched and I'll have the coolest in-laws and cutest grandchildren ever. :) Hooray for puppy love!

Memory Game

This is fun and cool:

1. As a comment on my blog, leave one memory that you and I had together. It doesn't matter if you knew me a little or a lot, anything you remember! Since this is our family blog, feel free to leave a memory about any of the five of us.

2. Next, re-post these instructions on your blog and see how many people leave a memory about you. It's actually pretty cool (and funny) to see the responses. If you leave a memory about me, I'll assume you're playing the game and I'll come to your blog and leave one about you. Thanks!

Houston, I Have a Problem

I am addicted to blogging. I know this sounds odd and you may not believe it because I don't post every day, but the following scenario presented itself as a major warning to me that I need professional help:

Tuesday, none of the kids took naps (yikes, I know). By 4:30 p.m., they were all becoming testy, so I figured we'd head to the mall and have an exciting afternoon to keep them from dozing off at 7 p.m. only to awake, ready to party for 6 hours, at 11:30 p.m. We had a disastrous trip to say the least, so at 8:30, I was delighted to put them all to bed and have four hours of tranquility with Adam. If you're a parent, you're probably chuckling to yourself because you know what happens next...

Amber woke up at 12:30. After thirty minutes of whining, she fell asleep again. Then, Rex woke up to eat and promptly went back to bed. At 2:30, Karli started whining and wouldn't stop, so I put her in bed with me. Amber joined us shortly thereafter and, in her sleep, suspiciously began kicking Karli. Karli screamed each time she received a blow and was finally worked up into such a frenzy that Amber and I were both wide awake. When Karli realized I rebuked Amber for kicking her, she needed another irritant and decided to whine because she wanted to watch a movie. Determined to return to my well-deserved REM state, I put Karli back in her crib and let her scream for 20 minutes. Finally, Adam, who was preparing for a huge mock trial that was to take place 5 hours later, came in and rescued Karli from the dregs of her brutally confining crib. She was beyond consolation, however, and despite any attempt Adam made to pacify her, the screaming fit continued. His efforts to prepare any arguments for class were futile and he was royally ticked off.

By this point, Amber awoke again and chimed right in alongside Karli, wailing so loudly that our neighbors woke up and began stomping around to let us know they'd been disturbed (oh...if they only knew...). Adam was yelling, I was yelling, Karli and Amber were screaming, and not wanting to be forgotten, Rex started crying too. This continued until 5:30 a.m. until two of the three kids had cried themselves to exhaustion and Karli the Insomniac finally settled down to watch Teletubbies.

The point of this tangental saga is that throughout the whole episode, I kept thinking to myself, "This is going to make a great blog post." Then, in the middle of sternly explaining to Amber why she couldn't eat ice cream at 3:00 in the morning, an idea for the title of my post popped into my head. During the whole melee, I just wanted to escape to the office, lock the door, and describe the situation play-by-play. At first, I thought this was an evil desire, but now as I'm writing, I think it may be more of a boon than a burden. My blogging addiction could actually be a cathartic coping mechanism developed by my feeble brain to help me survive episodes of children-induced stress, panic, and sleep deprivation.

Shock and Awe

Celebrating my 28th birthday last week has put me into a state of shock and reflection. The shock comes from discovering more and more gray hairs on my head every day for the past two months, the rate at which said discovery is made being too rapid for me to pluck them out. Also producing shock in my life is the recently-discovered phenomenon of instantaneous weight gain. My body is not like it was twelve short months ago; now, if I eat a carb-rich diet one day, I pay for it the next by barely being able to wedge myself into my clothes. Add to this my severe muscular atrophy that can only be slowed by pumping iron religiously each day, and I feel like I should be 82 instead of 28. Surely I must be older than a late-20-something.
Reflection stems from thinking about what a marvelous life I've had thus far, and the promise of more wonderful years to come. I have an amazing husband who magnificently juggles a rigorous school schedule with taking care of our kids so I can squeeze in a few breaks here and there, along with teaching all of us valuable lessons of dedication, tenacity, humility, humor, and Christlike love for others. He is the best blessing in my life! Our three sweet and adorable kids make me happy every single day and help me learn to be patient even when it's the last characteristic I want to exercise. I have such great parents, siblings, in-laws, grandparents and friends who give me love and support, and I feel like I have blessings more than I deserve. Here's to many more birthdays and years of life filled with good things, happy times, and great people!

These blueberry scones are my favorite breakfast (or anytime) treat; I made them for myself on my birthday and ate nearly the whole batch (and I complain about being overweight...duh!). They are completely divine. Obviously, I couldn't button my jeans the next day. Click here if you want the recipe.

Doesn't Miss a Beat

Karli is funny...she doesn't make much noise (that is, when she's not throwing a fit), sits around and observes, and when no one's expecting it, does something hilarious with all the information she's absorbed. Case in point: last night, Adam, Derrick, Leslie, and I were eating dinner while the kids played. We looked over to see Karli "feeding" her baby doll named Jessica. She had even donned my nursing cover. She'll be a great mom someday!