10

Amilia Anne (Millie) - 2 weeks old
Named after her Grandma and also the Millenium (Jan/2000)

15 Months

4 years old - 1st dance performance
6 years old
9 years old (almost 10) My baby girl is ten. Ten!
We really can't believe it. Dad and I were just talking about how fast 10 years has gone by. We will never forget the day you were born and how happy we were to see you. Our life has been so blessed ever since because of you and the joy you add to our family. There is something about the first baby. You take in every detail and second of being a new mommy. I will cherish our time when it was just you, dad, and me. Then you start growing and before we know it, we have 3 more babies and you are the BIG sister. You are the oldest because you can handle the responsibility of being a good example to your little brothers and sister. And even though you are the oldest, you will always be our baby girl. I am proud of the young lady you are becoming. I watched you interact with your friends at the birthday parties and I love how you are a good friend and make sure everyone feels included. I love how funny and confident you are with others. You are blessed to have many, many friends. Your fun personality draws others to want to be around you.
When it came time to plan your birthday party, you were torn because you wanted to include all of your close friends. But, you also wanted to have a sleep-over and we thought it would be too many girls! Because of this, you were lucky to have 2 birthday parties.

Party 1:
I grabbed your neighborhood friends and we picked you up from dance and SURPRISE! You were so surprised to see all of your friends in my car. I fooled you because you thought it was going to have to be the next week.
Then you picked a place to eat dinner and dessert. You chose Olive Garden, one of your faves. I had so much fun with these darling girls!


Here is everyone singing to you!
For dessert, everyone got ice cream sundaes. You got some awesome birthday presents!

Party 2:
Ice Skating at the Gallivan Center, then a sleep-over at the Marriott Hotel connected to the ice rink in downtown Salt Lake. I was impressed with how fast all the girls caught-on to ice skating. Even the boys figured it out and everyone had a great time. Quinny loved it too! The weather was awesome. There was live music and the DJ even wished Millie a happy birthday!

We went straight from skating to the hot tub and swimming. Then it was up to our room for presents and cake/ice cream. This year I made cute yummy "cake pops" and also ice cream cone cakes.




Then dad took the little kids home and I had the pleasure of having a slumber party with you and your friends. I tried to be a fly on the wall and it was then that I realized you really are in the "tween" stage. Right between young and teen. Listening to your conversations and the questions you asked the "magic 8 ball" was very fun! One of your friends was even wearing a bra and I just can't believe you are getting that close to grown-up! Of course we didn't get much sleep but who cares right? When we got home yesterday I loved that you and me got to take a 2 hour nap together! Did you feel me snuggle-up to you while you were sleeping? Could you feel me holding on to every breath, wishing that you would stop growing?

BUT, sometimes growing-up is not so bad...

You are getting old enough to babysit for short periods of time. I love that when dad and I needed to go out for some "alone time" last night, you were willing to be in charge at home. And even more, I love that when we left you in charge, we knew we could trust you to take good care of the kids.
Thank-you, and Happy Birthday!

Something SWeeT and something SiLLY

So SWeeT...

Without prompting, Sambo made this card for Millie and gave it to her for her birthday (this is the inside of the card)


How generous of him to give her a whole dollar! Oh he's a sweetheart. I love my sensitive little guy.


So SiLLY...

As we've mentioned many times, Will aka "The Great Man" is a funny dude. He says things and does things with his face that are hilarious...even when he's not trying to be funny.

The other day he was leaving to walk up to his friend's house. I said, "Have fun and use your manners."
He said, "Yeah, Kai's mom really likes manners. But she also likes the Utes. So how can she like manners AND like the Utes?"




P.S. {A happy birthday shout-out to Millie!!!!}

Proud

Her teacher, Mrs. Burton said Millie "stays on task, tries hard, gets good grades, and is a good friend to everyone"
I am most proud of the ladder. More important than an "A" any day.
Keep it up chick

Go Jazz

There's a lot of cheering for the Jazz at our house. Not only the Utah Jazz, but Sam's junior Jazz team. This is his first season playing basketball and he is hooked! He wanted a basketball hoop for Christmas and is really looking forward to when he can shoot hoops in our driveway.
Go Sam!


Of course, he also looks forward to the game treats!

2010

HaPPY NeW YeaR!

To celebrate, we went to Fat Cats for some bowling and pizza!
We decided that's somewhere we need to go more often.
Will had the highest score of the night.

Then mom was off to work at the hospital from 7:00-1:00 am. Lots of mommies having babies either trying to avoid paying a deductible, or accomplishing having the New Year's baby.

It's worthwhile to mention that it was also a night of the very rare, "Blue Moon." Only happens once every 19 years (thus the saying, "once in a blue moon") I noticed it and how light it was when I was driving home at 2:00 in the morning. Beautiful.

Dad and the kiddos went to our friend's house where the grown-ups were sneaky and set the clock 2 hours earlier. They totally fooled the kids into thinking that it was New Years when it was only 10:00! They were banging pans and all.

Here's to a new year, and a new decade. I can only hope that it's as good as the last one! I know that's a lot to hope for.


***Wow, I think I wrote 5 posts today! I had to get us all caught up.

Locks of Love

I'm so proud of Millie. When she turned 7 she decided she wanted to grow her hair long so that she could cut it and donate her long ponytail to "Locks of Love" where wigs are made from real hair. She's been growing it out for nearly 3 years now with that sole purpose.She originally heard about it from her Aunt Jenny. She was intrigued and instantly set on doing this.
During this Christmas break, she decided it was time to chop off the hair. It was long enough to cut off 11 inches and still have some to spare. The spirit of giving really touched her this year. She has been looking for opportunities to help other in need. She has such a big, sensitive heart. It's true that this girl has been pretty "spoiled," but for as much as she gets, she likes to give back.

Anyway, here she is at the hair salon a couple days ago. Just her and I went to get our hair done together and it was really fun!




Before...

During...

And After!

She, (and especially me), LOVES her new shorter 'do. It looks darling and there are no more wars over brushing that long tangly mane of hair. It sure was gorgeous but also a source of contention almost daily...me trying to brush through her snarl-y hair while she whines and moans. Not any more :)

The only thing I don't like about it is that she looks 2 years older :(

Good job Mills, we love you.

We Ski Free at Three

What's almost better than going skiing?
Having your kids beg you to take them skiing!
Sam and I were so happy when Monday morning the kids came into our room and jumped on our bed asking us "when are we going skiing?"
We looked at each other and said, "Today!"
So we took advantage of Alta's "Ski free at 3:00." Even though it's only from 3-4:30, we figured this was a perfect gap for the first time back on the slopes, especially for Will. And especially since Quincy was coming along.
I can't tell you how awesome it was.
Everyone has visions or dreams of things that they want in life. One of mine has been to have my whole family skiing together and everyone loving it! This definitely happen today.
I think it is such a great family activity that we can do our whole lives together.
The kids skied awesome and Quinny had a great time in the backpack. And it was REALLY cold, like 17 degrees. No whiners, couldn't believe it. We were especially proud of Will...he's just a little guy and remembered everything he learned last year.

The kids wanted to go again so we also went yesterday with our friends. It was snowy but still lots of fun.
I have a feeling we will be doing a lot of Alta skiing at 3:00. This is not a cheap sport...especially with 4 kids!
Good Times.

35 and 33

We can't decide if it's a good thing or a bad thing, having birthdays right after Christmas.
This year, it was definitely a good thing. After all the excitement, chaos, fun, and work leading up to Christmas, we needed a break! And we needed a break together.
Sam took care of that for us. He arranged for Aunt Candice and Uncle Doug to come stay with the kids while we had our birthday outing.
We went to Settebello for lunch, then to Gateway.
We saw "Sherlock Holmes"
Shopped
Ate Dinner
Shopped again - and this was a HUGE sacrifice for Sam - he's hates shopping!
Saw "Avatar"
Spent the night at the Marriott downtown
Slept In!

The plan was to go skiing but it was way stormy weather and Candice needed to get to work so we grabbed brunch and headed home. We decided we would go the next day and bring the kids along.

Thanks babe and Happy Birthday to Us!

Christmas!

Make a Smilebox scrapbook

After the craziness of presents we feasted on quiche, cinnamon rolls, and fruit smoothies. Yum!

Spent the afternoon playing together with our new stuff, then we headed to Grandpa Judy's for

some hot tubbing!

Another successful Christmas :)

Done.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve.

Today it was just the 6 Clarks.

We started the day off swimming and going down the water slides at Lifetime.

Then a couple of hours of downtime while mom wrapped and made final preparations.

Then we went to Tepanyaki, one of our favorites:



Here's the part where they toss shrimp in your mouth - here we are in action- we were 3 for 6:




I've never seen these kids eat so much in my life! I had my share too.

Next we went to the movies to see "Alvin and the Chipmunks." Of course, we had to have frozen Cokes and popcorn (even though we weren't one bit hungry) because Quinny insisted! Oh how she loves her "pop pop"

The movie was really good, but went later than we realized. Our plan was to take the kids to the shelter downtown and make a donation (the kids too) but we were starting to get anxious about the night ahead.

So we headed home, tracked down where Santa Claus was online (he was in Brazil at 8:30 pm), decided we had enough time to carry on our tradition of putting on our Christmas jammies and exchange gifts with each other. A month ago the kids drew names and each had a chance to go shopping and pick-out a gift for that sibling. They really enjoyed doing this and did a great job choosing a perfect gift.

Here they are, ready to open the first gift of Christmas:

Today was as close to perfect as you can get...

...until Sam started assembling the surprises and was up almost all night!