Warm Halloween???

Finally the weather is supposed to be warm for the treat-or-treaters! Over the past 3 years Halloween night has been frigid. Keep your fingers crossed the weekend storm doesn't decide to ruin our high hopes.

Halloween sneak peek

The kids have been busy! Here is a quick look at some of the pre-halloween pumpkin carving.

Wow what a beauty

Sam's job has a few perks outside of the normal benefits. One of these "perks" is he gets to drive SWEET cars when he goes out of town on business. Take a look at this hot little number that he rented in Boise this past week. Nothing says BUDGET rental car like a neon blue PT cruiser! Do they still make these things and why this color? Funny thing is Sam wore the same color bow tie and cumberbund to his Junior Prom. I guess you get what you pay for and the $19.95 a day price tag was about right.

Kiss and Make Up

I (mom) tried a new recipe for dinner the other night. As usual, the kids were sticking their noses up and giving me the stink-eye as I was serving it They do this whenever there is any new or different food. Good eaters, but skeptical when it comes to trying something new (which is often). Then I usually explain what it is, and how they like all of the ingredients in it. Without a fuss, the boys tried it. Will said, "Mmmm I do like it!" Currently he is the picky eater of the bunch. Sambo just kept shoveling in his bites, and even Quinny was tasting it. I smiled, feeling so satisfied that I was providing them with a fabulous meal. That's when Millie blurted out, "It's yucky!" I looked at her plate and she hadn't even tasted it. So Dad gave her a free pass to her room. A little while later she came downstairs and handed me this note:






That's what being a mom is all about. I love you Amilia. BFF.

Kung flu shots

Nothing says fun like "flu shots". Last night all 6Clarks were vaccinated. Check out these pics:

Millie had such a good time she hated to leave

Wilbur was mad that this girl saw his Mr. Incredible underpants

Quincy stares at her meaty thigh

Sambo aka "Lunchbox" asks the nurse for a shot in the other leg, and a second sucker

Top Pics of the day

As mentioned in the previous post, the kids had a great time riding "Biff" after the boys came down from the mountain. Thanks Ash for taking this picture.
This is at the Scarecrow Festival at Thanksgiving Point. Millie had a dance performance there...she danced her little heart out. We ended up staying there for 5 hours. What a fun start to UEA break.
I (Holly) took some pictures of Millie in her baptism dress yesterday (something I've been wanting to do since January). Only took 10 months. Because she was baptized in February, there was like 8 feet of snow outside so I never got a great shot. So now may I present to you my beautiful Millie.
One more thing about her (which she will kill me later for saying); she is a total poser. All you have to do is point a camera at her and BAM! She's striking a pose. Her scrapbook is more than half-full of posing pictures. This started way back at 2 years old and hasn't stopped. She's not joking when she poses either, she takes it seriously.

Deer Camp 08

According to Grandpa Clark, during the past century the Clark's have only missed 2 deer hunts. This year Sambo continued the tradition as another generation was brought by horseback to deer camp. The weather couldn't have been any better for a 6 year old rookie. The Clark rules state "you have to be 8 years old to be in camp" but Sambo and Dad were anxious to get him up on the hill. After sitting on a VERY PACKED horse for about an hour Sambo decided he needed to give his legs a break, and ended up hiking roughly 5 miles up very difficult terrain. Everyone was amazed his little legs just kept moving, and for the record he NEVER complained. Once in deer camp he was just one of the guys. It is amazing how grown up he is getting. When asked what his favorite part of the hunt was he said "cleaning the deer was the grossest but coolest thing I have seen". I couldn't believe he could stomach it. Another highlight was carrying a pocketknife around and carving his initials in every aspen tree in sight. Mom, Millie, Will and Quincy came up Sunday to ride horses and greet the hunters. I had so much fun, I think I might roll the dice and take Wilbur up next year.

Crazy hair

This week Ridgeline Elementary had a crazy hair day. Check out these doos:

And yes Sambo's face was not photoshopped.

One down

As mentioned in a previous post, regardless of the weather Sam was going to do a cyclocross race on Saturday. If you are wondering what the white stuff on the ground is; it is snow. Yup it snowed on Saturday. The race went off as planned and he loved every minute of it. The official results haven't been posted but unofficially number 1258 was 8th place of 43 riders.
It took 4 races but I finally won

Whatober 12, 2008

Can you believe this? Check out this snow. This is what we woke up to this morning. After church and the singing of a few Christmas songs the 6clarks attacked the famous sledding hill "Murder's Hill". Whatober has come to soon and has totally caught us unprepared (check out Millie's make shift outfit with the HIGH WATER pants) The good news is; the forecast is calling for 70 degree temps by mid week.

I DON'T have to go to the bathroom

After telling the kids they had 2 rides left at Lagoon's Frightmares on Friday night, they all said they didn't need to go to the bathroom. Terror Ride and Dracula's Castle were the 2 rides that they wanted to ride the most. Guess from the picture who gambled and lost while riding the Terror Ride. Funny thing is in spite of the "accident" everyone finished Dracula's Castle with NO delay!

6Clarks: The case of the missing pumpkins

Last year we bought a bunch of pumpkins to decorate our front porch. We noticed that the pumpkins disappeared one after another. Sometimes they would literally be gone within 10 minutes of being placed on the porch. We just thought it was some punk teenagers being funny. To prevent the kid's Jack-O-Lanterns from being snatched in a similar fashion we waited until Halloween night to set them on the porch. Each kid took great pride in their creation. Finally the time had come to set them on the porch and get their costumes on. I placed a candle in each pumpkin, lit the candle and went inside to help out with the kids.
10 minutes later the kids were on the porch with trick or treat bags in hand, when Wilbur noticed his pumpkin was missing. The crazy thing is, the candle was left on the porch with the pumpkin lid. Needless to say he freaked!!! Once again we blamed the teenagers for being cruel and boneheaded. After calming Will down we went trick or treating around the cul-de-sac. As we passed by our house (maybe 10 minutes after departing) we noticed that Millie's pumpkin was missing but the lid and candle remained. These teenagers obviously knew what they were doing and I was looking to give them a beatdown. We finished off the night trick or treating and upon arrival at home noticed that our pumpkins too were finished, that is all but the lids and candles. The next morning I looked for any sign of smashed pumpkins in the road, nearby fields, etc.. only to come up empty handed. Needless to say we were all baffled by the disappearance of the pumpkins. Later on in the after noon I caught a glimpse of something white buried in the back yard bark. Upon further inspection IT WAS A PUMPKIN. I pulled out the pumpkin and guess what I saw? Teeth marks. We had solved the mystery; DAISY was the pumpkin thief and was EATING the pumpkins and I guess was saving this one for later. The crazy thing is already this year we have caught her stealing from the porch decorations.

Hee-Haw

You know it is Halloween time when you see that Hee-Haw (or

Yee-Haw as Wilbur says) farms is open for business. Monday night the 6Clarks loaded up the Suburban and headed to this little farmyard oasis (farm animals, corn maze, scary houses and a pig named Leroy with giant nuts!!!). As we pulled in the parking lot to meet the rest of the Clark gang we noticed the place was packed. It seems their was a corporate party going on, which actually worked to our advantage. Jake recognized an old buddy from high school who was giving away passes to the employees of Axiom mortgage and scored about 20 free tickets! Here are a few pics of this glorious place and the fun time the kids had with their cousins.

Cyclocross-Sam's new hobby

What is cyclocross? It is 40-60 minutes of pain and misery, most often raced in the mud, rain and snow. It is a combination of trail and road biking, with stints where you jump off your bike and carry it up a hill and over barriers. The crowd is very lively as they drink, ring cowbells, and at the last race pumped techno music while dancing and handing out $1 bills (shown in the pic). This past week was the Draper race, and I wussed out. I woke up to rain, cold and more rain and went back to bed (I did go to watch the later races). Little did I realize the conditions couldn't have been better for this race. I will go on record right now and say neither rain, sleet, snow or dark of night will stop me from racing this weekend. Here is the forecast for Saturday and it looks like rain, sleet, and snow is/are very possible.

Lagoon-A little slice of heaven

What do you do to celebrate? Well for the 6Clarks, we go to Lagoon. Especially if it's Frightmares! Since we always take the kids, Holly and I never get to go on rides together. So she sent out an email to a bunch of friends to see if there was any interest in a couples only date night at Lagoon. She got back a ton of responses saying "we would love to go" or we are "Totally in." As the day came closer, the emails started pouring in from these same people except they were like, "we couldn't find a sitter", or "my kid has a game," etc... Well by 5:30 Friday night Holly and I were all ready to go...but apparently we were the ONLY ones. We were stood-up by literally 20 people (but all were legit reasons). Even some friends from Ogden bailed, which is strange because everyone from Ogden loves Lagoon! So Holly and I had to make a decision, and we decided to go anyway. On the way to Lagoon we grabbed some pizza at a new place called Settebello. Soooo good! We arrived at Frightmares at 7:30 and we were so happy to flash our good ol' season passes. We didn't waste any time hitting every ride. Let me tell you, we were laughing our heads off. Not only because the rides were so fun, not because we rode Colossus 5 times in a row, not because we stayed upside-down the entire "Rock O Planes" ride, and not because we were just having so much fun together. It was because we met the coolest people there. Who needs to invite friends to Lagoon when you can just meet better ones there? This is our new friend Ron Grant in the picture with Sam, and the other picture is of his girlfriend's back tat. These are the kind of friends you get to hang with at Lagoon. Anyway, the night was awesome and I am so glad Holly and I still went. Here are some pics to show how much fun we were having. The only downer of the night was Holly realized after getting off of "Wicked" that her cell phone was no longer in her coat pocket. So 2 hours later we checked back to see if it was found or smashed underneath the roller coaster, and by some miracle Holly hawk-eyed it in the bushes under the ride! It was trashed but at least we recovered her SIM card.

Mr. Mom

Holly has a very interesting career as you all know. This week she had a certification course to be trained as a SANE nurse. What this basically means is she performs an in-depth medical exam to victims of sexual assault/rape while collecting forensic evidence for Law Enforcement. She even gets to put the acronym behind her name. So now she is Holly Clark BSN, SANE. This is quite a big accomplishment and we are all very proud of her. This course was 40+ hours, which means dad was responsible for all the domestic duties. Here is a small insight as to what was going on at home this week:
Monday-Millie has piano, and tumbling
Tuesday-Millie has dance and both boys have soccer practice
Wednesday-Sam has tumbling, Millie has Activity days, Dad has Young Mens, and Holly has Young Womens.
Thursday-Both boys have soccer games of which Dad coached Sambo's team
Friday-Ridgeline Run at elementary school, Wilbur has a field trip to the Zoo
It was also the end of the quarter for Sam and he was on the phone and laptop everyday, all day trying to bring in the last minute deals.
Needless to say things at home were not SANE but INSANE. With this being said we managed to do just fine. We're a good team. Here are some pics of the field trip with Wilbur on Friday. Also I understand why the ladies get into the mid-day soaps. I have to admit I got hooked on Days of our Lives. The Steffano Demira vs. John Black saga fascinates me. It is like a car crash, terrible to watch but you can't look away.