Mother's Day Tradition

Our annual Mother's Day tradition, which occurs on the Saturday before Mother's Day, is to get flowers for planting in all the beds and pots around the house. This year, we went out to breakfast at Friendly's, since it is very close to our house, and the we went up to Nanticoke Gardens, which is our favorite nursery in the area. The kids just love picking out a whole rainbow of colors and with only a little bit of direction, they do a great job. I think that they would bring home one of each flower if we had the space!!


Potter and Molly at the pansies.

Picking out the perfect impatien is a hard job!!

Mother's Day - Flowers galore!!

All the marigolds at Nanticoke Gardens. This year we didn't buy marigolds since we have planted a ton of marigold seeds and hope that they will do well enough for us to have them in a pot in the front of the house.


The baskets this year at Nanticoke were absolutely beautiful and as you can tell, Dave and I had to duck down to avoid getting hit in the head by the fuscias. We ended up getting another Million Bells like we did last year.



When you first drive up and get out, you are immediately surrounded by a sea of pansies in just about every color and variety imaginable.


The most fun for the kids is, once a flower has been picked out, sitting it on the cart and then driving the cart all around the gardens!

My family with all of our flowers; we are ready to plant!!

The Rose-breasted Grosbeaks have returned!

This afternoon, the Grosbeaks returned to our backyard to sample the black sunflower seeds in one of the feeders. I have gotten a picture of the male (who is the more colorful of the pair), but then after these were taken, another male and female came and spent quite a long time eating. The kids think this is so much fun!

An Indigo Bunting (we think!)

We are fairly certain that this morning while having breakfast, we spied an Indigo Bunting out on our feeder. With our new 'squirrel repellant feeders' we now see tons of cool birds in our back yard, including some rose-breasted grosbeaks, but we have not gotten good pics of them yet. The kids are having a lot of fun and learning how to identify tons of birds.

Our new addition to the family

Skipper is our newest family member. He joins his crabby friends Spike and Skittles. He seems to be adjusting well and making friends with Skittles. He follows him all around the crab tank. Spike, as usual, just keeps to himself. He is quite the loner. At least we've got a couple interesting crabs to enjoy!

Clark kids photo shoot

Potter, Caleb and Molly are such loving sibs...we are so lucky!!


I love how they love to be so close to each other, literally!!! What beautiful children, if I do say that myself!!

Molly's tattoo

Molly went to a birthday party this past weekend and her goody bag was eerily suited towards her love of Ariel and being a princess. She wore her new sunglasses all the time and kept walking around the house showing off her Ariel tattoo. Lucky for her, it didn't come off in the bath last night and she happily showed it to all of her friends at school today.

Caleb is 19 months old!

Make it fast! I am not sitting here much longer.


Hey, is that a huge truck going by?


I've had enough. I don't have time to waste on these pictures all the time. Gotta go!

This was my favorite shot of him this month. So angelic looking. Finally calm to sit for 30 seconds.

Potter is citizen of the month!

Potter was chosen from his class, by his teacher, as citizen of the month for April 2008 and was given an award this afternoon at Tiger Time in front of the entire student body. We are extremely proud of him and all of his fellow 'citizens' this month!

Earth Day Walk

In celebration of Earth Day on Tuesday, the kids and I went for a 1/2 hour walk around our block to collect garbage. I have to say that we are such a dirty and trashy society!! The kids each filled up a Wegman's grocery bag with tons of garbage. I think that we could have probably gotten more but we had some time constraints. It amazes me the amount and things that we found. Potter put a broom (!) in his bag along with an old sock and tons of empty bottles, and Molly found lots of wrappers and straws. We did go by a bus stop on Main Street and that produced a great deal of what we picked up. Why are there not more public garbage cans?? Isn't this something that would keep things cleaner? Anyway, the kids had a great time, at some points arguing over who got to pick up a certain piece of trash. They want to do this more often; how can you say no to that?

Potter and Molly in the sprinkler

Molly and Potter also enjoy playing in the sprinkler. Caleb, not so much yet!!

More backyard fun with the swings

Potter and Molly *love* the swing!

Kids in the backyard.....start of summer!!

Caleb learns how much fun it can be to get soaking wet at the water table. He also isn't very discriminating and will drink the water from here too. We need to work on correcting that!

Potter and Molly love to twist up the swings and then twirl wildly around thousands of times. It makes me dizzy watching them.

Fun with friends at Arnold Park

Annie, Emma, Sean, Adam, Potter and Molly in the giant sandbox at Arnold Park. This sandbox is so cool, there are 4 built in excavators that the kids can use to dig huge holes.
Caleb giggles as he contemplates going down the slide again.


Cathy winds up and gives Caleb and Laurie good pushes on the swings.


Chasing the bubbles in the grass.


More fun in the big sandbox. We forgot extra shovels, but thankfully, there were community ones there for sharing.

More Round Top pictures

This is our 'secret' path up on Round Top.


Once we had hiked up to Round Top, we took a minute to look at the view, that sadly, I did not photograph for posting here. There is then a smaller hill that you climb up to get to the picnic tables, pavillions, and playground. The kids raced up ahead of me and Dave and this is what they found. The looks on their faces were priceless, and their sadness gave way when we let them romp all over the picnic tables instead. (see post below). I called the Broome County parks department that afternoon and the lady assured me that new equipment would be in place by Memorial Weekend. We'll see about that!

Hiking up Round Top

This past week was spring break for Potter and Molly. On Monday, Dave stayed home from work in the morning and we all hiked up to Round Top Park, which is just a block away from our house. The old driving road is now a path that you can go up to the top of the park and then you've got a gorgeous view of Endicott, the Susquehanna River, and part of Vestal. Since the leaves on the trees have not really come out in any big way yet, there is more to see that isn't blocked by the foliage. This huge log has been there forever and is always a favorite climbing toy for the kids. The dancing on the picnic tables was our way of creating playground equipment when none was to be had. (See post directly above this one). The weather was just right, a cool morning with lots of sunshine and blue skies. Good exercise and a great way to start off the week of vacation.

Saying goodbye to our friend, Sparkle

This afternoon, we said goodbye to our pet hermit crab Sparkle, who died last weekend after not surviving through his molting phase. Potter decided that Sparkle would be happy in a garden, surrounded by the bee balm, where we could visit him. Using Great Granddad's World War I fox hole shovel (for which we are grateful to Granddad for giving us recently), Potter dug a grave for Sparkle, had a small ceremony, and placed him at rest. We will miss Sparkle who was a very active and happy crab!!



Potter digs Sparkle's grave with Great-Granddad's WWI shovel.

Potter placing Sparkle in his grave.



Prayer time for Sparkle.


Potter wrapping Sparkle up. (A bit out of order)



Sparkle's marker in the garden of bee balm.

We enjoy a nice day outside....

This was from last weekend (April 6th). It was nice the whole weekend and the kids got some much needed outside time.

Caleb is 18 months

They were so cute, I couldn't pick just one!

Potter's poetry recitation at school

Potter's school hosted it's 16th annual poetry presentation today at school. Potter's poem was titled 'Loose Tooth', by Jill Eggleton. He is getting so much better as speaking slowly and making good eye contact with the audience. It was a great job!