The Clark Family - This is Us

Monday, April 6, 2009

Caleb has moves

I finally got some video of Caleb dancing. He is sooooo cute!!

Over the weekend, the kids built many neat things with megablocks. Molly recreated the very long hallway in Granddad's house and then the kids talked about how they were going to slide down the hallway and into the family room on their knees when we go down for Easter. Then Potter and Caleb built a huge 'garage' together. Caleb had all of his trucks next to and inside the garage. I had to take another picture just of Potter with his garage.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Caleb dancing (sort of)

Caleb loves to dance and I tried to get him into it this morning while I cooked the pancakes he made (see post below), but I got only a smidgen of what he is capable of, but he is still my cute little guy.

Caleb making pancakes

Caleb loves the kitchen, loves to mix, loves to cook, must see what is in every pot on the stove, and can make a good pot of coffee (really!!) This morning was no exception as he made pancakes for everyone for breakfast.

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Potter - March citizen of the month

Yesterday during Tiger Time at Potter's school, he received the Citizen of the Month award for his classroom - we are extremely proud of him!!! His teacher, Mr. Henderson (in a black long sleeved shirt) handed out all of the awards to each child, but it was special that he got to give Potter his award as well. Look carefully in the group shots. Potter is in the third row, almost to the complete left. It was hard to get a shot of all the kids and see everyone's faces. Yay Potter!!!!

Monday, March 30, 2009

Caleb's first birthday party

Caleb attended his first birthday party last Saturday for one of his friends at preschool who turned three. This was at Bee Bop N Tots, an hour and a half of singing, music with instruments and sort of a choreographed program. Caleb started off by not even wanting to walk into the building and I had to half drag him up some stairs and into the hallway (I should have known then to have brought my flask with me) and he continued to cry, wail, scream, flail around in the hall, would not take off his shoes to go into the classroom, and so we sat in the hall for a good 15 minutes while he laid on some really nasty looking carpet. Once I could get him into the room, the other kids were well into their singing and the woman who was in charge of the program said in a way too cheery voice 'Oh, don't worry, all kids come around before too long!' Yeah, well she doesn't know my kid! So as it turned out, I sat with Caleb on my lap through almost the entire program, lunch, cake, presents, and it was only the last 10-15 minutes that he would get off of my lap and run around. And this was with two of his best buddies there from preschool!! So the happy pictures that you see were when I was about to bust a gasket with my child. I don't think we'll be going to any other parties soon. Either that or Dave will have to escort him there.

Caleb realizes that I am not within a 12 inch radius of him!!!

Molly's get up

Molly has on the most hilarious outfit. It is the rainbow colored headband, the singing Ariel necklace, the Princess backpack, the Middle Eastern little zip purse, a nice dress, green owl socks, and aqua ballet slippers. Holy cow, you need sunglasses to see this.

Thursday, March 26, 2009

Lin and Claire (an event that may never be repeated)

This is me at Wendy's apartment holding her cat Claire. At first glance, this may not seem unusual, but let me assure you it is MOST unusual. Claire used to weigh around 25 pounds, and has now slimmed down to about 17 pounds. (Just for a point of reference, our kitty, Blaise, weighs about 8 1/2 pounds, about what Claire has lost) She has always had a bad disposition and not really been friendly towards anyone except Wendy. The kids have always wanted to pet her, have her sit on their laps, etc, but we can't even really get within a 3 foot radius of her without the hissing starting. When we went down in January for the inauguration, I developed a sort of relationship with Claire where she would come and rub on my leg and then lay by me on the floor. This trip a couple weekends ago, I was determined to make Claire like me and not be afraid of her anymore. SO, one night I decided to brave it and pick her up and she just was content, crossed her paws in front of her, so I screamed at Wendy to get the camera and take a picture of this, it'll never happen again. As it turns out, I think that Claire misses me, because I would play with her mouse laser beam and she would chase it around (well, she would at least move one paw towards it) and I know that was special time she and I had.

Monday, March 23, 2009

Finally, we get to the pancakes!!

You'll be seeing this first, but this is the last thing that we did after waiting in line for quite a while. Most of us had pancakes and sausages which were delicious with their maple syrup, but Caleb had a hot dog (by then, it was very close to lunchtime) and then we decided we needed to hit the road and get home. It was such a great trip, I am glad we did the Maine maple syrup Sunday. Sweet treat!!

The ice house

Although the kids had fun hacking away at giant hunks of ice with picks and other sharp objects, it made me cringe watching all these (0ther) unsupervised kids doing it. They weren't quite sure of why people would have an ice house, even after I explained it to them.

Boiling down the kettles of syrup

It was so cold outside, so when we finally found the huge fire with all the boiling kettles, we stayed there a few minutes longer!! They have huge poles that they stir around in the kettles every few minutes. It was cool to watch.

Moooooooooooooooooooooo

This one had a lot to say.......

A bit of livestock

There was lots of lowing and mooing. Check out the video above this post. I wish I had gotten better, as he was really letting it all out. And the kids loved that there was a Wilbur pig. We didn't see Charlotte, though. Those of you who don't know who I am talking about obviously do not have children.

Maine maple Sunday

The third Sunday in March is Maine maple Sunday, which is an extremely big deal and there are a lot of hard core Mainers that participate in this every year, as well as us tourists. We had a very nice drive out to the farm that we chose (there are hundreds that do this) and we got to go through a covered bridge, which the kids thought was cool. We went to Merrifield farm, which is basically someone's house (the Merrifield's?) and then all of the property where they raise the livestock and, of course, make the maple syrup. There were hundreds of cars parked on this little two lane road and then you had to hike back to the house. There was a long, long, long, line that was for the pancake breakfast. Overall, I think we waited in that line for an hour, but since there were 8 of us (and 4 anxious kids) we took turns holding the spot in line, while we walked around the property to check things out. More later on what we did....

All sorts of snuggling

Some friends of Jeff and Laura, Stuart and Delia (she is in the pictures with Caleb and Alex) came over on Saturday night, had some bbq for dinner and then the kids all watched a movie. Delia is a little younger than Molly, but they had a great time (all five of them from age 2-13) playing with Polly Pockets. It was sweet to watch them all together.