Project Fun

The kids and I have completed a couple small projects that we had fun doing. I believe I found them both on Pinterest or just online somewhere.

Painting Pots

Before painting them, I had sprayed them with a water sealant as one of the websites says to do to keep the paint form streaking if it gets wet.

Summer working away.

Mason always stopping to smile. 

Finished product!

The plan is to plant basil seeds in the bigger pot and maybe find a small flower/plant to plant in the two smaller pots. They had so much fun painting these.

Chalkboard Mats

This one I found on Pinterest. The idea was to buy table place mats from the dollar store and just spray paint them with chalkboard paint. It would give the kids something to do while waiting for their meal or just in between. Super easy and cheap.

Two place mats from the dollar store

First layer of spray paint (I had to do two coats)

Summer testing it out

I find that they are a little messy with the chalk dust when it's time to wipe them down, but the little kids love them.

School's Out for Summer

Here we are a month into our summer vacation already. I can't believe we are over halfway through June. The kids and I decided to make a "Summer Fun" poster again. We did one two summers ago and it was fun to check off things as we did them. It also helps us think of something to do when we find ourselves in a rut. 

We all threw out ideas of things we like to do and then placed them on the poster. Summer and Mason decorated it a little at the top. We have added a few more since making it.

A couple weeks ago we hit McGraw Park to play a little tennis. . . 

. . . and then walked up to the splash pad to play for a little. I always forget about that park because it's kind of hidden behind Central Catholic, but it is a nice park to go to.

Kids had a lot of fun, both the littles and the big ones. And they saw the McDonalds in the distance so we decided to have lunch out. They really had to twist my arm ;) 

We've been getting out to do some other things and working on some projects, but I'll save that for another post or two.

Spring Break 2015

FYI: THIS POST WAS STARTED THE END OF MARCH & FINISHED IN JUNE. WHOOOPS!!!

The Clark family stayed in town during spring break since we had already made plans back in August to go to Disney World over Easter with a couple of my siblings, their kids and my mom.

I have to admit, we were pretty lazy the first part of break and watched a lot of television/movies and the kids played a lot of electronics. I did have the kids read most days to do something worthwhile. They also made sand creations. Big kids didn't get in the picture, but the Cubs colored cross is Noah's and the other cross is Madison's.

By mid week I was ready to get out of the house. It may have been chilly, but I needed to get out and do something. Wednesday morning I ran a few errands with Summer and then picked up Mason's friend, Caelen, to come over to play for a few hours. It turned out nicely that Madison's summer softball coach was around and met Madison and a couple other girls at the batting cages to work on hitting. He also caught for her so she could pitch a little.

Madison met a bunch of friends at the mall on Thursday to do a little shopping so the other three and I thought we'd check out the Children's Discovery Museum to see if there was anything new. Nothing new, but a favorite all the time is the climbing maze.

After the museum we decided to hit Orange Leaf. A definite favorite of the kids.

For as long as we've been in IL, we've never hit the David Davis Mansion. Noah had been there once for a school field trip. I decided it would be fun to check it out with the kids. Seemed like a great idea since the weather was still cold. It was pretty neat. I stressed a bit throughout as Mason and Summer like to touch everything in sight and we weren't supposed to touch anything in the mansion. Eeek!

As you can see, like any other tourist type place, there is a gift shop. The kids grabbed a sucker of sorts and the littles grabbed a little coloring book or something of that nature.

Overall it wasn't too bad of a break. It could've been warmer, but that's the way the Midwest works. At least we were able to hit Florida a few days after spring break!!!

Madison's Confirmation

What an amazing weekend we had this past weekend (I'm a little behind) a month and a half ago! My mom, sister and two of her kids had come over for Madison's confirmation. Because they were able to make it here late Friday evening, they were also able to watch her play volleyball the next day. That may not seem like a big deal to many, but since we live so far away from all our family, it's rare that anyone gets to see our kids compete.

Per Madison's requests, Sean smoked ribs on the grill for us Saturday evening and we ordered a large cookie cake from Insomnia Cookies. Once done enjoying our meal, the girls headed out to do a little shopping :)

Sunday was the big day. Mass wasn't until 2pm so we had plenty of time to get ready. My heart just melted looking at Madison and realizing how she's turning into a beautiful young lady. I'm so used to her wearing sweats and t-shirts that it kind of took me by surprise after seeing her dressed up AND with her hair done.

Mass was absolutely amazing! I'm no good with words, but I felt so proud and overjoyed watching Madison with her confirmation class, Noah helping serve mass with Bishop Jenky and just everything about that day.

Madison, Bishop Jenky & her sponsor, Jackie

Madison & Father Eric

Noah and his friend, Kyle, were able to serve at Confirmation mass and
were the Crosier Bearer & Miter Bearer. Such a special memory for them!

Sean wanted in one of the pics since Grandma Helen is his sponsor
from 11 years ago!

Here's a cute picture of the cousins and Summer waiting for mass to begin.

Thanks to a few friends that took pictures of our kids before mass. I snatched a couple from their Facebook pages :) Below are pictures of the whole 8th grade Epiphany class and one of just the girls.

I'm so happy that Madison has been able to rejoin her classmates from the last four years to finish up her 8th grade year and share these special moments with her friends. It's been such a blessing.

We love you Madison and your dad and I are so proud to be your parents!

New Year's Updates

The majority of our friends and family know what's been going on with us, but for those that are further away, here's a post to update you on all the craziness that's been going on with the Clarks.

Long story short is that Sean's contract gig was up in Bothell, WA and a job opportunity landed in his lap that brought us back to IL. We have been lucky enough to come back to the same area we were before and our kids have been able to start back up at Epiphany Catholic School in Normal. This is truly a place that we can call home as we have SO many great friends that we can call family. It's such a great feeling!

The Kids

Madison is in 8th grade and happy to be back with her friends. She takes Algebra at Central Catholic first thing in the morning and then heads back to Epiphany for the rest of her classes. She's currently playing volleyball and just landed the part of Alice in the upcoming play "Dorothy in Wonderland." To Sean's delight, she has also decided to do Scholastic Bowl this year (sort of like a trivial pursuit/trivia competition). Finally, she's always looking forward to starting up her favorite sport of softball! She is excited that she will be able to get back on the same team she was on before leaving.

Noah is in 5th grade and also happy to be reunited with his friends. We were grateful he was able to jump in to finish basketball season with his buddies. While in WA, he played soccer and landed on a great team where they only lost one game. He loved it! Coming up in March he will be joining Epiphany's track team. Maybe we'll have our first child who enjoys track & field :)

Summer is in 2nd grade and has a big year this year. She is preparing for her First Reconciliation and First Communion in April. I can't believe she will be our third child going through it. She loves playing with her brothers and always keeps us on our toes. She's looking forward to starting up gymnastics soon and will be playing on an Epiphany softball team this summer.

Mason is still being homeschooled as we lost his spot in Kindergarten when we moved to WA. He should be able to get back in for his first grade year (I hope so anyway). He is participating on Epiphany's chess team, though, and is happy to have started doing tournaments again (Summer is doing this as well). He will also be starting back in with a boys gymnastics class in the next couple weeks as he really enjoyed doing that in WA. I think he's been most excited to be able to have play dates with his best buddy, Caelen, again :)

The Parents

Sean is working for TEK Systems again, who in turn have him contracted out to Caterpillar. Sean drives to Peoria in a car every day.  It could be worse, it could be in Seattle traffic. :)  He has a new 26" Weber grill from Santa and has been experimenting with smoking pork shoulder and ribs on it.  It's nice to have grilled and smoked food back on the menu after not having the facilities to grill in the apartment back in Washington. Sean has also started up with the home brewing hobby again and has his first batch (a Patersbier) ready to keg.  Track season is just around the corner again as well.  Sean won't be able to coach every day like years past, but he's looking forward to helping out as much as he can with throwers, vaulters and hurdlers when the timing works out.  Sean is just happy to be back home in Bloomington.  Home with our friends at Epiphany Catholic Church and Epiphany Catholic School.  

Robin is homeschooling Mason and is playing taxi driver as she runs the kids to all of their activities.  It's been a little crazier than normal since Sean is working out of town, but it helps that we have so many friends that can help when needed. Robin also took care of documenting much of what we did in Washington on our family blog. Hopefully we can continue to keep some of this up to date so the kids have somewhat of a memory book of our family life and other extracurriculars that keep us going that they can look back on as they get older.

Feel free to poke around our blog to check out some of our adventures/outings we had while we were out in Washington. We expect to travel there again sometime to cross off a few things on our list that we didn't get to. If anyone is interested in coming with us, let us know :)

Mount Rainier, Mount St. Helens & some good southern cooking

Wow! What a weekend! Sean and I had originally planned on making a trip to Forks, WA and hike to Second Beach, but we thought we'd save that trip for when we have a little more time. Mount Rainier was the next choice. It's been on our list of things we wanted to see while we're in the area and it's much closer than heading to Forks.

Mt. Rainier from afar

We headed into Mt. Rainier National Park from the Nisqually entrance and headed up to Paradise Area. We wanted to find an easier trail for the kids this time around (the last one ended up being a few miles longer than planned and initially a little steeper than planned) and this area had many easy, short trails.

Kids running down the path.

This guy was pretty happy to finally make it to see Rainier finally :)

Summer wanted to go a little further to try to reach snow and Sean was more than happy to take her a little further with her. She has been nicknamed our "hiking buddy" during a few of our hikes.

In the meantime I took the other three back down and ended up walking over to the Myrtle Falls area.

Myrtle Falls to the right & Mt. Rainier to the back left of the boys.

Sunset as we left Mt. Rainier.

Such a beautiful area even at this time of year! And we were quite lucky that the weather was on our side and the roads were good to go. This time of year it's required that all vehicles carry chains due to weather variability. That would have really screwed up our trip had it been snowing at the mountain on Saturday since we don't have chains.

The weekend adventure continued as we made our way west so we could visit Mount St. Helens the next day. Since we really didn't plan this until Saturday morning, we found a hotel and place to eat in Chehalis that evening.

After filling ourselves with the hotel breakfast, we hit the road and stopped at the Mount St. Helens Visitor Center about 5 miles east of Castle Rock. We watched a video about the eruption and checked out the information they held there.

The negative about visiting this time of year is the fact that many places were closed along the way. I was looking forward to taking the kids to the Forest Learning Center (I had read many great reviews), but it had closed the end of October.

The Science & Learning Center at Coldwater was open so we stopped there to waste a little time hoping that the clouds/weather would clear a bit for us to have a chance at seeing the mountain. We had also noticed that it was getting pretty chilly out. And as expected, it was getting cooler as we gained elevation.

The Johnson Ridge Observatory was also closed, but the road was still open to get to it so we thought we'd take a chance to see the mountain from the viewing point there. No luck. It seemed worse. I did get a shot of Mason and Sean in front of the observatory. We three were the only ones that left the van in an off chance we could see anything. Everyone else didn't want to brave the cold to do the same (we had sweatshirts, gloves and hats, but it had dropped to 40-41 degrees once we arrived at the top).

Below is a snapshot I grabbed from a Mount St. Helens volcano cam two days after we had been there. It gives you a real-time view of the mountain. The shots are taken from the Johnston Ridge Observatory. I can't believe we were soooo close to it and we couldn't see it that day. Makes me sad :(

The idea was brought up to wait it out for awhile to see if things would clear, but how frustrating would that have been if we waited an hour or more and it still was out of sight. I guess there will need to be another visit some day.

Our journey was coming to a close and it was time to start our way back to Woodinville. One thing that we've been wanting to do is to eat at a place that was on the show Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. Sean found one that was in Tacoma called Southern Kitchen. It sounded great and the menu looked good for everyone so we tried it out.

Oh my! Our food was wonderful! No complaints from any of us (I don't think). I would definitely go there again if I'm ever in the area. And the waitress we had was great, which is always a bonus.

That ends our weekend. It was short and sweet, but we packed a lot in and it was a lot of fun!

If you like to look at pictures, I've added links below to our Snapfish albums. The pictures from our day traveling to Mount St. Helens aren't the most exciting because of the weather :( Sorry.

Mount Rainier - Canon

Mount Rainier - iPhone pics

Mount St. Helens - Canon & iPhone

Halloween 2014

Halloween was a little different for us this year. Originally we had planned on being in a house by now, but unfortunately we aren't yet, so many of our Halloween/fall items are still in storage. The kids and I were able to find one tub with a few things in, but the tub we really needed was too hard to access so we have minimal decorations.

Pumpkin Patch

Pumpkin patches aren't quite the same either. I'm assuming some of the reason they are limited to going all out like we are used to is due to the rain they get here so I'll try not to be too irritated. And it may be that we just haven't found the right one yet. On any note, we still tried to have a little fun.

Mason is catching Summer in height :)

After our first attempt to a pumpkin patch, we realized we probably needed to go get rain boots for everyone (well, for the kids). It gets a little muddy around here.

I even had to help this girl get out of a messy situation :)

Treats for the Cousins

The kids and I wanted to prepare a Halloween surprise for their cousins. They miss them and we thought it would be fun to make a special treat to send them. Where did we go for our idea? Pinterest, of course!

We also sent a plastic Halloween canister full of Beggin' Strips for Marley and Cocoa. Mom has been watching Marley for us since we moved and the kids have been missing him immensely as well :(

Trick or Treat

I was a little stressed thinking about trick-or-treating since we are still in an apartment and not in a neighborhood yet. We ended up taking the kids to downtown Bothell to get it done and it actually worked out nicely. They filled their buckets quickly and we didn't have to walk blocks and blocks to do it. 

What made a great finish to our night out was what we found when we got back. The neighbors on the first level of our building made Diagon alley. Hagrid greeted everyone and directed them into the alley.

Upon entering, they were to sit in the chair and let the "sorting hat" determine what house they belonged in. The kids had a hoot with this.

* Update: I guess it's being argued that Noah was put into
Gryffindor & not Slytherin. We we aren't 100% sure.

After grabbing their treats, we headed upstairs to order pizza and get our treats ready.

Witch cupcake kit was found at Albertsons.

Graveyard Dirt Dessert - courtesy of Pinterest

After filling ourselves with all of our goodies, we followed with tradition and put in a Halloween type movie: Ghostbusters!