Christmas Visit to the Clarks

After our big get together with my side of the family, we used Sunday for a quick visit to Sean's grandparents place. His parents met up with us there and so did Sean's brother with his two stepsons. It was great seeing them all again!

The kids with Grandma & Grandpa Clark.

The kids with Great Grandma & Great Grandpa Clark.

Sonny w/his two stepsons, Jackson & Riley, and Grandma & Grandpa Clark.

Sean posing with the snowman the guys and kids had made after they had gotten done sledding.

Looks like quite the leafy snowman to me!

It was great seeing everyone again since it had been quite awhile. After all that partying with the families on Saturday and Sunday, our kids were pretty tired by the time we started to head home!

Can anyone say wiped out?!

Hinners Christmas

We've always celebrated with my mom, dad, siblings and their families on Christmas Eve. It's been getting harder every year and our time celebrating keeps getting shorter because we like being in our own home Christmas morning for the kids to get their "Santa" gifts and with over six hours of driving now, it's been crazy. My brother also usually has to get back to celebrate with his son before getting him back to his mom either later that evening or the next morning.

That being said, we were tired of rushing through our meal and opening gifts to just rush out the door to get home. We decided to change our tradition and move Christmas to be earlier. This year it worked out to do it two weeks before and it was awesome! We were able to just hang out, have a few drinks and play games without worrying about a long drive home on Christmas Eve. And we had lots of time to just enjoy our family that we don't see very often!

Santa & Mrs. Claus even came to visit the kids. They each got a coloring book and M&Ms! They even left the adults a large box of chocolates. YUMMY!

I think it's safe to say that the kids were happy with all the gifts they received from the exchange and Grandma & Grandpa Hinners!

Aubrey in her cute attire!

Jessie & her cutie, Jacey.

Uncle Rod w/his godson, Mason.

1/3 of the grandkids awaiting their turn to open their gifts.

These two tend to hang close every get together :)

Quick shot of mom and dad before taking dad back to the health center.

The kids playing Apples to Apples upstairs.

We had such a wonderful afternoon/evening with my mom, dad, brothers, sisters, OUTlaws, nieces and nephews!!! To my family, there will be more pictures on Facebook soon for your viewing pleasure :)  

Christmas Concerts

Last week was a full week of concerts for the Clark family. Madison and Noah had their concerts a week ago Monday. It was also Madison's first band concert. I wish I would've remembered to grab a picture of her with her oboe, but I will have to do so next time.

Madison & Noah in between concerts.

Noah with his buddy Ian.

Summer had her preschool concert last Friday. Her class had been practicing their songs for quite awhile and she was so excited to dress up and sing!

Summer all ready for the concert.

Coloring with one of her good friends.

Summer getting into her song/arm movements!

With her teacher after she was done singing.

It's always fun to watch the kids at these things. The only negative is that we live so far away from all of our family that no one can ever share in these memories with us. These are the times that I wish we did live closer so my mom could see my kids in some of their activities, but that just isn't going to happen anytime soon. For now, pictures will have to do. And believe me, I take plenty of them :)

Easter Seals Christmas Party

Mason started going to Easter Seals this year for speech therapy. He's 2 1/2 and only uses a handful of words. We are usually ones that like to wait and see if things will come on their own (Noah had similar problems with speech, but his wasn't quite as bad), but we decided to try it and we are happy with that decision so far.

Easter Seals hosted a Christmas party at Timber Pointe Lodge for their patients and families over a week ago and we decided to take everyone. I think it's safe to say the kids had a pretty good time.

Telling Santa and Mrs. Claus what they wanted for Christmas! Mason didn't want to have anything to do with this.

Summer telling Santa about the Lalaloopsy doll she wants for Christmas.

After visiting with Santa, we headed downstairs to the arts/craft area. The kids kept busy down there for awhile. Two tables were full of beanie babies and stuffed animals to choose from for the kids to adopt. Decisions, decisions. Not sure how long it took for Mason to choose just the right one :)

Madison adopted this soft little bunny!

Noah getting help putting the reindeer antlers on his candy cane.

Mason concentrating hard on coloring his picture.

And my sweet little Summer!

New Thanksgiving Traditions?

This Thanksgiving we did a few new things that we haven't done before. To start with, the kids wanted to run in the Turkey Trot run so we started our morning heading to Miller Park to run/walk it as a family.

Turkey Trot

Summer & Mason cuddled under a blanket to stay warm. Summer is purposely not smiling for me. She really was in a good mood. Really.

Sean ran with Noah because Noah didn't want to walk much. They finished in a little over 30 minutes (we were at the very back of the pack so after taking around 30 seconds off, that's my guess).

I stayed behind with Madison and pushed Summer & Mason in the burley. Wow, it took a lot inside of me to keep patient. Madison wasn't really in the mood to run so she liked walking a lot AND whining a lot! We strolled in at around 40 minutes :(  But at least she came out and did it. I'm sure next year I'll be telling a different story.

The Clarks sporting their Pumpkin Dash shirts!

The kids holding their participation ribbons.

Thanksgiving Dinner

Sean and I made a snack for the kids when we got back and got moving on making our Thanksgiving dinner. He was in charge of turkey (which was already in the oven), homemade gravy and the homemade cranberry sauce (which was done the night before). I was in charge of homemade dressing, mashed potatoes, green been casserole and corn casserole. The pumpkin pie was made the night before. It was all so very yummy!

Upper left: Madison and I picked out paper plates this year to save the energy of doing so many dishes :) They had the perfect verse on them.

Lower left: Our table set including our fine crystal. Yes, we are nuts for letting the kids use it, but they LOVED it!

Upper right: Madison made name cards for all of us. She does this every year for us, but does something a little different each time.

Lower right: Sean getting ready to carve the turkey at the table. And no, the kids don't have wine. They have what they call "fake wine" which as everyone knows is actually sparkling juice in a wine bottle.

Evening Activities

We usually end the day by watching National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. We started to watch part of it, but the older kids were anxious to play Risk with Sean so they started that game half way through the movie.

Conclusion

I believe that we will keep the tradition of doing the Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving morning and Sean may keep making his homemade cranberry sauce. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving day as a family and need to remember to always count our blessings!!!

Tis the Season to go Shopping!

Almost two weeks ago I left town and headed for Iowa City area to meet up with my three sisters and my mom. It was that time of year when we take the weekend to do some Christmas shopping together and get to spend time as sisters/daughters/mothers without all the kids interrupting every few minutes.

Below is a picture of us getting back to our hotel after being out all day Saturday!

If I had to guess, I would say the pregnant one in the middle outshopped all of us! She was like the Energizer bunny: she kept going and going and going :) We love you Lizzy!

We had a great time as usual. We started off by hitting the Williamsburg outlet mall Friday evening and then ordering pizza from the hotel. Then we shopped most of the day Saturday with a lunch break at Buffalo Wild Wings where we got to watch quite a bit of the first half of the Hawkeye game. Lastly, the topping on the cake was the awesomeness of being with my mom and sisters!

I miss and love you guys! Can't wait to see you soon for our Christmas celebration!

Madison's 5th Grade Basketball Season

Madison had a blast playing basketball this year. We weren't sure what to expect because she hasn't wanted to play it since her 2nd grade year in Pella, but it turned out great.

Her class is a very athletic class and they had 15 girls out (they have 19 girls in the 5th grade). It's great to see so much interest in the sport!

Since there were no 8th graders out, the 7th graders had to play both 7th and 8th, which then caused some of the 6th graders to have to play up with the 7th grade team. That left only three 6th grade girls to play their gams so our 5th graders were split into three groups of five and rotated playing the 6th grade games. It was a little crazy, but it all worked out.

After watching the first game, we reminded ourselves that they were only 5th graders and the main thing was to see how they improved from their first game to their last game :) It's easy to watch and say, "Why didn't they do this?" or "They should've been looking to throw it inside." or many other things that are going on in the game.

As the season continued, the girls were feeling more comfortable out there and doing a few more things that showed things were clicking a little more. They still have a ways to go, but they are only 10 and 11-year olds and have 7 years of basketball left!

Madison looking for the ball.

Playing point guard during part of one game.

Don't look at her face Madison, watch the ball and WANT it :)

Madison could've totally stolen the ball from this girl a few times if she tried. The girl was standing straight up and not guarding the ball at all while dribbling. Something to work on for next year.

And on the floor fighting for the ball! Love it!

The girls also had some great coaches that really wanted to be there and wanted to help the girls do their best. That's always a great thing to see, especially since it was all volunteer time for them.

I can't wait to watch these girls as the years go on. There is a lot of talent within them and they're going to be an amazing team to follow as they get older. I get excited thinking about it. Go Knights!

Noah's Fall Soccer Season

Noah absolutely loves playing soccer. He and his neighbor friend are playing it together whenever there is a free moment. We missed out on letting Noah play last fall because of the timing of our move from Pella to Normal so it was great seeing him get back into things this fall.

Noah was lucky enough to be on the same team as his friend that lives next door to us. Like I said before, they are playing soccer all the time!

Trying to save the ball from going out of bounds, but wasn't quite quick enough.

Noah turned into a more aggressive player throughout the season.

He was a lot of fun to watch!

Can't wait until spring soccer rolls around and we see how things progress even more. Great season, Noah!

Epiphany's 1st Annual Pumpkin Dash

Wow! What an experience it is to plan a race. So many things to take care of that you don't think about until you start planning. Something was always coming up.

It all started when I brought up the idea last spring to a couple of people at school. I started looking into things over the summer, but had been so busy with softball/baseball season, that I let it go for the time being.

Then after having coffee with my running group late summer, we started talking about it again. And from that day forward, it was a go!

My friend, Amanda Sanders, brought up the awesome idea of having the race close to Halloween and people could dress up in costume if they chose to. It would be something different than the other races.

We only had a couple of months to really plan this thing so we decided to make it low budget and more of a community event for our school and church. We also decided to hold it out at the junior high XC course because it was available, free and the trees would look great for the time of year we were holding our race.

With the late planning, we couldn't get the Lake Run Club to do the timing because of all their other commitments, but we were able to secure a time clock so people could see their time as they strolled across the finish line. We awarded the top male and top female finishers. We also awarded best adult costume and best kids costume.

Below is what was given as awards (trophies) along with a gift card that was donated by one of our sponsors! An Epiphany parent did an amazing job decorating the pumpkins for us!

We had a few sponsors who helped provide food/drink, rewards for prize winners and goodie bags for the kids run. They are so great for helping out and keeping our race costs to almost nothing (except the shirts). Thank you to The Rock Restaurant, Potbelly Sandwich Shop and Dr. Brett Keller from Central Illinois Orthopedic Surgery!

It turned out to be a great little event. Monsignor Powell even showed up in his Moses costume to "part the Red Sea" at the start for our runners :)

Epiphany Catholic's principal, Mike Lootens, also showed up to run with everyone. We had such great support from our administration and the families that had come to enjoy our fun run/kids run with us!

Sean and I are already thinking of some great ideas to make next year's event even better. It'll be nice that there aren't so many unknowns since I've been through the planning process once now.

Thanks to everyone who helped plan the race and to the the ones who donated their time or talents to help get things ready to make this event a successful one. I just love my church and school community!!!

Halloween Weekend

Wow, what a FULL weekend of activities! I think we were pretty wiped by the end of the weekend and Sean thinks we can skip next year after doing so much this year. The kids would beg to differ.

We started things off with a Halloween party on Friday evening at a friend's house. The hostess made chili for everyone and the rest of us brought a side dish/dessert. She had all kinds of fun games planned for the kids. I wish we could've stayed longer, but I had to run out to pick up a time clock for the race the next day.

The next morning we had Epiphany's First Annual Pumpkin Dash, which I'll talk about more in a separate blog post.

We came home to rest that afternoon for a little bit before having to head out to Trunk or Treat at church. We missed out last year so we decided to check things out this year. The kids had a lot of fun and ran into plenty of their classmates from school.

Sunday was used as prep time for all the Halloween parties at school on Monday. It was also pumpkin carving night. Every year, Sean has the kids design what they want for a jack-o-lantern and he does his best to carve it for them. Below is what we came up with this year.

Mason and I showed up for Summer's preschool Halloween party on Monday morning. We had fun watching the kids play their games.

In the afternoon we headed into the elementary school to drop off M&M rice krispie bars for Madison's class and to help with Noah's class party. First thing to do was to help kids get their costumes on and then everything was kicked off with a Halloween parade. The kids all looked great!

Madison leading her class out of the school.

Noah's 2nd Grade Class

After a full day of excitement at school, it was time to hit the neighborhood!

The kids before heading out!

Madison chose to stay back this year and help Sean hand out candy to the kids. She wanted to see them all in their costumes. I took the other three around and after about 25 minutes, Summer and Mason were ready to go home. Sean drove around the block to come get them and it was amazing how quickly Noah took off from house to house without the younger two slowing him down :)

At the end of our trick-or-treating evening. Another fun evening down in the books!