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 :)