Chuy's Parade

A Christmas tradition for the Clark family is to attend the Chuy's Children's Parade downtown. The girls each bring an unwrapped toy to donate and get to watch a pretty cool parade too! This year, we had extra special company - G&G Clark, G&G Lavis, and The Schultz Family!

Learning to Knit

Grandma Clark (aka GG) brought knitting kits to Texas this trip and taught the girls how to knit hats for their American Girl dolls. Bill even got into the knitting mood.

Friday Update

I love Fridays at work because:

1. It's Friday (duh)
2. Everyone in this company is burning banked vacation since they changed policy and we can no longer bank hours but instead go to the "use it or lose it" policy. There are people here who get 8 weeks of vacation annually, plus 5 floating holidays, plus had 2 months of banked vacation to use up in 2010. Needless to say, I'm the one turning the lights on and off every Friday - there is no one here.
3. Per #2 above, I have a lot of time to myself with no one calling me, emailing me, or stopping by unannounced
4. I can catch up on my blog reading and writing

On Thursday, Lauren's school hosted a Thanksgiving lunch. Bill was already there as a W.A.T.C.H.Dog for the day, so I picked up Emma from school and met them all there. We arrived early enough so Emma was able to catch recess with the 1st graders. She ran out the door with all the kids and b-lined straight to the swings, where she got into the sitting line...how did she know to do that? She waited patiently and was so excited to swing on the big kids playground. Lauren, on the other hand, rallied the kids and got Bill to play a game of tag. Seems all the kids decided to be the taggers and gang up on the Watchdog :-) The lunch was really good and Emma was so excited to eat hot lunch at the elementary school, even though she says she gets hot lunch every day from Chef Tara (at her school).

We had a family homework assignment to disguise a turkey so that it would be spared from being a meal on a Thanksgiving table. We discussed possible disguises...a cheerleader, a football player, a princess...all great ideas. We ended up wrapping it like a Christmas present, attaching a tag to its beak which read "To: Santa, From: Lauren"...it turned out very cute. Lauren, Emma and Bill colored the Turkey while I cut out the wrapping paper and made the curly streamers. Lauren taped the paper and streamers to the Turkey. It was a lot of fun. Here's a picture of my two turkeys working on the turkey.

Sweet Berry Farm

Lauren's class took a trip to Sweet Berry Farm on Friday, and I was able to go along for the day. Even more special, Emma was able to come along and participate as well (our 1st grade teacher ROCKS!!!). The kids had so much fun going to all the stations prepared for them. They shucked corn in a rotary machine, then took the kernels and cobs and made a cute Thanksgiving decoration out of them. They had a pumpkin relay race, then took their pumpkin to a painting table and decorated them. They had a hayride and ran through the corn maze (no child left behind...whew). It really was a lot of fun!

Happy Halloween

I finally found my camera USB download cord, so we have pictures to share! We had two families over for Halloween yesterday, and spent the afternoon getting ready, eating, and running around the neighborhood gathering candy. It was really a fun day.

Bill was "The Situation" from MTV's reality TV show, The Jersey Shore. I went as the Wicked Witch of the West Texas, and the girls were also witches (so I was also called the Mother Witch last night...).

My favorite picture was finding Emma and her friend Baelen eating their candy...sitting in the bowls of candy.

We're Baaack

It has been far too long since the last post. I blame this on ease of keeping tabs on Facebook, busy schedules, brutally busy work days (seriously, they expect me to do work instead of blog!), and general exhaustion after the kids are in bed. But, I've decided those are all bad excuses to not keep everyone up to the minute on happenings in the Clark household. I searched high and low for my camera and USB cord this morning, but realized my procrastination on organizing the home office has just come back to bite me. So, I'll hunt tonight while sorting papers. I do have a picture though of Emma at school...she is working on tying, and is proud to tell all that she can tie her shoes! She can also ride her bike with NO training wheels. Her knees are proof :-) We do have video on Bill's phone, and once we figure out how to get that out of the phone, we'll get it up here.

I'm sure you are all wondering what we've been up to since the last post. I will make the attempt to list the activities here, in no order of occurrence because they've all blended in my mind:

1. Lauren lost her third tooth and Mommy was in town to witness the event. She actually took a paper towel and pulled it out herself!
2. Emma transitioned from being a Longhorn to being a Giraffe at school. She is doing so well! She has commenced her reading program and read her book to the entire class.
3. Lauren started first grade!! We are THRILLED with her teacher, the classroom, and the overwhelmingly positive feelings we all have this year. What a difference! Lauren's spunky personality is back, her imagination and creativity are full speed ahead, and she is just an all around happy little girl. We couldn't be happier.
4. Bill's new business venture, Microventures, received full SEC/FINRA approval and is up and running!!! He's been busy with the start-up and media, and loves what he's doing.
5. I raised $$$ for Alzheimer's Research by participating in Austin's Memory Walk. It was emotional and rewarding. Although they did not post final rankings, I had to be in the Top 1o individual fundraisers for the Austin event, and I was the first one back from the walk (it was not a race, but I wanted to be first!). I was so proud to be able to do this for my family and friends. I can't wait to participate next year!
6. Lauren's school had their Fall Fest event last Friday! Lauren spent a good deal of time in the petting zoo holding bunnies, baby chicks, and chasing a baby pig around the pen. Emma spent most of her tickets trying to win at the cakewalk. She enjoyed the game, but didn't end of winning. They had a hayride and bounce houses. It was a nice evening.
7. We determined in October our neighborhood was targeted for garage break-ins. We are OK, but did realize that someone unscrewed our garage exterior lightbulb, hoping that we'd forget to close the garage door and then take a few items from us. Luckily, we double and triple check every night so they never had a chance, but still unsettling.

That's all I can think of at this point, and work is bugging me to get back to it :-) I will try to be better on getting updates loaded here!

~Jessica

Emma's School Celebration

Even though Emma's birthday was officially last Saturday, we held her school ceremony today. Emma has a poster which shows pictures from all 4 years of her life, and after talking about each one, she walks around the sun (a candle) holding the globe, which represents Emma growing one year old (since the earth takes 1 year to travel around the sun). Afterward, we celebrated with UT cupcakes on Spiderman plates - it was a hit!