Merry Christmas

We headed to Idaho to celebrate Christmas. We were going to be there for a week and were so excited to see everyone. We were very blessed and everything went as planned. We had no delays even though the weather wasn't the best. Thanks to Monica for picking us up at the airportand driving us to Pocatello. My mom picked us up there. We did a little christmas shopping and have decided we will never do that again. There were more people in WalMart than on the day after Thanksgiving.

We spent Christmas Eve at Aunt Shellie's house. She made prime rib and baked potatoes. It was delicious!! The climax of course was the nativity scene that the grandkids performed. This was the first time we had done that. It was precious! Mary whipped up all these costumes and they all looked so cute. Of course the best part was when Shaylon got her dad, Sam, to be the donkey. She rode in on him while Grandpa Clark read the story from the scriptures. Porter was a wiseman and was not very patient and cooperative. He had had enough. We did a $5 gift exchange and he definitely perked up when he saw that his present was a ball.

Christmas morning was great. Porter was the center of attention as he opened all the gifts. It took him a minute to get a hang of opening presents, but by the end he was willing to open every single one of them under the tree. Porter got a Woody doll from Toy Story, his favorite disney movie and a few other toys from that movie too. He loved it and was soon saying "woody." Which we were so surprised at, given he can only say 5 other words.

We had fun having all the cousins over every day. Porter loved having play mates there all the time. We did spend a lot of time lounging around and loved it.

Thanks to Olivia we got a temple time set up where Terry and I, Liz and Ruffin, Olivia and my mom went to a session. The cool thing about it was that we went when my grandpa was working. It was special to be in the temple with him he thought so too and it made me so happy when he came up to us and said, "this was a special experience for me." We all went out to eat at Craigo's after and that was delicious.
We went up to the cabin by warm river and spent a night. It was so cool. I loved it. We had fun playing games, talking and eating. Definitely an experience that people pay good money for and we got to enjoy it for free. We felt so high class in that nice cabin. Thanks to Sam and Mary and Jed and Amanda!!

We headed down to Utah to spend the night with Marthea and Jeff and their boys the night before our plane left. It was good to see them. Porter had fun playing with those two little twins. It definitely made a difference in our trip having already done one of the legs of the trip the day before. We sure had fun and 7 days went way way to fast.

I had to leave the Wii comments till last because I wanted to add a video of the best Wii performance in history by my mom and dad. Santa bought a wii for Christmas for the family to enjoy and boy did we enjoy it. I don't think it was ever turned off the whole time we were there visiting. We sure had fun figuring out how to play it while laughing at each other. We are definitely out of the loop when it comes to video games and it took quite a few tries to even get the basics down. Our favorite of course was the boxing and as you can see below we sure had fun. This video is priceless as you watch my dad with great skill execute punches and my mom laugh as she just moves her arms back and forth. Well, skill was not the key factor here because as you can see my mom wins. It was so funny!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Can't wait for more fun next year!

The First Snow!!

It is now beginnning to look a lot like Christmas around here in Indiana. We had our first snow fall and I forget how beautiful it is to look out and have everything covered in white. It was wonderful!! Porter was tentative at first wondering what snow was and didn't really want to touch it, but quickly warmed up to the idea that you could pick up that fluffy white stuff and eat it. I wish we would have had time to go sledding. I am sure he would have loved it. Anyway, I am very excited for Christmas now.

I am way behind on my blog and have to give an update on our fun fall adventures. Here is a random sampler of the past few weeks.

We took our annual trip to a local state park to see the beautiful fall leaves. This park has many look out towers that allow you to see the fall colored trees.

We have broken down and become those parents that put their kid on a leash. Just kidding we were playing with a dog leash. It was funny to see Porter try to get away.

We really did have fun carving pumpkins this year. We didn't carve them until the day before Halloween, but that didn't stop us from keeping them out on our porch until Thanksgiving. White trash I know. We had to enjoy them though. Porter didn't like to stick his hand down into the pumpkin, but once the pumpkin guts were out he had no problem getting them everywhere.

This is what the average picture that I try to take of Porter looks like these days. He is definitely past the stage of posing for me to take the perfect picture. The second he sees the camera he wants to see it to, so by the time I get the button pushed and my slow camera take the picture this is the close up head shot that has been taken. I do so wish for a new camera for Christmas. Hint, Hint Terry :)!

18 months old!!

Porter just turned 18 months old and I am loving him more and more. His little personality is starting to shine. He makes me smile and laugh often with his changes in facial expressions and the little quirky things he does. Sometimes as we watch Porter play or do something interesting, Terry and I look at each other and smile thinking of how cute and wonderful he is.

-Porter weighed in at 21 lbs. 11 oz. at his doctor appointment.
-He is 31 1/2 inches tall
-Takes 2 naps a day. One from 10-1 and then from 4-5:30 or 6. I love it and can't believe that he still is doing it and sleeping through the night.
-He loves to eat anything with noodles, peaches, drink milk and eat yogurt. He loves to feed himself with his little fork and spoon and is doing pretty good with drinking from a cup. It is usually when he is done that it becomes a mess because of course it is playtime then.
-He is becoming quite the cuddler. I didn't think that he was a very warm little boy, but has recently loved to just lay by me and snuggle or come up to me and give me a big hug. I love those moments!
-He is a boy at heart and loves to play ball, hiss with his little plastic snake, and ride his horse. I am not ashamed to say that he also loves to put on necklaces and carry purses too. It is so funny. He is beginning to love to try on everyone's shoes and has yet to really be able to walk in many that he has tried on. It is interesting to note that when given the choice in my closet of shoes that he picks the highest of heels that I own to put on. They must just look the most interesting.
-If he could he would live outside. He would play and play all day out there and not whine a bit. I think most little boys are like that though.
-He can say baby and no, it does take a little stretch of the imagination. He does jabber like crazy and acts as though he is speaking words that you can understand. He will look straight at you and say jibberish with such intonations as if he were truely saying a coherent sentence. It makes me laugh. I am sure the words will come soon enough.
-He has started nursery.YEAHHH!! I couldn't be happier and I know that he loves it too! No crying, no looking back nothing. He practically ran into the room with joy! I am so glad he loves it and as of yet exhibits little seperation anxiety.

It's A Girl!!

Face profile

This is the picture to tell us the big news that it's a girl. Good thing we trust those ultrasound techs because there is no way I could have been able to tell from this shot.

We found out yesterday at our ultrasound what we are having. I am so excited to announce that we are having a girl. I can't wait to buy pink and frills. Terry is also so excited and teared up a little at the great news. It is always so fun to see that little baby sillouette on the screen and know that it is so real. Terry also felt her kick for the first time yesterday. She looks good the doctor said, "healthy and whole." Which is always great news! We took Porter to the ultrasound and thought he would enjoy watching it and sharing in the moment, but he was more preoccupied by all the other things he could get into or climb on in the room. Up until she let us listen to the heart beat for minute and had to record that. Porter stopped dead in his tracks looked at the screen for a minute and then started to dance. It was so funny! The ultrasound technician kept the heart beat on for quite some time just to watch him dance. We were able to have the ultrasound recorded on tape. We didn't get to have that with Porter. So we brought it home and everyone came over last night to watch it and find out the good news. Porter did repeat his funny routine of dancing to the loud heart beat. We all got a kick out of it again. Anyway we are so happy and are already trying to get Porter to say sister. No luck yet, but I think he has started saying no. Surprise, surprise that it would be one of his first words. hee, hee.

Happy Halloween

Terry was Hagrid off of Harry Potter, I was a witch and Porter was a bear (thanks mom for the costume!)

Whoever invented the idea of trunk or treat is a genius. We had our annual trunk-or-treat for the ward last Wednesday and it was wonderful to only have to walk a little and see everyone. I have been so excited for Halloween this year because it is the first holiday that I think Porter was able to really be involved in and I was excited to see all the reactions he would have and the things he would do. I was surprised when he wasn't scared of Terry after putting on his wig, but he definitely was afraid of the fog maker by one of the cars. His favorite thing of course was getting the candy. He is no stranger to that and can already pick out the things he likes best. The suckers of course. His idea of trick or treating was a little different though. He would rather go get a piece of candy, eat it, then move on to the next one. It was a very hard concept for him to grasp that he had to leave it in his bag and eat a few at the end. One funny thing was how he would walk around and steal other kids candy. He was the Halloween theif for sure. It was so cute to see him so innocently reach into their bag only to pull out one of his favorites as the unsuspecting victim was looking the other way. A few kids caught him and did not think it was funny at all. We even got him to play a few carnival games that were going on inside the church. Throwing the bowling ball at the pins and then giving himself a nice round of applause was his favorite. I wish I would have gotten a video of that. I have definitely got to video things more. I know I will forget these special moments.

This is Alida and Aaron at the party we were invited to. He was a hick and she was barefoot and pregnant. Last friday we were invited to a Halloween Costume Party at Mike and Anita Horn's. No little kids were invited. So Terry and I had a wonderful night of fun to ourselves. I wonder if that was my favorite part about it. Anyway, it was soo fun. Everyone had wonderfully creative costumes. The refreshments were all about halloween, i.e. eyeballs in the punch, popcorn frankenstein heads and tons more. We got there and hung around for about a half an hour then we were split up into teams to go on a scavenger hunt where you use a video camera to tape the things you've done or find. We had a time limit and when we got back we watched each others tapes and laughed our heads off at the funny things we'd done. To top it all off our team won and we got gift cards to the movie store.

Funny pictures

I went to this funny webpage, thanks to my sister Alida, and had some fun playing. Here are the results. Bethany and I would make quite the couple back then. What do you think? Here is the website if you want to do your own. http://www.yearbookyourself.com/

Our Family

Get your own Family Sticker Maker & MySpace Layouts.

Family Pictures

We got our family pictures taken and if you would like to see them you can go to https://www.searsphotos.com/?shareid=S206461928l442HW264DR

Sorry about that. I think this will work better now.
You'll have to wait and see in our Christmas card which one we picked.

Wonderful Fall!!

We have had a fun fun fun filled week this past week. It started off with us heading to Cincinnati to visit Bret and Tania and their family and also see my parents there. We enjoyed listening to general conference, talking, and of course playing games.

Porter loves to have play with other little kids and especially boys. We're glad that we have been able to visit Bret and Tania a couple of times.

I hope Porter is getting to know and love his Grandma and Grandpa Clark. He warmed right up to them and when they had to leave gave them each a big hug. I was so grateful that he did. Of course Grandpa Clark warms over the hearts of all his grand kids with spoiling them by letting them do things they wouldn't otherwise be allowed. Like in the picture above he let him crawl all over top of the car. We love you Grandpa and Grandma!!

My mom and dad headed back with us to Bedford to spend a few days with us. We were worried about how to fill our time with them, but ended up having a lot of fun and having about every minute filled with one thing or another.

The first thing we did was go to Blue Springs Caverns. It is a boat tour of an underwater cave. It ended up being really neat. I haven't ever been in a cave that far. We enjoyed seeing the blind fish that are only found in caves and blind craw fish. They don't have eyes because it is pitch black in the cave.

The next day we didn't have much planned for the morning, but my dad definitely had a few things he wanted to see and that was of course the farm land and harvesting. I didn't realize how much my did is a farmer at heart. He loved to just drive around to see the harvesting of soybeans and corn and whatever else neat thing he could see of that nature. That night we went to Little Nashville which is a little town full of unique little shops of the area. Then headed to the state park near there to see all the changing colors of the fall leaves. We didn't get to see much because it was rainy and foggy.

The last day we went and toured a little old fashioned village. It was so cute all decorated with fall mums and corn stalks. We got this fun fall picture together. We were so sad to see them leave and have to head back to the day to day grind, but we sure enjoyed their company.

Side note:

A couple of cute porter things.

Our little boy at heart went out to play outside the other day and found none other than a big black ugly cricket. He wasn't scared a bit of the wriggly little thing and played with it for quite some time until unfortunately I think it died. I just thought it was so funny that he loved playing with it so much and showed no fear at all. Not only that, but you can tell we let him escape in only his diaper. (How embarrassing!)

Here is a picture of our sticker lover. He loves to play with stickers now ever since we introduced him to them from my bag of tricks for sacrament meeting. When he gets a sticker from the Walmart lady he proudly places it right on his shirt. Either there or his forehead. I wonder who taught him to do that ???!!

Husband Tag

What is his name? Terry. That's it, not Terrance or anything extra.

How long have you been married? 2 years.

How long did you date? I think 3 months. This is bad, but now that I think about it I can't even remember the date that he proposed and I certainly can't remember the date we went on our first date (I thought for sure that nothing was going to come of it.)

How old is he? 28 almost 29-that's sooo old!

Who eats more? Definitely Terry, but I am always up for a challenge and could eat as much as is required. You know I am one of only 2 people who have eaten the Hungry Heifer at Big Judd's. That is 15 scoops of ice cream.

Who said I love you first? He did and it took me awhile after to return it. But he is so good about saying it often now. He never forgets to tell me each morning, before he leaves, and each night before we go to bed.

Who is smarter? Well, we have had many debates about this one. Terry could cream me in any trivia game anytime. Especially trivial pursuit. I guess it depends on the subject. He knows history, people, music, dates of events. I am way better at math, science and health.

Whose temper is worse? I would say about the same. We definitely both have our moments.

Who does the laundry? Terry does his own. I do mine and Porter's. I can also do Terry's, but he is not allowed to do mine or Porter's. I need not go in to details of the pink shirt, set in stains or shrunken clothing.

Who does the dishes? Usually I do, but he will help when he can or I tell him he has to.

Who sleeps on the right side of the bed? I do.

Who pays the bills? I do. He helps do the budget though.

Who cooks dinner? I do. He will if I suggest something for him to make. There are certain dishes that he makes that I can't do as well as him.

Who drives when you are together? He does. Unless, I'm pregnant or we are going on winedy roads.

Who is more stubborn? He is.

Whose parents do you see the most? His. We live closest to them.

Who proposed? He did.

Who has more friends? I don't know, I think it is a tie, but he definitely keeps in touch with his friends better.

Who has more siblings? He does. He has 6. I have 5.

Who wears the pants in the family? I don't know. We try to make decisions after passing it by the other one.

Our first doctor visit

I went to the doctor for the first time on September 18th. I finally picked a doctor and am happy with my choice. The worst part about it is that the doctor's office is in Bloomington and I have to drive a half an hour to get there. It is a pain but there are no doctors here in Bedford where I live that I would trust. Anyway Terry was able to come and we brought Porter too. That was mistake and we will never do that again. What was I thinking bringing a little 1 1/2 year old that wants to get into everything to sit in a quiet waiting room at a doctors office. It was quite the nightmare you can all imagine. We finally got back to see the doctor after the one we scheduled to be with was called out to deliver a baby. We got to meet the doctor and he just asked a couple of questions. We listened to the heart beat and we were done. I couldn't believe it, that was it. I don't know what I was expecting, but it was definitely different from when I was pregnant with Porter. With Porter we were so in tune with everything going on and it was the first time and when we heard the heart beat I looked over at Terry and tears were in his eyes. It was a very warm, intimate moment. This time I was worried about Porter jumping on the doctors lap to get on the wheelie chair or getting in to the cabinet under the sink that I hardly just took a calming breath and thought "this is our new little babies heart beat." I looked over at Terry and he was wrestling Porter and certainly was not having the quiet moment of joy that we both expected. It still was good and had to take that moment of reflection in the car since I was alone as I drove home and reflect on what this really meant and how truly wonderful it was. We are so excited and really wish we could hear the heartbeat every day. We won't be able to find out what it is for at least 4 weeks. It has flown by and can't believe that I am almost 16 weeks along.

Although Porter is a handful he is truly my little buddy and I can't imagine a day of play without him. We have hit a couple of milestones that I count as a huge weight of my shoulders. First of all he loves Toy Story and Toy Story 2 so will sit and watch them to give me a little break. Second of all last Sunday was the first Sunday that we made it through the whole sacrament meeting without having to take him out. I was bound and determined to make it happen so with my 2 full bags of tricks in hand I headed to church. You think I am exaggerating but I am not. I took markers, crayons, coloring books, stickers, toys of every kind, snacks, drinks, books, etc. I just pulled one thing out after another and he had a few moments of rebellion, but was easily soothed with the next thing that I had to grab his attention. Anyway I felt very happy about my accomplishment, mainly because now I know it is possible.

Sorry this entry is a lot of words, but I just haven't taken a lot of pictures lately. Hopefully next week will be better.

I'm Back!!!

I am again back as a blogger enthusiast. I just had two months of laziness hit me. I hopeyou will believe me when I blame it on the pregnancy. I have had the worst case of tiredness and laziness the last two months. I have had no desire to do anything and have taken two naps a day for most of the days. I kept thinking to myself, "what are you doing, pull yourself together," but then soon after found myself jumping into bed again and saying, "who cares!" I am starting to feel much better. I am now about 15 weeks and doing great. I do not have the "baby bump" yet as many of you skinny girls have. I just look a little fatter than usual. I am not nauseated at all just because I take my miracle drug Unisom daily. When I don't take it because of work or something I throw up every time.

Any way enough about me. My main motivation of writing this blog is to have written down that Porter is now pacifier free!! YEAH!! It was the smoothest transition ever. I had been dreading how to eventually take it away from the moment I let him have it in the hospital when he was born. I have heard horror stories of toddlers and preschoolers still having their pacifier. What happened was I couldn't find any pacifier one afternoon and it was time to put Porter down for a nap. I decided to just lay him down and see what he would do. He was so tired that he just went right to sleep. He didn't cry one bit. The rest is history and I will never go back. It happened so smoothly and without tears I won't be so reluctant in giving a pacifier to the next one.

There are a few things that I missed telling about this summer and thought I would share:

It has been years since I have been able to go boating. I was so glad when Kristi and Dustin invited us to go boating with them a few days after the 4 th of July. Many of the Tlustek family went and we had so much fun. I went on the tube a few times and stayed on longer than Terry every time. Porter loved riding in the boat and even got in the water with me.

Not only the river, but Porter has grown to love the city pool. We have gone there a few times this summer and he loves it.

This is the fruit of my labors this summer. ONE red delicious tomato. I have been sad to read about everyone's garden being such a success, when mine turned out to be such a failure. I have to remind you all that I planted zuchinni, cucumbers, beans and two tomato plants and this is all I have gotten. We have babied this tomato till now when without any warning at all Porter picked it from the vine. We thought it wasn't quite ripe, but Terry bit into and thoroughly enjoyed it. There is nothing like a home grown tomato (so they say)! I have learned a lot though and hope that next year will be more fruitful :)!

We were so glad to be able to go and visit Bret and Tania. It is only about a 2 hour drive and definetly worth it. We had fun holding those tiny little girls and playing games with the family. I loved to watch Porter look with excitement into the swing to see those two precious little girls. He reacted with such softness and joy knowing that they were something special. I wonder where that comes from. It must just be a childlike attribute that comes automatically. We definetly need to imitate as adults. I kept wanting to catch him looking so precious on film, but as soon as the camera came out that is all he wanted.

The Chicago Cubs and cute Porter stuff

These were our first seats for the first 4 innings

Well Bethany is more then slacking in her posting responsibilites so I guess I have to take up the slack. Well I finally made it to my one Cubs game a year. I was excited this time because Bethany said that she wanted to go, so I was planning on her and was excited for her to be there. Well a couple of weeks before the game she forgot that she had scheduled herself to work that night. So my cousins went with me instead. We had fun put I really wished Bethany could have come. I seriously thought about taking Porter but I remembered that last time I went I didn't get back until 1:30 a.m. and that definitely would not fly with his sanity. Well the game was at Cinncinati. I told Bethany earlier this year that the Cubs's chance to win a World Series is greater then ever. By the way the last time the Cubs won was 1908, yes thats right 100 years. If they were going to win I wanted to say that I got to see that team play. Well if they do end up winning the World Series then I will have to say that when I saw them they were not at thier best. They lost to Cinncinati 10-2, it was probably the worst game I have seen them play all season. Our seats were good, but around the fourth inning my cousin Logan snuck down to some empty seats four rows behind the Cubs dugout. the rest of us did what he did and spent the second half of the game in those seats. I got some good pictures. All in all it was fun trip in spite of the horrible loss. Next time I hope Bethany can come.

These were our seats for the rest of the game. These are three of my cousins (front) Alex (L to R) Nick, Me, Logan


The lengend Lou Pinella, the Cubs manager

The Cubs First baseman Derek Lee

Left fielder Alfonso Soriano

Here are some cute Porter pictures, I know this is really why people really read this blog.

Porter has become even more mobile. He has now grown tall enough and strong enough to pull himself up on chairs, even our tall dinning room chairs. I was home alone with Porter one day and he was playing he had gone into the kitchen and I realized it had been awfully quite for too long. I went into the kitchen to find Porter one the computer. He was clicking away with the mouse like he knew what he was doing. It blew my mind and it really made me think about how closely he watches everything we do.




Porter loves to go bike riding. One day he started screaming pointing at his bike seat, so I took it down and proped it up against the couch. He was perfectly content just sat in it and watch t.v. about a half an hour later he was dead asleep.


I found this sucker on sale at Wal-Mart for 50 cents. I thought it would be funny to try and see Porter tackle this and I was right, he had a lot of fun with it. When we finally took it away he bawled.

U.S.A. Swimming and Water Polo

Well I have been waiting for awhile and thought it was about time that I said something about the Beijing OOlympics. My hero Michael Phelps was amazing. Never have a seen a single athlete so prepared and focused on the task at hand. I was able to see all but one of his live finals on T.V. and I am proud to say that I saw an amazing piece of history unfold. I have had more kids then ever ask about being on the High School swim team or joining our swim club. Michael Phelps said that he set out to change and bring about recognition to the sport of swimming and he has far succeeded even his expectations I'm sure. Thank you Michael Phelps the world of swimming owes you a great amount of gratitude and respect for your amazing feats, sportsmanship, drive and focus. ALL HAIL THE KING OF THE POOL MICHAEL PHELPS!

Well There is a sad and happy feeling to this entry. The U.S.A. Men's Water Polo team won silver in the Olympics on Sunday against Hungary. This is sad because they didn't win gold, but awesome in the fact that they have not meddled in twenty-two years and were ranked ninth going into the Olympics. They hung with the Hungarians for the first half of the match, the Hungarians by the way have won the gold for sixteen consecutive Olympics they lost by three but have brought a great amount of recognition to a sport I love very much. CONGRATULATIONS U.S. OLYMPIANS!

Here we go again!

Well Bethany and I tried to hide it but there is no denying that Bethany is Pregnant. Like I said we wanted to keep it a secret until she was three months along, but people asked the right questions and made their own conclusions from the answers so we decided to confirm their conclusions. Bethany is about two months along and we figure she will be due in the middle of March sometime. I feel sometimes that we can barely handle one, how are we going to handle two? Well we are excited and can't wait. Bethany doesn't want to find out what it is, I on the other hand want to find out.

P.S. I cut my hair about a week ago. but now I am contemplating a beard again.

2 Years Together

Yesterday was our anniversary. We have been married for two years. I can't believe how fast time has gone by. I can't believe all that we have accomplished together either. I really do have my best friend at my side and I love that. I love Terry even more than the day that I married him and I didn't think that was possible. He really helps me be a better person in the gospel and in temporal things. I hope that the love, understanding and friendship that we have grows at the same rate that it has in the past two years!!