Tlustek Family Updates

New Motivation!!

2010-08-26T10:05:00.000-07:00

Although, I have been close to a complete failure on updating my loved ones on my life this past year or two. I now have a renewed sense of self with my new canon rebel at my side. It is nothing super fancy, but compared to what I did have I love every picture I take. I hope to now take more pictures and in turn do some more posts!!!

June 2010, by Bethany Tlustek

2010-07-22T09:44:00.001-07:00

I'd like to share my Walmart Digital Photo Center photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

Trip from Bedford, IN 47421 to Cincinnati, OH

2010-06-16T20:45:00.000-07:00

Trip from Bedford, IN 47421 to Cincinnati, OH

2010-03-15T07:15:00.001-07:00

I'd like to share my Walmart Digital Photo Center photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

oct.-nov 2009, by Bethany Tlustek

2010-03-04T09:26:00.001-08:00

I'd like to share my Walmart Digital Photo Center photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

Summer Fun and Family Update

2009-09-13T17:04:00.000-07:00

We have fit a lot of fun things in this summer and are feeling so blessed that we had so many people come visit us here, clear in Indiana. I am so grateful too that I survived my trip to Idaho. It was wonderful while was there, but definitely a hard trip getting there and back.

My little baby has turned 6 months old. I can't believe how fast the time has gone by. It has gone by a lot faster than I remember with Porter. She has brought a calmness and a joy to our lives. She is so sweet and mild mannered. We love her so much.

Liddy is now eating cereal and loves it. She had her 6 month appointment and she weighs 15lbs and 9 ounces and is 26 and 3/4 inches long.

During our trip to Idaho we were lucky enough to be there when little Madalyn (sp?) was born. Liddy and Porter also got another girl cousin on the Tlustek side. Her name is Jane.

I had to put this picture up. We went to the water park and Sam had to fulfill his mean brother now mean uncle duties and torture poor little Porter. I think Porter loved the attention though.

Our little Liddy is quite the cruiser. She is crawling everywhere and pulling up on anything she can get a grip on.

Aren't these the cutest kids around. I loved taking pictures of all the cousins lined up and smiling. We just got done riding the carousel.

Porter sure loved Mary while we were in Idaho. I'm sure it was her kidness and attention she gave to him, but a little of it was that he wanted to do whatever little Ashlon was doing. Ashlon and Porter have a love hate relationship. I hope with the next visit it will be all love.

We had to go camping while we were in Idaho even if it meant a whole lot of work to just stay up at Warm River less than 24 hours. We had a lot of fun. We even floated down the rapids. I can't remember the last time I had done that. It was still as fun as we remember.

The kids sure had some fun swimming with us. I was so happy that Porter was brave enough to float down the river on a tube with me. He and Shaylon were the only ones brave enough to do it.

I love that my dad loves to be a part of my kids life. Even though there tempermant doesn't permit it at times. He loves to hold them and win them over. Liddy is pretty mild mannered and just sat there with them as they enjoyed the fire together.

Here is my pretty little girl sitting up all on her own. She also loves to sit in her walker and scoot around.

This picture makes me laught, but it is a rare occasion when all of them are looking, plus we have a smile from Liddy and I guess you could call it a smile from Terry.

While we were in Idaho we got together with Liz, Melanie, Julie and Shawna and all their kids. It was perfect and I loved it. All the kids played and played while us girls just chatted under the pavillion. I sure wish we lived a little closer for times like this.

Here are all the cuties again on the famous couch in my mom's kitchen. I feel like we always take pictures of all the kids on that same couch. Anyway, I love getting pictures of all of them together. Porter, Liddy, Kolby, Shaylon, Ashlon and Max (just days before little Maddalyn was born)

Here they are all eating lunch together. Gracee, Shaylon, Kolby, Emme, Ashlon, Max and Porter. It was a wonderfully healthy meal of Ramen noodles. They all loved it though and we had to make like 5 packages.

Liddy 5 months with Lucey 3 months.

Liddy with a cute little smile.

Of course that gator was a hit with Grandpa. There were even seat belts for the kids. The loved it and could have ridden around for hours on that thing.

Liddy at 5 months.

Liddy, Shaylon and Ashlon with matching pajama pants from Grandma Clark.

Grandma Clark and Liddy at 5 months old.

Porter and Liddy August 2009.

I put Liddy down for a nap and when I went to check on her this is how I found her. It was so cute! She hasn't done it since though.

Marthea and Jeff and their family came and stayed with us for 3 weeks over the 4th of July holiday. We loved having them there. Porter especially loved having playmates to wake up to each morning. This picture is from the 4 th of July parade. Adam, Jake, Adam's cousin, Zach, and Porter.

What we've been up to....

2009-06-25T17:13:00.001-07:00

Well, this post is just going to be a hodge podge of all the things that we have been up to this summer.
The highlight for us this month were the special visitors we were able to have. My grandpa Clark and his new wife Janis came to visit us along their way to Pennsylvania. It was a wonderful visit. I was so grateful to get to talk with Grandpa and get to know Janis so well. We had a fun time going and visiting the Amish with them.

This spring we debated back and forth on whether or not to do a garden. We finally decided to get the ground tilled and now we are seeing the beautiful fruits of our labors. It is so fun to see and are excited to have fresh vegetables later this summer. It has been hard work though.

Our little Liddy baby is growing like crazy. She has not stayed a little newborn for long. She is holding her head up pretty good, rolling up on her side, sleeping at least 6-8 hours throughout the night and smiling with all her dimples. She weighs 11 lbs. 4 oz. and is now 3 1/2 months old.

I had another first time experience here in lovely Indiana. Stephanie my sister-in-law invited me to go blueberry picking at a local little blueberry patch farm they have. We picked blueberries all morning. The blueberries were huge and delicious. We left with our bellies full of blueberries because you could eat all you wanted for free while you were there, but had to pay by the pound for ones that you took home. It is fun times like these that help me feel more at home here. I definitely like huckleberries more, but my bucket got filled 20 times faster with these quarter sized blueberries.

Porter is definitely becoming a good big brother. I know he loves little Liddy so much and wants to be a part of whatever is going on with her. He always wants to be in on the action.

I pull out the camera to take a picture of Liddy and here comes Porter mimicking the exact position or action that Liddy is.He has started wanting to hold her a lot and pick her up. He can hold her pretty good, but it is the picking up that is a little scary. He about pulls her arm off trying his best to get her up. There has been a lot of teaching going on in our house in the past few months and being a good example has put on a whole new meaning.I sometimes wonder if their little jabbers and coos are understood between the two of them. Because like in this picture and the next I just find them talking face to face like this. Porter will often cup her face in his hands and just talk to her so sweet.

A little piece of heaven for me when I see this. Everything seems to be calm around the house and I am able to get so much done. Terry thanks for all your help and being such a great dad!!

Another fun thing we have done this summer is take Porter to his first movie in the theater. The local movie theater here in town has free kids movies every Wednesday morning. We wondered how our little Porter who is such a tornado would do. He surprised us because he did great as you can see in the picture above he was glued to the big screen. He is following in his dad's footsteps. He loves movies. The movie was Horon Hears A Who. It was a pretty cute movie.

Porter got a little swimming pool for his birthday. We blew it up and Porter jumped in the freezing cold water and loved it! He played for as long as we would let him and then of course cried when he had to go in.

Our smiley little girl is starting to be able to sit in the Bumbo. She is always so smiley in the morning after a good nights sleep and a full belly.

Porter sporting his hot new boots. This picture is definitely going to be good blackmail.

Porter and Liddy

Liddy at 3 months old.

I just had to take a picture of this. I was getting in to my car after being at Walmart and came out to see an Amish cart in the parking lot. I thought it was pretty unique.

Porter takes care of Liddy and of course wants to give her anything he has. Like sharing his food. He got a new little woody doll that has a parachute on it and has been playing with constantly for the past little while. One day I was on the computer and had Liddy laying on the boppy when I was done I was surprised to see that Liddy had a very precisely placed friend laying on the pillow next to her. It was so cute. Porter had put his little Woody doll there to keep her company I'm sure.

CHICAGO

Terry decided a couple of months ago that he was ready to take a road trip. I was definitely up for it and really wanted to go to Chicago. I had never been and it is only 4 1/2 hours away. So we started planning and found a fun exhibit to see at the science and industry museum. It was all about Harry Potter. Terry was really excited and of course it was really neat to see a lot of the actual props and costumes that were used in the actual movies. My favorite thing was the car that Harry and Ron drove to Hogwarts.Here I am standing in the replica of Hagrid's shack. I am standing in front of Hagrid's clothes. He was a giant.

We stayed in a hotel right along the Chicago River and Lake Michigan. It was beautiful and a wonderful vacation.We walked down Navy Pier and took a picture next to Lake Michigan. It was beautiful, but looks and feels more like an ocean. I forgot my camera and had to just take pictures with our camera.

Terry was able to go fishing with some of "the boys." This is a picture of his prize winning fish, a mere 4 inches long.

Liddy is two months old.

2009-05-07T17:35:00.001-07:00

She weighs 10 lbs. 4 oz. and is 22 1/4 inches long. She is a great eater and very content most of the time. She only cries if she is tired or hungry. She takes a pacifier really good which I am happy about. If she is held she is very happy. She doesn't sleep as well as I would like at night. She will wake up about every 3 hours, but it takes awhile to get her back to sleep and I am usually to impatient to stay up so I just put her in bed with me. She is very smiley and will smile at anyone who talks animated enough at her. We love her very much and already in 2 months can't imagine our lives without a little girl in our home.

Happy Birthday Porter!

2009-05-07T16:51:00.000-07:00

My baby turned 2 on Sunday. We invited family over on Sunday and had a fun little "fish" party. Porter loves fish and can say it pretty good. Although he prounounces it "pish." It's pretty cute. We got him 3 little goldfish for his birthday. He loved them, maybe a little to much. Which I am sad to say that there is only one left after only having had them for 4 days. They were very loved. Probably a little too much. If it weren't for Terry succoring the last one back from the edge we would have none. Porter did pretty good at blowing out his candles. It took him a few tries but he got them blown out . After having cake and ice cream and opening presents we had a little pinata. Porter liked it, but his hits were never going to get that thing opened. There were a lot of cousins there to help him out and Michael was the one who finally got it open. Porter got a little T-ball set and has had a lot of fun playing outside with that.

A walk down memory lane....

Baby Porter

One year old

Two years old

Terry's wonderful gift!

2009-04-23T18:10:00.000-07:00

Terry promised me when I got my new house that the first theing he would do was refinish the free piano we got from his cousins. He did just that and sacrificed his whole week of spring break to sand it down and paint it for me. It was hard work getting the swear words sanded out that were carved in it, but it turned out beautiful. I love it! My mom and little sister Marianna helped me refinish the bench and now it looks wonderful!

Liddy's Blessing

2009-04-23T17:08:00.001-07:00

Liddy and Porter

Liddy was blessed on April 12th. It was Easter and a beautiful day too. The sacrament meeting was wonderful because of course the talks were specifically on the resurrection and atonement of Christ. Terry had to speak in sacrament meeting so it was a big day for him, but he did great. What a wonderful blessing it was to see the priesthood power at work. The blessing was very sweet and brings peace to my mind of the blessings that are in store for her.

The blessing dress was made by mom and was beautiful. I loved it! Thanks again mom!

One month later!

2009-04-05T09:20:00.000-07:00

Yes, I have survived the first month of adjusting to my new life with 2 kids. It has been fun, but has had it's moments. How can you stay frustrated for too long with this little face.Thanks to Terry and family help, we are doing great. Liddy is now 8 lbs. 4 oz. She is a great eater and will take a bottle now too. We were even able to go out to a movie while Alida and Aaron watched the kids. She also sleeps okay at night, not as good as I would hope. I let her sleep next to me a lot of the time. I know that it is bad, but I am so weak when deprived of sleep.

We had Marianna here for a little while and Porter loved having her around. He got spoiled with her around.

We did have a little mishap. Porter fell off of the counter. I wish I could say that I was busy with Liddy and trying to manage many other things when it happened, but I can't. I was standing right there and turned my back for one second and heard a thud. He has fallen before and really didn't think anything of it, but when I pulled him back from crying on my shoulder I was surprised to see that my shoulder was blood covered and Porter's lip had already blown up to twice its normal size. I freaked out for a minute and had to call Terry for help. He was able to come home and after evaluating the extent of injuries headed to the dentist rather than the emergency room. We felt so blessed to find out that everything was okay. There was not going to be any permanent damage done to his teeth or gums. The skin that connects the lip to the upper gums was cut, but unable to be reconnected. The dentist said that with a lot of children that skin needs to be cut anyway to allow the teeth to grow in correctly. So, all is well, but it was pretty scary at the time. Porter's first dentist visit was not one that I invisioned to have pictures taken and scrapbooked, but am grateful that he was okay.

Welcome little Liddy!!!!!

2009-03-09T12:16:00.000-07:00

Well we have done it again. This last Saturday we had really nice weather and had made plans to be outside with various warm weather activities. About noon Bethany looked at me and said. "I have been having contractions and there are about 30 minutes apart." I really didn't think much about it because she has had them for a while off and on through the last part of the pregnancy. Well about 5 o'clock she said they were getting closer together, but not getting stronger. We went to watch the high school perform "Fiddler on the Roof" and she kept timing herself. We got home and they were about five minutes apart. We went to bed and about 1:30 a.m. she woke me up and said they are getting stronger and closer. Bethany got up, packed and took a bath. We went in about 5:00 a.m. By the time 9:30 had rolled around she was at a ten and ready to push. At ten o'clock on the dot of March 8th 2009 Liddy Tlustek was born. She weighed 7 lbs. 11 ounces and was 21 inches long. What is really funny is that she has hair, quite a bit of it too. Even more funny is the fact that it is dark. Mom and baby are doing wonderful and we are set to go home from the hospital anytime. Here are some pictures and videos of the events of the past few days.

A good contraction picture, Can you see the intensity?

Liddy a few seconds after birth.
Hello Liddy!!!
The weigh in.

Bethany and Liddy.

Terry, Bethany and Liddy.
After the bath

Marianna has been a big huge help with everything.

Porter Loves his new baby sister.

5 Addictions tag

2009-02-09T09:51:00.000-08:00

Well I have been tagged by my sister on five addictions, so here goes nothing.

1. I have a newly aquired addiction, "Heros" the t.v. show. I had never watched one single episode until a week ago. I always thought it looked interesting, but never bothered to watch it. We had some friends over for dinner a week ago and the topic came up. Our friends had the first season on DVD and let us borrow it. Here it is a week later and we have almost finished the first season. Its not a small season either, we are talking 20 some episodes. I want to catch-up to the current season by the end of the month.

2. Coaching. I always think about the time that I could use doing other things if I wasn't coaching, but then when you have a succesfull meet or a swimmer swims a crazy good time that they have never even been close to before. It gets addictive. We have three weeks to go in our current season, but already we are talking about plans for the next two seasons and what we want to try and how we think we will fair out.

3. How I fold my laundry. My friends find out that I still do my own laundry and they laugh. Sometimes bethany does it, but 80% of the time I do my own. I have a specific way I like my socks and t-shirts folded, and how my clothes are hung up. Its not rain man obsessed but it is pretty bad. I don't make Bethany do it when she does my laundry, I just make sure and do it when I do.

4. My cell phone. I don't use it any more often then I need to, and I don't text. I just think that the reason I have it is so people can contact me easier and if I don't have it with me then whats the point.

5. The best for last, my family. I love the mornings when Bethany our I have nothing to do and Porter wakes up and we all sit in our bed and watch cartoons and then go down and make breakfast and eat together. I love spending time with them and it just gets better and better.

I tag Bethany, Jared Crace, Brad Wynn, Olivia Oldham and Larry Eaker.

Happy Birthday to Bethany

2009-01-27T13:59:00.000-08:00

Well Bethany turned 26 this last Friday. So I thought I would say a few nice things about Bethany.

1. Bethany is a trooper. She does so much with Porter, work, and me being gone for all my coaching stuff and being pregnant.

2. Bethany keeps me smiling. I am thinking about keeping an audio recorder next to the bed to record the hilarious things she says when she wakes up at night. For instance, last night I woke up and looked out the window and it had snowed alot I was thinking about school being canceled and said out loud, "oh no I think school is going to be canceled," Bethany sat straight up and said loudly, "UH-OH Spaghetti-O's." I laughed so hard and so did she and quickly she fell asleep.

3. She has such passion when she teaches the young women. All the girls in the young womens at some point have come up to me and told me how they love her lessons and her spirit. I tell them "I do too, thats why I married her."

4. She absolutely loves to laugh at goofy things. Sometimes the dumbest things will happen and both of us will just bust out laughing, just ask her about the flight attendant's smile.

5. She loves and takes wonderful care of our son and soon to be daughter.

For her birthday I got Bethany a new Scentsy and she was very surprised with the fact that the smells I picked and the warmer were her style. Also We have exciting news. We bought a house. Thanks to the hurting housing market Bethany and I were able to afford a VERY nice home for a fraction of what they originally asked for when it went onto the market this last summer. Here are some pictures I took when we went to visit it last time. Also, here is the link to the realty listing. Go to the link go to "listings" and put in the number 10055087 for the MLS number the address is 4 Rose lane Bedford Indiana http://www.tuckerobr.com/public/AllProptySearchResult.asp

The outside

The Outside

Looking at the front door

the kitchen

Master Bedroom

Master Bath, there is a shower and toilet behind the door to the right

Basement North Side, there is the third bedroom door

Merry Christmas

2008-12-25T13:03:00.000-08:00

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!!

2008-12-07T15:02:00.000-08:00

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!!

2008-11-03T22:06:00.000-08:00

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!!

2008-10-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-30T14:19:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-21T06:55:00.000-07:00

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

2008-10-16T13:46:00.001-07:00

Get your own Family Sticker Maker & MySpace Layouts.

Family Pictures

2008-10-12T15:36:00.000-07:00

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!!

2008-10-12T14:53:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-27T19:25:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-23T11:39:00.000-07:00

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!!!

2008-09-16T08:51:00.000-07:00

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

2008-09-06T12:26:00.000-07:00

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

2008-08-25T05:54:00.000-07:00

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!

2008-08-11T13:34:00.000-07:00

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

2008-07-22T19:11:00.000-07:00

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!!

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

2008-07-18T16:16:00.000-07:00

Okay, if you were to ask Bethany what her two pet peeves with me are they would be that I don't like to shave and that I don't regularly cut my hair. Well lately I have been a little better at the one and not the other. I shave every other day however lately I have just been too lazy to cut my hair. I have had the sides trimmed twice since the beginning of the summer but the top has not been cut at all. We decided to take these pictures and after a particularly hot muggy day when I had not washed my hair for a couple of days.

I had my hat on and when i took it off and ran my fingers through it I found that it would stand up on end. Gross you say, but let me explain. I swim almost everyday in the morning before I coach and sometimes twice a day because every Monday, Wednesday and Friday Part of my coaching job requires me to teach swim lessons for an hour. Its hard for me to justify washing my hair when I know I am just gonna do it again the next day. It is not the norm, but it does happen on occasion.

So Bethany is getting tired of it and I have to admit when I look at these pictures I am reminded of various celebrity mug shots that sometimes make there way to the news when someone of note gets arrested for drunk driving. So we put it up to you family and friends, we want to hear it from you. To cut, or not to cut, that is the question.

I love peaches, because they are so delicious!!

2008-07-17T07:50:00.000-07:00

We have been abundantly blessed with peaches and apples this summer. The house that we moved into had two fruit trees that have been here for years. We were so surprised to see so much fruit growing on them. The peaches have really impressed me. We have gotten about 4 bushels of peaches from one tree. They are so sweet and good and good size too. Most of them bigger than a soft ball. We have highly anticipated their maturation to ripeness. We have many times had to save them from neighbors or passerbys wanting to pick them .We have given a lot away, eaten a lot fresh and made a few peach cobblers. I thought I would can them at first, but realized that they were cling peaches and hard to get off the pit.

The apples are small, but perfect for apple juice, applesauce and apple pie filling. I don't think I am going to be as good as my mom would be and make apple pie filling to freeze. I think I am just going to make apple juice.

Fourth of July- "I Love America!"

2008-07-06T14:30:00.001-07:00

Even though the weather wasn't perfect we had a fun fourth of July. It was rainy off and on, but pretty good during the parade in the morning which we all enjoyed. I don't know if the parade was that good, but it is fun to see the kids play and sit around and talk.
They handed out these flags which I thought were a hundred times better than candy and the kids loved them. Porter especially did. You couldn't have stolen it away from him.

Of course he loved the candy especially the suckers, but I didn't. Porter was right up there in the line up of kids ready to get any candy that came his way. Really the only way he got some was because some people come along the sides of the parade to give out candy rather than throw it. Porter got 2 suckers and you couldn't have gotten them open fast enough for him.

We were there with Stephanie and her kids, Marthea and their kids, The Bailey's and me and Porter. Here we all are. It doesn't look that exciting, but it was fun.

Our favorite part of the day of course is the Wiffle Ball tournament. We had enough people to have 5 teams and played a double elimination bracket to find the champions. Last year my team was horrible. This year we did so good and had some memorable "plays." We made it to the championship and guess who's team we were up against, none other than Terry Telusky's. It was neck and neck there for a while, but then they did beat us and I have to say that it was fair and square. Terry was so happy and has been remembering those glory moments often in the past couple of days.

We watched the fireworks in Kristy and Dustin's backyard. There were just a few, but it was great. All the kids got to have box after box of snaps and of course every kids dream came true when the pulled out the sparklers and there was enough for each kid to have like fifty. Needlesstosay, the backyard was just full of smoke by the time we were done. Porter liked the sparklers and wasn't hesitant at all to grab a hold and wave it in the air. I was surprised that he never tried to touch the end. He just waved it around, sometimes too vigorously.

Well, I love America and count my blessings often of all the little freedoms we enjoy here. I know that we are blessed. I make Terry think I am crazy when I just turn to him out of the blue sometimes and say aren't we so blessed that we have cars or whatever has come to my mind at the moment.

Cincinnati

2008-06-30T11:14:00.000-07:00

Terry and I, Porter and Terry's niece, Kelcy, headed to Cincinnati last weekend to visit my dear brother Bret. His birthday was last Tuesday and we thought we might drive down and surprise him for his birthday, but then decided to make a weekend visit of it instead. We had so much fun just being with him.We didn't know what we would do while we were there, so Terry looked online and found the Cincinnati museum. It has 3 different museums in one. The Children's museum, the History Museum, and the Natural History and Science. One of the neatest parts of the museum was the building it was set in. This building in the picture used to be the old train station. It was huge.

The first museum we went to was the Natural History and Science. It was probably our least favorite. There just weren't that many neat things on display. One fun thing was the cave that you walked through. They made it feel like you were in a real cave with water, cool air, and different exhibits of animals and formations that you might see in a cave.

The next stop was the Children's museum. Of course there was a lot of neat things. It is a child's playplace paradise.

Porter loved the water exhibit. He didn't care much about the neat things you could do with water, just splashing made him happy. We sure missed Tania, Miller and Dallin. We thought of you often and kept finding ourselves saying, "if they were here they would love this or this or this!" We can't wait to come back with them there.

Kelcy and I played a little dress up with these sari's. It was fun for us. They were big enough for us so I have to believe they were intended for the young and old alike. I would have loved to stay a minute and play with the "play store" station or the kitchen set. Those were my favorite things as a little girl.

The next museum was the History Museum. It had the biggest World War II exhibit. What I liked about this museum was that it gave the stages of history around the theme of Cincinnati. My favorite part in this museum was the huge miniature diarama of the whole city of Cincinnati. It filled this whole room and was broken into sections so you could walk through it and see all the different buildings and parts of town.

All the fun wore us out, but we were hungry. Bret had a good idea of a place to go where there are a few restaurants along the river by the aquarium. We headed through town to get there and got to go by his building were he works. It is a huge skyscraper. I always imagined him working in a huge city like this. We even got to see where he pays to park. We couldn't believe he had to pay, but I guess we aren't used to the big city way of life. As we drove through town we recognized some of the buildings we saw in the diarama. It was really neat.

We ate at this nice Italian Restaurant. Then we had to go get some famous "Greater's" ice cream. It is an ice cream place that is well known in Cincinnati. It was really good and we then headed home.

When we got home we were all ready for a nap after the long day of walking. It was so much fun though.

We played a few games with Bret and then headed home. The drive there and back only took about 2 and half hours. Not bad at all. We really enjoyed the ride. We will definitely be going there often!

Family Outings

2008-06-23T14:28:00.001-07:00

These past few weeks the weather has been wonderful so we have headed out on nightly bike rides. We have usually gone just around town and to the nearest park. A few days ago we decided to go to a nearby state park and have a picnic. It was kind of a last minute thing, but we loaded up our bikes and headed out. It turned out to be wonderful. The weather was perfect. Porter loves to ride the bike so he was perfect and Terry and I just enjoyed spending time together. We found a neat bike trail that led us along a stream and we followed it until it got to rough to go any further. I love to be outside deep in the heart of natures beauties and to smell the crisp air. I also have found a new thing I love to look out for here in Indiana and that is fireflies.
I think I've always loved to ride bikes and I hope we can see many more neat things together as a family on them.
Porter got this bike seat for his birthday and he loves to go outside. He doesn't like the helmet, but once I get it on he doesn't mind it.

Events in Idaho

2008-06-11T16:28:00.001-07:00

I have spent the last two weeks in Idaho. It is always a wonderful break to go and see family even though I am trying to cram in 4 months of fun into such little time. The main event this time was of course to see our dear little scraggles graduate from High School. I never thought I'd see the day when she would reach this mile stone and seem so grown up.

They had a little slide show of all the graduates. Marianna was so cute and is so beautiful now.

She was Valedictorian of her class and gave a wonderful speech. She just did a little unique highlight of each year from elementary school through high school.

I am so proud of her and enjoyed spending a day of shopping and going to lunch with her while I was there.

We all went to support her. I took Porter to the graduation, but he was so fussy that I ended up taking him to the babysitter that Mary had set up for her kids. The babysitter was also tending Amanda's kids so she ended up watching 5 kids. I was so grateful because if not I wouldn't have been able to see Marianna's speech. That is the reason for no kids in the picture.

That weekend Bret and Tania were traveling through Burley on their way to move to Cincinnati. We all decided to go and meet them there for some fun. We went and visited grandma Zollinger and she was so glad to see all of us.

I have to keep taking pictures of Porter with the animals that he loves because he acts so cute around them. He loved Grandma Clark's cats. Thank goodness there was a tame one that was really pretty nice.

He did eat some cat food before I could stop him.

Porter had his first hair cut. We went to Grandma Clark's beauty parlor. He did good for about 10 seconds while I took the picture. Then he was a wiggle worm and cried a little bit just because he wanted to see what was going on and grab the scissors.

We didn't cut off much, but he looks more like a little boy.

Porter was sick for most of our trip and needed a little distraction sometimes. Grandma Clark thought of some cute things to do. Porter loved to listen to her play the piano and she was coordinated enough to play with him on her lap. She had great patience and would just hold him in one arm all the while doing her regular jobs with the other. She said she used to do it all the time with us when we were young. She said, "that's how I would get my work done."

Thanks to Olivia for the great idea and planning we were able to get a little camping at warm river into our vacation. It wasn't the best weather, but we always seem to make memories and have fun.

On the way home we fed the fish bread and marshmallows. There were a ton of fish and were jumping for the bread like crazy.

New Starts!

2008-05-19T16:22:00.000-07:00

Our first new start to report is that Porter is walking. He started last Wednesday, Just 2 weeks after his first birthday. He took a couple of steps on his own during the day and then that night we practiced with him going back and forth between Terry and I. I am sure that his legs felt like noodles by the end of the night. He would hardly even stand and so we decided to call it quits. Since then everyone who played with him thought they were the first to discover his new talent. I am happy to say that I saw it first. I thought for sure that he was going to wait until I was gone to try and walk but he didn't. It has been just so funny to see such a little guy walking around.

Another new start for us is the planting of our little garden. We consider it a garden, but really it is just a few potted plants. We planted tomatoes, beans, cucumbers, and zucchini. I planted them a few weeks ago and was very surprised to see that they even grew. They are now about 5 inches tall and growing great! Porter loves to play in the dirt and he eventually will take a taste. He doesn't like it though and will not try it again until another day in which he has forgotten that he already tasted it.

Porter's 1st Birthday Party

2008-05-05T10:17:00.001-07:00

We had a little party for Porter to celebrate his 1st birthday. All of Terry's family that lives around here came and enjoyed cake and ice cream with us.

Porter didn't know quite what all the fuss was about during the opening of presents. He doesn't have the art of opening them on his own down yet. I wasn't too worried though. There were many cousins there willing and happy to help :)
He loved this ball I got him! I have to admit though, Katelynn is pretty good at getting him to laugh and smile!
We sang happy birthday to him and put the cake in front of him. He would reach out and just barely touch it and pull back. He certainly didn't demolish it like I thought he would.
We gave him this huge peice of cake and thought for sure that he would just go crazy and eat it, all the while making a huge mess. On the contrary, he didn't even know what to do with it. He just looked at it and lightly touched it. He would have probably ate the whole think if we cut it up into nice little bite size squares.
We then went outside and had a bubble blowing party. Porter loved it. Ilana, Terry's sister, gave him a bubble blowing machine. That was perfect because of course he couldn't blow the bubbles, but loved watching them and trying to touch them.
I bought bubbles for everyone so they all joined in on the fun.

Porter is 1

2008-05-03T14:30:00.001-07:00

Happy Birthday Porter!!

Weight- 18 lbs 10 oz Height- 29 1/2 in.
Porter is eating 3 meals a day and drinking from a sippy cup. He takes 2 naps a day. One 3 hour nap in the morning and then an hour nap in the afternoon. He goes to bed between 8-9 at night and wakes up at 7 in the morning. We love to wake up to his little jabbers in the other room.
He is getting his 7th tooth. He has 3 on the bottom and 4 on the top.
One of his favorite things to play with is his stuffed animal "Hop on Pop" from the Dr. Seuss book his Aunt Alida gave it to him. It is so cute to watch him grab it and the first thing he does with it is give it a big hug and just cuddle with it. He also likes toy cars that he pushes around, balls that he is beginning to throw, remotes, phones, and of course anything else that he shouldn't have.
Porter is starting to stand on his own for minutes at a time, but has no desire to take a step. When we practiced with him last week by having him walk between Terry and I , he took 3 steps on his own. I think that he will be walking very soon.

Some of Porter's favorite things to do are taking baths, playing outside, and going for walks in the stroller. He loves music and will dance anytime. He also likes to do the hand actions to the alligator song.

His favorite foods are bananas, macaroni and cheese, cheerios, bread and crackers of all varieties.

My NEW Car

2008-04-26T12:45:00.001-07:00

This is a picture of my new car!! You may be saying, "but you've had that for a couple years now." I have, but I am proud to say that it is all mine now. I just wrote a big check to pay it off and can now consider it officially part of one of my possessions. I have been looking forward to getting this paid off and reaching one of my new year's resolutions of being debt free. I have finally achieved it and haven't felt so free and happy in a long time. I love it and it almost feels like a new car. Anyway, just thought I would share my glad news and proud moment.

History Fest

2008-04-24T14:35:00.001-07:00

Here I am at the History Fest. I wasn't looking forward to going, but Terry was so excited. I am amazed that every time I go with Terry and do something that I think I won't like, I find something interesting. This time amidst the many booths of guns and old war items there was one booth of lace making. I headed towards the booth thinking that it was a quilting booth and as I got closer it was this guy making lace and teaching lessons on how to make it. I added a line into this lace, it is almost like weaving using the bobbins that are hanging to go over and under and twist them to make a certain pattern. I have never seen how it was done before and was surprised to see how it was made. It is a very detailed process that takes hours and hours for a tiny strip.

Terry of course went to see the different battle reenactments. We saw one from world war II, which I didn't think was any different than watching grown men play cowboys and indians in camouflage. Terry loved it though and rattled off how neat all the different guns and granades were. We also saw a civil war reenactment which you can see in the background of these pictures. It wasn't too exciting, but Terry thought it was cool to see them in uniform and to see the guns and the different war techniques in action.
This picture shows them shooting off some cannons.

Alida and Aaron Bingham's Wedding

2008-04-19T08:05:00.001-07:00

We went to Alida's (Terry's sister) wedding on Friday. It was so wonderful! It is the only sealing I have been to besides my own. It was neat to be able to comfortably sit back and enjoy the ceremony. I liked that the sealer encouraged them to look at each other throughout the ceremony rather than him as he talked. I wished we had done that. I think it made it special for them to look into each other's eyes.
All of her brothers and sisters were there outside the temple. They got some memorable pictures. I love that!
It was the perfect day. It was sunny and not too warm. We had to take some pictures by the tulips in full bloom. They are one of my favorite flowers!
Porter loves to be outside and is getting to love the grass, dirt and rocks. He was gentle with the flowers. It was his first encounter so I don't think it will last long. I set him down and thought that he would pull all the petals but he didn't.
We went to the reception that night and helped out with making sure there was always enough food on the refreshment table.
There was a dance after the formal reception part and made the reception so much fun. I don't think that I have ever been to a reception that fun. Everyone was dancing-young and old. It went on for a couple of hours. I am trying to get Terry to take a couples dance class together. After the fun we had he might be more willing to do it.
We had to decorate the car of course. We used oreos and paint. It turned out pretty cute.

If You Give a Mouse a Cookie

2008-04-15T11:17:00.001-07:00

So, I have really been looking forward to getting photoshop to help with scrapbooking. I have been saving up my money for months. I had a birthday in January, but had to use the money I got for bills. So, I have been saving up since telling myself that I still need to get myself a birthday gift. Anyway, I finally went and bought it at Office Depot, brought it home, installed it, loaded a few pictures on it and went to make something. Guess what, not enough memory on my computer. What a disappointment. Guess I'll just have to go buy a new computer to go with my new software. The future does look bright though, because we may be getting a computer from Terry's sister. That's not the only problem I realize now even more than ever how much I want a new camera. Does this story remind you of anything-"If you give a mouse a cookie!!" I've learned a lot and am about to give up and take the photo shop back. Because if I don't I might need to take classes on how to run the program or even a photography class. Wouldn't that be fun!

ABC tag

2008-04-08T07:11:00.000-07:00

A-attached or single?: Attached

B-Best Friend?: My wife Bethany

C-cake or pie?: tough choice, i'll go with pie.

D-Day of Choice?: Friday its the start of a couple of days off.

E-Essential Item?: glasses/contacts

F-Favorite Color?: Brown

G-Gummy Bears or worms?: Bear, you can bite the heads off and transplant them to different colored bears.

H-Hometown?: Bedford Indiana

I-Favorite Indulgence?: Movies

J-January or July?: July, Independence Day!

K-Kids? Porter 11months

L-Life isn't complete without?: Bethany and Porter, the gospel is a given

M-Marriage Date?: uhhh??? just kidding July 21st 2006.

N-Number of Brothers and sister?: Brothers-1, sisters-4

O-Oranges or Apples?: Oranges vitamin c is good for you.

P-Phobias or Fears?: Not being able to provide for my family

Q-Quote?: "It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat."

-Theodore Roosevelt

R-Reason to smile?: Life is great!

S-Season of Choice?: Fall, I love the holiday season

T-Tag 3 people: Brad Wynn, Danielle Wynn, Marthea

U-Unknown facts about me: I want to write a book.

V-Vegetable?: Corn, i'm from Indiana what do you expect.

W-Worst habit?: I pick my nose.

X-X-ray or Ultrasound?: Ultrasound, it was an ultrasound that told us we were having a boy.

Y-Your favorite food?: medium rare steak, or ribs smoked in my new smoker.

Z-Zodiac sign?: Libra

ABC Tag

2008-04-07T11:28:00.000-07:00

A-Attached or Single? Attached

B-Best Friend? Terry, but that's a given. Porter is a close second.

C-Cake or Pie? Definetley cake.

D-Day of Choice? Saturday

E-Essential Item? It's a tie. Straightener and hair spray.

F-Favorite Color?Yellow

G-Gummy bears or worms? Worms (I would prefer something chocolate though!)

H-Hometown?Ashton-Idaho

I-Favorite Indulgence? Visiting Idaho for at least two weeks at a time!

J-January or JUly? January, It's my birthday!

K-Kids? Porter- 11 months old

L-Life isn't complete without? The gospel!!

M-Marriage date? July 21, 2006

N-Number of brothers and sisters? 3 brothers, 1 sister

O-Oranges or apples? Oranges at christmas time. Apples if there is caramel to dip them in.

P-Phobias or fears? Debt

Q-Quote? I don't know a certain one, but if I could pick a genre it would be those by prophets or church leaders.

R-Reason to smile? It is soooo sunny today! Yeah!!

S-Season of choice? Spring

T-tag 3 people: Terry, Liz and Olivia

U-Unknown facts about me? I don't mind cleaning the bathroom. In fact I would choose that over any job in the house.

V-Vegetable? Broccoli

W-Worst habit? Picking zits :( I know it's gross, but I love to do it!

X-xray or ultrsound? What kind of a question is this?

Y-Your favorite food? Italian! Especially from Johnny Carino's which I haven't gotten to go to in forever!

Z-Zodiac sign? Aquarius

Easter Family Pictures

2008-03-31T14:25:00.001-07:00

Porter in his easter outfit. I wish I could have taken a picture by some spring flowers, but we have had nothing but rainy weather here for quite some time. The grass is turning green and the daffodils are coming up though. I am excited for spring. It is my favorite season of the year.

We went to the temple on saturday and had a little family picture. It is always a wonderful experience to go to the temple. We had planned to go to a session, but when we got there it was already full and we even got there early. We had Porter and Kelcy, Terry's niece, was babysitting him. We thought it would be to long to wait to go to the next session, so we did a few sealings. It was good to hear the blessings and covenants given in the temple sealing again and again. I felt a little bad that we weren't doing an endowment session. I just had to remind myself that any part of the work was great and as the temple sealer put it as we left the sealing room, "Thank you for being saviors on Mount Zion for your kindred dead." So simply put, but so inspiring. The best part of all was that it only took like 45 minutes to do sealings and so then Terry and I just went and sat in the celestial room for a half an hour. That was such a treat!! Sometimes I feel like after 2 hours of being in the session you almost feel like you need to enjoy the celestial room, but just don't have the time. This time we had plenty of time to just relax, because Kelcy was thinking we would be gone for 2 hours and we had only been gone for an hour. There was only one other person in there so it was so peaceful! Our temple trip was great!!

Zoo

2008-03-28T08:58:00.000-07:00

We decided to go to the Zoo in Indianapolis as one of our spring break adventures. Terry has been so excited and talking about it non-stop. He looked it up on the internet and had all the sites to see mapped out. He was most excited about the exhibit that let you touch real live sharks. It was pretty fun. The weather wasn't cooperating, but it made for active animals to watch. It was overcast and sprinkled rain a little while. We got to see jellyfish, shrimp, seahorses and the highlight of the ocean life was the sharks. We can now add touching live sharks to our list of exceptional life experiences.

We saw the polar bear swim in the water. We got a view from here and one from down below where you can see them underwater through glass windows.

There were elephants, rhinos, kangaroos and zebras. The anticipation of the whole trip was to see how Porter would react to all the different animals. I thought that him being a dog and cat lover he would be so excited the whole time. I'm not sure if he really loved it. The glass windows that you can look through the water made him nervous. I think he thought that he was going to fall in. Either that or the animals were going to get him.

Porter's favorite I would have to say were the plain old ordinary farm animals. He loved the sheep, goats, horses and cows. He was excited about touching them.

My favorite was the dolphin show we went to. We all left wanting to be dolphin trainers. It looked so fun. The dolphins did all kinds of tricks and were so cute.

Easter

2008-03-26T10:13:00.000-07:00

Happy Easter!! We had a fun Friday night coloring easter eggs. The easter bunny came Sunday morning. Porter loved the egg hunt. He wished that he could have stuffed the whole egg in his mouth. He loved his peeps too! Sacrament meeting was great! The bishop had picked excellent speakers and I felt the spirit so strong. I enjoyed being able to spend that whole sacrament meeting time just listening to the testimonies of the resurrection. I also know that Christ lives and that we will be resurrected as well. One interesting thing that was brought up was that the resurrection is an ordinance and priesthood holders will perform that. I guess I knew that before, but had never really heard it in such simple terms. We had a ham and potatoes easter dinner with Terry's parents and Sister and niece. It was a fun and relaxing afternoon. It wasn't very warm and sunny outside though. Anyway, I hope you enjoy the pictures.

So whats Terry up to these days?

2008-03-14T07:46:00.000-07:00

Well Bethany has encouraged me more than once to write some entries to the blog which I have only done once now. However, I think it is about time to bore you once again. This year has been crazy for me. I started three new jobs. The first is by far the least favorite. I supervise in-school detention and after school at Bedford North Lawrence High School (which is the high school I went to). I get to deal with the kids that are discipline problems, don't know when to get to class on time or like to skip school. It's not that bad but it's not teaching. There are some great opportunities for being able to teach next year with teachers retiring and I am doing and saying everything I can to be able to get one of the spots. The other two jobs are time consuming but I love doing them. I am the assistant coach for the boys swim team at my high school and the assistant coach for the local Lawrence county swim club, which is basically a feeder program for the high school team. The other guy I coach with is the head coach of both the teams as well. We get along great, work well with each other and have fun. It is much different and better than last years coaching experience (check out the blog entry about our sectional win). I have been coaching solid for almost 7 months and now we have a three week break before the club season starts up in April. I am looking forward to getting home at 4 o'clock rather than 8 o'clock and being able to spend more time with Bethany and Porter and with the weather getting warmer hopefully that time will be outside as much as possible.
Well if you didn't know this by now I am a little over weight. When Bethany and I were married I weighed 220 lbs. from then until now I have ballooned to 257lbs. I know, I know, very unhealthy and very depressing. However, I am going to remedy that problem. The school district I work for has gotten together with one of the gyms in town and have started a contest. They have started a biggest loser challenge, much like the T.V. show. there are over 100 contestants. We get limited memberships to the gym and free diet counseling. In order to be in the contest we had to take a health screening and measurements and all that stuff. Needless to say after I was done with all my pre-contest health tests I was very depressed. I dare not share the details in fear of making you think less of me. Needless to say I need a big health change if I want to enjoy life for years to come.
Along with all this I am the first counselor in the young men's presidency in our ward. We have a good scout program and some great boys. All the guys in the presidency are really good guys that I get along well with and we have a lot of fun. This Saturday is the young men's stake basketball tournament and it has fallen upon me to be coach. This hasn't happened because of my superior basketball skills or knowledge but rather because all the other leaders are busy on Saturday. I think it will be fun and we have a really good shot at winning. Well that's whats going on with me. I know there are no cool pictures or anything, lets face it people only want to see pictures of Porter but if your lucky I will find a picture gem and put it on here some time.

WORK!!!???

2008-03-10T11:37:00.000-07:00

I just thought I would write a little update on how my new adventure of starting to work while raising a family was turning out. I hate to admit it but so far it is wonderful!! Only because I get to work in the best place in the hospital. I am going to work on the Mother/baby unit, but these last few days I have been orienting to different areas first. They like to do that just so you can get an idea of what they do in the other areas related to mother/baby. I spent one day in the NICU another day in the nursery and one day on labor and delivery. My favorite was in the nursery. I just held babies all day long. Can you even call that work and get paid for it too??? I think that I might want to transfer there soon!! Anyway, I really liked all the areas. So far I haven't missed out on anything fun and actually had a wonderful blessing come out of it all. My little Porter got sick on Thursday and I was scheduled to work on Friday. I just didn't know what to do. Donna couldn't babysit because she was going to the temple too. I convinced Terry to take a sick day but was still worried about what we were going to do with Porter after school while Terry went to swim practice. I went to work leaving the mess in Terry's hands to figure out what to do, praying all the while that it would all work out. I went to work and at about 11 am looked out the window and it was snowing and blowing and had already snowed about three inches. You've got to remember that we had had 50 degree wheather before this and thought the snow was done for the winter. All it takes is an inch of snow on the ground for school to be cancelled here. I called Terry and sure enough school was cancelled and so they had to cancel all school functions after school too! So Terry was able to stay with Porter all day. He took him into the doctor's office and he had two ear infections. Needless to say I was soooo grateful that it did work out. I know it may sound simple and such a little thing but at the time I felt like it was the biggest blessing ever! I just don't want Porter to get any less than the best because I am working!

Best husband of the week award!!!

2008-03-04T15:35:00.000-08:00

You know you are loved when all your husband can think about is you as he goes to the store to buy potatoes. Terry came home so excited with a little surprise in hand. He went pretty late in the evening to the store and saw this lady taking down the Idaho Potato display. He had the nerve to ask the lady what she was going to do with the extra balloons. She said she could give him one if he wanted. Terry thought it was perfect for me. On the balloon it says Grown in IDAHO. I have to admit it describes me well. My roots are firmly planted. He made me give it a big hug when he got home. He is so funny! Gotta love him though. What would life be like without a husband who did random acts of kindness that made you know that he loved you so much! I love you Terry!Porter is enjoying an orange. He has 4 teeth now at 10 months old.

The Family

2008-02-22T15:24:00.000-08:00

This is my handsome boy ready for church. I realized that I dress him up for church, but haven't really got a picture of him all dressed up. This one isn't the best, but he sure gets compliments from all on his grown up boy look. He even took the sacrament for the first time last Sunday. He got his own piece of bread, but needed a lot of help with the water. It was so cute. His latest developement in communication is his ability to shake his head no. He loves to do it. He thinks it is a little game. He also loves to walk while holding your hands. He would gets mad/scared if you let go of one hand or if you quit doing it.

Me and my little buddy. This week on Monday was my first day of work. I have had to do some orientation which has made me go everyday from 8am-5pm. It has been hard, but good since Donna, Terry's mom has been more than willing to tend Porter. I am so appreciative because she not only doesn't mind, but I get the impression that she loves to do it. She loves to teach him new things and play with him all day. On the other side work has been pretty good. I have to sit through classes all day, but they have let us go home early many of those days. Some information is new, but most of it I have heard a thousand times before and think it is a waste of time. I am anxious to start doing the real work that I am going to do.

I got a picture of Terry and his buzzed head. The whole swimming team did and also the other coach. They say that shaving all the hair of you at the end of the season right before the big competition will make you swim faster and hopefully win. I don't think it really helps and even Terry said that it really didn't. It's all a mental thing and hopefully gets you the boost of spirit to do better. State is this weekend and hopefully they do good. I'll keep you posted.

Stars dethrone Jasper to win first sectional crown since 1985!!!

2008-02-17T04:54:00.001-08:00

I think the late night arrivals from our dear husband and father for the past 4 months have paid off as we saw him read the front page of the sports section of the newspaper this Sunday morning. He read in a loud voice and tears in his eyes the wonderful news that was given to the world this morning that BNL won the sectional title.

The paper reads: Bus ride to Jasper secional: $75. 14 nylon spedos:$150. Two water-logged sets of coching attire (shirt, tie, slacks, and dress shoes): $250.
First Bedford North Lawrence High School boys IHSAA sectional title in 24 years: Priceless.
In other words, the BNL boys swimming and diving trip to the 2008 IHSAA Jasper sectional finals Saturday was well worth the cost. After an intense-and at times breathtaking -battle, the Stars detrhoned perennial powerhouse Jasper. 312-306, for their first xectional title since theeir 1984-1985 campaign.
After four lead changes and trailing by several points, Taylor Sanders boosted BNL with a sectional and school record time of 59.92 in the 100 yard breast stroke...gave the Stars a slim advantage with only the 400 yard freestyle realy remaining in the competition.
Silence fell, however, when Jaspertorpedoed its way to decisive win in the realy that left everyone unsure as to which school had captured the sectional crwon. After several dynamic minutes of tabulation. BNL was announced champion and the entire team (including shirt and tie donning BNL coach Marc McCay and assistant coach Terry Tlustek) plunged into the pool and celebrated the victory!!

It was good to hear how excited both coaches were for their boys that they had worked so hard with all season. Mark McCay also won coach of the year. It was a good accomplishment and I am happy for Terry and the swimming team.

Ice Storm

2008-02-15T13:00:00.000-08:00

Its crazy to think that I grew up in Ashton Idaho where it is notorious for freezing wheather, but have never experienced what I did this week. I lived through an ice storm. It was my first one. I had heard about them, but never really knew what they were about. We looked outside on Tuesday morning and the world was covered in a sheet of ice!! It was amazing. It almost looked like snow on the deck, but when you stepped on it it was as hard as a rock. You could literally ice skate in our driveway or anywhere for that matter. School was closed for two days straight. I loved it. It was almost like having a normal family again. Terry was home and so we had breakfast, lunch and dinner together as a family for both days. We played monopoly and Lord of the Rings RISK. I am sad to report that I lost every game. AGGHHH!! I couldn't believe my horrible rolling of the dice luck. Anyway despite the poor losing streak we had a fun filled two days.

Porter is growing still (I think)!!? We went to the doctor's office today and he had lost weight, about a half a pound. He got taller though. I've got to feed that little busy body more!! Anyway, he weighs 16 lbs. 4 oz. He only has one bottom tooth on the left side and one on the top coming in. He loves to crawl everywhere and pull up on everything. He has figured out how to climb up the stairs so our latest investment was a gate. He loves to click his tongue and he does it all the time. He loves grown up food. It doesn't matter if he just ate a ton of food of his own. If he sees someone with food he'll crawl over to you, climb up you and grunt until you give him some. It is crazy. He just learned how to play patty-cake and I can't believe how fast he learned. Kids are amazing.

I got offered a job and I accepted. I am going to start working next Monday. I am really nervous and stressed out just because of all the details of getting Porter taken care of and the routine taken care of and also because I am going to be working in an area that I haven't really worked in before. I am going to be working in Mother Baby, dealing with the mother's who have just given birth and the newborns. I am excited for that!

Highlights from our Idaho trip

2008-02-08T12:15:00.001-08:00

Our trip to Idaho was a wonderful break that we enjoyed with everyone. Our original intention to go to the Rexburg temple dedication was postponed due to President Hinckley's funeral. We will just have to go to the Rexburg temple on our next visit. We had fun everyday spending time with family and friends.Of course many of our days were filled with playing games. There was no school for a full week, so we had lots of time to fill.

One of the major highlights was to be able to see Marianna play in her basketball district tournament. She played so good and we all cheered really loud. She had quite the fan club as you can see. It was Mary's idea to get the cousins to wear Marianna's nickname Merna across their shirts as they cheared at the game. It was a rare occasion to see it spelled correctly though. Most of the time it was ANREM, NAMER or RENAM. Anyway it was the thought that counted and Marianna loved it!!

The cousins had fun playing together. Even though Porter is the smallest he did pretty good holding his own. He got his pacifier stolen countless times. It didn't bother him though he would just crawl around on Grandma's floor and find something to put in his mouth instead.

We even got a wrestling match in. It was fun to watch Sam be the coach. I mainly went to see a few other people from Ashton that I wanted to say Hello to.

Marianna was fun to talk to and tease. She is so wonderful. We talked about college and boys, the play and upcoming Junior Miss. She is doing great and she loves being a senior. I told her that I was jealous of her high school fun. It just reminds me of that fun time in life of high school and college. I also told her that I was amazed at what a good babysitter she is. She just takes care of all the neices and nephews with ease. I think that is so neat.

We had a girls night out and went to a movie. We had so much fun together. My mom and Marianna came too. We took and afternoon and made a little cousin craft where we decorated a clothespin and made a scrapbook page and clipped it in it. It makes for a cute little photo stand.

One of the big highlights was to have Monica come. We can't believe she made it and she almost didn't. She drove from Salt Lake to Ashton in the storm of the century. She had practically made it there, but 100 yards from our house she ran off the road. Luckily she was close enough she could walk to our house and then Sam came and got her out. She is so fun to talk with. Especially when we get to listen to her boy drama.

We were sad to come home, but know that we will be back soon for Marianna's graduation!!

Happy Birthday to Me!!

2008-01-25T15:45:00.000-08:00

My birthday was on Wednesday and it was wonderful. You know you are loved when you get 20+ cards/phonecalls/emails/happy birthday songs sung to you in one day. It really was a great day. I went out to lunch to Casa Brava a mexican restaurant with all of Terry's sisters and sister-in-law. It was so much fun. Donna watched the kids while we went. Then Terry took me out to this really nice Italian restaurant in Bloomington. We dressed up a little and really felt like we were living the high class life. It was fun to be there just the two of us. Terry was so cute. He wanted to surprise me and had done some looking around and talking to everyone to pick just the right place. He did good and I almost think it is my new favorite restaurant. Needlesstosay we won't be going there very often due to the price, but it was fun to do for this special occasion. One of my other favorite things was a little scrapbook card/album from Tania with a few pictures of me and Miller and Dallin. It is soooooo cute! As I remember back I can't believe that I was there when both of them were newly born. I'm glad that we have had other special times too throughout their growing up years. It is really a treasure. Anyway, I mainly wanted to write about my birthday to thank everyone for their friendship and love. Thanks for remembering me!!

Picture time

2008-01-24T15:49:00.001-08:00

Just wanted to share Porter's 8 month old pictures with everyone! He is so handsome!

Just an update!

2008-01-22T09:06:00.000-08:00

I have applied for a few jobs and had an interview. My interview was to possibly work in the OB unit of the local hospital on the Mother/Baby side. We'll see what happens. I have mixed emotions about starting working. I've put it off for quite sometime and now think that it would be good for me to work just a couple days a week, just part-time. I have loved being home with Porter everyday. I am also grateful that if I do work there are so many willing to help out and babysit Porter. Mainly Terry's mom, Donna, she is retired and has helped out so much with babysitting Porter already.

Terry is loving swimming, but is now counting down the weeks of when it will be over and he will be able to spend more time with us. He is also starting to apply for jobs for the next school year. Hopefully he will get a teaching job.

I am most excited about the upcoming week when I will be going to Idaho to enjoy some much needed family time that I didn't get over the holidays. I am going to go to the Rexburg temple dedication and attend a session there to before I come home. I hope I can see Marianna play some ball at her district basketball and have a wonderful time with the anticipated cousin craft with all the girls.

All Boy

2008-01-22T08:53:00.000-08:00

Porter loves dogs! I can't believe how much he enjoys them. Most kids I think would be scared of them, but he just wants to grab them and let them lick him and everything. On Sunday Alida's fiance Aaron brought his dog to stay the weekend, when we went over there Porter was in heaven with his dog Mali. We were in the other room when we hear a loud giggle from Porter. Katelynn and Sam were playing fetch with the dog and it just made Porter laugh. Every time the dog would jump up in the air Porter would let out these big belly laughs. It entertained all of us for quite a few minutes.

Could Beethoven be in our midst??

2008-01-08T10:22:00.000-08:00

Porter has now began to officially coordinate arm and leg movements for me to say with proudness that he is crawling!! I say that with mixed emotions because it is so fun to see them grow and develope, but at the same time it is sad to see my stuff broken, eaten and destroyed within seconds of him being out of my sight. He is also pulling himself up on everything. I can't believe that he can do it. I didn't think that he was strong enough to. It just started a week ago and now he thinks he can pull himself up on everything. Last night as we were watching TV we looked over to see Porter pull up on the piano bench. It didn't stop there though. He reached his little hand up higher, I am sure to grab on, but to his amazement music was heard. We couldn't keep him away from the piano for the rest of the night.

Happy New Year!

2008-01-08T09:56:00.000-08:00

It is so good to be back to what sometimes gets to be feeling like the grind. My house is clean. Porter can take a regular nap. Exercising is back and of course nutritious food is being cooked. I do miss spending time with Terry, but getting things done feels great too! I have a lot of goals for myself for this next year many of which I know will make life much easier.
1- I am going to read my scriptures in spanish everyday. YEAH!! I got them out, wiped the dust off of them and got my colored pencils ready. It has been fun so far! The memories of the spiritual experiences of my mission come flooding back to me.
2- Become an ace at the organ. Actually I only wish to be able to play the hymns during sacrament meeting without making a million mistakes :)!
3- Get out of debt! Could it be possible!
4- Keep up on my blog and scrapbooking! I would say write in my journal more often, but I have decided that they are a wonderful substitute.
5- Attend the temple every month (with or without Terry). I know it sounds bad, but I don't mean it to. I want to go with him everytime, but it has become our excuse that we are to busy and it is hard to leave Porter for that long, so I have no excuses now. I hope we can go together often, but if not I am going alone!

Thanks to everyone for your comments. I love that you care about me and my family so much. I really enjoy reading about you all too!

Christmas Day

2008-01-02T11:46:00.000-08:00

The fun started on Christmas eve whene we went to the Bailey's home for dinner and to see Santa. Thanks to Meemo and Grandpa Kern they have a wonderful tradition that includes Santa coming and being able to sit on his lap. Santa knows the children by name because he comes every year. There is a lot of chaos as the children each get a present from him. We went home and opened our own pajama presents before getting to bed. We got up early on Christmas morning to open presents and head to Grandma and Grandpa Tlusteks to open presents there and have breakfast together. Porter enjoyed eating the wrapping paper and pulling of the bows. He would have loved to have a big bag of bows to eat and play with. He liked the new toys we got him and a few new types of food to enjoy. He has a new tooth so we got him a toothbrush and toothpaste. Terry's two favorite gifts were the 7-in-1 grill/smoker and the Harry Potter jelly beans I got him. He loves it and tells everyone in detail all about it. His other favorite Bertie Bott's every flavor beans were a highlight for everyone. There were many dares given and dollars recieved to eat the worst of the beans vomit and rotten egg. I am proud to say that I tried every flavor!! The flavors were soap, pickle, sausage, booger, earwax, dirt, earthworm, vomit, rotten egg, and black pepper. We both finished reading the Harry Potter series at the end of this year and thoroughly enjoyed them. Terry gave me a beautiful diamond necklace and some clothes. I was surprised that he picked so well. This holiday season was a lot of fun. Terry's whole family was there. Another big news item was to hear that not only is Alida getting married, but she is going to stay around here in Bedford. I am so happy for them and am happy she will still be around to enjoy spending time with. I got so many Christmas Cards this year and I loved hearing about everyone's successes this past year. Thank you to everyone!

Stockings and Snow

2007-12-22T15:03:00.000-08:00

Not only was I excited to get a package in the mail, but I got to open it before Christmas. And the best part of all was that the package contained these fun stockings from my mom. She made them. I was so excited to get them and consider them one of my prized possessions. I have been waiting all year for them, because we picked the fabric out together last year during black Friday at JO Ann's Fabric. They turned out wonderful! Thanks again Mom!!
It snowed!!! YEAH!!! I was worried t wasn't going to snow before Christmas, but it did. We got up early to go take some pictures and play in it for a while because I knew that it wasn't going to last very long. Porter didn't know what to think. He just touched it gently then licked his fingers.

I saw Mommy kissing Santa Clause

2007-12-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

We went to our ward Christmas party. We had a special visitor come and guess who it was Santa!! If Porter could talk he would have told you that he saw mommy kissing Santa Clause, because it was Terry that dressed up. He was so excited to be Santa. Especially with Porter. It was the first time Porter saw Santa. He loved it!! He wanted to grab that white beard and pull.
We have been trying to be on the ball and send out our Christmas cards with pictures in them. Every attempt has failed. I just haven't been happy with the pictures that we have taken. This was one of them and as you can see Porter's face is blurry. Hopefully we'll get a good picture sent out before Christmas!
We had to take a picture together with Santa. Don't worry Porter's not mad because he's sitting by Santa. He's mad because I won't hold him right next to him and let him play with his beard and fur coat.

Candy Shop

2007-12-11T11:31:00.000-08:00

Anita Horn and Diana Megnin from the ward invited me over to have a candy making day with them. We made a whole day of it and made all different kinds of candy. We dipped turtles and peanut butter balls, baked sugar cookes and bar cookies. We made about 10 different types of things. I was so grateful that they included me in the fun. What a way to get into the Christmas spirit both by being included and by making the Christmas candy favorites!
They sent me home with a whole bunch of it. What a treat, now my treat plates are done and I look like such a homemaker.

Porter loved it too!! His favorite as you can see from the picture were the 3 dogs that they have. Porter LOVES dogs. They will keep him ocuppied for hours. He pets them and talks and laughs at them. These little dogs loved him too, they wouldn't leave him alone. They kept licking him and pushing him in his walker. It was so funny to see.
We listened to Josh Groban's new Christmas CD and talked and laughed all day long.
There were a few recipes that I already knew, but some were new to me and will become a family favorite!!

The Fun Begins

2007-12-06T11:17:00.001-08:00

In all my excitement to spend hours surfing the net, I have neglected Porter a little bit. The other day he was just playing away in his new walker one minute and then the next thing I knew it was dead silent. The cute little guy had fallen asleep mid play.
Caught red handed. I didn't think that I was going to have trouble with him this Christmas. I didn't think he was good enough at his army crawl to get to the presents. I was wrong and we have practically the whole month left to keep him from eating them or ripping them open!
I scooted him back and he got right back to them!
As you can see from the video he is unstoppable now. The moving has started!

Merry Christmas!!

2007-12-03T12:36:00.000-08:00

This is our family photo in front of our Christmas tree! You can even see our piano in the background. It looks from the picture like we are finished unpacking. Looks can be deceiving!! I don't have anything up on the walls yet and am looking forward to doing that. Terry couldn't believe me when all I could think about was getting the christmas tree up amidst our chaos of moving. It was the first thing I wanted to do. He is happy now though. He has to admit it looks really good and is getting us more excited for the holiday season.

Porter is 7 months old today!! Yeah! His next step is crawling. It's amazing to see how they go through the process of learning how to do it. He has got the army crawl/scoot down. He can get his knees up into position, but he just sits there in the crawling position. You can almost see him thinking "now that I'm up how do I get to that paper I want so bad!" They learn fast though. He also is just a talker. During Relief Society yesterday someone was holding him and he was just playing with some toys and talking away. If it were me I would have put his pacifier in his mouth so that he wouldn't disturb anything, but all the sisters loved it. They were just smiling at him like crazy. It is fun to hear him wake up in the morning and just be cooing away in his crib.

Highlights of Moving In!!

2007-12-01T11:13:00.000-08:00

1. Visiting teachers and sisters of the church in general are awesome!! It was only them and us that showed up to help us move on Tuesday. They were such troopers. They helped us move all the stuff acrossed the street to our new duplex and even started to help get stuff organized. I am so grateful for that.

2. I love new things. We have been putting Porter on the ground with no fears. If he falls over he won't crack his head open, nor will he get as dirty.

3. I can't live without the internet. We just got it installed today and it is so fast. It takes like one second to go to the next page. I haven't had internet like that ever in my home. I know that I am going to get a lot more done now.

4. I love visitors. I don't know what it is about a new home. It might be because it is so much more homey and inviting, but we have a lot more visitors now. I am so grateful for that.

5. I love to play the piano. A cousin of Terry's gave us their old piano. YEAH!! It is like an early Christmas present. It is really old and worn, but it is a treasure to me. It reminds me of that poem about the touch of the Master's hand. I've cleaned it up a little and sounds so sweet when you play Christmas music on it.

6. Terry's favorite is Space. We have so much more room than before. It is small compared to our giant dream home, but for now we are living in the lap of luxury.

He's sitting up!!

2007-11-19T09:05:00.001-08:00

This past weekend Porter has been perfecting the art of sitting up. He can do it for a long stretch of time, but eventually gets off balance and falls. It's quite an accomplishment.

Porter's other great accomplishment is falling asleep on his own. YEAH!!! I just lay him in his crib and he puts himself to sleep. What a blessing it is and I don't even know how he started doing it. I have decided that I can't complain about him not sleeping the whole night. This makes up for it. I don't have to sit there forever trying to help him fall asleep because he does it on his own now. He ends up in crazy positions like this sometimes though.
Porter loves his pacifier. It has become his favorite toy. He is always trying to succeed in stuffing the whole thing in his mouth. I don't think it will fit, but he gets most of it in by putting it in sideways like you can see in the picture. It is so funny.

Our Family Photo

2007-11-19T09:02:00.000-08:00

This is a little late. We took it in July, but thought it would be fun to have on our blog.

California

2007-11-12T10:51:00.000-08:00

Well this last weekend I fullfilled a long time dream of going to California. I left home Thursday the 8th and returned on the 11th. Some old roomates and myself got together and kind of had a last hooray because the last of us is getting married in January. We picked this time to do it, because everyone's schedules fit perfect. Thursday I flew into L.A. and met up with my friend Jared who had flown in from Colorado. Our other friend Keldon who lives in L.A. picked us up and took us to his place for the night. That night the three of us sat up until about two o'clock in the morning talking about anything we could think of. Friday morning the groom to be, Ryan came and picked Jared and I up and brought his fiance Larissa. It was awsome to meet Larissa, she is a great person and ryan and her fit very well together. Keldon had class that day and so he was unable to hang out.
Ryan's parents and brother Stuart and his family were all in town also and because Stuart is in the Air Force he was able to purchase really cheap tickets and we all went to Knotts Berry Farms Theme Park in Orange County. It was alot of fun riding the rides and just being able to hang out. It was during this time that both Jared and I wished we had had our wives and kids with us. We talked all day about how our wives would have loved this or that, or would have loved to ride a certain ride. That night Jared and I stayed with Ryan at his house. Ryan lives with seven other guys and the place was a total bachelor pad complete with aluminum foil on the attenas and stains in abundance on the carpets, it also had a very "guy" smell to it (if you know what I mean). It was at this point again that Jared and I both were greatful we were not still single and had wonderful wives that liked to make our homes very crafty and homey and smelling good.
On Saturday morning Larissa invited us to go surfing with her sister Pam and brother-in-law Mike. Surfing is something I have wanted to try since I was a kid and we all jumped at the chance to go. Keldon drove down to Seal Beach where we were and joined us for the day. We had a blast. I have been told time and time again that surfing is not easy and guess what? It wasn't easy. It was, however, very fun. I got all the way up on the board three times, rode in on numerous waves and tumbled in the surf for the rest of the time. It was tough, but was alot of fun. We surfed for about three hours then cleaned up and went to eat with Ryans family. We were beat to death. After we ate Jared and I rode back to L.A. with Keldon.
That night Keldon took us to Santa Monica and showed us "The Promanade on 3rd." 3rd street in down town Santa Monica is shut off from traffic and is a big strip mall. they had all sorts of cool stores. We got to the end of the strip and went to poke around in the Barnes & Noble there. I was standing there with both Jared and Keldon and Jared pointed out a man that was looking at some books and said, "hey isn't that guy famous?" I looked and there was the actor Donald Sutherland. Jared kept trying to get me to go say hi to him and after some convincing I went and stood next to him and quietly asked him if he was who I thought he was. He informed me that he was, I introuduced myself (as if he really cared); shook his hand and asked if I could get a picture with him. He said "no" but was very polite however. The next morning we got up, had some breakfast and flew home. I had alot of fun in California, but I missed Bethany and Porter and knew it was time for me to get home. Let me tell you, any ideas that I ever had about wanting to live in a big city like that were gone. I like my small towns and lots of space.

Here we are, this is one of many cool little videos I have.

Here are various pictures of surfing and the steam train at Knotts Berry Farms

Fall is here and so are the Sunday drives!

2007-11-02T11:06:00.000-07:00

We went to Brown's County State Park this past Sunday. We had fun going to all the look out towers and looking at the changing fall colors. We were a little early because there were still a lot of trees that were green, but it was still very beautiful.

Here is our Fall photo of the family.

This is Porter and I at the top of one of the look out towers. You can see the infamous southern Indiana view. All you can see are leafy trees for miles and miles. One of the signs said that on a clear day you can see for 11 miles.

Terry and I

We all went to get our eyes checked and we are sad to report that Porter had to get glasses too. Just kidding only Terry and I got new glasses, but as we were looking for ones for ourselves we couldn't believe these cute glasses and that they were so small. We tried them on him and he looked so grown up just like a little kid.

Porter tried on my new swim cap. I'll have to get a photo of me in it and post it later.

7 habits of a semi-effective person

2007-11-01T06:25:00.000-07:00

Well Bethany tagged me. This is the first time I have ever written on this blog. I should make it more of a habit though. Well here are my 7 things.

1. I love facial hair. I know this causes complete and utter disgust from my wife but I just love it. I hate having to shave and any chance I can get to not shave at all or as little as possible makes life that much easier. I know Bethany can't stand it, but I ask her all the time "do you shave your legs every day?" Plus, besides loathing shaving, it makes me feel manly, as stupid as that may sound. I didn't get to the point where I had to shave every day until I was 20 years old and now that I have it I guess you could say that I appreciate it.

2. I am a complete dork. This will not be a surprise to those really close to me, but I am a fantasy/sci-fi dork. My favorite movies include Lord of the Rings, Star Wars and X-files. I don't think I have to write anymore about this topic because if I do I will only further exemplify my dorkiness.

3. I have a tinge of OCD. Not with cleanliness or anything useful like that. I have it when it comes to routine. I lay my clothes out the same way every night for the next day, I have to get dressed in the same order every morning. I eat the same thing every morning. I have to have my classroom the exact same way everyday before I leave. Its not like I will go "Rain Man" on myself if things get out of order, Its just nice to not have to worry about the inconsistency of certain things under my control. Like I said, just slight OCD... very slight, yeah definitely very slight, definitely very slight.

4. I love to be active. I know, I know, my stature would tell you other wise but I love to be out and about playing sports of all kinds, Preferably in the water. But, I do love baseball, basketball, football, rugby (when I get to watch it), I can get into anything I can understand. This is probably why I have yet to really like hockey, I've tried but its just too discernible. I LOVE to hike and camp. I know some would say this kind of takes away from my dork credentials but hey I am what I am.

5. I met "Slash" the guitarist from "Guns and Roses." Its a cool story ask me about it some time.

6. I love politics and history. This one should be kind of obvious since I am a licensed social studies teacher, but I have to mention it. If I could I would spend all day; in a library, museum, archives, special collections, watching history channel or talking to people who experienced history it just completely fascinates me to no end. I mean, isn't life about social interaction? I also love being politically active. I have for the most part lost faith in our political system. However, I try to be involved and slow down the continued digression as much as possible. I know this will set some people off but......... I am a registered Democrat.

7. I saved the best for last. I love my wife and son. They make life completely worth living. If I didn't have anything else in my life that I believed in or enjoyed doing and still had Bethany and Porter I would be still so happy. I look at Bethany often, even though she may think I don't, and wonder how on earth a guy like me got a women like her to marry me. I sleep so easy at night knowing that she will always choose the right and never go against what our Heavenly Father asks of us. Also, Porter is amazing. I can stare at him for hours and just wonder how amazing he is. Of course I hope that starts to subside a little when he gets older, it might spook him out if I stare at him all the time.

Anyway, that is my list. I hope you enjoy it and the spelling and grammar was correct. I tag Jared, Anya, Ryan, my mom, dad, Porter and Marthea.

7 things about me.

2007-10-30T13:25:00.000-07:00

I've been tagged (thanks to my friend from colleg Fern!). Here are the rules:
A. List 7 habits/quirks/facts about yourself.
B. Tag 7 people to do the same.
C. Do not tag the person who tagged you or say that you tag whoever wants to do it.

1. I'm a copy cat at heart. Anything cute I have is because I saw someone have it and I liked it so I had to get it! Sadly enough it is because I have to admit that I am not creative at all.

2. I have recently gone to the dark side and purchased a swim cap and goggles and am taking swim lessons from Terry and the head coach of the swim team. I am not very good, but I have been going out to the high school and swimming with Terry's sister Alida. It is a very peaceful and relaxing way to exercise I've found out.

3. I miss speaking spanish!! I am sad to say that I have been forgetting a lot of words that I have had to look up. I need to practice more, but it does make me nervous. I hate to make mistakes. I have been talking to Terry more and more in spanish. He doesn't seem like he really wants to learn though. I wish I had enough commitment to teach Porter. I wish even more that there was a bilingual school here like Tania has in Washington that would teach him spanish for me.

4. I love to go to church! I love the ward that we are in. I love my calling in the Relief Society as Secretary. It is helping me learn how the presidency's of the organizations work. All of this is attributed to the amazing feeling of peace, love and joy of the spirit that you get when you are at church. It is irreplaceable. The church is true!!!

5. I could live in a messy house and not let it bother me one bit (as long as no creatures came because of the mess!) I am sad to admit it, but I am sure that some of you who read this I have lived with and can remember my room and how messy it was. I am happy to report that I work against this tendency very hard and my house is pretty clean most of the time!!! (Terry helps too!! Aren't husbands great!)

6. I love breastfeeding! I would recommend it to anyone as the best diet I have ever been on. Since I have been breastfeeding I have lost all my baby weight plus 10 lbs. Yeah! I feel so good and look okay too! I need to work out a little more and have been doing that too, but I have been eating like I usually do and the pounds just slowly came off.

7. I love Porter's smile. It is so addicting. I could just sit there and make him smile back at me for hours. I find myself doing it a lot, because of all the time I have at home with him. Sometimes I look over and he is just smiling away even if I'm not paying attention to him. Lately, I just have to laugh which makes him smile even more as I am trying so hard to feed him some cereal and all he wants to do is smile. I feel frustrated and then he smiles and I just crack. I know that there are more of these moments to come when you shouldn't smile, but have to because the kids are so cute.

Well, I am glad that is over. It took me about a half an hour to think of just 7 things. I don't think I am up to the "100 random things about myself list" yet! It was fun to do though. I tag Terry, Alida, Kaya, Ruffin, Bret, Mary, my mom and Marianna. I am excited to see if you all do it!!

Trunk or Treat

2007-10-25T11:14:00.000-07:00

We went to the ward Trunk or Treat. It was crazy because that is the first Trunk or Treat I have been to since it was invented. It was a cold fall day, but really fun. Porter looked so cute and he did so good. I thought that he was going to get sick of the hood to his costume, but he was so happy. Terry thought of his costume last minute and it turned out to be a highlight. He looked good dressed up in his dad's German clothes. I was maid marion, but not very unique. We'll have to coordinate better next year and not do it last minute. Happy Halloween.

Park Fun

2007-10-23T12:34:00.001-07:00

We had a free afternoon and we decided to go to the park Porter had fun playing on the toys with the cousins Katelynn, Michael, Sam and Adam. We were just about to leave and saw the perfect size swing for Porter. We put him in and he loved it. Adam loved it too because he could push him.

Fall Break

2007-10-23T11:26:00.001-07:00

We had wanted to go camping during Labor day weekend and weren't able to so we have been planning a fall camping trip. I know it is crazy to think coming from Idaho weather that you could possible go camping in the middle of October, but we did and the weather was great. We started of early Friday morning. It was cold and cloudy out, but it never rained all day. We got to the covered bridge festival and were there until it closed at 5 pm. There are covered bridges throughout Indiana and this festival of selling goods is centered around them. There were all kinds of booths for almost a mile stretch. We walked by most of them and enjoyed looking at all the different things. We didn't buy much because we didn't have room to take it back with us, but we got away with a few cheap ties for Terry, a five dollar Disney movie of the Incredibles, and a souvenir mug. Of course there was carnival food that was fun to eat. Terry's favorite was the inch and 1/2 thick pork chop sandwich as you can see in the pictures. We went to a camp ground that night and spent time setting up our tent and talking around the campfire. Terry had the bright idea to bring our huge air mattress. Sadly enough it didn't quite fit in our tent. We tried to make it work, but halfway through the night we just had to let the air out we were feeling a little claustrophobic. The next day we went hiking with Porter in tow. I didn't think it would be that bad. The trail was marked "very rugged" but I didn't think it could be that bad. I stand corrected. I think they should start marking the trail as "extremely rugged-caution if you have small children and think you can make it turn around and go back!!!" We had to go through ravenes and climb steep rock areas, avoid water puddles between rocks, and climb up and down hundreds of stairs. It felt good to have made it when we got done, but my calves and thighs are sore still. We spent the night again and then on the way home went to a branch in greencastle for church. It was a really fun weekend and we hope to do some more camping.

Happy Birthday!!

2007-10-23T11:21:00.000-07:00

Terry is 28 years old. He had his birthday on October 18th. He didn't have to go to school that day so that was a great present in itself. I had a fun day planned of going golfing and going to dinner. It was rainy and Terry didn't really want to go. When I asked him what he did want to do he picked going to the Army Surplus. We went there and walked around. He loved looking at the guns, but I don't know if I was very good company. I certainly didn't have the reactions he was looking for when he shot off the fancy names of the guns from world war II or the type of sword remake from the Civil War. He had more fun doing that than anything else. We went to dinner that night at Texas Roadhouse his favorite place to eat. We sure love him and hope he has a wonderful year of life filled with joy!!

Porter is growing!

2007-10-16T12:56:00.000-07:00

Porter had his four month check up (we were a little late because he is now 5 1/2 months old). Just wanted to update everyone and tell them that he is a big 14 lbs. 12 oz. boy. He is 26 inches long. He also got some immunizations and did great! Still smiling like crazy

What a wonderful 2 weeks

2007-10-16T11:45:00.000-07:00

I got home just fine and Porter did much better on the trip home! I made it home with all my crafts and purchases without having to pay the overweight charge at the airport. It was a stretch though and I had to carry 2 bags through the airport but it was worth it!

Highlights of the last 2 weeks:

1. The hotel was fun and we spent three days there. I had some good babysitters!

2. We also went to a water park and spent all day there. It was indoor and that was wonderful. Porter does so good in the water and slept for a good portion of the time so that I could get some water slides in :0)

3. There were so many of us there. We went out to eat at Tomato Street. What an adventure that was!

3. Marianna did wonderful at Junior Miss. We were so proud of here that she was there and having so much fun and that she was one of those very talented girls. I enjoyed attending every one of the 3 nights. The girls you could tell were the best of the best. Listening to their talents was like going to a professional concert/ballet.

4. My mom and I were able to go to a special luncheon with Marianna Saturday before the final performance. She told us little backstage stories about how neat all the girls were.

5. We only got to talk to her through notes and phone calls, but the last night we got to hug her and love her.

6. We drove to Kennewick after it was over and visited Bret and Tania. It was only a short time but we got a little fun in with the boys while we were there. Miller amazed me at how much he understood in spanish when we went and visited his class!!

7. I couldn't have a trip to Idaho without a cousin craft (we missed one important member-Olivia). Our little craft ideas turned into big projects though and a little time turned into a few days worth of working on them. We made church books and painted block signs. The best part was being together and talking with just us girls and of course the kids!

8. My most proud achievment was sewing Porter his first Halloween costume. I can't believe I got it done. My mom helped with a few hard spots and I thank her for that. Stay tuned for the official Halloween picture of him in it. It's really cute!!!

Home Sweet Home

2007-10-02T15:59:00.000-07:00

We made it!!! We are excited to be here and to be able to see so many people. The flight was long and Porter did okay, but I hope to never have to do it again without Terry. We had a few set backs and got off late with our first flight. Porter cried a few times and it was very uncomfortable. We then missed our second flight and had to take a later one. We finally got to Burley around 8 pm and began our fun.

When we woke up the next morning it was a precious moment to see all these loved ones come out from different rooms in grandma's house that we didn't even know were there, but the house was full. Lisa and Jason, Jarom, Aunt Anna Maria and Jim, Monica and my mom arrived just a few minutes after we had all gotten up. We had some good talks and memorable times throughout the weekend with everyone there.

Also on Saturday, September 29 we woke up to SNOW!! Can you believe it?!! It was 39 degrees outside. I couldn't believe it because we were still having pretty warm days still in Indiana. Usually in the 80's. As we drove around that afternoon we saw that a few snowmen were made . That's how much snow there was!

Jerrica's reception was beautiful and so was she. She looked just wonderful and so happy. Her colors were fall colors and I loved that. I went back many times to dip more things into the chocolate fountain.

Monica's talk in sacrament meeting was wonderful. She looks so great and exudes the spirit like crazy. I feel like she hasn't skipped a beat. She is still that wonderful Monica that I love so much. She told us many wonderful stories about her mission and it was fun to talk to each other and share stories.

Sleep. Who needs it??

2007-09-17T16:42:00.000-07:00

Well, I have to say that this week has been a week of trial and error. Porter has not been sleeping well and we are to our limit of sleepless nights. We have tried everything. Baby Wise(book on sleeping patterns) doesn't work, yes Porter can scream at the top of his lungs for 30+ minutes without falling asleep nor does keeping him up for a long time before we put him to bed, even if his eyes droop as we try everything to keep him awake. Just today we had him take his first bites of rice cereal. I am not sure he knew what to do. He didn't make a sour face, but I don't think he got anything down. He would just keep sticking out his tongue and drool the rest of it out. I just kept scooping it back up and feeding it to him, but I don't think it helped. I guess we'll just have to keep trying our best and being patient. Hopefully, he will grow out of it and sleep through the whole night. Wish me luck :0)
Other things that have happened this week were going to Stake Conference. I hate to admit that this year was the first time that I had gone to the adult session. I decided that I had been missing out. It was great to be there with just adults, so quiet, good topics, and of course the spirit was very edifying and inspiring. As the saying goes you don't realize how blessed you are until you don't have it and miss it very much. That goes for a stake building just around the corner. I have always grown up with the stake building less than 5 minutes away in every place that I have lived. Not here though, the stake building is in Bloomington about a 30 minute drive from my house. I guess I have to say that I am even blessed in that because some of the people in the stake have to drive about 2 hours to get there. It was worth it though. The stake presidency was wonderful to get to know. One is convert from california and also a spanish speaker. He came up to me and talked to me in spanish. It was so special to me. Hearing someone's sincere thoughts in spanish always make the feelings of love from my mission come back.

Family Photo

2007-09-13T10:08:00.000-07:00

The neices and nephews. I am posting this a little late and I can't believe how much Porter has already changed!

My parents- Frank and Barbara Clark

Just wanted everyone to have a picture of my beloved family on my blog. I just copied it from Tania's blog. I'll send more when I go to Idaho and get the rest.

Anxiously Awaiting

2007-09-11T09:52:00.000-07:00

Apart from spending time with Porter. I also find myself looking out the window anxiously awaiting our new duplex to be completed. Right now we are living in a little apartment that is less than desirable. In our new duplex the siding is almost done going up and they are going to put stone on the front part. The inside has all the drywall up. They are making headway and they say that it will be done the beginning of October. I thought I'd send a picture of it. The apartment I live in now is just across from the new one we can't wait to move in to.

Porter's Milestones

2007-09-11T09:26:00.001-07:00

Porter turned 4 months old about a week ago and since he has hit that mark we have been able to see him change so much and hit some big milestones. Katelynn (Terry's neice) was the key to getting Porter to do his first giggle. I think he was in just the right mood and Katelynn was playing with him who I know he enjoys. Before we knew it he was laughing. We all just joined in. It was so cute.

I am sad to say that I think every mother experiences this at least once in their life, but today as I was in the other room doing something and Porter was in on my bed I heard a loud thud and a horrific scream. Yes, you guessed it Porter has also learned to roll over!!! I should have known to not leave him alone there, because he has gotten quite good at rolling from front to back and back to front too. He's playing with his feet and smiling all the time. We so look forward to those times because they do out weigh the sleepless nights and the cries.

His next favorite thing is to drool all over everything, especially himself. I can't keep his clothes dry. He just foams from the mouth.

Spring Mill

2007-09-05T10:10:00.000-07:00

We decided to plan a fun trip to visit the Amish and go hiking at Spring Mill. We first went and got some cheap eggs and looked at the fun things the Amish do. I still am dreaming about getting a fun rocking chair from them someday. Then we went to Spring mill, looked in all the cabins that have all the different proffesions of a village. The weaver, blacksmith, doctor, drug store. The new fun thing this year was to see a potter. She was making clay pots on the wheel. This year was the first year that they had done it. Hein's kids went with us Michael, Sam, and Adam. They had fun watching the potter. We spent the most time there. I carried Porter around in his carrier on my stomach. Michael helped out for a bit. He wanted to try it out. I watched him as he walked, sat and had to pick up things off the floor funny. I told him that is how it feels to be pregnant. I just laughed as I watched him. Porter just loves to be in that carrier. We then went on a little hike through the trees along a little stream that goes to a cave about a mile back in the park. It was a nice day and when we got to the cave it was like a natural air conditioner back there. The water was freezing cold. The kids and Terry had fun hiking in both of the openings of the cave and sliding down the waterfall. It is so mossy and there are a few big smooth rocks that you can just slide down. They just had so much fun sliding down it like a water slide.

Terry, Sam, Michael and Adam all climbed up this hillside to one of the cave openings. I stayed down at the bottom. The joys of being a mother!!!

This picture is of my computer illiteracy! I have taken like 2 weeks and about 7 phone calls to Liz just to get some pictures on my blog. I finally got this one downloaded and it is going the wrong direction. You would think well then just delete it. But there is my next problem I don't know how. Anyway, I hope you just enjoy the pictures.

Having fun on the nature made water slide. I thought this was pretty good action shot with my amateur skills of photography.

Labor Day

2007-09-05T10:00:00.000-07:00

We had fun over the three day weekend. We went to visit Terry's friend Larry and his wife Alene up in Indianapolis. We went to the city center circle and to the mall. Terry's old roommate Seth and Donna and there little girl were also there. We didn't do a lot. Mainly we just hung out and talked. Being from Idaho I wanted to go and see all the sites, but to them Indianapolis is no big deal so they would rather just stay at home, watch a movie and chat. On Sunday as our new tradition. We enjoyed having dinner with Alida (Terry's sister). We had family home evening with everyone on Sunday since no one had school the next day. On Monday though we were most excited to go swimming at the city pool. We wanted Porter to be able to come swimming with us. He hasn't been the greatest sport about it. He loves to take baths, but he hasn't liked to go swimming. I think it is the difference in water temperature. The pool was pretty cold, but to our surprise. He did great. He just kicked around and smiled. We loved having him there. He makes everything so much more fun.

Terry and Porter enjoying the water.

Terry's sister Alida and his brother Hein and family all came swimming with us too. As you can tell this picture is typical of life here in Indiana. Porter is always the center of attention. I am surprised that Porter is even in Terry's arms. Someone else is usually holding him.