Happy Halloween

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

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

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

Funny pictures

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

Our Family

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Family Pictures

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

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

Wonderful Fall!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Side note:

A couple of cute porter things.

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

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

Husband Tag

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

How long have you been married? 2 years.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Who is more stubborn? He is.

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

Who proposed? He did.

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

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

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

Our first doctor visit

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

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

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

I'm Back!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Chicago Cubs and cute Porter stuff

These were our first seats for the first 4 innings

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

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


The lengend Lou Pinella, the Cubs manager

The Cubs First baseman Derek Lee

Left fielder Alfonso Soriano

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

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




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


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

U.S.A. Swimming and Water Polo

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

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

Here we go again!

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

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

2 Years Together

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

Hair today, gone tomorrow.

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!!

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!"

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

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

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.