Ely Nolan

We have another new Father in our family. My sister, Rachel, and her husband, Rob, welcomed their first baby two weeks ago today!
It is amazing to have a new little person in the family. Their family unit has forever changed.
I'm excited to visit my sister and her baby in a few weeks!

Happy Father and Mother... (Day)

I like the idea of taking a photo of Dad and Kids on Father's day and Mom and kids on Mother's day. So we tried. With kids you have to take 10 shots of the same pose. At least we captured some of the funny things about our family. -although not so pictures perfect.

Rocket Launch

Jared brought up an old favorite past-time over memorial day weekend --model rockets with black powder motors.

Jared's dad was the real master-mind. He had simple models for the boys to put together and some other really fancy ones too. Stan works at ATK, building boosters for the real NASA Rocket ships!


There were some cute spectators for the lanchings.


I had to post a million pictures (from Derek and Susie) to show the fun event. So here goes:






getting ready to push the "blast off" button


running to retrieve the rocket and parachute




more cute spectators



and very cute "eligible" spectators

Another Memorial

Jared has always been close to his grandparents. Grandma Deanie still lives in Garland (his hometown) near his parents. We get to stay in her beautiful basement when we visit on the weekends! When Jared worked in real estate we built/rebuilt a home across the street from her. We lived there for two years and brought both of our boys home from the Bear River Valley Hospital. I was also born in the Tremonton Hospital. Garland is home in many ways.

One of our favorite places to walk from the Clark home is through the neighborhood and past the hay fields to Grandpa Bjorkman's grave. Even though I never met Grandpa --I am proud to be his granddaughter. He is a wonderful man with a wonderful family to be apart of.

It was fun to come home and see all of our special places there. Home will always be home.

S.N.O.W.

The first few days after we arrived I was hesitant to go outside. Even inside I drank hot cocoa and wore a jacket. I found long pants and coats for everyone. but I still really hoped that we would get to see snow. (I love winter-with a good coat) I thought we would have to drive up into the canyon to get into the snow until --it came to us in the valley!




(This picture with my sister, Renee, shows how Tessa was for the first few weeks of our visit when she left my arms. Now she is really excited about all her people!)

next best thing -- Uncles (and Aunts)!

The boys have had so much fun playing with fun Uncles and Aunts.
There really are so many special people we get to spend time with this summer that blogging about them is a daunting task.

Andrew and Beth

The sweet new cousins:

Are cousins kind of like brothers?

The title is a question Michael asked a few days after we arrived in Utah. He recognized that cousins are really something special!

Here are a few of our moments with cousins:
We're enjoying every one of them and
we're hoping for more of them with other cousins too...

en route to utah

Here's Tessa on her first plane ride (in my seat). She and I enjoyed the trip much more than we would have the four day car ride.