Calgary Zoo

In August, Caroline and I went to Calgary to visit my Dad. While there we went to the Zoo, which happens to be a great one.


By far Caroline's favorite animal was this little gorilla. You should have seen her face light up when she saw it.

We are not the best bloggers.

I realized today, well before today, that Brad and I are not the best bloggers. I mean there are so many things to keep up with these days, as far as electronic communications. There is facebook, which we recently joined. We have our Clark family website; I have my cooking blog, twolittlechefs, our photography website and our fineart photography website. That doesn't even include checking personal email, work email, reading what the word of the day is from dictionary.com, reading the news that I have delivered into my inbox, reading friends blogs/facebook, etc, etc....

How does one keep up with all this electronic communication and still have time to actually call and visit with friends/family? Not to mention eating, sleeping, playing, working, you know - living?

ps...this picture has no relavance to my post, I just know that people are more likely to read something if there is a picture along with the text. True?

Little Critters

For those of you who don't know, my wife absolutely loves little critters. And by that I really mean all animals of any kind. Seeing cats, dogs, birds, even cows will fill her with glee. Thus, it is to her great pleasure that we have a family of quail living in our backyard. In fact, she has even named them the Murphys. I must admit that watching 9 or 10 little puff-balls (chicks) following their parents was one of the cutest things that I have ever seen. The little babies just looked like fluff with legs. Ever since, Caroline has been stalking them trying to get a picture, but they are rather elusive. This one shot with the telephoto is all she has been able to capture thus far, but the hunt continues.

Soup is Good for your Car

I spent a couple hours lying in a gutter on Saturday, fixing my car. The exhaust pipe between the engine and the muffler broke, so little Rafa was sounding a lot more robust. To solve the problem I made Caroline and I some tomato soup and grilled cheese for lunch. Then I cut the can and clamped it around the ends of the pipe where it broke, and viola, good as new. Well, as good as new as a 39 year old car can be. : )

Extra Money?$?

Looking for a way to earn some extra money? In January 2005, Joe Tamarog earned $510 to have this ad permanently tattooed on his right arm. What do you think?


That same year, one man had his forehead temporarily tattooed with an anti-smoking ad. He was paid $37,375 for 32 days...not bad eh?? Would you do this?

Time Killer

Brad and I joined the 21st century yesterday...ta da...we joined Facebook. And already we realize what a time killer it can be. We are wondering, what is the love of Facebook? I mean we can see the perks of it, it is fun to see what people that you knew when you were 7 are doing now...

Basically, I would love to know why people use Facebook. I am not criticizing it or anything, I am truly just curious what your feelings about it are.

Mad Scientist and Books

Clayton, Part I:

This is my brother Clayton and his wife Jessa. Clayton has been working with a company called Mad Scientists for the last 7 or 8 months. Basically they do science experiments for kids at birthday parties, school classrooms, etc. Brad and I got to go and watch him perform once at the Pleasant Grove library. It was awesome. If you know Clayton, you know that this is the perfect job for him. Anyways, I guess yesterday while working at a summer camp the local paper, The Daily Herald, came and interviewed him and took some photos. There is an interview with him and another Mad Scientists on the The Daily Herald's homepage, and he said there will be a blurb about it and a picture in the paper today. Check out the video interview here, and if you are interested call up Mad Scientists and ask for Clayton to do your kids party, he really is great at it!

Part II: Books

Clayton is also a writer and reads many, many books. He started a very interesting blog where he reviews books that he likes and plans to post some of his own writing. Interested? The blog is called Books By Clay, check it out!

What Would a Piano Made by a Car Company Look Like?

For some reason Audi decided that they needed to design a grand piano. I guess, so loyal fans could put one in the garage next to their R8. If you want to see more pics click here.

Friends

When I went to graduate school I met some really amazing people, including my wonderful husband. The year that I started graduate school at BYU there were 3 men and 6 ladies (including myself) in my class. With such a small group you quickly become friends. I was also lucky enough to get to know some of the students from the year before me and the year after. In fact, if you didn't know this, Brad and I met in the master's program at BYU, which of course was the best part of the whole thing!

Anyways, every couple of months some of us ladies, we call ourselves the master girls, get together and reminisce and catch up on each others lives. It is great fun! We had one such night this week. Included in the picture are from left Liz who recently moved from Philly to Minniapolis, Brooke, Jen, Holly, me, Dr. Baker (one of our professors who became friends with us), Tami, and Caitlin and new son Guy.

Thanks ladies for making this a great night!

ps...Kelly and I are hosting a contest with a prize on our cooking blog, check it out!

Summertime when the living is easy...

Just thought I would share a few day to day things that are going on at the Clark house this week. On Monday I trimmed the overgrown rose bush in the front yard. The great thing about that was I ended up with three various bouquets of roses for the house. Granted I had to kill about 10 earwigs that came in on the flowers, which I hate (earwigs that is), but I think it was worth it.


Monday evening Brad and I went out and picked as many cherries out of our cherry tree as we could manage with a stool, a very unsteady latter, and limited tree climbing abilities (note to self: wear shoes, rather than flip-flops when trying to climb trees). Today I am making some cherry jelly, which I have never had before, and tomorrow I plan to bottle the rest. I am hoping that the cherry jelly will be delicious and go well on things like the Cranberry-Orange Scones I made Monday afternoon (yes, that was a shameless plug for my cooking blog: twolittlechefs)

ps...if you want another one of our crazy neighbor stories please ask, and refer to our cherry tree

The Community of Christ (RLDS)

When Caroline and I were in Kansas we went to Independence. The Reorganized Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints has their world headquarters there. The have changed their name to the Community of Christ.



This is where they have the general conference, every three years. It reminded us of the Tabernacle, but was kept rather dark and had a different feel to it.




This is their Temple. It is rather unique, and the interior was quite beautiful, with lots of natural light.

Afternoon Walk

One afternoon we went for a walk with the Rathers in a nice park. It was wonderful, but very hot and humid.

The boys' favorite section (other than the area with all the turtles) was where the branches overhung and made a kind of a tunnel.

There was a lot of special stick finding going on, though some of the branches had to be 'adjusted' to make them just the right size.

The boys were very excited when they found some animal tracks

While we were there Jeremiah and I became great friends. I knew we were going to be pals when he corrected his brothers, informing them that my name was not Brad, but Brown, which is what he called me the entire time.

Rather Family Fun

Staying with the Rather's was a lot of fun. We enjoyed some wonderful food by expert chefs. :)


We also did some family bonding on the Wii.


There were also plenty of games and building, which including the burying of the boys.

Road Trip

Caroline and I made the journey to Witchita to visit her brother and his family. We had a blast as you can see.

Along the way we saw a huge convoy hauling tanks and armored cars. They were heading west and we were going east, so we could only try to take a picture through our window as they went past.

The area west of Denver was beautiful, and so was the rest of trip east, but rather flat and boring.

My Birthday

Last Tuesday was my birthday. Brad went out of his way to make it an awesome day. Amongst other things, we went on a ghost town/mining town hunt. It was tons of fun! I put together a picasa album of a few of the pictures. You can click this link if you want to check it out.