I'm Way Too Attached

...to my mascara. Pathetic, I know. However, I feel like I am not necessarily the only female in the universe that feels attached to a certain brand. This is why it was so devastating when, while doing my makeup, i somehow hit my open bottle of mascara off of the counter and into the toilet. Now, if it had been closed I may have thought twice before throwing it away but since it was open there was no way that I was going to use it. Gross.

...to google searching. I google search reviews on almost everything before I buy it, even if it means reading reviews on different brands of mascara. I decided to switch to see if mine was really the best out there and, much like a new haircut that needs a couple of days to get used to, I think this new stuff will be fantastic after a couple of days. And thank goodness, unlike a bad haircut, mascara can be replaced if it ends up not working. I also learned after an unfortunate quick trip to walmart after getting a call from a boy when I was already on my way and practically ran through the store to get the basics, I now always double check to make sure that I am not grabbing the bright blue mascara.

T minus 32 hours

In about 32 hours we will be in the Valley of the Sun and couldn't love that name any more than we do right now. After the snow storm this weekend and the cold, cloudy weather today we cannot get home faster. Isn't it funny how the days before a vacation are more hectic than normal days? Make sure the laundry is done. Do the dishes. Pay the bills. Clean the house. Not to mention switching car insurance. I don't know how you people with kids do it. I may bring a lot of this on myself since the I feel the need to mop the floors and clean the bathrooms the day before we leave even if they have all just been cleaned. Maybe it's because I hate unpacking so I think that maybe if I have a clean house to come home to it will make the unpacking a little less dreadful. Either way, a clean house is much nicer to come home to than a dirty house so maybe the craziness of the days before vacation help make the vacation that much better.

We cannot wait to see...

 and...

I've Been Thinking...

Lately I've been thinking a lot about Emergency Preparedness and the things that we need. Thanks to my mother-in-law we have a pretty good supply of canned/boxed food that we could eat off of for a while. However we don't really have stuff together in a quick way to grab in case we don't have a lot of time to gather everything together or things always in the car in case there is ever an emergency either. Now, if any of you have ever seen the trunk of my car you know that I could probably survive out of there for plenty of time but do I really want to eat ridiculously stale peanut butter crackers or have to layer on all of the clothes that I have been meaning to take to DI for months? No, I'd rather just take some time and put an actual kit together for Jeff and myself in our cars. So what does this all mean?

My goal between now and General Conference is to have a 72-hour kit for each of us in the house and an Emergency Car Kit in each of our cars. That gives me about 3 months to collect and shop the sales. Thank goodness for pinterest and all  of the people out there that have gone before and made awesome lists. I have compiled a list of things from these lists adjusted because let's be honest, I'd rather not eat those tuna from a pouch things.

These are not ours but they're what I hope that they end up looking like.

I wish I could be like this woman so after the Emergency Kits maybe I'll try doing this. She plans all of her 3 month storage into meals in bags with the recipe. Genius!

I'm always up for ideas and suggestions so if you have any, let me know. Oh and I do plan on giving a Christmas/New Years update, maybe today, probably tomorrow.

Happy Thanksgiving!

We:
     -Survived Black Friday
     -Accomplished a lot of our Christmas shopping
     -Spent a fun Saturday night at Cafe Rio and Dairy Queen
     -Caught up on Biggest Loser
     -Had a delicious Thanksgiving Dinner!

Picture Time!


Checking the temperature of the turkey. Okay, it was more like a turkey loaf but I still didn't want a nasty under-cooked turkey loaf. Plus, who wants a 14 pound turkey for two people?

I can't remember what this face was about. 

But he is the pro at making mashed potatoes. De-li-cious!

Turkey, green bean casserole, rolls, and "sparkling" 7-up.

Mashed potatoes, glazed carrots, and gravy. 

No pictures of the banana cream pie but it was also delicious! We hope your Thanksgiving was as fun and delicious as ours!

Thankful

Today I am thankful that--
1. My Teacher Work Sample will be finished by the end of the week.
2. I only have tomorrow left this week of school. Thank you Utah for giving Wednesday off for Thanksgiving break too!
3. That by the end of this week, the craziness of Black Friday will be over and life will get a little more back to normal in the lives of the Clarks.

Two Posts in One Evening?!

I just figured out that Blogger is like Gmail in that it saves your posts as drafts in case of moments like I just had. Why are things like this always trial and error? Lame. I did just grab the camera so here are some pictures from our recent adventures.

The Big Red Barn. Jeff's mission president owns the place so we went down and went on a hayride out to a pumpkin patch and got out pumpkin! It was tons of fun!

Spanish Fork Reservoir. One Sunday after church we went up to the reservoir and had a picnic and then walked around. It's gorgeous up there. You could see over the valley and the leaves changing.

Happy Halloween! Mummies and Coffins for dinner! Yum! Sadly we had zero trick-or-treaters.

The Comings and Goings of the Clarks

UGH people! I was just in the middle of the most epic update for you guys and my computer cord had apparently become unplugged from my computer and it died! This raises so many questions.

Why is my computer battery so awful? Answer: Probably because I let it die way too often.
 Why does Blogger not have the feature like Gmail where it saves my posts as drafts every 5 seconds? Answer: No idea.

Where has the time gone? Answer:

~Student Teaching-- I cannot believe that I will be done with my student teaching so soon! It has been great/frustrating/exciting/exhausting/fun/full of laughs. I will miss my students a lot, even the one who argues with me just for the sake of arguing, the one who cannot stay in his desk for more that 3 minutes for the life of him, and all of third period PE. I will especially miss the intention and unintentional debates that we have because they feel like can actually say what their opinion is. I (most days) will miss when they come into my room during lunch because it is warm and the days in the middle of November that we opened all of the windows and plugged in the fans because the classroom was 800 degrees. I will not miss the majority of third period PE and their inability to stay on the same team or listen in general but even they have their own moments of being endearing.

~Work-- Can you say holiday season and Black Friday? We can and Jeff has been working so hard to get the store ready for Black Friday and everything else. He even pulled an all-nighter last week. Luckily, once BF is over it seems like it will get a little better. The employees that are on his team all really like him and tell me every time that I come into the store how glad they are to be on his team.

~Family-- Jeff's parents came up a couple of weekends ago and it was so fun to see them and catch up. We did a ton of talking and went up to Riverton to can apples and applesauce. We are so glad that they came up to stay with us for the weekend!

~Scouts-- We are over the 8 year old scouts in the ward and they are hilarious! It's fun to have a calling together and they all think Jeff is the coolest person they have ever seen.