may and june were such busy months for me and there would have been plenty for me to write about, but nooo time. now that school is out and life has calmed down there isn't much of interest happening to me. the girls and i have started the summer holidays on a good rhythm. they have to clean their room every day and do one chore before they do anything else. at first there was a lot of complaining and they were taking all day to clean their room when it just had a couple of things that needed tidying. but then brent bought wii. (we don't really have that kind of money but he returned his laptop and we had an instore credit for...let's just say a lot of money at future shop.) the first morning after brent brought it home the girls woke me up with breakfast in bed (a piece of toast with butter) and a note saying good morning and that they had cleaned their room and done a chore. so could they please play wii? so finally my house is starting to look like it did before the crazy hecticness of the last 6 weeks. and i filed my taxes. i'm looking forward to having a little money. there are some things i really need. nothing exciting--stuff like new undies and a new bathing suit. we went to the pool to celebrate the last day of school and my bathing suit was suddenly so thin. and the skirt is all stretched out. it was ok when it was cold but now that summer has set in i want to go swimming. not really looking forward to the shopping for the bathing suit bit though. i don't know how to do that and still feel good about myself. try on a suit and suddenly i see all my flaws....see? i don't have anything to write about. here are some pictures that capture some of what happened the last 2 months:

Your Birthdate: August 22
You tend to be understated and under appreciated.You have a hidden force to do amazing things, doing them your own way.People may see you as strange and shy, but they know little.Your unconventional ways have more power than they (and even you) know.
Your strength: Standing up for what you know is true
Your weakness: You tend to be picky and rigid
Your power color: Silver
Your power symbol: Square
Your power month: April

ugh. i couldn't sleep last night. it is such an annoyance. lying there knowing that you have to be up in a couple hours and not able to shut your mind off. i got up and sent off some emails about some of the thoughts that were plaguing me in hopes that it would help, but of course it didn't. so i'm sitting here in the aftermath of mother's day in a sluggish stupor. i don't feel like getting something to eat--i just don't want to bother even washing some grapes off. my house looks as if a stampede went through it. brent and mic did do some dishes yesterday but he just isn't that efficient at loading the dishwasher and he only washed one dish by hand and someone put the dirty icecream scoop on it. the table is still extended. and exactly why was it extended in the first place? for no good reason--only 3 people ate at it. there are half eaten plates on the table, glasses in the living room, no counter space in the kitchen, a bunch of crap in the laundry room (because that is how brent cleans up) and a really stinky diaper in the garbage. mother's day was...hectic. the girls were really excited but when that happens they just seem to get into more trouble. they were fighting and crying and throwing temper tantrums about ridiculous things like who gets to use the bathroom first. we were halfway through the day before they were finally able to give me their gifts. here are some of the things mic said about me in her brochure she made at school: "my mom loves to go to grandmas, she likes to go on runs. my mom is great at jogging and cooking also singing. i'd like to give my mom a hug, a great house, the new harry potter book, some chocolate bars and lillies. a future event for my mom and i will be to go out for dinner, watch a movie and go out for ice cream." haha. well at least she doesn't think i like to sew anymore. that part was very sweet. so was natalie saying over and over throughout the day Hap-py mother's day!! sarah and kyle and anne came over for dinner. adriel was uncharacteristically fussy and anne kept saying mic was a chubby baby and that jane was much skinnier and that mic had such chubby cheeks and for some reason that really pushed my buttons. and sarah would agree and say that mic was small that's all and that she wasn't skinny and for some reason it really bugged me and anne kept saying it. and then she would try to make me feel better by saying that she was still cute even though she was chubby and started saying that she considered adriel to be slim and mic was like him. and i think i might have offended sarah because i said there was no comparison and between the two but its not like i think one is better than the other. and the whole conversation was just ridiculous because i know the way mic was and her size and weight is really completely irrelevant but i couldn't stop it because for some reason. all this time nat was climbing around me and jumping and not listening and kyle was playing kenneth cope. after dinner i told brent that it was tradition to go to pipers on mothers day. neither kyle nor he wanted to go...as if it was up to them...but i persisted and told brent that if we didn't go that i was going to go up to my room and stay there by myself because i am highly sensitive and couldn't take it anymore. so we went and for once the mother's won one on mother's day. we took a few pics and then the girls insisted we play tag. kyle ran while holding adriel over his shoulder and gave us a good laugh. for some reason i always have so much fun playing tag with the girls. they are so cute chanting na-na-na-na-bu-bu and then running away with a delighted shriek. we stayed there long enough for the girls to get some of their pent up energy out and my nerves to relax. then we came home and watched the survivor finale. and then i couldn't sleep...

the big day

april 16th was the big day. big not just because bethany and amy had a birthday--or christian too for that matter--it was a big day for brent. it was the day of his presentation. now brent has done lots of presentations before and he always does them well (so well that i wish he could do them instead of taking a test or writing a paper) but this one was different. this was his presentation of his practicum. his sponsor was there, the chair of the geography department was there, potential employers were there, and the vp of mal-u was there. in fact the vp came only to brent's presentation. i went to cheer him on and to see what everyone else's presentation was like.
one of the other people did a practicum for the centre for continuing studies (cccs) department of mal for marketing purposes. he showed a map that showed students living in the north end of nanaimo that have paid more than $3000 for tuition in ccs. as i watched i thought, 'i bet one of those students he has marked is brent.' then as he continued and talked about marketing it got me thinking about how brent found out about this program in the first place. i had first heard about it in an email from the college. the email came at a time when we were at a crossroads in our lives. it was in my junk mail which i hardly ever check, but just happened to...i told brent about it and that has been his focus ever since. reflecting back to that time i remembered how difficult life was. we were broke and needed to find a new direction for brent. he was looking at taking a trade, but i felt it was a waste of his degree for him to become a carpenter. anyways, this is my rambling way of saying that i feel like we were shown a way out. and on this day i recognized it and felt gratitude and joy.
i was so proud of brent. he had really done a good job. his sponsor was thrilled. i watched as others--his gis instructors, geography instructors, and fellow students told him how good his map was. of course he did a really good job on his presentation. afterwards he got an email from his sponsor and we found out that he was the one who invited the vp there. (his sponsor was a history instructor at the college. brent mapped out nanaimo in 1891. not just the streets and stuff, but who lived where and how much was the land valued at and anything else that was available on the census and tax records.) the college had granted some funding for this project (the college actually paid brent--a small dent in comparison to the amounts we have paid them) and so the vp came to see what the money was used for. apparently he said it was money well spent. his sponsor is so happy with the work brent did that he wants to contract him out to do more. he said there is only one other city in canada that has historical gis maps. you can see some of his online map here. http://tree.mala.bc.ca/Website/MyNanaimo_Brent/viewer.htm it was such a victorious day for us.

spring break

spring break came up on me suddenly this year--yet when i was faced with the prospect of a free and open schedule with no driving to ballet or field trips, i realized i was quite ready for a break. a whole week with nothing i had to do. so much freedom lay before me. a week full of possibilities. now sitting at the other end of the week it feels as if the break was just as busy if not busier than any other week. i guess it is just that stage of my life. the busy stage. which, i think, is the longest stage. as much as i despair of it, i'd much rather be busy than have nothing to do. but i do wish i had more time to get everything done. i've been busy but my housework is not done, i haven't read to the girls all week, the flowers are sitting outside waiting to be planted, the laundry and ironing is piling up, i need to go grocery shopping, i haven't done the girls hair since last sunday, and i'm not going to say anything else about what needs to be done. what did i do?it all started with sunday. (weeks have a way of doing that, you know) i got home from church and only had time for a hurried lunch before i was out the door again for a meeting. in typical meeting fashion we didn't end quickly and so brent had to pick me up for caleb's baptism from deb's house. he had called and deb said for him to bring me something sexy to wear and i said no not sexy but apparently he only heard the no part and brought me nothing to wear. he was rather grumpy about it too. i was supposed to lead the music (all caleb's organizing--poor guy didn't know that we aren't all so musically talented) and i was not going to get up there in front of everyone wearing jeans and running shoes so i went to sarah's. sarah met me at the door wearing track pants. i asked if she had a skirt and shoes i could borrow. unlike some sisters we know, sarah was perfectly willing to share her clothes with a sister in need. she lent me her sexy swishy brown skirt. i inquired as to why they weren't dressed up and it turns out they thought the baptism started 2 hours later. i'm not sure why she thought i was so desperate to borrow a skirt for something that wasn't about to begin. so i guess it was a good thing that brent grumpily didn't bring my clothes because sarah and kyle would have missed the whole thing. the attendance at the baptism was fairly scant. so scant in fact that there was no one to play the piano. layne was supposed to and he didn't come. esther didn't come. evan didn't come. i looked around desperately for someone who could play. dad meantime kept saying i could play. i said i had never even tried to play the primary songs. dough said they'd sing whatever i knew how to play. i told them that was "how great thou art" and that was it. at one time i knew quite a few hymns and could even sight read relatively well but one can't go for years without even touching a piano and keep up that skill. i was not going to give in and play now in front of a bunch of people. how could this happen? so many people in the family play better than me and yet there i found myself sitting on the piano bench with my hands shaking crazily and playing "how great thou art." so the baptism was nice in its only little way. it definitely had an air of disorganization to it. on the program i was listed as a clarke. i've been married for almost 10 years and people still call me sister clarke. it seemed that the baptism just wasn't that important to some people because they didn't show up even though they had a part in the program. evan and esther were supposed to sing but they were sick. so it was good that sarah and kyle found out the real time because kyle was supposed to give a talk. he gave a pretty good one too. (not bad for someone who is on the high council if you know what i mean) he translated a story from a japanese storybook. i love going to baptisms. i always feel the spirit. it didn't disappoint.after the baptism brent wanted me to invite sarah and kyle over for dinner. i didn't want to. i don't like having people over when the house is in complete disarray. i had been helping mom in all my spare time and my house really showed it. and i hate it when brent makes me do something that he can do himself. YOU invite them over if you want to have them over. he had some lame excuse as to why he couldn't so i reluctantly did. so reluctant was i that sarah and kyle didn't realize that the invitation included dinner. i called them later and sarah was in the middle of cooking up perogies. they gave up their dinner of perogies to eat some of brent's cooking. i kept completely out of the kitchen and left all the cooking and cleaning to brent this time. and he did even do the dishes. well what he could fit into the dishwasher--and since our dishwasher is the size of a large microwave and he is not nearly as expert as i am at packing as much as possible into it, there was a lot of stuff not washed. brent made caramel popcorn for dessert. we asked s&k to bring the popcorn because we didn't have enough. kyle must of really wanted some because he made a second trip back home to get it when he forgot. i mean, i told him to go back and get it in quite a bossy and presumptuous fashion but i never expected him to listen to me.brent cooked pork chops, sweet potato, corn and instant potatoes from our food storage--the potato pearls that we bought from the bishop's storehouse and then dry pack canned. he says this is what food storage is for. i could never get myself to open those cans unless we had no other food. (we are different that way. i save and he spends) catherine and patrick came over and we played the iron rod (i think that's what it is called.) it is the lds version of cranium. it was fun, but carried on a little long. in the end brent and kyle cheated to finish the game. i don't know what we were thinking pairing those two together. sarah and pat were very unlucky in their rolling and catherine and i were unlucky in our questions always being allplays. when we got an easy question catherine always asked if we could have another question. obviously her and my approach to games is completely different. anyways, it was a fun night and a good start to spring break

i'll try again

so yes i know it has been a long time. and i do feel like throwing in the towel with the whole blogging thing. you see it seems like it takes me a long time to write an entry--and i don't mean in between entries. but the real thing is probably that i don't journal in a personal journal and so my feelings here can spill out uncontrolled and may be too brutally honest. and really i don't feel like this is the place. yet there are things i wish i could say about my hurt feelings, the sense of betrayal and rejection but i know it to be too hot button of an issue. i don't think i've ever been one of those kind of people that does good at not dealing with issues. i mean i can go on and pretend like things are normal to avoid uncomfortable confrontations, but i don't like to. it is uncomfortable to not deal with it either. i guess what i'm saying is that it feels a little dishonest to come on here and to talk about the fluff of my life but not the things that are truly troubling me. probably if i was up to date in my real journal i wouldn't have a problem. but maybe if i wrote more i would overcome it. so i shall try to get into it again.

thoughts on the new year...

i want to move on from that depressing last entry but don't have a lot of time so...i thought i'd just copy what i wrote for the relief society newsletter.

I wanted to write about the new year and getting a fresh start. I felt inspired by what Sister Schortinghuis said in her testimony on Sunday. I can’t give a direct quote, but I like how she said that we don’t need to wait for a new year to start anew but that each day can be a fresh start. Sister Schortinghuis’s remarks got me thinking about how we live in a world full of cycles from days to weeks to seasons to years and how each one gives us an opportunity to move forward and be better than we were in the last cycle. Really that is the way it should be in the gospel. We are to open and close each day with a prayer. Just as sacrament meeting would not feel right without starting with a prayer, our day should not start without an opening prayer. I’ve never thought of my morning prayer being an opening prayer for the day before but let’s go with that idea for a moment. We pray when we first get up and consecrate the day to the Lord. This action helps us to “stay the course” throughout the day and then in the evening we close the day, review how we did, repent, and resolve to do better the next day. Starting all over is a gift to us through the atonement of our Savior Jesus Christ. It is because of Him we can start everyday with a clean slate.