the talent portion will be worth one-fourth of the final score

aaand more from the tietjen christmas party- the talent portion! carson and shellena made up a tietjen 12 days of christmas, klayton sang, all of the kids performed, and, the piece de resistance, mandy, spencer, klayton and carson performed the california raisin's rudolph the red-nosed reindeer (i have seen the video of all of them doing this when they were really little- i can't believe they still remembered it all!). enjoy our nerdiness!

last christmas i gave you my heart

Monday night was the Tietjen Family Christmas Party at Ma and Pa Tietjen's place in Rexburg. We had lots of fun singing songs, eating, watching the kids reenact the nativity story, chatting, and even opening presents (the grand kids did a present exchange). Here are some of the highlights...

Here's Avery's Christmas dress that my mom sent a few weeks ago. Klayton, Avery and I leave for Las Vegas on Friday afternoon for our Clark Family Christmas. Mallory and Josh won't be there and I'll miss them lots, but I'm excited to see my brothers and Grandma Clark and Mom and Dad. And it will be Avery's second Christmas! Should be holly and jolly.

doppleganger

I always tell Klayton that he is going to look exactly like Anderson Cooper when he's older(which I'm really excited about!). Thinking about it always reminds me of that scene in The Wedding Singer:

"I always just envisioned the right one being someone I could see myself growing old with. And Glenn would be a really good-looking older man. Like Blake Carrington." -The future Mrs. Julia Guglia.

Anyway, he got his haircut just like him and I think it looks awesome, like he-should-be out-there-covering-news-on-CNN awesome.

snow thank you

It snowed a couple of days ago and Avery is in love! At least six times a day she goes in her closet, digs out her hat and mittens and shoes, and comes to me and says "'side" (slurred like a drunken sailor), which means "mommy, please take me outside right now!" so i bundle her up like Ralphie on The Christmas Story and we play for 10 minutes, until her nose looks like a teeny tiny tomato. Then we go inside and take off all of her winter stuff and she sucks the dirty snow off of her gloves.



I need to start storing her shoes and outer-wear up high so she can't reach them.

Just teasing (kind of). But this did inspire Klayton and I to slip Santa some extra cash so he could buy her a sled for Christmas. We're headed to my parent's cabin in the mountains outside of St. George, UT for Christmas, so she'll definitely get to use it before we even get back! She's going to love it.

just the other night

i took this one last night. it was right before avery's bedtime ritual of picking up her room, saying a prayer, drinking her baba and kissing mama "night night".

and another

this was also taken in France, in Troyes.

as promised

i promised Mallory that i would post some videos of Av since i haven't in a while (sorry Mall). here they are. this first one is really short- it was on our first day in Paris while we were waiting for Klayton to get directions somewhere...

no i don't want a battle from beginning to end

last weekend klayton, carson (k's bro), shellena (his wife), and matt (her brother) all drove down to SLC to catch Coldplay on their Viva La Vida Tour. it was so great. they are amazing. Coldplay has been on my list-of-bands-to-see-either-before-i-die-or-they-break-up since Parachutes came out my senior year of high school. i love them and they didn't disappoint. chris martin's energy is so good. he is the coolest. anyway, we met up with jeremy, carson's friend, when we got there and we all had a really good time. thanks so spen and juliet for watching av for the night!

then there was thanksgiving! klayton's parents rented cabins from their friends in Swan Valley (between here and Jackson Hole in the mountains). it was beautiful and so much fun. i love klayton's fam. we were the only people there and we each got a little cabin and there was a big lodge where we had thanksgiving dinner and hung out. i didn't take as many pics as i should have, but here's what i've got...

klayton's pre-turkey nap

cheeeese

milo was ready to paintball








ava too

crazies.

eating








going home.

hope everyone had a happy thanksgiving!

midnight

here are my pics from the midnight Twilight premiere. i wasn't kidding, i really went with my seventeen-year-old sister-in-law Kenzie and her friend Kortni. we had so much fun. we even got some movie theater guy to take a pic of our entire theater (there were 12 theaters playing Twilight @ midnight here and they were all sold out) cheering. haha. the movie was super good (but probably only if you have read and loved the book) and i saw it THREE TIMES yesterday. seriously. i'm nuts. but it was worth it. edward was worth it.

my first hot topic purchase in about 6 years...

yes, i wore this shirt all day today.
yes, i am also wearing it to the midnight twilight movie premiere tonight.
yes, i did just turn twenty-four years old and am a mother.
yes, i am going to the twilight premiere with two seventeen-year-old high school students.
no, i don't care if you think i'm retarded.

i'm so glad that you found me

**warning. it is my wedding anniversary and this is a mushy post about how much i love my spouse. not recommended reading for those with weak stomachs...***

today i have been married for four years. yep, that's right. i married klayton the day after i turned twenty (i refused to be a teenage bride- haha). it seems like a lot of time from some view points; for instance, i have now been married for the same amount of time that i spent in high school (and those four years of my life went on FOR-EV-ER). it also seems to have gone by in Star Wars lightspeed; when i look back it's all blurry lines and holding onto my seat for dear life. the one thing, though, about the last four years that i still marvel at (and there is no end in sight, either) is how much i love klayton more all of the time.

when we were young and silly and the king and queen of PDA (i officially apologize to anyone and everyone who had to spend time with us back then), i thought that would be the best time of our lives. then when we were married for a while and together all of the time, but would still stay up until midnight giggling and talking and dreaming, i would think to myself, "okay, this is it. this is perfect." but it keeps getting better. falling in love with klayton always seemed too easy to me. i was always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for the happiness police to come and say, "alright. you've had enough." but klayton is my best friend and an amazing person that i still admire more all of the time. even through the hard stuff, klayton makes it easy to be with him. i am so lucky to have found klayton. he's my best friend and the best husband. he really is everything i always wanted, and all that i never even thought to ask for.

i love you, babe!

here's us on our first date! it was an 80's dance.

i had such a big crush on him. haha.

that summer was so much fun. we got engaged in august, just a few months after we started dating.

here's our cutesy engagement pic.

and one of us dancing at our wedding.

we just get better looking as this goes on!! haha. this was a couple of years ago, when i was preg with av.

the happy fam in france. getting to go around klayton's mission with him was like getting to see a huge piece of what makes him who he is. it was an amazing time.

you say it's your birthday

it's my birthday too, yeah.

i turned twenty-four years old today!!

happy birthday to me.

the french connection pt. 3

the last stop on our tour de france? Vannes (pronounced VAN), on the western coast of France in Britagne (Brittany).

first, a note about some of the best, most generous and fun people i have ever met in my entire life; the Hourdier-Gallien family, Thierry (teery), Sylvie, Elyse, Zoe (zo-a) and Lucie. oh, and Buster the Mexican dog! haha they live in Vannes, which is a few hours away from Paris. On our first day in France, Thierry and his lovely family met us at the airport, gave us a car to use for the duration of our trip (my beloved Twingo), a portable crib, a stroller, a cooler (for milk for avey-rizz), a map, and a baby backpack. i met the Hourdiers when they came to America to visit last summer right after we brought avery home from the hospital, so i already knew that they were great, but... wow. we were so taken care of. they helped set us up in our hotel room and went home to Vannes, where we met them a week later. they took us to some amazing places and even went took us back to Paris at the end of our trip for our return flight. they made our trip flawless and easy. they are wonderful.

our first day in Vannes we went to Auray, on the ocean. Ben Franklin landed there when he went to ask the French for help in the American Revolution. cool, eh? P.S. love this family!!! check them out.

K and A enjoying a stroll.

we went to Carnac, a Stonehenge-esque stone formation that some ancient Celtic dudes made. really interesting and super beautiful. here we are atop a tomb.

downtown vannes has an awesome marche that we hit one freezing afternoon. then we walked around the town to check out the ramparts that still surround this part of town.

ahh, la mer!

bundled av.

we walked all along these rocky shores. so beautiful.

Thierry's baby. Klayton is so jealous.

the city of Guerrand, where they make salt.

halloween!! of course, klayton went as Napoleon...

we brought lots of American goodies to celebrate with, including wax vampire lips!









pumpkin number 2 for klayton and his zombie helpers.

hahahaha. priceless.

okay, it was, like, midnight when this pic was taken... yikes. haha

pumpkin carvin

we made this one a Vaudevillian-puts-damsels-in-distress-on-train-tracks bad guy...

avery slept through Halloween because we celebrated pretty late, so the next morning we showed of her spidery goodness.

how cute is she!?!?!

Lucie, Av and Zoe

this was the last town we hit before heading back to Paris to catch our flight. Mont Saint Michel is an island by night, surrounded by miles of beach sand by day, when the tide is out. the town was built up in circles, with a Cathedral on top.












here's us near the top. what a hike!!

well, that's all from our france trip. thanks for hanging in there. the bottom line is that we had the best time. avery was perfect and it was better than i could have ever imagined. Vive la France!