2013-A year in review

WOW! I fell off the face of the blog world this year. I apologize and I will probably regret not documenting much of this year! I also kept a small jar of special things and wrote notes about fun events that happened. 

A lot of things happened this year so without further adieu,  2013-Life with the Clarks!

January-
Derek and I went on a date night. 

My girls Bible Study started back up. We did the study "Breaking Free" by Beth Moore. It was amazing! 

Heather, Emily and I went shopping at Green Hills, went to the vera bradley store and ate at PEI WEI.

February-
I went to my first Predators Hockey game with Derek, TJ and Heather!

We had a snow day!

Went to Pampered Chef "Feast" spring product launch in Lexington, KY

My brother Jacob came for a visit and helped me put some organization shelves in my pantry and laundry room!

March-
I got a hair cut!

College friend, Troy and his wife, Nicole, and little boy, Jax, moved to Spring Hill, TN into the apartment complex right across the street from our townhouse complex. Little did we know that Nicole and I are like two peas in a pod! Feels like we had known each other forever! The start of a lifelong friendship began! Now I'm "aunt" tiffy to sweet Jax.

Spring Break 2013 family trip out to Arizona. 

April-
*Our friends Nathan and Whitney tied the knot!

*My SIL and MIL continued to post on our other blog We bought a tick farm. I need to post on there as well but I just haven't yet!

*Heather, Emily and I did the Color Run 5k. It was a total blast!

*My baby brother got engaged! YAY Adam and Ashley!

May-
*I got to spend Mother's day with my momma! Friend Heather came home with me and we went to the Mother/Daughter/Friend tea at my home church!

*Heather, Emily, Nicole and I did the 5k Foam Fest. It would've been better if the weather would've cooperated, but it didn't and it was miserable. At least it was free!

*We went on a family/friends vacation! A cruise to the Western Caribbean (Haiti, Jamaica, and Cozumel) with my inlaws, SIL and BIL, and our friends TJ and Heather. We sailed on Royal Caribbean's Oasis of the Seas, the 2nd largest cruise ship equipped with an aqua theater, ice skating rink, zip line, etc. It was amazing!

June-
*Sisteren (Ashley, my brother Adam's Fiance) moved in with us for the summer as she interned at Thomas Nelson Publishing House for my SIL, Kenzi.

*Derek and I went on a date to Arrington Vineyards for an afternoon picnic!

*Finished Karen Kingsbury's book "Coming Home." It was SO good!

*Pool time, Lebanon Outlets, Opry Mills mall and lots of adventures this summer with Nicole and Jax!

*Went home to WV for a week at the end of June, did a Pampered Chef party for my mom, got to spend time with two of my best friends, Brittany and Kelly, and got to see my sweet babysitting girl, Aleyna and her sweet momma Ulya and dad Jeff before they made their big move to Cali!

My brother, Adam came home with us to TN for the month of July. He did odds and ends and helped Derek at the farm. He did get to shadow a PA for a few days as well.

July-
*Went wedding dress shopping for my future sis in law's wedding dress! Her fam came down for 4th of July and it was so fun to go with her and her momma!

*Celebrated my 26th birthday (Several times hehe) one at the Cheesecake Factory with hubs, Adam, Ashley and her family over the 4th of July weekend, had chipotle on my actual birthday after church and also had friends over to our farm for a cookout on my actual birthday, and finally ate at Chuy's and went to see The Heat with Heather, Emily, Nicole and Kenzi for a girls night for my birthday. Hubs bought me and Ipad for my brithday! It has been a neat tool for my classroom and just everyday browsing.

* Celebrated 4 years of marriage to my wonderful husband. We went to lunch at Puckett's :) My favorite! Then we went to some home showrooms and kitchen and bath places to look for some house ideas! We finished the day with a picnic pizza at our land, dreaming about our future out here!

*Finally posted my professional wedding pictures that we have the rights/discs of on Facebook.

*Derek and I planted a garden of pumpkins and watermelons on our farm.

*Went to Swanky Plank Vintage Marketplace with Ashley and Nicole.

*Celebrated Jax's 1st Birthday with Nicole at Amigos Mexican restaurant for lunch!

*Adam, my brother, and I went to the Nashville Zoo on his last day in Nashville! We had fun looking through my super zoom lens on my fancy camera and taking lots of fun pictures of animals.

*Finished my first big scrapbook! With the help of my mom's cricut and Nicole, I completed our honeymoon scrapbook! I'm very excited about how it turned out!

August
*Started my 5th year of teaching, 2nd year in Kindergarten.

*Celebrated with Katie and Johnny at their Mexican Fiesta wedding shower. I got to see her twin, Kelly, and her family at the shower. I received some awesome news from Kelly and Chris at the shower.

*My mom and brother, Jacob came down to Nashville for a wedding (Jacob's girlfriend's sister) and it happened to be Mom's birthday weekend as well. We had a blast and went to the pancake pantry.

September
*Had a fun night on the town for Katie's Bachelorette party!

*Went up to WV for my Dad's 50th birthday. We surprised him with the corn hole yard game we had made. We painted it in WVU colors and symbol for him.

What we made for Daddy for his 50th birthday!

*Used my sewing machine and a few tutorials and created a stuffed felt campfire for my camping themed classroom.

*We decided to put our townhouse on the market! Kenzi and Josh put their house on the market.

*We met with a builder who we are pretty sure we are going with. He will be doing our house as well as Kenzi and Josh's house.

October
*Katie and Johnny's Nashville wedding. I'm so blessed to have another childhood friend who lives in the Nashville area! So glad Mom could come down to celebrate with them as well.

*I got a hair cut!

*Sewed a camera strap for my canon camera. Pinterest inspired!

*We harvested our pumpkins and watermelons. It was a sad crop but we will make it successful once we live out on the land!

*The 2nd Annual Clark/Howard family fall fest. Daddy came down for it and made Tennessee Jambalaya in his cast iron dutch oven and apple dumplings in the other dutch oven. We had a blast with all our friends and family members who were there! We love hosting parties at the farm and can't wait until we have a house out there!

*I made my first dress! Pinterest inspired!

November

*Participated in holiday bazaar booth with my Pampered Chef Business. It was a great experience and fun meeting new people!

*Our friends, Chris and Mary became parents to the beautiful Addison Marie! She is a doll baby!

*Heather, Emily, Nicole and I started a monthly girls night get together. We kicked it off with dinner at Chuy's! Our favorite place!

* I made it to $15,000 in Pampered Chef Career Sales!!!

*My mother in law had major sinus surgery here in Nashville. She has recovered beautifully and we pray that her health only continues to improve!

*Derek killed his first deer and on the same day, both of my brothers killed deer!

*My Kindergarten team of teachers decided to do something a little different to celebrate Christmas together. We went to a place called painting with a twist. It was a blast!

*It was our year for the Nashville Thanksgiving with the Clarks/Howards/Hills. Mom, Dad and Adam came down this year. Jacob couldn't make it this year and we missed him lots. Derek's parents, Tom and Sandy were down as well. We had our Thanksgiving feast at Kenzi and Josh's house. It was amazing as always and ended and a fun tradition of trivial pursuit game girls against boys where the girls made a huge come back to win the game!

December

*Longview Staff Christmas party

*Fun times in my classroom with my kiddos

*Lots of Christmas shopping

*Girls night with Heather, Emily, and Nicole for our monthly girls night. We went to Carrabbas and did a little gift exchange.

*Had an unfortunate sinus infection but luckily went to the doc at my parents house in time to feel better before Christmas.

*Christmas in WV, traveled to Ohio after Christmas to visit with Derek's family.

Christmas at my momma and daddy's house!

*Home to celebrate New Years Eve with friends in Nashville.

My Daily Mile year end review wasn't as good as I'd hope it would be. I also did not train for any big races last year. I only did a few 5Ks. I also know that I didn't log all of my miles in daily mile or didn't keep track of milage on some walks/runs. My total was 72 miles in 2013 with March being the highest month of 25 miles and in second place was August with 16. 

Here's to making 2014 a better blogging year! Lots of life changes will be happening to the Clark's in 2014 so stay tuned!

5K Foam Fest-Nashville Race Recap

*DISCLAIMER* The majority of my opinion of the event in general had to do with the weather. I know that we can't control the weather but you can control some things.

5K Foam Fest-Nashville

This took place right outside of Nashville on a Cowboy ranch/farm event location. I did the race with 3 of my friends. One of my friends husband came and took pictures of us. Bless Steve's heart because it was miserable!

Pros:
-Glad we had an earlier start time (8:40)
-Glad my SUV had 4 wheel drive
-Glad I have great friends that stick together
-The first couple bouncy/foam obstacles were so fun!
-The lodge that had the fireplace burning
-We got medals for this race and a cool shirt.

Cons:
-It was 44 degrees and raining. After the race, my hands were so cold, I couldn't move my fingers to open my granola bar. :(
-The trails we had to "run" on were impossible to run. Way too muddy. Way too steep in some areas, thought we were going to wipe out and hurt ourselves.
-Lack of race personale/medics on the course. Saw several people, including my friend, who had to stop and we didn't want to leave her incase she needed someone.
-Long lines for some of the obstacles in the middle of the race.
-The water obstacle lines (inner tubes specifically) were crowded and people wouldn't keep moving.
-We skipped some of the obstacles because we were freezing and exhausted. We wanted to save our energy to climb the big death drop slide at the end of the race. (Skipped the double 8 foot wall climb, the cargo net, the electrical belly craw, the second inflatable slip n slide, and unfortunately the death drop slide)
-When we finally got to the death drop slide, a race attendant was waiting telling everyone that the first slide was closed due to 3 people breaking their ankles and the second slide was a "go at your own risk" because they didn't have enough water to make the slide slippery enough. We opted out because we didn't want to risk.
-We had to park across the street in a huge field. Luckily, I had 4 wheel drive but LOTS of people were getting stuck in the mud and they only had 1 tractor to pull people out.
-We didn't have any way to rinse off any mud and then because we parked so far from the actual race and had to walk back to our cars, we had to hold towels up for each other to change in the cold out of our cold, wet clothes.
-Not many photographers on the course and not many places where our friend could get to, to take pictures of us on all the obstacles.


It seemed like the Foam Fest race company didn't consider the amount of rain and cooler weather Nashville was predicting for Saturday. I know they said it was a rain or shine event but I feel like more people would've enjoyed it if they would've post poned it. Next time it would be better to plan for it in June, July or August.

Honestly though, I'm not quite sure I'm a mud runner. I enjoyed the foam bouncy houses but all the mud and water/mud pits, not a huge fan. Regardless of the weather and such, I did complete the 5K Foam Fest and can mark it off my list!

I'll leave you with some pictures!

Heather, Me, Nicole, and Emily (Freezing but not realizing what we got ourselves into)

Walking the plank over to the starting line. I'm pretty sure that we had more flooding during this race than they anticipated.)

Fun FOAM!

Let the race begin. 

First obstacle: don't let the balls hit you in the face.

This was one of my favorites!

Slip n slide that wasn't as wet as it needed to be.

A picture of the slides in the distance that we didn't get to go down :( 

One of the many GIANT, muddy hills we had to climb. 

Em went first! 

Then Nicole and then me!

Completely wet and frozen. 

Not amused. 

Is this over yet? 

Poor friend Heather wasn't feeling well and she still managed to finish in this miserable weather.

Eh, we did one slip n slide, we don't need to get even more wet and do another. 

Coming upon the slide where we opted out and walked around it to the finish. 

In line for the snacks, shirts, and medals. 

Warming up by the fire after the race. 

Happy Tuesday!

New Blog Series-What's in my kitchen?

I realized how much I've missed blogging. Sometimes you just have to prioritize your life and blogging took a back seat for awhile. I really want to try to do better and post more for me. I love looking back on past posts and it's kind of like an online scrapbook!

Anyways, on to the point of this post. It's hard to believe that I've been a Pampered Chef Consultant for  a year now. April 30th to be exact! I have sold (so far) $11,827.07 in my career. I have recruited 1 consultant under me and she is going to be awesome at this! I am ready to kick it up a notch and really build my business.

For fun, I am going to start a new blog series called "What's in my kitchen?"
After a few weeks of getting it up and running, I am hoping to make it a link up so all of my wonderful followers and join in and post about their favorite things in their kitchen/share recipes/etc.

So without further adieu: One of my FAVORITE pieces in my kitchen, The Deep Covered Baker (From Pampered Chef)

This is picture from the pampered chef website and I'm going to add some of my own pictures, too!

This is one of mine and Derek's favorite recipes: Chicken Parmesan Soup. Made in the MICROWAVE in 12 MINUTES!

I also love making a pork tenderloin in the microwave in the DCB, family fast fajitas in the microwave in the DCB and cakes...in the MICROWAVE in the DCB!

I love it because it is fast and delicious! You can also use it in the oven and I've done that once, I believe. I use this at least once a week in my kitchen!

Stay tuned next time for another one of my favorites in my kitchen!