Jason and I did a triathlon

Jason did his 8th triathlon.  I did my 2nd.  I posted about my experience on the running blog HERE for my story or HERE for Jason's story. if you want to read about it.

Parenting is just so much fun

I thought I would post something that isn't missionary related - although that would be preferable, I believe.  It has been a quiet summer thus far.  Really, only Scott and Alyssa are home.  I usually leave for work before Dan gets up and he is usually at work when I get home.  I might see him for a few minutes when he gets off work but he is usually anxious to shower and leave again.  Friends hold a powerful place in the life of a teenager, much more so than a parent does - at least on the surface.  Here's hoping that some of that early parenting sticks. 

Dan is itching to move out but is insisting on renting a house with a couple of friends.  The only problem is that he needs a co-signer and this mean dad is not willing to endorse such a foolish plan.  Although Dan is largely a pretty responsible young man, I don't know his friends and I have a bad feeling that I would get stuck with the lease when the boys realized that they couldn't make the $1000+ payment every month.  I informed him this morning that he needs to find somewhere cheaper to live.  He is furious with me.  Some day I hope he realizes that I am trying to help him avoid making silly mistakes rather than trying to control his life.  Maybe he will realize that my life is busy enough without having to worry about his.  I hope all my children come to learn that the life lessons we are trying to teach them are meant to help them be self-sufficient.

There is a certain amount of melancoly that comes with being the parent of teens.  Not every decision they make is a smart one and some of them will have painful consequences.  It is not enjoyable watching the process but the process is necessary for them none the less.  I try to emphasize that "learning wisdom while in their youth"  is not about getting smarter.  Rather, it is about learning to listen to and internalize the life lessons of others so that you don't repeat the same mistakes.  Another lesson I want my children to learn is to look at every decision from a distance.  That means leaning to live life without regrets.  30 years from now, my teenagers will look back on the the desires and decisions of their teen years and either wonder what they were thinking or be happy with the choices they made.  It is invaluable to be able to make decisions in the here and now with the ability to see their consequences from that viewpoint.  There isn't much worse than looking back and feeling that you could have done better if only you were willing to put the effort in or if you had only had the guts to fail.  Failure is okay.  Not pushing yourself and testing your limits is not okay.  How can we possibly learn to live like our Father in Heaven if we allow the petty challenges of life to limit us?  I have failed at a lot of things in my life but I have also succeeded in areas that I believed would be impossible.  As I have aged, my desires and priorities have matured and the things I wanted in my 20's and 30's have become somewhat irrelevant and trivial in many instances.  I have also learned to become much less judgemental - that happens when things don't always turn out the way you planned.

Life can be quite painful at times but we exist to be happy.  Wallowing in our trials and pain is not what the Lord intended we should do.  If that is true, then how can we be joyful in the face of so much pain?  Joyfullness does not prevent or prohibit feelings of sadness or pain but it does provide us a background of faith and surety that He is in charge and "on our side".  That brings comfort and peace to my life.  I know the things I worry about (both the trivial and the very real and serious) are also on His mind.  I am grateful for a loving Heavenly Father who knows me.  He lives.

extra letter from Caleb--Friday, June 14th, 2013

I got permission to write you to tell you that on Tuesday morning, someone broke into the Yorba Linda 3 East car (which is the one that ferries us around) and stole my scriptures. There was a camera in there, a gps and many other things, but the only thing that was stolen was my scriptures. 

I literally just received a phone call from someone in the ward saying that a woman wants to talk to me. 

Ok, now I just called her, her name is Nicky. I guess she was walking a few days ago and found my scriptures! They were on the ground behind a few cars, about 2 miles from where we live. I am going by at 5 today to pick them up. She only got in contact with me because there was a printed referral email in my scripture tote from one of the members who used to be in the stake presidency. it happened to have a phone number, so she called it and figured out how to find me. Well, turns out I don't need to email you about my scriptures after all!

Love you Mom, hope you're doing all right! The Sister in that picture was Sister Parkinson.

Elder Clark

Letter from Caleb--June 10, 2013

Dear Mom,

I have not gotten a bike book yet. I am excited to get one from you though!

You? Bike?!! No. Lies. If it makes you feel better, I bike an average of 20-30 miles a day, and I also work out on bike about 15 miles on hills every other day. My companion is great! He is kinda... well, haha who knows. He thinks he is right all the time but rarely is (or wait, maybe that was me) and has been out 17 months and been a junior companion his entire mission. Honestly, he could do leadership, and I know he wants it really bad.

It is just interesting with him. I need to give it a lot more time to see how I actually feel.

How was our week, and did we teach a lot? Well, Our week was good. A lot of time has been devoted to fixing Turners frankenbike because it is awful and frightening and he was going down a hill in front of me and I watched it buck him off like a bronco. Like the whole bike just "bucked" and away he went. Somehow, by the grace of God, he landed in green grass and managed to not even stain his shirt. I don't get it, because he was going fast. (Hes a big kid, not muscular. 9.8m/s/s works in his favor). Also, we taught one lesson this week... this area will be more of a struggle for sure. BUT, the lesson we did teach was to a new person that we found, and we taught the first lesson and invited her to be baptized, and she said yes, so that was cool!

I do like our new ward. There is def. more (read: moar) money in this ward than I have ever seen in my life. People have backyards here! Also, one member has an Astin Martin and its awesome. In answer to your question, no, we are not near the beach (July 1 we will have no beach in our mission anymore) but are actually quite north of there. We are living in the city of Placentia, but our area covers Yorba Linda, Placentia, and Anaheim. You can look up the boundaries on LDS.org for the Yorba Linda 3rd ward.

I did get my bike.

My current bed is soooo much better.

YES Mom, of course, great for 4 months.

How can a dog miss me? She doesn't even remember me. Speaking of dogs, I am going to do a surgery on a dog in a few days.

Pictures from Caleb and explanations

Lots of pictures from Caleb. If you want to see any of them bigger, just click on the pictures.

All my stuff packed into the corner minus the bike.

Sid's Baptism

El missioneros that have taught sid. WEll kinda because the blonde sister (Parkinson) was not one of them

Saying goodbye to the Cannons :( Hunter and Davis are missing.

Chris, one of the boys we baptized, holding a lizard

The lizard

Transfer day, seeing people for the last time :(

Elder Tait, my ZL this last Transfer

Saying goodbye to the Acosta Family (and some random girl?)

Sister Hansen, and Sister Bingham. They are both awesome.

"No Elder Clark, you can't leave!"

"Why?!! Why are you leaving?!!" I may be putting words into Sister Hawker's mouth. Also, Missionaries are the best a photo bombing.

Have to always take a good one.

Elder Hansen

Pretty typical Sister Williams picture. Got to throw up the peace signs

And a good one too!

Really expensive Chinese chicken or something? (Chickity China, the Chinese chicken...)

Yeah. This was in our apartment... 

Elder Johnson. My first ZL in the Orange Zone. I miss him, he was a great example and went home last Tuesday.

RWAR I AM TORTOISE 

Sister Parkinson

Elder Walker, my first DL. He is moving down to Irvine

The bike I built with Brother Weber. He bought a beach cruiser for 20 bucks at a garage sale so we tore it apart, had it custom painted white at a Porshe dealership, then bought new parts, and custom built this bike. It has no brand, it is just awesome. It is a sweet ride. Brother Weber was going to get Black wheels next, so there wasn't the silver spokes.

The water res at the Santiago creek near my last area. I just like this picture, because it is different than the rest of California

Saying goodbye to Nico, who we baptized in December

Bristol Building (where transfers and the office are)

Saying goodbye to the Webers in Palmyra :(

Day at Kent Park

Yesterday we went Kent Park to do some swimming in the lake. I didn't swim for very long as I was just exhausted from the bike ride yesterday. After our brief swim we grilled out with Deb and her family that was visiting from New York.  Below are pictures from our fun afternoon.  If you want to see any of the pictures larger, then click on them.

Jason being a grill master.

Deviled eggs!

Fresh banana bread.

This is how the Clarks do veggie trays.

Deb and I.

Scott and two of his friends from the neighborhood.

Scott and his friends being silly making faces.

Deb and her granddaughter.

Jason and I.

Alyssa.

Alyssa, Jason, Scott and Aidan roasting marshmallows.

Alyssa, Me and Scott.

Sleep Study

It wasn't the best night's sleep due to electrical construction in the basement of U of I hospitals and clinics. They were doing electrical work at 11 at night, so I may get to repeat the sleep study. IF I pass the sleep study part, then I'll get to do the 2nd part of the study which will pay up to $500. Here's hoping I pass!

Here I am all hooked up and ready for the sleep study.

Swimming at Kent Park beach

Yesterday I went to Kent park again, this was my third time in one week.  Jason's 2nd time.  It was the very first time for my children to go there.  How we have lived in Iowa 13 years and never knew about this AWESOME swimming area only 15 minutes from our house, I have no idea.  It's clean, there are changing places, bathrooms, it's roped off and it has a CLEAN sand beach.  It's a great swim area and perfect for practicing for our triathlons coming up.

Last week I went there with Deb.  Deb is a great friend I met through my Body Sculpt class.  Ashley is another friend I met in Body Sculpt class.  Both of them are going to do their very first Triathlon this year and I'm so super excited for them that I can hardly sit still.   Below are pictures of my friends and my children.  Somehow Jason didn't get in pictures this time, but I will include one of us from when we went there last Friday night since we still look the same.

The water is still in the 60 degrees temps, so we all have wetsuits to swim with.  My children swam without wet suits and I'm not sure how they did that, but they seemed happy.  Ok, so here are the pictures:

Jason and I taking a picture of ourselves.  About to get in the cold water.

Jason in his wet suit.  He looks like a Super Man
in that suit!

Deb in her Tri Suit.  This is what you wear under the wet suit if
you have one.

Deb in her wet suit.

Ashley in her wet suit.

Ashley and I after swimming.

Alyssa with her two friend Zofia and Zhanna.

Scott in the water!

Alyssa and her friends!