Tribute to the Truck

This was a sad week for us. On Monday we sold our truck. We have a lot of fun memories in with that truck. The pictures above are of a trip we took to Death Valley right after we got married.

This has been a really warm week out here. We have enjoyed going on walks and looking at all the blossoms.

We also planted a small garden. We are trying to grow strawberries, an assortment of hot peppers and herbs. Clayton wants to make hot sauce and pickle them in the fall.

Nicole's cousin Julia stayed the night. Nicole enjoyed catching up with her.

The Babymoon

Clayton had the whole week off for spring break. So we finally had the chance to:

1. Get the baby's "room" ready. We went to Ikea and got some organizers to put the baby's clothes in. We couldn't resist buying some adorable puppets. We can hardly wait to hold and play with the baby. We also washed and folded the baby's clothes. Thanks to Nicole's cousin we are all decked out with boys clothes, it was really nice of her to give us all her old baby clothes. We also went to a cute baby boutique and got some more stuff for the baby.
2. repair our truck. We had the windshield and muffler replaced. The truck is running like a charm. On a very sad note we are preparing to part with our beloved truck. The truck is just not safe for the baby to ride in so we are selling it. We showed it to a nice guy and we will probably sell it tomorrow. We are both sad because she has been such a great truck.
3. go on a babymoon. We went to a B&B in Onancock, VA. We had a lot of fun. The B&B is in a quaint town on the Chesapeake bay. We had dinner at a fun restaurant on the wharf. The B&B was built in 1897. On our way home we drove through Virginia Beach. We stopped at the beach but it was super cold and windy. Nicole took pictures of the waves for a sculpture she is working on.
4. go to dinner with Clayton's friends, Michael and Stacy, and Lance and his girlfriend Megan. We went to a neat Korean restaurant called "Honey Pig". It was a really fun experience and we can't wait to go there with anyone who comes out to visit us.
5. fix another car. The van unexpectedly began spewing power steering fluid. Clayton was able to find the problem and replace a cracked hose. The van is running fine now and we hope the fix will hold.
6. watch "Breaking Dawn." Nicole enjoyed it. Clayton... well.... is still alive. Although he did have the urge to start blowing things up for several hours after the movie.

We are down to just a few more weeks till the baby. We will let you know of any developments.
Shout out to Amanda, congratulations on winning 2nd place and people's choice at the Dallas opera competition!
Shout out to Regan, break a leg this weekend at the high school musical. Remember practice safe kissing. (you never know where those lips have been!)

The Competitions Continue

This past week we baby sat Nicole's Cousin's kids while they went on a cruise. It was a lot of fun and a learning experience for both of us. Nicole took them to the park almost everyday and watched a lot of Barbie ® movies. Most of them were requested by the two year old boy. Clayton felt his pain because the poor boy is out numbered by girls. His favorite bedtime books were Purplious and Fancy Nancy. Clayton tried to help him out by playing ball and wrestling; the little boy is surprisingly coordinated and extremely vicious. Her cousins also gave us a bunch of cute baby clothes and toys from their last baby. We are so grateful for all the stuff people have gotten us for the baby.

(From last week)
Clayton's mock trial competition was a lot of work. He was lucky to have a great partner and they both argued really well. There were 120 students competing for about 30 spots. Clayton was excited to be selected for the board. Next year he will have to coach teams for the mock trial competitions held at GW. Nicole got to be involved as well. Nicole demands that we include part of the feed back from the judges; they said that Clayton's closing argument was "excellent" and he even convinced the other team that they were wrong. In all fairness Clayton did get some excellent advice from his mock trial coaches. She played the part of an expert witness on journalistic ethics. She did great, in part because she taught a class on it in relief society... Just kidding, she minored in communications and had taken some journalism classes. She did get really snippy with the opposing team because she thought they were mean. After it was over, we went to our favorite Chinese Restaurant, Chinatown Express.


Clayton is busy applying for internships. This weekend he also had the Journal Competition. For those of you wondering the journal competition is essentially taking a 75 page Supreme Court opinion and condensing into three pages of 12 point Courier New font. It was really challenging. We are looking forward to the rest of this week Clayton has spring break and we are taking a short trip to the East Virginia Coast. We are going to spend the rest of week getting getting ready for the baby. We found a great video that Clayton should have seen earlier it is advice from law students to their sixteen-year-old selves.


Some of the ladies in our ward are throwing a baby shower for Nicole on March 20th about 2 weeks to baby time. We are grateful such a great ward.

Baby now packs quite a punch and really enjoys kicking, especially when Nicole is trying to sleep.

Shout out to CalDon's cross-country team for being featured in a web advertisment you can check the video out here. Its pretty cool it a 5k festival of colors, with crazy people that run even though they are not running from a T-Rex.

Shout to Amanda and Barret who are moving to LA. Amanda got hired to sing for the LA opera. Now we can have an East side, West side feud.

We are also keeping Nicole's Grandpa in our prayers. He fell last week and is in the hospital.