the baby kicks

On Monday, we had a surprise visitor. Nicole's cousin, Jubal, came into town and stayed with us on his way to audition for an opera. Before picking him up at Union Station, we decided to get dinner in Chinatown! We found a neat little restaurant. The place was really busy and the waitresses were constantly shouting in Chinese. Nicole was delighted by the General Tso's Chicken. She said it was the best she had ever eaten. The restaurant also served fantastic noodles. The best part of the whole experience was that the chinese food didn't make us feel sick afterwards. Clayton was delighted with the atmosphere of hanging ducks in the window and the street view of the chef preparing fresh dumplings. For those who visit DC, the place is a real treat.

The next morning Nicole took Jubal to the opera audition and then off to the airport. On the way they got stuck in DC rush hour traffic. While Jubal was practicing his beautiful audition music with the car window open, another car with loud rap music playing pulled up right next to them. It was quite a contrast. We hope he did well on his auditions and wish him luck.

Later on Tuesday Clayton was feeling sick, so he came home early and Nicole nursed him back to health. He was able to stay at school the whole day on Wednsday, but found that he didn't need to stay late on Thursday and Friday. Nicole was enthralled. She came home from babysitting on Thursday to find that Clayton had made her dinner and brought her sunflowers.

Friday Nicole barely made it to her appointment with the doctor for her glucose testing. The test involves drinking something close to a flat orange soda exactly one hour before drawing blood for the test. The test is for diabetes, which she hopefully doesn't develop as this week's pregnacy craving was for toaster strudels. YUM! Then she rushed back home for another babysitting appointment. Clayton took a final on Friday and did pretty well and then went right back into preparing for the next finals. After Thanksgiving, he will be pretty busy studying for finals.

This week Nicole has started to really feel the baby kicking. So Saturday Clayton spent some time trying to see or feel the kicking for himself. He may need to wait a little longer before he can feel it. On Monday we will find out the gender of the baby (for real this time) and we will keep you all posted Saturday night we went to a couple's house to play a board game. It was called 7 wonders and Nicole liked it because she won. Clayton only likes games when you can cheat. This must be why he likes hockey so much.

Today we went to church and afterwards we got set apart for our callings. Our congratulations to Mike Burrow on shaving his mustache. What has it been? 25-30 years since he has been mustache free?
We are both looking forward to the nice break next week and we are so excited to see Nicole's family for Thanksgiving.

Hope you all have a wonderful week.
Peace and Blessings!

Bengal Spice + Hot Chocolate = The Cutest bunny EVER

This week Nicole's pregnant bump is starting to get more defined. Clayton has decided that in order to keep himself from looking pregnant too, he needs to start working out. Clayton hates exercising for exercising's sake, but he thinks this is a worthy cause. So Monday night for family home evening, Nicole and Clayton did yoga from a DVD that Nicole found. Every night when Clayton gets home, he is doing yoga. So far all of Clayton's back problems have disappeared and he feels much better. We'll see if he continues the routine after Christmas.

Nicole and Clayton await anxiously to know the gender of the baby, but will have to wait until Nov. 21st.  Nicole spent all of Tuesday and Wednesday trying to find the best place to have the ultrasound done that also takes her insurance. We are so excited to visit Nicole's family in Kentucky for Thanksgiving, and thankfully we will find out the gender of the baby the day before we depart to Kentucky.

Thursday Clayton surprised Nicole by coming home early. He has been feeling a bit worn out from writing the same paper for the past six weeks. Writing law papers has proved to be much different from writing like a normal person. Apparently the students are supposed to take everything they have ever learned about writing and throw it out the window. Perhaps this is why lawyers are notorious for being terrible writers. When Clayton is feeling a bit depleted from law school he sometimes looks at this "cutest bunny ever" photo that he found.

Friday Nicole spent some time with her cousin, Catherine, helping her family take family pictures for Christmas. She was reminded of Natalie and how much she loves family photos. Later, Clayton and Nicole went on a last minute date so Clayton could get a brake from writing his paper. We attempted to see a movie but nothing looked very tempting so we went to Noodles and Company where Nicole could eat normal food and Clayton could have something Asian. (Oddly enough it was Nicole's Italian dish that made us both sick.) Then we took a stroll to one of our favorite stores, The World Market. Its kind of like a museum of international artifacts that you can actually touch. Clayton bought a Russian treat to share with Nicole. It was vanilla flavored ground up sesame seed powder that she thought tasted like vanilla flavored baby formula. Apparently the "actual" Russian treat is much better because it is ground up sunflower seeds. Nicole bought some shortbread cookies that she used to love in England. When they returned home Clayton made the most amazing hot chocolate (he uses the bengal herbal tea to season it) and they watched a movie.

Saturday we went to Costco, which for some reason Clayton finds very therapeutic. Perhaps it's all the FREE samples. Then for the rest of the day/evening, Nicole worked on preparing for a talk on tithing and Clayton worked on his paper.

Sunday Nicole gave her talk while Clayton made funny faces at her from the second row. Then immediately after church Clayton's home teaching companion took Clayton off to go home teaching and Nicole gave his wife a ride home. Clayton also had his first meeting with the scout committee shortly after home teaching and then had to turn in his paper, so it was a busy day for him.

Hope you all have a wonderful week.
Love,
the DC Preece's

D.C. Temple

On Halloween, we took cookies to our home/visiting teaching families. Then we came home and made some wassel and started reading Dracula by Bram Stoker. It is a great book. We highly recommend it to anyone looking for a spooky thriller.

Tuesday Nicole and Clayton both had lots of work to do.

On Wednesday, Clayton had a meeting with the JRCLS. The national conference will be in D.C. in 2013 and he will be working on the planning committee.

On Thursday, Clayton came home early and we decided to go for a walk down by the river. The leaves were super beautiful. unfortunately we forgot our camera so not pictures. While we were walking. Clayton spotted a huge bird in one of the trees. We watched it for a while trying to figure out what kind of bird it was. Suddenly the bird flew to a closer branch. It was a huge owl! It sat on the branch staring at us. It was super cool. It had gigantic eyes. We were so disappointed that we did not have our camera.

On Saturday, we went to the temple! The D.C. temple is HUGE! It is also really beautiful. The grounds are neat because it is surrounded by a forest.

After the temple, Nicole was craving Olive Garden. We found one on our GPS, but when we got there it was no longer in business. Nicole was so sad. We decided just to drive home. On our way home we spotted a little Italian restaurant and decided to go there. We walked in and there were only four tables and a bar. The room smelled really smokey. We were about to leave when a guy sitting at one of the tables said, "The restaurant is through those doors. We were really relieved. We sat down and the server was super friendly. The food was delicious. We had this really yummy calamari in a tangy lemon sauce.  They also served yummy bread with an olive oil, basil, garlic and sun-roasted tomato dipping sauce. The sauces on the pasta were really good. The food was also pretty reasonably priced. When the waiter brought us the check, he also brought us some tiramisu, on the house. It was really yummy. We really liked the restaurant and will probably go back... someday.



This week we received a sweet letter from Brianne and Cailie. Thanks for your kind words.

Out of Tune

This week

Here is a picture of us at the corn maze last week.

Clayton spent extra time tying to get caught up from his week off.

Nicole came and visited him and law school on Tuesday. We went to the J. Ruben Clark Society (JRLS) reception.  The JRLS is the Lds law club. It was fun to be there with other students and see all the little kids running around. The event was fun. We got to talk with some of Clayton's fellow classmates. We learned that one of the served in the same mission, at the same time, as Joseph (Nicole's cousin) and they knew each other. They sang together at different functions during their missions. The menu was interesting; there was a taco bar, there was also mac and cheese and chicken fingers for the kids, apple juice and a big tub of ice cream.

On Wednesday, Nicole came up to the law school again to go with Clayton to the Art Law Society panel. Nicole got to hear about law and the arts. It helped her to realize just how awesome it is not to be a lawyer and to be the one making the art. After the event was over we walked to china town. After surveying the fabulous culinary offerings we opted to go to Fudruckers.  We also saw a really cool water fountain at the International Monetary Fund building. We also saw a segway gang. Apparently there are night tours of the city on segways.  We were afraid we had come across a vile group of segway mercenaries, whose evil deeds are the white collar equivalent to the hell's angels.

We rode the metro home. We were feeling kinda gross because the metro car we were on was a bit... sticky. This reminded Clayton of something he saw a few days ago while riding the metro. There was a family with three or four kids riding to the zoo. The kids were super excited and were going crazy while their parents tried to keep them under control. The dad was trying to get two of the boys to sit down in the seat. When he turned around, his younger son was licking the window of the metro. The father was incapacitated with disgust. He just stood there, his jaw dropped and he let out a slight whimper. At this point the mother also noticed the boy licking the window.  She was quicker to act than her stupefied husband. She made a mad grab at the boy, pinned him to the seat and began a germaphobic lecture in an attempt to scare the child straight. The dad just stood there.

On Thursday Nicole received a call from her Mom about her Grandfather Fred. At the doctor's office, they found a growth in his lungs. On Monday he will receive further scans and decide the best course of action. He is in our thoughts and in our prayers.

On Friday, Nicole's friend, Hilary, who has a two year old little boy, invited her to go to the ward trunk or treat. Her husband is a lawyer and was out of town. As Clayton was still studying, Nicole too was widowed for the night by her law career husband. So they went together. It was fun to see all the little kids running around with candy-crazed eyes, finding ways to run the trunk circuit multiple times without getting caught. One of the trunks was decorated as a Wonka-vision nerds packet that transformed the giant candy bar into a smaller size. The couple was dressed as Willy Wonka and an umpa lumpa. In another display, a single lady in the ward dressed up as the queen of hearts and set a "throne" up in the back of her truck.  She made everyone bow to her before she would give them candy. Hilary's son was dressed as the cutest little robot. He had a duck tape covered box with dryer exhaust vents for the arms and legs. The original design had the child wearing a sweatshirt underneath, but it was much colder than expected, so when he put on his winter coat he couldn't really move his arms, let alone bow to a "queen of hearts," so he skipped that one.

Saturday we were assigned to help clean the church, but Clayton threw his back out and wasn't felling up to going, so we skipped it. It was probably a good call because Clayton stayed lying on his back for the rest of the day, icing it. It feels a little better, but these things take time to fully heal. Hopefully, we'll be able to help clean next time. Nicole's piano tuning kit came on Saturday and she was a bit apprehensive to start right away. We did find an electric tuner online to assist, but our computer isn't really portable so we moved the piano to the computer. Now it sits in the middle of our living room and will be there until she decides to finish tuning it. We'll see. Tuning a piano is much more tricky than it looks. Saturday was also the day we found out that Clayton got a speeding ticket. He got caught on camera when he was helping to transport the new piano. The bill was sent to his parent's address in Utah. It wasn't a huge fine, but it was a super bummer because it was Clayton's first speeding ticket.

Today was stake conference and we enjoyed the talks, though parking was a bit crazy. Nicole was worried about Clayton's back having to sit for two hours, but he did OK. After the meeing, Clayton received a calling. He will be on the troupe committee and is excited to be working with the scouts again.

We hope all is well with you, peace and blessings!