why yes, i AM celebrating my 26th by going dancing on a Wednesday night

cake

I want this amazing cake for my birthday.

And everyday of the week.

product

now THIS might exceed the weight limit in my suitcase(s) but I don't even care!

yes, there are SIX sea salt sprays!!!

now i won't have to worry about finding hair product in Madrid. :)

courtesy of BHC

look who got her polariod camera!!!!!!!

well *technically* its a Fujifilm Instax... :)

christmas dinner

jolly good--because it's still funny

Merry Christmas: Love, the Clamms

Then {in 2008}

and Now {2010}

this is my friend Lindsey

for Jill

“A well-spent day brings happy sleep.”

-Leonardo da Vinci

books

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.
Instructions: Bold those books you've read in their entirety Italicize the ones you started but didn't finish or read an excerpt.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34 Emma – Jane Austen
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

"Never worry about the size of your Christmas tree.

In the eyes of children, they are all thirty feet tall."

-Larry Wilde

Enjoy these days of frost and snow,

It won’t be very long, you know,

The days fly past, and they don’t last,

Embrace this pretty winter song.

“Surely everyone is aware of the divine pleasures which attend a wintry fireside: candles at four o’clock, warm hearth rugs, tea, a fair tea-maker, shutters closed, curtains flowing in ample draperies to the floor, whilst the wind and rain are raging audibly without.”

-Thomas De Quincey

"What I expect from my male friends is that they are polite and clean. What I expect from my female friends is unconditional love, the ability to finish my sentences for me when i am sobbing, a complete and total willingness to pour their hearts out to me, and the ability to tell me why the meat thermometer isn't supposed to touch the bone."

-Anna Quindlen, Living Out Loud

My Top Facebook Status Words of 2010

1: Love
2: Clark
3: Know
4: Don't
5: Jill
6: Tonight
7: Really
8: Hamm
9: Wieskamp
10: Thats

{i must have tagged Jill in a LOT of posts...}

winter song, for you.

This is my winter song to you.

The storm is coming soon,

it rolls in from the sea

My voice; a beacon in the night.

My words will be your light,

to carry you to me.

Is love alive?

They say that things just cannot grow

beneath the winter snow,

or so I have been told.

They say were buried far,

just like a distant star

I simply cannot hold.

Is love alive?

I still believe in summer days.

The seasons always change

and life will find a way.

I'll be your harvester of light

and send it out tonight

so we can start again.

Is love alive?

This is my winter song.

December never felt so wrong,

cause you're not where you belong;

inside my arms.

Obsolete English Words...

...that should make a comeback.

Freck
Verb intr. – “To move swiftly or nimbly” – I can think of a lot of ways to use this one, like “I hate it when I’m frecking through the airport and other people are going so slow.”

Hoddypeak
Noun – “A fool, simpleton, noodle, blockhead” – This one doesn’t need any explanation as to how you could use it; you may already have someone in mind who fits the description.

Illecebrous
Adj. – “Alluring, enticing, attractive” – Alright, so at first this word kind of sounds a way to describe something diseased, but if you put the stress on the second syllable for emphasis, it does sound like a compliment: “That girl was so illecebrous; I’ve got to figure out how to see her again.”

{read more here}

***************

want

i {heart} coldplay so much!

twenty-five

"There is a season for wildness and a season for settledness, and this is neither. This season is about becoming... Stop every once in a while and...ask yourself some good questions like, Am I proud of the life I’m living? What have I tried this month? What have I learned about God this year? Do the people I’m spending time with give me life, or make me feel small? Is there any brokenness in my life that’s keeping me from moving forward?

Now is your time. Become, believe, try. Walk closely with people you love, and with other people who believe that God is very good and life is a grand adventure. Don’t spend time with people who make you feel like less than you are. Don’t get stuck in the past, and don’t try to fast-forward yourself into a future you haven’t yet earned. Give today all the love and intensity and courage you can, and keep traveling honestly along life’s path."

-Shauna Niequist

Jill {via Katie via Melissa} sent me this article called "Twenty-Five" click on the link to read more. It's really good.

{oscar wilde}

winter

"Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: it is the time for home."

- Edith Sitwell

magical

because

"There I met a young, fair, blue-eyed girl whose bearing was so free and natural, and whose expression was so open and confident, that as soon as she entered the room she took me captive. The moment when I first laid eyes upon my future wife remains in my memory with an almost mystical force."

-Karl Bonhoeffer's {Dietrich Bonhoeffer's father}

because love can turn even a practical, pragmatic, psychiatrist/neurologist into a poet.

cozy

i would like to be sitting here right now.

love.

{Sweden.}

fitted sheets

there are few things in life as annoying as folding a fitted sheet.

But thanks to Jill Cooper {and the daily what} it's easy!

just because

Ecuador...waiting for the bus

Madrid...not waiting for a bus

Gdansk...waiting for a bus

London...waiting for that stupid public transportation!!

I'm quite fond of these two gingers. :)

microwaves

every night when i warm up my "warm thing" in the microwave... usually the thought that pops into my head is "i wonder how much microwave radiation is getting into my brain while i stand here waiting for 2 minutes and 30 seconds to go faster..."

and then i wonder how much has already gotten into my brain that makes me think about pointless things like that.

and then i think i would sound like a paranoid hippy-type person if i said those things aloud....

and then i blogged it. go figure. at least my toes are warm.

this is the second random video i've seen with this song today...

This complete non-sense...and i loved it.

cutest

by Amiah

THE BIRDS

I like birds about as much as I like squirrels... (i.e. not at all)

This is my back yard:

there are at least 1.7 million Canada Geese on the pond.

I feel like I'm living in a National Geographic special.

AHHHHHHHH!

{click on the panoramic pictures to see them bigger. the horror!!!}

Thanksgiving

As my dad says, right now we're on borrowed time. So Thanksgiving this year was special. My heart was happy to be with my family, grandparents, and the Hamm family. {and yes i did get asked several times "Wait...you're having ham for Thanksgiving and not turkey?" and yes i AM super extra really mad at Bethany for going to "Haiti" instead of being here. I will probably never speak to her again. Probably.}

It may have been the best Thanksgiving I can remember. It was relaxing, we had good food, good families, there was a really good football game on, I read a little Harry Potter, we laughed a lot as always, painted fingernails, snuggled by the fire... it was perfect.

I'm finding its easier to just BE where I'm at right now and in turn really really enjoy where I'm at. I know I'm leaving in about five weeks so that means I slow down and enjoy the moments I have. The take-home lesson here is... continue to live this way when I'm not preparing to move really far away.

Its easy to get busy, for life to be hectic, and that hectic seems normal. FYI, it's not. We start to think--"facebook needs to be checked, this email needs to be read now, this text needs to be replied to, etc." It doesn't. They can wait. Almost nothing is more important than the real live person you're spending time with right now. I think that's something I will always fight for. To be fair, it takes some work...breaking bad habits, disciplining yourself to make new habits {which in the end, include thinking of someone else instead of yourself}. I never regret the times that my phone is away and out of my mind... but I DO regret when I look back and think "why did I feel like I needed to check this-or-that?" I hate wondering if someone has felt de-valued because whatever is on my phone seems more important than they are... probably because I know I feel that way when someone can't have a conversation without responding to every *ding* their phone makes.

"...a doctor named Marcel Tuchman. He was the most compassionate person I have ever met in my life — I mean, full of human kindness. And every time he met somebody, you had the sense that he cared more about them than anything else in the world. So what I learned from him is that when you actually are with somebody, you’ve got to make that person feel like nobody else in the world matters. I think that’s critical. So, for example, I don’t have a mobile phone turned on because I’m talking to you. I don’t want the outside world to impinge on the conversation we’re having... Every moment counts, and that moment is lost if you’re not in that moment 100 percent."

-Tachi Yamada, M.D., president of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Global Health Program.

Somehow my Thanksgiving post turned into a soap box! :) Maybe because I have only 42 more days in Lincoln, NE and each one feels important.

Also. We somehow FORGOT to take pictures!!! So... here's the Clamm Easter picture again... because Thanksgivng looked similar because Beth is not in this picture...except we were at the Clark house... and plus Ray and Wini {and maybe a few embellishments.........}

in case you were wondering...

What's your Patronus?

Your Result: Your Patrnous is a Wolf!

You work best in a close support group and are fiercely loyal to those you love. You are unbeatable in a group and incredibly strong even alone due to your cunning at getting the job done.

But genuine shared laughter is one of the surest ways for human beings to come together and break the stalemates of life. It is essential to genuine community. No wonder, then, that laughter is so good for our health. It is even a symbol of redemption, for there is no greater incongruity in all creation than redemption. When deliverance comes, "we are like those who dream: our mouth filled with laughter, our tongue with shouts of joy" (Psalm 126:1-2)

Abraham fell on the ground laughing when told by God that he, a one-hunded-year-old man, would have a child by nenety-year-old Sarah (Gen. 17:17). Later Sarah herself laughed at the same "joke" (Gen. 18:12-15). God specified to Abraham that the child of promise would be named "Laughter" Isaac means "Laughter". "Your wife shall bear you a son, and you shall call his name Laughter, and I will establish my covenant with him" (Gen. 17:19) Was this a penalty imposed upon them because they laughed? Hardly. Rather, it was a perpetual reminder that God breaks through.

-Dallas Willard, The Divine Conspiracy

food

The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.

-Erma Bombeck

tonight.

fireplace

The Divine Conspiracy

Harry Potter mug

Happy Christmas Tree Day

Its beginning to look a lot like Christmas here at the Clark's...

a Monday

While my mom was shooting her deer (technically a few days before), I had the kids for the day. It was lovely. A day filled with laundry, Toy Story, playing outside, coffee, walks, and a visit from a friend.

"Aah, watch. Help me fix my bike."

Never mind the fact that he refuses to actually get ON his bike.

And yet he somehow managed to fall off it...