Holiday Week Update

Well, I haven’t posted much in the past couple of weeks, so I thought I’d let everyone know what we’re up to.

• Christmas was wonderful. Mom came up and spent the weekend with us. We hope that she didn’t get too sick from hanging out with us and our colds.
• James and Anna were excited about the visit from Santa Claus. When I walked down the hall to their room at 7:00 AM, Anna burst out and told me that she’d been waiting for “a really long time” for me to go get them. We tried to eat a little breakfast before we started opening presents, but that just didn’t work.
• It’s a nice, slow week at work. It’s nice to not have a lot of pressure this week.
• Julie is speaking in Church on Sunday. If you’ll be in the area, sacrament meeting is at 9:00, give or take. Her subject is “charity.” I’m looking forward to it.
• The Clarks are officially not going anywhere this weekend. Julie’s speaking assignment, and the Young Women’s New Year’s Eve party have pretty much shut that down for us.

Hope that satisfies your information craving! Later.

Chunky Vegetable Lasagna

Here’s a Clark family favorite. It takes some time to prepare, so we don’t get to make it very often, but we do like it.

Chunky Vegetable Lasagna

• 12 uncooked lasagna noodles
• 3 cups broccoli flowerets
• 3 large carrots, coarsely shredded (2 cups)
• 1 can (14 1/2 ounces) diced tomatoes, drained
• 1 medium red bell pepper, cut into thin strips
• 1 medium green bell pepper, cut into thin strips
• 3/4 cup pesto sauce
• 1/4 teaspoon salt
• 1 container (15 ounces) ricotta cheese
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
• 1/4 cup chopped fresh parsley
• 1 large egg
• 1 clove garlic, finely chopped
• 3 tablespoons all-purpose flour
• 2 cups milk
• 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (8 ounces)

1. Cook and drain noodles as directed on package.
2. Mix broccoli, carrots, tomatoes, bell peppers, pesto and and salt.
3. Mix ricotta cheese, Parmesan cheese, parsely and egg.
4. Melt margarine in 2-quart saucepan over medium heat. Cook garlic in margarine about 2 minutes, stirring frequently until garlic is tender. Stir in flour. Cook over medium heat, stirring constantly, until mixture is smooth and bubbly; remove from heat. Stir in milk. Heat to boiling, stirring constantly. Boil and stir 1 minute.
5. Heat oven to 350°.
6. Place 3 noodles in ungreased rectangular pan, 13 × 9 × 2 inches. Spread half of the cheese mixture over the noodles. Top with 3 noodles; spread with half of the vegetable mixture. Sprinkle with 1 cup of the mozzarella cheese. Top with 3 noodles; spread with remaining cheese mixture. Top with 3 noodles; spread with remaining vegetable mixture. Pour sauce evenly over the top. Sprinkle with remaining 1 cup mozzarella cheese.
7. Bake uncovered 35 to 40 minutes or until hot in center. Let stand 10 minutes before cutting.

School Programs

We shot this video last night at Anna's preschool program.

Here's a photo from James's school program. Our seats weren't nearly as good because the entire town showed up for the elementary school program.

Drum roll, please...

This is the official unveiling of ClarksInWyoming 2.0, codename: “Wrigley.” Version 1.0 (codename: “Chocolate”) was a lot of fun to build and to see, but now that we’re into winter, it doesn’t make sense to keep all those fall colors up.

Things to note:

• The comments function. I kind of like it, but I’d like to know what you think.
• Internet Explorer bugs. I’ve done what I can to work around them, but if you are using IE, and something doesn’t look right, then let me know. I’ll do what I can to fix it. I still highly recommend Firefox, though.
• Comments and videos. For some reason and on some videos, the comment appears behind the video. Why does this happen? I don’t know. I’m still looking into it.
• Updated: I figured out why the videos and comments were doing what they did. Technically, its complicated. To fix it, fairly simple.

I appreciate thoughts and comments on improvements we can make.

Belated Birthday for Grampy

We sent this to Grampy in the email, but he wasn’t able to download it, so we’re uploading it here. Happy Birthday Grampy!

Starring Anna and James!

I just made a video starring Anna and James, I hope you like it! My cousin and aunt introduced us to this site, it is so much fun! Animoto.com

Virtual Caroling

In accordance with wish number 1 on Drew’s list, here is the (now) World Famous Clarks in Wyoming Children’s Choir with two rousing renditions of some Christmas favorites. Enjoy!

Updates for this week

• We went to Grandma Swensen’s funeral
• James and I came home from SLC and left Julie and Anna with the Harlines
• It snowed here in Big Piney.
• We’re going to attempt a reconnaisance mission tonight to find the girls. Wish us luck.