THE Mizzou Room

Here is a little preview of my Mizzou Room. Granted it is in the basement, but I finally have it. Included are two "before" pictures and 3 "after" pictures. The 2 before are actually after a good portion of the work had been completed (rewiring the ceiling lights, priming the upper portion of the wall and ceiling, and spray-painting the main pipe). Unfortunately I did not get any true "before" pics. Ultimately there will be a better TV, a refrigerator, down there with 2/3 of the room will be tiger striped carpet, so more pics will be forthcoming when the work is actually complete.

Chicago

February 2009: Ellen and I took a long weekend trip to Chicago. Stayed in a Downtown hotel with a great view of the Lake to start off what was a great weekend!
Did a walking tour of Downtown Chicago in the cold. Got lots of cool pics. Also, Ellen had her first trip to the Field Museum.
The main reason for the trip was for my grandmother's 90th Birthday!!! Happy Birthday Grandma, and here's to many more!!!
Couldn't go to Chicago without staying with my brother. So here is a good summary of our time at their house... The blur in the above picture is Taylor as she swoops by to turn the roomba back on because someone had the audacity to turn it off!

North Carolina!!!

May 2009:

Our good friend Colen was getting married to her German Air Force man in NC. It also so happened to be our 4th Anniversary so we made a vacation out of it.

Had to crop this picture down for 2 reasons. First: This blog is and will remain no worse than rated PG (Ellen is in a 2-piece; thanks to our agreement if I finished the 1/2 Marathon, she would wear a 2-piece). Second: our computer screen could not handle the brightness of our whiteness!

Reason #287,639 of why you should do blogs in a timely manner: I have no idea what the name if this ship is.
4 wonderful years!!!

Ellen Walks!!!

May 16, 2009. College of Arts & Science graduation. Ellen gets her Master's in Public Administration and gets the chance to walk at graduation (she missed her undergrad graduation).
Everyone with a 4.0 stand up!!! Yep, that's right, it might not look like she is standing up, but she is. Way to go Ellen!!!
Don't worry everyone, she said she would still cheer for Mizzou if they played the Sooners!!

2009 Kentucky Derby

Our 2nd Kentucky Derby Party (first one in Oklahoma). Grillin' on the front porch, big hats, lots of friends... fun was had by all.


Standing room only!!!

2009 Big XII Men's Tourney

Well, it has been WAY TOO LONG since this blog has been updated, and we have probably lost what few readers we had, but I am bringin' it back baby!!! The next few entries are going to catch you up to what we are doing now via a few big events since we last updated (the last time it snowed in OKC).

Mizzou won. It rocked. 'Nuff said.

Snow Day!!!

January 27th, 2009: OKC gets more freezing rain/ice/snow than it can handle. Everything closes down... EVEN TINKER AFB!!! So, Ellen and I got a Snow Day together. After diligently working in the morning and early afternoon, it was time to play.

That is when we went outside and noticed something very peculiar. We are still finding out things about our house that we like, but this one was unexpected: Magic Grass!!! Apparently snow/ice/etc will not stick to the grass in front of our house. As you can plainly see, every house on our street has snow covered lawns except for ours!


Some of you might be thinking, surely they shoveled their grass to just look like that. Really? Why would we shovel our lawn, that makes no sense. The real travesty here is that our driveway is not so magic and that will still need some wintertime maintenance when frozen precipitation starts falling.

Ellen tried her hardest to make a snow angel, but with only a thin layer of snow on top of ice, she just did not weigh enough to make a lasting impression.



Unfortunately in her efforts to make the snow angel, she had some frostbite issues and lost her left hand. She will quite possibly never be the same, but just as you would imagine with Ellen, she still had a smile on her face!

My NEW Camera (Take 3)

Here is the final set of pics. All of these are from the Trail de Paris (TX that is).

She may be all of 5'1" on a good day with shoes, but MAN does she have some serious Ups!!!

My NEW Camera (Take 2)

The following pics are all from around the Clark home this Christmas 2008.

Meet Scout, the newest addition to the Clark household and a great lap dog!

My NEW Camera!!! (take 1)

Well, I have decided to try my hand at photography as it is something I really enjoy doing and Ellen says I need something outside of work (provided I get some time away from work). So here are a few of my first pictures with my new camera (the Nikon D90). These are pictures all taken in full auto mode and as I learn more about photography I will be cooler and not use the full auto mode, but I like the results I have gotten so far with this camera. These are some of the very first pictures taken with this camera.

The very first picture snapped with this camera, and most likely the subject of the majority of future pictures...

Initially very impressed with the ability of this camera to catch the details in the dark, also a shot of the first time we had ever put up Christmas lights!!!

Just took a couple of pics around the house...

Updates Galore!

We have finally updated the blog after a six week hiatus!! 2008 was a great year for us! We are so excited about our choice to stay in Oklahoma City. We were able to see so many friends and family over the year through weddings and trips. We are looking forward to the unknown in 2009 and we promise to do a better job of capturing our life through the blog! Read below for more updates!

Christmas in Paris!

On Christmas Eve, we drove down to Paris to enjoy a few days relaxing with family and friends! My brother, the Guatemalan, had come in for Christmas and a friend's wedding so we were so happy to have him around! This Christmas ended up being one of our favorites! The highlights from the weekend included: everyone cooking together on Christmas, trying to make our own cheese, walks along the Paris trail, sleeping in, seeing Valkyrie and having drinks out with the Hudsons and Lindsay. The other major highlight was Mark taking pictures with his Nikon D90!! For those of you who may not know, Mark is very gifted at taking pictures! We will definitely feature Mark's work on the blog. Most of the pictures that we took were with the new camera, so we will have to post those later.

Our Dining Room

Mark and I have loved and cursed owning a historical home. We are really trying to become homeowners that can make updates and changes on their house without hiring an expert. We went so far as purchasing our first drill! Our first big project was the dining room. Half of the walls were covered in ugly wall paper so we had to rip down the wall paper and then prime, paint and decorate! Initially, we thought this project may take a weekend, but after 2 months of on and off again work, we finally finished. Below are the before, during and after pictures.


The hardest part was removing the glue that the wall paper left behind. It was gruelling!


We primed the wall with a gray primer, because you could still see a dark red seeping through the white primer.



Next we painted the walls. We actually painted the walls two different color greens. We had a vote with our friends and family on which color to paint the walls. The lighter green (Ellen's favorite) won out initially, but the first coat left little to be desired. We then went back and put the darker coat (Mark's choice) over the the lighter coat. The blended colors were a perfect match!

At Christmas, my parents gave us a beautiful Tunisian rug. They bought it at a cool rug shop in Tunisia when they went to visit my mom's cousin! So the dining room is a complete masterpiece!

The Pogemiller's Visit

We had a few visitors to our house in November and December. Mark's parents enjoyed Thanksgiving in OKC. We gave them a tour of the city, walked through the Botanical gardens and served them buttermilk pie (a southern treat!) It was a wonderful weekend!

In early December, Kristin (Mark's sister) and Aubrey (our niece) came down to experience the real OC! We also tried to show them all of OKC. We ate OK-Mex, our favorite pizza and took a boat tour of Bricktown. It was so fun to be able to play with Aubrey. She is so cute!!

I also had a Junior League "Ugly Sweater" party that weekend. Below is a group of us decked out in our ugliness. It was one of those situations where it seemed like everyone else made their "ugly sweater" look cute and I just kept it ugly. Thankfully the picture is not a close up!