Sterling's big **TWO-FIVE**

oNcE uPoN a LoVeLy TiMe.... my husband was born. twenty-five years ago.

that my friends... is a quarta of a CENTURY!! but.. [(like all men it seems)]... with age and years he is only getting more and more handsome. (wish it worked the same way with women!) crap.

I had a huge day planned for us. (sorry to those who wanted to see him on his birthday)... I planned the day to be filled with all of his favorite things.

Since I knew that our day would be very filled... i didn't even know when we'd have cake and ice-cream!! so we planned a little dinner/ date night for the night before his birthday on Thursday.

Our BFF's Tahnee and Brett and their new little 4 1/2 week old baby came up to our apartment.

• We broiled FLANK STEAKS (they had been marinating in Dr. Pepper and some other spices (its sterling's secret recipe.. i'm not at liberty to disclose the top secret recipe, folks),
• Made some mashed potatoes (wayyyy too much, might I add.) we peeled probably 8 HUGE idaho potatoes for only 4 people. lol
• Made a "Nuts about berries" (from zupas) type salad
• Green Beans (fresh from Cosssstco) with Soy Sauce
• andddd had some extra fruit (strawberries and blackberries.
• Oh... and a big drink of strawberry/ orange/ banana crystal light for everyone.
  Truly... it was quite a feast. We went to go digest our food while watching the BYU basketball game in our lounge theatre room of our apartment complex. . When we got back, we started a movie (Slumdog Millionaire) INCREDIBLE MOVIE.

Then we had cake. Yellow Cake with Vanilla frosting. Me and my sister Morgan made it together, and we wanted to make is special and a cake he wouldn't forget. . soooo. we wrote it backwards.

He made a wish and blew out his candles! We went to bed shortly after because I warned him of a busssssy day.

My initial plan was to do his favorite things all day.. including his favorite meals. So that meant attempting to make French Toast in his favorite way... I had never made french toast before, so i was facing the challenge of making it his favorite way with his favorite recipe. hmm. ok.

As I was laying in bed.. I was thinking of what time I needed to wake up to sneak out of bed and make his breakfast... then out of no where... ummm.. "We don't have bread" came blaring into my mind. Crappppola. So.. I made a game plan to wake up at 5:30 in the morning and go to the store and get some bread. I HAD to make french toast for him. no exceptions.

I got up at 5:30, got the pans out, all the ingredients so i'd be ready, got myself (sorta) ready... and left to walmart by 6:30. Stupid Bread.

Got home at 7 and got to work! My mom has a tradition of making us breakfast on our birthday with the red "you are special today" plate. She got me and sterling the same plate for our wedding!! I was sooo excited to use it.

The grand total consisted of FRENCH TOAST, STRAWBERRIES/ BLACKBERRIES annndddd.

dun. dun. dun..

an orange julius smoothie

(I had almost 3 cups... i luff it.)

oh. and a couple candles to make it a romantic breakfast.

While he ate, he opened his present from me. Two ties. he didn't have ANY solid color ties.. so i got him one bright turquoise one and one light purple one... with a little bit of design in it.. but.. sexy. (he wore the turquoise one to church with his black shirt today and looked dannnng good!)

I didn't get pictures of the next few activities because my camera's battery charger was left in vegas... hence.. a dead camera. So until we had time to run to get a new charger, we went without pics. but i'll inform you.

After breakfast, we had a little extra time. So we took a 45 minute nap.

• We woke up and I took him to go get an hour couples massage!! Absolutely very needed. (massages are his favorite)
• After that, I took him to Starbucks so he could use his FREE DRINK birthday card he got in the mail. He got his favorite frappucino with caramel drink, and we headed to the next stop.
• Since we went hiking in Moab the whole week before, and hiked so many miles... he had complained about his feet getting bad bad blisters and bad callusses. He had mentioned a few months before that he wouldn't mind trying a pedicure... so thats what we did! i took him and we got our feet massaged and he got the dead skin grated and shaved off. and his toe-nails painted purple... jusssst kidding. but i got mine done. (:
• After our pedicure I took him to get his favorite lunch. Costco Lunch. (: a SUPREME pizza.

After lunch, I took him Bouldering/ Indoor RockClimbing at the place next to REI!!

I even had his rock climbing shoes and his chalk back and a pair of shorts to climb in hidden in the back of the car. (:

(forgive the BUTT shot)

By the end of the climbing... my arms were so frickin sore!! killl me. but he had a great time (:

We had time to go home and relax for a couple hours, and shower off our yucky smells from climbing.

Then I told him to dress nice, and we were headed out for the rest of the night.

I took him to his favorite dinner at TGI Fridays so he could get his favorite Jack Daniels Burger. (: I even had a couopon for buy one get one free.

I made sure that our server knew that it was required of her to embarrass Sterling as much as possible. so .. as promised, she brought a herd of red clapping servers singing happy birthday... accompanied by a caramel/ fudge sundae. (: yummmmy

He quite liked it.

next... we were on our way to salt lake city... we jammed out a little bit in the car to some songs.

Sterling had no clue where we were going... i just gave him directions.

i love my birthday boy

He figured it out when we were getting our tickets printed at the front... he saw a big picture of Jeff Foxworthy, Larry the Cable guy, and Bill Engvall.

he was soooo excited! i couldn't have hoped for a better reaction.

Bill Engvall

Jeff Foxworthy

He got me some cotton candy... which i adore. (: I ate probably 95% of the whole thing.

nom nom nom

Larry the Cable Guy

Seriously BY FAR the funniest show i've ever been to.. I had tears coming out of my eyes most of the time because I was laughing so hard. (:

Overall: quite the successful day!

We both had a ton of fun, and we were exhausted by the end of the day.

Happy 25th Birthday to my Mr. Sterling Hart Clark.

xo

SpRiNg BrEaK 2011- mOaB uTaH.

For Spring Break, we wanted to go somewhere warm, but we wanted to split that time with Idaho. Because we didn't know we would be able to see my family again before the summer time and when we move.

We wanted to have a spontaneous trip, with no planning ahead of time, so we decided to head south... and chose to go to Moab!

We didn't want to have to rely on restaurants and buying food for the whole time... or a hotel. So.... we (being the adventurous buckaroo's that we are...) put a bunch of blankets and pillows in the back, a whole lot of water bottles, power bars, jerky, craisens, fruit leathers and cadbury eggs. (i know, right? delicious.)

We arrived around 8pm, and it was dark. We drove up to Arches National Park, and up the canyon for a bit and found a nice parking spot and made the back of our Murano into a bed. We used our flashlight to play Skip-Bo and Monopoly Deal. We went on a midnight hike around a close-by rock structure (it was hard to tell in at night, being so dark) but in the morning we found out that it was called "Balanced Rock".

The next morning, we got up and looked out the window and there were cars everywhere and the trails were already buzzing with people! So... we sneakily got dressed in the back of our car, and headed out to see some trails! only AFTER we had gotten filled up on some power bars and snacks, and filled up our camel-back type backpacks.

We had quite the large amounts of energy on our first hike. But it was stinkin COLLLLLD. (probably 40ish degrees) with light rain and a tonnnn of wind. but we had SUCH a blast.

We were quitttte stoked to take silly pictures.

We FINALLLY after a long hard hike got to our first arch. MASSSSIVE!!! ouR first hike of the morning was a 2.5 mile round trip hike.

next: we drove a little ways up the canyon... (15 minutes) and went to another long hike (6 miles round trip) with about 8 arches total along the hike. (:

SUCH beautiful views over the red rock cliffs.

Double-O Arch.

in case anyone didn't know... i'm freakin strong.

...

...

We're climbing into all sorts of crevaces and such for our breaks. Eating our snacks, feuling our energy (:

There were some random tree's here and there... this was pine tree arch (i think thats what it was called... something of the sort)

Love my monkey man.

We slept awesome the first night, the second night was harrrrrrd. It was so freaking cold in our car, and our blankets were barely keeping us warm enough! AND i had to pee ALLLL night long. I was too scared to get out of the car in the dark in the middle of the night in the middle of no where... so every 20 minutes the cold or my bladder would wake me up. I was sooooo excited when sterling woke up, and we drove to the visitors center to use the bathrooms, and brush our teeth. (: We went to Mcdonalds for some breakfast... Sterling had 2 Sausage McMuffins, 2 Hashbrowns and a Breakfast burrito to get a jump start on our long day of hiking- and I had a huge Muscle Milk Protein Shake, and a Mcdonalds Parfait, and a PowerBar. haha We were READY!

Our first hike of the day was to the Windows Arches (2 of them) and to the Double Arch (my 2nd favorite arch) It was probably a 2 mile total round trip with all of them.

I think the reason they call it the window's arches is because it looks like a window to such a beautiful view of all the beautiful red around us.

so for this picture (BELOW)...

so since it was just the two of us... we mostly had to put our camera on a rock somewhere and set the timer on it.. the nearest spot for our camera that was able to get the full view of this arch.. was pretty far away.. but sterling made the brave attempt.. he set it, and had 10 seconds to run. He made it to me BARRRELLYY but as he was turning to face the camera/ stopping himself from the dead sprint... he slipped on the sand/ dirt on the rock and fell RIGHT as the camera flashed. haha i was trying so hard not to laugh. ok.. i laughed really hard (: love the attempt. and i like this picture.

Right before we were taking this picture, I called sterling out on something that happened to be QUITE smelly...

let's just say, he didn't deny it.

so this picture, I was letting him know how I felt about that particular smell.

...i truly don't know what's happening in this picture.

but the pile of rocks was inspiring.

needed to take a little time out of my day for yoga. (pfffff... right)

Sterling's "Buddah Pose"

'

Made the trek over to Double Arch. This picture you could BARRRELY see the double arch. the first one is above where we are standing, you can see part of it in the top right corner.

My ultimate favorite of the whole trip was the butt-kicking workout hike (4.3 mile round trip) to the

amazing beautiful Delicate Arch

(Favorite picture below)

love this handsome boy

no.... THIS is my favorite picture... how creative are we!??

and this was taken with the timer on the camera.. with the camera balancing on a rock!

Sterling wanted to try and get a picture of the Delicate Arch in the reflection of my sunglasses.

Artsy Fartsy Ster-fry (:

After we went to Delicate Arch, we went to do the 6 mile hike... the long way. a total of 7.5 miles round trip.

We kept bumping into the same group of people on EVERY single trail that whole day... so we did this whole one with them. It was way nice to have people to take pics for us, and we would take some in return for them!!

The hike required me to embrace my inner-primate...

and scale those walls like a spider monkey (:

Private Arch was wayyyy scary. Climbing up to on top of it. .

it was probably a 3 foot wide slick rock climb to the top of that thing... i didn't allow myself to look anywhere but my feet... we were so high up there, i was scared we'd fall off. (: but we were ok (:

Its hard to see us, but we're at the edge of this cliff overlooking the valley.

Yup.. we did the hard trail.. and almost DIED. we were SOOO excited when we reached the end and started the trek all the way back to the parking lot. haha. i never thought i'd be so excited to only be half-way done with a trail. haha.

These were our friends from centerville that we kept running into on every trail that day... (really... we knew they were stalking us.. ) They told us that we were the coolest married couple they know..

well... duh. (:

They were way fun to talk to, and kept us talking and looking for photo-ops! *fuh-chink!!*

On our last night there, we met up with mi Madre and Rich winter. My mom was running in the half-marathon the next morning, so we went out for a little carb load at an italian restaurant. woop woop!

While we were there a couple people asked us if we all planned to wear blue... we really didn't!!! but they said that we all looked cute together... wellll thanks (:

We thought that it was cute that my mom wanted to resemble an oompa loompa for her race. (spray on tan/ teeth whitening to the max) (: bwaaaha. at least she could rock it.

and THAT ladies and Gents... was our fantabulous trip to the southern hemisphere of the land of utah. though, it never was hot.. and stayed below 60.. it was the best spring break of ever and ever.