December Update

Happy Holidays!

December seemed to fly by! Albuquerque finally started feeling a little more wintery. We have had several small snow storms and it has been quite chilly. Here is a little sampling of the weather and Tessa's first snow.

We got to spend some more time this month with John's mom and Ray! Ray was wrapping up his work here in Albuquerque so we got in one more good visit before they headed back to San Antonio. As I am sure you can guess, Rockband did make a large appearance that weekend.

For Christmas, we headed to Sacramento to be with John's Dad and family. We had a great time trying new traditional Czech food (Fish Soup) and learning the Lensky Family Traditions (Don't lift your plate!) After Christmas, we headed to Old Town to do some sightseeing and shopping. On the 27th, we headed over to Aunt Liz and Uncle Dave's to catch up over brunch. It was a fun trip full of wonderful family time, thoughtful gifts and lots of yummy food! Here are a few pics from the trip.

John with his brother Michael and sister Pavlina.

Pavlina and Mikey showing off their loot!

Lots of Gifts!



John and Petr (Renata's Brother) rockin'



The Whole Gang
Michael, Pavlina, Renata, Randy(John's Dad), and us!




Celebrating with Uncle Dave and Aunt Liz

John and I always love seeing family especially this time of year. We are so blessed and what a perfect time of year to celebrate that! We hope you all had a very Merry Christmas.

November Update

November started off with a bang in the Clem household! John turned 30 on November 3rd. John, however, forgot that he was a grownup now. At the top of his birthday list was Rock Band 2. I have to admit no matter how old you get it is fun to pretend you are a Rock Star. Here are some pictures of all of us Rockin' Out!

John has had a desire to play an instrument for awhile now. So with his new found passion for "fake" guitar playing, I thought an actual guitar would be a wonderful hobby to pick up on this benchmark birthday. We bought the guitar online together so I knew he was getting exactly what he wanted. Although John knew a guitar was coming for his birthday, he had strict instructions that he could not open it until his birthday. The day that the box is delivered I come home only to find out that John has broken a string on the guitar. BUSTED! The string was fixed and the box was taped up until November 3rd. Once his birthday came, our home has been filled with beautiful melodies that he is learning off the Internet and from books. He is picking it up quickly and it is has been a lot of fun to watch the progress.

On November 24, the Clem's including Tessa hit the open road to drive to Glen Rose for Thanksgiving. It is about a 10 hour roadtrip and we were both a little nervous about how our dog would handle being in the car so long. Here are a few things we discovered on the trip...

1. Tracy gets bored driving.

2. John gets bored not driving.

3. Everyone in the car is a lot happier when Tracy is not driving and John is.

4. Our dog, Tessa, can go an amazingly long time without going to the bathroom.

5. It is not faster to drive through Amarillo...no matter what the TomTom says.

6. Tracy's threshold in the car is 10 hours.

7. Tessa's is 8.

8. Every meal must include french fries.

9. We get abnormally happy when we see gas below $1.50.

10. There is something euphoric about getting a Dairy Queen Blizzard on the last leg of the trip.

Tessa before 8 Hours!


Tessa after 8 hours!

We had such a great time in Glen Rose. On Tuesday, my parents were working so John and I decided to visit Fossil Rim, a wildlife reserve. It is one of the parks were you can drive through and feed the animals. John had never been to a park like this so he really had a great time. If you are ever in the Glen Rose area...you have to check it out, http://www.fossilrim.com/. We got some fun pictures!

John getting attacked by Ostriches.

John and Steve (my Dad) attempted bird hunting again with Uncle Randy and my cousins. This time they saw all the dove you can imagine. The problem was-it isn't dove season. Although they did not even shoot the guns, John said it was a lot of fun watching the dogs getting trained. (My dad got two bird dogs for his birthday and this was their first trip out) Ricky joined us Tuesday and Gayle and George as well as their two dogs joined us Wednesday night. This now brought the dog total to 5. My parent's garage looked like they we running a kennel!

This was the first Thanksgiving we have had at my parent's house. We have mostly gone to my grandparent's in the past. It was so much fun to have everyone cooking in the kitchen...and there were no cooking disasters! A big accomplish for the first time. We saw lots of family (The Wright side) and ate WAY to much. That evening we had the standard Wade Gaming Night including some of our favorites Chicken Foot (which I won) and Scotland Yard (which John won) Sorry Marshalls....you will never be the board game champions the Clems are!

The boys avoiding the kitchen!

A competitive game of Scrabble with Mema

The Cleaning Crew (My mom and Aunt Jill)

John--Post Glen Rose Thanksgiving

It is a Wade tradition to go to a Christmas tree farm each year and pick our tree out as a family, cut it and bring it home. With everyone being in different places, we do not get to do that together anymore. On Friday, we decided to go get the tree. Gayle read the information card for the farm and determined that they opened at 9am. We decided to load up the whole crew early so we could decorate all day. As we pull in at about 9:15am and their are no cars in the parking area, we suspected something wasn't quite right. They didn't open until 3pm. (9am is the weekend hours) So we went home and we re-loaded back up at 3pm to get our tree. We ran out of time to decorate so we snacked on leftovers and busted out the games again. We had a girls against boys Taboo tournament...girl's are the remaining Champs. We, also, played Apples to Apples with the whole crew...but of course one of the Clem's took home first place!

The Future Mr. and Mrs. Marshall

aka Gayle and George

Saturday, the Wade side of the family joined us for some Texas Barbeque! It was another big eating day full of family, which was great. We had a a lot of family come that we had not seen in awhile...some John had never met. It was great to see everyone and catch up.

Major (He is one half of my twin cousins)



Gayle, Touy and Granny looking at Wedding Stuff

Sunday morning we all headed out to breakfast at Glen Rose's greasiest spoon, Debbie's. My dad introduced John to this place awhile back and now it is a must before we leave town. After that, we hit the road with a totally exhausted mutt after five days of playing.

November was a great month and we got to see so much family both John's and mine, which we love. We have much to be thankful for!

October Update

After returning from Hawaii, the first big thing that happened in October is that John was unofficially accepted into the University of New Mexico. Once he finishes this semester and his grades post, it will be official. Go Lobo's!

Albuquerque has the largest Hot Air Balloon Festival in the world each October. One of the most fun evenings at the festival is the Special Shapes Glow-deo. This is where all the special shaped balloons illuminate at night. Some of the cool special shapes are Darth Vader, Mr. Potato Head, a Daisy, a Bald Eagle, Noah's Ark, Champagne Bottle...truly any shape that you can imagine. We had some hiccups getting there last year, but this year we were able to see all the balloons. Here are a couple of pictures....although, it truly doesn't capture the evening.

John with the Bald Eagle-How Patriotic!!!

We enrolled our puppy, Tessa, into an eight week obedience training in August. Besides totally embarrassing us, the classes were uneventful. She can sit, stay and lay down---of course those were all things she could do before the class. Although she didn't pick up any good party tricks, they let her graduate anyway. She actually won the Gold Medal for the obstacle course. The commencement ceremony was October 14th and we are so proud :)

On October 17th, we headed to Texas. My sister, Gayle, is getting married in April and needed one more opinion before she purchased her wedding dress. She picked a beautiful dress and she will be such a stunning bride. We would put up pictures of her, but we don't want to spoil the surprise. While the girls were shopping, John, Steve (my Dad) and Ricky (my Brother) headed to Cabella's---you could almost hear the male grunting! Then we met up for some Dallas Stars Hockey, which was a great game even though the Stars lost.

We spent Halloween with John's mom and Ray. We love staying in on Halloween so we can pass out candy to the neighbor kids. We made chili and cornbread and watched Young Frankstein---our Halloween tradition!

August and September Updates

Between school, work and a lot of traveling, we have not updated this for a while. We have lots to share.

In August, John had two of his closest buddies from the Army come to Albuquerque. It was a great weekend for some great boy time and catching up after not seeing each other for awhile. It was also a great weekend for me to leave town :) One of my dearest friends, Ann, was having a baby shower in Dallas the same weekend so it worked out wonderfully.

Here are a couple of shots of the very boy and very girl weekend!

Tracy, Ann and Brenda

John, Beau and Dave

The beginning of September was a busy month at work for me with the Labor Day Telethon and with John starting the fall semester with school, but we still made time for lots of trips to see family and friends.

We took a trip to San Antonio the first weekend to see John's Mom and Ray. We almost had to admit John into Rehab because of his new addiction to Rockband! The second day we were there John played Rockband on the Playstation for over 4 consecutive hours. We had to literally pry the guitar from his hands so we could make it back to Albuquerque. We had such a great time and it was wonderful to see them both!

The next weekend we headed back to Texas for a wedding of one of my college friends. My Dad took John on his first bird hunting trip. Although they did not see any Doves, they were still able to have an adventure with a flat tire and a flat spare! We were able to have dinner with my family the evening before the wedding. The next morning was when Hurricane Ike hit the Gulf Coast so by mid-afternoon it was raining really hard in Dallas. Although the wedding was wet, it was fun to have an evening to hang out with Gayle (my sister) and her future husband, George, who were also at the wedding.

The last weekend in September we hit the road for a trip to Colorado. We had a good friend getting married and we still have many friends in the area. The first day we arrived we went to a BBQ where many of my co-workers from my time in Denver got together to catch up. It had been several years since we had seen many of them so it was so fun getting reaquainted. Then we had breakfast with my friend and past roommate Cindy. (Cindy also sang at the wedding) Cindy and I have played phone tag for almost a year so it was so fun to be actually hanging out.

The Old Denver MDA Clan

We made one last stop before the wedding to have lunch with my good friend Kelly and her husband Brad. We had not spent time with Brad before so it was wonderful getting to know him and seeing what a wonderful couple they make. After lunch, we took a brief detour to look at the place that we got married almost 3 1/2 years ago. Can you believe it has already been that long? Then we headed to Colorado Springs to watch Tonya and Ryan marry. It was a beautiful outside venue that overlooked the mountains. Being in Colorado made us miss it very much!

Tracy and Kelly

Ryan, Tonya, Tracy and John

The very next Thursday we were on our way to Hawaii to spend time with John's Aunt and Uncle who live there. We spent alot of time on the beach just relaxing. We also made it to Pearl Harbor, Pali Lookout and the Swap Meet. John even attempted surfing. However, our favorite spot ended up being Matsumoto's, which had the most delicious Hawaiian Shaved Ice with the creamiest ice cream in the bottom. If you are ever there, you have to check it out. http://www.matsumotoshaveice.com/

We spent our last night in town at a Luau. We are so thankful to Lynn and Sherri for making the trip possible and for giving us a free place to crash. Happy 50th Lynn! Here are some of our favorite pictures.

Pearl Harbor

Pali Lookout (It is very windy!)

The Luau

As you can imagine, we are spending this weekend recovering--watching football with Ray!

Tessa is 7 months

For those of you that do not know, we decided to get a puppy this past February. Since we do not have big milestones to celebrate with children yet, we thought it would be fun to celebrate Tessa's 7 month birthday with a Family Pic...as you can see Tessa did not think this was quite as fun as we did.

Please do not call PETA or Animal Control!

This did however give us a chance to take some great pictures of a finished backyard! The summer has been really nice so we have been able to enjoy several meals outside and even some card games. For those of you that did not see a "before" picture, our backyard was a gravel lot. With John's creative mind, A LOT of labor from John and Cheerleading from Tracy, we have attached the picture of the finished product.

PS: I promise we will not be blogging about our dog each week!

Lake Tahoe Adventure

This past Friday was John's 11-Year Class Reunion in Placerville, CA. They couldn't get the ten year together quick enough, but it was still great to catch up with old friends---no matter when it was. Friday night we caught up with John's classmates.

Saturday morning we met John's good friend Tony at Sweetie Pies for Breakfast. Of course John indulged in Olallieberry Muffin---his favorite! We got to meet the newest addition to Tony's family, his five-month old son, Nathan.

After breakfast, we headed up to Lake Tahoe. We took the Scenic Drive up Highway 50. On the way up we stopped by the American River in Kyburz to visit and remember Marcia.

From there, we continued up to Tahoe. We started in the Heavenly area by taking a Gondala ride up the mountain for majestic views. Tracy had never seen Lake Tahoe so this was so exciting. We stopped at Inspiration point at Emerald Bay for more great photos and then hiked up to Eagle Falls. As you can see in the pics, we were not quite dressed for a hike. It was a little challenging in flip flops! We were both totally out of breath and pledged to get in better shape---Pronto. We stopped to enjoy the views (and catch our breath.)

From here we stopped at Squaw Valley-Home of the 1960 Winter Olympics. We headed down the mountain to Sacramento. We stopped one more time to see the Donner Memorial. When we made it back into town we treated ourselves to a Chipotle Burrito---something we cannot get here in Albuquerque.

Sunday we enjoyed breakfast with Aunt Liz and Uncle Dave before heading to the Airport. It was a great week of seeing beautiful sights, friends and family!