Music!

Today I read an article about music and running. The article was about weather or not music helps someone run.

The article was kind of long, so I'll just sum up a few things I got out of it. First off: music does help. They did a bunch of tests on athletes, the tests showed that with music helped with motivation and for really long distance runners (15+ miles), it kept them from getting bored. Another thing I read in the article was that faster music can make the runner, run faster! So I guess this proves that rock beats country with working out!

I found this really cool, and it confirmed my thoughts on the matter: I noticed, harder the song, faster I want go run. So does hard (or fast) music help me run? Yes!

Mexican Burgers, Arm Wrestling, Workday, and a Game Night

This past weekend was fantastic! I already blogged about Thursday's awesomeness, so I'll just skip to Friday night! Friday started out pretty bad, the SMASH rehearsal was cancelled because of the icy snow. That was the second time my scenes were canceled due to snow and ice. That day became much better that evening. That evening all of us Clarkes went over to the Donahues for Mexican burgers and fellowship! The Donahues are great people to talk to, so that's what we did until the burgers were ready.

The burgers, man... in case you don't know what a Mexican burger is, it's like a burger, but tacoified. They were so good! I usually only eat 1-3 burgers, but this time I had 4. They weren't small, I just had to eat more, if you know what I mean...

Anyway, after we finished eating burgers, we played some Dutch Blitz. That game is always very entertaining... the sounds people make are hilarious! I ended up in second place to the Shannon and Brenna team by 1 point. It was intense.

During that visit we got on to the subject of working out a few times... duh, that's gonna happen when I'm going somewhere. I gave the Donahues a few tips on working out... but from there we went onto the subject of arm wrestling. The girls arm wrestled some, and then they wanted me to arm wrestle Mr. Donahue. The Donahue girls made Mr. Donahue sound really strong by the stories they told. His job also aids in his strength building. Not even their older brother (who was 24) has beat him yet. So I figured I'd get crushed. Though. I guess the thousands of pushups, pullups and weight lifting I did in my life paid off: I was not crushed right away.

We started arm wrestling. We held the starting position for bit, then I realized he's playing with me, or I stand a chance. His face showed that I stood a chance. So I went full blow on him. I then could tell I had stronger fast twitch muscles. I brought him down until I only had an inch left. We held it there for a long time. My arm felt like it had nothing left. My hand then went up about an inch. That angle change let me use slightly different muscles. So I gave it a little burst and pushed back to the one inch remaining position. It was now down to who could last longer. I knew that he could, because his job requires him to have very good muscular endurance. So I then looked at our hands. Both of our wrists were still straight. So I put all my willpower into curling my wrist. It took me another minute to fully curl it, giving me the inch, giving me victory!

I felt pretty good about that. I was quite surprised to win. My arm felt dead. Then my dad, knowing I was stronger than him, took advantage of my tired arm and decided to challenge me to an arm wrestling match. So I accepted. At first Dad was winning. My arm just felt like it wasn't working. I then just pushed as hard as I could. Dad has a good amount of fast twitch muscle fibers, but his slow twitch aren't as good. That's because tennis (Dad's sport) using more fast twitch fibers in the arms. So once of pushed his arm half way down, I snapped his hand down, giving me victory.

I thought I was done then, but no. Mr. Donahue wanted to try my left arm. I told him I have an injured shoulder, he then said: all the better! I lost that match quite quickly. Once he pushed my arm to the point where I had to use my injured tendons, I snapped down and lost. Turns out, that to isolate the rotator cuff (what I injured) you have to do an arm wrestling motion. So beforehand, I already knew for sure I was going to lose that match.

After all the arm wrestling we had dessert, talked, and then ended up leaving. Thank you Donahues for having us over!

The next day was a workday with our church at the Root Cellar. A lot of the girls painted, a group of us guys did more of the 'brute work'. We cleaned out and rearranged the Root Cellar shed. Shoveled a path or two, and then we had a lunch break. After lunch two other guys and I fixed a few broken things indoors. I was then put to work on cleaning windows. That sounds boring, but it's fun when the bottom of the window is at your neck, the window is about 4 or 5 feet tall, and you don't have a ladder. So I got to use my athletic ability and jump up into the window frame and clean the windows.

When I finished, we all waited around, talked, and then schemed to have the Kidd kid's over. We ended up only having Millie and Grace over, but they're still pretty awesome! That night we hung around, played Dutch Blitz, and ate pizza until something like 10:30pm. The next morning we went to church. After the service we brought Kevin, Millie and Grace to our house. We pretty much just played Dutch Blitz, ate lunch, and then had a snack before we headed off to our home group game night. On the way to the game night we picked up Kyle Almquist. At the game night we ate some really tasty snacks, played a bunch of games, and solved mini mind games. After the game night we brought the Kidds and Kyle home, and then went home ourselves.

Over all, the entire weekend was extremely fun! I'm a bit tired, but it was totally worth it!

Bowties, Shrimp and Steak.

Yesterday after SMASH, Colleen and I staying after to prepare for the dinner we were making for our parents and the Richards' parents. I brought my 4 bowties so we could dress up as servers, but when we started we just wore normal clothes to prepare the dinner. Rebecca, Tucker, Samantha, Colleen and I were working on making everything for a hour or so. We made some steak, thawed some shrimp, mashed some potatoes, mixed some salad, cooked some veggies, made sauces and dressings, and to top it off we made the dinning room very fancy and dimmed the lights slightly. By the time we did most of that it was 5:30. It was around 5:30 when Shannon, Mom and Dad showed up. Shannon helped with a few last minute things and we all got into our black dress pants, white shirts, and bowties. Rebecca and Samantha had to leave, so it was only Colleen, Shannon, Tucker and I in the bowties and dress clothes. It was pretty funny doing the bowties because I was the only one that knew how to tie a bowtie. Tucker just needed a few pointers, but I had to tie the girls' bowties.

When Pastor Sam arrived (Mrs. Richards was already there), we had all our parents seated. We served them the shrimp, salad, and drinks for appetizers. We then brought out all the veggies and steak. When they finished that, we brought out the dessert: chocolate cake served with a Shirley Temple. While they had dessert, we had all the leftovers... not to brag, but the meal was like Heaven, but on a plate.

When they were finished with the whole meal, we invited them into the lounge, where peanut butter cookies were served. While they relaxed we cleaned the dishes. When we finished we played card games and relaxed!

Over all, it was a superb evening full of great laughter, food and fellowship! I would do it again... but with more leftovers!

Another Post About Pushups...

If you're like me and have been doing pushups off and on because you've just been getting bored of them, you probably want to know some variations you can do to a regular pushup to change it up. I've mentioned some things like inclines, declines, finger pushups, etc... but I didn't mention a lot about hand placement, what to do with your feet or much about repetition.

So to make sense of hand placement, I want to tell you something I read about because I was curious about how much weight I was pushing when I did a pushup. I found a bunch of sites saying the same thing about pushups: the weight you're pushing is at your hips. That's because when you're doing pushups your center of gravity is there. So when your hands are directly under your shoulders you're probably pushing 45-65% of your bodyweight. While if your hands are by your waist, you're more likely pushing 60-80% of your body weight. So over all, the closer your hands are to your waist or hips, the more weight you're pushing.

At first that seemed like way too much weight! I mean, 100 pounds is about 62% of my body weight! I can't bench press 100 pounds 68 times without rest. Then I looked into bench press a little. Turns out the grip and movement of a bench press isolates the chest more than a pushup. A pushup uses your chest, your triceps, and some shoulder muscles. Still, 100 pounds seemed like too much. So I went to our bathroom, took our scale, and put my hands on it, directly below my shoulders: 98 pounds when in the up position. I was surprised, so I then tried it at my waist: 135 pounds in the up position. That's about 84% of my body weight!

So to sum this part of the post I'd like to say that if you want a more challenging pushup, move your hand closer from your to hips. The opposite for making it easier, though, going past your shoulders will probably make it hard because doing that engages weaker muscles.

Another thing I'd like to mention about hand placement is how to isolate different muscles. I only really know how to isolate two muscles groups in a normal pushup: the triceps, and the chest. To isolate your triceps more, put your hands close together. The diamond pushup is a great example of that because that's about as close as your hands get when doing a pushup. Now what's your guess on isolating the chest? Probably putting your hands out wide... Which is true! I've done ultra wide pushups, they are harder than bench pressing. I could only do about 15-30 of those. The problem with those is you greatly limit your range of motion. So if you want balanced pushing muscles you probably want to mix wide pushups, close pushups, and shoulder width pushups.

So to some up that part of the post, I'd say wide=chest, near=triceps. Do both.

Now, what on earth do you do with your feet when you're doing a pushup? You have options. The usual thing to do is to keep them close together and keep them still... but what if you want something more challenging? Well, one thing you could do is stack your feet. Stacking feet makes it a bit harder on your core. Make sure you switch them every 5 or so pushups to keep everything even and balanced.

Something more fun than stacking is to bring your knee up even with your waist or hip when you go do. It will have to go off to the side so you won't bump your knee. On your way up, bring your foot back to your other foot. Switch sides every time. I really like this one, it works on the core, balance, hip flexers, and puts more weight on to your arms, and less on your feet.

Another foot variation is to have your feet wide. This one doesn't do much for me, but it's good for practicing the one arm pushup.

If you want a real challenge, run while you're doing pushups. You're staying still, but when you're in the up position, you're bringing your knees to your chest... one at a time, unless you're really hardcore, then do both.
That's not all. When you're in the down position, you should be bringing your knees to the same level as your hips. Doing this for only 1 minute will make you want to stop.

There are tons (as in tons) of variations you can do with pushups, but I'm not going to list them all...

So now how many reps do you do? That depends on your max. Lets say you can only do 0-10. Then I recommend going to fail, then do girl pushups, core exercise, then some arms work, and to finish: cardio.

Now, let's say you can do 10-30. You don't really want to go to fail, then just stop. Maybe do sets of 5 or 10. Then do a total of double your max. So if you can do 10, do something like 4 sets of 5 reps. How about if you can do 50-75? You probably really want to get to 100 if you're at this point. That's where I am. I can't really give good advice, because I haven't reached 100 before. But I'd recommend sets of like 50-70% of your max, and do a total of about 125-150. There are hard core workouts that are like 250 pushups everyday for 10 days, then rest 3 days and test yourself to really boost your pushup number, but doing this too often will overtrain your pushing muscles, making you lose muscle. I wouldn't recommend this more than once every 3-6 months. I'm going to try it out next month to see if it actually works. So I'll let you know how it goes!

So sum this part up, I'd say sets are better than maxing out. This is not always true with working out. It all depends on the exercise and your goal.

Oh, Sugar Sugar!

So, as many of you reading may know, I have a weak immune system, thus I get sick pretty often. But I did find that whenever I stay up late (as in 12:00 on...), I seem to have a much higher chance of getting sick. Another thing that seems to aid me in getting sick is sugar. Both of which make sense. Throwing your body's sleep pattern off (especially if you're athlete) isn't good for you.

Of course, something everyone loves is another thing that aids viruses: sugar. I LOVE sugar! It tastes awesome(not plain, mind you). It's an easy way to make bland foods yummy. I love sugar for the first few hours after eating it (the taste, then a little sugar rush), but later I strongly dislike it. First I crash a little. Being tired isn't fun, unless you're over tired. Sugar isn't that grand for working out either, well, at least the processed sugar is, which is what we usually call sugar. Too much sugar gives you fat. Fat is like the anti-fitness. It slows you down, is bad for posture, and some other not-so-desirable things. Now, you can burn fat by dieting, doing and with a mix of resistance exercise (weights), so that's all good if you do all that. It still would be better to replace sugar with fruits, vegetables, and protein, no matter how much cardio you do.

That's all bad and all, but the thing that really gets me is the getting sick part. Sugar pretty much feeds colds and viruses. Lack of sleep weakens you're immune system, and sugar strengthens the cold trying to beat your immune system! It's a pretty bad combo. Sadly that's usually what we involve in a party: staying up late and eating unhealthy foods.

So now you can probably see why I'm trying to go on a nearly sugarless 'diet'. Because having a weak immune system, eating sugar, and losing some sleep usually ends with me getting sick. I really don't like being sick, and I don't think sugar is worth it... so there you go!

Military Training...

*Insert rant about how cool my past few weeks were*

Anyway, I caught myself a nasty cold this past weekend. It a cough with a side of clogged nose. Not too bad, but it's a pain when you read about something you really want to do, but know you're too sick to do it. As for me, I was researching pull-ups. I want to increase my number of pull-ups... Not by one or two, but by like five or ten. I then found myself on this military training site. They had a bunch of free workouts! Two of which really caught my eye: the pull-up push, and pushup push. Both of which I really want to increase. They had two very intense two week workouts... both of which were supposed to increase your max about of reps by 30-100%! This is great and all, but I read a little more, and it said if you do this more than once every two months, you'll strain those muscles.

That's a pretty intense workout there. Hence why I wish I was not sick. I hope I'm feeling better by the first Monday of next month, because that's when I plan on starting the pushup push. Should be pretty epic... and hard... (200-300 pushups everyday is gonna kill me.)

Blazing Wild Wings!

Last week was my last week working with Richard on the Grocery Lister web app. Thursday day night Richard and his family took me out to Buffalo Wild Wings. Ever since I heard of the Buffalo Wild Wing Challenge, I wanted to do it. I thought I could probably handle it pretty easily... but then I read a few reviews about the challenge. Then I knew it would a serious challenge. Some guy got a blister on his thumb from the sauce. They sauce was rated very hot, like 60 times hotter than a jalapeño pepper, or about as hot as liquified habanero. Now you may think that a liquified habanero isn't that bad. After all, habanero hot sauce isn't that bad, but habanero hot sauce has vinegar in it. Vinegar weakens spiciness. So in actuality, habanero hot sauce isn't as hot as a habanero.

So I had some pretty big doubts about beating the challenge. Eating 12 of those wings in 6 minutes was going going to be a very hard challenge.

Now let's go to the actual eating of wings! My first bite was spicy, but I could handle it. Then, I realized, this was a really good tasting sauce! So the first three were super easy. I was enjoying it. After the third one the burn really kicked it. My mouth, hands, and lips were on fire! Naturally, My vision started to blur with tears. That's normal. Then I thought to myself: "if this just burns more, this is going to be easy!"

I was wrong. That was not all. By the time I was on number 7, my vision blurred more. It felt like my eye lids were swelling. The burn didn't stop at all. It just kept getting worse. When I was finishing the 7th wing, I felt this strange tingle through my arms up to my neck. It was kind of like that feeling you get when you sit on your foot too long, your foot falls asleep and then the weird tingle sets in. I thought I could handle that too. But after my 8th one, it was fully body. That includes the head. I was getting light headed. I was 2/3 there! So I couldn't give up. I continued. The ninth made me cough. Have you ever had bronchitis? The cough is just terrible! But it felt like nothing compared to that cough. It literally felt like I swallowed fire, and then coughed up it's coals. So then I concentrated on not coughing. That slowed down my eating. I only had a tad over 1 minute left. I ate the 9th, then the 10th. I bit into the 11th, and then I could feel my body about to throw up everything I just ate. I held it in. The tingle had gotten bad enough that my hands were kind of going numb, and my vision was so blurry I could barely see the last 2 wings I took another bite. The vomiting feeling came again. I held it, but I knew I couldn't eat anymore. I only had about 25 seconds left anyway. I lost the challenge. Now that I gave up, I was allowed to use a napkin. The numbness started to fade, so my entire face and hands left like fire. I almost wiped my eyes, but then I remembered the warning that the sauce could cause blindness...so I decided to wait.

I then drank 2 tall glasses of milk, and two glasses of water. The burn continued for at least another hour, but it wasn't nearly as bad.my hands continued to burn until around 2am, then they occasionally burned the next day.

Before we left Wild Wings, I tried one of their 'second hottest wing'. It was nothing compared to the Blazin' Wild Wings.

The next day I had some other side effects... let's just say it felt like I sat on a stove.

Hope this post didn't gross you out!

Quick Review...

So lately I haven't been blogging much. That's because I've been very busy with the geek work with Richard. Because I was so busy with geek I've been pausing some of my school, like my blog, for example. Today my geek work was cancelled, so I'm catching up on a bunch of school today.

So I said this would be a review. So I'm going to just review the week!

From Monday to Friday I did school, work, worked out a little on most days (some of the time I went with Jenna and Colleen or Richard) and some other random usual stuff. Friday night we had some superb pizza and cookies with the Donahues! Had great time there! It was a grand stress reliever as well... let's just say SQL and mapping out Wal-Mart was driving me a little crazy.

On Saturday I slept in, did some school, did some plyometrics, and then had Casey and Richard over at noon to wait for and greet Shannon. Shannon was gone all week in NYC in case you didn't know...

Colleen left with some friends to go to Leavitt's play: The Beauty and the Beast. Richard, Casey and I just hung around, and started blaring hard rock and some techno. It's was pretty epic! Shannon was later than we excepted, but time flies when you're blaring music and making fun of your dance moves!

On Sunday I was a greeter at our church, that was pretty fun, except the fact that my hand nearly went numb in the -2 degree weather.

That brings us to yesterday. Yesterday I worked out with Calvin and Dad at Planet Fitness. We came back, ate some food, then did geek work for awhile. That evening Jenna visited after working out with Colleen.

Over all it was a pretty fun (and very busy) week!

Stairs

Stairs are a handy thing. They're an easy way to get from one floor to another and they safer than elevators... but did you know they can be used as leg and cardio workout? You can run up them and jump up them. You can do this weird crawling thing that is a full body workout, but I'm not going to get into that.

Well, I'm just going to give you a workout and describe the exercises on the way. Where shoes. Bare feet could hurt if you miss a step. Also, if you have a guardrail and you feel like you could trip, use the guardrail.

You can walk or jog down after every exercise. Jogging will be more cardio, but walking will allow you to do some of the later exercises better. I usually do a fast walk down the stairs. Do the exercises as fast as you can while staying in step.

First off you run up stairs. But in this way: right foot on to the first step. Your left foot should follow it on to same step. Your right foot should go on to the next step. Left following... Etc. Do this twice, but next time start with your left foot, and have the right follow. This should be a very fast turn over, because your strides are so short and easy.

Second, you run up the stairs. One foot on each step. Do this twice. Starting with the opposite foot so you do the same amount of reps on each side. This one should be a fast turn over as well.

The next exercise is how I usually use stairs. Every other step. Run up the stairs every other step. Do it twice starting with the opposite foot. Concentrate on bringing your knees high first. This is harder and reduces the chances of you tripping.

Now that you did all the easy stuff, time for something to challenge you. Start off on the balls of your feet, a few inches from the stairs. Your feet should be close together. Now, jump up on to the first stair. Jump up until the top. Do this twice. Keep a hand on the guardrail, just don't cheat and pull yourself up.

Now. The final, and hardest exercise. Do the same thing as the last exercise, but only use one foot. Do this once on each foot. So unless you have more than two legs (I hope you don't), do this a total of two times. If you feel this is too dangerous for someone of your fitness level, don't do it. But, if you like the challenge and know you can catch yourself with the guard rail, (or at least reduce the impact enough so you don't break your nose or something), then do that. Even if you're a well trained athlete, use the guard rail. Many people (including me) on my track team have fallen down doing this exercise. Luckily the only injuries were bruised shins. So use your judgment on this exercise.

If you want to do what we did in track, do that entire workout 2-4 times. This workout is meant to increase speed, and vertical jump. If you change it a little, you can get more cardio and less strength. For example: take out the jumps, but run down the stairs as well. Have fun!

Time to be a Geek.

Yup. This week and next week I'm going to be a geek. My dad is doing an internship with my friend, Richard. He's a really smart guy, and a nerd/geek. We plan on doing some programming stuff on the computer, and then I believe we're going to try and make an online app. These will take a lot of time. The internship is supposed to be 6 hours a day. I won't be doing all of that every day due to having school, acting, workouts to do and hopefully go hangout with other friends.

Because I'm going to have less time, I'm going to write shorter posts for now. Or maybe I'll write a long one, but take two days to write it. This for example, was a shorter post.

Weights!

Yesterday was the second day of SMASH this year. I was going to rehearse in it, so I went. The acting was pretty fun! It's always fun to play the villain!

After SMASH was over, all of of SMASHers hung around and talked. Kenan and Joel told me they had weights for me in their car, so when Shannon arrived, Kenan and I moved the weights from their car to our car. Earlier they gave me four 25 pound plates. All the weights together were: four 25 pounds plates, two 10 pound plates, four 5 pound plates, and six 2.5 pound weights. They also gave me four dumbbell sized bars to hold plates, and two different kinds of barbells, also meant for holding the plates. They also gave me the safeties so the weights wouldn't fall off! That's probably over $200 dollars in weights! It was super generous of the Estes! Even if they claim they're just 'cleaning out their basement', it's still super generous! If you Estes are reading this: THANK YOU!!!

Now... me being a very excited guy, had to try them out! So that night I did some quick cardio, and then weight lifted. Couldn't do any bench press, because I needed a rack or a spotter, but did a bunch of pulling exercises! Felt awesome. Now I only need to go to the gym for cable work, heavy (as in very heavy) weight, leg workouts, and some good core exercises!

Today I have yet another day of SMASH! I have only one line, but it'll be fun just hanging around the great people there! Also, after SMASH the Donahues are coming over to spend he night. Should be fun!

The Restart

So school has restarted after the Christmas break. Hence why I'm writing this post. Now I can't sleep in anymore. It's time to go back to my normalish life. Only this time not only school has restarted. SMASH has. SMASH is now three days a week, in time, it'll be four days a week, and eventually five days a week the week before the play.

I love doing SMASH, it's quite fun! But it's time consuming. So for the next two months I'm going to have to crunch in my school, my workout, SMASH, and things that just come with life. So I'm going to have to change my sleeping habits. Going to bed between 10:30pm and 1:00am isn't going to work. I need to get up early, like at 6:00 or 6:30am.

Speaking of changing habits and sleep: I caught a cold. I actually haven't had a cold since Thanksgiving. That's unusual for me because I seem to have a weak immune system. I think part if that is because I've been eating healthier. My body was loving being sickness free, but then came the holidays. Loads of chocolate and sugar. Also you don't have school in the mornings, so why not stay up late? Yup. That's what I did. All that sugar and unusual sleeping habits weakened my immune system. So what does this have to do with habits? I'm going to change one of mine. I'm going to eat a lot less sugar. I'm going to try to band all soda from myself (besides Moxie, of course), have less desserts, and just over all less sugary meals. This should also help me with my fitness. Less sugar=less fat=more fitness. Also if I replace that sugar with more protein, more protein=more muscle=more speed=better results. So I'll be killing two birds with one stone!

Visit and Meteor Shower

Yesterday evening us Clarke's had Jenna and the Donahues over. Calvin, Abbey, Mom and Dad were out shopping when they all arrived, so it was just Colleen, Shannon, the Donahue girls, Jenna and I. Abbey, Calvin, Mom, and Dad came some time after supper but I don't remember exactly when.

It was a pretty relaxed evening, just talking, playing various games, and eating supper. Some of the girls painted their nails, but that's not really my kind of thing to write about, do that's as far as I'm going with nail painting.

Before the Donahues arrived, Jenna, Colleen, Shannon and I exchanged gifts. Jenna and Colleen worked together and bought me 3 bowties: a black one, a blue one, and a purple one. Bowties are cool. I know have four of them, one from Abbey, one from Jenna, and two from Colleen. I guess I need to get some more nice shirts to go with them. I probably won't wear the purple one without a black shirt, so I'll need one of those!

Anyways, yesterday even was quite entertaining. I enjoy playing games, and it's even more fun when some of the people playing are over tired or hyped up on coffee. It also makes it easier to win, but they didn't need to know that.

I wanted to go to bed early that night for two reasons. One: Calvin, Dad and I were working out at 6am in the morning, and I wanted to watch part of the meteor shower this morning. The girls were aware of that, and so they planned on leaving around 10:15. They almost did, but a funny event involving a mug, water, Shannon's elbow, and Abbey's face made them stay a bit longer.

Overall, I had a great evening. The Donahues and Jenna are pretty fun(ny) people to hangout with!

Now... on to this morning. I did get up in time to watch the last 15 minutes of the meteor shower. To do that, I had to get up at 4:45am. That's why I wanted to go to bed early. Because I only saw the end of of the shower, I only saw about 5 meteors. Which was ok with me because they were pretty bright ones!

After the shower was over I ate some food, and then went off to Planet Fitness to workout. I had an ok workout. Used light weight weights because of my shoulder injury, so it's wasn't that hard. I did do some heavy weight squats though, which was nice. But the thing that made this workout different was that Tim was there! I gave Tim some tips, and just talked to him for and bit, then continued my workout.

Just a Summary...

Well, I haven't blogged in a few weeks because it was Christmas vacation. A ton of things happened in those weeks, so I'm just going to write a summary.

Obviously we celebrated Christmas. We celebrated it with Calvin, my Aunt Debby, Tim, Angie, Gabe, Adeline, Abbey and the rest of our family. I'm not going to list off all my gifts, because that will bore you. Let's just say I had a grand time with everyone, had great food and received great gifts!

We also celebrated mini Christmases with our friends. Yup. I'm not in a listing mood, so I'm not going to list off all the times I exchanged gifts with people, or what I received. I'll probably mention random gifts in my other posts and if I remember to write about it I'll say who it's from.

Now over the whole break Abbey was home (and still is). Calvin was here almost everyday as well, and is still here too! Sean came over for a bit as well. We went and hung out with Casey and Sarah a few times. Went to parties where a ton of SMASHers were, saw some Teenpacters, and on New Years Eve we went to the Estes (we were not the only ones there, a bunch of SMASHers and various Este friends) for a New Years party. My Uncle Steve and Cousin Katie visited for awhile as well!

At the Este's party we played tons of games, ate a bunch of food, just hung out, and laughed, having an over all grand time Us Clarke kids and Calvin ended up staying at the Este's over night because the roads were too icy for us to get home safely. Us guys talked to about 3am, and we ended up leaving their house at 8am to get to our church on time.

Because of all the sweets and lack of sleep in those weeks, I caught a cold. But over all, it was still a grand time! Way too much fudge though!

I may go into detail on some of these fun events later... who knows!