Candie.

When we first got married, we decided that one of our first financial goals was going to be to buy a new car that would last us for many future years to come. After the entire summer of working hard and researching, we decided that we wanted a 2013 Mazda3 Hatchback in Pearl White with the specialty package that included a Bose stereo system and sunroof. Yeah. We like to pretend we are fancy.

We test drove one while in DC and this gave us motivation to save up and work hard. Luckily Tanner was able to work extremely hard this summer to make it possible for us to prepare for the largest purchase of our lives thus far. He's a stud. But I digress.... at the end of the summer we went to Vancouver to see my family and while we were there we decided we would buy it then so we could just drive it to school when the time came.

Before getting to Vancouver I got in contact with the Mazda dealership there in Vancouver so they knew when we were coming and what we wanted exactly to make sure they'd have in stock. Pretty much the easiest sale of their life. Just have it ready and we will come get it.

Well the day finally came and my parents dropped us off at the dealership... we weren't leaving without our car. What we didn't expect is how DIFFICULT and LONG the process is of leaving with the car... After 5 hours of filling out paperwork, meeting with various different departments and convincing them that we indeed had the financial stability for this purchase- we were FINALLY on the road in our new baby :)

Although every long hour in that car dealership was worth it, I don't look forward to buying new car anytime soon. I got my fix of stale popcorn and awkward salesmen for a long time.

The first thing we did while driving away from the dealership was come up with a name for 'her'. After little deliberation, we came up with and decided the name "Candie". Must be spelt "ie" instead of "y". This makes a big difference in the interpretation of her name. Although the explanation behind her name is confidential, her name is Candie and she is p e r f e c t. 

(Oh and did I mention, in the midst of those 5 long hours, Tanner was able to use his amazing sales skills and talk down the salesmen $6,000 from his original offer? Yeah. Attractive.)
By the time we walked out of that dealership, the salesmen was not only barely making any commission off of us, but he even admitted how impressed with us he was. People like to underestimate us. And we like it.

We were able to drive with away with exactly what we wanted, specialty package and all, and only 16 miles to her name. That's a beautiful thing.

Candie:

Tanner finds himself taking multiple pictures a week of her. I only put a couple, to spare you from the rest. It's like our child. Except she doesn't cry, doesn't poop and is constantly playing R&B. and I'm okay with that. 

Dear Candie,

Welcome to the family. We love you.

xoxo,

the clarks.

Our Humble Abode.

Throughout the entire summer in DC, I couldn't help but daydream about when I would be able to finally be reunited with our wedding gifts and an apartment that we would actually be living in longer than 3 months. Since we just moved out to DC with the bare essentials, we didn't do any decorating and the only thing that hung on our walls was one mirror I had made out of spoons. I couldn't wait to be back in Rexburg, open all of our wedding gifts and set up our first real 'home'.

After many box openers, garbage bags full of packaging, meals on the floor and shopping sprees later.... my daydreaming days were over and our first home was finally coming together. It was a fun experience to go out and buy things like our first couch, kitchen table, tv, entertainment center, etc. Neither one of us had ever needed to buy these things until now, and it was fun to do it together :)

So without further delay; I present to you Our Humble Abode.

Kitchen 

                            

Family Room/ Kitchen Table

Bathroom 

Spare Room/Storage for all wedding gifts/my extra closet ;)

Our bedroom :)

Laundry "room" :) 

We LOVE our new apartment and feel more at home every day. I love decorating it and making it our 'safe haven' away from school and work and the chaos of the world. It also helps that I have the coolest & sexiest roommate ever. 

Xoxo,

the clarks.

4,808 Miles.

I know. I'm bad. But it is about time I finally took the time to update the look of our blog and actually post on it! I can't believe how long it's been since I've posted and so much as happened since then, so I'll try my best to quickly update so I don't have to play this rigorous game of catch up any longer.

As the summer came to an end, there were mixed emotions of excitement, stress and sadness. Lets be honest, we were not sad that our hard summer days were finally coming to an end (until next year). However, stress ran pretty high in our home between Tanner trying to get as many sales as he could in our last days there, to me finishing up with the family I was nannying for and also making preparations to pack up all of our stuff in 5 suitcases. We decided that since we are coming back out next year, we would just leave my car with Tanner's boss so that we can use it out there next summer as well. Plus we were planning on buying a new car at the end of the summer anyways, so it worked out great. The downside was that we needed to pack everything into the 5 suitcases we got there with though. But that's a whole other story.

Anyways, since Tanner got offered to be a Team Leader next year, he was required to go on a 'business trip vacation' to Hawaii with all of the other team leaders for the company. The wives weren't invited until after the 4 days of training were over, but since we already had a family vacation in Sunriver planned- it wouldn't have worked with timing for me to fly out there after their meetings were over.

So since Tanner got to fly to Hawaii, I wanted to do something fun instead of sit in an empty apartment all by myself. It just so happened that my BFF Aunt Ericka and my Grandma were coming for their annual trip to NYC that weekend.... Boom. Idea. I got online and there are charter buses that take you from DC to NYC for only $30. Perfect. So on Friday I took the bus and met up with them for a fun weekend!

My aunt and grandma were so nice as to let me tag along with them for a couple days. We packed a ton into those couple of days though! Shopping sprees on 5th Ave and in Soho, Saw Annie on Broadway (they bought me a ticket last minute when they found out I was coming.... how sweet.), yummy dinners, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge and The Shake Shack.

It was so fun to be back in NYC and reminisce on when I lived there last summer. I missed it. It was definitely time to be reunited with the city I am so in love with. It was the perfect ending to our summer living on the East Coast.

Brooklyn Bridge

View from the Brooklyn Bridge (If you squint you can see the Statue of Liberty)

Love the Street Performers 

I was pretty excited about this flannel and vest I found at one of my fave stores in NYC

Brooklyn Bridge with Grandma

SHAKE SHACK. This place will change your life. Even if you have to wait in line for 2 hours to get a burger. Worth every minute. 

View from our hotel! 

Times Square

Gotta love people watching in Times Square. Homegirl is killin' it. 

ANNIE!

Annie on Broadway with Ericka!

Again, the people watching. So perfect. 

Grandma's first time on the Subway! (she was holding on tightly ;)) 

Most perfect day to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge 

While I had so much fun in New York, I couldn't wait to get back, get our stuff packed and get back to Vancouver to see my family that I hadn't seen since my wedding. While I was in NY, I looked up on 'Find my Friends' app (Tanner is the only one I find.... I like stalking him), and because he was in Hawaii, we were 4,808 miles away. The farthest away we had ever been from each other since we started dating. And I hated every single mile of it. 

Tanner with his new 'TaylorMade RocketBallz Driver' golfing in Hawaii. 

(He was clearly HATING the distance as well..... right?) 

Tanner flew from Hawaii to Portland to meet up with me and it was a sweet, sweet reunion. When people say "distance makes the heart grow fonder", it is true. and so does 6 hour time differences. So by the time we were both back on the West Coast- together- I finally felt like myself again :) (gag if you must). 

See you again in 6 months- East Coast! I'm going to enjoy my distance from you while I can.  

Xoxo,

the clarks. 

The Visit of Family.

Tanner's youngest brother Cooper kept my in-laws pretty busy this summer because of his studly athletic abilities on the football field. He was able to attend multiple football camps at various campuses around the country like Stanford and Notre Dame (just to name a few). So they decided to make these trips into a 3 week long vacation and stop at all the cool sites along the way.

When they made their way to the east coast, they decided to end their trip with the very coolest stop of all- DC! :) 

Tanner and I could not WAIT for them to come. Although my in-laws would be sleeping on an air mattress in our empty guest bedroom and Cooper would be all cozy on our couch, we were stoked for them to stay with us. It was the week of the 4th of July so we had been moved out here for a little over a month and were missing our family a ton! (I know I know I'm really late updating all of this! I'm workin on it!!)

It just so happened that I already had that week off of work because the family I nanny for was out of town that entire week. SCORE. And although Tanner never gets days off, this also gave him an excuse to take 2 whole days off! *GASP!* DOUBLE SCORE. 

The first day that they were here they obviously wanted to see the sights. And so did I! Tanner had to work that day, so we said goodbye to him in the morning and went off to be tourists in the city. My in-laws generously bought us metro cards and loaded them up for our week of adventures so we wouldn't have to worry about driving. 

Day 1: We rode the metro into the city and decided to have the Smithsonian as our first stop. The moment we got off the metro, me and Cooper both were literally about to pee ourselves so we had to find a bathroom... STAT. Little did we know, the nearest public bathroom was centuries away (or that's how it seemed to our bladders) so the next thing I knew I was following Coop into some random official Government building and was immediately greeted by security guards and a metal detector. Coop explained that we just really needed to use the bathroom so the security guard took our ID's, made us sign in, checked our bags and sent us through a metal detector. After passing all the tests, we barely made it to the bathroom in time. Later I found out it was the Department of Agriculture or something official like that. Who knows. But after we were done relieving ourselves, we grabbed our IDS back from the kind security official and were on our way. Good times.

After our bladders were emptied, we continued onto our destination, the Smithsonian. Oh and did I mention it was one of the most humid weeks of the summer?? Go figure right?
The type of humidity that makes you feel like you are eating the thickest slice of musty, city air while making you feel instantly wet the moment you walk outside. Love that. Super comfortable. So basically walking around the city was awesome. And by awesome I mean, sticky. But that wasn't stopping us!

         In front of the Capital Building! 

We decided to go to the Air and Space Museum first. (It had amazing AC). Holla! And the exhibits were really interesting as well! We also watched a movie in the I-Max theatre. 

We grabbed lunch afterwards and then headed to the Natural History Museum. Another score for the AC and also of course, great exhibits. I loved the one I went to when I lived in NYC and this was equally as cool! I loved the animals of course.

                       Dinosaurs! 

                    More dinosaurs! 

           My favorite! The elephant!! 

Day 2: Tanner was off work!! YAY! First day (besides the typical Sunday) that Tanner wasn't working until 10:00pm and I was soooo happy! We took the metro into the city with the clan and headed to see some more sights! 

Tanner and I both knew that we wanted to go to the famous Holocaust Museum while we were living here, so we decided when his family came it would be the perfect opportunity. Apparently we underestimated the popularity of the museum and considering the fact it was the day before the 4th of July in DC, the patriotic were out and about and determined to flood the sights.

Luckily, my Father in-law prepared and even though the tickets to the museum were sold out for the next week (What??) he was able to swing it to get us VIP tickets by making a generous donation and we were all able to go! I was soooo excited. Props to you Big Papi!

When we got there they tell you to grab a booklet and that is your 'person' and each level of the museum you complete, you read a new page in the booklet about your person and then at the end of the museum you find out whether or not you survived the Holocaust. They are real people from the holocaust so it gave it a whole new meaning. The museum was GIGANTIC and took us about 3 hours to get through but it was soooooo moving. So many videos and real life examples. It made the Holocaust seem so much more realistic to me and even then made it almost impossible to understand and fully comprehend. My person was a young girl who during the midst of the holocaust ran away and hid in some palace until she was discovered by some prince and they migrated to New York and got married and lived happily ever after. Go me. Cooper ended up dying by being hung in public. Sad. 

 Afterwards, we went to the National Mall which we soon figured out was sooooo huge and spread out. It had rained that morning so it was also extra humid. Sweet. But we were determined to see at least the Lincoln Memorial! After many wrong turns and eventually seeing majority of the memorials in search of the Lincoln memorial, we finally found it! And although we were all dripping with nice, salty, sweat... It was worth it and gave us a funny story to look back on!

This is the view of the monument from the Lincoln Memorial. It is under construction this year, so it is covered by scaffolding- but it still makes a cool picture! 

               

Brotherly love. 

                It's fine. We had to ;) 

Humidity and all, it was an amazing visit and especially because I got to spend some much needed quality time with family and my honey! 

Day 3: the 4th of July we decided to sleep in, have breakfast at I-Hop (our fave), lay by the pool, and then go to Georgetown for a movie (White House Down ironically), shopping and dinner! We ate at another one of mine and tanners spots-the famous  Serendipity! And ended the night off with nothing better than a Frozen Hot Chocolate! Our favorite!!!

We were so grateful to have them come and be able to have so much fun together. They spoiled us rotten but more importantly, we were able to enjoy each others company and make even more cherished memories here on the East Side :) We are truly blessed! 

Xoxo, 

-mr & mrs clark