Labor Day

I really wanted to do something with water so my friend Amber, and I were trying to think of places nearby to take our families. Finally, after much deliberation, er, indecisiveness, we chose to go to Ponca City to their Sun-N-Fun waterpark. It was just a little over an hour away and not too bad on prices. The place was somewhat run down, like the slides needed painting, hedges trimmed, weeds and branches all over, etc. Other than that, I'd say it wasn't bad. They had a huge water slide type thingy that Kort lived on most of the day!

Obviously this isn't Kort, but it's what the slide was. We started out sitting behind him to go down. Then gradually went on our own side holding his hand, until he would go down next to us all by himself! He definitely loved that thing. 

They also had a lazy river with tubes to sit on, a wave pool that Clay and him played in. There was a kiddie area that had a mini water slide that Kort could go down by himself (about 10 feet) and he loved that just as much. 

I actually took Griffin down it with me as well and he didn't seem to mind it! Griffin did great through the day. He fell asleep in his car seat so I sat and watched Clay and Kort. Finally at the end of the day, the Clark's watched Kort and Griffin for a few minutes while Clay and I went down the big slide with inner tubes. It was fun!

We left the park and grabbed some food at this mexican restaurant which was actually inside their airport terminal, if you could call it an airport ;) 

Great day with great company.

Columbus Day

Sunday night rolls around, and I'm already thinking about the long week ahead until Clay gets to be home for the weekend. Out of no where, he asked me what time I fed Griffin in the morning. I told him when he wakes up, around 7, and then around 11. Clay was wanting to go shooting the next day. He asked if I wanted to go. I asked how that would work. Would he take some time off work, would I just drive there, who would watch the kids? After being in the dark and not knowing what was going on, he finally told me that he had the day off (ding, ding, ding, because of Columbus Day) and we would be going together to go shooting, and our friends were volunteering to watch the kids :) How I didn't realize Clay had the day off, I don't know, but I was super excited!

It was raining all morning long, but we still decided that rain wouldn't stop us. Clay really wanted to try out some of his new guns. We dropped the kids off at our friend's house and headed out.

We got to some guy's property that Clay knows through having a wind turbine on his land, and it was kind of down in a pit. I don't remember specifically the guns we shot, but I shot a handgun, AR17 I think, and I believe the other was another shotgun. Anyway, it was super fun and I did awesome at hitting the target! Ya'll better watch out ;)

Leonardo's Discovery Warehouse

Our friend/neighbor invited us to Leonardo's back in the beginning of October. We've been there a couple times, but they have changed things up a lot and it was much more adaptive to Kort's age so he had a ton of fun this time!

Kort loves watching Jake and the Neverland Pirates, so he called this rocking ship, the Pirate Ship. Griffin did great the whole couple hours we were there! 

This contraption, you would load the "bricks" and wind them up. The middle picture, Kort was "painting" the wall, and then putting his own flowers together :)

6 months

I cannot believe Griffin is already half a year old. It's been fun to compare him and Kort. At this age with Kort, we were just moving half way across the country from Washington to Minnesota. Four long days in a cramped moving truck. I remember Kort rolling off the bed at one of our hotels, and that wasn't even the first time it happened. Good thing I learned from that and haven't had that mistake with Griffin yet - and hopefully never! Kort started sitting up right after seven months. Griffin's already doing that. Kort started crawling after eight months - I think Griffin is going to beat that. Clay and I decided that having an older sibling really does help speed up their progression.
Here's Griffin's six month stats:

Height: 27 inches = 69%
Weight: 16.4 pounds = 26%
Head Circumference: 43.2 cm = 33%

I couldn't believe he was that low in his weight. I just read what I had posted about Kort's and his was 45% and I was saying how low I thought that was! Oh well, he's doing great, eating well and continuing with solids, which I have now introduced bananas to him for dinner time and rice cereal in the morning. He is still my chubby baby to me.

He is army crawling everywhere! If he sees a toy not in reach, he'll go across the floor to get it - sometimes only to see Kort grab it away at the last second.

Jabbers da-da lots of times during the day.

Oh and how can I forget that he already has his two bottom teeth!! I already posted about how that went. He's much happier now :)

(He had just woken up, hence the red mark on his face, and why he's not smiling :))

Will stay sitting up by himself if I put him down like that. Once in a while he might fall back or to the side, but he's beginning to catch himself forward or to the side. Sometimes when he's in the crawling position, he fall to the side like he is trying to sit down, which he can do, but his arm is clear away from his side so he's not sitting fully straight up.

He's not quite ready to sit in the shopping cart by himself yet, but he does pretty good with big brother!

I want to document his daily schedule so I remember so here goes:

7:00-7:30 a.m. Wake up. Nurse. Feed Kort. Give Griffin rice cereal.

9:00ish Morning nap.

10:00ish Wake up. Play.

11:00 Nurse.

12:00 Eat lunch with Kort.

12:15ish Griffin down for nap.

12:30 Kort down for nap = some quiet time for me!!!

2:00ish Wake up for Griffin (and usually Kort). Nurse. Play.

4:00ish Short afternoon nap.

5:00 Nurse. Make dinner. Feed Griffin solids (bananas right now).

7:00-7:15 Change into pj's. Nurse. Put to bed.

8:00 Kort to bed.

That's about as basic as it gets. We lead a boring life anyway. I've definitely become a homebody and don't really get out much. If I do, it's usually to go grocery shopping or just to whatever store to get out of the house. We did play in the water a little throughout the summer and a couple of parks. I need to do that more now that the temperature has cooled down. 

Anyway, just crazy that Griffin is growing so quickly! He'll be crawling everywhere when we go to Idaho for Christmas. Then we'll be celebrating Kort's birthday, then daddy's birthday. And before you know it, it'll be mine and then Griffin's birthday!!

Meadowlake Train

Kort is getting to the age where he likes trains. He can't really pronounce the "ch" in "choo, choo" so he makes some noise rumbling his lips (I can't think of how else to explain it right now). Earlier this summer we decided to make a family outing to this train that goes around the park and a little lake. I think it was $2 for each person.

Kort seemed to love it, but every time the train blew its whistle, Griffin started crying :(

Just so you know, Clay wasn't grabbing Kort's neck - ha ha He was trying to turn his head to smile at me to get the picture :)

We got sno cones afterwards, which were yummy. But Kort was misbehaving while sitting atop a log with planted flowers and fell off somehow and scraped his shins really bad. Needless to say, we ended the night right then and heard him screaming all the way home. Good thing we had some anti-itch and cleaning stuff in our somewhat newly put together first aid kit that helped him feel better. He's got some good scars on his legs now and every time he looks at them he does his choo choo sounds, then says flowers, then sno cones. It's funny how he associates all those to scraping his legs. Smart kid.

Summer happenings

Now that the temperature has dropped to the high 80's, summer is about over :)

Here's what we've been up to. Clay brought home some wood from work a while ago and I had been wanting nightstands so we finally got around to building them. I got the plans from the blog knock-off-wood, which I love and we've used her plans before. I love how mine turned out. I wanted it vintage/rustic looking so I added some type of glaze.

Clay didn't put the same stuff on his and is a little bigger with a little different design. Love them though! 

We finally got out of the house kid-less! Although it was only a couple hours and went by too fast, we looked at guns for me and got some groceries so it was nice and quiet. Just look at that hunk ;)

This little boy has been teething. For the first week, he wasn't taking any naps. He was fine throughout the day, but just would not fall asleep on his own. So I either held him if I could, or leave him in his bed for the duration of nap time and he would cry or laugh. Nighttime was still ok. Once that tooth was popping through, the nights got rough. He was now napping during the day, but waking up all night. I gave him Tylenol and orajel, but that didn't seem to work. I ended up getting teething tablets and that has helped a lot. He's now cutting his 2nd bottom tooth and finally going back to sleeping through the night. 

He is now way more mobile!! He's army crawling all over the living room, sticking his bum in the air, rocking back and forth on his hands and knees, just getting ready to full out crawl! 

We tried out our county fair again this year. Fail. However, this year the 4-H had some games and prizes for kids to do for free. Kort got 10 tickets to do a ring toss, shoot some hoops, plinko, and spin the wheel. He got some candy and toys from it so he was happy. 

I decided to let him ride the ponies to at least have the experience even though it was 6 bucks for five minutes. 

He loved it though so it was worth the money.

We went to our city's Cherokee strip parade, which wasn't too bad. Kort did great and loved the horses and candy! He loved seeing the fire trucks, but there were too many and super loud with all the sirens going off that he was covering his ears! 

And the grand finale . . .

Longhorns!!!

Just so this post isn't super long, I'll stop here and do separate posts for other things :)

Potty trained!

Another amazing thing that has happened this summer is that Kort is potty trained!! The first few days he was only in undies and had quite a few accidents. He started getting it down and knew when he had to go so he'd run to the bathroom on his own. A while ago he was taking his diaper off grout hour the day and had to go pee so I took that as a sign that he was ready. I would just remind him throughout the day that if he had to go potty to just let me know, instead of constantly taking him every hour, etc. I made a sticker chart to let him put one on each time he went potty on his own. Once he got to the end then he could pick a toy out at the store. He also would get potty prizes each time he'd go poo in the potty as well as a potty snack (skittle, gummy bear) each time he went pee. The whole #2 thing took a while. Luckily he never went on the floor, just in his undies. A few times I could tell by his actions, or lack of, that he was getting ready to go, so I grabbed him and put him on the potty and he'd go. One time Clay and I thought it had been too quiet. Come to find out Kort was on the potty going #2 all by himself!!! It was all uphill from there :) To this date, he's only had one accident and he's doing great through nursery and letting his teachers know he's got to go! He still wears a diaper at night though but is usually dry half the time but I don't want to mess with wet sheets quite yet. 

His Lightning McQueen tent

Mickey Mouse chair

Potty chart completed

Dallas

I haven't seen Jared since before his mission and while I was pregnant with Kort. He got home a couple months before I had Griffin so I couldn't see him for his homecoming. Now he's got two nephews he's never even met! Well, he told me a week ago that his friend's dad was flying him and his buddy to Dallas (where his friend is from) to stay for the week before they could move into their apartment before school started. Jared asked how close we were to there and I said we would take a trip down there to see him!!!!

I was trying to find hotels on Hotwire and was trying to find a good middle ground to where he'd be staying and the temple and shopping. Our friends just stayed there the other weekend and told us about Galleria Dallas - the shopping mall and The Westin Hotel connected to it. It was literally getting out of the elevator from your room and walking into the mall! So, I found the area for that hotel on Hotwire. Before you book, you're not guaranteed that specific hotel, just have a list of ones that are similar to it, same star rating, etc. Our friends paid $200 a night and if we got it on Hotwire, it would be $140 for two nights! Well, I went through the process and once you pay/book, you find out what hotel you got. We got The Westin! I was excited :) 

We left Friday morning, stopped in OKC for an appointment I had, and then made a stop at this place we saw on the Travel channel from the show Food Paradise - The Original Pie Shop -  fried pies. 

It was right off the interstate in Davis, OK. Really, they were good, but I guess I don't like them as much as I used to as a child (the fake, processed ones), but it was fun to check that off our list of food places to visit ;)

We made good time, the kids did great (thanks to our friends letting us borrow their portable DVD player for Kort), and drove to IKEA! We were in there for too long ;) We ended up getting a lot of presents for Kort's birthday and Christmas. That is such a fun store! We finally met up with Jared and went to dinner at this awesome BBQ joint. It was so crazy seeing him again! 

We caught up on life while we ate amazing ribs, pork loin, and brisket. 

We took him back to where he was staying, and ended up saying our good byes :( We didn't think we'd get to meet up the next day as he had a lot planned, so that did end up being our good bye. We'll luckily get to see him again at Christmas though. 

Our hotel was amazing!

Griffin went to sleep pretty well but Kort did not want to fall asleep, even in his own bed. It wasn't super late but he woke up a couple times so Clay got in the bed with him.

Saturday morning we found a Target to get some diapers for Griffin then headed back to the hotel. We started our shopping by Clay taking Kort to look at some dogs there for adoption while I fed Griffin.

It was a big mall with three floors and an ice skating rink in the middle - kind of reminded me of The Mall of America.

I was so pumped to check out certain stores and go on a shopping spree, but as usual, I'm too much of a bargain shopper and only ended up spending less than $50. It was still fun though. I think it was the first time I actually bought clothes from Forever 21 and Clay buying something from Brookstone. 

We ate lunch at Five Guys, where the potatoes were from Idaho Falls that day, then headed back to our room a little later to take naps.

We went shopping some more after, got a light dinner, then went swimming in the pool. I took Griffin and he seemed to like it! It was a little cold and he ended up wearing his normal shorts over his swim diaper since I didn't have trunks for him. Kort loved every minute of it and was brave again jumping off the sides. 

We got back to our room, took baths, and got ready for bed. The boys did better at falling asleep this time :) Kort ended up waking at 6:20 - ugh. Good thing Griffin slept a little longer. We went to get gas, Griffin fell asleep, so we took a drive and checked out the temple. The gates were closed so we did t get many pictures, but it kind of looked like the Boise one. Check off another temple on our adventure map :)

We had to return something at the mall, then ate lunch at Panda Express. I haven't really eaten there and never really wanted to, but I just got the noodles and orange chicken and just gobbled it up it was so yummy! We left at 1:00, the boys took a two hour nap, and we made it home 4.5 hours later! It was a fun trip to get away, seeing how we don't do that often enough, and especially see Jared after forever! 

Jordan's wedding

I now have a new sister-in-law, Brittney, whom I haven't met other than on FaceTime, but I'm so excited that my brother has found his sweetheart to marry in the temple! 

It was somewhat of a fast pace relationship and so by the time they got engaged, we didn't have enough money to fly out there for the wedding. Even if I just took the boys, I don't think I could've handled them by myself :/ so needless to say I was pretty bummed that we wouldn't be there. It would've been amazing to see a sibling married in the temple - since Janelle was married before me, obviously I couldn't go to hers. But there will be more in the future :) 

Everyone was there that night to celebrate except Brooke, who was doing a triathlon that day in Boise, and Jeremy, who actually was part of a rescue mission in the kidnapping of Hannah Anderson. He was a member of one of the Ada County metro SWAT teams that were dropped off from a helicopter in the wilderness to find her. Amazing rescue story and to realize how brave my brother is along with the team . . .

Anyway, so I facetimed Janelle and Tom while at the reception and was able to see everyone! Sounded like it was a great day!

Rolie Polie

I can't believe how fast this boy is growing up! Just yesterday he started rolling all over the family room, back to front, front to back! After I put him down for bedtime, he had been asleep for a bit when he started crying. I went in to check on him only to find him on his tummy. Crazy boy! I have unswaddled him and he's now doing fine falling asleep on his own. It only took a couple days to get used to it. Anyway, just wanted to post this milestone!

Mom and Dad's visit

Mom and Dad were able to come visit us the beginning of June. They had planned to go to Colorado Springs this summer already so I told them they should just turn it into a 2 stop trip since Denver is in the middle of us. They couldn't come for Griffin's blessing, so this worked out anyway. 

They got into Colorado Springs on a Wednesday and were supposed to fly out Saturday morning into Denver then to OKC. Well, mom's ticket wasn't scanning in co springs so by the time they got it fixed they missed their flight. Again, by the time anyone could help and figure things out, they had missed that flight out of Denver to OKC. This is where things just got messed up. The day before, there were some F4 tornadoes that hit west and part of downtown OKC. All those flights got cancelled and every flight (and airline, even into Wichita and Tulsa) they tried to get on, didn't have going into OKC until Monday. Sooo, they were either stuck in Colorado Springs until one of those Monday flights, stay there until their original flight back home the next Wednesday, OR I said they should just get a rental car and drive here. It was a 9 hour drive, but would still get them here earlier than a flight. That's what they decided to do. I was so surprised that my mom agreed to it! Thankfully the airline was going to credit the flight into OKC. After a long and boring drive for them, they got in around 10:30 pm. 

Sunday we went to church, took a much needed nap, and then headed out for Clay to show them some turbines and his work. 

Monday, I took them around town and went to Walmart to grab some diapers and food for dinner. They also bought Kort a bubble lawn mower that he absolutely loves! I'm sure they enjoyed our Walmart - ha ha ha! 

Tuesday, I decided to do the Kids Bowl Free summer program and take Kort for his first time.

Surprisingly he loved it and did great! We had the bumpers up, a 7lb. ball and the ramp to help out.

It was nice to get out with my parents.

We went shopping a little bit afterwards. My dad was so excited to try out Clay's hammock, but he needed an umbrella so we found him one at Ross. He was in that thing everyday :) and it was perfect  weather for it! 

We also went to the park to fly a kite and mom took Kort to see the ducks.

Clay was able to take Wednesday off from work to help me take them back to the airport. We got them there, said our goodbyes and then headed to the mall. We got Clay some early Father's Day presents and headed home. 

It was kind of weird having my parents visit, but it was great. I only say that because it had been a year and a half that I last saw them and the last place they were able to come visit was in Tacoma for Kort's baby blessing! It was a fun time having them here and letting them play with and spoil Kort and Griffin!