Cheers to 6 years!

Six years!! It still seems like such a short time that we've been married, yet I feel like I've known Clay forever and have always been with him :) 

This last year together has been full of emotions. It was the beginning of Clay's new job which has created the opportunity for being home more often and not working long hours leaving me less stressed and more happy ;) Clay got to deal with my crazy pregnancy hormones even after Griffin was born. We finally made it back to the temple after it being not a whole lot possible while I was pregnant. We made it happen with having to take the boys with us, not having a babysitter, and did initiatories while taking turns watching the kids. 

With being married towards the end of the year, this is sounding like a year in review ;), but it was a great one! 

Clay surprised me with these BEAUTIFUL flowers! He knows I think flowers are lovely, but I'd rather not have them because I hate that they just die and feels like a waste of money. Am I pathetic for thinking that?! Haha Regardless, I still love that he surprises me with them :) I surprised him with this framed "love story"! 

He also made a fabulous dinner of chicken alfredo and had a relaxing night after the boys went to bed. 

We actually went out and celebrated the weekend before. Our friends invited us to the play, Dracula, at the local theater. They got a babysitter and we brought our kids to their house, and go figure, our boys were the only kids still up at ten when we got back. About the play...um, we didn't really know the whole story and so it ended up being pretty crazy/gory(realistic fake blood) and just weird!! It was nice just to get out on a date, finally!!!

I'm so blessed to have Clay as my best friend and to have been sealed with him in the temple for eternity!! He gets me. He knows when I need space, comforting, love, attention, help, relief. He understands the language of women simply because of me ;) He is incredibly patient with me, an amazing father to our beautiful boys, so much fun to be around, makes me laugh and really I could go on forever. I look forward to our never ending story!

Griffin at 7, 8 and 9 months

Mickey Mouse is getting smaller and smaller!

At 7 months, he:

-Crawls everywhere

-Pulls himself up to things

-Has 2 teeth

-Loves his solid foods

-Says "da da" all the time

At 8 months, he:

-Starts to walk along the couch

-4th tooth about to pop through

-Loves to "talk" (yell) with his brother

8 month stats:

Weight: 17.8 pounds = 16%

At 9 months:

-It's hard to get him to sit still for anything, or lay for a diaper change

-Has 4 teeth

-Loves his finger foods (bread, puffs, graham crackers)

-Walks by himself when pushing something in front of him

His 9 month doctor appointment stats:

Height: 28.5 inches = 58%

Weight: 18.6 lbs = 17%

Head circumference: 45.1 cm = 43%

Halloween

For some reason, I had the urge to go all out for Halloween decorations. I found so many fun things on pinterest and actually completed most of them!

We most definitely had to watch "Ernest Scared Stupid" for Halloween night :) My friend and I got together to make a fall wreath, but somehow mine turned into a Halloween one. I saw this tutorial on making paper bats and taping them to look like they flew out of your fireplace :) Loved this one!

I decided to do better at making our meals consist of Halloween ideas, so we got Papa Murphy's pumpkin pizza, I did mummy hot dogs for lunch, and attempted making jell-o worms (didn't quite work out, but it was still yummy)!

For our ward Halloween party, I really wanted to stay on our costume theme - cops and robbers - so I made money bags to hand out. I believe Clay and I put together around 130 bags, thinking that would be enough. There was probably 4-6 pieces of candy/mini candy bars in them, so it was one heck of a deal for the kid in the first place :) We created our van to be a prison where Clay handed the bags out of the meal slot. Those puppies were gone in maybe ten minutes. There were a ton of people that came, obviously more than we thought would/planned. 

I also really wanted to do a good pumpkin carving this year (we got our huge pumpkins for cheap at Aldi!) so I found this OKC Thunder pattern. I thought it turned out pretty decent - at least you know what it says!

Who can resist such an adorable money bag?!?!?!?! I found this idea on pinterest, once again, and had fun putting it together! Griffin got so many compliments!

We took Kort around the gym to do some of the carnival games that the youth put together for our ward party. He started catching on and was able to do some games by himself. Then we headed out to the parking lot for trunk-or-treating. Just look at my cute cop and robber :)

Halloween night we wanted to try out some real street trick-or-treating and wanted to take Kort to his nursery leader's house, Sis. Mortenson. She is one of the most sweetest and kindest ladies I know, so it was fun to go there where Kort knew someone. Then we headed to our friend's neighborhood and did pretty well, even got a house that gave out full size candy bars! ha ha

Really, Halloween is probably one of the most pointless holidays, but it's so much fun decorating for and partying. I really wanted to put a party together, but things just got in the way, and people were busy with school carnivals the only night we could do it. Some other year :)

Pumpkin Patch

I bought a Groupon to a pumpkin patch, just 5 minutes away from the Temple, so we could kill two birds with one stone.

The groupon included 2 free mini pumpkins, take a ride to the slide and straw maze, petting zoo, and whatever else there was to do. Kort enjoyed looking and petting the animals. We saw pumpkins being shot out of a cannon, and started to wait in line to catch a ride to the maze, but Griffin started getting hungry so we ended up just leaving. It was still fun for the time we were there, but I'm glad we had planned other things to do in OKC than just this. Kort still loves to run away and not stay by us so it was probably not as fun as it could've been, but he'll get the hang of doing things as a family as time goes by :)

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 :)