Nursery time!

Sundays just got easier!

I'm sure many of you have gone through what we have with a toddler and trying to handle them through all three meetings at church. It's guaranteed that one of us won't make it through the last meeting (Relief Society or Priesthood) as Kort has way too much energy and it's past lunch time. It's also right after he wakes up from his nap in our arms so he wants to run around. That doesn't help.

Luckily . . . the nursery must love him because they let him go in at 17 months, four Sundays early! Ok, so the first couple Clay would put him in there during Priesthood and he did quite well. Now, he's in there the whole two hours after Sacrament and he is an angel in there ;) Yes, he's the typical newbie that cries once he gets dropped off, but he's good a couple minutes later after we leave.

Absolute hilarious story.

Fact: Kort does not sit still. Maybe give or take a couple minutes he will and then BAM - he's off on another adventure. I don't know if it's taking longer for him to "mature", but he still tries to eat crayons, can't sit still in a chair without being strapped in. So, now for the story, or rather a short story.

We love checking in on Kort during nursery to see how he's doing, if he's crying, biting, and what not. Well, this last Sunday, Clay went and checked on him and what do you know, they're trying to all sit at the table, eat their snacks and Kort is on top of the table, crawling to the other end, stealing the other kids' snacks. The teacher pulls him down, puts him back in his chair. This repeated a couple times. 

Ok, so I said short story. I meant it. Guess you have to know how Kort acts. I could not stop laughing for a good solid five minutes when Clay told me this. I can completely picture it. He climbs on anything he can. We have our apartment so baby proofed that we pretty much have nothing anymore. He's gotten to the point where he knows what to use to step up on to climb on the computer desk, the table, or up to the counter top. He uses diaper boxes, his toy box, or our little half circle chair thingy (whatever you want to call it). He is a monkey!

Anyway, it's so, so nice to be able to relax now in Sunday School and Relief Society! 

Then we come home and the madness continues.

happy 4th!

With us just getting back from vacation, we really didn't plan anything spectacular for the 4th. Kind of a bummer, since it's usually one of my favorite holidays, especially when we lived in Idaho. It was guaranteed that there was some sort of water involved, whether being on the Snake River boating, or swimming, cliff jumping, we were there. Then the fireworks. And who could forget the parades! Well, we got nothing of that this year :)

There was no parade in this town of ours. We went to lunch at Rib Crib. BBQ. 

Enough said :) Then had a movie marathon.

This was a really great movie. Awesome that it had clips from the real life story.

Napped through half of this - not on purpose though, since Clay started it after I fell asleep. But the main guy, Dartanyon, is from Percy Jackson - that Olympian movie :)

This didn't fail me. Great like the first one.

We grilled some hamburgers after Kort went to bed and continued watching. Didn't want to leave the house for fireworks since we're trying to get Kort back on schedule, or maybe we were just lazy. So we caught a few out the back of our apartment. It was a great day though. Just relaxing.

So thankful we have a free country to live in and that we have so many brave soldiers that have and are risking their lives daily so that we can continue to live freely and worship freely as we please. 

O--K--C!

This has been consuming my life for the past couple of months. Maybe I jumped on the bandwagon and became a Thunder fan because we live in the same state, so sue me. :) I'm still a Jazz fan at heart. I've come to love this team though, even through losses and all. Ok, so they really didn't lose a whole lot ;) ha ha I have to say that they really aren't much of a dirty team, unlike those Fakers, er, Lakers. This is a bright, young, talented team. Heck, practically all of them, or at least the starters, etc., are under the age of 25, AND they made it to the NBA Finals. That has got to say something. So what, they lost to the Heat. Their time will come :) Maybe I can catch one of their games before we move again from this state. I can tell you what, though, that if we ever moved to LA or whatever, I can guarantee you that I will NEVER be a Laker fan ;) HA HA No jumping the bandwagon on that one :) Here's to OKC Thunder's future . . . !!!!!!!

father's day

Father's day felt a little extra special this year. With Clay's wind project that he's on, he works long hours 6 days a week, so every spare time we get to spend with him is cherished. Clay had his rotation weekend, which meant a big whopping four day weekend! 

I don't want to write a super long post about how fabulous Clay is of a father, because we all know that he is :) But instead I'll do a top 5 list.

1. He comes home after work and still helps me do chores. Even after a 14+ hour day.

2. Takes care of Kort on the weekends to give me a break - and to spend time with him.

3. Did I mention he works super hard to support our family and provide for our needs/wants?

4. He trusts me with our finances :) (had to throw that one in there)

5. He loves the Lord more which in turn draws us closer to Him.

I could go on, but those are some of my favorites about him.

These are some wonderful men that I have married into the family of. We sure do miss Grandpa Fenton though. Dave is such a hard worker to provide for his family and is so kind to others and thoughtful. I'm thankful to have a father-in-law like him.

And how could I forgot my papi - papanawa :) I always told myself I had to marry someone just like him, and I'm pretty sure I did :) He is intelligent, kind, smart, hilarious, and the list goes on. I guess you could say I'm daddy's little girl. 

I'm glad there's a special day to celebrate all the fathers in our lives. I wish I did better at celebrating it like a holiday, but at least I tried more this year :) ha ha I made Clay breakfast, we went to church, I let him take a nap, and he had some friends over that night for a bbq and watch the Thunder basketball game. It was nice that he could at least relax, especially having the next day off of work.

Clay had already gotten a grill for an early father's day present, so this is what he got from me. Just something simple, thanks to Pinterest :)

are YOU insane?!

In all of the almost five years that Clay and I have been married, we really haven't gone on a real vacation. Like, longer than a weekend vacation. So when Clay's family decided we should go somewhere for a type of family reunion, Barb, Brandon's wife, thought of Catalina Island. I hadn't really heard of it before, but I had seen it on one of the episodes of The Bachelor - it was some romantic getaway on an island off California. Yeahhhh! Sounded like a great idea :)

To make a story short, we already started planning months before we were going. We are going the end of June and bought our flight tickets clear back in March. Needless to say, I've been pretty psyched about it. We had also started a family weight loss competition with a pot of $350 for the winner. So to help Clay and I out, we decided to buy the workout DVD's of INSANITY!

We had gone through P90X, although we never made it through a month of that, and those are back in storage in Minnesota, so we needed something. It was a great motivation to get ourselves beach body ready for Catalina.

Well, with a month left of the competition and 3 weeks away from vacation, sadly, I've done nothing. Ok, so I can't really say that. I just haven't lost much. I have been working out. But within the last few weeks I've actually gained weight. I don't know how the heck that has happened. I haven't done anything differently. I have also been super, super tired and exhausted all the time. Ok, so you're probably thinking, are you pregnant?!?! NO! :) ha ha I have an under active thyroid and the only thing I can figure out the problem is that my dosage is not enough. Under active means it's contributing to a low metabolism rate which probably explains the weight gain. I haven't had my blood checked for about five months, so it's possible. My symptoms all relate back to when I first found out I had hypothyroidism - I was sleeping all.the.time. I never noticed anything with my weight though because I was always active, working out, working, going to school, etc. Ok, I'm just rambling on now.

Along with Insanity, I've tried to incorporate their meal plans and kind of count calories and be better about healthy eating. So I have come to a conclusion, which you've heard before, but it's like a light finally clicked on in my head - exercising more leads to better eating habits. It's so funny, you would think you wouldn't have energy for the rest of the day if you work out and "use" all your energy with a workout. It's just the opposite. I find myself making bad food choices when I don't workout, and then I never want to make dinner, do chores, and clean up the house. And so even with my energy level low because of my medication (of what I'm blaming it on right now until I go see a doctor) right now, I still find myself with more energy throughout the day when I get a workout in, even if I only survive ten minutes on the treadmill. Oh, and the Insanity workouts? Really, I've only done like five days of it! HA HA If you've ever done it, or know someone who has, they'll say the warm up is a workout itself. It's SO TRUE! You're literally dripping sweat. It's nasty. So that's my justification some days that at least I raised my heart rate for
ten minutes during the warm up :)

I'm sure you all enjoyed reading my post, that is if you're still reading. Guess I just wanted to remember this moment so I have no excuses in the future saying I won't have energy afterwards if I workout, etc. and yadda yadda yadda :) One thing I do miss? Nursing. Never thought I'd say that. BUT. . . I miss it for the reason that I could keep my weight down :) ha ha Agree? I won't tell you how much I've gained after I stopped, but I'm glad I made it through the hard times to nurse as long as I could and did.

Ok, the end . . . for now. Until Catalina . . . :)

Memorial Day Weekend

I could not wait for Memorial weekend to get here! With Clay's job, he usually works 6 days a week and 14-16 hour days, meaning he leaves before 6 and gets home around 8, if I'm lucky. So this creates lonnnng weeks. They have a weekend (Friday thru Monday) off every 3 weeks. Well, it was his weekend the weekend before memorial weekend. But he got gipped and had to move it to memorial weekend. Lame. Oh well, we lived.

He got off Thursday and noon and took our car in to get serviced. I had Visiting Teachers come over for the first time in literally years. It felt so good and I felt loved. Friday morning, we left bright and early for the OKC Temple. We were actually able to do an Endowment session together! The Relief Society had someone there to help babysit and so they watched Kort. It was so nice to be able to be in the same room with Clay, and be the witness couple. I hadn't done a session since before Kort was born and when my brother was about to go on his mission. It had been long before that that Clay and I went together as well. Guess that's what kids do to you, and when you move around so much that you don't really get to know anyone enough to trust to watch your kid (or I was too much of an emotional wreck and with the baby blues that I couldn't leave Kort :).

We were going to meet up with some neighbor friends and stay at a hotel together and go to either Frontier City or White Water Bay (amusement and water park), but that fell through so we just booked a hotel for the WWB package and went swimsuit shopping. We were in absolutely no rush. It was so nice. It did take Kort 2 hours to fall asleep that night because the front desk never brought us a crib like they said they would.

It was a pretty nice Saturday, cloudy, but hot. The water park was huge, probably as big as Lagoon-a-Beach (you Idahoans and Utards Utahans know what I'm talking about). To make a story short, it was breezy so Kort was cold most of the time. I guess he doesn't like a lot of water, other than his baths. They had a bunch of fountains that we tried to get him into, but he'd just scream when he got wet. So we ended up in the lazy river most of the time, which was fine by all of us. We both got sunburned, me on my back where Clay supposedly applied sunscreen, thighs that never see light, and that stupid hair part that I always forget about and then end up peeling and it looks like dandruff. I guess I did bad on putting sunscreen on Clay's back as well and he had a strip on the bottom. He forgot the top of one foot which burned really bad. You live, you learn. 

Obviously I'm not going to show you my swimsuit body :S ha ha However, a big step for me was that I didn't wear swim shorts, but rather the boy cut swim bottoms. I'm conscious of my legs, ok, upper thighs, and I have been trying to get back into shape for when we go to California this summer. I'll admit, I'm jealous of those moms who lucked out and didn't get any stretch marks during pregnancy and can go back to lookin' hot in a bathing suit post baby. I'm not one of them. You probably didn't need to know any of this though. Just for my own journaling.

Oh, did I mention that Friday night we found a TEXAS ROADHOUSE to go eat at?!!! Oh, I was absolutely ecstatic! We didn't have any around us in Minnesota or Washington and we only got to eat at one once in Boise when we visited family, so I was dying to eat some rolls! It was heaven!

On our way back to Enid, we stopped at Home Depot and bought a grill. Clay couldn't go throughout the summer without one since ours is in storage, in Minnesota. I even used it for the first time last night grilling chicken! Go me!

Monday was a chillax day and we grilled steaks and went swimming in our pool. A little bit more success with Kort in the water. We'll get there. We've got some splash pads in town that I'm hoping to take him to and get him used to getting wet. It was such a great weekend to be able to see Clay for more than 2 hours every night :)

But once again, I need to take the time to ponder on the importance of Memorial Day. I've had many family members fight for our freedom. My grandpa was a medic in one of the world wars. He had so many bad dreams that I remember him saying was the reason why he and my grandma couldn't sleep in the same bed. I miss them. My mom and dad both served in the military. My older brothers grew up in foreign lands because of that. My two brothers, Jeremy and Jordan, served in the military and were in Afghanistan and cities in that country to serve our country. Clay's brother, Justin, is fighting overseas as we speak. He's been in Afghanistan and is stationed in Germany right now. That's just my immediate family. I'm so grateful for their service. We are able to live in the land of the free because of them. THANK YOU!

mother's weekend

So I'm a little behind on posting and since I'm trying to keep up and use this as my journal, I will bore you with the details of Mother's day :) that is, if you end up reading past this.

The Friday evening of that weekend, Clay told me to make sure and have the house clean. Well, if that isn't enough of a hint that we would have someone over. ;) He got one of his work buddies to come over and stay here while Kort was asleep and we could go to dinner. The last time we went out without Kort was last summer back in good ol' Austin, MN. It was so weird to be without Kort. We went to an Italian restaurant, which really wasn't all that great. Oh well. It was nice to get out and just be the two of us.

The rest of the weekend wasn't really all that spectacular. Clay had to work Saturday, like most of the weeks, and so Sunday he took care of Kort like most of the time also. I did, however, get to enjoy a nap without Kort pulling at my hair, and Clay made dinner.

Clay had kept it a secret on what he was making me for the day. I had an idea when he bought play-doh, but it was the best mother's day gift :)

He also let me get a new Scentsy burner! 

We were in need of some good smells in our home.

I was just looking through my old posts from last year and realized that I didn't even have one for mother's day. But I suppose I already wrote about that in my last post or so.