Good-bye and Hello

This summer had been a lot busier than it seemed to be. Maybe it seemed to drag on because I was sick through most of the latter part, but Clay was also putting in extremely long hours at work. He had worked a 90+ hour 6 day work week and him and some other guys had actually figured out how much overtime he was working and what his hourly pay would have boiled down to if he was paid hourly. It was roughly around like $3.15/hr. Absolutely pathetic. 

We both knew this was going to be our last wind project because we just couldn't do the long hours anymore, we needed to settle down a little more permanently because of this baby coming, and I just wanted some stability, as well as Clay did. So, the option at the time was to figure out what we wanted to do next with Mortenson - try and get back into the FCG group that we originally started in, or try and get into one of the offices to be more settled. 

Clay went back and forth with the main guys of each group seeing if they had any positions opening up anytime soon. We had been told so many things that we thought we'd end up in Virginia for a while. Then it was North Dakota or Iowa. Or we could have gone to the Seattle group. I also thought that Clay would enjoy working somewhat with his old boss in the Phoenix group. As for me, I hated not knowing what we were going to do, when we would be moving, and where for how long. 

Out of the blue, one of the guys Clay works for (he works for the owner/company of the wind farm) commented that he should apply for the assistant supervisor position of this company, Enel, and work aside him which he is the supervisor of the wind farm. We looked into this company more and asked about its benefits, etc. and then thought long and prayed hard about this. 

I was at the point where I wanted to get out of Enid. I just wanted to move anywhere else. I didn't want to live in Oklahoma, of all places, for the rest of my life. So I may just have had a little bit of a bad attitude in thinking about this position. 

A little about it - it would be a permanent position. We wouldn't be moving in 6 months or a couple years. This position would be running the wind farm for as long as it was there. That's what we wanted. Clay was to the point where he wanted something more consistent - not the type of job where it's different stuff/tasks everyday - that's what's been giving him so much stress. Also, it would be a 40 hour work week. No Saturdays or Sundays, which Clay pretty much has been working every Saturday and lately most Sundays. Anyway, the list goes on of the pros with this company and position.

So what the heck, he applied. 

To make a long story short, from the application process to the end, it probably took three months to find out he got HIRED!!! 

What a relief! I finally know what we're going to be doing with our lives for quite some time now. We are moving out of this apartment (thank goodness!) and moving into a HOUSE the weekend after Thanksgiving! We'll rent for a little bit so we can save up to hopefully buy our own house in the near future :) Finding a house to rent has been an adventure itself. The rental market here is crazy! Because of all the oil workers and air force base, it's very much a demand so once you find something you like, IF you find something, you better pounce on it fast! We definitely lucked out. 

So here's to our future - with Clay being home earlier than 7:00 p.m. and having time to spend together as a family!!!

As for our old company now, MORTENSON, they've been incredible. 

Great company to work for. Clay has been lucky to work with wonderful people and we've met some great friends along the way. Although the wind group wasn't exactly the route we thought we'd end up in, it in itself has helped us out tremendously. It has gotten us completely out of debt, been able to save up an emergency fund, and even buy a new (used) car and still stay out of debt! (Thank you to Dave Ramsey as well!)

Don't be jealous that I joined the mini-van club. I'm cool like that. You can thank me later when I haul all your stuff around town that couldn't fit in your sedan. 

We had originally planned to get another Accord from the same guy we bought the one we have now. However, he was a bust and did not help us until the last minute, which the cars he found was out of our price range. Clay kept hounding me saying it would be a good idea to just get a mini-van. I said I would NEVER own one, and stuck to that. But as I was getting desperate to find a car (maybe not that desperate), it just made sense to get a mini-van. Clay's parents had picked us up from the airport and it was SO easy to get Kort in and out of his car seat in their mini-van. And with my belly ever growing, it made it a lot more comfortable to do so. Then we found this pretty. And we bit the dust. Purchased. New mini-van owners. Let's just say it's kind of hard adjusting to a bigger car to drive, but I sure love it. Now you can make fun of me. I don't care.

Here's to Enel, Clay's new company, with high hopes for our future here in Oklahoma!

(Now there's no reason why you can't come visit us now. No excuse to say that you don't know when you could because we'd just be moving again . . . cause we won't, for a while :))

C + J = #2

For around two months this summer I wore these puppies day and night.

They look just like sweatbands.

But they helped my sanity.

My MIL asked me one morning via skype if I had just gotten done working out because I was wearing these "sweatbands". I told her no. Then I quickly made something up as to why I was wearing them. That's when I knew I had to be tricky on what to tell people if they asked me what they were.

Then one afternoon I was at a playgroup at the splash pad with Kort. My friend asked me out of the blue if I was pregnant. Dead end. I quietly told her "yes" and she went on to explain that she thought I had been because of these seabands. She'd wear them for traveling due to motion sickness and she knew of people wearing them during the first trimester of pregnancy to help with the morning sickness and nausea. 

Well, my friends, yes, I am pregnant with baby #2!

I have already announced it on facebook. But, I want to document it on here so I don't forget because obviously (to me) I don't write in a journal so this is what I have for remembrance. So to start from the beginning . . .

Clay and I felt it was the right time to continue on with growing our family. With Kort, once I got on my thyroid medication, it took two months to get pregnant. I didn't know how it would go the second time around because my period was still kind of messed up, but nothing like it was before the medication. I heard also that it was harder the second time around. 

Well, our trip to Catalina Island had come. I was prepared to be miserable right in the middle of the trip - if you catch my drift. So I thought it would be fun just to be stupid and draw this in the sand: 

C+J = #2.

Never did I think it would ring true.

I never did become miserable that week. 

And about two weeks later . . .

(sorry if this grosses you out)

I put a puzzle together for Clay to find around the house to find out the surprise!!!

I still couldn't believe my eyes when I saw the double line. I was in shock. There's no way this could happen again. I thought being pregnant was a one time deal. It was done and over with. Even though we wanted more kids, it still didn't seem like reality. I started tearing up and said a quick prayer to my Heavenly Father and thanked Him for this miracle happening.

The rest is history.

So, after about two + months of suffering through major fatigue and 24/7 nausea, I finally started to feel better about the 15 week mark. Kort was still taking 2 naps throughout that time which was a tremendous help so I could get in that much needed rest. 

At that 15/16 week checkup - I had to go by myself - the doppler wasn't working so the doctor just did a quick ultrasound to check the heartbeat. We got a pretty good look at what our little babe would be - and how could you miss such a thing!?! I felt bad because I knew before Clay and he wasn't even there. He was for the 19/20 week u/s however and we both saw!

PURE BOY!!!

(I won't already embarrass him so no gender shot, but trust me)

We headed to Idaho a couple weeks later. I was going to have a "gender reveal" party with blue food, etc. but time just ran out. So no creative way to announce. I wanted to do something for Halloween though and incorporate my belly since it's getting "out there". I don't even know how I came across the idea, but I decided to do Dr. Seuss' Thing 1 and Thing 2. Kort was obviously Thing 1, and my belly was the Thing 2. I was going to get Clay that red and white tall hat but procrastinated so we didn't quite have a full family costume. 

(There was supposed to be a white background of the circles so it's hard to see)

And since the Things have blue hair (other than for me - ha ha), I found this darling crochet tutorial and made Kort's hat!

Now, to finish off this super long story to bring it up to date, sadly, I have only taken one belly picture, and it wasn't even for my belly - my awesome sis in law and I were making maxi skirts so I took a picture of how mine ended up, which just so happens to partly show my belly at 21 WEEKS!

I'm huge! AHH! Yes, it's true you are much bigger quicker after your first one ;)

Pumpkin Patch

This last weekend we decided to hit up pretty much the one and only pumpkin patch close by us. Nothing like our Farmer John's pumpkin patch in Austin, MN last fall. They just loaded a bunch of pumpkins and dumped them in the front of this school and decorated it. It was nice to just let Kort run wild for a little bit, even though it was in the 80's and didn't feel like fall at all. We ended up getting a couple little pumpkins and one big one. We could have probably paid half the price from ones at wal-mart, 

but it was the whole experience that I wanted :) 

Freezer Meals

Ok. I'm completely a newbie at this. I wanted to try doing freezer meals to
1. Cut our grocery bill
2. I'm sick of cooking once 5:00 hits
3. Do it sometime in the future

I decided the night before shopping to gather a menu. There's plenty of resources out there, but I'm really picky with my meals so I found some good crockpot recipes. I got all the recipes together and put a shopping list together as well. I'm so glad Clay was home this weekend to help watch Kort otherwise I would have been a complete mess.

Just before I was going to get everything started, I realized a rookie mistake. I bought frozen chicken. Now how are you supposed to cut chicken to freeze it? You surely can't thaw then refreeze it without cooking, which would have defeated the whole purpose of my plan. I was completely bummed out. So to make a long story short, lesson learned to buy fresh everything first. However, I did have a pork roast and round steak not frozen so I was at least able to make 4 freezer meals. Maybe one of these days I'll find someone who is a pro and can help me out and we can do a day of freezer meals :) ha ha

Sunday drive

Clay heard at church that the scouts were going camping at the Glass Mountains, just outside of town. He wanted in on this because, well, you know Oklahoma, there's no mountains anywhere so where just was this special place?!

We took off and threw the destination in our phones. This is what we came upon. 

It had to be the place.

Not quite what we had hoped for. Oh well. We got out and took a walk around. Stretched our legs, and were pretty much back on the road minutes later. 

I guess this is as good as you're going to get out here on the plains. 

Hope those scouts have fun camping :) 

It was then that Clay decided he couldn't live here for the rest of his life. Me neither. Ha Ha Nice Sunday drive, however. 

Twister

For Clay's last rotation weekend, we wanted to try and find something to do outside of Enid. I heard about a fair and parade in this town called Pond Creek, population like 500? I don't know. The parade wasn't too bad. Nothing compared to what I'm used to for Burley's during fair week. I tried to get Kort to get candy, mostly for myself :)

We tried to find the fair grounds but never did. So, we had another plan. About half hour north of there was the Twister Museum. You know, the movie?! In the town of Wakita, Oklahoma. Kort fell asleep on the way there and it was lunch time. We decided to just look up a place there on the GPS which was appropriately called Twister Cafe. Sounded fine. We get there and it's practically desolate. And that cafe? Um, totally shut down. Luckily we found a little grocery store/convenient store and bought some nasty pizza and chili dogs. We made it to the museum/little building and took an hour tour while Kort made the place even more like a twister, tearing everything apart.

Wakita's water tower. The one you see in the movie.

Location map of places filmed at, all pretty close to Enid where we live.

The outside of the "museum".

Bill Paxton's pinball machine :)

The original Dorothy from the movie.

Aunt Meg's house before and after the F4 hit.

What the crew did to the town of Wakita. Literally made it a disaster. And to top it off, they left it like that for 2 weeks after filming, just in case they needed to come back and fix scenes.

It was actually pretty cool checking out all the stuff and hearing stories about the movie, since I actually knew the movie and like watching it. There have been people from all over the world that have come to the museum. There are actual storm chasers around here from England which made them stop by as well. Don't think I'd drive/travel 10+ hours just to come check out the museum, so it was pretty nice that we lived so close to check it out.

Labor Day

I thought it would be fun to explore a little more of Oklahoma, so I wanted to go check out Tulsa. I thought the zoo would be fun to take Kort to, so I kind of had that planned out. Well, after 94 hours and 7 days of work later, I didn't think Clay would want to go anywhere and would just want to relax. So I put those plans on hold. It was going to be 100+ degrees so we decided no on the zoo, and Clay wanted to get out of the house, so we opted for OKC instead.

Bricktown was our new destination. Come to think of it, we drove past the Thunder's stadium, and I didn't even get a picture. Guess that means we'll just have to go to a game this season to get one :) The only thing I can compare Bricktown to is a mini downtown with a bunch of restaurants - the party place after the games. They have a riverfront type thing similar to San Antonio (of what Clay told me) that you can take a water taxi on. We just ended up stopping at Bass Pro Shop and finding a place to eat lunch.

We ate at Jazmo'z Bourbon Street Cafe just off the riverwalk. Pretty good food, I got chicken fettucine alfredo, but I wouldn't get that again, even though it was good. Half the plate was full of grease after I almost finished. Clay got an appetizer of "alligator bites". He said it was just fried meat and had me try a piece. Dumb blonde of me. It was real alligator meat. Nasty. Ok, so it really wasn't all that bad, just really bland.

We had parked a ways away at the Botanical Gardens and I had planned on maybe letting Kort play in their splash area and us walking around. Well, it all lasted about 5 minutes until it was sweating hot and we just hopped in the car and left. Kort was getting cranky so I told Clay to just find a Target and they could take a nap while I went in.

Oh how I have missed Target! Well, the one we found quickly on the GPS was similar to the one we had in Austin, MN so not big and not a Super Target. Oh well. Kind of in the ghetto area too. I felt good when I walked into the store. However, that feeling soon dwindled as I wasn't finding any great deals. I then realized the one main reason I have loved Target was for their clearance and couponing. Don't get me wrong, I love all their stuff, I'm just a cheap-o and rarely buy full priced items there. I left the store with only the purchase of a bottled water for Clay.

Kort never ended up falling asleep so we headed home and entertained him with a water bottle and twizzlers. He went to bed early. We bought Battleship and it was AWESOME! Rihanna wasn't too bad of an actor and Liam Neeson is brilliant as always. It was such a great day though to be able to spend with Clay, seeing how I pretty much hadn't seen him for the last week. Good thing it's his rotation this weekend and it's fair time here!!! Yee-haw!