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 :)

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.