Half birthday

Updates on Clifton -
Clifton has been really fearful this week.  Scared of going to bed and being alone.  Scared when the lights are off, just scared.  So he has been waking up often at night and early because of his fear.  One night he was so (genuinely) scared that he was in full on tears and screaming for me to stay with him and hold him.  Not sure how to calm him down I thought for a second and realized this is a great opportunity to teach him a lesson.  I let him know that I get scared too and that when I get scared I say a prayer asking Heavenly Father to help calm my spirit and make me feel safe.  So we did that.  We had already said our night prayers so this was just a prayer for asking Heavenly Father for help.  After Clifton prayed (of course me telling him what to say) he laid down and went to bed with no fear and slept through the night and has not really been fearful since.  What a powerful lesson he learned and I was reminded too.  Heavenly Father loves us all and can help us even in the simple things such as prayer.  I hope Clifton realizes that Heavenly Father is always there for us.  Being a parent is hard but so worth it specially in moments like that.  The next morning he woke up and told me Heavenly Father is in his room.  He is so cute!

Funny/cute thing he said this week -
We were making cookies for Peterson Movie Night and while he was helping he turned to me and said "baking is so fun".  Love him:)
Also he had a stuffy nose all week and one morning he said "Mom my nose is broken".


Updates on McKay -
She is starting to dance to music and I love it.  We have little dance parties out our house.  She is good:)
Her personality is getting stronger and stronger.  If she does not like something she lets you know.  She is such a girl:/

We spent a lot of time outside in the beautiful weather we have been having and McKay is loving being outside.  She loves feeling the grass and crawling around following the boys.  So different then Clifton was.  He did not really like grass.

I had to put this one.  It makes me laugh.  She is very silly!

While we were outside Clifton found a caterpillar.  To my surprise he picked it up and brought it to me.  So I showed him how to hold him without hurting him.

  The caterpillar crawled all over Clifton and he thought it was great!

Tuesday was Clifton's half birthday.  He is now 2 and a half years old! So I decided it would be a fun new tradition to celebrate half birthdays.  With simply a half birthday cake and some fun party games.

So we got busy making a half cake.  (don't judge me I am not good at making cakes look pretty)

 McKay helped by making music with pots and pans:)
Then we got some party blowers out and went crazy dancing around and blowing the blowers.

McKay of course joined in on the fun too!

Later it was time to eat the cake.  Clifton loved blowing out the candles.  But neither him nor Evan really ate the cake.  So almost all of it went in the trash.  But we had fun and that is all that matters.

Thursday it was free museum admission in Tacoma.  So we went to go see the new Lemay America's Car Museum.

 There were so many cars in there.  My mind was blown away!  Clifton enjoyed it.

He really liked the slot car track.  Of course Alex had to play too!  Both the boys really enjoyed it.  McKay had fun watching.

Saturday I had a crazy experience.  I went to donate blood to help a young man in our ward earn his Eagle award.  I was a little nervous because I have not donated since I was in college.  But I felt fine afterwards and went about my business.  I put the kids to sleep and sat down to be lazy and watch TV.  I stood up to charge my phone on the dock by the TV.  I was light headed so I grabbed onto the shelf.  Next thing I knew I was shaking on the ground.  It took me a little to put it all together.  But realized I passed out when everything on the shelf was on the floor around me.  Luckily the kids was not in my arms or under me.  The worst part was Alex was not home to help me:/  But I survived and realize it could have gone a lot worse.  I can handle some bumps and bruises.  This is the first time I have ever passes out. It is a crazy feeling.  I think I might not donate blood for a while.

Beginners Silk

Updates on Clifton -
He has been wanting to drink from a big boy cup lately so we have let him try and he does really well.  The tough thing for him is he cannot carry it around like he does his sippy
We are still trying the potty training but it is not going anywhere as of now.  I am not pushing him very hard because I feel if I will push he might just not do it or fight back by peeing all over the place.  So I am trying to go at his pace.  I did go to the store with him and pick out a few cheap toys he wanted and put them in a basket.  I explained that if he goes potty on the toilet he can pick a toy out of the basket.  So far he wants the toys and will sit on the toilet but he does not go potty:/  We will keep trying.

Updates on McKay -
She has had stood a few times without holding onto anything.  Of course when she noticed she fell down:)  She keeps growing and growing and it is way too fast.  She is starting to play by herself better these days and that makes me happy.  She loves watching Clifton and Evan play and often tries to join in.  The boys are usually very nice and let her, until she crawls all over them and tries to use them to stand up.
She also has another tooth poking through.  So two in the bottom front so far.

This week was crazy and crazy fun!  Alex left for Washington DC this week for work.  He only went for one meeting so had a lot of time to roam around and explore Washington DC (I am not going to lie I was a little jealous).

He enjoyed going around and seeing the newer structures they have built.  He also loved going to the Smithsonian Museum and spending way too much time there.  Alex was there for 9/11 and they had some memorial services going on at the Pentagon for people that died and people who lived because of others.  He was very touched by their words and felt lucky to be there.

Monday morning at 5AM our house fire alarm went off.  I jumped out of bed and ran downstairs to see no smoke anywhere.  I quickly grabbed the kids and tried to comfort them while trying to figure out what was going on.  Finally it stopped after opening a window, which freaked me out.  (This was about an hour of alarms going off).  I was not sure I should call 911 so I waited till the fire station was taking calls and asked what they thought.  He suggested I call 911 and make sure it is not carbon monoxide which is what I thought it could be.  So I called 911 and she tells me to get out of the house NOW and the firefighters will be there soon.  That freaked this worrying mother out.  So we went outside and waited for the firefighters.  Of course Clifton and Evan were excited to see a fire truck again and right outside the house.  In the end, there was not a significant reading of carbon monoxide and I still have no idea why it went off.  It was a very scary and tiring morning.

 Since Alex was out and about in Washington DC looking at museums I decided to take the boys to one near us.  I have never been to the Puget Sound Navy Museum and it was right next us.  So we took a visit.

 It was a lot of fun.  They had a cute little kids area for the kids to roam around.

 And even in the rest of the museum they had a ton of buttons to push, structures to climb on, and things to play with.  The boys enjoyed it.

 However I think they enjoyed the water fountains outside even more!

I saved some of the packaging from the BBQ we got a little while back and I was planning on letting the boys play with it.

I gave them some tools and set them to work destroying the styrofoam.

Thursday night I escaped for the evening.  I took my bike over to the ferry and went over to Seattle.  So I have never taken a bike on the ferry.  For some reason in my head I was thinking that I was not taking a car so I must go load where the pedestrians load.  After a few weird looks I realized I was supposed to load with the cars.  Oh I felt so silly.  Very embarrassing, but now I know for next time.  Once I got to Seattle I biked over to Emerald City Trapeze Art where I meet my sister-in-law, Rebecca, and took a Beginners Silk class.  So biking in Seattle is a whole new experience.  It was fun and a little scary.  The roads are scary driving but even more scary riding a bike, mainly because I am in the cars' way.  Anyway I survived!

 It was SO much fun!  It was extremely hard and tiring but very fun.  Even after losing all the baby weight and getting back into shape my body still struggled to pull myself up and to balance.  It takes a ton of core strength and grace.  Which I am sure I could use more of both of those;)

Friday we went to the zoo for the first time this summer.  This was the first time going with Clifton where he was really excited and understood what we were doing and knew what they different kinds of animals were.  It was fun!

 McKay loved the shark tank.  She was amazed by it.  She also loved the fish tanks too.  She would kick her legs in excitement and make her ahhh face.

 The walrus was cool.  It would swim right next to the glass and you felt so tiny next to it.

 McKay is such a trooper.  She is a real good girl and is easy to do things with even if it throws her schedule off a little.

McKay's first ride on a carousel.  She loved it as much as Clifton does. 

Clifton and Dad looking like studs in their sunglasses.  Like father like son. I tried to get one with them looking at me but Clifton took them off before I could.  Love this photo!


We went to go visit our good friends over in Redmond this weekend.  We all went to visit Snoqualmie Falls and had a little picnic together.

 The falls were beautiful!

All the kiddos playing together.  It was great getting together and seeing their little one grow.  I love getting together with friends:)

Half Marathon

Updates on Clifton -

He is SUCH a daddy's boy!  He wants dad to do everything and always wants dad's full attention.  If I tell Clifton that I love him he will say "I love Daddy."  No joke:/  I can't blame him, he does have a good dad.

Clifton is getting really good with his colors.  He is not perfect but for the most part he could name his color and point to the right color.  He is also getting good at one to one correspondence.  He knows his numbers up to ten but he is starting to count one item at a time and count the correct number of items.  He is still working on it but he does pretty well.

 

He loves his sister and it melts my heart!

Updates on McKay -

Well her first tooth has made an appearance.  Here we go!  She actually is handling it well.  A little more fussy and needy then normal but it has not interrupted her sleeping, yet.  Hopefully I did not jinx myself:/

Her personality continues to shine more and more everyday.  She is going to be just as silly as Clifton is.

 She is using a sippy now!  She is growing up super fast.

For Labor day we spent the night at Alex's parents house.  Clifton loves going to Grandma and Grandpa's house.

Grandma had some more blackberries to pick.  So Clifton got to work!

On Labor day I spent the morning doing my half marathon.  It was my goal that I gave myself after I started running a few months ago.  I also decided to give myself a more challenging goal (for me maybe not challenging for others) to run a half marathon, 13.1, in under two hours.  So summer was coming to an end and I wanted to get one in.  I found one in Elma which is right next to Alex's home town, McCleary.  I knew it was a small town so I was not expecting a big turn out or a fancy race.  I figured we could spend time with Alex family over the holiday and Alex could hang out at home with the kids while I was running and just meet me at the end later.

It was defiantly an experience!  There were only 9 half marathon runners.  And I came in second!  The whole time I thought I was in first because no one was in front of me but there was someone who accidentally ran earlier with the marathon people.  Anyway I was excited to come in second even though there were only a few of us.  But since there were only a few of us they did not get prizes.  I just wanted a trophy or something.  Not very often will I come in second.  But the main thing is I did it and I did it in under two hours.  1 hour and fifty eight minutes!  I also got to meet some cool people along the way.  I ran with a guy who was running the marathon but showed up late so he ran with the half marathon people (if you could not tell it was not very organized).  But he was an older man in his 40's and in the last six months has almost traveled to all 50 states to run marathons.  This was is 98th marathon.  He needed to do two more to hit one hundred and go to Alaska to get to all 50 states.  He was intense.  We both had a laugh when telling each others our life stories.  He thought I was crazy for being married and having two kids by the age of 25.  And I thought he was crazy for not being married and not having kids and traveling all over the world to run.  It is interesting to hear the other ways people live their lives.  All in all it was fun and I did what I came to do.  I felt great about myself and proud to have followed through.

This week we went to a small little farm, where Clifton could interact with the animals. 

 Clifton reallly really enjoyed it but it was freaking me out a little.  They also had sheep and they were afraid of us which was fine but they would run around and get close to ramming into us.  Clifton thought it was cool.  I was worried we were going to get trampled.  An adventure indeed!

This is what happens when Clifton asks Dad to color with him.  Alex spends an hour coloring:)  Alex wanted me to put his on the refrigerator too.

The fire fighters for our neighborhood came to talk to our neighborhood about fire safety and they brought their fire trucks along with them.  Clifton could have spent all day and probably all night in the truck. 

 This boy sure loves trucks.  He is totally a boy:)

We had some friends come over to have a Sounders game BBQ!  It was a ton of fun.  It was great to get together with friends and for Clifton to have friends to play with while we ate and watched the game.  I think we should do this more often:)  GO SOUNDERS!