HAPPY BIRTHDAY CLAY!!!

My little boy is 1 year old!! I can't believe it has been a year already! This year has been CRAZY, but tons of fun. Clay is so fun to be with all day. He is constantly learning new things. Yesterday he pulled the mop out of the closet and started pushing it around the kitchen floor, he is such a good helper! He loves sorting the clean clothes, and helping me put the wet clothes in the dryer, or the wet clothes in the other room. Last night he woke up at 2:30 ready to go, I kept trying to get him back to sleep and nothing worked. He kept kicking me because he couldn't get back to sleep so I starting holding his knees down when he would kick, and he thought that was HILARIOUS! He was laughing! I was like seriously you are laughing. . . . then I thought screw it I can't be mad at him when he is giggling, so I decided to make him laugh even more by tickling him and hoped this would wear him out. He did eventually go back to sleep, and slept until 8 this morning!

For his birthday we had family and close friends over. The night before his birthday however our sink got clogged. We tried to clean out all the pipes under the sink, we used drain o, we did everything we could think of and it was still not draining. So the next morning Mike took off work to figure out what was wrong. He ended up taking apart pipes that were in the basement and in the process breaking one of them. YEAH! So after Mike and Travis got all the pipes cleaned out and almost barfed because it smelled so bad, Mike went off to the store to get some new pipes. In the mean time, I still had not showered and I couldn't now because the pipes downstairs were taken apart. My kitchen was a complete disaster with dishes everywhere full of water from the sink! So Mike got home, fixed the pipes, and by 12:30 I was in the shower. Everybody was coming over at 1, by the way and I still had to make all the cupcakes and lunch for everybody too! So I had Jen make the cupcakes for me, and had Travis and Megan help with the decorations and food. All in all it turned out really good, lunch was good and the kitchen no longer smelled bad. Clay had a great 1st birthday and he loved all of his presents! I don't know why but it seems we are always working on something when Travis and Megan come to visit us, we are going to scare them away!

The cupcake tree! Thank-you Theresa and Melissa. Also thank-you Jen for making all the cupcakes!

Opening presents, he wanted to be sitting on my lap the entire time.

Last but not least he loved his little cake, after every bit he would say mmmmm

Now for Christmas, I am so excited to go to St. Louis I can hardly wait! I am so excited to see all of my family and my parents new house!! It is going to be so much fun, we will be there for a week! YEAH! It is only a week away!

CHRISTMAS TREE!!

So the other night Mike, Clay and I went up into the mountains and found ourselves a Christmas tree! It was so much fun! It was pretty cold and there was a lot more snow than we had anticipated. We did find a good tree after a little bit of walking and searching. We ended up hiking up the side of the mountain in about 6 inches of snow. Mike carried Clay under his arm, and I cut down the tree!! We had a lot of fun, and got a good tree. I just have to finish decorating it and then I will post more pictures of it all completed!

Clay's 1st birthday is this Saturday!!! I can't believe it has been a year already! We are excited to celebrate his birthday, and I will post more about him for his birthday. I will tell you how great he is, even if he is mad at me right now for not letting him play with the computer!

FALL!

So the other day I raked up all the leaves and let Clay play in them. I didn't know if he would really pay attention to them, but he loved them! He had so much fun crawling in all the piles of leaves. The really big piles he would try to crawl right through the middle of them and get stuck, all you could see was the back of his head. Later that day some ward members came by with a big trailor full of leaves and picked up all of them! YEAH! So all in one day I raked them, Clay got to play in them and then they got picked up!

Lately Clay had been dancing to music it is the cutest thing ever. He is walking everywhere and has been loving it.

The other thing I have been doing is working on a book that somebody ordered from me off of Etsy! It was so fun to make and it turned out so good! I hope she loves it too! She is getting married on the beach so she wanted light blues and greens. The crab was the theme throughout her wedding, so I stitched one on the front! Oh and it is going to be her sign in book.

Halloween and more!

Well everybody else was posting Halloween pictures so I thought I should join in the fun! Our costumes were not quite as good as Amy and Randy though I must say!

So Mike has gotten quite a few comments about how he looks like Syndrome on the Incredibles. So we thought that costume couldn't be more perfect for him. It turned out a lot better than I thought it would. He dressed up for work on Friday and everybody loved it! He kept having people coming over to find him because they heard he had a good costume.
Halloween night we got all ready for the trick or treaters, come to find out our ward had a trunk or treat that we didn't know about so we didn't have very many people come over. We went to visit Jen and Cody and they had over 100 kids already! After that we went to Tammy and Nate's house to show off our cute little smokey the bear! It was a good night and now we have lots of left over candy... I don't know if that is a good thing or not.

This picture of Clay and I is when it snowed quite a bit. Clay kept pointing out the window at the snow so I let him walk around it in for a little bit, he loved it! He is walking every where now he doesn't want to crawl any more. He is getting super good at it. He still falls quite a bit but he is getting better.

The other thing I never posted about was our Nebraska trip!! We drove to Nebraska a few weeks ago for my friend JJ's wedding! It was so fun to be there and see all of my friends. The wedding was great and JJ was beautiful of course. We stayed with Brad, Emily and Mya. Mya is so cute and so full of energy just like Clay. Clay didn't know what to think of her at first, I think he was a little intimidated. It was also Mya's first birthday! It was so fun to be there for that and watch her smash her face into her cake. We also went to a Husker game!! That was so fun and it was Mike's first time going! It was a great trip, a long drive, but fun. I can't wait to see everybody for Christmas!

Walking, Vegas and more

Well my baby boy is now walking. Well trying really hard! The most steps he has taken has been about 12!!! He is doing so good, and he loves it! He is standing up on his own so well, and usually takes 2-3 steps then sit down to crawl the rest of the way. He is such a fun little boy to play with all day long. Yesterday for lunch he had almost an entire thing of easy mac and lot of little slices of pear! For dinner he ate an entire banana and most of his quesadilla! He is eating so much it is crazy. He is happy as ever, except for at night when he doesn't want to sleep very much at all. He loves to play and not sleep.

A couple of weeks ago we went to Vegas because Mike went to a big bike expo there. It was called interbike, he had a blast. The first day all they did was ride all the bikes they wanted to. They went up to a mountain and had access to anything they wanted. He loved it! I got to spend all day with my Aunt Lori and my cousin Amy and her two adorable little girls. I had so much fun spending time with them, which doesn't happen very often. They next day I went to interbike with Mike and wondered around to all the booths and saw all the new fancy bikes and accessories. It was a fun couple of days, and Clay did amazingly well in the car!!! We are going to drive to Lincoln next week, so hopefully he will do well then too!

Other than that not too much has been going on. I put up some fall decorations in my house which is so fun! I love fall! I also got curtains put up in my bedroom and in Clay's room! Our room feels much more like a room now. This last week was my birthday, so I got a new dresser/shelves for my clothes! It is so cute, I love it! I got it at Ikea of course, but it is just a bookshelf but has a glass door on the front that is frosted glass with flowers! I also got some new clothes at Gap. Thanks Mom and Mike's mom for my new stuff!!!

OH! I do have another story to tell. So for my birthday Mike's sister Jen asked me if I wanted to go to lunch, which sounded awesome. So I chose to go to Olive Garden, I never go there but I really like it. So little did I know it was UEA week and all of the schools were out. Still I didn't think Olive Garden would be packed for lunch on a Thursday. Well, it was pretty full, and the wait was 15-20 minutes, so not too bad right? Well we waited for 20 min and nothing, so Mike went to talk to them, and then we got in. So we sat down, got our menus and decided quickly what we wanted to we could get our order in right away. We then waited and waited and waited some more. We sat there for 40 minutes with no water, no waiter, nothing!!! So we left! Nobody even noticed us leaving!!!! The girl at the door asked how our meal was and we told her we don't know, we never had it. We then explained what happened and she just stared with her mouth and eyes wide open. She didn't even say anything!!! No free meal!!! We then went to Iggy's, they guarantee you get your food in 15 minutes!! Perfect! It was really good food, and good for Clay because there was lots to look at there. Then we went shopping and got some cute new clothes for Clay and a little walker which he loves. It was a great day!


This was at my Aunt Lori's house, he had a great time doing this.

Etsy!

So I have been wanting to open a shop on Etsy for some time now, but have failed to do so. Until today!!! I finally got a shop all set up! It is so much fun! It will be even more fun when I actually sell something, so wish me luck.

I started out with the name enjay, which is my initials NJ just spelled out, my creative little brother came up with that. So I debated for like. . . . 5 months ish, and finally decided to just do it. Well I went to set it up and it was already taken!!! I was so sad. Then I decided to do enbe, which is what my creative husband came up with. So after playing with logos forever, because I already had one for enjay, I finally got everything set up. I posted all of my books for sale this afternoon, and now I need to make more because there are not very many!

Here it is http://enbe.etsy.com

Other than that, we are going to Vegas tomorrow to a bike expo. I am super excited! We are going to stay with my Aunt Lori in their beautiful house. Tuesday I am going to play with her all day, while Mike goes and rides tons of different bikes. Then on Wednesday I will go with Mike to the bike show and look at all the new bikes!! It will be super fun. Then we are going to drive back Wednesday night, wish me luck, Clay hates the car at night!

The other night at dinner Clay kept making a super funny face. He does this face quite often but I haven't ever gotten a picture of it. Well I got tons of pictures and a couple of videos, he couldn't stop making that crazy face. He is so much fun and so full of energy. He is going to be walking any day now I can feel it. He is so dang cute I can't handle it most days.


Look at those faces and just try not to laugh.

Updates

So we are all moved into our new house! There is still a lot of organizing to do, but mostly everything is done. There are still a lot of boxes in the garage, we do need to work on that. We are loving it though. We had a problem with some spiders when we first moved in and when we saw one crawling out of the attic door, that is above our BED we decided to call somebody. They came the next day to spray and we haven't seen a spider since! Now that, that issue is over it is much better. I have been loving all the space, and Clay loves it too. He crawls around everywhere, and really wants to be walking. He pulls himself up on everything still, and has balanced on his feet by himself a couple of times. The other thing we now have is stairs. He loves going up them and when I want to help him go down, he is thrilled. We have loved being in Hyrum, everybody has been really friendly. We already planted a couple of trees!!

The day we closed on our previous house, my mom flew out to help us! It was so nice to have her here! She made me beautiful curtains, and there should be more on the way! My dad also came that weekend, and helped a ton with the yard. It was so fun to have them here. I feel like that was forever ago, I am ready to have them back! Travis and Megan have been up a few times to visit and have helped a bunch with getting everything put together. Travis has assembled all of the new furniture we have gotten, thanks Trav! We lost the bolts to Clay's crib, so we finally gave in and just went and bought new bolts, I am sure they will turn up one day.

This last Tuesday Mike had the entire day off. Well except for UPS but he is usually home when we are waking up. So we went to the Children's museum in Salt Lake! It was so fun!!! I think Mike and I had more fun than Clay did. There was a little area just for little babies that Clay loved. There were just a lot of soft toys and a little slide.


That is pretty much everything that has been happening. Clay did have his 9 month check up. He was only 16 lbs. which is below the 5th percentile! So we need to fatten him up. The doctor said to put melted butter in with his peas and feed him shredded cheese. He loves the shredded cheese, I haven't done the melted butter yet. He said he can pretty much eat anything now, there is just a few things he can't eat. We have been having fun trying new things. He is still just a cute as ever!