Crazy Home Remodel

I threatened Clint that whatever we didn't have finished in our home remodel by October 1st, I was going to hire someone to do.  This did not include the master bedroom makeover, but everything else.  Well we got to work.  We pretty much worked on getting everything done 7 days a week from July 10 through, well we will never be done.  But we did get the living areas "done" and the boys' room.  We are so happy with how things have turned out. 

Sawyer continues to be daddy's helper.  He has his own collection of real tools due to all the daddy /son Lowe's outings (we are probably Lowe's number #1 customers by now).  Funny though, Clint prefers a lot of Sawyer's tools and keeps taking them.

Everyone needs a break from all the hard work.

Most of the rooms we have finished are still missing rugs and throw pillows.  I will try to capture rooms as I get them "completely" done.  I don't have before pictures, but just imagine it being pretty bad.  In the dining room we pulled up shag carpet, laid wood floors, scraped popcorn, textured and painted the ceiling, painted the walls, replaced the light, made curtains, recovered chairs, and painted a craig's list hutch for our china.  The dining room table was one of mine and Clint's projects when we first got married.  We bought a raw wood table and finished it for the dining room.  It took about 4 months because it was so humid each coat took about a week to completely dry.  It is fun to think back on those simpler days.

Pauline Wright

My grandmother, Pauline Wright, passed away on September 25th, 2010 at 1:11pm.  She was 85, raised 5 daughters, one son (my father), was brilliant, loved to read, and she spent the last four years living in Siloam Springs being cared for by my parents.  She had a very peaceful death and most of my family was able to make it in at some point the last week of her life.  We were all able to make it to her funeral.

This is all my grandmother's direct decedents (and spouses).  As you can tell I have a lot of cousins. After the funeral all 40+ of us headed to Olive Garden.  Kind of unique but that is my family.

Here is my family.  My sister's and I have lots of boys and it is nearly impossible to get a picture where all the kids are looking in the right direction.  Sawyer lost his last paci and was incredibly difficult that day.  We ended up giving in and making an emergency trip to Target to get more pacies.

Here I am 33 weeks along.  At this point I was already bigger than I was with Sawyer when I delivered.

Kansas City

Because of my pregnancy with Sawyer (placenta abruption), I was put on travel restriction at 32 weeks.  We decided to make one last weekend trip before I hit 32 weeks and traveled to Kansas City to visit my best friend Ashley.  We had a blast.  We were only there for a very short time, but we loved it.  Ashley and Shawn were incredibly hospitable, their house was beautiful, we slept like rocks in their guest bedroom, and we ate great food.  Even though we didn't get to hit too many tourist attractions, we got a taste of what Kansas City had to offer and are looking forward to going back.

We visited the WWI memorial and got a great view of the city.

We went down to the Farmers Market on Sunday for lunch.  We love living in a small town, but these are the things that make up miss city life.

Sawyer really enjoyed the trip.  He got confused and instead of calling Ashley, "Miss Ashley", he called her "Ashley House" because we told him we were going to Ashley's house.  It was pretty humorous.

End of summer update

This post essentially wraps up our summer.  Ever since I quit my job in June we have been super busy.  Between traveling, having some quality family time, and the most time consuming remodeling the house, we have been busier than ever.  I will go through a few pictures from the end of our summer.

We have really enjoyed eating lunch as a family.  We try to get picnics as much as possible.  Clint still has glasses in this picture.  He got lasik at the beginning of September.  He had great results and no more glasses!

Sawyer loved the lake this summer.  It makes me happy because the lake is one of my favorite places to be.  He loves hanging out with his cousins, swimming, fishing and most importantly driving the boat.  Unfortunately he isn't smiling in this picture, but I promise he was on cloud nine.

Sawyer caught this "big fish" all by himself.  Well is put up a fight so Clint had to help reel it in.  It was bigger than anything his dad caught that day.  Sawyer went around for a couple of weeks telling everyone about his "big fish" even strangers.  And like a true fisherman his fish got bigger with every retelling.

My two peas in a pod.  These guys are always up to something.  I definitely have my hands full and I can imagine with a third boy it will only get crazier.  Notice Clint's tank tops.  This is a new trend for him.  I don't even think he has regular T-shirts left since he has cut all the sleeves off.  I guess it's an okie thing.

This is how I spent the months of July, August, and September.  I spent my days at home scraping popcorn, painting ceilings, and painting walls.  I worked until my pregnant back couldn't handle anymore.  It is slow going when you are trying to keep a two year old out of the mess.  When I was about 7.5 months along we had to hire someone to finish painting the last room.  But all and all I scraped and painted about 1500 square feet of out house, all while pregnant.

 

We really loved having a garden this summer.  We ate more okra (mostly fried) than I would have ever thought and loved every bit of it.  We are already looking forward to next summer's produce.  We had great okra and peppers, decent onions and garlic, tomatoes and zucchini for a short while, asparagus that will really come in next summer, and lots of fresh herbs. 

My sister, Julie, gave me the best birthday gift ever.  She got the first two years of our blog turned into a blog book.  We love having the book laying around.  I intend to keep up with post, probably shorter post, and have a book for every year of our life.  We have really enjoyed having photos and memories so easily captured.  Like I have said before this is the perfect alternative to a scrapbook or baby book for me. 

Sawyer's 2nd Birthday

Sawyer had a great second birthday.  We have been talking about his birthday for weeks and he was so pumped for it.  Especially the birthday cake.  Birthday morning he was all smiles and once again a great helper in the kitchen.  He loudly proclaims "Me Help" until I let him help me cook whatever I am working on.

We had a small get together at our house on the night of his actually birthday.  It involved pizza, an annual tradition.  We had pizza the night Sawyer was born.  And most importantly his birthday involved cake.  I made a fun cake for Sawyer and he did a great job blowing out the candles.  But then the confusion started.  He thought the entire cake was his and didn't want to share with the other kids.  Poor baby.

 

The next night was Friday and we took Sawyer to Kiddie Park here in Bartlesville to ride the rides.  He was so serious during all the rides, but he loved it. 

On Saturday, Sawyer met up with his cousins at the aquarium.  All the cousins love being together so much.  Of course I am never going to complain about being with my best friends either (sisters and parents and Clint).  We then ate lunch, more pizza and fish cupcakes from a delicious bakery.  Sawyer, Shepherd, and Jack even had matching shirts.  It was a great birthday week for Sawyer!

 

You may note Sawyer was wearing necklaces in many of these pictures.  This was a particular phase that lasted about a month.  He had to have a necklace on whereever he went.  Unfortunately he wanted a shiny necklace so I would let him wear one of mine.  This did not make Clint happy. 

Update on Sawyer

I wanted to post an update on what Sawyer has been up to lately.  I have been home with Sawyer for a little over two months and have seen so many wonderful changes in him.  He talks so much more now.  In fact at home he is constantly talking, now if we could only understand him. . .  Actually he is getting much better at communicating, but he gets frustrated when he can't express what he is thinking.

He calls himself "Tow" for "Sawyer" and wants to hear the "Tow Tong" which is the "Sawyer Song" every night or Row Row Row your Boat.  He won't let me sing him hymns anymore.  But of course it is amazing he still lets me sing to him with my tone deaf vocals.  He still loves his blankie and paci, but keeps all his other favorite tokens of the day on the rug in front of the kitchen sink.  It is always fun to see what are his treasures of the day.  Lately it has been a box of tea, flashlight, drill, screwdriver, and some rhinestones.

He loves loves loves tools and necklaces.  He is pretty quiet and serious around other kids and loves to try to figure things out.  He is always working on something.

He loves craft projects, but not so much balls right now.  He is an excellent swimmer and can nearly swim on his own now.  We spent a lot of time at the pool and lake this summer.  He shows absolutely no fear in the water and will jump in even from a high height.

  

He is pretty easy going until he hears the words "no".  He is very rule conscious and rarely disobeys us, but if we do have to tell him "no" over something, there will be some serious crying.  It is mainly because he hates the thought of us being upset with him.  He takes it very personally from Clint.  He is a sensitive human being and his feelings get hurt easily.  That is not a trait either Clint or myself has so we are learning to navigate it.  In other words, there is a lot of crying in our house.

He still likes to read books, but he is not as obsessed as he was a few months ago.  He loves to help mommy or daddy in whatever we are doing.  He actually does pretty good.  He made an entire pizza the other day with homemade pizza dough all by himself.  I just told him what to do at each step.  

He also decided this summer (at 21 months) he was ready to be potty trained.   He was fully trained when we left for Colorado, but because we didn't have a toilet in Colorado, it created some #2 anxiety.  So we kind of do a hybrid of big boy underwear and diapers.  It is working just fine for now.  I can't take any credit, because he pretty much has potty trained himself.  We recently switched to all cloth since we really only use diapers at nap, bedtime, or ask for one to take care of some #2 business. 

Funny story though, we were at Clint's bosses house a few nights ago.  We let Sawyer urinate on the grass a lot of the time and he started yelling "tee tee grass" just as Clint's boss started to give a little speech.  At the top of his lungs he was yelling.  So Clint and I grabbed him and ran to the car.  We were able to compromise and he happily "tee tee'd on the tire". 

He hasn't had a haircut yet.  He has very thin coarse hair and I am afraid that once I cut it, the boy will have a buzz cut for the next 18 years.  I am trying to hang on to the little baby wisp as long as possible.  

I absolutely love having all this time with him.  I can hardly wait until he wakes up in the morning or from nap time to hang out.   He has been such a fun blessing in our lives I can't wait to add a little brother to the mix. 

Here are some of Sawyer's other favorite things. 

Driving the boat.  In fact he is obsessed with boats, trains, bikes, and airplanes.

Playing with his cousins.  He loves loves loves his cousins, especially Ellie.

Heidi, they are best friends.  Heidi is loving all the attention he gives her.

His cell phone, or anything like daddy's.  Mommy has no possessions in our house according to Sawyer.  Everything is Daddy's.  This morning he told me I was using Daddy's scissors when they were in fact my own.  Hmm.

Montana - July 15th-July 18th

Some of our good friends, Josh and Sam, tied the knot this summer.  Clint and I decided make the trek and have a little baby moon while we were at it.  We left Sawyer with Grammy and Grandpa and flew up to Bozeman, MT.  I had never been to Montana before and was blown away by its beauty.  We had a great trip hanging out with family friends and enjoying eachother.

The wedding was in a beautiful field of wild flowers.

Here are the guys at the wedding.  The groom, Josh, is in the leather vest.  We loved his wedding attire.

 

While we were up north, we decided to take a day trip to Yellowstone.  Clint and I have a life goal of hitting all the National Parks.  We collect patches at each park and Clint has a jean jacket that we sew them to.  As the jean jacket will someday make a comeback, we think this is the coolest idea ever.

This was our favorite spot in Yellowstone.  A secluded beach on Lake Yellowstone.  We couldn't get over how big and diverse the park was.

Clint is relaxing in the sand by the lake.

We saw a lot of wildlife in the park.  This guy was so close to our car we could have touched him.

I am standing in the Yellowstone River.  On this trip I was 23 weeks pregnant and just starting to show.

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. It was breathtaking.

And of course we couldn't leave without seeing "Old Faithful".