Blickenstaff's

Have you been to Blickenstaff's in the Riverwoods? It is a fun new toy store filled with candy and toys of every kind.

It's a pretty unique name right, not one you hear everyday. Well my mom is Cathie Irene Blickenstaff and two of my cousins opened up the store and manage it.

Last weekend my dad took Griffin and I down to the store for the first time. It was also Grandma Blick's first time in the store and when Grandma is in town the family gathers. It was so fun to hang out with some of my uncles, aunts and cousins that I don't get to see too often.

Griffin loves my phone, so my dad bought him his own play phone. Griffin loves it... until he see's my phone and then he wants mine instead. Why would you want to suck on a phone that is made for playing with when you could slowly destroy your mom's blackberry?

Just like they say, it's fun for everyone! It was an amazing store with loads of fun things to try out! It will be so fun (and expensive) to take Griffin back when he's a little older!

Fourth. Family. Fireworks. Fun.

South Family Campout

Last weekend the South family reserved a site at the Heber Valley Camp. There are A LOT of us and the accomodations were perfect for such a big group!

It was a weekend of firsts for Griffin. When we got to camp on Friday night we headed to Legacy Lake and went for a paddle boat ride.

Griff was not enjoying the life jacket at first, but can you blame him? I mean look at him... it's like Grandma Oli at Lake Powell all over again! If anyone in my family read this they would agree but I don't think any of them do.

As you can see, when we got going he loved it! It was a fun new adventure!

Later that night we sat by the fire and roasted marshmallows and I begged Griffin to pretend to be a cuddly baby again and fall asleep in my arms. He finally did after a couple of hours and it made my whole night. Nothing better than a warm, little baby sleeping in your arms!

The next day we did the little ropes course that they have at Heber Valley. It was fun!

And this little angel just hung out with us and finally dosed off.

What better way to cool off than with a popsicle? This was Griff's first try and he wasn't too sure about how cold it was.

Nine Months Outside the Belly

Griffin in now nine months old and I really can't believe it! Time has just flown by! He is getting more tricky each day. His new favorite thing to do is to roll over on his tummy as soon as I take off his diaper and pee. He's like a little corkscrew when I put him on the changing table and he just lays there and rolls over and over again. It's pretty hilarious.

At the nine month appointment Griffin weighed 15 lbs 12 ounces and was 25 3/4 inches long. He's still holding strong to the 3rd percentile.

He hasn't figured out how to crawl yet, he just rolls around to get whatever he wants. Everyone keeps telling me to be grateful for the days before he becomes more mobile, but this baby is a fast little roller! He's the jolliest little guy and we love him so much!

Caution... brutal honesty lies ahead!

Ok so if you are from Lehi or the surrounding cities, you may have heard of a crazy little thing called the "Miniature Float Parade." If you haven't heard of it... Here's my very opinionated summary on the whole ordeal. The miniature float parade is when all the wards in Lehi waste a lot of time and money building a 8 x 10 foot float for the primary children to ride on or walk beside in the 95+ degree heat. Sounds like a good time right? Well, Marc and I were CALLED (that's right they make it a calling) to be the float committee chair people. I'm sure that you can tell from my tone that I was thrilled about this!

Since we, the South's, are really good at procrastinating we had 2 crazy, crammed weeks of non-stop floating. After almost getting a divorce we finally finished the damn thing, and then had two days of hell to make it through the two, yes you heard me TWO parades.

Ok, so the theme for the parade was "Guess What I Saw..." and we decided that we would use "Guess What I Saw On Safari".
We started with a barbie jeep and took off from there.

Then I cut out letters on the Cricut, glued them to styrofoam, Marc cut out the styrofoam with his saw and spray painted them black then I glittered all of them one by one... WASTE OF TIME!

The easiest thing that we did was rent some zebras from Modern display... Oh wait but then we had to transport them from Salt Lake.

Good thing Griffin didn't mind the company.

We had a few trials just getting to the parade route. The float platform that the city provided didn't have a trailer hitch. When we called to "the Float Lady" to find out how we were supposed to transport this little beauty we were instructed to "have someone sit in the trunk of the car and hold onto it, or have someone sit on the back of a 4-wheeler and hold on to it and just drive real slow." Yep that's right, we live in LEHI! So, on our first attempt the welding on the pull broke and I was sitting on the back of the float holding onto a zebra as we went careening into the curb. It was hilarious. I didn't know what to do except to hold on to that zebra. Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of that little diddy, but I did get a picture the next day when we were losing the tree and Marc had to do some emergency, roadside repair.
When we finally got there it was evident that we had no clue what we were doing. Some of these Lehites have been doing this for years and they really know their stuff. There were several floats that were darling! I have no desire to be one of them, so our mediocre float was good enough for me.

Thanks to Dan at Alexanders for donating this banner to us!

Our little primary kids wore safari hats and binoculars and some of the younger ones wore animal hats. They were cute.

The tree was supposed to look like it had binoculars with huge eyeballs coming out of it, but it kind of just ended up looking like short circuit...

After all was said and done we still know that the church is true even though our testimonies waivered there for a minute. Ok, well Negative Nancy is signing off now. Sorry for my brutal honesty. I guess I just wanted to document this so that when I look back I'll remember why I didn't post anything else, because we were working on this dumb float. Ok, for real Nancy, get out of here!

How cute is Griffin in this jeep?!

Griffin's First Camping Trip

Over Memorial Day weekend we drove down to Mesa Verde, Colorado with Marc's sister Wendi and her family. There are so many awesome cliff dwellings and Indian ruins to see and hike around.

This is Wendi, Chad, Kaitlyn and Elizabeth. These girls are little troopers and they had so much fun!

Griffin loved the pack! He was so happy to be hauled around everywhere. On one of our tours of the ruins we had to climb a 30 foot ladder. I happened to be carrying Griff in the pack. I was going along just fine and was thinking that I was probably almost to the top. I looked up and still had a ways to go and I started to get a little nervous. Then I felt this sweet little hand patting me on the shoulder. It was like Griffin knew I needed a little encouragement so I wouldn't freak out and make a fool out of myself in front of the rest of the group. In the above picture Marc is carrying Griffin. This was about a 10 foot ladder but then after that it was very steep and you had to hold on to the chains. I'm so glad that Marc was carrying him for that part!

I was so stressed out about keeping Griff warm at night. It got pretty cold. He slept in his own bed until the early morning and then I would pull him in to sleep with us. The first night he didn't want to be snuggled at all. He slept much better when I gave him my half of the pad and Marc and I crammed onto the other half. But he let me curl right up with him the next morning.

I have to thank my husband for still loving me. I was so stressed out going on this little roadtrip and I had my mind made up that there was no way it was going to be fun. To say I had a bad attitude is an understatement, but I won't go into the details. I thought that Griffin would hate it and that we would be miserable. I was so wrong! We had a blast and Griffin was so great! We even ended up staying an extra night!

So, pretend like you've missed us, alrighty?

Obviously I am not doing a good job at documenting our lives. In case you were wondering, our world still revolves happily around this guy.

Griffin has changed so much in the last couple of months. He now:

-rolls ALL over

-sits up by himself

-jabbers constantly, which includes a lot of da da da da da (yes, I am jealous)

-claps for everything and anything

-grabs onto my shirt, hair, jewelry, face... pretty much anything he can get his hands on, and he has a strong grip

-has two bottom teeth

-loves to eat

-smiles at everyone
-melts my heart (but he's always done that)