We had a perfect day today at the park. We took a bike ride, had a picnic, played on the playground and walked through the MK Nature Center and looked at the fish. To top the day off just as we were leaving we saw a family of deer barely ten feet away.

Clayton tried to follow the deer as they left. It was such a beautiful scene.

Well in just a few short weeks Clayton will be turning 2! I can't believe how quickly time has gone by. He's growing so fast, and learning so much. He's very chatty these days, and loves to make all the animal sounds which he's getting very good at.

Clayton's cousin Connor stayed the night with us a while back. They had such a blast! I've posted an album I created with pictures from that weekend up above. Watching these two grow up together is going to be a lot of fun.

Clayton is growing up so fast! Today we were driving in the car and he sneezed, and needed his nose wiped. I handed him a Kleenex, he promptly blew his nose with it and then handed it back to me like it was no big deal. I can't believe how big he's getting. It made me a little sad that he didn't even need my help anymore.

We had a great Easter this year! Clayton had a total of there different Easter egg hunts. He quickly learned that there were treats in the eggs. We also had brunch with my family and Easter dinner at home.

Clayton is growing in leaps and bounds. I can't believe how quickly he's changing. Obviously he's walking now, although I think running is a more acurate description. It seems he's runs everywhere he goes. He's a very energetic little boy, but he's also very happy and sweet. I'll try to add some more pictures soon.

Christmas is coming, Clayton is walking and snow is falling outside. I know, I know I've fallen severely behind on the blogging, but things have been crazy and I just haven't been able to keep up. Since there is no way I can cover everything, I'll just stick to the highlights. Clayton celebrated his first birthday! He is also walking and has been for some time now. He was a spider for Halloween, so cute. He says "mama" and "dada" very well but only when he feels like it. He's very independent minded, I have no idea where he gets it from. I could go on and on but instead I'll just leave you with some pictures. I don't have the Christmas pictures uploaded yet, but I'll try to get a Christmas post done soon.

After nearly two months of failed attempts at crawling Clayton finally began to crawl yesterday. He's been very mobile for some time now, but not crawling in the traditional way. He started out on his stomach, pushing so hard with his arms that he moved backwards instead of forward. This frustrated him to no end as he saw the object he was trying to get to moving further and further away. Since then he's mastered the art of moving from side to side, going from the crawl position to the sitting up position and vice versa, a bear crawl and of course rocking back and forth on his hands and knees. Somehow he seemed to be getting all over the place but he still wasn't crawling forward on his hands and knees, until yesterday that is. Evidently all he needed was proper motivation. He saw my tennis shoes on the floor and decided he wanted them bad enough that he was finally going to do it. Sam kept moving them further away to keep him crawling. I'm just thrilled that he did this before Sam left. I thought for sure that he would start crawling while Sam is in Alabama and it made me so sad to think that he might miss it.

June has been a good month for us. Unfortunately Sam had annual training for the first two weeks so we didn't see much of him, but he was home by Father's Day. We had a great Father's Day. Clayton really missed his dad while he was gone.




Clayton is desperately trying to crawl. He's been on the verge for a few weeks now, but he mostly seems to move backwards and side to side which frustrates him to no end. He's moving all over the place just not necessarily in the direction he wants to.



Any day now and he'll be taking off and we won't be able to keep up with him. Actually, we barely keep up with him as it is. He's so full of energy, but when he finally runs out of steam he crashes pretty hard.



Clayton is growing leaps and bounds, I can't believe how much he changes each day.