Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Merry Christmas to All!


I just loved Christmas this year. I love my kid's matching Christmas PJs too.

FYI- In the picture Davis has his hand on his new cowboy gun (it goes with his new boots, cowboy hat and vest/chaps outfit his aunt custom sewed him :) and Leah has her tiara on (it goes with a princess costume she asked Santa for).

Sometimes I struggle with the commercialization of Christmas and I fear we're turning ourselves, and our children, into greedy little hoarders. This year I think we successfully gave our children presents but didn't spoil them rotten... it's a balancing act of the toughest proportions.

We spent Christmas here in Las Vegas but my kids did get to see Papa Bryan and
Meema as they stopped and stayed with us on their drive up to Idaho. My kids love them and were sad to see them go! Leah was also sad to see Dirt McGirt, our cat, go. My sister loves me a lot and agreed to house our cat so he hitched a ride up to cold country with my parents. Thank you guys, that helps a ton!!!

Ok, back to the festivities. All of Jeff's brothers and his sister were in town so the Leavitt house was bursting at the seams! The Leavitt Christmas traditions start on Christmas Eve when we eat homemade potato & cheese soup in bread bowls with homemade oatmeal muffins, we do a little white elephant gift exchange, have the children act out the nativity and then we play a game called Skittles. I've often made fun of this game because you use a sting to spin a top and knock down "bowling pins" to score points. It's a great game but the entire thing is made out of wood! I think my children can just picture the elves whittling this game in Santa's workshop :) Even though it's probably the only game not made out of plastic and/or cardboard in the last quarter of a century it's SUPER fun!!! And Jeff's brother Tyson got a perfect score!! Go Tyson! Christmas Eve was quite the success :)

On Christmas morning Gray woke up at 5am! And so Jeff and I got out of bed to wait until the older kids woke up which is usually pretty early. We were being loud and kept checking on them but they slept until about 7:45am- which is late for my kids! We opened presents and the kids loved every one! Then we went over to Jeff's Grammy's house (she just turned 80 a few weeks ago!) and ate waffles with whipped cream and strawberries. Most of Jeff's family that lives here in Vegas came and there were 40 people total!! It was great! One of the highlights was when Grammy related the story of when she was a little girl and they couldn't afford to buy a tree, so her parents would wait until Christmas Eve when the trees were free. The kids would go to bed without a tree and wake up with a decorated tree with presents under it. I thought that was a special insight into her childhood. We left there and headed straight over to Grandma Cindy's for more presents! There were 20 people opening presents! It was a blast. Okay, my fingers are officially tired of typing :) The end.

Monday, December 24, 2007

Blueberries!



My children love to snack on blueberries!! They are one of the most nutritious things a person could eat so I let them have them by the cup full. They do have one minor drawback...the mess! Countless times I've had to take my children out in public with blueberry stained mouths because sometimes it just doesn't wash off!! I don't think it helps that somehow Davis' face gets covered with juice every time. They have mastered the technique of shaking the blueberries into their mouth from a cup and this saves their hands from getting terribly stained so we're making progress :) Ahhh, aren't they just adorable!?!

Friday, December 21, 2007

Bath Time!



This is the first time all THREE of my kids have been in the bath together!!! A tub full of adorable cuteness if you ask me :)

Thursday, December 20, 2007

Picture I found:

This is a picture I found from when Grayson was born that I didn't know existed since it was taken on Jeff's mom's camera. I found it on their home computer and I just thought I'd share :) BTW Gray's face is purple because he was so big and came out pretty fast, they said that those factors can sometimes cause this "bruise" on their face. He was still adorable :)

Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Because we don't have snow :)

My children are lovely creatures with spectacular imaginations. They are very good at playing by themselves and I must say Davis and Leah get along quite well. Today was one of those days were the children haven't been pestering you for a while and you begin to wonder "what are they doing?" Here's what they were doing:


This video cracks me up because you can hear Davis say "Leah butt doodie" and he knows he's being naughty because his dad tells him not to say butt. I personally think it's a lost cause because they always tell me I'm being naughty when I say but, like "but I want to". Also their room was perfectly clean yesterday because I had a young girl from our ward come over and help get the house clean, that's the Ariel we refer to. If only I had a before and after picture to fully illustrate their destructive powers :)

Hey, there's a boy in Relief Society!

Our big development is that Grayson has started to crawl and move around! He doesn't crawl exactly, he wiggles his way to the things he wants. Davis and Leah crawled before they were 7 months and Gray is now 7 1/2 months so I was starting to worry about his genius status (just kidding, of course :) He hasn't been feeling all that well lately so he hasn't had very much pratice but he's definitely capable of getting to the things he wants. He has been a fantastic baby and I'm finding joy in watching him progress into a toddler. There is, however, the issue of church. Church is so much harder with a child that's mobile but hasn't reached the reasoning stage. My friends and I joke that the halls are the pre-nursery classroom because you see all the same moms out there every week, most of us wishing for a crib to put our children down for a nap in :) Sometimes I try to convince Jeff that because Grayson is a boy he needs to go to Priesthood :) Here's a picture of us chillin' in Relief Society where he ends up:

Saturday, December 15, 2007

Totally Random

Life has felt kinda strange lately.
Last Sunday Davis got a stomach bug and "spit up" (as the kids like to call it) a few times. He was well by Tuesday but then Wednesday afternoon Grayson started spitting up A LOT. I wasn't worried until Thursday night when he was spitting up every time he ate and had a fever. Then I realized he was cutting all 4 of his top teeth!! Poor guy! On Friday he was miserable so I decided to give him Pedialyte. He doesn't take a bottle so I had to give it to him using a medicine dropper. He liked it a lot and what do ya know he stopped puking. The number of times I was barfed on: SEVEN.
In the past week my kids, who don't eat wheat, dairy, corn or eggs, have also been invited to 2 pizza parties. Luckily there were enough things to distract my kids: tokens, games, tickets, prizes. It was quite a challenge but I'm happy to report they didn't eat any pizza, soda or cake. It's a Christmas miracle :) Just kidding. Oh yeah, at my husband's work party they served pizza too! It was at a really delicious restaurant so it looked gourmet but I still couldn't eat it. Everyone looked at me strange when I wasn't eating so one of Jeff's bosses ordered me the salmon (turns out his wife had done a wheat-free diet before so he was really sympathetic). The salmon was so good too, cooked perfectly!!!
My kids have also been doing/saying weird things. Leah likes to pretend they're the kids from Peter Pan so she's Wendy, Davis is John and Grayson is Michael. This is all fine and dandy except Davis has been referring to himself as John all week and not just during playtime. He's way more dedicated to him alter-ego than Leah and he regularly corrects me when I call him Davis. It's actually starting to annoy me! And then yesterday Leah and I were cutting snowflakes out but then she wanted some green paper to cut some out Christmas trees. I had some green construction paper on the bookshelf and when I pulled it out she said "Oh, you're such a mom." I didn't ask her what that meant but it sounded really mature... or something. And then that night at bedtime Davis asked me to snuggle with him in his bed but then wouldn't let me because I would have to move his sippy cup to get close and he didn't want me to move his sippy cup. Quirky kids.
I'll be glad to get back to normal :)

Monday, December 10, 2007

Bed Head







I do love my hair cut but because I have to put product in it I have the worst bed head ever!







I've tried to explain it to my friends
but words cannot do it justice,
only pictures can prove how extreme it is!!

Tuesday, December 4, 2007

Reality Check

My friend and I were talking yesterday about the "blogging world" and how most people only post happy blogs and make positive comments on someone's page, you don't say what your really thinking. Well this is a blog about how life can be hard.

Between the difficulty of my kid's diet and having to find a good home for our beloved cat Dirt McGirt and trying to find the money to take my kids to the doctors I want I'm ready to have a melt down.

We have to get rid of our cat because Grayson's eczema isn't responding to the diet like I thought it would and our doctor thinks it might be the cat dander. It's totally breaking my heart and I'm not really sure how to properly do it, do I put an ad online or do I check in my ward first? If money was no object I would just put him in a boarding facility for a few months just in case he wasn't causing it and we want him back. But money is always a factor.

Another hard part of my kid's diet is that people think I'm crazy. Most people who have eczema just put a steroid cream on it and eat whatever they want. The problem with that is the creams don't prevent it from coming back, they just treat the symptoms not the cause. Some people think it's not fair that my kids can't eat candy and cookies but I think it's not fair to feed them something that hurts their body. I'm not sorry that I believe most ailments can be "cured" by eating the right foods. It does take discipline but they should just be thankful that the responsibility falls on me and not them. What I really want is for people to say "you're their mother and I'm sure your doing what's right for them".

O.K., rant over and actually I feel better :)