Thursday, May 27, 2010

So much has happened...

Junie B. taught us the tooth fairy recycles. In our family, she really does!
Leah lost two teeth while Whitney grew two teeth :)
Leah M. Leavitt, toothless wonder
Whitney aka "Chompers",
careful, she bites!
Leah's first front tooth came out last Friday and the second four days later.
I helped the first one out with some dental floss.
It was just hanging on very Nanny McPhee style for WEEKS!
It had to go!

Tuesday, May 25, 2010

"Just a day, just an ordinary day"

-Ordinary Day by Vanessa Carlton

I'm a spaz-and-a-half. I try to be responsible but really, it's harder than it looks haha. Here's the plan: to go the The Old Mormon Fort (with some other families from our ward), Monday at 10am. Leah leaves for the bus at 8:30am so I figure I'll have plenty of time to get the younger kids ready and leave 9:15-9:30ish. Well, Leah is a major turd in the morning. She hasn't written a story for her homework and insists she doesn't know what to write. The assignment was for her to write FOUR SENTENCES! She's whining and crying and being completely obnoxious. She does this forever and then, when she finally decides I'm not going to her homework and tell her what to write, she whips out a cute, funny story in about 5 minutes. Really, a turd!

Anyways, that makes her late for the bus so I have to give her a ride to school. I'd be dropping her off at 9:10am so I figured it would be better for me to leave for our outing right after that instead of coming home and wasting 20 minutes. On the way down Davis asks if we can play in a playplace instead of waiting at The Fort. I agreed but really, what was I thinking!? This is DOWNTOWN Las Vegas mind you. Really, the ghetto. At the McDonalds there are all sorts of scary people. I have to get Grayson dressed since he was still in his PJs (what, I didn't mention that part?) and while I'm changing him I put my keys down on the floor- not in my purse. Of course as I'm shutting the door I realize I just locked the keys in the van!

I immediately start calling some of the moms I thought were coming to see if they could go to my house and get my spare. Yeah, you know, the spare that's SOMEWHERE in my disaster of a house! Jeff calls right then too and I tell him what happened. An employee at work might have been able to go the house and bring me the keys but it will be awhile. Not good. Luckily I was able to get a hold of Natalie as she was leaving her house and have her bring me my spare! Me trying to tell her where it might be was hilarious, "on the kitchen counter, under some papers...maybe under a box too...by the fruit bowl." Or something vague like that. I think I might have even told her to look on the floor! I really didn't know where it was at all. Even though everything kinda worked out, all I could think about the day was what a fiasco.

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

Mother's Day 2010

I spent Mother's Day this year driving 12 hours from Amber's house in Idaho to my house in Las Vegas, my trip odometer read 791.8 miles! Even though is was a long drive it was SUPER easy. Davis and Whitney are AMAZING travelers. It's just exhausting anyways. And I wanted to leave Amber's before lunch but she had JUST had her baby the night before so I couldn't pry myself away from him until 3 pm, putting me home at 2 am (because of the time change). It was worth it though. Such an awesome trip I'm lucky to have had!

When I got home Leah had made this for me:
Love her!
And this one too:
This one just totally made me laugh. They way we're calling each others names about to embrace, the way it shows her confidence in my missing her, it's all too cute!

To top it all off Jeff even bought me a couple of things. What does a mother of four really need? A membership to Costco!! LOL I wanted one since they seem to be getting more organic fruits and veggies and what not. I've never had one so this should be interesting :) AND a book called The Backyard Homestead. It has practical advice on how to arrange your vegetable garden, keep chickens for eggs, etc. I LOVE it!

Oh yeah, Jeff was an all-around great gift giver this year. He even delivered the flower bouquet to my mom when he picked Grayson up from her in Needles. Thank you again Meema, happy Mother's Day!

Tuesday, May 11, 2010

Books: March, April

I can't believe I haven't put my March books up yet and it's already May! Two things: I don't really remember the order I read these books in so I just listed them randomly, and I think it's too much to put all the books for a whole year in one post so I think I'll do them two months to a post from now on. Okay? Here they are:

Leadership and Self Deception by The Arbinger Institute
This book was so awesome! It's main message is that even though you are the leader in some situations you still need to think of people as humans and not as objects. Once you deny their humanity you have a tendency to act awfully and yet feel justified. I HIGHLY recommend it to EVERYONE.

Dirty Little Secrets by C.J. Omololu
This is a young adult novel and the dirty secret the title refers to is hoarding. I personally found it interesting because it showed how hoarding is a real mental issue for people. I know people who are hoarders so it was captivating for me. The main character of the story is a 16 year old girl and her mom's a hoarder. So this means there is so much stuff in their house there are only paths through it all! She can't function as a normal teenager because she can't have friends over or even let them come to the front door. The story kinda take a weird turn when the mom dies in the house but the daughter won't call the cops because she's afraid the fact that their house is wall-to-wall stuff will make the news. Even though the ending, which I'm not to to reveal, is weird I still really liked this book.

The Ladies Auxiliary by Tova Mirvis
We read this one for our RS book club. I liked it, didn't love it. It's about a orthodox Jewish community and how they can be elitist and not welcome newcomers. Their attitude was all very sad to me. The main character was annoying to me too. I felt like she had made some mistakes in the past but didn't learn from them, and in an attempt to be "open" about her past inspires the teenage girls to rebel. And the women were such gossipers!! I couldn't handle that at all. Overall, the most enjoyable thing for me was the glimpse into the Jewish rituals. I actually really liked that part, they are so interesting!

River Secrets by Shannon Hale
This one was better than Enna Burning but not as good as The Goose Girl. Razo is an endearing character and it's good to be able to see the relationships started in the first two and how they've progressed.

Mistborn, The Well of Ascension, The Hero of Ages by Brandon Sanderson
This trilogy was recommended to me by Jeff's brother Trent. I must say I LOVED the first one, Mistborn, but the other two weren't nearly as satisfying. Vin is an awesome character though. Love her. She's what they call mistborn and can burn metals (like bronze, pewter, etc) internally and have special "powers". The most amazing plot twist was when Vin's love interest, Elend, has a half-brother, Zane, who's also mistborn and tries to persuade her to run away with him. That was totally unexpected and nerve wracking. Zane is not stable! Okay, so overall I liked the trilogy but I did find the story, and fictional world it takes place in, very complex and sometimes distracting. And Brandon Sanderson repeats himself over and over. I like to read book series quickly and so I think that pointed out the repeats. Each book was 500+ pages so I think he intentionally repeated facts to "refresh" our memories but since I'd just read it it really gave away parts of the ending. And I recently heard they're making this into a movie too so that's exciting!

The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
This book was gross. It had so many love scenes that were so crudely written I cringed. The idea of the story was great but the author's writing was awful! The two main characters are Clare and Henry. Henry's a time traveler. He can't control anything about it: when he leaves, where he goes or how long he's gone. He meets Clare in real-time when he's 28 and she's 20 but she's known him for a long time. In the future he will travel back to her childhood, 152 times over the course of 12 years. This is the part of the book that was awesome. In a world where time travel exists then this would be possible and the question would arise, what came first? Does she love him because she's known him all her life or because he's right for her? It's an interesting concept! If it wasn't for the horrible writing I think I would have really loved this book.

Monday, May 10, 2010

I have a new nephew!

Oh my heavens. I got back last night from a week long trip to Amber's that lasted 16 days haha. I'm happy to say she has a successful all-natural home delivery of a healthy boy on Saturday. He is a luscious 10lbs 9ozs and is quite adorable. This picture was taken a little while after delivery...she looks too good I say!
We had to wait and wait for him to make his appearance, 12 days after his due date! We filled our time with shopping, sudoku, watching our favorite movies Star Trek and The Jane Austen Book Club and I sewed some AWESOME curtains for Amber's front room. I didn't get a picture of them but you can kinda see them in the background of this one, they're orange:Davis and Whitney came with me. They were great! They stayed pretty low maintence so I could help out around the house. Everyone was in the room when the baby was born and the boys were hilarious. They acted like babies are born everyday, it's no big deal :)
And once the baby was ready to be held Cash LOVED holding him. He's going to be a great big-brother/helper.
Sterling is an all-around goofball so he said the funniest stuff. After the delivery he was getting pretty bored and tired. He chose to fight sleep by running in the room, saying something and running out. The two things I remember him saying were, "I KNEW I was going to have a baby brother" and "I LOVE my baby brother". So cute!
He was born on Grayson's birthday, May 8th! Love that!!