Taekwondo Skills

Once a week Grayson has been taking a taekwondo class at Mirabelli Community Center. He's the youngest in his class, the age range is 3-6, but he really enjoys it. Mr. Pino is the instructor and one day after class Gray and I were talking about friends. When I asked who his friends were and he said Mr. Pino first :) This video is hilarious to me but I might be a little biased haha.

Staycation details

In November my parents took the kiddos again! Jeff and I wanted to use his vacation days for some alone time instead of the usual family trip (which can be kinda stressful and exhausting). We thought long and hard about going out of town but there's no better place to party than right here in Las Vegas! We packed some fun times into those 5 days:

*We ate at Olive Garden while Costco was putting new tires on my van
*We ate sushi with Emily & Kevin Bowman
*I read two books, The City of Bones & Hush, Hush (neither of which were that great)
*We jumped out of a perfectly good plane thanks to Skydive Las Vegas
*We ate out with Emily & Steve Roeth, Cheesecake Factory mmmmm
*We partied with them late into the night playing Phase 10 (which I despise) and Mormon bridge (which I love)
*Jeff played his guitar and I went to play basketball
*We stayed two nights at the Green Valley Ranch and ate at the buffet twice
*We went to see Harry Potter and ate at Yogurtland
*Lastly, we went to the Rebel game

I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting but you get the gist. On the drive home from Needles with the kids I told them what we did. Davis was so cute and after each thing he'd say whether or not he thought it was "awesome" or "not awesome". Pretty much everything was AWESOME :)

Here's what the kids did at Meema & Papa's:
*went to the desert, collected rocks and had a picnic

*rode horses

*went to the river, played in the sand and found a beaver's dam

*got cute

*had fun in Oatman, AZ

Good times.

"I remember when, I remember, I remember when I lost my mind"

-"Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley

A few months ago, at the end of September, I was going a little crazy. Not enough sleep, too much responsibility. My mom and dad offered to take Whitney & Grayson for a few days and it made a world of difference. I don't want to sound too cheesy but I feel like I was able find my balance again.

One of the biggest factors of my exhaustion was the physical fatigue. I hadn't had a decent night's sleep in months! Either Gray or Whitney, or both, were getting up at least once a night. I really needed to get some rest.

And because of the mental fog sleep deprivation causes I was forgetting things all. day. long. I felt like a stress-ball because I HATE to forget things. A perfect example of this is when I was dropping off the kids I realized I had forgotten to put the bag with Whitney's clothes into the van!! My parents survived the whole time with two outfits for her haha.

I guess it was kinda weird for a mom to want their 1 & 3 year-olds to stay somewhere without them, but I just felt I had no choice. I NEEDED it. It was hard though. When I buckled Whitney into her seat in my mom's car she reached for me and kept saying "mama". I got a little chocked up and my mom said, "Bryan, it's time to go." My dad shut Whitney's door, gave me a hug and said, "we'll call you when they're crying and you won't miss them as much." haha.

Having a little space was great. The big kids and I did our normal routine we just did it with less stress. And we slept all night. Davis did surprise me and was extra whiny at first. I had to explain that the babies were at Meema's and he needed to act like a big kid. He got the message :)

We painted a TON of Halloween decorations. The kids painted every single day. And I went to yoga at the gym every day. It was wonderful. Very balancing, and I may or may not have cried at yoga. Stressed much!?

Here are two of the Halloween paintings:

So cute!

My mom posted these pictures of Whitney and Gray on her Facebook:

The babies were enjoying their break too :)

When my parents brought the kids back we treated them to Phantom of the Opera tickets that included a backstage tour.

Saturday morning they were able to see Davis play in his soccer game too! It was really special for him to have them there.

Halloween Madness

These are ALL the pictures I took on Halloween!
I guess I'm not really into this holiday haha.
We went to the ward party.
Leah as a fairy, Gray as Woody and Whitney as a pumpkin.
Davis was supposed to be a Power Ranger but he wore his costume the whole day and was over it by the time we left for the party.
The party was great!!
Davis was SUPER happy because he won a goldfish from one of the carnival games.
The kids collected an obscene amount of candy during the trunk-or-treat (except for Grayson, he had about 5 suckers) and I handed out glow-in-the dark necklaces.
It was fun. Perfect Las Vegas weather too!

Soccer Skills.

Davis played soccer for the first time this season. He had a really good season, played well and enjoyed himself. He was the only player on his team that had never played before and I didn't see his coach ever really explain the game to him, so he was pretty confused during the games most of the season. Jeff has been REALLY busy seeing home health patients after work at the clinic so he didn't have time to take Davis out and explain things to him either. Before the first game Dad told him if he scored a goal he would buy him a big Lego set. Jeff thought it'd motivate him but really it just distracted him. It even got a little worse when Jeff's dad said he'd take him to McDonald's if he scored. After one game when Davis was particularly not focused he admitted, "all I could think about was McDonald's and Legos!".

My favorite memory of the season was from the very first game. Davis' coach put him in as defense and Davis had NO idea what he was supposed to do. After coaching him from the sidelines for a few minutes he understood that he was supposed to kick the ball as hard as he could when it came to him, and the first time the ball came he did just that! He was so excited he put his arms in the air and looked at us with a big grin on his face. It was adorable!!!!

Mid-season was a little rough though. Despite his best efforts he hadn't scored a goal and after the game Dad poked a little fun at him. Davis started crying. After talking him down for a few minutes he told me soccer was harder than he though it would be and he didn't like it when the other kids stole the ball from him. For a few weeks after that he didn't want to go to practice and would be grumpy for the first part of the game. I'm happy to say he eventually got over it, finished the season and wants to play next year!

Wow, my blog has been super boring lately.

Our lives haven't been boring though. I need to get on the ball and post all the awesomeness I've been keeping to myself ;)

But, first I want to blog that I won a giveway!!
Well actually TWO!
The first one was forever ago. I won a Twilight inspired t-shirt from Olivia's blog
and I kept meaning to take a picture of it but...I didn't.

And then the other day I won the giveaway on Stacy's blog


$25 to Polkadot Pansies!
Yay!
I ordered right away and the shipping was fast. The only critique I have of them is that they say on their website that everything's in stock but a few of the larger flowers I wanted were in fact sold-out. Other than that, they're great!

The pink flowers in the girls' hair are from my order.

(this is my second favorite pic from our family pics we took on Thanksgiving,
the other one will be on the Christmas card)

Also, Stacy recently added some really cool things to her etsy shop.

Leah would love any one of these necklaces!!

I'm thankful for family.

Thanksgiving at the Leavitt's. 19 adults and 19 kids!

Fun, fun, fun.

We ate.

And then Livi sang "Incarnacion" and Jeff thought it was the

funniest. thing. ever!

I'm pretty sure he cried.

Skyping Kadee & Troy, Rockband and Toy Story 3 rounded out the festivities.

...and we took family pics.

Here's Rod and Cindy and their PLETHORA of grandchildren: