Hard Times

I’m so sorry for the lack of updates lately. We’ve been having some hard times lately and I haven’t wanted to sound like a Debbie-Downer. Thankfully Levi was able to find a job a couple months ago, but then this month I was laid off.

For those of you that haven’t been laid off, it makes you feel like a loser. Even though I know it is not my fault and that there’s nothing I could have done differently. Applying for jobs because you have to, and not necessarily ones you want, is also difficult. I would love to stay at home but I just don’t think we can afford it right now.

I know that I have so much to be thankful for; a sweet little family, our good health, a warm home, food. I’m just ready to feel stable again; something we haven’t felt since before Levi was laid off.

I just have to keep reminding myself that there is a bigger picture that I’m not seeing and I have to trust in Heavenly Father that all will be ok. It’s such a hard thing to do though.

Thank you for listening; I feel better just typing it out. Hopefully I’ll be back to my normal, cheery self in a couple days.

Too Much Fun Lately

That’s right, we’ve been having so much fun lately that blogging about it has been the last thing on my mind. Here is a quick month by month of exciting (or just funny) events.

January

Claire has become quite the little culinary artist. Levi said this happened in a matter of minutes (I’m pretty sure he always says  that lol). She got the eggs out (a brand new 18 count carton of course) and cracked about half of them mostly into a container. Levi discovered this and asked what she was doing and she replied, “I’m c-oh-king eggs!” Duh dad! So they cooked them up and ate them. A couple days later we found an un-cracked egg in a container in the drawer, that could have gotten ugly real quick.

 

February

We finally took our anniversary getaway (hey, 3 months late isn’t bad). With Levi’s schedule of reserve academy just about every Saturday we finally managed to squeeze it in. We went down to North Bend/Coos Bay which is somewhere neither of us had been since we were kids. It was fun discovering a new town, eating the most amazing seafood of our entire lives and just spending time together as a couple. It felt weird to not be toting a diaper bag (or a “diapy change bag” as Claire likes to call it) and our little monkey around. The house we stayed at had the most amazing view of the bay. And although it was cold it didn’t rain on us, thank goodness.

Big thank you to Grandma Janet and Uncle Hayden for holding down the fort here, Clairee had a blast!

Sad news, my brother Eric was deployed to Afghanistan. I’m so grateful that he’s been in relatively safe places the whole time. Not a day goes by that we don’t think about him and pray for his safety. But on a happier note, we also found out right before he left that him and his sweet wife are expecting a baby. The baby boy is due around the same time that he gets home, end of September/beginning of October. My older brother and his wife are pregnant with a girl (due in July), I’m so excited to meet my new niece and nephew! But geez talk about peer pressure! ;)

 

March

We finally had enough snow for Claire to make her very first snow man with just a tiny bit of help from Dad. She was so proud of it. She loved eating the snow and making snow angels. We were all kind of sad to see it melt. Little did we know it would snow a couple times in March, such crazy weather.

 

April

I’m pretty sure that every holiday just becomes more fun the older Claire gets. We had a wonderful Easter. Claire was so excited about her piggy bank, anytime she finds money she runs and puts it in her bank. We went and took some family pictures at the capitol building, it is soo beautiful that time of year. She was awesome at coloring eggs and we also took a walk to go see the ducks. What a fantastic day!

We met Grandma Debi at the zoo bright and early at 9 AM. We didn’t realize until after we were there that it was Packy’s birthday celebration so everybody, and their brother’s, and their cousin’s were there. But a great time was still had by all.

  On one of Levi’s free Saturdays, we went down to Roseburg/Winston to go to the Wildlife Safari. I went when I was little but Levi and Claire had never been. It was so neat to see the animals so close up and from the comfort of our car. This emu (or maybe ostrich) was so funny!  It gave us the stare down for a good 5 minutes. All of the animals must be loosing their winter fur, this guy included because he had a crazy ‘do. He kept squawking at us, and boy, Claire was just thoroughly fascinated.

We stayed at a hotel with a pool and that kid did not want to get out. We went swimming 3 times in less than 24 hours and it was meltdown city the minute we said we needed to leave. I was having a swimsuit malfunction so no pictures will be posted, it was a bad one, so bad in fact that I threw my swimsuit in the hotel garbage.

We also discovered a new hobby on our way home, Geocaching. Basically it’s an Easter egg hunt for adults, minus the eggs and frilly dresses. There’s an app that will tell you were the nearest one is. Then when you get near it you have to start hunting around and the two we found were pretty darn hard to find. We’ve decided this is a great activity for each member of our family, Claire because she loves being outside and doesn’t care what we’re doing, Levi because he loves technology and me because I’m good at finding things. Hopefully we’ll be able to do this a little more as Levi’s schedule opens up a bit.

And last but not least, the day came when this happened: 

Again, it happened in just a couple unsupervised minutes, we’re not even sure where she found these scissors. When I got home from work I scoured her head and could not figure out where this good-sized chunk came from. Apparently she’s really good at blending, who knows, maybe she’ll be a hair stylist?

Coming up-Levi graduates from reserve academy (the volunteer police position) next week, I could not be more excited! His schedule will be a little more flexible. And he’s super excited since he’ll be able to drive the police car now. I’ll post pics next week.

Christmas and Claire

 

Whew, I sure love the Holidays but, it is soooo exhausting being the adult in them. Although way more fun! Claire loved all things Christmas. Christmas trees, Christmas lights, Santa (until we asked her to sit on his lap, then not so much), ornaments, and who can forget presents. On Christmas Eve with Levi’s family, Claire got absolutely spoiled (food, utensils, cookware for her kitchen, clothes, a doll house, etc.) and we got all done and she said, “More presents?”, I don’t know where we’d put anymore!

But we really tried hard to teach her about the more important aspects of Christmas. We attended a festival of nativities in the beginning of December. There was live music, a gym full of nativities from all over the world made from everything from gingerbread, to plastic, stone and fabric and a wonderful little Bethlehem play area for kids that included a tent full of wheat (random I know but the kids would not come out of there!). It was amazing! We were telling Claire about each member of the nativity and we pointed to baby Jesus (she knows adult Jesus) and asked her who it was and she said “Baby!”, I said “Yes, baby who?” and then Claire said “Baby Who!” I think by the time Christmas rolled around she understood that it was baby Jesus but “baby who” was so cute!

Christmas Morning was so much fun! Although staying up till 2 in the morning was not the greatest idea. Claire was so so so slow at opening her stocking. I was expecting that she was just going to rip into her stocking, dump everything out, throw it aside and move on to her bigger presents. But she took each item out, inspected it, told us what it was and either wanted to eat it or play with it. We were so anxious so we kept telling her to keep going faster but it was truly adorable. It was finally time to unveil her present from Santa, she pulled the blanket off and this is the expression we saw… priceless!

We were worried that she would play with it for a day and then be bored with it, but 2 weeks later and she’s still cooking all sorts of delicious food for us. The only problem being that she know thinks that she can really cook. The other day she hopped the gate, opened the fridge, took out the eggs (18 count) cracked all but one and got most of them into a plastic container. Several days later we found an egg in a random drawer, silly girl. Apparently this all happened in just a couple minutes when Levi was looking for something but he couldn’t even be mad at her because it was so adorable. So he fished the broken shell bits out and they scrambled them up for lunch. That girl can sure gobble up eggs!

Christmas day included a stop at the Borts’, I don’t think their menu could have been more delicious! We’re so lucky to have such wonderful friends whose whole family has adopted us. We then spent the afternoon at my parents’ house and got to see my baby brother and his wife, Carina (Uncle Ewic and Aunt Ina) for the first time in 6 months. It was so good to spend so much time with them while they were here. Claire loves them both so much, I love seeing her interact with her aunts & uncles. The day after Christmas we went to Zoo Lights with my mom (thanks for the zoo membership!), Eric and Carina, and we all had a blast despite the near freezing temp and sprinkles. We had to be shuttled in because the zoo parking lot was so full but who knew that would turn out to be such an exciting event for Claire. She was mesmerized by all the lights, as were we. I hadn’t been since I was a little kid and Levi wasn’t sure he’d ever been.

It’s always a little sad for me when the holidays are over. There’s not much to look forward to for the next couple months and no more paid holidays off until memorial day, that seems so far away, but I’m sure it’ll be here before we know it. Well I better get to bed, I hope you all enjoyed the holidays as much as we did, Happy New Year!