Schizophrenic Post

I’m feeling so much better this week. I had a very productive day and I thought I would end it by updating our blog. But it will be a little scatter-brained as I have months to catch up on and too much to write about.

Claire is seriously funny, she gets it from her daddy. Between the two of them I’m laughing constantly. The other day she taught herself how to gargle; we all laughed, it spewed everywhere and she repeats it every couple days. Then she tried to bounce a gumball, it didn’t work so well. Today she looked at us (we’re sitting on the couch, no talk of anything Christmas related) and said, “You guys are both Santa!” We even had her repeat it because we weren’t sure we heard her right. She is only 3, I wasn’t expecting this for a couple more years, hahaha. A couple days ago she received a Rudolph purse from Grandma Janet, put it around her neck and started spastically jumping around and saying in a mean, grumbly voice, “I’m a mean guy with a purse!” Where in the world does she come up with this stuff!? 

I love the way she describes things. She uses words together that I would never think of, but it makes sense. A couple weeks ago she was sick with some sort of tummy bug and told us that her pooh was melted. I have laughed about that everyday since.

She has a really sassy mouth on her these days and oddly enough it sounds just like what we say to her. Yesterday she said to me, “don’t talk to me that way.” As I was typing this I heard her say to her dad, “you need to be nice to me, you know better than that.” I keep thinking to myself, she’s 3, what is she going to be like in 10 years. Yikes!

Claire had 2 new cousins born this summer for a total of 6 cousins. Kilah was born in July and Luke was born in September. They are both just too precious, I miss them both so much! Luke was born just a week after his daddy returned home from Afghanistan. I’m so glad that my brother was able to get home safely and just in time.

I’m so proud of Levi, he received an award at the OPOA banquet. It was a Distinguished Service Award for the contributions he’s made with law enforcement websites, reserves and all of his help with the Chemeketa law enforcement program. And we had a much needed weekend away, it was fabulous.

Claire loved Halloween. She begged us to take her to the “scary store” (the Halloween Superstore) and after a couple weeks, we gave in. We really thought she would be scared the moment we walked in the door. But just the opposite, she loved every terrifying moment of it. She dressed up as a tiger, but not just any tiger, a scary tiger. Get it? Lions and tigers and bears, oh my! We trick-or-treated for about an hour, that’s when Claire grumped out on us. She has been asking for the last 2 months now to go to Halloween. We’re having a hard time explaining about time, seasons, months, etc.

We celebrated Claire’s birthday in November. I am really having a hard time believing that she’s 3. It just can’t possibly have been that long ago that I gave birth to her. She is so fun, energetic, funny, incredibly smart, easily excited, loving and sweet. I’m so blessed to call her my daughter.

Tonight we made a gingerbread house, she said, “this is the funnest gingerbread house ever!” We had fun, although there was a little too much candy-eating going on. We still need to go see Santa, do Zoolights, 2 Christmas parties and lots of shopping; good thing I’m not working or I would never be able to get all of this done. Claire and I were able to walk around the temple last weekend and found this amazing nativity in the reflection pool. It must be new, I don’t remember it being here before. So beautiful!

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.