Marching On

This March weather has been throwing me through a loop! We had a couple of really nice days and then it got all freezing and raining again and even threatened to snow two nights ago! It's been crazy and it's got me daydreaming for summer. Levi has a bunch of super cute 2T shorts and cooler jammies that I can't wait to bust out for him but it just refuses to get warm enough! I am sooo ready for summer. I keep finding myself pulling up pictures on my phone of the last few Julys and Augusts and just wishing it was like that now! I can't wait to go berry picking and peach picking and spending time by the pool. And I am excited to have the summer off to spend with Bubba and baby girl! Hopefully I won't be too too sleep deprived to enjoy it! But thankfully even though it's been cold, we've had enough sunshine lately to enjoy the park a fair amount anyway. 

Levi and Lincoln at the park. As usual, Levi looks way more thrilled about life than Lincoln does haha. 

Another fun park day! This particular afternoon was even sweeter because we found a little shop in Tigard that sells huge cookies so we got to have a cookie picnic at the park as well. Recipe for success! 

So this week is spring break in Newberg (and Tualatin) so I get the week off work! And Levi still gets to go to daycare which means I have two full days completely free! I am super excited to use them to work on baby girl's dresser! We got an old dresser off of Craigslist for $25. It definitely needs some TLC but it's solid wood and the drawers slide easily and it's the right size so it fits my requirements. I've got my wood filler, and my paint and primer and sandpaper so I am ready to dive in to salvaging it into something super cute! I've already taken off the nasty old brass hardware and feel like it looks better already! Haha. So that's probably going to take a lot of my time on Wednesday and Thursday. But I am so glad that we found a dresser that will work before the break so that I have this child-free chance to do it! 

I've definitely been hit by the nesting bug lately (even though I still have two more months of pregnancy to go!). Yesterday I painted baby girl's pegboard and I LOVE how it turned out! So good! And Levi and I found a perfect stick for her macrame at the park so I was able to strip the bark off of that and sand it and spray paint it gold and it turned out so good! And last night I prepped the flowers for it and laid them out how I think I will want it to go and I am super excited about it. I think it will look awesome! Also, the spice racks we ordered from Ikea finally arrived so Eric hung those up in Levi's room (except for a couple we will use in baby girl's room) to be used as bookshelves! They turned out great and I am soooo glad to finally have Levi's books put away and up off the floor and arranged so that he can actually see them and have more variety to chose from so that I'm not just reading Sheep in a Jeep 5 times in a row (although granted that is a pretty awesome book) haha. 

Levi's new bookshelves up and looking great!

Levi's room is really starting to come together now that his bookshelves are up. All of his toys have homes, his closet is organized and the wall with the window is looking good. Now he just needs his new bed (Eric is going to make him a pallet bed! I'm stoked for it!) and I need to figure out what we are doing with the long wall his bed will be along. So far it's a blank slate and I just haven't figured out what I want to do with it yet. Also, he's going to need another light in there because right now he only has his floor lamp and it just gets too dim in the evenings. We still have his other hanging lamp from his nursery but we aren't sure where to put it because we don't want to put it right above his bed and we also want to find a way to hide the cord for it. So we're still working on that. We're also still working on getting our pictures up on the walls around the house. We're making slow progress, hung Levi's canvas of his 5 month pictures which I love so much, yesterday. But we still haven't mounted our tv or got anything up in the living room yet except Jesus (#priorities) haha. 

 Anyway, also this week I found out that the district wants to renew my contract for next year! And Ha and I already talked about it a little and she is wanting to renew hers. So now Eric and I have a decision to make about that. We went to the temple yesterday and got to pray about it and talk about it some while we were in the Celestial room. I am leaning towards accepting the position again. It would still be just two days a week which right now feels like the perfect balance for me and our family. I just worry that because baby girl will still be so little I will miss her and I really don't want to miss out on things with her. But at the same time, I feel like Levi really loves getting to go to daycare and that he is definitely benefiting from going. He gets good socialization and he's learning a lot there. Unfortunately, we won't be able to send him back to Kindercare in the fall because they are no longer accepting part-time kiddos. Meaning they would take him back after the summer because he is already a student there but they wouldn't have a spot for baby girl. So that wouldn't work for us! I definitely want to keep them together if at all possible. So if I do decide to accept the position, we will have to figure out new childcare again. And I know it will be a lot more expensive to pay for two kiddos in care instead of just one. But I think it will probably still be cheaper and definitely a lot easier to do center care rather than a nanny. With a nanny, they could stay together but I just HATE the taxes part of it and paying hourly and I think Levi would really miss out academically and socially that way. So there's that. But I would still be making enough to cover the childcare and still put some aside to save for the house which helps me feel more secure financially. We are definitely wanting to shoot for buying a house in Texas sometime next summer which is suddenly starting to feel very soon! Also, I feel like it will help my resume and help me just experience wise to stay with Newberg for another year. And a lot of things will be easier than this year because I already know pretty much all the kiddos who will be on my caseload and I've learned how things work logistically and paper-work wise so that's nice. Ha and I have also been talking about how we want to get things even more organized and congruent between the two of us documentation-wise. So we will be formulating like a blank daily note form, annual report and 3-year re-eval form to make sure that we are both covering the same things and that will make it a lot easier for whoever comes in after us. Because when we came in, things were definitely a mess! Which made it super hard at the beginning. 

So yeah, the job thing has been weighing on my mind, but I feel confident that the Lord will direct us to make the right decision for our family. I know that He knows what the best plan is for us, now it's just up to us to be open to receiving that revelation.

Anyway, so that's been life in a nutshell. Work, making plans and decisions for the upcoming year, nesting and prepping for baby girl and just living life! Eric and I got the chance to go up to Portland on Friday for dinner at this cool upscale Peruvian restaurant as part of dining month. That was awesome. It was a unique atmosphere and had some interesting and unique flavors and offerings. So that was fun. I don't know that I would go there again because I liked their dessert and first course better than either of our main courses but it was still a fun experience. We are so lucky to live here where we have so many different restaurants to choose from and so many ethnic food choices! We were talking about it as we were driving home and since we've lived here we've gotten to eat at restaurants that are: Morrocan, Vietnamese, Thai, Korean, Chinese, Indian, Greek/Mediterranean, Lebanese, Brazilian, Mexican, and now Peruvian. Not everywhere has that kind of variety to offer and I love that we have been able to take advantage of it!

To finish up, here are some random pictures of life lately!

I just love how it looks like the writing in the box is a caption for exactly what Levi is doing "In search of incredible" It's perfect! 

Little man is still very much in love with his binkies! He is pretty good about giving them up when he wakes up from his naps or in the morning, but if they are left somewhere within his reach, he will readily snatch them up any time! This morning he found three of them and managed to fit all of them in his mouth at once! Eric said he looked like a baby Bane haha. 

Best snack ever! Grapes, pineapple and strawberries! I actually love that Levi loves fruit because it gets me to eat a greater variety of fruit as well. I try to mix it up so we are buying different things every week and I love it. 

I love waking up to this face! Eric gets up with Levi almost every day and then on days that I don't work, he and Levi come in and wake me up at 7:30. Levi always comes in my room with a gigantic smile on his face and a "Hi Mommy!" It's my favorite. 

Here comes the sun

After our recent snow, the weather has finally started to get more spring-like this past week and I'm loving having some sunshine back! It's still a bit cold outside but having more light in the evenings and mornings is making a big difference for my mood! I always feel so much more alive and happy when the sun comes back in the spring. 

Levi trying out the neighbor's tricycle. He figured out how to get his feet onto the pedals but couldn't actually pedal to make it go. 

He still thought it was pretty cool though. Oh and he insisted on wearing that hat even though it is too small for him. As we were getting ready to go outside he was like, "hat? hat" and then he found it in his drawer and insisted on wearing it. haha. 

This past week we celebrated little man's second birthday! I was super lucky because his birthday fell on a Tuesday (when I don't work) so we got to spend the whole day hanging out together and basically just doing whatever he wanted to do. It was awesome. We had raspberry chocolate overnight oats for breakfast, got to go play at the library in Wilsonville, ate pizza for lunch at Costco with Daddy (Levi's request), went to the truck park in the afternoon and had mac n cheese with hotdogs in it for dinner! Then after dinner, Katie came over and we opened presents and ate ice cream. Levi did a great job blowing out his candle that we stuck in his icecream. I credit all the practice from blowing his kazoo and harmonica! Haha I would say it was a birthday success. Levi loves his new toys! He especially likes his balance bike from grandma and grandpa, his toy tool set from me and Eric and his car play rug from Papi and Nona. He loves his new tools so much that he regularly carries them around with him and asked to take them with him to daycare on Wed and Thurs. He was so adamant about bringing them that Eric let him take his hammer in the car. Which turned out to be a problem when I picked him up from daycare and brought him home and there was no hammer there! For the whole hour from when we got home to when Eric got home with the hammer, Levi just kept asking for it: "My hammer? my hammer!" And I would tell him it was in Daddy's car and he would run to the window and look outside and say "go outside, Daddy car, hammer!" And I had to explain to him that Daddy was driving home from work still and so the car wasn't here yet. It was a hard evening for Bubba (and me!) haha. 

Playing at the truck park!

It was such a beautiful day! Even though you can't tell in this picture, there were other kids there and Levi had a good time playing near/alongside them. He hasn't quite gotten to the cooperative play stage yet (unless it's a bossy older kiddo who tells him what to do haha) but he loves to be around other kids. 

Levi was very excited to open all his presents. After he opened his tool set he wanted to use his tools to help him open all the other presents which made present opening much less effective and much more needing of adult assistance haha. 

 Anyway, so that was Levi's actual birthday. Then yesterday, we had his birthday party. We are so blessed in that we and Levi have such good friends in our ward! He got to have Porter and Riley, Lincoln and Liam over and they all had such a good time playing together. It's so great at this age because you just give them some balloons, some balls and the play kitchen and they were set. No games or special activities needed. I made Levi a cake with diggers on it and it was so cute but he didn't even try a single bite of it. He was much more interested in the ice cream, strawberries, blueberries and pretzels we served haha. (He did try some cake later in the afternoon). But yeah, the party was a ton of fun.

Levi's cake with diggers on it! I love how it turned out. 

Then later that afternoon Eric, Levi and I went up to Ikea to get a lamp for baby girl's nursery. We were going to get some spice racks to use as bookshelves in her and Levi's rooms also but they were completely sold out! So we will probably have to order those online. Hopefully its still a good deal when we have to pay for shipping. I've been getting more and more excited and into decorating baby girl's nursery. Now that we have the room I can start getting things to fill it and I love it. At the end of March is spring break so no work for me but Levi will still have daycare. Which means I will have two full days to hopefully do baby girl's dresser! Now I just have to find one that will work before then! I keep checking Craigslist and facebook. Nothing super promising yet, but I'm sure something will show up soon! 

So yeah, that's what's going on here. I'm excited for it to keep getting warmer so that Levi and Eric and I can spend more time outside together and not freezing! Especially now that Levi has his new bike to ride! Hopefully the next few weeks will keep trending towards nice weather. 

Look Who's Turning 2!

Yesterday, Eric, Levi and I went and took Levi's two year pictures at Brown's Ferry Park. I had originally wanted to go take them at a place with big trucks and diggers for him to be around because I think he would think that was pretty cool but it was cloudy yesterday and by the time Levi was awake from his nap and we were ready to go, I was afraid the light wouldn't last long enough to get very far. So we just picked a close place. And it actually worked out great because just as we were finishing up pictures, Levi's best friend Lincoln happened to show up with his family on the way to feed the ducks! They invited us to join them so we tagged along and Levi had a lot of fun feeding the ducks and I got to snap some pictures of the two boys together! So here you go, pictures of my very grown up looking little boy! I love him soo much!

This boy's expressions! I can't even!

I love his hand in this one, he's like "What?"

Of course he wanted the camera for himself. I'm excited to see if he gets into photography some day. 

Levi was throwing a little fit about walking over the uneven ground of the meadow. I don't know why but he seemed very scared of it and wanted us to carry him. I still don't know what was bothering him so much about it because as soon as Lincoln showed up, he walked on it fine! Go figure. 

Little heartbreaker! He's so handsome even when he isn't really smiling. 

Watching the ducks.

Oh my goodness I love my boys!

Feeding the ducks with Lincoln.

Lincoln's family had brought a wagon so we put both boys in it for a picture. I love how Lincoln is looking at me like, "are you for real? I ain't smiling" Haha