Shout out to my super-duper husband!!!!

Matt passed part II boards with flying colors!!!

~*~*~*~*~HOORAY!!~*~*~*~*~

One step closer.....

It's done!

My babies are registered for KINDERGARTEN!!!

Brooklyn and Blake will be attending the same elementary school that I did! :) It's not your typical neighborhood school; it's a bit more advanced curriculum based on a back to basics approach to education. Heavy parental involvement is required, which has phenomenal benefits. We have made the decision to keep them in the same classroom together for kindergarten and they will be attending full-day. I'm glad that we had those choices!

I'm really excited about the fact that Brooklyn and Blake are starting kindergarten, but I'm a little anxious and nervous too! I'm realizing just how overprotective of my kids I am!! They have never been away from me like they will be when they start school, 6.5 hours each day! They'll be eating lunch (that I pack everyday) on their own, playing on a playground without my supervision, etc. On the other hand, it'll be nice to have one-on-one time with Gavin. Heck, I don't even know what it's LIKE to have just ONE child with me all day long! I'm really looking forward to that part, actually! :)

Having to be up and out of the house really early this morning gave me a bit of perspective about what things will be like in the Fall. I drug the kids out to the car before 7:00am, still in their pjs, and dropped them off at Grandma's while I went to register them. After picking them up, we ran a couple errands and on our way home, not even NOON yet and all three kids are asleep in their carseats!!!! When we arrived home, I transferred each child to their own sleeping location. Brooklyn promptly awoke and told me kids don't take naps in the daytime!! She was grouchy as can be and it didn't take long after I laid down with her for her to fall back to sleep! So, we ALL got naps this afternoon and consequently had an extremely late lunch. We're sure going to be in shock when we have to adjust our schedule before school starts! It's going to be a big adjustment, I know!

I can't believe I have kids going to kindergarten!!! Makes me feel OLD!!

Farewell, our dear Prophet

President Gordon B. Hinckley, the prophet of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, passed away this evening at the age of 97. He has served as prophet for almost 13 years, which is more than half of my life! He's the one prophet that I will always remember. Such a loss for our church, but I know he is with his beloved wife and our Savior Jesus Christ in the Celestial kingdom. What a marvelous, full life he lived, such an incredibly dedicated and stalwart man! We will miss you, President Hinckley!

Sculptures in the Streets

For a little Saturday morning fun, we decided to take the kids down to Main St. in Mesa to walk along and look at the Sculptures in the Streets exhibit they have going on. We parked at one end of Main St., then walked up one side and down the other. The kids loved seeing which "statue" was next and posing with them for photo ops. It was nice to get out of the house and spend some time in the fresh air. We stopped at McDonalds for ice cream cones afterward as a treat! :) Here are LOTS of pictures of our adventures~

Um, I think I could have built this!!!

The princess on her big pink chair!Gavin's newest trickMatt showing off his moves! Almost, hon!

Mr. Brown Can Moo!

This has been Gavin's favorite book for awhile now. He loves to say the sounds on each page! If he had to be attached to a book, I'm glad this is it. It's such a cute one!!
I love to say this last part of the book SUPER fast! I pretty much have it memorized, we've read it so much!

MOO MOO
BUZZ BUZZ
POP POP POP

EEK EEK
HOO HOO
KLOPP KLOPP KLOPP

DIBBLE DIBBLE
DOPP DOPP
COCK-A-DOODLE-DOO

GRUM GRUM
GRUM GRUM
CHOO CHOO CHOO

BOOM BOOM
SPLATT SPLATT
TICK TICK TOCK

SIZZLE SIZZLE
BLURP BLURP
KNOCK KNOCK KNOCK

A SLURP and a WHISPER
and a FISH KISS, too.

Mr. Brown can do it.
How about YOU?

Day full of injury....

.......to ME!!!

Injury #1 - We attended a birthday party today for Beka's twins. It was naptime, so Gavin was being a little bit clingy and came to sit on my lap. I had him turned around facing me and I can't really remember what was going on, but all of a sudden, Gavin head-butted me, RIGHT on the bridge of my nose!!! It made the loudest crack and instantly, tears formed in my eyes! Matt was surprised that there wasn't blood dripping down my face! Amazingly, it didn't swell and I don't have any signs of black eyes, thank goodness!

Injury #2 -
What is this a picture of, you may ask? Yes, it's my foot. Do you notice anything unusual about my foot? Oh, a bandaid, you say? Why, that's right! And why is my big toe covered with a bandaid? Why don't you take a guess!

A. A knife fell from the counter and cut my toe
B. I kicked something and my entire toenail got ripped off
C. I stepped on a nail and it went through my toe

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If you guessed B, you're right!!!!

Let me just start by saying it's ALL Matt's fault! ;) After the birthday party, Matt suggested we head up to my mom's house just to hang out a bit since we were already nearby. We were going to lay Gavin down in the pack 'n play for a late nap. I went out to the garage to retrieve said pack 'n play and brought it in the house and into the room which Gavin would be napping. I swung it out to set it down, stepped forward and my sandaled foot collided with the end (foot) of the pack 'n play. I felt an excruciating pain, looked down and there was my big toenail opened up like a lid!!!!!!!!!!!! I held it down for a bit while I stood, doubled over in pain. My mom was right there and I told her what had happened and I plopped down on the bed. I seriously felt light-headed and about one second away from passing out! My mom doctored my toe up, nail still attached. Seven hours after this blessed event, my toe is STILL hurting! I have to limp and the more I walk around, the more it hurts. And trust me when I say I'm nursing this pain for all it's worth!!!

I think the most disappointing thing is that I actually like my feet and toes!! Now my left big toenail is going to fall off and it'll probably grow back in all nasty and ugly. I'm not going to be able to take the band-aid off, because if I do, I'm sure I'll barf on the spot. UGH!!! Why did this have to happen to me?!??! Like I said before, it's ALL Matt's fault!! But I still love him, even if I have an ugly toenail. :) Hey, maybe this means I'll get a 10% discount when I go for a pedicure, since I only have 9 nails to paint! ;)

Sibling rivalry issues

Kristin, this is for you!! ;)

Like I mentioned before in my Christmas post, we've been having some issues with sharing, particularly Blake. Blake kindly helps himself to Gavin's toys, claiming that Gavin "let" him play with whatever toy he has. Sometimes, Gavin doesn't mind, but other times, Gavin wants his toy and rightfully so! But, the SECOND Gavin touches one of Blake's toys, Blake flips out!!! Someone please tell me how that equals out????!? I'm confused.

Anyway, so today during Gavin's naptime, I got his new Little People airport all set up and ready for him to play with. Of course, I couldn't keep Blake away from it. After Gavin woke up from his nap, he decided he wanted to play with Blake's lego Thomas trains and what did Blake do? He BIT Gavin on the back!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ooooh, I was furious!!! This little wound may look small, but boy did Gavin scream! Blake was sent to time-out and now his Transformers are in time-out for all of tomorrow. I can't believe this kid!!! I don't really know what to do to fix the problem. It doesn't matter that Blake JUST got the same amount of toys for Christmas, or that he'll be getting a bunch of birthday gifts in three weeks, he just wants all of Gavin's toys. *sigh* This parenting stuff is hard work!!

Gavin is 2 years old!!!!

Happy Birthday, sweet boy!!!!

I can't believe my baby boy is already two years old!!!! It seems like just yesterday that we were waiting to meet our new baby, not knowing if it was going to be a boy or girl baby. I had a feeling all along that he was going to be a "he" and I was right!! I'm so thankful for Gavin and his sweet personality. I can't imagine our family without him!! :) Please indulge me for a sec while I take a trip down memory lane......

Overdue and ready to pop!! Right before heading to the hospital.

Mommy meets Gavin

6 days old3 months old6 months old9 months old1 year old15 months old18 months old21 months oldAND TODAY, at 2 years old!!!
with his favorite person, Mommy!!

Since Gavin's birthday fell on a Sunday, we just had a quiet day with family. Gavin woke up to find his BIG birthday gift, a basketball hoop. Went to church, came home and Gavin napped while I baked the cake. We went to my parents' for dinner of chimichangas, ate cake and opened gifts. Gavin is VERY into opening presents and has to get every last stitch of paper off before he pays any attention to what the actual gift is! He got more Little Einsteins stuff (books and stuffed characters), some Thomas items (DVD and Arthur train), a remote control car, a play camera and bath toys from us, the Little People airport, a big Elmo plush, a flashlight (the kid is fascinated with them!) and a Doc car (from the movie Cars) from my family, and a TMNT monster truck and candy from Becky & Taylor. Brooklyn and Blake were very helpful at church today, informing anyone and everyone that today was their brother's birthday! LOL! I wish I could have done a bigger/better celebration, but Gavin really doesn't know the difference and he was perfectly happy today!

Make a wish!

Opening gifts

Photographer in training!We're going on a trip, in our favorite rocket ship...

I still need to get out and take Gavin's 2 year "portraits" and you can bet that I'll be sharing those too! :) Happy Birthday, Bean!! We love you!

Better late than never!!! --> Christmas

Boy has it been wild around here!!! Every time I sit down to the computer, I've meant to blog, but I just haven't had the time to compose my thoughts, pictures, etc. to get an entry up!! So here we go!

I don't know about everyone else, but the month of December is just chock full of "things to do." There were things I just plain WANTED to do, things I HAD to do and some things I really DIDN'T want to do. We had family functions every week leading up to Christmas, which is great. I love my family and Matt's family, but really, it's just becoming a little TOO much when we feel like we need to go to everything!

Christmas day went a little like this-
* Matt and I stay up until after midnight, getting everything set up for the morning
* 6:15 am - I wake up in order to get a shower in and be all ready before the kids wake up
* 7:30 am - Wake up 2 of 3 kids (Blake was already awake) so that we can do our Christmas
* 8:15 am - Tell the kids that we have no time to play with the gifts they just opened because we have to be out the door in 45 minutes. Rush, rush, rush to get kids fed, dressed, hair done.
* 9:30 am - LeBaron family Christmas exchange. Can you say pure chaos!! Haha! Everyone talking at the same time + trying to figure out who has who for gift giving + wrapping paper everywhere, KIDS everywhere = MAYHEM!!
* 10:30 am - Over to Matt's parents for our sibling and little cousin exchange and gifts from Mom and Dad. Everyone got to talk to Karl, who is currently serving a mission in Mississippi. :)
* 1:15 pm - We come back home, put Gavin down for a short, but sweet nap, twins get to play with a few of their new toys. At this point, I know if I sit down for too long, I'll be OUT!
* 2:45 pm - On the road again, this time to my Uncle David and Aunt Candy's home for Christmas dinner with my dad's side of the family.
* 5:30 pm - Now, we finally head over to MY parents house for gifts. I manage to sneak in some shut eye (only like 15 minutes) since we beat my family home.
* 8:00pm?ish - I don't really remember what time we actually got back to our house, but again, we tell the kids that they can't play with any of their new Christmas gifts because it's bedtime. Promise them a million times over that the second they wake up tomorrow morning, we'll begin extracting each toy from it's package.

What's wrong with this picture????!???! I honestly can't do this EVERY Christmas for the rest of my life! At some point (like next year), we're going to have to skip all this craziness to be able to spend time at home with just our little family and actually enjoy Christmas day. Now, I'm not saying that my Christmas day stunk or anything, because it didn't. I'm grateful that we have loving families that we can spend time with. But I just want to sit at home, enjoy our morning, let the kids play with their new goods and THEN we'll visit our families at our leisure. Ahhhhh, can you imagine! ;)

And I was all set to take a thousand pictures of the kids ripping into their gifts on Christmas morning, but - don't faint - I didn't. After a couple pictures of the initial reaction to their Santa gifts, I put the camera down so I could enjoy their excitement. I really only have 38 pictures taken on Christmas day. I'm just going to share a few-

Christmas Eve in new jammies

Say cheese! Blake's big Santa gift

Gavin with his beloved Rocket. Christmas could have been over for him
after he saw this and he would have been perfectly content!!!Brooklyn modeling her new Jasmine dress up from Santa!

Brooklyn's favorite gifts - Jasmine dress up, hot pink Graco double doll stroller, Lil' Luvables Doll Factory (from G & G LeB), all her new Littlest Pet Shop sets

Blake's favorite gifts - Fisher Price Kid Tough digital camera, Spiderman action figure, Mack truck (from Cars) playset, Transformers Optimus Prime Battle Rig Blaster dart gun thingy (from G & G LeB), Dreadwing transformer (from G & G Hamilton)

Gavin's favorite gifts - Little Einstein Pat Pat Rocket, Little People Farm (from G & G Hamilton), and his new trucks

We've had a few issues with "sharing" new toys. Blake seems to want to play with everything that Gavin got for Christmas. However, Blake will flip out if Gavin touches something of his!!! I don't think anyone should have to share their brand new Christmas toys. Blake thinks that if he offers a different toy to Gavin as a trade, he can take whatever Gavin had that he (Blake) wants. UGH! The joys!!

Just think - we get to do it all over again for Gavin's birthday in 10 days and then Brooklyn and Blake's three weeks later!!! New toys, more fights! Yay!

More blog entries to come...... This just scratched the surface of the past two weeks!!