My Christmas Wish List

Well i decided to procrastinate doing Kaden's homework and make a nice little list of the things i want for Christmas instead, and a list of things i will someday ask for Christmas.

Books- I love books especially ones that are nice and that i will read, or have read and want to put on the beautiful new bookshelf Kaden and I are getting ourselves.

 there is an entire collection of these and i only have one so far ( Great Expectations) they are adorable though aren't they. They are called the penguin classics, and i absolutely love them!

 I found these at Nordstroms and i really love them too. They are just upbeat little motivational books and Nordstroms will price match them for what they cost on Amazon, and you still get the cute Nordstroms wrapping.

For the Home-

 This will be in my entry way eventually. I meant to ask my mom for it for Christmas and then i splurged on Black Friday instead. Oh and this is from my  new favorite catalog, Ballard Designs.

 I think that these are so neat and i know Kaden really likes them too! It is a mission plaque personalized for where ever your husband or son served. Pretty neat huh? We already have the Saint George Temple painting to match too.

So for our wedding we got several Kitchen Aid attachments and no kitchen aid. I know this is pretty pricey but again i should have probably asked my mom for this.
For Me-

 Isn't this adorable? And its Juicy. I seriously have not bought anything from Juicy Couture forever and I pretty much wear a headband or flower everyday, its time for a new one.

 I lost my tiffany's necklace that i got for my 18th birthday during one of our many moves this past year. It seriously made me sick and i still get upset thinking about it. This isn't quite the charm i want, i want the plain charm on the simple silver necklace, and an additional key charm to go with it.

Okay now i better get back to Kaden's homework. I am sure i will add more practical things later.

Thanksgiving Day

Today Kaden and I spent the day with both families. Let me tell you, there was never a dull  moment. We spent the morning searching out the best deals for black friday with Nancy and hanging out around their house until we went to Ron and Joyce's (Leavitt Grandparents) for a family lunch. The lunch was great and it was nice to catch up with everyone. Thank you everyone who made food, Kaden and I were slackers and didn't bring anything. After lunch we played with the girls and all visited for awhile. Then the boys all headed out for a pretty good skeet shoot.

 

Alayna's first time ever asking to sit on my lap. Such a huge step for Leavitt mankind that i had to document it.

 

This is Grace searching for Kaden while playing hide and seek. Yea that is Kaden standing behind her.

Thanksgiving with my family is when things got interesting. We started out our exciting night of thankfulness with some sweet family pictures. Now i do take pictures and they usually turn out pretty amazing, but i take no claim to how these turned out. My camera was sitting on top of a garbage can on auto with a button in my hand and timer on the camera. Hope everyone finds these as entertaining as i did though. When your family consists of 4 girls and Kaden who knows what will end up on the front of the 2010 Christmas card.

 After family pictures we headed home for some dinner. Now mom said earlier in the week that she wasn't making anything because she didn't want to have to make an entire dinner and clean it up and not be able to eat most of it. Well i am sure thankful that she changed her mind because we spent at least a half our laughing around the dinner table before any of us could get the prayer said to eat. We have a tradition in our family (one of the few) of going around the table and saying what we are thankful for. Well this year we started with Pierce, he manages to sneak his way in to most of our holiday dinners. He even said the Easter dinner when he was like three, he's in the 5th grade now, so this has been going on for quite some time. Anyways here is how thankfuls went.

Pierce- family, heavenly father, trees and shade. (can you tell he lives in Moapa Valley?)
Hannah- that mom made dinner
Dad- Some of the dogs, none of the cats.
Sarah- her opportunity to get an education. (Dad added, and online bank transfers)
Me- (mom skipped me) Hey you skipped me! Mom- i know im hungry
Kaden- He said he was thankful for me (it made my night)

Then we proceeded to laugh about all kinds of random things and here is what came of that. Pierce tried to start saying the prayer but we all were laughing to hard to get started, over who knows what so after we all lift our heads and unfold our arms trying to get our giggles out Dad goes off with- I want reverence dammit! He couldn't even keep a straight face oh my heck lets just say even though our dinner table is always entertaining tonight was especially comical.

Well I am thankful for the time this day allows me to spend with my family and for all of the fun memories that were made. Now its off to bed to wake up in 4 hours for a day full of shopping crazy awesomeness!

The Month of Thanksgiving

I am not sure if every year is this way or just this year, but it seems like everyone went from Halloween straight to Christmas. Don't get me wrong, Christmas is an amazing holiday and is worth celebrating as long as possible, but I think that Thanksgiving should not get the shaft just because we Christmas means gifts and good music. Hello, Thanksgiving means two days to a week off school and work and great food! Okay, but it also should be a time to recall all of the things we are Thankful for. That is why we had the first Thanksgiving isn't it? The pilgrims and Indians were thankful for this country they have to live in. (remembering this statement from the 5th grade.) Well anyway this November i decided to make sure i pointed out something i was thankful for everyday. What better place to do this than i face book? I am pretty positive i kept up with it every single day so far, and here are all of my posts.

I am thankful for my little car that is still alive and getting me from place to place.

I am thankful for the chance we all have to make some changes in our nation today. (voting day)

I'm thankful for my amazing education classes. todays ed 3000 was a blast :)

I am thankful that we had enough In the bank for the rest of kadens tuition and all our bills, but I'm even more thankful that next semester we will have full pellgrants :)

I am thankful for my husband and for all of the complaining he puts up with. plus our date night at home depot has been pretty fun.

I am thankful that Tiffany acts like a little kid and comes and cuddles with me when Kaden leaves for work.

I am thankful for Luke (brother in law) and the example he is to me and Kaden. he heads into the MTC on Wednesday.

I am thankful that it is still warm enough for rain and that it hasn't snowed yet. (it snowed that night)

I am thankful that I am able to live somewhere that is so beautiful all the time, it snowed last night and I still am amazed by how pretty it is outside.

Thankful for the surprise deposit into my account today. oh the blessings of tithing are wonderful :)

I am so thankful for all of the men and women who have and do serve our country.

I am thankful for my teachers that see more in me than I do in myself. If it weren't for them I would probably be failing the majority of my classes this semester.

I am thankful for my sister sarah, even though sometimes i swear she pretends like she doesn't live near me she is a great friend and sister the majority of the time

I am thankful for Sundays and the time I get to spend with Kaden.

I am thankful for my health and the ability I have to work out and stay in shape. I feel so amazing after a trip to the gym.

today I am thankful for my convocations job. it gives me the opportunity to hear great educated speakers and get paid to do it.

I am thankful for music! I am completely musically challenged but just listening to it sets my mood. it is so powerful and definitely something I take for granted.

I am thankful for nice clothes. (I'm completely serious) I don't mean this in a conceided way but I always feel so much more confident when I know I am dressed well.

I am thankful for my day care kids. they have such sweet hearts and teach me so much.

I am thankful for great friends that are always there for me and that are such awesome examples. even though I don't get to see most of them very often I know once I do we can just pick up where we left off. (plus Camille to the picture)

I am thankful for my nieces! I wish I got to see them more, but they are adorable and so much fun and I love spoiling grace 

I am thankful for the home that kaden and i were able to buy this year. It might not always be clean and it definitely isn't looking to amazing at the moment, but i love that it is ours!

I am thankful for the things i love to do, Dance and Photography, both are ways i can express myself, and both keep me going. I would have never thought i would still be dancing or that i would have gone anywhere with photography when i was younger, but i absolutely love that i plan on doing both until it is physically impossible. (yea, taking pictures right after ballet, still in my pink tights and leotard.)

I am thankful for both mine and kadens parents. they have raised us both so well and are such huge examples to us. we couldn't have been blessed with better parents.

 I have really enjoyed doing this. It has helped me everyday to look for things i am thankful for and all that i am blessed with. I am so Thankful for all of my family, and my friends. I have been so blessed in my life to be surrounded by the most amazing people. I have the best parents and inlaws, the most beautiful and loving sisters anyone could ever ask for, i have 3 awesome brother in laws and a wonderful sister inlaw that i look up to so much! I have the three most adorable nieces in the entire world. I also have some of the best friends anyone could ever ask for, I have friends that i have known almost my entire life and others that i have stayed close too since high school. 

Obviously by my posts you can tell i am in complete school mode. I am thankful for the things that happened in my life that lead me to receive my education. Honestly  so far it has been the best thing i could have ever done for myself and i know it will be once i am finished as well. I am thankful for my Amazing husband and all that he does for me. He puts up with so much from me, and works so hard, i only hope he knows how much i appreciate him and how thankful i am that he chose me to be his wife. My list can go on forever, at the moment i am sincerely thankful for just about everything in my life. So, after tomorrow once Thanksgiving has come and gone, I will start celebrating Christmas with everyone else. Until them i am keeping up with celebrating Thanksgiving as much as possible.

Family Pictures

So we took family pictures a couple of weeks ago before Luke left. Here is the one that turned out alright, ha ha they were all pretty comical, and next time Jessica please ask me if my lens is clean. Huge smudge right across me and Vance's faces.

I'd have to say we are a pretty good looking family though. 

Class, Class, Work, Class, Work, Class, Sleep

Seriously this title sums up my life. The End.

Okay not really, a few exciting things have happened between my 18 credits (plus 3 of kadens) and my two jobs. I got really sick with migraines a few months ago that put me in a zombie state for for awhile, seriously not sure how i am passing my classes since i don't quite remember going to them but i finally am past that and have been playing catch up for the past couple of weeks. Luckily when you say im sorry i found out i had a tumor your teachers don't want to hear anymore and cut you a break. I don't have a real tumor or a cancerous one at least. Its called a pituitary tumor, its a gland that releases hormones and mine just decided to quit releasing one day back in August so it swelled instead. Its all fixed though and i sure am happy about that! So since i have finally been able to live again Kaden and i have tried to get our house together. Slowly but surely it is coming along. We actually started painting this week, Woo Hoo, it was a huge step for us. So right now our Kitchen is blue and half of our downstairs bathroom is brown. We plan on adding the wicker to the kitchen walls tomorrow night and finishing the bathroom saturday though. Kaden went hunting a lot the past few months, probably not as much as his brother Kyle, but enough to feel like he was gone every single weekend for ever. Then last weekend was Lukes farewell and he went into the MTC yesterday. It still doesn't quite seem like he is gone yet for us, but i know we are already missing him. I think everyone is going to have a hard time with Luke being gone but we are all so proud of him too. It has been great seeing Luke grow up the past little while. After the back east trip he got really excited to go out and serve. I absolutely loved seeing him glow when he would start talking about the church and how ready he was to leave.

So although my classes are crazy this semester and work has been too. I have really enjoyed most of them and i have really tried to find something positive in all of them. My education classes are always great and they make me so excited to go out and have my own classroom, i actually changed my specialization again and this time i am sticking with it. As much as i wanted to do early childhood and special ed i kind of figured Utah is the only place where i need early child hood for anything and i don't plan on living here too much longer and what i really want to help kids in is reading and writing, and i can always go back and get a special ed endorsement, but i switched to reading and language art. Next semester i start in on those classes and finish up the one general i have left. I am also taking a geology class, for who knows what reason, because i sure don't, and a Jazz class. Geology i will be happy to just pass at this point because it is just ridiculously hard but i do really like my teacher. He is super interesting and has some great stories. I also love that he knows me by name and always talks to me even though im practically failing. It give me a little more hope for the class that he cares enough to know who i am even though there are 80 other students in there. Until today i wasn't quite sure how Jazz was turning out for me. I have always been really hard on myself in dance and the only thing i ever thought i was good at in dance was being flexible and well that pretty much left me, i actually always feel like my teacher is picking on me too, she walks by and will tell me to turn out more or will pull my shoulders back and push my butt in telling me to stand up straighter, and sometimes she makes me do pirouettes until i fall on my butt so i pretty much chalked the class up to a good experience, glad i tried it while i was in college but obviously dance was not for me, also i am probably the oldest person in the class (i have just discovered i am old according to girl age at school). Then at the end of class today she called 4 or 5 girls up including our demonstrator and asked if we would want to be demonstrators for next semester. My job literally dropped open. After almost an entire semester with a class of 50 plus dancers who have been dancing continuously forever and are still little and in shape she asked me to be a demonstrator. SUU has a pretty awesome dance program and plenty of great dancers so yea, im still in shock. Now if i just make sure to go to the rest of my classes this semester  i think i will finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I will post some pictures of the house and everything as soon as i get them uploaded.