Year in Review

Bronze starts the year off working 60+ hour weeks.

Also start the year off with an announcement, expecting baby #3!

Take a trip to Santa Fe, NM, have a wonderful time visiting family.

Had to give up a loved family pet of almost 7 years :' -(

Decided not to move so we bought a different vehicle to accommodate our growing family.

God says he has other plans for us. (Jeremiah 29:11)

Go out on a limb of faith and list our house for sale, TONS of showings!

Feeling very pregnant, wonder what in the world we're doing trying to sell our house.

New Sysco driver hired! Bronze resumes a more normal work schedule.

Sold our house with no where to go.

Had baby #3, Eliad!

New Sysco driver didn't work out, Bronze back to crazy work schedule.

Homeless - move into tiny 2 bedroom condo with our family of 5.

Bought another house. Blessed that it met not only our requirements but our desires as well.

Had wisdom teeth taken out (worse than having a baby) felt like it would have been wiser to just leave them in ; - ). Ha,ha.

Turned the big 30! Yes, it does feel older.

We were in our first earthquake, unfortunately we didn't get to 'experience' it due to the good construction of our house and had to find out about it after the fact.

Celebrate family Thanksgiving in our new home.

Look at my baby and wonder how he got so big, so fast.

Celebrate multiple times for the Christmas season with a lot of family.

Prayed with husband, thanking God for the many blessings we have been given, for the trials he's brought us through this year and for his guidance in the next.

Wondering where this year went but looking forward to next year and what God has in store for us!

Stages

There are different stages in life. A lot of times they are new and exciting and sometimes they are monotonous and tiresome.

Right now we are in one of the monotonous ones. Don't get me wrong, it's not necessarily bad, we've had our share of exciting and it's kind of nice to just be settled into a routine.

Unfortunately our routine lately hasn't allowed for much me and Bronze time.

Every day is the "same-ole same-ole", Bronze going into work super early, me taking care of the kids and home life all day, Bronze getting off work in time to eat dinner, get everyone ready for and off to bed then starting all over again the next day. The weekends are filled with getting things caught up on that didn't get done during the week and any other obligations that we must fulfill. Life's over all good and God has been good to us, we are blessed.

The other night after getting the kids to sleep we did something out of the ordinary, instead of Bronze heading off to his early bed time while I finish getting things put back together from the day we snuck off to our room very quietly. You see, Bronze had found some hidden camera shows that were entertaining so we thought we'd watch some to lighten up our serious schedule. We got all set up and let the videos roll. It was so much fun to laugh together. We laughed until there were tears coming out of our eyes, we laughed until our sides hurt and we had to muffle our screams in our pillows so that we wouldn't wake our sleeping children. I don't know if the fact that we were so tired and in autopilot had anything to do with it or if it was really that funny, but I do know that laughter is good for the soul and our souls were in pretty good shape the other night.

Today

Today is Bronze's big out of town day.

Today, Eliad woke up with a red, stuffy nose.

Today, I dumped uncooked rice all over the place.

Today, Ardon cut his foot and was only traumatized by it after we put a band aid on it, since then he has been lame.

Today, I have been trying to finish up homemade Christmas items that didn't get done before.

Today, Elee took off her pants and ran around the house hiding them faster than I could find new ones to put on her.

Today, Elee took our DVD collection and spread it out all over the floor in the 2 seconds that I stepped out of the room.

Today, Elee emptied out the cooking utensil drawer, I'm still finding them strewn all over the place.

Today, Elee gave her baby brother a box or macaroni to eat because he was hungry.

Today, Elee got her head stuck in a toilet seat, not just in it but STUCK. Forgive me for not taking a picture but in my panic all I could think of was getting this germ infested thing removed from my daughter.

Today, and everyday, Elee is an incredibly sweet, loving and nurturing girl. She is also incredibly ornery, mischievous and a bundle of energy. She keeps everyday exciting and I wouldn't change a thing about her!

Just So You Know

I haven't been trying to ignore any one. I just currently have no phone. My phone started acting up Christmas eve, eve (last Friday) so I had to get it swapped out for a different one (same old model) but we had an incident today that left me phone less again. I'm kind of irritated about the whole ordeal and don't really want to talk about it but figured I better let you know just in case you needed to reach me. I do check email often so you can get in touch with me there. Oh, and I'll probably need everyone's phone numbers all over again :-P don't you just love technology?!

Working On It

I have a lot of pictures on my camera, and I would love to share them with you. Unfortunately Bronze's computer wants nothing to do with me and my pictures right now. Sure, Bronze can get things to work just fine but if I make an attempt to try anything the screen just goes black. It's almost as if the computer is trying to tell me something :-P

I'm trying to get it figured out and when I do there will be a picture post to get us caught up!

Did You Know...

that if you look up my blog, "The Leyba Life" on google's search engine, one of the options it gives you is "Two Life Terms For Leyba"? Well, it's a totally different Leyba, one of no relation. I hope!

(Just wanted there to be some clarification about that.)

Stereotypical

It's so easy to set stereotypes. For instance, there are many different types at the grocery store. Like the mothers who's children seem wild through the whole store. You know the kinds, they're the ones who's kids are still in their PJ's and opening everything in the shopping cart while snot comes out of their noses.

Well today we fit in to that stereotype. We fit it well.

I had to go to the store, so against my better judgement we took off.

Normally things go fine, it's a nice opportunity for us to get out of the house for a little bit and the most tiresome part is just the getting everyone loaded and unloaded everywhere. Today however, things did not go normally.

We haven't been out much lately so the kids have a lot of built up energy, energy they decided to take out by bouncing all around in the store. Every time I turned around I had to pull someone out of the way of oncoming shoppers. I had a terrible time getting store associates to help me, and poor Eliad was so tired he cried until he fell asleep in the checkout line. As we were loading up to leave I was trying to load up Eliad's carrier while holding open the back hatch for the guy loading my groceries. In this short couple of seconds Elee, the child who never leaves my side, ran out in the parking lot to jump into a puddle. Sigh. Eliad's seat banged along the car as I dropped the hatch on the sacker who was loading my car (sorry) so I could run to grab my wayward child.

At that moment I felt all eyes on me and immediately felt sorry for those 'stereotypical' moms that struggle through a shopping trip.

I'm not stressed out or frustrated by the experience, just tired and thankful that nap time is just around the corner!

Cake and Bacon

Yes that's right, not 'cake and baking' but 'cake and bacon'.

With some of the changes they've made at his work lately there hasn't been much in the way of speciality food items for Bronze to bring home.

Until today.

You see, yesterday they had a dessert and bacon tasting day for all of the sales reps. What a combo huh! Since Bronze has become buddies with Lan, the one in charge of getting rid of all the extra food, and I occasionally send him goodies we get a lot of left overs that normally would get thrown away. I am amazed at what they throw away, they only want the best and freshest food to serve potential clients and freezer space in town is limited so anything that doesn't get use immediately gets thrown out.

This is one of the things that Lan set aside for me today-

There are 2 different kinds and I don't even know what is in them but it's heavenly. This is one of those things that you'd pay $6 or more for at a restaurant.

In addition to cake Lan sent home a tray of cookies for the kiddos, a brand new/unopened box of frozen sweet potato fries (and remember this is industrial size), frozen cookie dough and of course a couple packages of frozen, uncooked bacon!

Thank you Lan!

Since we were unaware Bronze would be coming home with goodies today we actually did a little baking of our own.

The last time I mixed up a batch of cookie dough I put some aside for the kids to shape and bake when time allowed.

Here is my smashing, squishing, drop it on the floor a couple times Einstein taste tester. Any time I would try to grab her cookie shapes to put on the baking sheet she would get upset and say I broke her dough. Sooo she basically had the same small chunk the entire time.

This, on the other hand, is my serious baker. To him, getting everything cut out just right and transferred to the baking sheet was an important job he had to get accomplished.

The finished product, besides taking them in and out of the oven he did them all by himself. He was pretty proud of them.