we were watching titanic the other night. it was on tv. it seems like titanic is always on tv. titanic and the bourne movies. and matt is in love with both, so i have watched more then my share of jack dawson and jason bourne. matt tells me that when titanic first came out, he loved the theme song so much that he asked for celine dion's CD for his birthday. and that really concerned his siblings at the time.

anways, the reason i brought up titanic was because during one of the commercial breaks there was an advertisement for carnival cruise lines.

hmm...

maybe it's just me, but i'm pretty sure going on a cruise seems like the WORST idea when i just watched titanic break in half and get sucked into the icy cold atlantic.

i think the person who put that commercial there should be fired.

we have a few friends who use the WIC program, and we have always been kind of jealous. getting free stuff from the government is the best. we didn't think we could get it since we aren't american, but turns out we can. and we did. and it is awesome!

(WIC provides Federal grants to States for supplemental foods, health care referrals, and nutrition education for low-income pregnant, breastfeeding, and non-breastfeeding postpartum women, and to infants and children up to age five who are found to be at nutritional risk.)

thanks idaho, for buying chet's food!

(for now he gets 7 cans of formula, 32 jars of baby food, and 3 boxes of rice cereal each month.)

being unemployed isn't so bad! between maternity leave pay and WIC, we won't need to use our savings for a while. :)

chet got weighed and measured at our WIC appointment.

he is 6.5 months old, but is charted as if he were 5 months old (because that's how old he would be if he was born on his due date). compared to other 5 month olds, chet is in the 10th percentile for weight and the 50th percentile for height. about the same as last time he was charted. he's consistent.

chet is 13lbs 14oz and 25.5 inches tall.

chet also got shots yesterday. it breaks my heart every time. here is a picture of him with all his bandaids.

matt and i had a deep conversation yesterday on our family walk. the topic was:

which is better...the dollar bill or the loonie?

we came up with a list of pros for each. it is incredibly fascinating, i know!

dollar bill pros.

- you feel rich with a wad of dollar bills.

- there are lots of rap songs that mention dolla' bills. which means they much be cool...

- you can throw dollar bills in the air like a rapper. throwing loonies in the air would hurt.

- they aren't as heavy as a loonie.

- dollar bills don't roll away. (it's amazing how far a coin rolls when you don't want it to).

- they don't make your wallet all lumpy.

- you could use a dollar bill as a book mark.

- the dollar bill is always a little bit more valuable then the loonie. (due to the exchange rate).

loonie pros.

- if you need to do 'heads or tails', and you don't have a quarter, you could use a loonie.

- if you accidentally drop a loonie you hear it.

- a vending machine never spits your loonie back out at you, like it does with a crumpled up bill.

- it's stressful trying to un-crumple the bills you have shoved in your pocket when a cashier is waiting. and loonies never get crumpled.

- you will never get a loonie confused with any bills.

- the loonie can get wet.

- loonies don't blow away.

- having loonies in your piggy bank makes it so much more valuable, compared to just having the other coins.

- it has a loon on it.

after all that, we are still undecided.

i'm a little unsure posting this video because i don't want anyone to think we are awful parents. but matt has convinced me to post it anyways. so i am. just so you know, this is not something we let happen all the time. chet gets lots of nice kisses from tank, but tank usually gets in trouble for doing this. if you don't have a dog, or don't like dogs, then you will think it is especially gross. but it makes us laugh.

this is us enjoying some snoasis.

chet and dad hanging out at school.

matt has a new favorite TV show.

it's terrible because we're always watching these shows about creepy criminal people, and then i dwell on those creepy things.

there was one episode where this young girl was held captive, and tortured, in a barn.

we, conveniently, live down the street from a barn.

i walk past that barn several times a day.

but now, at night, i RUN past it!

i use my ipod, or my cell phone, as a flashlight and tank and i book it down that stretch of road. it's tricky running here at night because rexburg doesn't think it is necessary to have street lights on most streets. (hence the ipod flashlight.)

anyways, tonight there is a criminal minds marathon on TV. matt was so excited until he remembered that he had to be at school all evening. it's been one very school-y day for matt. he didn't have any classes, but still managed to spend 12 hours on campus. what a good student! chet and i visited him for lunch and for dinner. we get bored without matt all day.

while i was on campus today i learnt that 157.2 billion texts were sent in the united states in december 2009. interesting fact.

i am about to do some name dropping. you ready?

i signed up for an institute class called 'building an eternal marriage' and my teacher is jack weyland. does that name sound familiar? he wrote the love story, 'charly'.

brother weyland is a very cute old man. he has super dry humor.

i feel silly asking this, but i am curious who reads our blog. i know the number of people that read it each day, but not who. soo...if you don't mind, i would love it if you would "follow" our blog. i'm not very good at following other peoples blogs, but i promise i will return the favor if you follow mine. :) (our list of followers is at the very bottom of our blog.)

we had a few FIRSTS this weekend.

we went to twizl berry for the FIRST time. it is a frozen yogurt place here in rexburg. it's fun cause it's self serve. you get to walk around and fill your own cup with all sorts different flavors of frozen yogurt and fun toppings. mine was cake batter yogurt with snickers, reeses cups, and cookie dough. what can i say...i like chocolatey toppings! and matt's was fruity. booring. the stressful part of twizl berry is that you pay by weight. weird, huh? when you're all done, you put your creation on a scale to find out how much you owe. i found it kind of stressful trying to guess how many ounces i thought my treat weighed!

we watched our FIRST movie with robert pattinson in it. (the vampire from twilight). and, even though we weren't watching twilight and never have watched it, i still kept waiting for him to bite into some ones neck.

he never did.

we ate cous cous for the FIRST time. branden and mikaela invited us over for sunday dinner. i guess branden and matt ate lots of cous cous on their missions, so it brought back fond memories for them. i'm always nervous trying new things, but i thought it was very tasty. thanks pronks!

these pictures make us laugh. the first one is chet when he was just 2 weeks old. in the second one he is almost 6 months. it's a good thing '2 week chet' isn't still around or '6 month chet' might try to eat him!

guess who is 6 months old today? CHET!

(my aunt and my cousins wife made the cute bib chet is wearing. it looks like a bandana. they call it a 'cool droolz'. you should check out their website. click here.)

10 THINGS CHET HAS TAUGHT US.

1. matt has a weak gag reflex when changing nasty diapers. (or at least pretends to!)

2. a baby can get french kissed by a dog and survive.

3. formula smells like metal, and tastes much worse.

4. after 3 months, the sound of a pump can make you want to lose your mind.

5. don't buy cheap-o diapers.

6. every one has parenting advice they like to share. just take it.

7. patience.

8. sleep is alright, but a happy chet is much nicer.

9. they really do grow up so fast.

10. life isn't just about us.

to celebrate his big day, we started chet on 'real' food.

it was alright, but it wasn't as tasty as the tootsie pop matt was sharing with him yesterday!

early morning walks are getting chillier by the day, so chet has been wearing toques*. the one below used to be matts. isn't that cute? but looks like it's is still a little too big. this is what happened after i left chet alone for 30 seconds.

*toque: a beanie...in canadian.

we had sunday dinner with the cichy's and the jensen's this evening. it was in honor of matt's and cody's birthday this past week. we had lots of fun, and dinner was wicked good. thank you cichy's!

in between dinner and cake we went on a walk to the park. we were quite a sight to see walking down the street with our stroller gang.

it's too bad you can't see cody and erin's new little guy, beckam. he is a doll. i am very jealous of his abundance of hair. chet used to have a great head of hair. oh, those were the days! waiting for his hair to thicken up is painful. i'm not very patient with things like that.

dave decorated cody and matt's birthday cake. it reads:

C + M. live a happy life 2gether.

cody and matt embraced the cake. oh my.

matt had one day of classes...and now it is the weekend again. i love short weeks!

this afternoon we drove out to mesa falls. we are trying to take advantage of every bit of nice weather we have left this summer. summer is ending much too soon. mesa falls is about 45 minutes north of rexburg. and it's pretty. it kind of reminds me of elbow falls, back home in alberta. except bigger.

fact: matt proposed to me at elbow falls.

this is a picture of the lower falls. (you can't very close to these ones).

and these are the upper falls.

a nice lady offered to take a picture of us in front of the falls. and she did, i guess. i was just hoping we'd be more beside the falls and not so much in front of them. thanks anyways lady.

there was this crazy water fountain that matt and i thought was funny. so we made a video of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_SouiUWLKGg

that could cause some serious pain!

there is a new place that opened this weekend in rexburg called sammy's. it's serves burgers and shakes in a trendy way. they had all sorts of live music this weekend to help celebrate the grand opening. one performer was benton paul. he is a guy from utah that sings romantic songs while playing the guitar. we like him. so we packed up chet and headed downtown rexburg for the concert. we felt kinda silly being there. it seemed like everyone there was younger then us. and single. and definitely not parents! but we were determined. we really wanted to hear benton sing something lovely.

unfortunately...we missed his performance. and i was too nervous to ask for a picture or an autograph.

so we bought a cupcake and went home. cupcakes are good too.

in honor of matt going back to school i have a multiple choice for you. it's pretty tricky.

using the picture below as a reference, it could be assumed that the leavitt family likes to wear:

a. denim.

b. hats.

c. rubber boots.

d. stripes!

last night matt and i baked cookies. when ever i bake cookies on my own they never turn out right. they are always so fluffy - more like a muffin top then a cookie. but, last night matt joined in on the baking. and he must have the magic touch because they turned out so tasty. flat and chewy, just how i like them. we used a recipe we found online for chococonut chip cookies. you should try it.

today is matt's 25th birthday.

happy birthday matt.

i'm married to an old guy now. he is officially closer to 30 then he is to 20. bummer. there is one great thing about 25 though. we will no longer get financially destroyed when we want to rent a car. up until now, we have had to pay the young drivers fee. and that usually ends up costing more then the car rental fee. so maybe we should go rent a car just for the heck of it?

for his birthday, chet and i got matt another nixon watch to add to his collection. apparently he is actually going to wear this one :) .and we got him the star wars trilogies. he is currently watching episode 1, and wearing his watch, so i guess he likes his gifts. i have a feeling he is going to be a little distracted until the credits of episode 6 roll.

i have never watched star wars. matt is very disappointed in me for that. and for not watching the lord of the rings either. i thought about agreeing to watch all of star wars with him, as part of his birthday gift. but i couldn't do it! especially not the old ones. crappy special effects just make me angry!

we have watched lots of movies lately.

last night we watched book of eli. it was weird. and very dark.

the night before we watched youth in revolt. i liked the dry humor, but not all the dirty humor.

our last night in arizona we went to see the switch. it might be our last date night for a while cause we no longer have grandparents to ditch chet with! we both really liked that show. so many good one-liners. and the little boy is too cute. when he was first introduced in the show i was like "oh man, i hope chet doesn't turn out to be like that". but i soon fell in love with him. and now i hope that chet is as tender and thoughtful as he is.

last week we watched clash of the titans. not our type of movie. although matt did enjoy seeing a pegasus.

the night before that we watched the back up plan. it's a good chick flick. and pregnancy humor always hits a little closer to home now for me!

tonight we are going to watch killers. i love ashton kutcher.

holy smokes, maybe i should start a movie review blog!

we got back to rexburg last night. we flew from mesa to great falls in the morning, and then drove to rexburg. it's amazing how fast you can travel now-a-days. i am very grateful i was not born in the days of horse and buggy. or even worse, feet.

when we were waiting to board our plane in mesa we saw this lady sitting next to a ventriloquist puppet. the puppet had it's own seat. it was so weird. matt said it brought back memories of a creepy episode of goosebumps.

we were trying so hard not to stare. which was super hard for both of us. but then we spotted my parents walking over to the puppet - with chet! i was so nervous for them, but turned out the lady was super nice. she even let chet get a picture with her puppet.

poor chet!

some people are so strange! that lady even has a facebook account for her puppet.

did you know that golf is a lot harder then it looks?

yep, it is.

we took a golf lesson on wednesday. and, my goodness, were there a lot of things our instructor wanted me to remember while swinging my club. the instructor said i have potential, but lack aggression. hmm...where have i heard that before? oh ya, from EVERY coach i have EVER had!

after our golf lesson i had total respect for tiger woods.

but it was short lived.

a couple hours later, while lounging around the pool, i read people magazines interview with his ex-wife and i realized that he is a major wiener for cheating on her. she sounds incredible.

our vacation is going by much too fast. do we actually have to go back to real life?