the leavitts.: November 2017

chase and mitch came to visit!

matt's brother, mitch, and his son, chase, came to visit us for a few days. it is always such a treat to have family come visit, and our boys were extra thrilled to have a cousin come see them! it was a quick trip, but we managed to fit in lots of fun things:

1. spent a night playing at lacy park.

2. the dad's took the boys (minus tad) for a 1 night campout at a campground on the beach in san clemente.

3. the dad's also took the boys (minus tad) to a haunted house... where they ended up in tears and needing to be carried.

4. we spent an afternoon at a beach called 'little corona del mar'.

we get to see some people from both sides of our family this weekend, in phoenix, and we are super excited!

camping..

matt says that whenever he takes our boys camping, all they want to do it go to bed because they love sleeping in tents so much!

view from the campground.

matt said that they thought this was an old abandoned train track, so they had the boys lay down on it for a picture. but literally minutes after they took it, a super fast commuter train sped by and they were like, 'uhh...'. that story gives me nightmares! i can just picture it as a news story..

'two dads, and their 3 sons, are dead after getting hit by a high speed train while taking a picture..'

last day. at the beach.

halloween 2017.

well i got another year of our boys wearing coordinating costumes, and i am so thrilled! haha i totally thought last year was gonna be it, but i was wrong. and dang, it was cute!

after much back and forth, chet and holden both decided they wanted to be scuba divers. they weren't the easiest costumes to put together, but i think they turned out real cute. i ordered all the black clothing from h&m, and the black balaclavas from some shop on amazon. i am pretty sure the fact that i searched for such a weirdo item, guaranteed my name on some FBI watch list! honestly, who else buys those things, other then murderers and bank robbers.. (and me). to make the tanks, we saved old soda bottles and gathered supplies from our local hardware store. the man in plumbing fixture section thought it was weird that i was shopping for halloween costume pieces in his aisle. and when i got to the checkout, the cashier had to call back to that guy in the aisle because my items didn’t have prices, and I felt super awkward as i listened to one side of their attempt at describing me over the phone.. “a lady.... yep.... short... sorta blonde... yep with the sick kid...” haha first, i am not short! and second, can we work in more positive descriptions next time?

the scuba idea worked so perfectly with tad's darling shark costume that i fell madly in love with at target. tad loved wearing it, and looks ridiculously cute when he does. the tail waddles back and forth with each step, and i die! he also roars when he is wearing it, and it's pretty darling... even if sharks totally don't roar..

a couple at school pictures..

this was my first year having 2 children in school for halloween, and was it ever hectic!

somehow i ended up being the room parent for both of my boys, which has turned out to basically be a part time job. i am always cutting something, teaching something, organizing some party, wrangling volunteers, sending out group texts, you name it! i love it. it keeps me feeling productive and useful. but it also keeps me feeling busy! in the weeks leading up to halloween, i ended up decorating class doors, organizing class parties, helping out with spooky crafts, and making halloween themed treats. thank goodness for pinterest and all it's helpful and/or ridiculous ideas!

pumpkin carving.

a family on our street invited us over for a pumpkin carving/potluck party. we didn't know any of the other people they had invited, but it ended up being a really nice afternoon. and it definfiely ended up being a more memorable pumpkin carving experience then we would have provided for our children at home!

we carved 2 pumpkins (and by we, i mean matt, chet and holden. and by that, i mean 95% matt). matt was a good sport! and, in the end, we had 2 super cute pumpkins to put on our front step for halloween.

holden always sticks out his tongue when he is concentrating. i love watching him color - his tongue moves back and forth with the marker!

(only the 2 middle pumpkins are ours.. we aren't that good!)

palos verdes hike.

we heard about a kid-friendly hike by the beach, down in palos verdes, so we decided to check it out. and, other then being super hot, it was a really great adventure.

one of the highlights of the trip was actually on the drive there - we drove right over a bunch of the docks at the port of los angeles. it was so neat! i have seen lots of shows (ie. 24!) where sketchy crime goes down in places like that, and it looks big in those shows. but it was seriously so much more impressive in real life! there was tons of enormous cargo ships parked at docks, getting their bins uploaded was even bigger cranes. and there were thousands, and thousands, and thousands of cargo bins stacked in these huge yards. anyways... my descriprion will do it no justice. but, just know, that it was really neat!

pumpkin patch.

our boys had parent/teacher conferences a couple fridays ago, and to say they made me proud is an understatement! their teachers had nothing but great things to say. i tried not to get teary-eyed (and especially not let their teachers see me get that way. haha) but it's hard when your hearing such positive feedback on the way your favorite little humans are behaving when you aren't around!

after parent/teacher conferences, we had the rest of the day to play.. so we drove out to a farm in moorpark that had a pumpkin festival. we had been there years ago, and it was just as good as i remembered. we did all sorts of pumpkin themed activities, rode a tractor train, picked some pumpkins, and fed farm animals. tad's favorite part was feeding the baby chicks. and chet and holden's favorite part was picking food from the farm fields. we picked raspberries, sweet mini peppers, jalapeños, and cucumbers. i made us stop there, because i had no idea how much it was going to cost... but it ended up being crazy cheap and i was kicking myself for not letting them pick all they wanted. next time!