Hilarious Levi

"Mom, Max took my motorcycle. You need to handle him."

His new word of the week: aggravated. "Mom I'm aggravated at Max"

"Is pooping healthy?"

After getting dressed in PJ's Levi tooted to which I told him that was gross. "But it makes bubbles in the bathtub"

Note: From reading this you can tell two things. The boys fight WAYYY too much, but from what I've heard most siblings do. Also we talk far too much about bodily functions around here.

This one's more sweet than hilarious:

Levi loves learning about the body and how it works (luckily he's never asked about where babies come from) but he had been talking about foods being healthy or not and I had told him some foods, like a lot of french fries and pizza are not good for the heart to which he said "If our heart didn't work, we couldn't love"

These are from a year ago (again cleaning some things up in the blog)

We were in the grocery store and after saying hi to the lobsters in the lobster tank he says "Goodbye lobsters, good luck!"

"Mom, I can't sleep. I'm not tired. It's tricky."

Touchdown!

Today we went to the gym for the first time in months. To confess I haven't done much since my 10k several months ago. I did the same thing last summer, I don't feel like exercising much when it's so nice outside and I suppose I just like my lazy summers.

As we were driving I got to talking about what they were going to do there, hoping to help Max prep for it because when we were going before he would freak out when I left. I reminded Levi there is drawing and other craft stuff and a fun conversation ensued.

Me: Are you going to draw?
Levi: No I'm going to exercise. Play exercise, so I can be strong!
Me: That's great, sometimes people exercise on a treadmill, some bike, some play, and some do sports.
Levi: One day I will do sports too.
Me: You sure can. We'll have to wait until kindergarden but then you can do whatever sport you'd like. Which one do you want to do?
Levi: Football! Then when I am big, I will play BYU football!
Me: *Smiling* That would be great, you'd have to practice a lot.
Levi: I will. And then I will play BYU football and be on tv. You can watch me, then you'd turn on the tv and say (in high 'mom' voice). "What!?! That's my boy!"
Me: I sure would.

He's only watched this season but I suppose we have another cougar fan on our hands! And Levi who knows but you might just play there yet. If that's the case you can bet I'll be the craziest football mom ever. Whatever you do bud, it's gonna be great!

My Little Ones

I was going through some old posts and cleaning out some of the old ones that were never posted, this one was from July, 2 years ago. We went to a concert in the park when Max was just a few months old. They are so little!!!!!!

Here's Levi and our friend Emma. I remember he refused to take off his tie that day.
Mr Max!!!!! He looks like a little old man. I love that face.

Update

Nothing terribly interesting going on round here, just livin life. But here are some highlights for those of you that MUST know.

Firstly Levi is LOVING preschool and so am I. He goes 3x a week for 2.5 hours in the afternoon. We go to the preschool a little before class start then him and Max can play on the play ground. This is good especially for Max so he can get the last of his wiggles out because once we drop of Levi we go home and he takes a nap and usually wakes up just before we need to do pickup. The timing is perfect and its a good guaranteed 2 hours of work time in my day. Nice.

Also despite the glorious break I get in the day I love it because Levi truly does. He loves being around all the kids, his fun teachers, and all the art/craft projects they do daily. Ask him how it's going and he'll enthusiastically, with arms in air shout "Great!!!" Ah, the preschool life.

One thing that's kind of hard to change is sleeping. Since Levi doesn't get a nap or even any quiet time he gets tired pretty early so we've moved up the bedtime because we've found that, for the most part, regardless of when they go to bed they pretty much wake up at the same time every day (lately that's been 6-6:30, 7 if I'm lucky) so to make sure he gets enough sleep we have to put him to bed early and on school days can't stay up like he used to when family comes over. It's been an adjustment for me because no more of this staying up till all hours working, it usually has to be before 12:30 or so or I'm completely dead the next day. We're all adjusting.

Also he's been extremely helpful lately. He's still a great picker-up-er and now has a new job taking out recycling. He loves it because it's a 'big boy job'.

Max. Now what's up with that little prince? He can now open doors, he couldn't before. He loves to pick out his own cloths and pretty much always wants to wear big brothers shoes. Oh, almost every time we drop Levi off for school or someone picks him up he freaks out because he think he gets to go to. In some ways that makes me a little happy just because he'd really go and be fine if I let him which I don't think he would have done a couple months ago. Also there have been a number of times lately where he'll go with Jason smiling without completely freaking out because he's not with me. All right!

Right now they're playing with legos and Levi refuses to play with the girl lego people and says he only likes boy legos. "I don't like lego girls, I only like lego boys. I hate lego girls. I don't like them because they're girly and I don't like girly". Well now.

Me? Super busy with shop stuff. I'm getting ready for the holidays and re-doing some stuff in my store and re-doing some pictures which is taking for-evha. But little by little I suppose. I've actually been cooking dinner's lately. I was getting back into the swing of things and had my dinner menu scheduled out but then it was extremely hot and because we are on the top level and have no air conditioning I refused to cook. Then I was completely dead sick for a week but now we're all better and I'm cooking more regularly which definitely helps out with the routine.

Jason has a new fish tank and has been working on setting it up and taking apart the big tank and piecing it out. Also he just started studying again for his APICS certification exam for work. I wish I was as good of a test taker as he is. I'd be stressing out about it, but it shouldn't take him too long to get.

So that's the current state of the Goodrich's, crazy as ever.

Itsy Bitsy Spider

Levi is a true crafter. He loves everything about making something. I guess I shouldn't be surprised because I do it a lot and try to get them involved in whatever I'm doing.

For his birthday he got an awesome kids craft book, well a couple of them actually. We are so lucky to have amazing friends who know my kids so well. Anyways we flip through them at least every other day to find different crafts to do and things to make.

Here's his first one, a paper plate spider. We made them and spent the rest of the day playing with them on and off, having them talk to each other, dance around and fly through the air.

Puppeteer

Lately Levi has slowly been weaning himself off of naps and now he really only does it once in a rare while. I got 4 years of it though, so not bad.

This day it was pretty warm and we had been doing lots of stuff so he was pooped. So pooped he fell asleep playing puppets and didn't even take them off. He sure loves them. If your ever around him you should ask him to do puppets with him, he says some pretty hilarious stuff and even has a great puppet voice.

If your wondering who these guys are let me introduce you to Fred the Frog and Charlie the Monkey. They are best friends and go on some pretty crazy adventures.

Buried Treasure

I am always looking for different 'adventures' for me and my boys to go on. Especially around our house because, let's face it, sometimes it can get pretty dull and routine.

This summer the 'Man of the House' made another, bigger sandbox that the boys have been playing in like crazy. They love it. So I decided I'd make it a little more exciting and put some 'treasure' in it for them to find. I figure they would love it because I had done something similar with buttons last year and seashells but they've since been claimed by our many little visitors.

I found half of these at a garage sale for $.50 and some more for $1 at Goodwill.
I threw scattered them in the two sandboxes,
kicked some sand around to 'bury' them,
and voila! Instant adventure. Levi then took the stash he had found, put it in his bag and re-buried it so his brother would find it. He's such a kick in the pants.

Sometimes Ya Gotta Brag

This is one of those braggy, my husbands awesome sort of posts. So beware.

I am so lucky to have such a handy, creative guy. I'm pretty sure he could make anything if he set his mind to it. He sometimes gets down on himself saying he could have done it better or this and that is messed up but I think it's all amazing. He just works on such a bigger scale and with so much cooler tools than I do. Here's some of his recent stuff, okay, mostly stuff within the past year.

His big fish tank stand he made a while back. I love all the molding.
His new fish tank stand. We're switching things around and replacing our bigger tank with this smaller one. I love the wood finish. Also you can't see it but there are two hanging lights above it. They look awesome. This was my birthday present last year. A custom made, large enough to fit Costco spices, spice rack that fits right inside the pantry door. I love it and don't know what I did without it. He was working at a machine shop at the time and they let him use the machine to cut out the plastic pieces. This summer he built a retaining wall in the back yard to level things out a bit so we could move our trampoline from the only sunny spot in the yard to a slightly shadier area. Then he had the idea of making another, bigger sandbox right next to it. Genius. Whenever we have kids over they always fought over our tiny sandbox. Now there's two. All that needs to be done is putting covers on them!And what I have been DREAMING of for almost two years. Cabinets that go on either side of the fireplace to put all the toys and such, making tons of extra space. One is filled with toys for the kiddos the other is 'mine', though it's really stuff for the boys but just stuff that needs to be more supervised. Also there is a big bin for Levi's stuff, like his special books, some toys that is just for him when Max is napping.

Hilariously, I said that once the cabinets were in we weren't going to use the fireplace as toy storage.....hasn't happened. Maybe once we redo the fireplace.
I love, love, love them. He did it all by himself (though he did order the doors). Eventually there will be bookcases on top of each that will go to the ceiling with some nice molding around it and the TV will be over the fireplace, but that's for later. I am sooooo lucky to have such a clever, creative, handy guy. He just makes me smile.

Jump for Joy

Guess who has joined the ranks of school attendees?
Yeah!!!!!!

He was SOOO excited and has been asking for weeks if it was the day. And the big day finally came. Preschool. Early, 6:30am I was greeted not by the usual "I love you mom, ask me what I dreamed about. " but it went something more like this. "Mom, what day is today?" Me: "What do you think?" Levi: "Today I go to preschool!"

I love these pics because as I was asking him to stand still for a shot or two he slowly turned around so I would take some of his backpack.
After Max woke up I found Levi talking to his little bro. "Today I am going to go to preschool. One day when you are big you can go to preschool too. First I go to preschool and when I'm done, I go to collage!"

Later when we were having a friend dropped off to play, when his mother came in Levi started right in talking about it. "Today I'm going to preschool. Isn't that great?!?!" and as he did it he was doing some hands out motions cause he just couldn't contain himself.

This is his "mom-are-you-seriously-taking-more-pictures-of-me?" look.
His "preschool-is-probably-greater-than-the-North-Pole,-Disney-Land,-and-all-the-grandparents-houses-combined" look.
Pure bliss. The day has arrived.
And lastly his, "I'm-so-excited-I-can't-stop-wiggling-and-we'd-better-get-out-of-here-soon-or-I-might-explode" face.
Your such a big boy sir Levi.

P.S. The day went great, he loved it and is definitely going back tomorrow. By 5:30 or so he had passed out in his room and it was a very early bedtime for us all. It'll take some work adjusting to the new schedule but totally worth it!

Tastebuds

My boys are such posers. I think it's probably because they've had a camera in their face since they were born and probably figure everybody has someone taking pictures of them through out the day. One day they will know know just how weird I am. I'm guessing it will be around 13 or so....

Here I had my camera out and Levi wanted to show me his taste buds. We just got a book all about the body and how it works from the library. It amazes me how much he remembers. Later that day, only after seeing it once, he could tell me where all the different 'tastes' are on the tongue. I couldn't even remember.
Max, true to form, had to show me his tongue too.
And his nose. Those red fingers, if your wondering, are from our strawberries. They have been growing like crazy. So a lot of times we'll go out to water them and have them for our morning snack.

A New Friend

When I was doing some vinyl cutting on my Silhouette machine I knew I would have a little bit of extra space. Not wanting to waste it I came up with this little guy:
While my boys were sleeping I snuck in and put him on in their room on the wall right next to the door. They noticed him right away and named him "Fred".

Lessons on Looking Tough

For part of Levi's b-day one of the things we did together was make superhero crayons. We found old broken crayons, took off the wrappers, broke and sorted them.
They showed me their manily muscles.
Max learned a thing or two from his bro. The key? It's 20% muscle, 80% awesome tough guy face.

My Little Squirt

Max has finally figured out the art of using our squirt 'guns'.
He was thrilled and couldn't help giggling everytime he shot it by himself.

Rollin'

Yeah!!!!!

Daddys shoes

I am pretty sure I took 30 pictures similar to this and this was the only one where I got them both semi smiling and looking at me at the same time. They are so handsome. Why I love this pic:
Max's hand in his pocket
Both boys pulling up there shirts (we show belly buttons round here, just in case they disappear)
Levi's eyes half open, this is a look I have in many shots
Max's silly growly face
Wearing dad's shoes, some which don't match
Grocery bag on the floor, a normal occurrence
Peach crisp made with the boys

Oaks park

What's a summer without going to Oaks Park? I must admit this year was a lot funner than last because Max actually got into it and was semi patient.

Plans had been made, things got crazy and we ended up going with Scarlett and her new boyfriend, though they haven't officially termed it as such, but they are exclusive, so they basically they are. It was nice having two extra sets of hands to help with the boys, especially since Max couldn't go on many rides and there were a number of them that Levi needed a person with him, so me or Aunt Rose got to be with him.
Max was so cute. There was an airplane ride next to a motorcycle ride. They were the favs. He stayed on each for several go arounds, the people there were so nice and just let him stay if he wanted. He went back and forth between them a number of times. I think he would have been happy doing that all afternoon.
So happy!
Max and I watched on while they went on the Ferris wheel. I would have loved to go on it with him but by then Max-o was exhausted, it was 3 hours past his nap time and I wasn't going to put anyone though his crankiness.
We barely got out of the parking lot before they passed out. It was a good day.

Well Groomed

Pretty much anytime Uncle Jared is over Max insists on brushing his hair. He does a nice job, though it usually ends up with his hair swept over his face, Justin Bieber style.
Got to get those sideburns.

Berry Day!

Your always in for lots of excitement when the Whites are in town. The boys, as usual, were in heaven with all their cousins and crazy uncle who is basically like a kids anyways.

We did what we normally do when they're here, play a lot and since I'm usually running around with boys running circles around me it's hard to take pics, but I did get some.

Because we didn't get to celebrate Eli's or Jared's birthday's we (ok, mostly I) decided to do a birthday dinner. Dinner was Elijah's pic, grilled cheese and for dessert we had fresh berries we picked earlier that day, pound cake and whipped cream. Elijah was excited.
Ok, really excited, memorized in fact.
Max might have had a bowl or two. And Henry, well you couldn't keep him away. Levi just kept sneaking into the berries.
Did you know there are such things as black raspberries? They are called black caps. Max kept sticking his fingers in them, olive style.
Will-O might have even had a lick or two.
Jared got a huge Costo bag of peanuts from my mom. Mom gives interesting gifts sometimes. Good but totally unexpected. Jared loved them, he could never turn down a ridiculously large amount of peanuts.

Pure awesomeness, and a picture of me.
Nese got all the boys a bunch of puppets. They freaked out about it and we played with the for a good while. Levi has the BEST puppet voice ever, and now so does Max though it's pretty squeeky.
Elijah found Aunt Roses shoes and couldn't help trying them on. Who could resist those bad boys? Max, not to be out done, had to strut his stuff too.
Nese was kind enough to give massages to the boys. Henry was first.
And Max, of course, had to immediately after. Notice a pattern????It's a good life.