So hungry!

Levi got a present in the mail from Uncle Nonner and Aunt Danica yesterday. He decided that he wanted to eat the box. It was rather cute. Notice that Levi, Daddy and the box all match. We were going to take a picture of Daddy and Levi, but Levi pooped through his clothes before we got back from looking at the wild flowers. We left him with my parents. Next time he wears the outfit we will have Daddy wear his shirt and take a nice picture.

Update: Last night Levi slept until 3:10am and then did not get up, after staying awake for an hour until 7:00am. That was really nice and probably our best night of sleep in a long time. The night before he slept almost as good. We are hoping and praying his sleeping will continue to improve. He still is weezing, but at this point I do not really know what to do.

Pray Request: Please pray that Ryan can enjoy his job and have confidence in his job skills.

Birthdays!

Sunday was my mom's birthday and it also was Ryan's birthday. It has been fun having them have the same birthday. I joke to people that it is the only reason I married him, as I am older than he is. So, if he did not have the same birthday as my mom and was younger than me I would not have married him. Just kidding!

We end up getting a lot of milage out of their birthdays, as we have events with my brother and his wife, his parents, my parents and us. This year was a little shorter than normal, as Ryan had to work in the afternoon. It was sad to see him leave, but I was grateful he got to go to church with us and spend a little of is day with us.

Ryan, thank you for being a great husband and father to us. We appreciate all of your hard work and think you are the best. We hope that you get enough rest and look forward to the days and time that you are home with us.

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In our family we have a number of duplicate dates.

• Ryan and my mom, Shelley have the same birthday (March 8th).
• Danica, my sister-in-law has the same birthday as my Grannie (mom's mom), which also happens to be Christmas.
• Eric, my little brother was born on my in-laws' anniversary, which also happens to be our Grandpa Ray's birthday (June 29th).
• I believe that my future sister-in-law, Megan was born on my parents' anniversary (April 4th).
• My brother-in-law, Joseph and his fiancee, Megan are getting married on my sister-in-law, Sarah's birthday (August 8th).

We joke that Eric will have to marry someone that has the same birthday as one of our family members and that she will have to be older than him, as Danica and I are both older than our husbands. We will just have to wait and see....we have a few years.

Baby feet

It appears that he has Ryan's feet. Ryan was hoping he would have my feet. Either way, I still think they are way cute!

Levi is 5 months!

Levi - 5 months

It is hard to believe that Levi is now 5 months old (a little over that). He now weighs 17 pounds 6 ounces. I often wonder where the time has gone. He is a cute baby and we enjoy him a lot. Things he has been able to do recently are:

• Talk, as he found his "voice" last month and during some portion of each day he talks and talks. It is too cute.
• Grasping more objects. He enjoys pulling things to his face. He likes to have his face covered. It looks like he might take after his Mama. He has always had a strong grasp, even from birth, if he was able to grab something. It is neat to watch him now do things with purpose.
• Been out of state. As you see from the last post he went to Arizona. He was a good traveler and always seems to be on road trips. We hope he stays that way.
• Been in the snow (in Arizona).
• Not quite sitting (I think his tummy gets in the way), but holding his head rather sturdy these days and looking around at everything.
• He still loves a pacifier.
• I am sure that I am missing a few things, but this is a start.

We feel blessed to have him as our son. We a grateful for him. The more I have reflected on him these past few weeks I have come to feel like he has brought some healing to my heart over the loss of graduate school and other disappointment I faced these past 5 years or so. I am thankful for His gift and remind myself often Levi is His first and that he was gracious in giving him to me. I am truely proud to call him my son.

NOTE: Levi is sick with bronchiolitis for the FOURTH time. We have been unable to get many answers regarding the reason he as been sick so much in the first 5 months of his life. This is often discouraging, especially as he is currently not sleeping much more than 2 hours at a time at night. We would like some answers to his problems, as we never really found any answers to the reason he breaths so fast. If you think of him could you pray for an answer to his troubles and/or healing. We would appreciate it, especially the Mama, as it makes a mama tired.

Grand Canyon!!!

Okay, so you can tell by the title that we went to the Grand Canyon. I always seem to have trouble moving the pictures around in my blog. I deleted one and tried to add it back and now it is at the top of my post. I am going to have to live with the disorder (hard for a firstborn) until I figure out how to fix it or have Ryan fix it for me. So, these two pictures are really suppose to be at the bottom of the post with the other pictures. If you know how I can fix it please let me know. Thanks.

A cool picture Ryan took of my parents while I was holding a sleeping baby in the lobby.

Me, Nick and Eric at the cutout in the trail that goes down into the Grand Canyon.

On Thursday we left for the Grand Canyon. We spent the night in Williams, Arizona. The next morning we took the train to the Grand Canyon. Our train guide, Morgan was really nice. She made the trip there and back very enjoyable. Once to the Grand Canyon we got onto a bus that took us to two different lookout locations. It was neat to see the Grand Canyon with snow, as when I went before we were at the other rim and there was no snow. I learned that during the winter months the North Rim of the Grand Canyon is closed, as there is too much snow due to the over 1,000 foot elevation difference between the two sides of the Grand Canyon.

Ryan had not been to the Grand Canyon before, so he enjoyed his time. He wished that we could have stayed longer. I was just happy that he was finally able to see the Grand Canyon. He would like to return to hike to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. On Saturday we attempted to hike down into the Grand Canyon a little ways, but forgot that the trail would be snowy. My dad went down a short distance before changing his mind, as he was carrying Levi. My mom made it a little further before stopping. I hiked down a little further with Ryan and the boys. We stopped at a little cut out in the rock for the tail and Ryan continued on. He gave his wife a heart attack almost when he went out of view. Thus, I decided to hike back up to the top with to boys to keep my mind off of the fact I could no longer see Ryan. The trip up was much easier than the trip down. Ryan would like to return maybe in October with Andrew and Danica to hike to the bottom. My mom has offered to watch Levi, so we will see where we are in a few months.

Levi was a good sport for the whole trip. He traveled very well in the car both ways. The cold weather did not seem to bother him too much. He did get wind burn on his face though. He had a hard time at night though. This is not really anything new, as he has been waking a lot at night since he got sick about a month ago. So, this mommy is not getting much sleep these days. I am hoping he is going to start sleeping more soon. We were down to getting up once or twice (seldom) each night. Now we can be up as many as four times. It is rough at night, but I check and each morning he still finds a way to melt my heart. Who could be made at such a cute boy?

Below are some pictures from our trip. We hope you enjoy and Ryan might post more later, but he is at work right now.

Levi with his Mama at Hopi Point. One of the stops on our bus tour.

Levi trying to keep warm with the help of his Daddy. The hat he is wearing was worn by Ryan when he was a baby. Kind of cool.

You can see that ll loved the Colorado River down in the bottom of the Canyon

like I did when I went when I was in grade school.

Nick, Eric (Uncle Junior), Shelley (Mama/Grannie), Levi (Big Man), Doug (Dad/Papa), Heidi (Mama) and Ryan (Daddy) at another lookout during the bus tour. Oh, I also call my dad Boss for some reason, so I guess he gets three other names.

A Few More Pictures

Doesn't Levi look warm?

Levi and Mommy out for a walk after dinner with six other children (2/5). I had told the kids we would start walking, so they could ride their bikes and the scooter. Well, we finally made it happen. It was a fun little trip and we should walk more often.

Cool kicks!!

Here is Levi wearing the Uggs that his Mommy purchased for him with the money that his great-grandma Isabelle gave him for Christmas. Right after Christmas I saw a woman in Target with her son and he had a pair on. I asked her where she got them and I went on a hunt. I thought they were too cute to pass up. Yes, I am silly. I don't own a pair of Uggs, but my son does. Oh well.

Levi & the babes..

Here we all are after Christmas. This is our four generation picture on my mom's did. Heidi (Mommy), Shelley (Grannie), Levi (Big Man) and Carol (GG...great grandmother). Levi's eyes are close, but he is still cute.

Our cute family!

I believe this is our "Christmas" picture that was taken after Christmas. It just didn't seem like we could find a time to take a picture for Christmas this year between children, odd work hours and holiday commitments, but this will have to work.

Note: This picture was taken on 1/9/09. Yes, our tree was still up. I told people we kept it up, as we put it up so late. I think our tree was only up a week before Christmas. The last two Christmas Seasons I have not decorated very much at all. Two year ago we moved on the 1st of December, which I highly would not recommend. This Christmas we had a new baby and had just taken in two new foster children. I am hopeful for next year, but at the same time we will have a 13 month old boy on our hands....we will have to wait and see.

Notice the pretty quilt?

This is Levi sleeping in his bed for the morning (1/6). This is the first and only time he has slept in his crib his Leach grandparents and great-grandmother Isabelle purchased for him. He currently sleeps in our room still, as the foster children occupy our other three rooms.

If you look at the picture the quit was made by his Grandma Jane. It is very cute and she worked really hard on it. It is a Noah's Ark theme with all different animals on it. We were very excited to receive it as a gift. Thank you Grandma Jane for all of your hard work. If I think of it I will post a picture where you can see the whole quilt.

Catching up..

Levi - 7 days

Levi - 1 month

Levi - 2 months (with cousin Isabelle)

Levi - 3 months

Levi - 4 months

Updating again....Where has the time gone?

Proud new van owners?

Well, last Saturday (2/7) we drove to the Stockton area with my parents and came home with the above purchase. I have said all my life that I would never be a van owner. Why is it the things you say you would never do you manage to do later in life?

You ask why the purchase??? Let's see, at the current count our household consists of 9 people. There is the mommy and daddy, Levi and 6 foster children. We have Destiny (14), Nico (12), ReyAnna (7) and Larissa (2). They are all siblings. Then there is Noah (11) and Larissa (7), who are brother and sister. Yes, we have TWO...count it TWO Larissa's in our home. Makes the adventure even more adventurous.

Baby Jesus!

Levi and I were in the Christmas Musical at North Fresno Church the middle of December. I played Mary with Levi playing Baby Jesus in the first service, as the original Mary who sang in the program could not be there for the second half of first service. In second service she held him the whole time. He slept through both of his performances as Baby Jesus. It was rather nice, as the Mama was kind of worried. He did great!

Computer crashed!

Well, out computer crashed about a month ago. We lost most of our pictures, but my brother was able to retrieve some of them with the equipment he uses are work. Thus, I do not have anymore pictures of Levi on the computer later than Halloween. I will post more hopefully this week.

He is doing well, as of last Monday he weighed 15 pounds and 1 ounce. He was trying hard to double his birth weight by 3 months, but he is just barely going to miss that bench mark.

We are still trying to figure out why is breathing can be so fast, but I may have found the answer to his problem on someone else's blog tonight. I will keep you posted on what I figure out. For now we are trying to deal with the acid reflux. We have one medication, but it does not seem to help too much. We have an appointment next week with the pediatrician and she said if it was not helping she would give us a different medication. To get the expensive medication we have to try the first two medications, so they can know that they did not work for him. We will see. But, if the new information I found tonight plays into his situation maybe we will go a different route for treatment. We will have to wait and see.

Until then goodbye 2008 and hello 2009!

The "other" Andrew!

Here Levi and I are on October 10, 2008 with the "other" Andrew. He came into our home on December 28, 2007. The day this picture was taken was the day he went to live with his Aunt Teresa and Uncle Brian. It is hard to believe it has been a year since we took him it. The 10 months that we had him had their ups and downs. It was a lot of work, as he needed help. It just seemed each time we would get somewhere they would tell us that was not what we needed or we were not where we needed to be.

Through this difficult time I was able to see that God is faithful. Intially said we would not have him over the summer and then it was that we would not have him when the baby was born. Obviously, God had other plans and I could not convince myself to let him go no matter how hard things got, as my heart broke for him over and over (it still does).

He went into respite care when I had the baby and the day he was suppose to return to our care was the day that the aunt and uncle were given the okay to take him into their home. Needless to say, God is always on time and never early. It was a huge answer to prayer.

We feel that Andrew is in the best place for him. We are very thankful for the work his aunt and uncle put in to getting him placed in their home. We are thankful they did not give up and wish them the best. If you think of Andrew could you pray for him and his aunt and uncle as they transition to becoming a family and attempt to get the help that they need. He truely is a sweet boy and we wish nothing but the best for him and his family.

Very behind on the blog!

Yes, we finally did make it home. After staying four long days in the hospital we were able to go home, as long as we agreed to bring Levi to the pediatricians office as often as necessary. She was not really comfortable releasing him, but we could stay no longer. We came home on October 6, 2008.

At times it was nice to stay that many days, but on the other hand it was a long time. I was walking rather well at that point after the c-section. The best advice I recieved regarding the c-section was from my friend Sarah. She said the first two days would be really bad and then after that it would be much better. Her words could not have been much more correct. Thanks!


This picture was taken his first Sunday at church, October 12, 2008. Levi did not know that he was going to be a triplet when he was born (Miguel, Christian & Levi). These boys are my parents foster twins. They are two months older than our baby, but they were 6 weeks early.


It has been fun dressing them alike and getting to share in their first holiday season. They are good boys and hardly every cry. Levi still is the largest of the three, which is rather funny.





Here we are at the Pumpkin King. It is hard to believe that Larissa was just a baby last year when we took the girls. ReyAnna and Larissa have been with us for over a year, although they stay with their mother most of the time these days. Last year when we went it was raining. We enjoy having them over to stay with us and have become good friends with their parents.

"Our little pumkin." Levi was a rather good sport. We got the idea from my brother, Uncle "Nonner" or also known as Andrew. He tolorated our craziness more than you would think. Nonner comes from my brother, Eric not being able to say Andrew when he was small. It has stuck and came in handy when we had a foster child named Andrew for almost 10 months.

Heidi had the baby at Clovis Community and will be there 2 to 4 days

The baby is here!!!!

Heidi and I are proud to present Levi Quincy Leach, he is 7 lbs 12.5oz 19 in long he was born at 8:09pm. After 4 hrs at 5 cm the doctor decided do a Caesarean section. Heidi had to wait a hour to recover before she could see the baby, and I had to go home because Heidi had a roommate I excited to see the baby and Heidi this morning. There will be more pictures to come.

Baby Leach in 3D!

I tried to post this before, but it would not work. It is hard to believe that I am due 6 weeks from today. I find myself wondering where all the time has gone.

We had to go twice to get the best pictures, as he was sleeping the first time. Actually, I think he slept most of the second time too. The pictures were taken at about 31 weeks. Enjoy!

Long time coming..

So, I do not blog very well and each time I do I tell myself I will be more consistent. Obviously that is not true. I decided I needed to update the blog, as I have left comments on other blog and don't want them to check mine and see how much I am behind.

Ryan and me riding the ferry on our return trip from the Island in Newport Beach.

Ryan and all the guys went fishing. He caught this 20 pound Duardo. He caught 1/8 of the fish for the whole boat of 34 fishermen.

We are currently at the beach, just my family and Ryan. My sister-in-law is in Africa on a missions trip with her church and returns on Friday. It has been nice to be at the beach for two weeks with no children!! Yes, we still have all four children and I am 7 months pregnant.

Me, rather large and my mom at the shower. The duck cake was very cute.

Me with my cousins Kyrstie (her son, Chase 5 mohnths) and Katie (her son, Jackson 4 months not pictured). When I have our baby my Grannie will have three great grandsons under 8 months old.

I had my first baby shower since we have been on vacation. It was really nice. My aunt and two cousins hosted the shower for me. A few friends attended and much of my family (both sides) were able to make it, which was really nice. I had a fun time and got some really nice gifts.

Family Update

As you can tell from the picture we have added a few more children to our home in the recent months. We now have four foster children. They are ReyAnna (6), Larissa (14 months), Jocelynn (7) and Andrew (3 1/2). They are two sibling groups. We enjoy them, although Andrew is a lot of work. If you think of us we could use prayer, so could he and our other children. Pray that the best possible outcome will be achieved for these children.

It is amazing to see how much Larissa has grown. She thinks she is such a big girl. She is funny to watch. ReyAnna has come so far in school this year. We have been blessed with a great first grade teacher, who really has taken a special interest in her. She now reads at a first grade seven months level! And to think she did not even know all of her letters and sounds when she arrived in our home in September 2007.

Needless to say we keep busy with four children between appointments and visits with parents. Neither of us are working much. My job has been cut back and Ryan is still in the process of looking for a job and interviewing. We hope and pray something will come our way soon. We could use a big blessing at this point in our lives or at least I could. :)

Other news, if you have not already heard, Ryan and I are having a BABY in early October. Pregnancy has been okay so far. I was sick and tired in the beginning, but it was not too bad. My parents are excited about being first time grandparents. Ryan's parents, who already have two grandchildren are excited too. This will be the first Leach grandchild for the family. My sister-in-law, Sarah also is pregnanct and due late October. So, the Leach family will have two babies in the same month.

Foster Children....

This is our first Halloween with our new kids, ReyAnna and Larissa. ReyAnna is 6 years old and in first grade. At the time of this picture Larissa was 10 months old.

Where have we been?

Well, I have noticed that I have not posted anything in a long time. My problem is that no one even looks at my site, so I do not post anything. My goal is to start posting more, so that I can include our site in our Christmas cards. I hope to keep family posted of things going on in our house that way, as Ryan has many family members that do not live close.

Above I am pictured with my mother and Claire, my mother's French student from this summer. We had a very nice time with her. If you are wondering, the Dodgers won this game. GO DODGERS! Too bad Ryan is a Giants fan. :)

Happy 2nd Anniversary!

Ryan and I celebrated our 2nd Anniversary on December 4th. We went out to dinner at Claim Jumper and then went and saw Stranger Than Fiction. We had a nice time and it was a good movie (a little slow, but pretty clean).

This is our Christmas picture. That is Moses, our Bichon Frise. He is 8 months old. We are currently considering getting him a "girlfriend," but we will see.

The weight loss journey is going pretty good, although I have a gained a little over Christmas, but will attempt to lose this week. I have currently lost 20.2 pounds. I am close to my goal weight. My mom has achieved her goal weight and will get "lifetime" next week. Exciting for her.

The Family on Vacation.

Here we all are at Newport Beach in August. Ryan, Heidi, Doug (Boss), Shelley (Mama), Eric Charles Halverson, Carol (Grannie), Danica and Andrew (Nonner).

Not the greatest picture of me. We have all jointed Weight Watchers (parents and I). I have lost 9.2 pounds, so I am thinner than I am in the picture....thank you! :)