March pictures!

Merrell Family
(captured by the timer on our camera -
thanks for going to the effort of setting up the tripod, Matt!!)

Slave labor.
Probably due to the spray bottle, Naomi's favorite cleaning chore
is to help wash the bathroom mirrors.

Biscuits and jam for breakfast always produce happiness!

Naomi's friend Keira visited from Maryland, and
we were thrilled to see her a few times during her visit!

Here is my friend Jenny (Keira's mom). I was so happy to see her and so sad when she left!
This picture was taken by Naomi - you can see Jenny looking elsewhere, since Keira was taking an identical picture at the same time!

The girls played a bit with Naomi's as-of-yet unfinished puppet theater. Here they were actually sticking the puppets out the viewing window and all the way over the top of the theater.

March was GREAT. We have more pictures from March to add...this is it for now, though!

Just a few more January pictures...

...then we'll move on to February excitement!

January was burn month for us. In fact, there was one specific week that was burn week! Naomi kicked things off by getting her first curling iron burn. She was standing on a stool, messing around while I combed her hair. The curling iron was heating up, and she's usually careful to avoid it. This time, she bumped it with her arm. :(

She spent the next hour on the couch with a damp washcloth on the burn, covered by a blanket, playing the fish game. While I was sad to see her in pain, I did occasionally laugh because the girl milked it for all she could!

I don't have pictures for the other two, but the next day, I got my own burns. While checking the contents of the crockpot, I dropped the meat and splashed the hot liquid on my face and arms. Luckily, the only place that actually burned was my hand. Phew! Naomi loves seeing injuries, and she was especially fascinated with my burned hand after just having received her own burn.

Later that day, Gabe wouldn't back away from the stove when I was boiling potatoes, and a drop of hot water splashed out and got him. I don't recall if he had an actual mark, but he sure howled! And then he stayed away from the pot. :)

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Naomi continued to practice her photography skills. She would take pictures with our camera all day long if possible, so normally I hand her the camera and give her a 5-picture limit. This was an early picture, and despite being out of focus, she centered it pretty well. Who wants to see detail anyway?

Daddy and Naomi

Gabe doesn't seem to get as much attention on the blog, but he's part of everything we do! I sure would miss that kid if he wasn't around. He plays hard, he sleeps hard, and he usually wakes up happy and ready to play hard again!

Goats

My parents recently started raising goats. While I was growing up, we had chickens, sheep, cows, horses, and probably other random animals I can't currently remember. But I never recall having a goat...

Anyway, the goats heavily influenced our recent trip to Monroe. On the 4 hour drive from the Las Vegas airport to my parent's house, my dad sat in the backseat, squished between the carseats, and entertained my kids with his book about goats. I believe it was a book about caring for goats, so it had lots of pictures of goats with problems, and also pictures of how to take care of those problems. I would have never guessed my kids would look at that for hours! Naomi kept asking to see the pictures of the goat crying and of the goat with the hurt leg.

Around Christmas-time, we read a lot of books about reindeer pulling sleighs. Naomi said, "I bet Grandpa's goat can pull a sleigh!". And then she proceeded to ask him about it every single time she talked to him during December and January. So when we were in Monroe, Dad rigged a pony harness to fit one of the goats and hitched it up to the toboggan.

Needless to say, Naomi was thrilled. And didn't want to stop, when it was time to stop. We put the goat back in its pen after awhile, so as to not overtax it. I took a turn pulling the sled, then. Naomi, suspiciously enough, seemed equally happy with ME pulling the sled. Hmmm.....

January trip to Monroe

This post was due awhile ago! In January, I took the kids and flew into Las Vegas, where my parents picked us up and trucked us over to Monroe, UT, where I grew up. We spent a fun-filled week in the snow before heading back. And here are some great pictures taken along the way!

The kids wasted no time in recruiting Grandpa Jones to haul them around in the toboggan. Gabe, who didn't enjoy snow at Thanksgiving-time in Idaho, had lots of fun this time around!

A highlight of visiting the Jones' always includes checking out the cows.
Here Grandpa is trying to get a cow to stick out its tongue. Gabe was fascinated!

Check out's Gabe's expression in this picture! We pulled some kitchen appliances and furniture out and stripped the wallpaper off. Dad chopped off the bottom of this white cabinet to put it at a better height for their future kitchen makeover. And Gabe was ecstatic about "helping" Grandpa with the power tools!

Gabe doesn't discriminate when it comes to chores. He grabbed a broom and helped Grandma with the sweeping.

My sister Bethany and her girls came for the weekend. The kids enjoyed some Rice Krispie treats...I'm not sure why they are in their pajamas, though. We're much too intelligent to feed them sugar right before bedtime. Maybe it was breakfast time!

Naomi and I went low-effort with our snowman. We piled up big blocks of snow we found and added one on top for a pirate hat. So it's a pirate snowman!

And here's my beautiful mom!

Thanks for a great trip, Mom and Dad! Naomi constantly talks about the trip (STILL...and it's March!) and asks when we will see you again. Hopefully soon!

Snowfall in Tucson

For the first time in the five years we've been in Tucson, we attended Snowfall at La Encantada (a posh shopping center).

This will seem comical after the actual snowfall recently received in other parts of the country. However, we do live in Tucson, and I want our children to experience snow more than once every few years. So off we headed...

Ooh, the anticipation!
(Notice the sandals and no socks...obviously we weren't expecting MUCH snowfall!)

We're excited and scoping out a good area for watching!

And here it comes!!! Pure magic.

I asked Naomi if she thought she could catch some snow on her tongue. That ended after a lady next to us made a comment about how that was disgusting since the "snow" was really soap bubbles. Whoops!!! I don't know what I expected, but it definitely wasn't soap bubbles!

And Naomi ended the evening playing on a turtle
with a few vestiges of the "snowfall" in her hair.

It was something to do, but not nearly as much fun as I expected.

I should have known better...

After all, I grew up in snowy states. With lots of snow play. And snow activities.

Bubbles just didn't quite cut it for me.

The kids had fun, though, and that was the ultimate goal!

Naomi's Soccer Experiences

Naomi is on a soccer team for three year olds. She was THRILLED about the idea of playing soccer. I'm guessing that's because Matt and I have both played in soccer leagues, and she's gone to some of the games.

Our girl almost burst with excitement when we headed to the store to get shin guards and soccer socks. After some fun soccer practices, we headed to our first game. Naomi's in the yellow jersey with long pink sleeves underneath.

We had promised her one penny for every time she touched the ball. Here she made a diligent effort to GET THAT BALL!

This is what she spent most of her time doing, though...

Dancing...

on the end of the field away from the ball...

She did earn four pennies, though!! Subsequent game experiences have been very similar.

What can I say?? We have a dancer on our hands!

Naomi will not be continuing soccer but will be resuming dance classes once soccer ends at the end of February.

The Merrells have surfaced!

Yep, we're alive. Bet you couldn't tell it by our blog posting...but we're here!

When you haven't posted pictures for awhile, it's a struggle to figure out where to start. We'll start with a few sweet but random pictures from the last month.

Licking cookie dough from the beaters by the Christmas tree...classic!

Making the house look festive (Naomi actually took this picture)...

No snow in Tucson, but we did get a bit of rain! If truth be told, it wasn't actually raining in this picture. Naomi was standing underneath the drainpipe AFTER it finished raining. :)

Painting!

Thanks for checking back in on us. (Did anyone check back in on us? Drat. We probably lost our two followers by not blogging more often.)

I promise to post again soon! This will keep you on the edge of your seat:

Next post: NAOMI'S SOCCER TEAM ADVENTURES!!

Naomi trims the tree...

Naomi has read books that mention trimming the tree.

Apparently I didn't emphasize enough that they were
actually decorating the tree, not cutting bits off with scissors.

Notice some little needles on the table? Naomi used the nail scissors to do a little trimming. Luckily, the damage isn't noticeable, and this isn't our main tree anymore. Tread carefully (and explain fully!) if Naomi offers to help you trim your tree!

So easily entertained...

ANYTHING can be entertaining when small children are involved. A couple weeks ago, the excitement around our house was that the van battery died. Naomi was flabbergasted to find out that cars use batteries, just like her toys!

These pictures are from when we jump started the van. (We ended up having to get a new battery even though we let it charge, but at least it delayed it a few days.) It was all an adventure to the kids!

Naomi opted to watch from the garage step where she could see both vehicles and the cables. (I took this picture from the driver's seat while the hood was up.)

Gabe's perch of choice was the front passenger seat in the van (which he thought was super cool, since normally it's off-limits!). Here's his cheesy grin at all the fun we're having...

And here's the view of what he was seeing (the car with it's hood up).

While knowing the battery had died was less than thrilling,
we had a great time giving it some more juice!

Thanksgiving with the Fieldings!

For the Thanksgiving holiday, we trekked up to Idaho to spend time with Val's family. We had a terrific time! We didn't pull out the camera until pretty much the last day there, so we didn't get pictures with everybody.

I was very excited about this first picture! The munchkins are our kids, of course, and the tall ones are (left) Jared, Jordan and Julisa. They are my nieces and nephews, so they are Naomi's and Gabe's cousins. Despite the age difference, my kids thought they were the COOLEST EVER cousins! (That could be due to Jordan, Jared and Julisa being incredibly nice about playing with them and throwing them balls over...and over...and over...)

Here we have Julisa and Aunt Julie (Val's sister) reading a book to Naomi. Naomi has somebody reading her a book whenever possible, so she was thrilled to find a few more people around who would read to her! In payment, Julie requested kisses periodically. I think I'll start that system, too!

Another reason why Gabe loved Julisa...this was very late (thus the pajamas), and Gabe was nuts. He was very unsteady and giggly, and he kept spinning circles, looking at Julisa and shrieking with laughter. While, as his parent, it was funny to watch, I'm not sure Julisa knew what to think about that crazy kid! She was a good sport and stayed by him, though!

Here are the Adele's in the family. My mom's great-aunt was named Adele, and each of the girls in this picture have the middle name Adele:
(Left to right) Julisa Adele, Constance Adele, Valerie Adele, Naomi Adele

Gabe most definitely does NOT have the middle name Adele;
he just wanted to get in on the fun picture-taking!

Our trip was absolutely fabulous (despite Matt catching a cold and spending a couple days sequestered in the room).

It was also exhausting! For our return flight, we left Julie's house at 5:30 AM and caught a flight out of Salt Lake. We met up with Edward in Denver and enjoyed spending some more time with him. Then we flew to Tucson. Matt had a cold, the kids were cranky, and I was motion sick. We were THRILLED to get off that plane.

This picture shows Gabe's thoughts on long travel days. This was on the shuttle from the airport to the parking lot.

And this one was taken in our car on the drive home.

We were happy to be home, but we were even happier to have been able to make that trip and spend Thanksgiving with such wonderful people!

What a terrific time we had! And nobody was seriously injured...
that always equates to a successful family event, don't you think?

Naomi's first soccer practice!

Naomi started her illustrious (well, soon to be illustrious) soccer career yesterday with a 45 minute soccer practice. I didn't have my camera, so I'll have to check with the other moms to see who might have documented that monumental practice.

Here are some youtube clips from a friend (thanks, Jess!). Naomi is in the pink shirt with black pants.

Warming up with Coach Gray

Ball handling skills

She was THRILLED that we purchased her very own shin guards and soccer socks. She will be taking her shin guards to preschool for show and tell today. Hopefully nobody notices the corner where there are teeth marks (Gabe got his hands on them for a minute).

FUN!!!

Our first taste of Christmas!

Gabe and Naomi were thrilled to open the first present of the Christmas season...Christmas pillowcases from Aunt Julie!

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Then they tried them out...

And they loved them! Thanks, Aunt Julie!!