Easter pictures!

Better late than never, and too fun to miss!

Snow cones at the park...serious business!

Naomi takes some pictures (check out Gabe's mop of hair!)

I love watching these kids walk while they hold hands!

Gabe insisted on finishing every single bit of that snow cone. Later, when I removed his shirt, I discovered blue streaks all down his tummy from the snow cone juice!

Naomi's favorite present EVER.

Dinner and another egg hunt at the Slivka's.
Gabe is hiding behind Isaac and Miley.

Meetup Moms of Tucson egg hunt

Gabe experiences the Duck Pond!

When I need a break and my kids need some distraction, I set up the duck pond. Or at least I used to set up the duck pond for Naomi. It's been a long, long time since we've done this. So the other day I set up the duck pond for Gabe and let him splash away to his heart's content!

Duck pond = bins, water, floaty toys and a towel.

Duck pond usually = happy mommy!

Gabe's new tie AND a belly picture!

Since we go to church every week, I wanted some ties for our little man. I found a tutorial on how to make ties for little boys from rejected adult ties (and we had a few of those around here!).

So here is my first effort at making Gabriel a tie. I love it!
And, surprisingly enough, he seemed to like it as well.

And here's a belly picture. I made the mistake of asking Matt to take a belly picture.
The first take had Gabe lifting up his shirt to show off his Buddha belly.
And the second take had Naomi lifting up HER shirt to show off her belly!

(No worries, I never lifted up my shirt to show you my actual belly!)

As a matter of interest, I just hit 24 weeks. At 22 1/2 weeks, we had a scare when I started bleeding. Since I have placenta previa (the placenta is completely covering the cervix), this was of major concern and I spent Thursday through Saturday in the hospital for monitored bedrest. Since then, I haven't been on bedrest at home but have had some restrictions given to me by the doctor. Luckily, there has been no recurrence of bleeding - whew!

Merrell Family Upgrade

As you may have discerned from the text in previous posts, we are upgrading from a family of four to a family of five!!

This little tyke is due August 21, and I am currently 22 weeks pregnant. Here are pictures from the 20 week ultrasound.

Peek-a-boo!

We're big on high fives in this family.

Gotta love sweet little baby feet!

In case you're wondering, we did not and will not be finding out if it's a boy or girl until the baby is born. So we are in suspense, just like everyone else!

Stuntman Gabe

This morning, Gabe was a bit screechy. After awhile of trying to gently redirect his behavior, I put him in time out in his crib. A few minutes later, I heard a crash and some crying. I assumed he had thrown his books against the wall and was crying to get out. I took my time getting in there, and THIS is what his bed looked like.

Yeah, that's blood.
And he was standing over it with blood covering the lower third of his face.

The blood had also dripped off the crib slats and was covering a bigger-than-my-hand spot on the carpet below.

I took him to the kitchen where I crushed some ice and put it in a cup. Once he saw me getting out the ice, he calmed right down. Hopefully he doesn't do these things to get crushed ice!!! I am happy to provide it at times he's not injured, too!

Here he is munching on crushed ice, happy as a clam. I slowly wiped him up and then left the kids to enjoy their ice while I tackled cleaning the room.

The cleanup wipes and Gabe's pajama. I should have included my shirt, too. It required a fair bit of attention to make sure it didn't stain, too.

I think he cut or bit his tongue somehow, since I can see a cut up pretty high on his tongue. I have NO IDEA how he did it, though.

Naomi never did this. Gabe has a split lip, bloody mouth, or nasty skinned knee weekly. Hopefully he masters the moves he's working on and can market them later on as a stuntman. Then at least all this blood and craziness will be building up to something productive!

Latest creations

Naomi needed some skirts to wear this summer, so I started with this one. This is the first time I've done a tiered skirt, and it was simple and fun. The hardest part is picking out the material...I have a hard time envisioning possibilities! I'll post a picture of her other skirt (not a tiered one) when she wears it.

I suppose this isn't really a "creation", but I was very tired of Gabe's hair looking long and unkempt. I was also tired of shelling out money at a hair cutting salon for his hair to be trimmed. So I decided to experiment with Matt's clippers. This time around I just used the 4 all over; now that I know how that looks, I can adjust for next time.

Here were my tactics:
...stools
...in the bathroom
...a movie playing on the tv right outside the bathroom door
...suckers
...speed

Check out this mop of hair that used to be attached to Gabe's head!

They were good sports.

Apparently the sucker wasn't enough, and Gabe had to eat part of the stick too.

Stuff about Me (Tagged!)

I got tagged awhile ago by JD's wife Sarah (JD is my cousin on my mom's side). I don't think I've ever followed up on being tagged prior to this, but here goes! Here are things about me in groups of 4.

4 shows I like to watch (well, we don't have any channels right now. But when we did, these were my shows):

1. Bones

2. Criminal Minds

3. So You Think You Can Dance (my favorite dance is the krumping, which Matt finds hilarious since I'm a little white girl from the sticks who has no rhythm!)

4. ....hmmmm, something from the History or National Geographic Channel

4 things I'm passionate about:

1. Reading
   
2. Fitness/exercise
   
3. The Gospel of Jesus Christ
   
4. My husband and kids
   

4 phrases I say a lot:

1. "So..."(with a pause...it drives me AND my husband nuts. It's like I am establishing that I need to say something, and then I have to collect my thoughts to express myself coherently. Argh.)
   
2. "I love you!" I have great kids and a fabulous husband. What else am I supposed to say?
   
3. "Look at that!" I have small children who love to see all kinds of things (or I need to distract them from other destructive behavior!).
   
4. "What should we sing?" Refer to the points above where I note that I have small children. Also, note that the CD player in my car is broken. So we sing a lot.
   

4 things I have learned from the past:

1. Be proactive...I spent a lot of time waiting on other people before I figured out I could make things happen myself!
   
2. Listen more than I talk. Don't interrupt other people so much. My experiences are not always as cool or applicable as I may think!
   
3. Don't always trust first impressions. Great friends can come from unexpected places!
   
4. Excesses of good things are still excesses (like my occasional reading binge...sorry, babe!)
   

4 places I would like to go:

1. Scuba diving almost anywhere! I had a brief taste of this in a training pool and loved it!
   
2. New Zealand. Lush landscape, outdoor sports, and yes, LOTR sites.
   
3. Havasupai
   
4. Antarctica
   

4 things I did yesterday:

1. Researched how to modify skirts for pregnancy
   
2. Read books with the kids - always a favorite!
   
3. Took the kids to a belated Easter egg hunt.
   
4. Talked to my grandpa to wish him a happy birthday!
   

4 things I'm looking forward to:

1. Baby coming in August!!
   
2. Matt finishing his PhD and us moving beyond studenthood (probably also in August!)
   
3. Taking classes again (I'm hoping Matt will eventually teach at a regular university so I can do this at a discounted price!)
   
4. Living closer to family so I can see them much more often (although I have absolutely no idea if this will ever happen!)
   

4 things I love about winter:

1. Snow!
   
2. Christmas festivities
   
3. Soups and bread bowls
   
4. Hot chocolate
   

4 things on my wish list:

1. Cricut...I have so many crafts I want to do which would be made MUCH simpler with this tool!
   
2. Books. Some new ones I've recently read, but lots of classics and oldies which I don't have on my shelf.
   
3. Right now...skirts I can alter to work for a pregnant chick. I am, after all, going to be hugely pregnant. In Tucson. In the summer.
   
4. A new pan...my pan handle has been cracking for awhile and completely gave out today.
   

Trip to a cabin!

In late March, we spent a few days at a cabin with the Mumfords and Angie (I would say the Whitakers, except Richie was home studying like crazy for his orals, which he successfully completed!).

For the 4-hour drive, we packed Angie and Mylie into our van. Gabe and Naomi were relegated to the back seat, which they loved so much that their carseats are still back there (and we've been home two weeks!). Here's a picture of Mylie, Naomi and Gabe on the return drive. Serious thanks to Angie for pulling crying control duty!

The cabin where we stayed...we actually only saw it from this angle on the last day we were there, when we were playing in a snow fort (pictured later).

Sledding was one of my favorite parts of the trip. My kids, especially Gabe, LOVED it! I really loved going down with him time and again. (I actually haven't been sledding in years, so I may admittedly been having as much fun as Gabe...)

Love the look on Matt's face here...

Not being well versed in appropriate snow behavior (we do live in Tucson, after all), Naomi didn't understand until too late why she shouldn't sit directly in the snow for long periods of time.

There was a random snow...bowl? It was probably created by the people in the cabin before us, and we trooped down to check it out on our last day. It was actually kinda hard to get to it; I put Naomi and Gabe in a sled and pulled them down to it. I broke through the snow about knee-deep every other step or so!

See the yucky snow on the sides and the bottom? Yep, Gabe is munching on some of that. I couldn't keep the dirty snow out of his mouth all three days!

The kids actually looking at the camera at the same time...Brooklyn is in the red coat, and Mylie is modeling that awesome doo-rag. (Being a spelling fanatic, I actually googled that term to make sure I wasn't spelling it incorrectly.)

On the way back up the hill; all four on the sled did not last for long.

We had a terrific time with lots of laughing, a couple people falling down the spiral staircase (luckily it was just adults who fell and not kids!), fun in the snow and fun playing games.
What a terrific vacation!

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!