Andrew turns 3

Our first son had a great third birthday complete with a few hours at Chuck E Cheese and too many presents for a three year old! Now he refers to everything in the house by "it's my birthday present!"








Happy Birthday, Andrew!

Ultrasound Fun

I've always wanted to have a 3D ultrasound, and my OB's office does them (yay for utah!).. so here are some pics from about a week ago:





Playing the harmonica:



And a little video - the html's not working, so here's a link if you want to see!

http://s16.photobucket.com/albums/b27/merrillfam/?action=view&current=3dus22009.flv

Long lost update

Well, it's been my typical month since the last update, and of course a lot has happened around here. Instead of posting 10 posts at once like I did last time I updated, I'll just go ahead and put the whole barrage of photos in this one big fat slideshow...

So Christmas was fabulous - lots of family, presents, food, 3 weeks worth of garbage collection, etc. One of my favorite highlights was the nativity.. the girls were too cute. And we could hear them because the boys were in bed.





Get this - at 10pm on Christmas Eve I discovered that, oops, we have no stockings, or at least I can't find them anywhere (I looked for an hour). So at 11pm on Christmas Eve, my mom pulls out some adorable fleece and MAKES my girls these stockings. (ok, I did the letters..) ;) Is that awesome or what? That's love, people.



Christmas morning was a big party - the kids all loved their gifts, and my mom and sisters were there for the whole thing - it was a lot of fun. And it's always funny to see what the kids actually end up liking the most. Andrew definitely loved his camera and wore out the batteries within an hour. (I don't know where he gets it!)







Speaking of which, Jason won a Wii at a business [school] conference (the only way we would have ever gotten a game system - I'm not the world's biggest fan, and wanted to sell it when he told me about it..) and after a few hours of yelling/crying at the tv while they figured out how to work it, the kids now love it and ask for it all day. Fortunately we got enough remotes that Jason doesn't have to fight them for one.. because he probably would.



Two days after Christmas (on my 28th birthday - yay, now I'm old), Jason's mom came to visit and stayed for the next week. It was great to see her, and the kids always have so much fun playing with Grandma Merrill. Also this picture is priceless.



On January 6th, Micaela turned 7 years old! She's such a sweet girl and always a big help (she even knows where the backup diaper stash is!) We love having Micaela in our family!



And since all that fun apparently wasn't enough to wear us completely out...



We decided kind of at the last minute to throw in a trip to California! When you combine a week's worth of free hotel nights from rewards points (thanks, mom!) and super nice friends who work at Disneyland offering to let us in for free, (oh yeah, and an 80 degree heat wave in southern CA) it's pretty hard to say no! So our kids got their first trip to Disneyland, and their first time playing on a beach.









(I think everyone needs a picture of them in a swimsuit at 6 months pregnant, don't you?)
We spent our third day there in San Diego visiting Jason's ailing grandma - she's 89 and a total sweetheart. The kids got to meet the rest of Jason's family for the first time - Micaela especially had a blast with her cousin Kyle (my favorite quote from her - "Wow, we're the exact same age AND the same size - that's soo awesome!" haha)





So that brings us up to today. Or to 2 days ago when we got home.. and I still haven't touched the van.. :)

Oh yeah, and we found out (um, a while ago..) that we're having another BOY! We're excited to even up the score here and add another little guy for these two to play with:





Happy New Year, everyone!

Ready for Christmas!

We are excited for Christmas in this house. The kids call everything we do lately a Christmas party.

We made probably 5 dozen sugar cookies, and out of that barely got 3 plates of edible cookies to take to our neighbors. We had lots of fun and made a huge mess.

Busy Boy

William is good at being a toddler. He's so much fun, but we have to keep right on top of what he's doing to keep him safe!







I love his adorable face and wild baby hair.

All I want for Christmas is my 4 front teeth

Poor Micaela seems to lose her teeth 4 at a time. Well, she has them pulled 4 at a time. She has plenty of room for those adult teeth to grow in now.

Before, baby teeth intact:


After, admiring her new space:


Also, in the past 2 weeks Micaela has gotten very into playing the piano and has learned a bunch of new songs. She practices (very briefly) at least 20 times a day. It's amazing what kids can do when they (all of a sudden, mysteriously) get motivated!

Crazy trip

Jason and I went to Europe! Crazy, huh? He had job interviews in Switzerland and Hungary, which we nearly missed due to most of our original flight plan being cancelled because of plane malfunctions, stupidity, etc. But we got everything rearranged and he narrowly made it to both interviews. It was a crazy few days, though!
In between red-eye flights and trains, we got to see parts of Zurich and Budapest. (Jason served his mission in Hungary and lived in Budapest for several months, so that was a fun little trip down memory lane.) My mom and sister were so nice to take care of our kids so we could take our first vacation alone since our honeymoon! (thanks, Mom and Holly!)

Here's a pic of us near our hotel in Zurich:

(you'd think I could have gotten someone else to take that instead of taking it myself at that great flattering angle..) :)

Our hotel sat on this lake:


This was the view from the train station in Zurich. Most of the buildings there looked pretty similar to this one:


And one of us in Hero's Square in Budapest: