Update on the Life of the Merrill Family

Warning: The following post was a combined effort by both Curtis and myself, and as such it is a bit confusing. I uploaded the pictures figuring that Curtis would put them in the order he wanted, but he assumed that I put the pictures in the order that I wanted, resulting in him trying to piece together a story out of the pictures that I chose... it is very random and a bit confusing, but a very fine effort by Curtis to make sense of the madness. My bad!

As you can plainly see our house is practically finished. Karalee tried to put up a video tour of our house...

As you can also see, Nathan is practically grown. Strangely though, nearly every stranger who comments on him, figures he is really a she. Given the camouflage pants and our frequent references to him, I can see why people just figure he is a girl anyway--making our duty to work harder pointing out his sex even more desperate--more blue in the wardrobe coming up!
Told you the house was practically finished! This is our "Great" room. It's big! All we need now to complete the "Great" room is a flat screen TV, a sectional, a lounging chair, a piano, and the finishing touch of a professional decorator (Crissy). And, we have the perfect plan to get some of this stuff free--some people on the base here in Sierra Vista (Fort Huachuca) buy brand new furniture and entertainment stuff and, apparently to their immense surprise (I mean who gets transferred in the Army?) then six months later are transferred to Korea, Japan, or Germany. They can't take a lot of their possessions and sometimes can't sell it in time. So occasionally, they'll post something on Craigslist mentioning "free" or just leave their stuff on the sidewalk to be hauled off as trash. We're praying that this stuff happens just when we're moving into our house!
It's pretty much a mansion.
I don't mean this photo being the mansion, but the photo above this one--silly!

This is the progress being made on the Gila Valley temple in Central, Arizona. As you can see, it's almost as far along as our house is. It's probably about the same size as the Albuquerque temple. If you still don't know exactly what that means, it's bigger than the Monticello temple--like twice the size. It's also bigger than the Redlands temple. It's probably about half the size of the Jordan River temple--a little bigger than half as small. I think it'll be a busier temple than the Albuquerque temple though. I think it'll serve about 10 stakes and four of those stakes will be minutes away. Two more stakes are only about an hour away and the other four are less than two hours away.
We were in Central, Arizona because, on a complete whim, Karalee, Curtis, and Nathan went to Ramah to visit Grandma and Grandpa Merrill (And Central is on the way to Ramah). We went on a whim because Curtis' schedule is so unpredictable. Sunday September 20th was the best time to go, so that's when we went. The 20th is also the day we decided to go to Ramah and had made absolutely no prior plans to going. We had wanted to go sometime, but our schedule did dictate (once I found out my schedule) that the 20th, 21st, and 22nd of September were the best days for us. While there, Grandma Merrill took us to see ice caves, which are about 25 minutes east of Ramah, New Mexico. Here is a photo of the ice cave. We also trekked up the remains of an ancient, extinct volcano and enjoyed the scenery, plants, and animals on the hike. Karalee especially liked pushing the baby cart up the gravel trail!
Grandma took the kids hikin', so Grandpa took the kids shootin'!Here is a photo of a gun-toting mama standing next to her father-in-law. Karalee is a dead-shot with the 22 rifle, which she is likely holding in the photo, as well as an SKS rifle. The SKS is certainly louder than the 22 and kicks more than the 22, but neither fact deterred "Janie" ('s got a gun)--she let the pop cans (and dirt around the pop cans), ranging from a distance of 10 to 35 yards have it with a bunch of led! Nevertheless, a pistol made even louder noise than the SKS, and so Karalee didn't bother to shoot that one.
This photo represents four generations of Merrill. Nathan is being held by his dad, Curtis, and Curtis is standing to the left of his grandmother, Lois Hope Clawson Merrill (who is 92 and very much going strong!) Next to her is Gene Merrill, Lois' son and Curtis' father, and Curtis' mother is on the far left, LaVerne. On a side note, Grandma Merrill, as of about 8 years ago isn't just a great-grandmother, but a great-great grandmother (not by Curtis, but by one of Curtis' cousin's daughters).
Grandpa Merrill and Nathan.
What a happy boy with his great grandmother!
More ice cave!
To the right of the people in question (LaVerne and Curtis) is the remnants of the cone of the volcano I was telling you about.
The happy couple standing next to that volcano cone!
A somewhat random photo of our favorite, and according to his mother, "patience teaching" nephew Kaleb!
As you can see here, Nathan holds his head up very well and loves tummy time.

And that's the update!

Maybe only exciting to me

Nathan has started reaching out and grabbing/hitting things. It is exciting to me to see this development, though I might be the only one excited by it. (Curtis finds it amusing that I get so excited over the littlest things.) Nathan loves to watch his mobile spin around, but today Curtis put him under it without turning it on but that didn't stop him from enjoying it. He laid there and hit the animals on his mobile for a very long time. I got a short video of it, but it is not very good, and probably boring, but I love watching it so I thought maybe others might too. He is growing up too darn fast!

Pictures

Here are a few pictures of Nathan and our house that is in the looooong process of being built.

Nathan is his Sunday outfit lookin' sharp

Haha, he looks stiff as a board

I think he is getting a little chub don't you think?

Crazy kid wouldn't stop moving

This is what he looks like most of the time, pacifier in the mouth!

He has started sleeping on his side, and today I found him on his stomach. I think the playpen isn't quite level because he doesn't do it in his crib.

Our house yesterday...

Our house today! (front)

(back)

It's the Most Wonderful Time of the Year

No I don't mean Christmas...I mean Cougar football time! This season is going to be a little tough on us, seeing as how we are not in Utah and will therefore only be able to watch about half of the games. Fortunately, today's game was on ESPN. Curtis, the little doubter, was not too excited about the game because he wasn't too confident in the prospect of BYU pulling a victory over Oklahoma. I, on the other hand, always think BYU will win, no matter how likely it is. Anyway, we celebrated the season opener by barbecuing during half time. I also attempted to make some BYU cupcakes but I lack both the skills as well as the tools to make anything spectacular. We each ate 1 cupcake and then I made Curtis take the rest to work because otherwise I would end up eating the remaining 10.



We also invited a few people over, but unfortunately, this is not Provo, and nobody but us seemed to be very interested in watching the game. Oh well! We didn't need anyone else to have a party! It was a great game with great food and great company. Even Nathan seemed to enjoy the game. (What else would you expect with Curtis as his dad?) We are looking forward to another exciting season of BYU football. Go Cougs!

(Nathan must have had a growth spurt over night, because just after I complained about him not fitting into any of his cute 0-3 month clothes he magically fit! This overalls and polo onesie outfit is absolutley adorable on him, I wish I would have taken a better picture...yay for cute clothes!!)

A little too big?

Nathan is weeks away from being 3 months old, yet he is still wearing newborn clothes! It is torture because most of his cutest outfits are 0-3 or 3-6 months. I tried to put a 0-3month outfit on him the other day and here was the result:



The picture doesn't do justice to just how huge this outfit was on him. After a few minutes I decided that it was just not working and I put him back into a newborn outfit. Maybe when he is 3 months old he will graduate to the 0-3month range. On a good note, it looks as though it will be a while until I have to buy him any clothes!


And just because I love these pictures:

I'm a winner!

Although I spent probably about an hour of my precious time entering codes on the internet it all paid off! I won not only once, but twice in Huggies Enjoy the Ride Rewards. I won a pack of Huggies diapers ($25 value) the first time around, and then a couple of minutes later I won a $25 Kohls gift card! Woo hoo! If anyone else has been earning points for huggies then check out Freebies4mom (I have a link on the right side of my page), she has posted tons of codes worth about 50 points total.

Also, some things that might be of interest.

**Sept 5th is national bowling night. You can bowl for free all across the country! Just go to this website and print out your coupon! (Check to make sure your bowling alley participates) http://www.bowl.com/coupon/

**For the mommies of little boys, I just saw an ad for home depot. I guess they do little workshops on Saturdays where the kids get to learn how to build different things. From what I can tell it is free. Lowes also does something similar. Here are the websites in case you want to check it out!

https://www.lowesbuildandgrow.com/

http://www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ContentView?pn=Kids_Workshops&langId=-1&storeId=10051&catalogId=10053

Ok...I really need to get a life!

Mesa

Curtis and I were finally able to make it up to Mesa to go to the temple. It would have only been a 3 and 1/2 hour drive if we didn't have a baby, but with Nathan it was closer to 4 1/2 hours. It was quite an adventure getting there. We had to stop once so that I could feed Nathan, I told Curtis to just pick an exit and see if he could find a semi-secluded place off of the road. We found a dirt road right off of the freeway and as we were about to park we noticed a huge dead cow right next to the road...so we drove a bit further. About 30 minutes after we got back on the road Nathan was screaming his brains out and it smelled as though he was in desperate need of a diaper change, so once again I asked Curtis to take the next exit and pull over so that I could change Nathan. Once I got Nathan out of his car seat I saw that his seat was soaking wet! No wonder he was crying! After he was changed and had a dry(ish) seat we hit the road again. There wasn't an on ramp where we got off so we figured we would find one if we just drove down the road a bit. Unfortunately the road was flooded so we had to turn around, we were a bit annoyed, thinking that now we would have to back track quite a bit to find another on ramp because this was the ONLY road! We only were able to back track a little bit before we found that the road was flooded this way too! We were completely stuck! The only ways we could possibly go were both flooded. Our only option was to get onto the freeway from the offramp! Neither of us were very excited about this plan, but there was absolutely no other way! Fortunately the off ramp was positioned so that we could see the freeway very well and when nobody was coming we went for it! It was actually pretty anticlimactic because it was so easy. Anywho, we finally made it to Mesa and it was well worth the quick day trip, the temple was absolutely beautiful. Curtis, has lots of family in the area and has been there many times, but it was a first for me! Once we were finished at the temple we were able to visit Curtis' grandma, and we also made sure to make a stop at Inn-n-Out.



Nathan didn't seem to enjoy the trip very much. The car seems to be one of the only places that he cries much, which is funny to me because I thought that babies were supposed to like the car! He was perfect on the way home though because it was pretty late and he was tired!

We ended up spending about 8 hours in the car and only about 2 in Mesa. I can't wait until The Gila Valley Temple is finished so that we don't have to travel quite so far. Supposedly it will be finished in December or January, and it couldn't come too soon!