Halloween 2012

I love Halloween! This year, however, has been a different story. This was the first year I didn't decorate in the 8 years I've been married. Weird for me. It must mean I'm burned out form renting! :) Ready to be in our own house again!! The kids were SO fun. Ash and I drug them all outside to take these pictures. The weather was so nice. We don't have 65 degree Halloween days but this year, WE DID!! It made everything so much better. No coats, boots, wind! Koop had his costume parade at school. It's always so fun going to see them all dressed up. After the "yelling" photo shoot, yea...there was yelling....we went over to the trunk-or-treat. Can I just say how much I love trunk-or-treats? Quick, easy, fast, tons of candy. Great for everyone! I'm not driving for hours and we get doughnuts and cider, hold the poison and razorblades! :) Lovely!  We met up with Kris's Parents at hos Uncle Ron's house after for more doughnuts. SO GOOD! It was a great day!

Koop is 6!

My little baby is 6! Where does the time go? We didn't actually celebrate it on "the" day. Kooper was very confused by this. :) He kept telling everyone it was his "half birthday" because we weren't having his party for a few days. Kris was out of town so we decided to wait until he came home. When it finally was the day we went bowling. My kids have NEVER been bowling. I know right, what kind of American parents are we! :) They LOVED it! I'm sure this won't be the last time we do that. It was a fun day complete with a super hero cake. (thank you Walmart!)

Kooper....

Favorite food: Ham and Cheese sandwich

Favorite things: Lego's, Lego Batman (Wii), anything remote controlled.

Favorite drink: Suicide (every flavor pop at the fountain dispenser)

Favorite Song: He really loves Micheal Jackson! ha ha I also have Transformers and Jake and the Neverland Pirates and his play list on my Ipod.

Favorite thing to wear: Shorts and a "short" shirt. (short sleeve) Most of the time he walks around lookin' like Officer Dangle from Reno 911. :) Google it you'll laugh...

Loves his Sisters and is the biggest help to me. I'm really not sure how I would function without him! He is a sweet little munchkin and I'm so happy he's in our Family! Love you buddy.

Olivia turns 4...

My little Girlie turned 4! This post is way late but I wanted to get her on the blog because Kooper and Gabriella's Birthday's are coming and with my whole new blogging thing again I didn't want Liv to feel left out! It's scary how quickly they grow up. I can't believe she is 4. She goes to preschool this year, she's not a sunbeam anymore. I tell her all the time not to grow up but she just keeps telling me that she has to but that she'll always be my little baby. Olivia is the sweetest most sensitive little girl. She loves to be snuggled and she loves to help me with anything. She's a very talented singer and dancer. She makes amazing cookies and cakes in her play kitchen, we are always eating the treats she makes. :) We love her. She is such a fun part of our family. She amazes me every day! We love you Livi.


Ashley and I made this cake. I've been watching a lot of cake shows lately and thought, "hmmm, I can do that"! Dumb shows, they always make it look easy. The fondant was a bit interesting....we learned a lot. Like why there are little air bubbles in the green layer. haha! After all day we decided to just finish the thing with ribbon. I think it turned out pretty cute. Maybe someday I can try making Belle out of fondant. :) Maybe not.

The "Christmas Vacation" tree...

Kris and i decided that we needed to start a new Family tradition this year! I thought we could go take a lovely little ride though the mountains and delightfully pick out a cute little Christmas tree and quickly put it up in our house, decorated, all in one day. I guess there are days I forget who I'm married to! :) We drove and drove I kept saying, "hey that looks good", "what about that one". Kris kept saying "no, I'll know when I see it. When a beam of light hits it and Angels sing....that will be it"! I guess he finally heard Angels because this is what we came home with.
After two hours of messing with it in the front yard. Kris wanted to wrap it up, set it up and "open" the tree in the house. (like on Christmas Vacation) So we wrapped and tied and lifted and FINALLY carried it in the house. We realized it was too tall for our 18 ft living room so we had to drag it back outside, unwrap, cut more, re-wrap and drag it back in. 8th times a charm because we got that thing stood up! It was just a magical as Kris wanted. We may have had scars from being whipped in the face with pine branches and literally sticking to everything because of the sap but it was worth it! It took a week to decorate, not because it was that huge but because we had to go to Target like 5 times to get more light strands. it took 6 regular strands and one 60ft spool to cover this dang thing. we still could have used one more strand at the top. In the end this has been my favorite tree we've ever had. Definitely a tradition we will carry on.
Kris with his decorated trophy! :) (this picture doesn't do it "size" justice. It's HUGE!)

Christmas 2011...

{Side Note}... I forgot I have to think backwards when posting so this post is backwards! :)



Koop and Livi, Poor babies, they had 102 degree fevers on Christmas. They both felt like crap. Once the adrenaline had worn off they crashed. They drug their sleeping bags from our bedroom to the middle of the "Christmas Craziness"! We made them sleep in our room because they sleep up stairs and I was worried they would peek over the railing and catch Santa. That would have been so sad!! :)


I forgot all about our little Santa plate! He got these awesome messy paper plates. :)
Gabbri was DONE! She was way ready for bed!





We made sugar cookies on Christmas Eve. After watching 4 little kids frost sugar cookies Santa wasn't sure if he really wanted to put those in his mouth! :) In the end he decided it would probably be ok. ha ha!








Christmas was awesome at the Merrill's this year! I love the season. My kids are getting to an age where they get it. It's so fun to watch there little eyes light up when they hear their favorite Christmas song or seeing Santa at the mall. It's all so magical! I love after all the craziness of shopping and shipping and wrapping is over and we are down to Christmas Eve, it's such a special night!

Re-starting my blogging!

I was looking through my blog the other day and was a little sad I haven't been keeping up with it. There were so many things I had forgotten and cute little pictures of my kids. I really loved it and want to print it off some day! I decided that I should post something so I actually had something to print. :)

Life has been so crazy! All these pages I posted because most of these pictures are in my external hard drive. I didn't want to upload all individually. :)

We haven't started building a house. We have been working on some new things and have decided to wait a while. It's been so hard finding where we should put the house and we don't want to rush into anything at this point. Hopefully next year some time.....Hopefully!! :)

It's been a good year. Fast but good. Koop started Kindergarten and Livi started dance. They love it! Gabri is turning into a kid. It's so sad!! They're turning into 6, 4, and 1 year olds. It's amazing how fast everything goes.

Well, hopefully this is the beginning to my keeping up with this dang thing!