The Dark Side

I had planned on blogging after Merrick went to bed tonight and I had already planned what I was going to blog about, but tonight he was just so silly that I just can't resist blogging about it.

When Jeremy and I get overly tired we tend to get silly and things that should not be funny become hilarious. We refer to this as "crossing over to the dark side". The last few night I guess we have kept Merrick up a little to late because he has shown us that he too can cross over to the dark side, running around like a crazy man and jumping off of everything he can climb.

Tonight the silliness began at bath time and when the bath ended he was not ready to get out. I really needed to go get something from downstairs but could not convince him to get out of the tub. He sat in the bathtub as every last drop of water ran out. Once it was empty I finally convinced him to vacate the tub and put his towel on.

I ran down stairs as quickly as I could and returned to find out that he was not quite as ready to get out of the tub as I thought.

Eventually his lips turned blue and he agreed to get out of the tub, but that did not end the silliness. While I gathered his lotion, pj's and diaper he took that opportunity climb naked into his toy box (I took a picture of that as well, but unfortunately caught his manhood in the picture and could not figure out how to crop it).

His craziness definitely slowed the process down, but in the end he made it to bed. It is interesting when you see your characteristics passed down to your children, even something so small and insignificant as getting silly/crazy/slap-happy when overtired.

The Everyday

I think that I have mentioned it before, but since we moved here I have been watching my two, four-year-old nephews (Quincy and Colvin) during the week and I also watch another little girl Merrick's age on Tuesdays and Thursdays. So Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I have three kiddos and on Tuesdays and Thursdays I have four children four and under.

Some days are really fun and other are really challenging, but the bottom line is that most days I am exhausted by the end of the day. One of the ways I have come up with to find joy in a long day is by focusing on the happy, funny moments and trying to capture those. I thought as we head into another week, I would share some of my favorite pictures from our time together so far and in case you were wondering the first one is a picture of Quincy sitting on the pot, with the door open, holding a balloon and a giant book.

Life's a Beach

This past week the weather was really warm for Portland (it was in the low 90's which still feels amazing to us). Early in the week I started thinking that if the weather was this warm we needed to take advantage and head to the beach. Jeremy worked really hard all week and got ahead in his homework so that he could take Saturday off.

Saturday morning Jeremy, Merrick, my parent's and I loaded up the car and headed out to Seaside. The weather out at the coast was perfect (about 75 degrees). We started the day by exploring Seaside a little. It turns out that they were having a classic car show and downtown was just packed with really neat old cars.


We wandered around until lunch time and had lunch at a great little seafood place. After lunch we finally made our way down to the water. We set up some chairs and just started to get comfortable when Merrick made a beeline for the water. I thought he would be nervous adventuring out on his own, but boy was I wrong. This is him headed out to the water and then walking all the way back to Nana and Papa by himself.



After our initial trip out to the water we all decided that the water was too cold and confined our play to the sand. Merrick liked scooping the sand and dumping it on people and Jeremy enjoyed digging his traditional hole.









I assume that this will be our only trip to the coast this year, but I don't see how it could have been any more perfect. The weather, food, and company were all perfect. It was truly a great day!

Half of Four

I am really not sure how it happened, but somehow my baby turned two today. Over the last few days people have been asking him how old he is. Occasionally he says "two", but more often he says "four". I think he is in a hurry to grow up and be four like his cousins. As a solution to our problem today Papa told him to say that he was half of four so I guess he is not two, but half of four.

We celebrated his half of fourth birthday by having a Caillou birthday party. Merrick is WAY into Caillou and we thought it would be the perfect theme for his party. We started the day by giving him a Caillou shirt and trucker cap to wear at the party.



When everyone arrived we kicked off the party by letting the kids finger paint with pudding. I think that the pudding made it to the mouth over the paper at a ratio of about 3:1. The kids also thought it was really fun to mix the colors so by the end everything was a nice shade of army green.





Once everyone was thoroughly cover we moved on to our second activity, playdough. Most of the kids kept with the party theme and tried to make Caillou, but Lauren decided to test her artistic skills a little more.





We then decided to take a break from the activities to have a little lunch. We had hamburgers, hot dogs, watermelon and sweet potato fries. The food was really yummy and we all ate too much so we decided to open presents before dessert.

There was no surprise here, but Merrick was totally spoiled by family and friends both near and far. He enjoyed opening the presents and his cousins enjoyed helping him.








After presents we were all still too full so we had our last activity, rocket balloons, which were really fun but did not really translate in the pictures.



We finished the party with Caillou cupcakes that I made and homemade blackberry lemon ice cream.





I think Merrick really enjoyed dessert.





I wish I could stop Merrick from growing up, but that does not seem to work. I guess the next best thing to do is thoroughly enjoy the moments we have and that is just what we did today.

Merrick, Mommy and Daddy love you more than anything and are so grateful you joined our family!

Labor Day in Paradise

I feel like since the foundation of my blog the blog theme has always been how awesome my baby is. Over the last few weeks I have felt the theme has shifted to how awesome my baby is and how awesome the place we live is. If you don't like it I am sure it will shift again someday, but for right now I feel like I am living in paradise and I can't help talking about it. Let me just give you an example of our weekend so you will know what I am talking about.

Friday we ate lunch outside in beautiful 70 degree weather and later in the afternoon went to the park. I was sad when we left Arizona because we had a great park right down the street, but this is the park we now have right across the street.


We had a great time there as a family before Jeremy had to go to class on Friday night.





On Saturday most of my family went out to a campground where Ben and Becca's family was staying, but Jeremy and I decided to take Merrick just down the road to the river beach


We went and explored down by the river and Merrick like chasing the ducks. I was shocked that they let him get as close as they did. After we had spent some time down by the water, we walked along a trail that overlooked the water. It was beautiful and perfect in every way.





Today, we went blackberry picking. I am kicking myself for not bring the camera, but it is amazing that without even leaving my parent's subdivision we could pick blackberries to our hearts content.

It has already been such a fun weekend and the fun will just continue tomorrow when my baby turns two and we have a party to celebrate. Check back in a few days for an update on all the birthday festivities...I can't wait!