It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood

This week had a few highlights.  A few of them had been in the works for a bit, like Jeremy starting his new job and my mom deciding to stay for an extra week and a half (she would have gone home today otherwise).  Other highlights came as a bit of a surprise, like a weekend that was just about as beautiful as possible for January in Oregon.

Friday was rainy so who would have guessed (maybe people who watch the news) that Saturday and Sunday would be clear and warm with a high of about 60 degrees.  We decided to take advantage of this beauty and spend as much time outside as possible so we took a couple of bike rides as a family.  The first day we rode out of our neighborhood to the elementary school Merrick is scheduled to go to (we got him registered for kindergarten this week) and rode around for a bit.  The problem is that there are not many paths we can take out of neighborhood that aren't too hilly so for our second ride we decided to test out our new car carrier.  Being that it was our first time setting it all up, it came together pretty quickly and easily.  We also learned that we could collapse Carrigan's trailer to fit it easily in the car.

I am sure that this weekend was just a blip on the radar and there will be many rainy days ahead.  But, Spring will come soon enough and now that we know we can load up our bikes and trailer, there are all kinds of adventures that lay ahead.

P.S.  This is totally unrelated, but too cute not to report.  At preschool we talk about the weather every day.  Lots of days we decide it is partly sunny.  This week one night it was fairly cloudy and Merrick looked up at the moon and asked me if it was "partly moon".

New Year, New Job, New Car

Just a few weeks ago I posted about our hope for this to be the year Jeremy lands his first attorney position.  Well, it happened a little quicker than we had anticipated.  Monday Jeremy had an interview with a company called Epiq Systems and by that afternoon they had offered him a job.  They had wanted him to start this past week, but since we were still a one car family (more on that in a sec) we just didn't see how we could make that work.  So, tomorrow will be his first day as a full fledged attorney.  There are some cons to this job that make it less than ideal and not a permanent solution, but we'll save that for another day.  Today we are just thankful for this stepping stone in his career.

That brings me to the other exciting piece of news for the week, we got a new car.  Now, when I say "new" when referring to one of our cars I usually mean "new to us", but this time I mean new, new.  We did a test drive yesterday of the 2015 Toyota Corolla and yesterday evening they delivered ours to our driveway.  When it pulled in it had 22 miles on it.  The guys who brought it said it had never even been test driven and it was as close to a brand new car as you can possibly get.  We are loving it already.

As Jeremy is fond of saying lately, "things are looking up for Millhouse".  In all seriousness though, we are feeling truly blessed and are so excited about what the future has in store.

Vacation (All I Ever Wanted)

I want to thank the Go-Go's for the blog title for tonight (and now I have that song stuck in my head).  Anyway, I know I said last week that I was already behind on reporting events of the year, but again they will have to wait.

Jeremy and I just rolled in from our first weekend away since Merrick was born.  My mom was kind enough to watch the kids while we went out to Seaside, on the coast for two days.  I am not really going to report too much on it, mostly because I am still on "vacation mode".  I will say it was not the perfect getaway, we did have a small run it with the law (that's what we get for driving a Mustang) and a brush with food poisoning.  It was, however, a good break and a nice recharge and it set a nice attainable standard for future getaways.

Well that is all for tonight.  More later.

2014 Year in Review

Well it is time to put 2014 to rest on the blog and it is a good thing to because so much has already happened in 2015 that I need to start writing about.  But first, here is the recap of our 2014:

January-What a bummer to start out with a low-light rather than a highlight, but in January I was diagnosed with alopecia.  The good news on this is that it was never noticeable and as the doctor said the treatment resulted in "as good of an outcome as we possible could have hoped for".  At this point my recovery is just about complete.

February- February's highlight was definitely our monster snow storm that brought us days of family fun in the snow.

March and April- They get to share a blurb because they were fairly uneventful, but May was sure to make up for it. (April did bring the birth of our sweet niece/cousin Isabel but technically she is not part of our immediate family).

May-May was a doozy (in a good way).  Carrigan turned one at the start of the month, shortly thereafter Jeremy finished his last law school final, and we ended the month with Jeremy's law school graduation.

June- June brought a trip to Arizona for Bryce and Savannah's wedding (again not technically our immediate family).

July-  For the kids and I, July was all about summer fun and swim lessons.  Merrick made some real improvement in his swimming this year.  He also really became interested in reading in July and is becoming a good little reader. For Jeremy, July (and June for that matter too) was all about the Bar.  After months of study, he finally put the Bar behind him.  We celebrated with a trip to Great Wolf Lodge (technically this spilled into August too)

August- In August we celebrated nine years of marriage and moved...again.

September- Just five short days into September Merrick turned 5.  A few days later we started another school year (my third with the preschool).  A few weeks after later we finally got Jeremy's bar results and he PASSED!!!

October- October's highlight was Jeremy's swearing in.  I have to say, that was a really cool experience. Oh, I also had a birthday somewhere in there.

November-November's highlights  were Jeremy's birthday, thanksgiving, and the start of the holiday season.

December- December brought visitors from India and Arizona and of course Christmas.

So that was our year.  We had some tremendous blessings and are looking forward to starting a new chapter of our lives (with hopefully a new career for Jeremy) in 2015.  We are loving life and each other and are so grateful for the gospel and all our family and friends that love and support us.

Christmas 2014

This week was Christmas and in the days leading up to the big day, Christmas festivities were in full swing.

Monday night those of us still in Oregon (Emily and Kai had gone home that morning) went out to the sticks for an amazing light and decoration display put on by a local church.  In addition to the displays they had a light show, a musical performance, hot chocolate and cider, and apparently it snowed but we missed that part.  It was no Temple lights, but the true Spirit of Christmas could still be felt.

We were back together Wednesday for our traditional Christmas eve.  We re-enacted the nativity story found in Luke 2 and exchanged presents with Nana and Papa.  Carrigan had not had a nap that day and was beyond grumpy so there are no pictures of her, but here is Merrick with his gift and my parents with the blanket we had made for them (we also gave one to Grandpa and Lollie,but alas I don't have any pictures of them opening theirs).

After everyone went home to their respective houses and the little ones were all tucked in, Santa made his appearance.  Of course he filled stockings and brought some smaller gifts, but the big surprise was in the garage.  He brought new bikes for Jeremy, Merrick, and me and a new bike trailer for CC.

Christmas day was such a hit!  Merrick got Disney Infinity and when he opened it he saw the characters and said that he could not play with them because we "don't have infinity".  Once we explained to him that that is what he just opened, he was very excited.  He also got legos, Rescue Bot dinos, a ninja castle and sword, and a few other things.

The biggest hit for Carrigan was the bag of Hi-chews that Santa brought in her stocking.  She refused to put it down or open anything else at first.  I had to open most of her presents for her.  Once we got to her stroller, she decided she was excited about that but had to put her precious Hi-chews in for a ride.  Eventually she decided she was excited about other things too.  Her highlights included a "Cozy Coupe", building blocks, an art studio for the iPad, and clothes and shoes.  She particularly loves her gold shoes from Mom and Dad and her outfit from Grandpa and Lollie.

We are SO blessed!  Not only with the abundance of gifts that we received, but with the love of God and Christ and a love for each other.  It has been a wonderful holiday season!

Fun with Visitors

This week brought some very welcome visitors to our neck of the woods.  We had long since know about my parents' travel plans from India (you can read about their perilous journey here) but we also had a surprise visit from Emily and Kai.  Emily and Kai arrived Tuesday night and my parents Wednesday night and life has been a whirlwind ever since.

Thursday, in addition to spending every free moment playing, (almost) all the cousins went to the bounce house for "lights out" bouncing.

Friday we made gingerbread houses.

Yesterday was full of shopping and we ended the day with something that I have wanted to do for years now, the Christmas Ships parade.  Every year (this was the 60th year) a fleet of ships decked out in Christmas lights traverses the Colombia and Willamette Rivers in a spectacular parade for onlookers along the river banks.  It was raining last night, but that didn't stop us from braving it, and having a really great time.

Today we had everyone over for dinner and a cousin Christmas gift exchange.

Tomorrow Emily and Kai go home.  We will really miss them (Merrick especially will miss Kai), but have had a really great time making the best of the short time we did have.