CC at 8 months

I am over two weeks late in posting Carrigan's 8 month update, but I figure what better way to start this year's blog than by looking at her cute face?

For Carrigan, the 8 month mark has been all about polishing her skills.  Her sitting has come a long way and she is now transitioning herself out of sitting without just falling over.  She has also sat herself up a time or two.

She is getting faster at scooting/crawling.  While she still has not mastered a tradition crawl, she is getting her belly off the floor more and more as she scoots and she is getting much faster.

Carrigan's biggest 8 month accomplishment is beginning to pull herself to stand.  This is still a fairly new skill, but she has clearly determined that she does not need to crawl before she stands.

She has become a good little eater.  Jeremy likes to say that she is an angry eater, but really she just does not have any patience from the time she sees her food until it gets in her belly.

The biggest disappointment for me is that while she says "da da da" all the time, it is very rare for her to say "mama".  Luckily for me she is pretty good at showing me just how much she loves me (and I must say the feeling is mutual).

2013 Wrap Up

Well, I think that picture pretty much sums up our happy, crazy 2013.  Obviously the highlight of the entire year was the addition of Carrigan Leigh Clifford to our family on May 4th, but we also had a big move and a few other highlights along the way.

Jeremy-For Jeremy 2013 brought the end of his 2nd year of school and half of his final year.  As with the last few years, he has been really busy with school, but now that he is in his last year, the end is in sight.  If you asked him he might tell you that his big accomplishment of 2013 was taking a final (and getting a "B") just days after Carrigan was born.  Over the summer, he was a tremendous help in all of our sorting, packing, and moving and also discovered a love for fly fishing.  In 2014 he is looking forward to being done with school and starting the next chapter of his life.

Sarah-If she is being completely honest, for Sarah the first half of 2013 was mainly about survival.  Surviving preschool while very pregnant, having Carrigan, and pulling off the biggest move of her life within months of having a baby.  The second half of the year calmed down considerably and she enjoyed spending time with the kids and returning to preschool with the increased mobility and energy of not being pregnant.  In 2014 she is looking forward to the unknown adventure ahead (a new job, a new house, and who knows what else).

Merrick-Merrick had some big accomplishments in 2013.  He took swim lessons over the summer and really improved in his swimming skills.  He also learned to ride his bike without training wheels.  He still loves preschool and is everyone's friend.  He is smart as a whip and cracks us up everyday, but don't even try to get a word in edgewise during a conversation because he is a chatterbox.  In 2014 he is looking forward going to the skate park more often with daddy.

Carrigan (CC)-Carrigan had the biggest accomplishment of us all in 2013 when she made her grand entrance into this world.  She is such and happy, sweet, and smiley baby and we really could not imagine our family without her.  In just the few short months she has been alive she learned to scoot, babble, giggle, laugh, and eat big girl foods.  She grows and learns something new every day.  In 2014 she is looking forward to sleeping through the night (please, please, please).

We have been very blessed in 2013 and really grown together as a family.  We are very grateful for the love and support we receive from our family and friends and most importantly for the love we feel for each other and our Savior, Jesus Christ.

Here is to a great year ahead in 2014.

Arizona and Christmas 2013

Every year about this time I realize that I am way behind on the blog, and I have to hustle to get caught up to the new year.  This year is no different so, with that said, let's recap Christmas and our Arizona vacation.

Our trip to Arizona started out a little rough with a late night flight that got delayed and turned into more or less an overnight flight.  We finally make it at 4am and had to spend the majority of the next day recuperating.  The rest of the week leading up to Christmas, and really the whole trip for that matter was a bit of a blur.

We spent most of our time with family.  Jeremy's brother, Jensen, surprised his parents and flew in for a few days and it was really nice to see him, we spent Christmas Eve with Jeremy's extended family on his dad's side, and got to facetime with Garret on Christmas.  We were also able to see some of my family.  We facetimed with my parents and saw my grandma, aunt and uncle, some of my cousins, and of course Emily and Kai.

Kai and Merrick were best buddies as usual and wanted to spend as much time together as possible.  We went to see the Temple lights together, went "lunar golfing", and just let them play.  They always miss each other when they are apart so it was good they were able to spend some time together.

Over the course of the trip we had lots of fun.  We saw a few friends.  We had plans to see a few more, but the end of our trip went a little sideways, but I will get to that in a minute.  We also got to visit Santa and take Merrick to "ride the horses" at the mall.  They weren't exactly horses, but motorized creatures that you ride through the mall.  Jeff had been talking for weeks about taking Merrick to ride them.  Merrick had a blast, but I don't know if he had more fun or if Jeff had more fun watching him.

Christmas itself was fairly low key.  We all slept in a bit, then got up for presents.  Carolyn's parents came over for presents and breakfast and it was nice to get to see them as they are part of what went sideways.  Most of the rest of the day we spent relaxing and playing with our new toys (Jeremy and I finally made our entrance into the world of smart phones).  We capped the day off with a super yummy Mexican dinner.  Probably my favorite part of Christmas actually came the night before when Merrick wrote his note to Santa and then prayed for him on his "big trip" (please disregard my chicken scratch in the note.  I was frantically trying to transcribe his dictation.)

While the trip as a whole was really nice, the end got a bit bumpy.  First Grammy (Carolyn's mom) was rushed to the ER.  She was in tremendous pain and it turns out her gallbladder had ruptured and gangrene had set in.  She had emergency surgery to remove her gallbladder and has since had some complications.  She is still in the hospital almost a week and a half later.  Then Carrigan got sick.  She developed a fever that did not want to respond to Tylenol and climbed over two days to 102.  Eventually her fever broke and she returned to her normal happy self.  We had almost a full day reprieve before Merrick announced at dinner that he "was cold".  Before we knew it his fever was climbing.  Our last day in AZ he spent down and out with a fever of over 103.

While all the sickness caused us to miss out on some fun and getting to see some friends, eventually the fevers did dissipate and thankfully everyone was feeling better when we headed home.

Oregon Christmas

If you follow my blog you know that I typically update on Sundays.  You also may have noticed that last Sunday came and went without an update.  If I am honest today almost came and went without an update as well.  The reason?  Well, last Saturday we left for AZ and our flight was delayed so we did not arrive until 4am and that Sunday flew by in a blur.  Yesterday, Carrigan came down with a fever and we had a really bad night.  All in all we only got a couple hours of sleep.  I was really wanting to blog about Christmas, but have been so exhausted that I felt like that whatever I did, I would be mailing it in and I did not want to mail in my Christmas update.  My solution up until now has been to do nothing, but it is time to step up so I will try to tackle at least a piece of the Christmas update, Oregon Christmas.

Since we were going to be spending Christmas in Arizona and had to tote all of our presents along with us, we decided to have an Oregon Christmas before we left and open the gift we had for each other.  This way we would have a few less things to drag along.  The only problem is that we did not have a Christmas tree so we had to get creative (yeah, that is our iPad with an image of Christmas tree).

The day was just about perfect.  We got up and opened gifts, played and spent time together, and went out to lunch.  It was really nice just to be together since things had been so crazy with Jeremy's finals.  Really, that was it, nothing elaborate or out of the ordinary, just time together.

My Semi-Annual Post About Stress

Lately I have noticed a tendency for Merrick to want to climb into things.  He has been climbing into laundry baskets, decorative baskets around the house, his toy box, and this cupboard (this day he had an accomplice, his cousin Lincoln).  I really don't think there is any deep meaning behind it, other than when you are a kid it is fun to climb into things and an empty laundry basket makes a pretty cool pretend race car.  But sometimes I wish I too could climb into something and shut out the world, and there is deeper meaning behind it.

The past few weeks I have felt like my life is like a run away freight train.  I feel like I run as hard and as fast as I possibly can from the moment I get up in the morning until the moment I finally crash out at night.  And, despite the fact that I am getting significantly less sleep than is healthy, I still feel like there are not enough hours in the day.

The other day I thought to myself, "ok, you just need to make a 'to do' list and then you can work through it".  Well I did that and I got a few things crossed off, but then the most annoying thing happened.  I realized that there was a whole list of things that I needed to get done before I could work on my "to do" list.  So I did the only logical thing, I made another list.  So now I have lists on top of lists and still have not accomplished nearly enough.

I am sure you are probably thinking that if I have so much to do I should just stop wasting time writing about it and get to work.  Well, writing on the blog was on my "to do" list and besides, sometimes a girl just needs to vent.  I guess my question for all you out there in blog land is, do you ever feel this way?  Do you feel like no matter what you do or how hard you try, you always come up short?  If not, please don't tell me and if so, just hang in there and if you figure out the key to getting it all done please let me know.

In the meantime, if you need me I will be hiding in my closet.

Cutie Pie Kids

This week Carrigan turned 7-months-old and so I got out my trusty camera and sticky bellies to capture the moment.  In all honesty Carrigan was not really in the mood for a photo op, but Merrick really wanted his picture taken.  In the process of all the photo snapping I was reminded just how adorable my children are.  See for yourself...

Since this blog is technically supposed to be about Carrigan turning 7-months let me brag for just a few seconds about some of her new skills this month. She has become a good little sitter.  Sitting is still not her preferred position, but she is getting good none the less.  She has also become very mobile.  While I would say she is not officially crawling, she can scoot herself just about anywhere she wants to go.

I am continually floored by how big my kids are getting and how much they change everyday, but what never changes is just how adorable they are.

Thanksgiving 2013

This year the word I would use to describe our Thanksgiving is a word I seldom use to describe our family functions, quiet.  Jeremy's family and Emily stayed in Arizona, this was my parents first Thanksgiving in India, and Ben and Becca went to Utah so that just left Brendon and Rachel's family and our family.  Despite Lauren's fear that without Nana here we would end up eating chicken and Jeremy's fear that it would be a "Charlie Brown" Thanksgiving, it was actually a nice day.

Jeremy and Merrick started the day playing football in the backyard while Carrigan and I stayed warm inside and worked on dinner.

In the evening we went to Brendon and Rachel's house to eat.  Rachel and I split the cooking duty and everything turned out so yummy.  We think we all ate until we were sick.

Despite my love for a good deal, I did my black Friday shopping online this year and did not partake in the crazy.  Instead, after dinner we put the kids to bed and had a nice relaxing evening at home.

In hindsight, I am really glad we did stay in because I am not sure the next time I will be able to use the word relaxing to describe our life.  Jeremy's last day of classes is Tuesday and he has already started "finals mode".  He studies like a madman and when he does take a break so we can do something as a family it is fast and frantic so we can squeeze in some fun before he has to get back to work.

Friday, for example, Jeremy studied all morning long.  After lunch we rushed to Bullwinkle's to let Merrick ride go karts and play a few games.  Then we rushed home and Jeremy was studying again within minutes of walking in the door and studied until about 9pm.  So is life these days; rush, rush, rush.

It is a crazy life, but a good life and I guess we will rest when we are dead.