Santa

We took the kids to see Santa on Harmony Place this year.  The best of the best as far as Christmas lights go in my opinion and the kids loved Santa!

28th Birthday

I've already alluded to the fact that my birthday was kind of a sad one this year with selling the car.  But it wasn't all bad.  I got some cool stuff, had a YW party and had some fun.

I got a huge lava boulder from Ron and I LOVE IT!
I got a waffle iron and a snowman family from my little fam.
My mom and neices and nephew drove down to visit which was fun.  I got a necklace from my sis and a cd from my mom.
I got a cake and a bunch of hugs from the YW, and some of the very best YW (Alexa, Cierra, and Olivia) brought me cupcakes with a decorated box:) Love them!

Ode to the Corolla

So we decided to sell my Corolla.  It was the smart thing to do and what is best for our family, but that still doesn't mean I'm happy about it.  We really want a van, and this was the best and fastest way to do that, but Logan selling it on my birthday didn't exactly make me happy:)

So this is my tribute to the Corolla.  My Saturn never got a tribute, but hey, this car was family.

This car was the nicest thing I've ever owned and I never really felt like I deserved it since the only reason I got it is because I wrecked my car.  This Corolla took us many places, I grew in this car.  We bought it 5 years ago when I was student teaching.  It took me to countless job interviews, disappointing part time jobs, to the hospital in labor (2 times) and it brought both babies home from the hospital.

Good times Corolla!  You will be greatly missed!

The only thing that made this a little bit easier is that we sold it to a family who was buying it for their missionary who is coming home soon.  They said he's going to college and looking for a "family" car to get married and have a family in.  That made me smile.  I hope my Corolla can be the Ford Escape in his life.  Thinking about that makes me smile.

8 months Grandma Photo Shoot

This little one is 8 months old.  I decided to dress her up in all the stuff my Grandma made for her pictures this month.  It makes me happy.  She's even worn the dress to church a couple times.  We always get lots of comments on it, which I'm sure is code for "Why the heck is your daughter wearing an outdated tricot dress?" But I don't care.  The nightgowns will never get used because they are just too thin and slippery.  But they are kind of adorable in a grandma chic kind of way:)

At 8 months Mer is crawling like a little monkey!  She started crawling on Nov. 11 and started pulling herself up on furniture pretty much immediately.  This girl is in a hurry! Still no teeth, so I suppose I can't blame the radical change in sleep habits on teething anymore.  She has been an angel since day one and mostly only woke up once a night, but this last month has been torture where 2 times up is a treat.  Good thing she's so pretty, because this momma is tired! Her current nickname from Chapter is "Fuzzy Guy".

Fall Leaves

The Saturday after Thanksgiving ALL the leaves fell down.  It doesn't make for a very pretty autumn but it makes the leaves nice and soft to jump in, and since they don't crunch you can get a pretty colossal pile.  

I have about a million videos of Chapter jumping in leaves. I picked this one because it's short and would upload quickly:)

Thanksgiving

We had the worst Thanksgiving ever.  Chap threw up on Tuesday.  Thank you Nursery.  Then Logan got sick Thursday morning so the kids and I went to dinner without him where Merit threw up.  Yay.  She was probably the sickest of everyone.  Early Friday morning I got sick.  By Saturday we were all feeling good enough.  So basically I have no pictures of Thanksgiving.  I did, however, fake some pictures of Merit in Chapter's Thanksgiving get up from 2012 this morning.  Haha.

 And just for kicks, here is one of Chap in the same stuff on his first Thanksgiving.

Bathtime

Merit is finally old enough that I trust her sitting up in the bathtub.  One day we were short on time so I threw them in together.  Adorable:)

Valley of Fire Day Trip

A few weeks ago we took off and headed down to the Valley of Fire.  Neither of us had ever been there and I always perceived it as being kind of lame, but all my expectations were completely blown away.  What a fun little place to go and everything we did was very kid friendly. This was only the first stop of our day of fun in Nevada so we didn't stay too long. Next time this will be the only destination.

 Stop 2 was driving down the shore drive of Lake Mead.  This did not meet my expectations.  A perfectly good waste of $10.  On the other hand, the kids slept the whole time and it was almost like being on a date:)

Stop 3 was Hoover Dam.  We hadn't been there since 2009 and had never seen the bridge completed.  We were going to go on a dam tour (like we did last time) but they are expensive and our kids really aren't going to care anyway so we walked out on the bridge.  Free and very very cool.  We will do this again.

Stop 4 was Toys R Us to get a feel for Christmas gift ideas.  Chap was unenthusiastic.  Lame.
The drive home was very eventful.  We had recently potty trained Chapter and we kept having false alarms and flat out refusals to use a gas station bathroom.  Suffice it to say we saw every gas station bathroom between Henderson and Overton where he finally gave in and went potty.  Haha.  Good times:)

Halloween!

Happy Halloween from the Blake Family!

 I think our days of coordinating family costumes are coming to a close.  This year I was dying for Merit to be a mermaid, but Chapter really wanted to be a dinosaur and I couldn't quite give up the matching yet.  Chapter was a dinosaur, Merit was a dinosaur egg (I made it), and Logan and I were characters from Jurassic Park (Dr. Grant and Dr. Sattler).  It turned out great. This was the best we could do with the tripod and self timer.  Our little dino looks annoyed and our little egg isn't looking. Haha.

 Chap was really eager to get going and didn't have patience for pictures.  Again, this is the best we could do of them together.

 Just before we went trick or treating he had a change of heart and wanted to pose by his pumpkin.  Turned out pretty well.

And our cute little eggie:) Her costume actually turned out a lot better than I thought it would, haha. Even if everyone thought she was a mushroom.

We didn't trick or treat for long, just up and around Crestview, but Chap filled his "pumpkin basket" about halfway and was happy about it.  I'll never get used to these warm Halloweens in St. George, but it was nice not to bundle the kids up too much.

7 Months

This little girls first year is just flying by!  She is perfect!  She is eating baby food now and really loves carrots.  She still won't take a binky and is still nursing like a champ.  She's getting really close to crawling (which is both terrifying and exciting for me).  She is up on all fours and rocking and sometimes she even planks which is hilarious. No teeth yet, but I bet by next month she'll have one since she's chewing everything like crazy.  Her best friend is definitely her brother.  She's just such a joy and I cannot believe how quickly time goes by.  She makes me proud and breaks my heart every day with all of her growing and learning.  Sweet girlie:)

34th Birthday

For whatever reason, these pictures turned out terrible.  Oh well.

 Daddy got a nerf gun too.  They've had a lot of fun with it their nerf guns.

 Logan wanted an orange cake.  So I made the Pioneer Woman crush cake, but it did not come out of the bundt pan at all.  I don't know why but I think it was the copious amounts of sugar and soda that just made it stick stick stick.  I had to soak and scrub the pan it was so bad.  It still tasted good though:)

That night we left the kids with the Grafs and we got a Rigotti's pizza and went and ate it up the the Red Hills Desert Garden.  It was AWESOME! Perfect weather and perfect company.

Of course I have to include (as I do every year) that I met Logan on his birthday and this year marks 9 years since I first laid eyes on that handsome blue eyed boy:)

3rd Birthday

This year for Chapter's birthday he knew exactly what he wanted and I think it's pretty safe to say we made all of his dreams come true.  Of course, they were pretty small dreams:)

 He wanted a snowman umbrella, a chomping dinosaur, an "orjange" nerf gun, a cake and balloons.  He also wanted to eat a "junior hamburger at daddy's office".  I threw in a dizzle for good measure;)

 He also had a friend party.  We had 3 girls and one boy over to play dinosaur games and have dinosaur dirt cups.

His little friends are so cute and he got some great gifts.  It's so fun that he is FINALLY getting excited about stuff.  I love it.

Swiss Days

 5th annual 3rd ward pancake breakfast at the Blake house.

 The parade wore her out:)

The kids made these cute necklaces at the pioneer games.  He was pretty obsessed for a few days.

We LOVE Swiss days!  It's seriously my favorite because it kicks off the start of the holiday season here at the Blake house.  Then we have Chap's birthday, Logan's Birthday, Halloween, Thanksgiving, my birthday and Christmas all in rapid succession.  Love it:)

6 Months and 3 Years

These kiddos, I tell ya.  They are just too much fun:)

Merit: She is amazing!  She's so much fun to have in the family.  She is a little spazzy and it scares me a little sometimes to think about her getting mobile in the next few months.  She has just barely started eating a little babyfood and she likes it most of the time.  She likes to blow raspberries, and she thinks her brother is HILARIOUS!  We went to the dr. today and she's almost 16 pounds!  I always dreamed of having a blue-eyed baby but her little brown eyes are just the cutest thing and I love them so much!  I was really worried about having a girl and doing the girly thing, but I love it and I think I'm figuring out this accessory thing.  I have been so blessed to have this little one join our family.

Chapter: He is getting so big and it is killing me.  He is the best brother to Merit.  He loves to hold her and sing to her and hand her toys.  He still isn't really big on listening (haha) but he's getting better all the time.  He's a brave little monkey too.  Today he had to get a shot and he didn't cry one bit.  He also had to have his blood drawn as a follow-up to the needle stick incident he had about a year ago and he didn't cry for that either.  Everyone in the lab was shocked at how good he did and they gave him stickers and suckers and a bouncy ball for being so brave.  He loves to play with his cousins and is completely obsessed with dinosaurs. He's been having nightmares lately, but nothing too hard to deal with I just mostly feel bad.  I don't know how I got such good kids but I'm sure thankful I did.

Breast vs. Bottle

Now that I've made it to the 6 month mark of breastfeeding Merit I feel somewhat qualified to compare the two primary ways of feeding your baby.

Now for a little background on each child. Chapter is the most stubborn child.  He absolutely would not eat in the hospital.  We tried everything.  The lactation consultant tortured us both for hours before finally giving up.  We had nurses literally crying and worrying he was going to have to go to the NICU.  In short, he is a little stinker who only does what he wants to and he was born that way. We finally got him to take a bottle at around 2 1/2 days old.  I was just happy my kid wasn't dead and unhappily pumped for 2 weeks and then happily gave him formula for the next 12 months.  Merit did pretty much the same thing, only we had better nurses and she finally figured out how to nurse at around 1 1/2 days.  We have been happily nursing since (minus the first month, ugh).

Formula Pros:

1. You know exactly how much your baby is eating.
2. Your husband can take a turn in the night.
3. You don't have to stress about leaving him with a babysitter.
4. No pain.

Formula Cons:

1. You have to buy formula.
2. You have to remember to buy formula.
3. You have to have a bottle, water and formula with you at all times.
4. You have to actually get up and make a bottle in the night. 

The Breastfeeding Pros and Cons are basically the opposites, but I'll cover them anyway.  

Breastfeeding Pro:

1. All you need is you. 
2. It's free.
3. In the night you can just grab your baby and feed her without turning on lights and tripping through the kitchen.

Breastfeeding Con:

1. It's a much larger commitment for you. It's all you.  No passing the baby off on someone else.
2. It's not all that fun for the first month or so.
3. It can be very isolating having to hide yourself away at your family's house, at church, in public, etc. 
4. You stress every time you leave your baby.  Also, not being able to leave for longer periods of time, like going to the temple.  That thought just stresses me to no end.  

Additional observations:

•  As far as the weight loss argument goes, I think it depends on you.  I actually have had a much harder time losing weight while breastfeeding, whereas it just happened all by itself and really quickly with Chapter.  
• You get judgy stares no matter how you feed your baby in public, only they are from different people. 
• I get really annoyed when I hear people talk about the "bonding" of breastfeeding. How if they quit they will lose the "bond". Holding, feeding and loving your baby is going to result in a "bond" no matter how they are getting their nutrition.  
• I feel like a lot of "mom shaming" goes on on both sides of this argument, but if I had to be honest I feel like the breast feeders shame the bottle feeders a lot, and I think it's unnecessary.  I don't think it's anyone's business how you feed your baby.  There's this mentality of if you don't breastfeed you don't love your child or care about them.  I've done both (I've done both as far as the pain meds during labor goes as well) and I can tell you that it doesn't impact how much you love your child.  I do not love Merit more because I had a (basically) unmedicated birth and I've breastfed her.  

Anyway, just my experience and something I've been thinking about a lot lately.