10 Months (The Many Faces of Merit)

 Here is the nose wrinkle smile.

 Here is the happy Chapter snuggle smile.

 This is the "Chapter hit me" face. :)

And this one might be my favorite of the month.  Swinging in the yard with her fluffy hair!

Merit is pretty much a doll.  She grew all 4 top teeth in a week this month.  It was a miserable week for all of us, haha.  This month we discovered that Merit loves to swing!  It was a pretty big surprise because Chapter HATED swinging (still kind of does) and it just makes Merit giggle and giggle.  

She still isn't walking, but I attribute that to her crawling prowess and the fact that we tore out the wall between the kitchen and living room so she is pretty much always locked up in a bedroom or in her high chair (or downstairs, but that room is so full of furniture from upstairs that there isn't much room).  This month we started styling her hair in a faux hawk and it seriously cracks me up!  I can't believe it took me this long to do it.  

And here's a picture of the Chap-man-do because he always wants a picture too:)

Goggles Save the Day (and my Sanity)

Chap has suddenly started hating the bathtub.  It is seriously like bathing a cat, not that I have ever done that, but he tries to climb out and he screams and thrashes.  It's not really a stretch to imagine him clawing and hissing haha.  He claims the water hurts his face. Not his eyes, and I use the same stuff on Merit and she almost always gets suds in her eyes and she doesn't cry, so I'm pretty sure that isn't the issue.  Anyway, after bathing him way too many times like a cat I decided to try goggles.

Long story short: Best $5 I've ever spent:)

He was still scared the first time we used them and he actually pulled them off mid rinse and he panicked but the times since then (and after I drilled it into his head that you DON'T TOUCH THE GOGGLES! Everything has went very smoothly.  Still not well enough that I dare put Merit in there with him again, but a vast improvement none the less.

Our Puzzle

An old acquaintance from high school posted rant on Facebook this morning about how she's sick of people asking when she and her husband are going to have a baby.  She went on to explain how they want to wait until they are "ready". They want to get out of debt, have a house, good jobs, Master's degrees, etc.  Basically they are waiting for their lives to be perfect.  So here's my unsolicited two cents (and personal experience); Having a baby makes your life perfect.

Logan and I had a plan when we got married.  He'd finish college (1 year), then we'd move to St. George where I would finish college (3 years) while he worked.  Then we'd move and I'd teach for 3 years while he got his Masters degree.  Then I'd quit my job, we'd move back and we'd have a baby.  Any of you who know us very well at all know that very little of this plan actually happened.

Logan graduated, we moved to St. George, but Logan was "demoted" very shortly thereafter.  I finished college but it took an extra semester because not all of my credits transferred from SUU to Dixie, and for some reason, teachers graduating in December are at a major disadvantage.  I also graduated at a time when there were literally hundreds of teachers applying for a dozen jobs, and I didn't get one.  I had a hard time finding a job at all.  Places like Kmart and Deseret Book don't exactly hire college graduates.  I ended up back at the dry cleaner before finally getting an aid job working 30 hours a week, but only being paid for 25 at $8/hour.

That's when we decided that we weren't getting any younger, took a leap of faith, and got pregnant nearly 5 years after we were married.  Then life started falling into place.  I feel like we had spent years trying so hard to jam the puzzle pieces of life together and getting no where.  We were trying to force life to go the way we wanted it to.

I won't say I regret waiting necessarily.  I'm grateful for the years we had to build a solid marital foundation.  I'm grateful for all the adventures we had and for all the memories, but having babies is when life finally turned our way.

In the years and months before we had Chapter, Logan's work environment had deteriorated rapidly.  He was trapped in a position with no room for advancement under an arrogant and egotistical manager, and none of the upper management offered any assistance.  We were both stuck in jobs we didn't even need a degree for.  We'd been applying for jobs everywhere for months, we were more than willing to move out of state, but Engineering jobs usually require 3 years of experience, and teaching jobs were few and far between, especially in cities large enough to have engineering jobs available.  We didn't even dare buy this house (we rented it) because we didn't really see a way for us to stay here.

Then literally within a month of Chapter's birth, Logan got a call that would change our lives.  Logan was offered a job by Quality Excavation to be an estimator (Miracle #1).  Still not the job he went to school for, but it was a job he liked, working for a company that was owned by a truly wonderful family, and they treated him well.  Then 6 months later, Logan passed the Professional Engineering Exam on his first try (Miracle #2), then he was hired by this same family to work for their engineering firm Development Solutions (Miracle #3).  And you know what? We never missed my tiny salary through any of this.

Having kids changed our lives for the better, in completely unexpected and unforeseen ways.  Our life puzzle just wouldn't fit together without them and I'm grateful everyday that we abandoned OUR view of how our life SHOULD be for HIS view of what our lives COULD be.  Sometimes it's hard to admit that Heavenly Father knows more about what is best for us than we do, but He is always right.

9 months

I'm a slacker and didn't take any special 9 month pictures of Merit this month.  Oh well, these cute Christmas shot will have to do:)

So last month after I proclaimed that she must not be teething I was wrong.  She got both bottom teeth right around Dec 7-11 time frame.  She also started clapping on Christmas and it is the cutest thing ever.  She got some necklaces for Christmas and she is obsessed with them.  I would say that the necklaces are definitely her favorite presents.  She can stand up independently for a few seconds and I wouldn't be surprised at all if she was walking by the next update.  She's still on a no sleep streak but, hey, she's cute and sweet and wonderful...she has to have a flaw somewhere:)

We love you Meri-berry!

Exterior house Before and After

We visited with Libby and Paul the other day and she brought it to my attention that I never posted a bunch of the renovations we've been doing to our house.

We're currently in the process of tearing out a wall and that means I'm about 2-3 major changes behind in posting.  The exterior was the first MAJOR thing we did,  It got started almost 2 years ago (oops!) when we did the roof.  I think I posted about that (or not) but I know I never posted the after because the trees grew leaves and obscured the view.  Then last spring we painted the trim and the door and that was a huge transformation.  I'll throw in a few pictures:)

The only true "before" I have of the entire house, even if the dumpster had already arrived.  Notice the chocolate brown trim, the peeling chocolate brown shingles, and, you guessed it, chocolate brown shutters, haha.  

 The Elder's Quorum from our ward came and helped strip 2 layers of shingles off our house.  I would be remiss if I didn't document the fact that the original layer was stapled down, and apparently the staples were in at a variety of angles making it especially frustrating to strip them off.

 See, I told you it was a long time ago.  Look at my tiny helper monkey:)

 Our friends Taylor and Jenny were very helpful with putting the new shingles on.  Josh even showed up one night to help.  Others who helped were Ryan, our friend Glen, and Ron.  I got up there the last day thanks to Anisa being willing to babysit.

 Here is a progress shot. (Oh man, all these Corolla pictures are bumming me out :( )
The roof got finished but then the leaves grew in on the trees and obstructed the view for a good "after".  Then a year went by and I finally talked Logan into painting the exterior.  I don't remember exactly when this was, but we hired Clark (a guy from our ward) to paint it.  I think it may have been after I had Merit. That would explain my confusion and no progress pictures, plus I think it was hot outside because I remember giving him drinks because I thought he was going to die.  Then we got new black shutters and painted the door red.  I was a little worried about doing grey, black and red on a white brick house with brown mortar, but I really love it and I think it looks more modern (even if all the haters wanted us to paint the brick:) OOOH! And you can see my Birthday Boulder in this picture!

We also redid the basement last winter, but I can't take "after" photos right now because all my upstairs furniture is in the basement.  I'll get around to that sometime if I remember:)

Our kid is an artist:)

Chapter's favorite Christmas gift was his little Vtech Kidizoom Camera.  It's been used thouroughly for the last 10 days and it's still alive.  It's been washed once in the bathroom sink (!!!) and it's still going strong on it's first set of batteries. The picture quality isn't great, but I'm going to go out on a limb here and say it might be operator error:)

Here is a sample of his best work.  We uploaded the pictures and Chap made some editing decisions in Picasa and here are the results.  Haha.  I think the blue one is my favorite.  We might have to get some printed:)

Our little Sunbeam

I can't believe Chap is old enough to be a Sunbeam. He has been saying all week that he is too big for nursery now and I'm pretty sure that was because Grandma Sherry and Grandpa Jim (his nursery leaders) had been prepping him.

Here he is, in all of his 3 year-old Sunbeam glory.  Looking a little shy and a little confident in his new church duds:)  When I asked him if he had fun he told me, "Actually, it was a little bit boring." We almost died laughing.  So blessed to have this one in our family!

"Sometimes Snow is Cold" -Chapter

We went up to Elsinore on Christmas afternoon and drove through a blizzard at least half of the way there.  We even had a pee accident in the thick of it in Paragonah that was really fun to deal with on the side of the road, oh the memories:)

We had fun there, my kids got SPOILED by their aunties and had a blast.  We even got to go sledding on Chap's new sleds from Grandma M.

We were awakened at 6 am by the sound of phantom weed wacking.

Since we went to Toys R Us all Chap could think about was getting a toy week wacker for Christmas, and Santa Delivered:)

Santa brought Chap a week wacker, a baby phone (as per requested) and a stuffed Perry the Platypus.  Merit got a singing purse toy, a lalaloopsie newborn and a large beanie boo.  And Santa stuffed everyone's stocking to the brim!

When we heard the sound of weed wacking in the morning, we got up and Chap had already dumped all the stockings, luckily he remembered what was in which stocking or we could have been terribly confused!

Gift List:
Chap got: Weed Wacker, baby phone, Perry, Lego Duplo set, digital camera, books, headlamp, clothes and a large duffle bag.

Merit got: Purse, doll, beanie boo, dresses, ponies, books, sleepsack and large duffle bag.

Daddy got: a multi-tool and some other small stuff since his custom seat covers for his truck haven't shipped yet:(

Mommy got: a new Shark Rocket vacuum.

Mom and Dad took it easy on the presents because if all goes according to plan, next week at this time we will be in demo mode of redoing the living room, adding a hall closet and moving a wall!  Yay!  It only took 5 1/2 years:)

As always, I didn't take nearly as many pictures as I thought I did, but it was a great morning for all:)

Merry Christmas from the Blakes

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:)