The Results are in, we are having...

To all my unbelievers, I would like to say...HA, that is all.

We are indeed having a BOY!!!

I didn't think it could happen, but with enough faith I got what I wanted!

Have a very Merry Christmas!

Boy or Girl?

It is time to cast your vote!

Will our little peanut be a

LITTLE DUDE

Or

PRETTY PRINCESS???

I wanted to put a survey widget in this post but couldn't figure it out...so it is on the side bar.

We will find out for sure what we are having on the 23rd. That will be a fabulous week for me, it is my Birthday on the 20th, baby day on the 23rd and Christmas on the 25th. I couldn't ask for a better week!

WHAT DO WE THINK WE ARE HAVING???

Kavic is hoping for and thinks it is a Girl.

I am hoping for a boy, but am expecting a girl.

If we look at the makeup of Kavic's family and my family it would seem we will have a house of princesses, I come from a family of mostly girls and Kavic does as well! Don't get me wrong I would love a girl, but since I was a little girl I always wanted an older brother (as annoying as they can be). I want my kids to have an older brother as well!!!

Change!

The past few months has brought about change in our lives, change usually gives me a little anxiety, I'm not a big fan of change. However, the change over the last few months has been really good for us!

First we bought a new car! It is a 2007 dodge magnum. We love it, we traded in the jeep for a lot more than we could have sold it for!Second, we were going to move to Blanding (yes that is the armpit of Utah) to finish nursing school. A few weeks before we moved Kavic and I got talking about the move, about school and just about our future in general, that is when we decided that nursing was not the right career for Kavic. Since coming home from his mission he always wanted to be a Seminary teacher, but he put that aside because I didn't want to live in Utah, I wanted to be able to travel and live somewhere else and nursing would provide that. (I have such a great husband). But I have come to terms with living in a cold desert for the rest of my life while Kavic teaches seminary!

Third, after more than a year of trying, starting tests and seeing the Doctor more times than I wanted to, Kavic and I are expecting our first child! My original due date was set for May 25, I had an appointment yesterday and after my doctor measured the baby are realized how big he (yes I think it is a boy) is already we have moved my due date up a week to May 18. I have showed the ultra sound to a couple of family members and the first thing they have said... "wow he is big". Great, I am going to have a giant baby, Kavic was giant so I guess it only makes sense for me to have giant babies as well (although, you can still pray for me to have small babies!) All in All we are super excited that we are finally pregnant!

The Merrill's did a trick or trunk for Halloween, this was our trunk and how we announced the news!

This is how I announced to my family (the shirt says, Worlds Best Mummy)

And just for fun, an escaped convict and the president

Mostly Just for me

This post is mostly just for me, so read on if you would like, but I wont be offended if you stop here!

Yesterday was almost the most perfect day! It started out not so perfect when Kavic had to go to work at 6:00 in the morning, so I was left to attend church alone yet again. I am not a big fan of my current ward but I deal with it. We have been apart of this ward for 9 months and in the primary for 4 months, two of which I have been able to go to relief society, so I have been attending relief society for 7 months. You would think people would at least recognize that I'm not new. It has been a tradition that Kavic and I get asked at least every other week if we are new in the ward. Yesterday after Sacrament meeting someone came up to me and asked if I was new... That was the final straw, I didn't want to stay another second for the rest of the block, so I didn't and I'm glad.

I decided I would go to my sister's ward to watch my niece in her primary program. This is where the day started to turn around and get really good! She was so cute in the programs, when it was her turn to say her part she got a little stage freight and froze, but never-the-less she looked cute! After church we all went to my sister's house for lunch and to chat. We walked to the park and watched the kids play and ate Rice Krispy Treats and took a nap on the lawn in the warm sum.

It was time to go but I didn't want to go home cause my hubby wasn't there so I headed over to my parents house to chill. The best part of the day was the walk I went on with my parents. Down the road is a wild apple tree, as a child I remember always stopping at the apple trees after church and picking several apples. We couldn't help ourselves so we picked several apples and ate them on the rest of our walk. It was the perfect fall day to eat the most delicious, crisp, fall apples. I wish we could do this everyday, forget about all the work and the house cleaning and the bills, just take a walk and eat the wild apples, that is what I call perfection!

Up's....and Down's of the week

Well, this week was filled with up's and down's. I will start with the down! We had to give our car back. The dealership didn't get the financing from the bank that they thought we would. We went back and fixed things up and got the car down to the price we had originally agreed on (they had lied to us the first time we signed for the car). But even after we got things worked out other things happened with our co-signers and it had been decided to return the car. We are now down to one semi-working car and no way of getting another car for a while =( oh well I guess things happen for a reason.

The up for the week...It was our 2 year anniversary!!! We spent a couple of days in Salt Lake, went shopping at the Gateway, went to our favorite resturaunt, Good Woods! Hit up GI Joe at the Larry Miller Megaplex. The next day we went to breakfast at Denny's and then to Hogel Zoo. We decided we weren't going to need our money for a car so we spent it on everything else!

All-in-all, it has been a most interesting week. But I have to count my blessing that I am married to a Hunk!

Karma

Yesterday I became a believer of Karma! The day started out like any other day. We went to lunch with my Brother-in-law and his wife, then we headed off to Wal-Mart to look for a printer. When we arrived we found an awesome rock-star parking space. As we were walking in we saw a large older lady in her motorized cart trying to stand up with the help of her old friend and a scrawny walmart worker. It was obvious that try as they may she wasn't getting out. Kavic, as we know, makes his living lifting large old people. He walks over and ask if he can help lift the lady out of the cart, they of course let him. Kavic lifted the lady in one try with no extra help. My favorite part of this story after the lady was standing she said "you did it without even hurting me". After Kavic got the lady into her car we finished our shopping in walmart.



We then made our way to the Hyundai dealership to ask about the cash-for-clunker deal. We had talked to another dealership and they said we couldn't do it because the Registration was in my father-in-laws' name. We thought we needed a second opinion. The man at the hyundai store said as long as Clair was a co-applicant we would be fine!!! That was great news. So we test drove a hyndai sonata and fell in love. As it turns out there was another sonata that had more bells and whistles than the one we were driving and was less expensive, try and figure that one out!



We were sold!



So here is how the finances worked out for us. The car was mistakenly marked down $750 from what is should be at $24,000...cha-ching! Then the salesman told us we would get $4500 for our clunker, and it should have only been $3500, they were having an extra rebate of $2500 off making the final price around $14000. So all in all we ended up getting $10,000 off the should-be sticker price. ( I know that math doesn't add up, but it did at the dealership, so I'm not going to complain). This was such a great deal for us we couldn't pass it up. If we had tried to sell the jeep we maybe could have gotten $2000 out of it. This was the deal of a life-time and we are so happy we did it!





Then to top of the day we got a phone call to let us know there is a house that we can rent when we move to Blanding! Housing was all we needed to finalize the move.



Moral of the story...help an old lady out of her shopping cart and Karma will take over!

Updates and Pictures!!!

Things have been going mostly great in the Merrill house. Kavic has a new job, he is now working for Access home care and he loves it! The people he works with are great, his clients love him, and it doesn't pay too bad, and best of all he is home at nights with me!!! That is the good news the bad news... I have been fighting pneumonia the last couple of weeks when I finally got my voice back, after losing it for a week, I got a rockin' cough that did indeed crack one of my ribs (I finally went to the doc today and she confirmed it all). I was lucky enough to get not one shot but two in my butt, and they stung!!! But I am on lots of good drugs so hopefully things will start to look better.

We finally got a calling in our ward, we are once again called to teach the 7 and 8 year olds in primary. This will be a fun challenge for us. It is not my ideal calling I would like nursery or the Library worker, or the best calling I have heard of given to a couple in cove was the sport closet organizers... I am not making this up, it really was a calling! I guess the Lord does have a humor and knows how much I hate teaching and decided this is the best for us! Wish us luck!!!

I guess that about sums it up...Enjoy our pictures from the last several months!

These first few are pictures I took for my Mom's mothers day gift

This little boy is so funny, he shared 2 hamburgers with Kavic. He is such a kavic's boy, sometimes he will jump out of his parents laps to sit on Kavic's!

This new bed set and wall hanging were my Mother's day gift. Kavic picked them out all on his own. He did an amazing job, and he sure does know my taste!

This is Ryan and Kavic drilling golf balls for a game hoping they wouldn't explode.

And this is Kavic playing the golf ball gameAnd lastly my dad can still do pull ups...that's impressive!
'

We're off to see the Wizard

We had a fabulous weekend! We were lucky enough to get tickets to "Wicked". We went on saturday and of course sat in the cheap seats but it was still amazing and we Loved, Loved, Loved it! (if anyone has tickets they are trying to get rid of we will gladly buy them!!!!) I being the nerd I am forgot my camera so I stole these pictures off my sisters blog.

SPOILER ALERT!!!

I love spoilers, so I always give away the ending whenever I can...if you have never read the book or seen the play and you do not love spoilers do not read on!!!

-So Elphaba is a misunderstood character in the land of OZ who just wants to do good. Everytime she does a good dead she gets accused of wickedness. She falls inlove with Fiyero, who also loves her but is engaged to Glinda. the story continues and other stuff happens to get to the end. Elphaba turns Fiyero into a scarecrow to save his life...dorothy throws a bucket of water on Elphaba to "melt" her and the story as we know it ends...but not really... Fiyero goes to the family castle, where Elphaba was living, and found her hiding underneath the floor boards... SHE LIVES!!! and they run off together and live happily ever after! What a great show, go see it if you can!

Happy Birthday To You

I have to give a shoutout to my most amazing husband. He is now as old as I am (yes he is younger than me and he hates when I throw it in his face =).

Anyway... HOLLLAAAA!!!!

I love you tons and hope your "birfday" was all that you wanted, and if not don't tell me, it will make me sad, but it better be cause you picked out your present. Thanks to everyone who came to the birthday breakfast we had a lot of fun!

Second Chances

For the last couple of weeks I have been thinking about second chances and I believe everyone deserves them. Heaven only knows how many second chances I've been given. Second chances allow us to redeem something we did wrong previously in our lives whether it be love, work, school or family. Elder Juan Uceda of the Seventy said "Who among us would be saved without a second chance—more than one opportunity to prove ourselves..." I try not to be a person of judgement and I always try to let everyone prove themselves with a second chance.

I also believe not only should everyone have a second chance but also EVERYTHING =)

This is what ribs are supposed to look like!

YUMMM!!!!!

Eat them up

More deliciousness
The Final Result

Super Bowl Catastrophe

This may end up being a long wordy post, but in order to really understand the heartbreak we went through I need to explain the whole story. Superbowl in my family (with a couple of exceptions) means food, food, food! We have all know for a few weeks prior to the super bowl that the main entrée would be Ribs, yes the real off the bone ribs. When my mom was buying the ribs she had planned to only buy 2 packages (which meant 6 full racks) but with not much coaxing from my dad they ended up buying 3 packages (9 full racks) of ribs. We had been working on our appetites for quite some time and were ready to indulge ourselves. That morning after church we came home basted the ribs with BBQ sauce number one and let them slowly cook. The aroma started to make our hungry tummies grumble a little. After a couple hours we basted them again with BBQ sauce number two and let them cook slowly to get nice and tender. After another couple of hours we added the third and final BBQ sauce number three. At this point we had taken all the ribs from the oven to the grill just to let the crust crisp up a bit before we would finally get to please our hungry bellies that had been waiting for this most delectable food for nearly 6 hours since they started cooking. After adding the final sauce we were only going to let them cook for another 15 or so minutes. We were all downstairs watching commercials... I mean a football game. My youngest brother came down and very quietly and calmly stated that the ribs were on fire. We had all just assumed that there was a little flare up that you get when cooking on the grill. Needless to say that was far from the case. As we all made our way upstairs to investigate this fire we saw flames shooting to the sky. We are quite lucky that the house didn’t catch on fire, the flames were nearly out of control. Needless to say we were all disappointed when the ribs didn’t make it. This was the outcome of our long awaited ribs.

Yellowstone in the Winter

Last weekend we went to yellowstone with my parents and two youngest siblings. I have to admit before I went the idea of going to some place that had four feet of snow and no running water and potentially no heat didn't sound very appealing to me. But because I love Kavic so much and he really wanted to go I sucked it up and took off to freezing cold weather. Needless to say I had so much fun. My dad brought up a lot of water so we could at least flush the toilet, but it just wasn't enough so there came a point that we actually ended up melting snow to use in the toilet. It was quite the experience. Here are a few picutres of our adventures. We didn't actually get to go into yellowstone, it was closed to all vehicles except snowmobiles. So we spent our time in West and Island park.

The whole gang

I loved the little blob at the bottom of the tree in this pic

It's hard to tell but this is the view of our cabin

We had to park in the neighbors driveway because it was clean, ours was not!

Mom and dad, this was day 3 that is why they look so glamorous!

My rockstar siblings acting so tuff on the side of the cabin


Dad and Kavic had to chip at this this nook to clean off the chimney stack and the snow would fall on them as the did!



The view out the front door of the cabin




I love this picture it makes the snow seem a lot higher than it really is next to the Imax building

I have to give a shout out to our favorite ice cream shop Mooseberry's (aka Arrow leaf) Hollaaa!!

More pics of the crazy snow in west.

Just the two of us

This is main street in west yellowstone, its a completely different town in the winter!

Kavic in his sexy pose.

Love It!

I love the blogs that have a lot a pictures to look at and my fabulous husband got me the most awesome camera eva for christmas! So here are some great and hilarious pictures I took of my cute family sledding over the christmas break! I know there are a lot but I loved them all so much I couldn't pick which to emliminate so I put in all my very favorites!

Super snowball fight...Go Team!!!

Isn't this the most precious picture you have ever seen!


Rusty...The dancing wonder =)




Superwoman

This is a girly who loves the camera

This pictures makes me laugh everytime I look at it!

Sometimes I want to claim this big brown eyed eskimo as my own!