Valentine's Day

This year for Valentine's Day, we celebrated with our good friends the Holbrooks. Maybe I'll post a picture with all of us... [hint hint Julie ;) ] We started by ditching the kids, then heading to one of our FAVORITE restaurants. No, it wasn't Italian... we actually deviated form our norm that night. It's a place we hadn't been in a LOOOONG time. We hadn't been there since... our Provo days? Is that right? Maybe it wasn't that long ago, but it has definitely been a while! Can you tell where we went?


Mmmmmm. Indian food is SOOOO good! I wonder if I can google this recipe. It seems like you can get recipes from anywhere these days. Anyway, after dinner we went back to Ryan and Julie's and ate my favorite Ice Cream. Well, my SECOND favorite Ice Cream. My favorite Ice Cream I cannot find ANYWHERE in this blasted state. The one, and only... Chocolate Malted Krunch. (I can't wait till March when we go to CA... I'm totally gonna eat an entire gallon of it.)


Anyway, no... we didn't have my favorite, but a close second... Dreyer's Rocky Road. And it HAS to be Dreyer's.
Breyer's.. yuck.
Store brand... pass.
Farr's premium... that's actually pretty good.
But Dreyer's... never a disappointment.


And we also watched a movie. It was called Duplicity. Have you seen it? We had never even heard of it, but it sounded interesting. It wasn't exactly a sit-back-and-relax kind of movie. Ryan said it best when he said, "Man, that was good, but you really had to WORK for it!" I think I need to see it again, now that I know what the heck was going on.


Anyway, good food, good movie, great friends, HOT husband... awesome Valentine's Day.

The Last Stretch

Charles recently celebrated his last birthday in the 20's. Why the pink cake? I know you are wondering. "I colored the cake pink, because... quite frankly I wanted to see a pink cake..." No, really, he CHOSE a strawberry cake with strawberry Frosting. I told him that next time I was going to dye the frosting black to try and "man it up" a bit. So he had to settle for what I had on hand. Just enough red, white and green to try and add a little "touch of Italian" to his Fairy Cake. But it was appropriate for his theme.

We celebrated at my parent's house the Sunday before his birthday. We started off with a feast. Salmon (at Charles' request) for the guys, and Turkey for everyone else. Then he opened up some presents...


Along with many thoughtful phone calls, texts and cards from his family, he also got a "promise to clean out and wash the filth that he drives in" from Jaden and Kaleb. They wanted to surprise him with a clean car, but unfortunately things didn't work out, so they are planning on doing it when we have a nice stretch of warm, dry weather. He also got some dinner and movie giftcards, (which include babysitting, right?... Right?)

And here he is opening my present. Nothing special. Just something I should have done about 8 years ago. I finally put all of his mission pictures into some albums. Now the boys can see their Daddy as a missionary.


Charles also received a long-coveted gift. He had been trying to convince me to get this for a long time--An Italian language-learning course.


You may be wondering why... if he served his mission in Italy... why would he ever need or want this language course. Well... 2 reasons:
1. "Use it or Lose it!" He feels like he is forgetting. He needs a refresher.
2. He really wants his family to learn the language. Happy birthday to all of us!

It is actually pretty sweet and I feel like I am catching on way faster than any foreign language class I ever took in High School or College. It is fun to learn with Charles and have something like this to do together.

Every once in a while we will catch Jaden saying, "La bambina mangia."
Or Kaleb saying, "Listen and repeat."
Hopefully they won't catch on too quick. It would be fun to have a "secret language" that the kids couldn't understand! Mwah-ha-ha!

Next we sang Happy Birthday and had cake and ice cream.


Jaden was pretty quick to "help" blow out the candles.


So of course the other boys wanted a turn too.



Well Charles, here's to being
"one year older and wiser too...
Haaaaaappy Birthday, to you!"

Our trip to see THIS little guy... and his parents.

Okay, okay, I know I haven't blogged in forEVER, but I've been busy alright?!

So, the first week in February my aMAZING and super sweet mom gave me the best gift I could ever receive... A week of babysitting. Laaaaa! We had our normal Sunday tradition of dinner at my mom and dad's, but instead of piling the kids in the car afterwards, we got to leave them there. Charles and I went home, packed our bags and left early early the next morning for the airport.

As we were traveling, we realized that this was the first time he and I had ever flown on a plane alone together. It was so much fun! Our layover was in LAX and we waited there for about 2 hours. Right before we boarded we were told they had overbooked our flight and offered about $600 in Southwest credit if we would wait for the next flight 4 hours later. Uh... no hesitation there! OKAY! We quickly agreed, and were SO excited. Not only would our trip be reimbursed, but we would be able to take ANOTHER trip free! Unfortunately though, it didn't happen. They ended up not needing us to do it... bummer.

So we continued on to Tuscon. Kare, Curtis and Nathan picked us up and we stopped at In N Out for lunch.


I sat in back so I could just stare at my cute little 8 month old nephew, Nathan. You can see his little 2 bottom teeth.


And who says giving a baby a pacifier will prevent thumb sucking?


Here's Charles getting some baby time.


Sorry Kare, this was the only picture I had of the 2 of us. Lame.


The boys. I love how the armrest is the perfect little seat for Nathan.



The first night we were there, we went to this "Italian" restaurant. Now we know to get the Pizza...


Here CHarles and I got to witness a very common occurrence for the Merrill family...


...perfect strangers doting on the adorableness that is Nathan.



Charles only got to stay for 2 days but it was so nice to have him with me and with no responsibilities for 2 whole days. So what did we do in Sierra Vista for 6 days? We got up early and worked out everyday I was there. No joke. It was SO fun! Kare had lots of free gym passes for me so we did step aerobics, and Zumba. We HAD to... because the rest of the day we did nothing but watch movies, Arrested Development, the E! channel, and stuffed our faces with Rocky Road Ice Cream, Dairy Queen blizzards, Egg McMuffins, cookies, popcorn and doughnuts. It was heaven. And I got to hang out with one of Kare's freakin' awesome friends, Felicia. I wish I had a better picture, but while I was in Sierra Vista she learned that she is pregnant with TWINS!! How exciting!


Also while I was there I was completely intrigued by the many cute faces and expressions of Nathan, and how pictures just NEVER do him justice. So I took LOTS of pictures of him, determined to have ONE actually look as cute as he really is. Well, I tried my best, and though these pictures ARE cute... you still just have to see him in person. You'll be blown away.

















Another exciting thing that happened while I was there was watching Nathan learn to say Mama... kind of! =) I love this kid!

It was such a fun and relaxing vacation, and I can't thank my mom enough for watching my 3 little ones long enough for me to get away. The boys had SO much fun with their Grandma and Grandpa (and Alli a couple days!) They got chicken and fries a few times, they went to a kids-fun-expo-something or other and got their faces painted like Spider Man, they were spoiled and got new light sabers, Jaden got to stay up late and watch The Biggest Loser, (which he later filled me in on since I had missed it.) They watched lots of movies, played the Wii, and probably had lots of junk food. No wonder they were not very excited to see me when I got home. But that's okay. I know I never have to worry about them being unhappy when I am away. Thanks a million, Mom!