Lyla Mae.. 28 weeks 2 days... ish :)

We had a dr. appointment today and got to get another ultrasound! Its so fun seeing our baby girl! It seriously never gets old, I could watch her move around all day if he'd let me! She was kicking and punching like crazy! He kept trying to get a profile shot but she would NOT move her hands away from her face long enough to take the picture! We got one of her sucking her thumb though... umm SO CUTE! She was measuring perfect and weighed an estimated 2 pounds 7 ounces :) I can't believe our little punkin will be here in about 12 short weeks! We love her so much already!

Ok, I know they are way hard to see and your probably wont be able to tell what the picture is of even with my explanation but since the scanner is broken I had to take a picture of the picture so... good enough!

This one is of her sucking her thumb :).. The big circle on the right is her head then just to the left is her arm coming up then you can see her little 4 fingers bent over and her thumb missing in her mouth!

This one is her head on the right looking down then her spine runs all along the top of the picture!

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving = Lots of family, Lots of football, Lots of staying up late, Lots of shopping and WAY too much food!

Happy Thanksgiving!!


yes I have gotten huge.. I know! :) 26 weeks 4 days

drive-ins!

I've decided I really love spending time with my husband. I always knew this..but I think with the work and now school schedules which cause a lack of being able to see him often enough for my liking has made me REALLY realize this! So Tuesday night I decided to take him on a date! I picked him up after work, went and got a pizza from spinato's (umm.. delish!!) and headed to the drive-ins :) We made a bed in the back of the truck, ate pizza then cream puffs and snuggled up to watch megamind! It was such nice weather and so fun to spend the evening with just my hubby and I! I highly recommend it :)

And the winner is...

Lyla Mae Merrill :)

A quilt, a name and the bump!

I decided I wanted to make a blanket for the baby a long time ago. So the day we found out it was a girl I was off to find material! I made one of those rag quilts for one of my nieces a few years ago and loved the way it turned out so I decided to go that route again. I have to say, I'm quite pleased with myself and the result!

Tommy and I knew the name of our baby whether it be a boy or girl before we even knew we were pregnant but I've decided to go ahead and share and get your opinions!

Lylah Mae Merrill :)

but we can't quite seem to agree on spelling... I've always liked Lilah.. Tommy likes Lyla.. I've decided I like the Y well enough but still like the H on the end and he's not so sure. So what do you all think?!

and last but not least... the bump! Here I am in all my prego glory at 21 weeks! sorry not the best picture.. but thats what you get when you ask the hubs to take a picture of the belly!

Jack Johnson!!

Jack Johnson is one of Tommy's all time favorite musicians. Tommy also loves concerts. Jack hardly ever comes here in concert. Till now!! We found out we were expecting 2 days before fathers day.. so being the awesome wife I am, I got him tickets for Jack! (I got him 2 but let him know right away the other was definitely for me and no one else!) It was a long few months waiting but it finally came and was so amazing! Jack Johnson is such an amazing artist and I loved spending the evening out with Tommy, just us! I love you babe! Happy fathers day daddy :)

Yuma

I was able to make a quick trip to Yuma a couple weekends ago for a boutique Kim and Mel were doing at Mels house. (well.. i went to help vacuum, set up, rub on vinyl, babysit kids, yada yada yada... :) jk!) But while I was there I got to watch one of Reddens football games! He did so good and we had so much fun even though his team lost. This was also the first time I'VE left overnight without my hunny :( I missed him!! Yes, its almost been 3 years and we still act like newlyweds but why not?!

Bacher-boo in his uniform!

me and the kiddos at the game

Weenieless!

That's right.. Were having a girl!!!!! We were totally convinced it was a boy but nope! We are so excited and are so glad we can finally say hers or she instead of ITS! She was measuring pretty much right on our due date give or take a couple days.. hopefully take! :) She will be the 12th grandbaby on my families side (last 5 will be girls now!) and the 18th on tommy's side! We can't wait to meet our little princess!!

yes...that just happened!

Blame it on the baby... its my excuse!

Speaking of baby.. we had another Dr's appointment this past Tuesday. Got measured, which was right on for our due date.. then... we got to hear babys heartbeat!!! We have gotten to see it on an ultrasound twice becuase with his doppler we weren't able to hear it from being so early so to make sure there was one, he did a quick look.. well this time we didn't need to look, it was loud and clear!!! We are so excited things are still going ok! We have an appointment on the 27th for an ultrasound and get to find out what were having!!! We can't wait! Any guesses?!

Happy Birthday Daddy-o!

Dad's birthday was August 25th! Since Mom abandoned him and went up to my aunt Debbies cabin I had the privelage of waking up and making him a delicious breakfast of eggs on toast! Then Dad and I, Kim and her girls, and steph and curt and their kiddos all went to Joe's bbq for dinner.. delish! Thanks for everything you do dad, you are the greatest dad anyone could ask for! I love you!!!!

Happy Birthday Toe-Mas!

Tommy is now the big 2-4! He had his birthday while we were camping so we decided thats the day we would go fishing. (I won't tell you he was the only one that DIDN'T catch anything.. poor guy!) But we had moms yummy pancakes and buttermilk syrup for breakfast, and dad made shrimp the size of a small lobster for dinner! which made up for the lack of fish caught for Tommy :) Tommy is such a great man! He is the first to jump if someone needs help, He works so hard so we can be buying our 2nd house! And he recently just started his last semester of school for firefighting and he has school 3 days a week including ALL DAY SATURDAY! boo.. He is so dedicated and is going to be the best Daddy ever! He talks to and listens to my belly every night already and his face lights up everytime we see our little one on that ultrasound machine :) He can't wait to meet him/her! I love you Tommy! Happy late Birthday!

I found my camera!

You probably didn't know it was missing! But it was.. which is cause for the lack of posting! So Here's what you've missed :) .. We went camping! It was so much fun! My parents and a bunch of their friends took their toy haulers and went up around Big Lake so after work one Thursday Tommy and I headed up. Well, we were about an hour away from the campsite and it was about 8:30 when an ELK JUMPED IN FRONT OF OUR TRUCK!!! are you kidding me!? nope! .. So we had to pry the bumper off the tire so we could drive the truck which is a miracle we even still could drive it! She just jumped right in front of the passenger front (my side, nice!) and knocked out the headlight, broke part of the grille, pushed our bumper back into our tire and cracked our radiator overflow bottle. So we turned around, headed back to show low for the night, then got the truck working in the morning and headed up to camp! We ate way too much, shot guns, went fishing, played lots of games and just had fun! Thanks mom and dad!


by the way, what we thought was not much damage to the truck ended up costing 4300 dollars!! Thank you insurance!

Emotions

So I know everyone says how emotional you can get with being pregnant. And now that I am 10 weeks tomorrow (YAY!!!) I thought I had been doing pretty good... until this week! Goodness gracious this kid is killing me :) I don't know who of you are country fans but it is by far my favorite type of music. So for those of you who are, the house that built me by Miranda Lambert came on as I was driving home from work the other day. I've heard this song many many times and love it. This same line tugs at my heart every time I hear the song but this time I lost it.. "I bet you didn't know, under that old oak, my favorite dog is buried in the yard." I miss my Chedder :( I'll leave it at that. But then TODAY I heard the song I saw God today by good old George Strait and I balled like a baby throughout the whole song! Tommy thinks I'm crazy.. he's probably right! :) Anyway I just wanted to write down a few things I guess more for journaling purposes about how this pregnancy has been so far. Other than still being pretty dang sick everything else is going ok! We go to the Dr tomorrow and will see how our little pumpkin is doing!

SYMPTOMS:

exhaustion
nausea
heartburn
nausea
throwing up
tired
......

DIAGNOSIS:

almost 8 weeks PREGNANT :)

YAY!!!!!! surprise! Tommy and I are expecting! I have been on progestrone and some other meds and on Monday we were able to go to the Dr and we saw a heartbeat! Words cannot express our gratitude and happiness for this sweet blessing in our lives! We wanted to wait till after the first trimester but we were too excited so we are just praying this is the one :) We are due Feb 27th!! Dr. Holmes says since this is the furthest we have gotten and with seeing a heartbeat, (and not to mention the 2-3 times of visiting the porcelain throne a day!) we have a 95% chance of holding onto this baby till we can hold it in our arms! We will keep you posted after our next appointment in a couple weeks to make sure things are still going good!

So long.. farewell

Well its been awhile so heres the latest... we moved! It's a Bitter sweet feeling.. we hated the drive out to our house but LOVED our home! It was our first home :( But we found a renter, packed up our house.. and moved it into a bedroom at my mom and dads! :) We have an offer on another home on Recker and Williamsfield but are playing the waiting game with the bank.. Dang short sales!..

Thirty, Flirty, and Thriving... :)

Happy 30th Birthday Steph and Bri!
Yes, their birthday was June 2nd so yes im 5 days late... but better late then never! We had a little party at mom and dads last night to celebrate! Did I mention they are 30?! :) Love you guys!

My own EMT!

After lots of school, lots of studying, and a couple attempts....Tommy got his EMT!

Merrill De Mayo!

This year for cinco de mayo tommy and i decided to get back to our mexican roots and throw a party :) ... (or we just used it as an excuse to have a party..either way!) there was lots of food, games and friends and the night was pretty fun!

Tommy hand painted this awesome face board! impressed yet?!

Tommy and Brent playing soda pong.. (i think they were losing!)

going going back back to Cali Cali.. :)

This last weekend Tommy and I decided to take a trip to Disneyland! After the few months we've had we decided we needed a break! So we headed up to Yuma Wednesday to stay the night with the Rojas fam! Then thursday we headed up to LA, checked into the hotel then headed down to Bubba Gumps! (any of you that read my Hawaii post knows how much we love Bubba!) then Friday was Disneyland all day then Saturday we hit the beach, and did some shopping before we headed back to Yuma to spend the night with the kiddos again! Swimming & ping pong! :) We had so much fun! lots of pics below!

This guy was outside of Bubbas and had the torch from the china olympics..pretty cool

seriously Tommy got a pound and a half of shrimp....and ate the WHOLE BUCKET

Indiana Jones!

in action spinning the tea cups! All the other cups were slowly spinning..then there was ours!

Tommy getting dizzy on the tea cups!

I work at Gunnells...it was a must

Tommy and the FIRE pole at the disneyland fire dept :)....

p.s. I've been working on some projects lately! pics to come!!!

Hair Anyone?!

Anyone need their hair did?! Let me know!!

How many men?....

Does it take to start a lawn mower?!

Driving range

Last weekend we went to the driving range with Aaron and Laura :) While the boys actually hit balls me and Laura posed for pictures!

it took her like 5 minutes to get the ball on the tee!

Knight FHE

The monday before Easter we had FHE at my parents house. They were going to be in Utah over Easter so they wanted to get everyone togehter before.. We had egg hunts, a lesson, lasagna and lemon bundt cake.. DEE-LISH!

...some pictures from the night!...