Merry Christmas!

So I didn't get around to doing an official Christmas card this year. Is it just me or has this season just flown by? Sheesh. And I still have to get some Christmas shopping done this weekend before the big day. Although things are busy, life is still good. Jocelyn has her second birthday coming up in less than a month (her SECOND!!) and pretty soon after that is the birth of baby Ava. We've decided to do an alternative method to birthing this time around and we're WAY excited. I'll be taking a Hypnobabies class to help prepare myself (which is basically involving hypnosis to allow me to get through a less painful labor not involving any drugs), and we've switched to a midwife who will deliver our baby in the comfort of our own home. I think a lot of people gasp at the thought of a home birth, expecting it to be dangerous...but trust me. I've done my research and it is surprising how many more accidents, infections, and unnecessary surgical interventions happen because of the hospital mindview and setting.

Anyway, I'll have to post a picture here pretty soon of my growing belly. We only have 11 more weeks to go (or so) and we're getting excited!

Maternity Clothes

Thought this was pretty dang funny, but really not funny all at the same time. Some lady wrote a few kind words to designers regarding maternity clothes issues.

Found at:
http://toddleddredge.com/the-usual-blather/maternity-fashion-if-toddled-dredge-wrote-fashion-friday

Like many of you, I read Big Mama’s regular blog feature Fashion Friday. She writes about everyday fashion in a way that is entertaining and not pompous. I read even though I am not even remotely fashionable. Fashion left me behind about ten years ago when everything switched to stretchy, drapy super-snaggable polyblends and 1970s patterns. I am hoping that eighteen months from now, when my body has settled into whatever it decides is post-baby normal and I need to finally replace my wardrobe, clothing will once again be tailored, monochrome and 100% cotton.

Fingers crossed.

For now, I am still in the purgatory of maternity clothes. And I have a few words to say on the subject.

Designers, listen. I know we’re not friends. You don’t like me and I don’t like you. I don’t spend nearly enough on clothes to be your target market, and you make clothes apparently only to pain and insult me. Your maternity clothes seem designed around skinny women wearing artificial belly bumps rather than real women with real pregnancies. I am going to charitably assume that you design the clothes you do out of well-meaning ignorance rather than sadistic scorn for heterosexual procreators, so I’m going to help you out with a little advice.

1. I am pregnant. Let me wear a @#$%^& normal bra. Those square necks and peasant shirts and wide-strapped tanks and spaghetti straps and whatever other absurdity is currently fashionable for the seventeen-year-old figure? It does not work on a woman whose body is preparing to feed a small hungry human. You do not want to see the face of my rage when I finally find a shirt long enough to cover my belly, only to find that the sleeves are so precariously balanced at the outermost edges of my shoulders that normal underclothing is impossible.

2. Stop sticking elastic in my shirts. Seriously, don’t make me hurt you. And DO NOT call the elastic anything remotely related to the word “comfortable.” It is not comfortable. It is itchy and it digs. Even if it doesn’t dig when I buy the shirt, it will in a month or two. PUT DOWN THE ELASTIC.

3. A pregnant woman’s stomach extends more than two inches below her belly button. I realize that in your youthful days you may have found a little breeze down there kinda sexy. I do not find breezes sexy. I find them drafty. And I would like to be able to walk down the stairs without everyone below me staring fixedly at the two inches of exposed stretch marks that are feeling a chill because you can’t make a shirt that meets my pants. And this is not a size issue. Lane Bryant’s maternity clothes do the same stupid thing.

4. I do not actually want to share my cleavage with the world. They will get enough of an eyeful once I’m nursing. Until then, kindly give me a neckline that allows me to bend over and pick up my current children without flashing the old man sitting next to me.

5. Clingy is not sexy. I know, I know. You think sexy is all about clingy. Maybe in the artificial belly bump modeling crowd it is. But until the last month or so before delivery, my pregnant belly jiggles. Santa has nothing on me. I would prefer not to be mesmerized by my own hypnotically rippling reflection in store windows as I walk past. The decorum of a little space between me and the fabric greatly improves my quality of life.

6. Bold patterns on a pregnant woman are the visual equivalent of an air horn. It says “Back up! Coming through!” While there are times I might be grateful if the crowd would part enough for my wide load to squeeze through, I can take care of that myself. I can always shout “My water broke!” Please make me something that could not be seen on the cast of Sex and the City or the upholstery of a 1970s couch.

7. Pre-shrink your fabrics. I cannot count the number of times I have bought an empire-waisted maternity shirt that fit perfectly in the store, only to have it shrink up in the wash, even after following its laundry instructions. Trying to dress in a rush only to discover that the shirt that fit yesterday now has a seam that runs horizontally mid-nipple makes me call down curses upon your heads. Seriously - the way you know Oprah’s whole “law of attraction” nonsense really is nonsense is by the fact that no maternity designers have yet spontaneously combusted from the powerful thoughts of destruction directed towards them by pregnant women.

I am seriously considering spending the last month of this pregnancy wearing only sweatpants and my husband’s XL v-neck undershirts. Funny thing - his shirts cover my belly, do not itch, do not shrink, do not cling, let me wear normal bras and do not have plunging necklines.

Perhaps someday our gifted designers for women can master the fashion achievements of Hanesand Fruit of the Loom.

a close to fall

Here are just a few recent pictures of Jocelyn having fun on Grandma's backyard swing. Fall is about ending around here, and it's been such a nice one this year. I can't believe it's the 3rd of December and we've really had no snow to speak of yet. We had one little spiff a few days after Halloween and it melted within a day or so. Anyway---I'm done talking about the weather.

Life is good. Pregnancy is pretty good, with exception of a few aches and pains and uncomfortableness, all is well. The belly is growing to be nice and round and I've officially banned stupid maternity pants from my wardrobe. I swear. It's more comfortable to just wear fat people pants than those stupid things. We've chosen a name for the baby and here it is:

Ava Nicole. Cute huh? I think so too. :) Jocelyn talks about her baby "Aba" and likes to point to her own belly when we ask her where her sister is. Ah well...she'll get it.

Rob is working on his business, Candelight, and should be making us money here by the time the babe is born. I'm so lucky to have a hunk of a husband who supports his family and is cool and nerdy at the same time. What would I do without you, Robdor?

That's life around here!

Up for debate

We've thought and thought and still haven't decided on another girl name for our next baby.
Soooo....any suggestions? It has to be something unique but not weird. And don't start with the Mc-names. You know, Mckayla, Mckensie, blah blah. Out of the question. So far we are kind of thinking something along the lines of Juliet, because it's pretty and not very many people have it. And because there is an Aunt Julie in the family. But we're having a hard time with a middle name for that one. No, just because we have a Jocelyn and we're thinking Juliet and our imaginary boy baby is named Jonah, does not mean that it has to start with J. That is all coincidence. So really, throw some suggestions out there. We're all ears.

p.s. Here's a random picture of the J. Isn't she cute? Messy face and all.

Halloween

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We all dressed up this year, which is a first since Rob usually doesn't care to participate. But since I spent a whole hour and a half making his rubix cube costume, he was willing to join in the fun. Obviously, I was a pumpkin, and even though it may seem SO obvious I still got a lot of questions from little trick-or-treaters, "what are you supposed to be?" Then I'd say something like "Um...a fairy princess". They'd give me a really weird look, take their candy and run. Jocelyn was the cutest bumble bee out there. I was worried that she wouldn't wear her costume that I sewed for her, because before the actual day of Halloween and the bribery of candy, she hadn't even tried it on. Every time I would ask her if she wanted to wear her bee suit, she would scream and throw a tantrum. Sheesh. What a sweetheart we've got. But I have proof now, with the pictures, that she actually DID try on her bee costume and it fit perfectly.
We spent the evening eating chili at my parent's and way too many sweets. Aunt Savannah took Jocelyn around the neighborhood to trick or treat and I think she had fun. Afterwards we went on over to the Merrell's for a "special" treat from Grandma and Grandpa. They kindly helped me to scrub off all of the "washable" orange makeup that so kindly did not want to wash off my face. But my face is back to normal and we can call Halloween of 2008 a success!

Oh--and the big mess spilled down my boobs was water that Rob threw at my face out of his glass to "help" me get the orange makeup off my face. Thanks babe. I look fabulous now. :)

Mother's intuition Nuthin'!

This whole time I've been thinking it was a boy. In fact, the day after I delivered Jocelyn I was sitting in the hospital thinking and being so certain that our next one was a boy. I swear I could just feel it. Boy was I wrong! Or should I say, GIRL was a wrong! As I was in the room with the ultrasound tech yesterday I kept making comments like, "oh look at his arm", "oh look at his spine", blah blah blah. I should have noticed sooner that ultrasound tech had a smug little look on her face. When we got to the part where she was going to tell us the gender, I said "now you're going to prove me wrong and tell me it's a girl". She smiled and said, "it actually IS a girl". Wow, that totally took me by surprise. We are so excited though and can't wait to meet our next little pumpkin. The only trouble is....we had a boy name all picked out and we can't seem to agree on a girl name. Here we go again......

A few more vacation pictures

Vacation!

I guess I should have put some of my pictures together as one image, because this thing is only going to let me load a few of them. So I'll just have to make another whole post with only pictures after this.
Anyway----we went on a vacation! And it's about freaking time. We stayed at an awesome cabin in Jackson Hole and visited Yellowstone and all the weird little shops around Jackson. We could not have picked a better weekend to go. The weather was so beautiful, all the trees were golden and orange and red, and the temperature was perfect. I had never been to Yellowstone, so it was a lot of fun. Jocelyn did awesome in the car (surprisingly) so it made the experience all the more better.
We didn't see much wildlife, though. We saw some elk, some buffalo, a dead moose on the side of the road, and tons of geese. The geese must have all been flying south and stopping in Jackson for a break during the weekend of our visit. They were everywhere! We would wake up to the sound of them honking and Jocelyn had a lot of fun chasing them around our cabin area.
We spent three days, and although it doesn't sound like long it was nice to get back in our own beds and onto a more regular schedule.

Sunflower days

Okay, so these pictures were taken about a month ago...which means that the sunflower days are now gone. But oh how I love them. Can I just say that I live in the most beautiful place in the world? Seriously. We are so lucky to be in such a awesome place.

Becky's bridals

This Saturday is the big day for Rob's cousin, Becky and her fiance' Jeremy. Becky is a beautiful bride and it's awesome how she's up for anything! The wedding is going to be held up the canyon at a beautiful pavilion and the weather is supposed to be great, so I'm getting excited.

On another note....things around here are truckin' on. It's that time of year for the peaches to be in season so I've been all sorts of domestic and been bottling peaches until I can't possibly stand at the sink and peel one more. My peaches are beautiful, though. It's worth posting a picture of my bottles, they're so perrrty. Other than that, life goes on and I'm sure sooner or later something exciting ought to happen and then everyone will be so amazed at my blog. Wooohoo.

House

I kept meaning to get my house together so that it looks really clean and organized. Then I would have taken some beautiful pictures and posted them to try to impress all of my friends and family. But then I realized that if I posted clean pictures of my house, if you ever came to visit, you probably wouldn't recognize it as the same house. So screw it. This is even my tidy. The reality is that I have a toddler and she just doesn't like anything to be where it should be. No pillows on the couches or chairs, no books on the coffee table. No thank you. She walks by and politely tosses them on the floor, just as I've picked them all up again to vacuum. So here are a few shots of the house with our furniture in it. We really do love it.

Sister to Bee....

It's true. Jocelyn is going to be a big sister, and though I'd like to say that the excitement on her face in this picture was due to that fact, I'd be lying. She was actually laughing because I was drawing on my face with chalk at that moment.....anything for a picture :) Mama is 13 weeks along, so just over 3 months. We had the first doctors appointment last week and we have a good strong heartbeat! Besides the usual wanting to throw up whenever I have to change a poopy diaper, and constant fatigue, everything is going really smoothly so far. The baby is due on March 8th and we're so excited to have a spring chicken on the way!

Okay, so besides that, this is what else is going on in our lives: We moved into our house (finally!) and have been here for about a month but I've just been way too lazy to update the family blog. The house is beautiful and we're still slowly but surely putting things in their places. It's nice to finally have enough space for all of our crap....which is a lot actually. It surprises me how much crap we've gathered up in the last 3 years of marriage. (Oh yeah, and we had our 3rd wedding anniversary on August 5th) But we love it here and we finally feel like we're settling in to a real home. Somewhere we won't have to pack up and move out of in the next year. We can stay here as long as we dang well want to!

In addition to the new addition we'll be expecting in March, we also got two kittens to join the family. They are cute as buttons and I need to upload a picture of them. They're two little brothers, one black and white and the other orange, and their names are Jacob and Edward. Yes, yes. I know you may think I'm lame. Bite me. I love Stephenie Meyer's books so you can just roll your eyes all you want. Jakey and Ed. Those are my boys. :)

Well, that pretty much sums up our two month absence...or however long its been since the last time I updated our blog. We're preggo, home owners, and Stephenie Meyer fans. Hopefully life will start to get back to normal and I'll be able to update more often. So stay tuned.....

Family Portraits

Lauren, here are some examples of family portraits I've done. I'm excited to work with you guys! --Miranda

A-Z

Ok, Julie. I'm going to copy-cat you and do your A-Z things about you....

A-Attached or Single?--Attached!
B-Best friend?--Robbie, hands down.
C-Cake or Pie?--Pie...unless there's no pie. Then cake!
D-Day of choice?--Mondays. I have Monday's off of work and we usually do
something fun for family night
E-Essential Item?--Diapers. Not for me....but you know, for the kid.
F-Favorite Color?--Purple, sometimes green. But not all greens. Just sage-ish greens.
G-Gummy bears or worms?--probably neither, honestly. Once when I was a kid my step dad had a big bag of gummy worms in his car and they all melted together. He ate them anyway and it just looked like a really disgusting colorful blob of boogers. I think that turned me off of them for life.
H-Hometown?--Springville!
I-Indulgences?--Those Betty Crocker individual brownies and cakes covered in gooey yummy
crap that you put in the microwave for like three minutes.
J-Jan. or Jul.?--July. Fo' Sho'!
K-Kids?--My little girl, Jocelyn. Who just happens to be all over this blog, so that's no big surprise.
L-Life is incomplete without?--My little family. I don't really want to think about what I
would do with myself without them.
M-Marriage Date?--August 5th, 2005.
N-Number of siblings?--One brother and three sisters, counting my little sister in St. George.
O-Oranges or Apples?--It depends. What is in season?
P-Phobias?--Spiders, freaky rapist men.
Q-Quotes?--"I really like salad now" -Rob Merrell. You honestly have no idea how much
that stupid sentence meant coming from him.
R-Reasons to smile?--My family, of course. Good movies, daily comforts such as warm house, food, etc....Also, Julie's seagle poop story was pretty good. :)
S-Season?--I'm a summer chick. Spring and Autumn rule too, though. Winter can die as far as
I'm concerned.
T-Tag another person?--Missy
U-Unknown fact?--I was a vegetarian for two years in middle school. I guess I was "finding myself".....and it ends up that even though I eat meat now, I'm not really
that crazy about it.
V-Very favorite store?--Right now I really like Rod Works, but that may be because I'm
trying to decorate a house. Otherwise, I'd say it's absolutely NOT Walmart.
W-Worst habit?--Biting my nails, maybe? I'm sure Rob could find something worse. ;)
X-x-ray or ultrasound?--Um. That's a weird thing to have an opinion about. But I'll just
say ultrasound 'cause I've had one before and it was pretty cool.
Y-Your favorite food?--Pineapple, donuts, pies, and the list goes on.....
Z-Zodiac?--Taurus.

hangin' in there

Still working on the house....it just seems like time is not moving by quickly enough. *patience* patience* patience*

Other than that, not much has been going on. We're in the packing transition right now, and since we sold our old nasty dresser at our yardsale a few weeks ago, all of our clothes have been in boxes on the floor. It's not a very efficient way of storing clothes, seeing as you have to dig through the whole box just to find a stupid pair of pants and then clothes are all over the floor. Ugh. *patience*patience*patience. I guess I'm not very good at that.

Anyway, this is a totally boring post but it has been a while since the last update, so here you go. :)

Eew. I look old in this picture.

Only 15 ish more days!

We have had to extend on our interest rate one more time in order to get our house finished. It seems like the last couple of weeks they haven't gotten a whole lot of work done, which is totally lame since our original close date was the 1st of June. Then the 15th. Then the end of June. And now it had better be done by the 13th of July or we will have to take the stupid higher interest rate. I have been bugging the crap out of the builders and the property manager and just about everyone at Harvest Park and now I think we're finally at an understanding. The last two days they have made a LOT of progress! We now have a garage, a deck, cupboards, a front porch, and there are boxes throughout the house that have lighting fixtures in them. I promised my sister, Missy, that I would get some pictures up so here they are. I realize they are really terrible pictures but last night we ended up going to see the house after dark. We were walking around the house with our cell phone lights trying to see what is going on, so these pictures are really the best I could get considering the circumstances. Get excited for us! We're getting close!

Sprinkler Fun

Summer is officially here as of tomorrow at like 5 something o'clock. We finally decided we'd better not let our grass turn completely yellow for the new renters who move in, so we pulled out the sprinkler and let little J join in the fun. This is one thing I will miss about this crappy ol' place. We are giving up our yard for a much nicer home, so we will have to go to a park or to one of the Grandma's houses from now on if we want to run in the sprinkler. We will miss the yard, the neighbors (Rob's Grandma), the wonderful ward. But great things are to come and we will LOVE having our own place. I guess it doesn't matter how much you complain about a house you live in...it's always a home. Rob and I were so excited to get out of our little dumpy apartment to get into this house (a whole house to ourselves!). This is Jocelyn's first home and even though she won't remember it, hopefully these pictures will help her know that it was a wonderful place to start her little life. And we are so blessed to have lived here....crumbly walls and all.

My daddy's a better programmer than your daddy

For Father's Day Jocelyn sported the shirt in this photo..."My daddy's a better programmer than your daddy", and Rob loved it. Jocelyn got him a Linux penguin hat, just to prove her shirt right to everyone. We had a great dinner over at Rob's parent's house that night and then had our own little celebration for family night yesterday. We made one of Rob's favorite dinners, lasagna with apple crisp for dessert and all was delicious. Rob really is the greatest dad and I couldn't have asked for a better husband to father my little Jocelyn. :)
Love you, Robbie!

Family Night

We had a great family night last night! We took Jocelyn to feed the ducks for the first time in her cute little life and she loved it. We took both popcorn and bread and they ate both, but I don't think they were really very hungry. They only seemed moderately interested....probably because everybody feeds the ducks during this season. Jocelyn just ended up eating the extra, though, so none went to waste :)
Well, I've decided we're doing our yardsale this Friday and Saturday to give me an extra day to get rid of my crap. Please come and buy something. Even if you just chuck whatever you buy in the garbage. All the money goes to a good cause---housing the Merrells in our beautiful new Mapleton home!

Rained out

It stupid rained on the stupid day I was supposed to have my stupid yard sale! So I canceled it. Maybe next week, maybe not. I'm trying to decide whether or not it would be a good idea to have it on the Art City Days weekend.....hmmm.

We had a good weekend, nonetheless, though. My sister was here visiting so we did a little shopping and had a fire for roasting marshmallows in my mom's backyard. It's Sunday now and we're just taking it easy.

Our house has tile now so I'm going to try to get some pictures up this week sometime. It looks great so stay tuned.....

Sometimes I just have to slurp her up

Life is still good among us Merrell's. We're about to get really busy here, though with the move and all that. We are having a yard sale this Saturday so that we don't have to take all of our crappy crap over to our new house....where we will only allow moderate crap to be ;) So if you're yard sale goers come on over. And if you're not---come on over. I'll be sitting on my lawn eating something delicious like scones with honey butter or something. I haven't decided yet. When I was just a kid, me and my cousin used to have a yard sale every summer and we'd sell scones. I'm not selling them, though. I don't even know if I'll get the energy to make them...so don't get excited. But do know that I'll be on my lawn at the butt-crack of dawn....waiting for yard-salers like yourself to come and pay me to get rid of my crap :)

The House

Kitchen and Dining area
Kitchen entryway from the Living Room
Jocey's Room
Master Bedroom

So here are some recent pictures of the house. We have paint on the walls, doors, and mesh on the kitchen and bathroom floors in preparation for the tile. Give us another week and I'll upload some pictures of my tile floors!

Ok, so I suck....

I've been really bad about taking pictures lately. I don't know what it is. I must have a case of writers block...but for photographers. Anyway, here's a really old picture of Jocelyn from a couple of months ago. We'll be heading over to our new house tonight to see if the tile guy bothered to show up today....since he didn't show up last Friday when he said he would...and then of course it was a long weekend, so we're rooting for today.

AaaaaCHOOOO!!!
Oh yeah--and I have allergies :p