baby doll

My funny little girl.  She is always making me smile.  While we have been working outside this little walker has been a great little toy for Max.   He is such a good little boy to just sit in it and walk around and smile at us.  He loves to watch all the girls run around and play around him.  

This is so funny.  He loves to carry things in his mouth.  He really loves to play with the ties that I got for church.  I had one at church and he just kept putting  it in his mouth like a gag rag.  

That face just melts me!

Max loves to sit on my lap and look at himself in the mirror while I am getting ready.  I love the faces he makes and the way he sucks his lip in.  

Adiosn was taking pictures of her dolls and I thought it was so cute.  

I went to logan with Max and he fell asleep.   I loved looking at him sleep with his cute little cheeps and those amazing lips and long eyelashes.  

Oh love his little nose!

Max moved out of the sink for a bath and now takes them in our big tub.  He loves it and has so much fun in it.  He gets so exceed if you walk into the bathroom and it is hard to not give him a bath if her really wants one.   He is so funny how he loves to put things in his mouth and just hold them there for a long time. 

Max Loves to swing.  It is so cute to push him high and hear him laugh and see his big smile.  He is great at hanging out and waiting for me to give him another push.   He is such a patient little guy.

Alexibeth

Wow the seventh grade is so much work… not just for my kid, but for the parents.  I am a little worn out already from all the things they expect them to do.  We have started a plant collection and it is a lot of work.  We have to take pictures of all sorts of tree's, moss, weeds, grass, and other plants while it is still warm and it isn't due for a while but when it is due everything is dead…. We have been working all summer on a bug collection that is more work than most kids do in college.  It has been so annoying because we caught most of them in the summer so they are all dried out and smell really gross and we didn't know that you have to have the legs all out and perfect….. so when we tried to do that all the legs kept falling off…. so so so frustrating. 

I told Alexis that the teacher had better give me a A for this…. Ha ha.   no joke though cause I had to put a lot of work into this thing with her.  I was a little mad when he graded her hard and took so many points away for dumb little things.  She had a bunch of extra credit for extra bugs and it was a dang good thing.  With all the extra credit she got 500 points out of 500.  (so we did get a A)  

you can tell she is learning so much from her plant collection .

Elizabeths cool little iguana Izzy.  She was going to take some pictures so she could send them to Mia and show it to her when she somehow forgot the put the lid on the cage and it got out and lost.  We were all so sad that it was lost and I was for sure we were going to find it dead somewhere.  

We were so lucky that Alexis did find it and it was alive and well.  It really is a cool lizard and it is fun to have a little pet.  Elizabeth really loves it and is so excited to have it.  It is suppose to grow up to 10 inches long so I think it will be so cool to see it grow.

little things

The pool put in a rope swing and the girls are loving it.  They played on it for a couple hours, and had a blast.  Now that is all that they want to do, and can not wait to back.

Adison is so cute with her hair.  She will tell me just how she wants it done, and most of the time she will say, "I want a Elsa braid."  "I want a Aunna braid, or a princess pony tail."  

We went to the lake and looked for bugs when adison saw this tree and said, "Mom, I need a picture like this"

Then she realized…. "umm mom, my foot is stuck"  It was so funny

Brytlee is my little tree climber.  She is so much like I was as a kid!

A selfie that Adison took of us.  She loves to take pictures with my phone.  I will have 60 or more pictures of the floor, and the toys, and other things that I have to go through every time she has my phone.  

I cleaned out the little shed and put some shelves up so we would have more room to store things.  As soon as Adison saw them she thought I was making some bunk beds and was so excited to come in and sleep on them.  She said the bottom one was hers and the top was Lexy's and Brytlee, and Elizabeth could share, and she could share with her friends Josy, Kinley, and Jane.  

This is the shelves all finished.   Adison is such a funny girl.  Just yesterday she said so many things that was that were so funny that I had to write them down before I forget them.   So the two of us were talking about Heavenly Father and I said.  "did you know that you have two daddies?  You have a daddy on earth for your body, and a daddy in heaven that is the father of your spirit.  it is your Heavenly Father."  Then a few minutes latter I said, "I have two daddy's also."  She was so excited and said, "ohhh you do"  Then I told her that Grandpa Merrill was my daddy on earth and that Heavenly father was also my daddy."  she was so excited, and said, "uhhhhh, you have the same dad as ME!"  It was so cute the way she said it and her expressions.
Max was taking a nap and so Adiosn was watching a movie.  She came to me and told me that she wanted lunch and that when it was ready to yell her name.  A few minutes latter she came and said is it ready?  I told her that it was and she said, "ok, yell for me ok, and then I will tell you to shhhhh be quiet"  and then went into the play room.  So I said soft.  "adison come and eat."  she ran to the stairs and said, "shhhhhh"   then Max made a sound and she said, "oh great! you woke him up!"  The way she she said it was so so dang cute.  She is such a spunky little girl and has so many expressions that are so cute.  She really could be in the movies with how dramatic she is.  

Victor

I have been sick to my stomach all day long after learning that my cousin Victor Brendan Mueller was killed last night.  He was only thirty years old and had one little girl and a baby on the way. He went to Provo to get Breanna's car to bring it home and fix something on it.  He had a friend with him, and his girlfriends little boy.  On the way home, the car ran out of gas on one of the three lane freeways.  He had a gas can and decided to go and get gas.  One the way back to the car with gas, he was talking on the phone with the friend in the car and running across six lanes of traffic in the dark at 10:30 at night when he was hit by a car and was killed on the scene.  His father Brent has just had open heart surgery only three weeks ago, and now he has the news that his only son has been killed.  My Mom and Dad and her entire family went to Brent and Olmedis's house and stayed with them until 5:30 that next morning.  My mom said that his mom had to take something to help her relax, and she couldn't stop screaming and crying.  She just kept saying she wanted to go and see him, but I guess the morgue wouldn't allow it.  They have to wait until his body is released to the funeral home.  My Grandparents are so heartbroken and cried the entire night.  My grandpa just kept saying her felt very sick to his stomach, which is what I have been feeling all day.  My parents are suppose to go on a 10 day vacation with my Grandparents this Wed. but with this sad news, I am sure it is  not going to happen.
Everything just seems like such a mess, and so wrong.  I am so sad for all of my family, my grandparents, and for my aunt and uncle.  I can not even imagine how they must be feeling, and I pray that I never have to know.
Sara has a neighbor that we meet this summer that went with a group of friends to California and went night scuba diving, and some how got into trouble and never came back to the boat.  They searched for his body for three days and then found him almost 100 miles away from where they lost him.  This is also making me so sick, because he was the age of my husband, he had young beautiful children at home.
One of my friends husbands died from a long fight with cancer and left behind two small children.  With all that has been going on I just feel like it is just to much.  Why are so many bad things happening?
I am so thankful that I know there is life after death, and that we can be together forever with the ones that we love.  I am so thankful that I have faith in the atonement and know that we can be saved and live with our Father in Heaven again.  Without this knowledge I think in times like these I wouldn't be able to function, and the thought of death would scare the pants off of me.  It makes me feel so sorry for the ones who do not know the truth, and think that this is it.
Also in a time like this, I just want to be with my family, and want to hold my children a little closer to me.  I want to keep them safe and help them do what is right.  I love my family so much, and it is crazy how much impact one family member can have on our lives, even when we don't see them a lot.  No matter what we are family, and we are bonded together and love each other no matter what.  I am sure that my Uncle and Aunt are going to need our prayers for a very long time.  With how heavy my heart has been and how sad I have been, I can not even imagine the pain they are in.

Sick baby

I have been so thankful for a healthy baby and for Max not getting the ear infections over and over like my three older girls did.  Alexis, Elizabeth, and Brytlee all had to have ear tubes put in because thy had infection after infection by the time they were his age.  But why is it when you think something like that… something happens to make you say never mind.  ha ha.  Annette and I say that if you are happy with the way your kids are sleeping, or acting, you never brag about it or it will bite you in the butt the next day.   

So Max loves to put EVERYTHING into his mouth.  He is pretty good about playing with it and then spitting it out.  But he is only 8 months old now so I really can't trust him not to swallow something he puts in his mouth.  So after his nap one day he started to breath really funny.  It sounded just like he had something stuck or he was choking in a way. It freaked me out so bad that I drove him to the doctor as fast as I could.  The doctor looked at him and said it sounded like what I thought, and had him go to the ER for X-rays.  They did four different pictures and didn't see anything.  They kept him in for a few hours and tried to see what was going on.  They thought he was constipated (and I knew he wasn't) and so they gave him a suppository and then made him drink prune juice.  In only 30 min. he went poo and they could see that it was runny and that wasn't the problem.  So they scratched their heads and didn't know what to do.  The doctor told us we should take him down to Logan to see a pediatrician at the ER there and see what they could figure out.  By that time he looked better and had started to act better so Ryan and I took him home and gave him a blessing.  We decided that we would wait over night and see how he was the next day.  So the next day he was breathing better and acting normal so we thought it was over  But then that night he woke up with a very high fever and was breathing funny again.  So the next day we ended up taking him to Logan to have him looked at.  The doctor was a joke and didn't do much.  He just told us that he had a virus and it could be RSV or the bad one that we are seeing on the news, but no matter what there is no treatment and it will just go away on its own, and that was it.  So we brought him him home, and just watched him close and kept checking his temperature.  The one night he woke up he was burning up so hot, and we didn't have anything to check him with, but I ran and got something that morning and it was 102.  It makes me wonder what he would have been that night because he was even warmer.  I hate it when my babies get sick…. it is so so sad.

The last part of the concrete!!!!  (for a while anyway)  I still have a few things I would love to do, but I think Ryan needs break from it for a while.  

It is all looking so great now that it is done.  I love it, and even more I love that there is way less dirt in my house1

This made me laugh.  This is just so like them.  They are great at figuring out ways to get something done, and I love it.  So thankful for all the help that Ryans family has done for us.  

Max is feeling better and is back to himself.  He is almost 9 months now and is such a great little boy.  He loves to tease me when I ask him to say momma, he will say da da or ba ba.  But when he is sleepy or sad he always says momma.  In this picture he is sucking his bottom lip in.  It is something he does a lot now.  It is so funny.  He really does it when someone talks to him he doesn't know.
He is so big, and I am not sure how long he is, but he is 23 lbs.  He wears 18 month clothes and is growing like a little weed!