Christmas parties, piano recitials....

We had a piano recital which was nice but this year it was Emma! We had A ward Christmas party at church, complete with Santa which Colton loved when he saw him from a far, but close up it took a  little bit to warm up...He had his big sista! that helped (now if I could get blogger to down load my video's).

 We also had a cookie making, hot cocoa drinking, 9 year old girl party.  All while the big girls were at the theatre performing "Once Upon A Christmas". Just a few more December events at the Merrill family house.

 Here is the cookies bakers!

 Carissa got an award at school can you guess what it was...."The best game dancer"! She lost her voices at every football game this year. She is really trying to get those Northgate fans to get up off there rears, and cheer.

 One of our most wonderful surprises was wakeing up to little elves & Santa painted on the windows. It really is feeling like Christmas around here.

December Birthday's

Addison and I are so lucky to have our birthday's in December its like a birthday month! We Celebrated Addie's birthday with dinner and ice cream at the San Franscio Creamery, then the girl's and Dad got to go ice skating with all the kids from the stake. What a birthday treat she got "star" treatment from all her young women leaders! For me this  year is the year we start counting backwards...I got showered with gifts that will keep me warm and dry through the month. Red rubber rain boots were my favorite, along with a present bought by my daughter on her own time and with her own money Yippie! A new running headband!  My Girl's getting older isn't so bad, in fact I think it's really great!

Oh Christmas Tree will we ever have enough lights?

A few Saturday's back we went out to look for that tree to fit in our house...but this year it could be BIG so we went to 4 places...then we found it... a very tall christmas tree we were so thrilled we could get a tall tree!

Merry Christmas From the Merrill Family

2010 update of the Merrill family

It’s just us, a regular family trying to raise happy healthy kids and not die trying.

Each of the kids are growing and time is always a premium.

We’ve enjoyed, date nights, movies, yard work, moving boxes, packing tape, painting, a piano being played, ballets, 44 sticks in the V-ditch, a putting green, a two car garage, a laundry room, new neighbors, missed old neighbors, Birthday’s, Grandma’s & Grandpa’s, Cousins, Aunts, Uncles, Beth, Shelby the dog, Girls camp, EFY, Swim team, all day swim meets, 16 years of marriage, T-ball, Balboa, Football games, Cheer boxes, New ward, missing friends from old ward, Running, Utah, & Monterey, But most of all each other.

Merry Christmas Love the Merrill’s

Bob, Emily, Carissa 15, Addison 13, Emma 9, Thayne 6, & Colton 2.



December is flying by.

In the interest of time, which is at a premium right now, I thought I'd add a few of our activities each week until New years. I hope I can keep up this month.

The little kids have been getting out of school early everyday until Christmas break I thought it was going to kill me (I never seem to have enough time to get everything done) but we have had a fun day after school doing Christmas traditions, Monday we put the big Nativity scene up on the piano, Tuesday we made all our Christmas cookie dough and then bake half of it. YUMMY!Wednesday we made jam and a gingerbread house oh what fun!



I have come across thee best kit ever!! "Trader Joe's", the icing was great the candy was better and it didn't fall apart. We finally had success with a gingerbread house. As of today half the candy is gone. Colton has a sweet tooth and loves to climb on the counter.there are 2 cut out cookies left and 4 snicker doodles, everything else is gone. We are keeping the dentist in business. Merry Christmas!

Addison turned 13!

Well it's official Addie has turned 13. Here are a few of my favorites...

I had someone else take pictures

so here are a few of our results...we can never all be present or happy but I thought some of these were funny. It's always so hard to get that perfect picture for the Christmas card.

November recap...

What wouldn't be November without a little Thanksgiving Cheer we ate, we rested, we ate some more!


We braved the 34 degree temperatures and ran in a 5K turkey trot. We all finished and the kids did a 1/4 mile run. Thayne came in 3rd in his age group, Michael was 20th out of over 3000 people. It was really fun to start our day off running.







We also had some Cousin fun the week of thanksgiving, Crafts, movies, games, cooking and lots of eating.






We had a very cold, very fast swim meet It was fun but we think swimming should only be done in the summer time!

A visit to the Ranch

Really we are just doing the regular stuff around our house but this week I got to go with Emma's Class of 4th graders to Macado Ranch...It was a great time we made rope, learned about the rancher life, made our own Brand for our cattle that we bartered and traded for, drank hot cocoa, and best of all we learned to lasso! I think we may have a cowgirl on our hands. It was tons of fun.

Fall is a favorite around here...

We had so much going on this month here are a few favorites...

We had the Allred cousins come YEE HAH! These wild and crazy kids don't sit still they had so much fun we couldn't even get a still shot of them. They loved the dress up box!





We (Carissa) had homecoming week which means a different costume each day and lots of extra goodies , I had many nights shopping at T.J.MAX and the grocery store...I have never bought 40 bottles of red Gatorade for football players before, & then put labels on them that said "Bronco-Ade". I don't think it worked the team got killed on Friday night. oops.






Best of all it was Bob's birthday we had a great dinner out and cake and ice cream with all his favorites minus the pictures he really hates the camera ...but we got a few.






Last but not least we had Halloween weekend! Starting with parades and parties for the little kids and then pumpkin carving for 4 out of the 5 kids. We ate Roasted seeds till we were sick ate candy till we barfed and then went to Trunk ot Treat at the church...everyone loved the month of October.