Baptism, Sealing, Water park fun, and more...better late than never!

Recently, Annie was working on her blog while visiting us in St. George. During that time, she commented that our computer did not let her cut and paste pictures on her blog like she was used to being able to do. YES! It is not just me! It really is hard to make posts on my blog! I have to load everything backwards and if I accidentally delete something, it is gone forever...also there is no moving pictures around or text. Where it starts is where it stays. And there is always large amounts of white space inbetween pictures to be deleted. So I sometimes procrastinate making posts. It is too complicated! I am glad that it is not just me. But I also need to do some catching up. Earlier, I started making posts for single events, but that is taking too long, so I am going to combine a few of the events that I really don't want to forget. Here goes...

Kylie's Baptism

Kylie was baptised on July 30th. She had grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins there, as well as both of her parents.
This was taken right after we arrived at the chapel.

Four beautiful ladies!

Kylie's Grandma South and Jennifer stayed at our house. Here is Joyce, trying out the slide!

With Sadie and Maddie...I love this picture!

Kylie's Uncle, Jacob baptized her

This was taken after the confirmation.

And, later on that night, at our house, Brynlie in one of her favorite dress-up outfits.

For her eighth birthday, Aspen let Kylie get some "purple" streaks in her hair. Sasha is working on her as quickly as she can because Kylie is not the best at sitting still for long periods of time.

Almost done!

Best Mother's Day, ever!

This was my Mother's DAy present from Annie and Russ...a baby announcement!

Spring and Summer Happenings

Will and Mickala moved in the end of April. They will be staying in our house while we are on our mission.

Some summer fun time at the city splash park

Sadie is determined to get Sasha wet!

Jason and Sasha's temple sealing!

A forever family! TJ got to go, too!

Carrs, Parks, Merrells, Merrells, and Squires. The picture with DAniel and Charbell got deleted, accidentally...I am so mad about this!

I am wearing Grandma Shurtliff's dress!

With Dale and Elaine

Love this one!

What a precious little one!

We stopped in Annabella on the way home, to put flowers on Kris's grave. The end of a wonderful trip.

"The Dress"

Mike's Grandmother Hunting hand-sewed a beautiful dress that his sister Shara Dawn wore when she was about two years old. Since then, the dress has been loaned to each Merrell girl around the time of her second birthday, for a traditional picture.


A few years ago Shara Dawn had a duplicate dress made because the original just wasn't going to last much longer. After Sadie had her picture taken in the new "dress" it was given to me for safe keeping. And I kept it safe! So safe that we couldn't find it when it was time for Brynlie's picture!

I knew I had seen it since we moved to St. Goerge, but I simply could not remember where I had so carefully put it away! Mike and I had searched everywhere! We were beginning to fear that it had been accidentally tossed out with the packing boxes.

But it finally showed up! Mike thought to look in the cedar chest! What better, safer place than that?!

So, even though she is closer to 3 than 2 in these pictures, Brynlie finally got her picture taken in "the dress".


We decided to make a day of it...complete with a trip to the beauty salon for the works...hair and nails - fingers and toes!

She was pretty cute, inspecting herself in the mirror and smiling for the camera.

However, there is only so much sitting still that a 2-year-old can take!

On to the toes!

Almost done!

By the time we got her home for the "real" pictures, she was pretty much done. Mike got a couple great dress pictures, but no way was she going to smile! She is an expert at the poker-face!

I think I like the ones we took at the salon about as well!

This is my favorite!

Mother's Day

I had a great Mother's Day this year.

Kristi spear-headed a book full of the most wonderful tributes from my family and friends.

Vince and Meagan sent beautiful flowers!

Mike got me an ice cream cake from Dairy Queen.

And the girls surprised Aspen...

...with some tee-shirt messages!

I Hope They Call Me on a Mission!

It has been a very long time since I last made a post.

There has been a great deal going on in our lives.

More moves (our kids...not us)

More possible moves (hmmm...I guess that could include us, as well as our kids)

Someday I still hope to complete the unpublished posts of our trip to the Dominican Republic...

...and the South grandkids

...the egg hunt

...my wonderful Mothers' Day

...Russ and Annie's "tiny" little secret

...the new person(s) in Aspen's life

BUT

FOR

NOW

I will announce that Mike and I have submitted papers to go on a mission!

We'd love to hear your guesses as to where we will be serving!

Dear TJ,

Today we put together your train tracks

We only had these three pieces left over!

This is how it turned out!

We put in new batteries so all of the trains go fast!


We wish you were here to play with us!


Hope your arm gets well soon!


Love, Grandma Merrell

Time to catch up the blog!

I have just spent the day catching up my blog.  It has been months.  I still have a few more posts to make after this one, but it is late (early) and I need to go to bed, so I am calling it quits for the night.  It feels good to get it done.  I hope it posts in the right order.

Valentine's Day!

We invited the Souths over for Valentine's day dinner.  We had honey-baked ham, baked beans, red fruit,  and pink veggie dip.

Kylie is hugging her bear from her daddy.

Being on a diet, I was proud of my idea for celery sticks stuffed with salsa.  The others are stuffed with cream cheese and bacon.  Aspen did not like those.

Here the girls are with their Valentine surprises they make for mom.  As usual, Brynlie has her eye on the cookies!   Happy Valentine's Day!