New Sleeping Arrangments

About a month ago Avery graduated from a crib to her toddler bed. She loves it and does great. She doesn't get out until it's time to wake up in the morning. It's been fun to see her make this transition so smoothly. She's growing up!

Camryn also moved up from a pack 'n play to her own crib. Finally! Avery's crib was a part of the Jardine recall so we actually got a brand new crib from Babies R Us for Camy. Kinda cool! I actually also got her crib mattress for free. I found one on craigslist and called about it to see how much it was and the lady said, "You can just have it." Sweet! Camryn has done okay in it but still prefers to sleep with mama! We started making her cry it out more the past few days and has been making good improvements, which is so nice. One of these days I'll get to sleep through the night again.

Colder than Cold

Sorry, Camryn. You can't play outside today. The wind chills are getting down to -40 F. Yes, that's negative forty degrees.

(Come to think of it, you can't play outside for probably another 4-5 months.)

Update: When Merrick left for work this morning, it was -13 and with the wind chill it was -33. Ahhh!!!

Trouble

The other day I was upstairs cleaning the bathroom with Avery when I heard Camryn near the bottom of the stairs. I took a peek and she had crawled up 4 steps! First time. I told Merrick to get behind her and she kept crawling up toward me and Avery, another few steps.


When she reached us, you wanna know what Avery said to her? "Hi, I'm Avery." As if, by learning to crawl up the stairs, Camryn had magically transformed into a stranger.

Wanna know what that stranger's name is? Trouble.

I'n a Princess

This video isn't that exciting because Avery's a whiner when it comes to getting photos and videos of her, but here she is in her new princess dress up clothes.

One Year

One year ago today we loaded up our Subaru and left the great state of Utah to move to Wisconsin. I was almost seven months pregnant, Avery was 18 months old and couldn't even say "Dora" yet, Merrick had just graduated from BYU. So much has changed in our lives since that day. Camryn Olivia was born in March and now she's crawling everywhere, saying mama and dada. Avery is over three feet tall, can jump off couches, and sing Twinkle Twinkle all by herself. Merrick has a year of full-time work experience under his belt, has read probably 30 books this year, is still learning how to deal with 11-year old scouts, can't imagine life without a DVR (and neither can Avery). I've survived a year without a car of my own, learned how to make homemade pizza, taught myself how to conduct music in sacrament meeting, started a coupon collection. We've driven to Iowa twice. We've experienced festivals and eaten brats, become addicted to frozen custard, and started picking up midwest accents (We're from WisCANsin, doncha kno?). We've been in two houses in two different wards and have met lots of good people. We've experienced colder weather than we knew was possible and seen more snow fall in one night than we ever have before. We celebrated Thanksgiving and Christmas without any family and started our own traditions.

It's been a challenging year with lots of firsts, but we've grown really close together as a family and have learned a lot of good things. 2009 has a lot of good things to look forward to also. We hope your year is full of joy and new beginnings.