Me and My Wild

Just a few pictures we took tonight of a rare snuggly moment:

Manis-Miller Wedding

Today we got to travel to good ol' Farmvegas to go to our friend Mollie's wedding. It was great to catch up with a lot of old friends from when Billy and I were growing up there. Although sweltering hot *I don't think carrying around an extra person helped with that*, it was such a fun wedding; Mark and Mollie looked like they were having a blast. As always going to a wedding makes me start thinking about all the memories from our wedding. *Almost 4 years ago!!! What?!* Here are some pictures from today:

Peeps and Cows

Merrick has a new obsession: cows. This kind of goes along with the tractors I suppose...since he seems to be training early to be a farmer of some sort. ;) This was us at Arby's today, admiring the very large, very fake, cow out by the road through the front window of the restaurant:

I'm all about trying to help Merrick be well-rounded, so we decided maybe we should get him some farm animals to help him learn more than just cows. :) We found this set of animals at Wal-Mart...

...and this is me trying to get him to say something besides COW! :) He's kind of getting the hang of "sheep" now.

It All Hits the Fan

I'm sure you might have read about our AC fiasco of several days ago. We found out *I say we very loosely, because if it wasn't for Billy I would still be in the dark* that it was frozen up, and are currently thawing it out to see if it will get back to work. I think a frozen air conditioner sounds like a good idea to me, but that shows you how much I know.

In the meantime we had fans set up around the house so we could try and get some sleep. This morning Merrick was a little too curious, and stuck his finger right into one of the huge box fans. No damage was done, but it sounded like it hurt, and from the look on his face I am hoping he won't try it again:

World's Strongest Man

Today it rained off and on, and after one of the showers Merrick got to go outside and stomp around in the puddles. He loved it, since stomping in puddles is usually forbidden since we want to avoid soggy socks:

There is a big wagon we use to move the trash cans up to the road for collection. Merrick decided to try to get some practice in for the World's Strongest Man competition.

I guess these guys have gotta start somewhere ;)

Ode to the AC, and my Hubby

Today I finally went and did the massive amount of grocery shopping I had been putting off. Partly because I knew it was going to be outrageously expensive *since we were out of everything from "bwuice" to trash bags*, and party because of this:
As you can see Merrick is not a fan of shopping. (He can smell a grocery store coming like a bloodhound, and sounds something like one while we are shopping.) I let him sit in the cart instead of the child seat for awhile, and that helped...until he almost climbed out. We got back home, Merrick went down for a nap, and I proceeded to unload all the groceries, work on some laundry, and clean the kitchen.

This was about the point that I realized I was sweating profusely and there really seemed to be no relief in the house. (I KNOW I'm 34 weeks pregnant and being sweltering is normal, but I am usually freezing) I checked the AC, and although I had slowly been turning it down *it was finally set on 65...which is unheard of around here because we are trying to save on the normally outrageous electric bill* it was still almost 80 degrees in the house. Uh oh.

Anyway...I let Billy know, who already has a sneaky suspicion that it's not working quite right. Hopefully it will be fixed easily and I will be able to stop sweating sometime soon. :) All of this jabbering is to say that aside from realizing how wonderful AC is, I also realize what my husband has been putting up with the last 4 years. *Partly in thanks to this post from my friend Rob.* Since I'm always freezing, the poor man has been sweating himself into a puddle since even before we were married, and 99% of the time he doesn't say a word about it. He is always turning the AC up, or off entirely, just to keep his cold-blooded wife happy. So, just wanted to say thanks, love! Hope we have many more years of keeping each other from sweating too much. ;)

Memorial Day

Hope everyone had a great Memorial Day! We had a great day hanging out with the family, playing ball, and cooking-out. Here are a few pictures from the day:

Enjoying grilling out
Taking advantage of open fields and wheels:
Family Volleyball Game:

Miami Virginia Ink

I was at work today, with Merrick, and made the mistake of giving him a pen to play with. He wasted no time giving himself a little ink while I was distracted with invoices and receipt:

His daddy would be so proud. Here is a picture of Billy's tattoo.

Its Hebrew for strength, and is from Psalms 73:26. He wants to add onto it sometime soon, with the rest of the verse. I don't mind; I like tattoos. He is not earning brownie points with his mother-in-law, however. ;)

When it's quiet...

...I either find Merrick getting into trouble, or he's hiding waiting for me to come find him. This was this morning, I found him hiding in mine and Billy's closet waiting for me:

Walking the Cat?

Ali and Merrick decided to take the cat, Ritz, for a walk today. He surprisingly complied for the most part. *He is mine and Billy's cat, but lives at mom's because we can't have pets in our house. He loves to go outside, but is an inside cat. I have to admit I have tried this with him in the past. It had pretty embarrassing results: Me dragging Ritz back to the apartment on his leash while my neighbors laughed* He only started hissing toward the end ;)

I'm realizing that my son, and my cat, are a lot alike. They both like to climb things, can't sit still long enough for snuggling, and in general just want to run free in the front yard.

Got Tractor?

We never leave home without one! This is what we heard, for the 2 hours in the car today traveling back and forth to church, nearly nonstop. :)

Kickball

Today was the first time in weeks I'd been able to go to 180 with Billy. I'd either been sick, Merrick has been sick, or we had other church activities going on and it was canceled. I left my camera at home today, and used a loaner that I was not a fan of. The pictures are not so hot, but I wanted to put up a few of the students playing ball. I mean, 180 can't happen without some kind of sport where we can all hurt ourselves, right? One of the parents made the comment about our frequent *and intense* ballgames: "It's like a kidney...they gotta have it". :)

The Great White

Our pool at the Y officially "opened". It's open all year, but just has a giant Epcot-looking bubble over it. So they took the bubble off, and we decided to take advantage of the nice weather, and the aunties new membership at the Y. Some of us *well, as in me* only have a few more weeks of being pregnant, so we didnt want to buy a maternity swimsuit that would cost a small fortune. I'll swim after the baby get here. :) So in the meantime I am just gonna hang out here, where I don't need a small loan swimsuit:

Here are a few pictures of Merrick, Billy, and some of the aunties enjoying the pool:

As you can see from these pictures, and the title of this post, Merrick is nothing short of florescent. :) Most people are some shade of pink or tan...nope, not Merrick. We slathered lotion from his scalp to his toenails, much to his disapproval, and managed to keep him from burning. Hopefully he'll get a little bit of a tan this summer, at least so we can take off our sunglasses when he takes off his shirt.

My Mom is the Paparazzi

Just some pictures of my guy playing outside yesterday:

Eating Finding Nemo

We went to Bass Pro Shops today for lunch at work. We'd been to the store before, just browsing around, as I blogged about before in this post. We'd wanted to try out the restaurant and we got our chance today. It was a really cool set-up, with a giant fish tank (pretty much bigger than my house) right in the middle:They serve a lot of fish, which I never eat. I am not a fan, although I have tried many different kinds. *One of my worst pet peeves is when people say they don't like something they've never tried* Not that I'm much into animal-rights, but it seemed kind of weird to me to be eating fish while sitting next to the cast from Finding Nemo. So I split a burger with my mom, which was still as big as a normal sized burger. I felt better about that, since there were no cows at the next table. :)

We decided next time we go Merrick will have to make the trip with us, seeing as he's obsessed with any kind of animal and loves fish tanks. But he was home with the aunties today...who are gracious enough to keep me happy by sending me lots of pictures. This is him "cheesing" for the camera because he's so excited to be going outside to play:

Band-aids and Finales

Merrick had his 18 month check up today! As usual, he was such a tough guy for his shots...not even crying through the 3 of them. Here are his tough guy band-aids:He hates his Doctor passionately, however. It's one of the few times he clings to me. It's more like crawling up my head trying to get away. *Hey, I'll take snuggling when I can get it...usually he's very independent ;)* He screams as soon as the guy walks in the door. I'm glad his doctor has thick skin, or it really might hurt his feelings, and his ears. Merrick loves playing in the office before he sees his doctor, though. Here is a picture of him trying to pick the painted-on bug off the wall:
After his doctors visit we watched American Idol with the family. I am sad to say my favorite lost, and also that I am banishing Billy to the couch. Just kidding, but he was for the other side. ;) I liked Kris, but Adam...goodness have a set of vocal cords. Anyway, the point of all that was to say that I recorded this video of Merrick dancing *unfortunately to Fergie, who I would never vote for...haha* while we were watching the finale:

We're thinking about signing him up for So You Think You Can Dance 2023. ;)