Christmas Party!

A couple of weeks before Christmas we went home to our annual cousin Christmas party at Aunt Lisa's. We always have a ball at this one!


The kids being silly dressing up


Lincoln going on a sled ride!

Me and my little sis (who's not so little anymore)

Justin entertaining my great aunts with a game of Mad Gab for over an hour, they just couldn't get it. It was hilarious listening to them try to say the phrases!

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Gingerbread Houses!

When I was little one of my favorite traditions was going to my grandmas house to make gingerbread houses. I have started doing it with my kids the last couple years. They had so much fun this year, Jett was so paticular about where he wanted everything to go, and everything on Tayas had to be in a pattern. The best part was it kept them entertained for like an hour and a half :)

Family Pictures

While we were in Vernal over Thanksgiving we had pictures taken for my grandparents (for Christmas). 30+ people and it only took 1 hour, seriously for our family thats a miracle.

Thanksgiving Weekend

This year for Thanksgiving we went to Vernal. It was great to see all the family, I hadn't been home since June, and if you know me you know that is a long time . I usually go to Vernal once a month or a least every other. So we had about 6 months worth of catching up, which included Thanksgiving dinner, Family pictures, two baby showers, one football game, a 2nd viewing of Twilight, and lots of gamin' all in one weekend. Not to mention Lincoln woke up crying through two of the nights ( Sorry family, FYI when we got home his top tooth had broke though, poor little guy.) Needless to say I came home exhausted, but it was worth every minute.
All the girl cousins!

Playing games (our favorite tradition) Notice the candles, there not just there for the ambiance. You can't tell because of the camera flash but the power went out our last night there for about an hour, being that it was already 1:00 in the morning you would think that we would have just called it night. Not us, it takes a lot more than a little power outage to stop us Merkleys from finishing a good ol' game of Phase Ten! The Turkey Bowl

Carrie Underwood!

I and a couple of my girlfriends ( Traci Hall & Nikki Petersen) decided to get tickets and go to the Carrie Underwood concert, I let Taya come with us because she loves Carrie Underwood. She thought it was so great that she got to come on a "Girls Night" with us, she talked about it for weeks. We had so much fun, we spent the day shopping, ate at The Cheesecake Factory (yumm-o) and then went to the concert. It was so awesome, Carrie was so beautiful, even in real life. Taya knew almost every word to every song. It was so fun to watch how exciting it was to her. I always complain that Taya is 6 going on 16 she's just growing up way too fast, she is so into Taylor Swift, Hannah Montana, Carrie Underwood, and any other singer that has long blond hair ( she is obsessed with long hair.) She has been growing hers out her whole little life, too bad if the poor girl takes after her Mom it will never happen. Anyway, what a GREAT Day! It was so fun to hang out with my little "All American Girl" hopefully when she is 16 she will still be as excited to hang out with her Mom :) happy wishing anyway huh?

Fall Festivities!

This was actually before halloween I'm just getting around to posting them...

for family night my sister and her husband came over and we carved pumpkins and then went to the pumpkin walk. Justin was working on the house and wasn't able to join us but as you will see we found him at the pumpkin walk!

This was Jett's favorite one "it's Micheal Felts" he says :)

"Hey looks its Dad" said Jett as we passed this one (it's a mailman).

Halloween!

This year for Halloween we went over to our friends the Petersens. We had pumpkin bread bowls, took the kids trick-or-treating and came back to decorate cookies and watch movies. The kids had so much fun and weather was awesome for trick-or-treating! We could not keep up with Taya and Hayden and Jett lagged about two feet behind the whole time.

Making Sugar Cookies

Amber me and Nikki

The Cale's Halloween Dance Party, 50's Sock Hop!

The boy's and Marylin Monroe (what a hottie right?)

Sunny St. George

So we're not dumb, we know what to do during the first snow storm of the year; we get the heck out of dodge. Last week we headed south and just in time too, we spent a week in St. George with my whole family, and if you've ever seen the show Brothers & Sisters it would give you an idea of about how the week went in our little condo. Minus the gay brother and the dead unfaithful dad of course! I know it's kinda a schmuck show, but almost every week I laugh my butt off because it is SO my family. It wouldn't be a Merkley family vacation without a few disagreements (to put it nicely). We went go-carting, hung out by the pool, went hiking at Zion, did a little mini golfing, shopping, a little relaxing and a lot of eating as always. I love my family so much and love how close we are. I'm so glad my parents take the time to plan trips for us to get together. I love spending time with them.