Brewer's House of Music

Christmas

2012-01-07T10:45:00.000-08:00

This year we had 3 Christmas celebrations.

Celebration #1--Orem, UT-- Little Brewer Family--December 19,2011

We decided to do our own little Christmas before we headed to the Northwest. We sang songs, read the Christmas story while playing with our 'kid nativity' and let the girls open presents. We got Merrilee a few little books and a toy Xylophone (all from a thrift store in pristine condition! Yay for deals!) Alice got a little baby ball and Candyland to share with her sister.

Christmas #2--Ridgefield, WA--Dunn Family--December 21-25, 2011

We had a great time with my parents. They took us and the girls to see Santa. In the line leading up to him, Merrilee kept talking about Santa and seemed pretty excited, but as we got closer and closer, she got more apprehensive. By the time it was her turn to sit on Santa's lap, she had the death grip on Ben and was saying "No, no, no!" Finally she couldn't take it anymore and broke down screaming. Oh well, we'll try again next year. Alice, on the other hand, LOVED Santa! We got a cute picture of Alice with Santa (not on our camera, sorry). We did get some pictures of the girls in the line leading up to the Santa experience...

We 'did' Christmas with my parents on Christmas Eve. It was nice just having only us and my parents there.

Alice in her cute Christmas Pjs

After we opened presents and put the girls to bed, we had a nice little Christmas Eve 'program' with my parents. One of my favorite traditions! On Sunday (Christmas) we went to church with my parents and then moved over to the Brewers for the rest of the week.

Christmas Celebration #3--Vancouver, WA--Brewer Family--December 25-29

We sure had a great time with the Brewer clan! All of Ben's (5) brothers except one were there with their families! It was a full house! We had a fabulous Christmas Seafood dinner with everyone and then opened presents and had a family devotional. (Unfortunately we didn't really get any pictures of the girls in their cute Christmas outfits, so if anyone else did, please send them our way!) This is the only one we got of Merrilee!

We loved spending time with everybody! It was so great to see Merrilee and Ashlynn play together again, now that they are both older!

It was so fun to see ALL the cousins play together! There were lots of opportunities too...While the guys went golfing, the girls and the kids stayed home and played together. While the guys went to the Blazer game, the kids slept while the girls had a fun movie night! We all went to the new Vancouver library (Which is AMAZING!) and played together...and we also went to Aaron and Hoku's and played together. I think we need to arrange for more occasions for these cute little cousins to play together more often!

Cute Leah

Alice having fun at the library

Song had her nifty camera and took some pics of the cousins at the library!

Cute Ethan

Merrilee had a BLAST at the library!

Grandpa Brewer reading to Merrilee and Malia

The week in WA went by way too fast and we already miss everyone from both sides of the family. Thanks, all, for making our Christmas celebrations so wonderful!

P.S.- Even though there are a lot of pics on this post, we didn't get as many as we would have liked of the girls with family members, if you have any, we would be so grateful if you could send them to us!

A Little catch up...November

2011-12-11T16:25:00.000-08:00

Its been a while since we updated so here it goes...

November was a great month (really, November is my most favorite month out of the whole year :) ) We had lots going on last month. We got our family photos taken for the the first time ever since we were married. We figured two kids later, it was about time. Here are a few we really like...

Merrilee and I also got our photos taken for the local newspaper for an article about how literacy can save a child from all sorts of unfortunate life circumstances. Here is a link to the story if you are interested. It is a 3 part story. This is the first part. My amazing neighbor is featured in the 3rd part and I am in a picture in the background with Alice in the third part of the story. (if you want to see the pics bigger, click on the "images" tab at the top of the story.) It was fun to talk about how much Merrilee loves to read and to advocate for reading to children.

In mid-November, Alice had her 6 month checkup. She is still just a tiny peanut in the 9% for weight at 13.8 lbs. She did great with her shots! She only cried when the needle was actually poking her, but after it was all over with, she started giggling uncontrollably and smiling! What a silly girl. Alice has also been continuing with physical therapy for her torticollis and we just got her a helmet last week to help fix her head shape. I must say it is a little hard to nurse her with that big hard helmet, but other than that, she's been doing really well with it and she is really CUTE in it too! Ben has dubbed her "Tron baby".

We also celebrated my birthday in November. Ben got me a sewing machine which I have been wanting ever since Song taught me how to sew when we were living in Virginia with them. I am so excited! I went to JoAnn fabrics on black friday and waited in crazy long lines to get some good deals and stock up on some fabric! I've already started a few projects. For the birthday celebration, Ben and the girls took me out to lunch and then we had some cake and ice cream at home with my sister's family. We also got out the Christmas decorations on my birthday (a few days before Thanksgiving). Since we will be gone for actual Christmas, we decided to put our stuff up a little early so we could enjoy it in our home a little longer before Christmas.

We had a nice small Thanksgiving here with my sister and family. My sister and I split up the food responsibilities and just had a great time cooking and eating together! All the kids thoroughly enjoyed it too.

Merrilee had fun eating

My awesome nephews

My cute niece Ellie

This is how Alice enjoyed the meal...watching everyone stuff their faces.

Adam and Kylie hung out with us a couple days after Thanksgiving and did some black Friday shopping with us. It was fun to see them. We look forward to them being on the same flight to WA with us for Christmas so we can all help out with each others babies. :) During the Thanksgiving break, Ben and I also took the girls to the nicklecade and redeemed our tickets for a cute little doggy piggy bank for Merrilee. It was genuinely very fun to just do this fun little activity with our little family.

Another fun thing I started in November is singing in the Orem Chorale (Local community choir). Its been way too long since I've sung in a choir. We've been preparing for a Christmas concert that we will perform this week. Its been great to sing again! It really just brings my heart so much joy to be able to sing with a decent choir.

Well, that about sums up November. We feel very grateful for all of our blessings and look forward to spending the Christmas holiday with family in the Northwest!

Halloween!

2011-11-03T13:45:00.000-07:00

Halloween was a blast this year! On Saturday, we had our ward Trunk-or-Treat. We dressed the girls up, went and ate a yummy soup dinner, and passed out candy. We didn't end up getting any pictures, but it sure was fun! On actual Halloween, I took Alice to physical therapy, finished making Alice's witch hat, got the girls ready and we were off! We took the girls Trick-or-Treating with my nephews and niece and a couple other families in the ward. Alice was a witch, and Merrilee was Jo-Jo the Clown. Ben had a lot of fun taking Merrilee up to the doors. The first of many years ahead that he will be taking his kids out on Halloween! Merrilee got the hang of things pretty fast and she was quickly holding out her bucket to be filled with candy and saying "Bye-bye" at each door. It was a nice night. Not too cold...perfect fall weather. Merrilee got a pretty good loot for Ben and I to devour...oh and Merrilee. (We give her a piece every once in a while....).

(Oh yeah...I also chopped off my hair this past weekend! I like it!) After trick or treating and getting the girls to bed, Ben and I made pumpkin chocolate chip cookies together and enjoyed the Halloween lanterns I made (Isn't Pinterest the best!?) We decided making these cookies on Halloween will become an annual tradition...Because we need even more sugar after all the Halloween candy, right? :)

Halloween was great, but personally, I am thankful it is November...The BEST month out of the year for many reasons. One is it is my birthday month! Another is it is Thanksgiving month. And a third reason is I get to start listening to Christmas music. Yes I am one of those people who start listening to Christmas ridiculously early, but that's as far as I go...Christmas decorations, shopping, etc. is to be done AFTER Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving and it deserves attention during its own month. I just wish there were more "Thanksgiving" songs to listen to! ;)

Pumpkin patch + Friends and Family+Alpine Loop= FUN weekend

2011-10-25T09:56:00.000-07:00

We had a really busy, but FUN weekend! Friday we went down to Springville to Jaker's pumpkin patch with the girls. It was a pretty big patch and we got some cute little pumpkins. They also had a few animals for a "Petting Zoo" and a corn pit!

So Random...a llama and a kangaroo (or wallaby) together.

On Saturday, Ben had a service project in the morning, then we loaded up the girls and went through a house in Provo, then met Grandma and Grandpa Brewer for lunch! (Yummy! Thank you G&G Brewer!) Then we went through a house in Orem. Its really fun/exciting to be looking at houses. We have a feeling its going to take a while to find the "One" though. We aren't in any big hurry. After the showing in Orem, we came home, got the girls down for naps and CLEANED the house (It DESPERATELY needed a thorough cleaning). Our good friends Grant and Bri and their little Bracken came for dinner and we had fun playing with babies, going on a walk and carving pumpkins together. Ben and I did the cat and Grant and Bri did the fun face! It was a fun evening (Thanks Grant and Bri!)

Sunday was a great day at church. I only got to teach sunbeams for a few weeks, and now they've called me to be the Primary Pianist. After church, Ben and I went to choir. Ben watched the girls there while I subbed for the choir pianist. I love singing/playing Christmas music so early! After church/lunch/naptimes, we went for a nice Sunday drive on the Alpine Loop. It was GORGEOUS! The fall colors were so amazing and vibrant! The girls did extremely well on the long drive! The pictures don't to it justice...but here's a few.

What a GREAT weekend it was! Looking forward to Halloween weekend! Fall is the BEST!

FYI- Alice's MRI a couple weeks ago came back CLEAN AGAIN! YAY!

Cornbelly's!

2011-10-17T10:37:00.001-07:00

This past Saturday we took the girls to Cornbelly's at Thanksgiving Point. It was a BEAUTIFUL day and was a lot warmer than we expected! We started off with the cornmaze. We wound our way in a good ways and then tried to back track our way out. It usually takes us a LONG time to do these mazes and we didn't think the girls could make it all the way if we tried to do the "real" maze. I felt we were successful though! We got ourselves pretty lost and managed to find our way back out so that counts right? :)

At the beginning of the outing both girls were so happy and excited to be there!

eventually Merrilee had to get out and help push the stroller!

Merrilee had fun playing with the corn she found in the maze!

After the maze Merrilee loved playing in the corn pit while mommy fed Alice

After Alice was fed, we let Merrilee play on a big spider web and a hay tower/pit!

Then Daddy took Merrilee through the Snake maze for kids. Merrilee Loved it! Ben had to bend over and duck his head the whole time.

After the snake maze it was time for the Train ride through the non-maze corn fields. We did this a couple years ago at night and they had these creepy scarecrows and pumpkins and goblin scenes that were pretty freaky at night, but this time we saw them during the day and they were pretty silly and fun!

This is the best we could do for a family photo while we were there

After the train ride, we let Merrilee play with the duck races, watch the robotic farm animals sing and dance, get a snow cone, play on tractors, go down many slides throughout the park and see the pumpkin princess!

Alice had fun too, although I think next year she will be able to enjoy it a little more! She spent most of the time observing all the commotion like this...

But we did manage to get a cute picture of her in a little hay/pumpkin display! We tried to get both the girls together, but that failed miserably.

We were going to get pumpkins there, but they were crazy expensive, so we might go to a real pumpkin patch in the near future to get our pumpkins. If not, I guess Winco pumpkins will have to do! :)

Fun Weekend in Rexburg

2011-10-11T12:26:00.000-07:00

This past weekend we drove up to Rexburg, ID to visit Ben's brother's family for the blessing of their little baby William. The girls were really good on the 4 and a half hour drive there. Of course right when we got there we had to get a picture of the two babies together! Alice is 4 months and William is 2 months. They are both small for their ages. You can definitely tell they are related!

Saturday evening, Adam and Kylie showed us the orchard on the campus of BYU-I, where we went apple picking! First of all, I think it is AWESOME that the BYU-I campus has a beautiful orchard/gardens right on campus and that students can pick their own produce and pay minimal $ for it! Second of all, it was a perfect Fall evening for such a fun Fall activity! Thanks Adam and Kylie! That was fun!

Poor Alice is usually sleeping when we take these "Family Photo" ops.

There were over 100 different varieties of apples!

Apple Tasting

You could see the Rexburg Temple from the orchard!

Merrilee loved tasting the apples

Alice woke up! We forgot her hat in the car, so a burp cloth had to become a little bonnet for this chilly evening

Sunday morning before church, Adam showed us around campus. We found a nice spot to eat lunch on campus and as we were getting set up, a squirrel kept on following me! It came right up to me and would have walked over my shoe if I wouldn't have moved it! It also walked right UNDER Adam's foot! It was a funny squirrel and made lunch exciting. After lunch, we went to Adam and Kylie's ward for William's blessing. It was very lovely. Right after the blessing, I had to go walk the halls with Alice for the rest of the meeting because she just wasn't going to sit through church. Of course she had to fall asleep right before it was time for family photos! :)

After church, Adam and Kylie had everyone over to their place for a luncheon. Alice woke up for that and we were able to get a few pics of the girls together in their cute Sunday dresses!

Merrilee loves giving Alice loves! :)

After the luncheon, we headed back home. The girls again, did great in the car! What a fun weekend!

On another note, tomorrow is a big day...Ben starts his new job and Alice has another MRI!

Good News updates!

2011-10-03T11:26:00.000-07:00

Its been a while since we last updated this thing! Here are some updates...

ALICE
Alice is 4 and a half months old! She is still just a tiny little peanut! At her 4 month checkup she weighed in at 11.62lbs (9%), 23in long (9%), and her head circumference 15.5in (9%). She is nice and proportionate! All 9%!!

Some updates about her health...(If you are not aware of what is going on with Alice, see the posts Here and Here) We got her September urine tests back and the levels they look for were normal! YES! GOOD NEWS! Within the next couple of weeks, we will take her for another MRI and a visit with the oncologist at Primary Children's hospital.

I took Alice to the eye doctor for a checkup on her Horner's Syndrome. As far as the doctor can tell, it is not affecting her vision. YAY! More GOOD NEWS! We will just keep an eye on it and get it checked up on every 3 months.

Alice has some torticollis (a condition in which the head is tilted to one side). I took her to physical therapy today for the first time and learned some stretches and positioning to help. I will take her every week for the next 3-4 weeks and then less often after that. They say it will probably take about 4-5 months to totally correct it. Hopefully the therapy helps! Because of the torticollis, she tends to lay on one side of her head, causing flattening. There is a possiblility of putting her in a helmet later on, but we will see where she is at in about 2 months.

Alice is such a happy baby and smiley all the time! She is such a joy to have in our home! She has rolled over a few times from her tummy to her back. She still gets up 1-2 times a night (sometimes 3...Yawn). Merrilee started sleeping straight through the night at 2 months old, so this is new for me. I guess she will sleep through the night when she is ready? I'll give her until she is 6 months old, then I'll start trying "methods" to get her to sleep through the night.

MERRILEE

Tomorrow, Merrilee will be 20 months old! People always tell you how fast your little ones grow up, so enjoy it while you can! I am beginning to understand that now! Merrilee is very much morphing into a very busy toddler. She is always busy, busy, busy and on the move, exploring everything she can get her hands on! She still LOVES books, and is getting more interested in toys. Lately, she really likes babies. She has recently started being more interactive with Alice and acknowledging her presence! She loves pointing out body parts on her baby sister..."Eyes, Noz, Nom (mouth), Does (Toes)" etc. When Alice wiggles during these anatomy lessons, Merrilee giggles in delight and Alice, in turn, gives huge grins. These are the moments we live for as mothers! So precious! Merrilee also loves to talk! She'll talk herself to sleep, keep a running commentary on whats going on throughout the day, and she still reads to herself. Of course only a quarter of what she is saying is understandable to us, but she knows exactly what she is saying! Merrilee also loves to eat! But she is starting to be a pretty picky eater. The only green thing she will eat is peas and any other veggie is totally out of the picture for her. I am planning on learning some fun ways to prepare veggies that Merrilee would actually eat...I think carrot bread (NOT carrot cake) might be on the "To-Do" list this week!

MAURA
These two little babies have been keeping me pretty busy! I love staying home with them everyday and enjoy being a "Stay-at-home mom." I find satisfaction in raising these little ones and finding ways to make our little apartment more cozy for us. I like drawing on my education and teaching skills to do fun things with Merrilee. It will be fun when she is just a little bit older and more coordinated so I can start doing more "preschool" type activities with her. When she's ready, I'll definitely be ready for her!

I got a new calling in church. I am no longer the assistant choir director (*tear), I am now a Sunbeam teacher (3-4 year olds in our church's primary program)! I am sad to be leaving a music calling, but am absolutely thrilled to be in sunbeams! These little ones are so darling! Again, I am glad I have an education background for this class of 9-10 little 3 and 4 year olds! So fun!

Recently, I signed up to be a substitute teacher. I still keep in touch with most of the gals I went through the music program in college with and a few of them were teaching music the same year I taught (but they are mostly all still teaching!). A couple of weeks ago, we had a little reunion with everyone in the UT area that went through the Music Elementary Specialist program together (We missed you Shaunel!). There were only about 9 of us in the class. Man I love these girls! You form a special bond with people you have to treat like children and practice teaching "Rig-a-jig-jig" to! A lot of us are married, some of us have children, but all of us are still involved with music in one way or another. We are all passionate about the power of music! This past week I got to sub for my friend Emily's music classroom while she was at a conference for a couple of days. It felt good to be back in a classroom and it felt so familiar and comfortable teaching those children music!

The gang with Sis. Kenney (one of our beloved professors)

BEN
Since before graduation, Ben has been searching for jobs. He has had lots of 1st interviews with no offers. Luckily, his internship with Novell has allowed him to stay until he finds a job. Well...GOOD NEWS...he finally got a job offer last week! YAY! He is now the social media director for a company in Springville, UT. (Literally a golf course away from his Novell job!) Its obviously not in the NW (Where we were hoping he'd get something) but it is a job! He got the offer last week on Wed or Thurs and they asked him if he would go to a convention they were holding in Vegas on Sat and Sun! Ben left Saturday morning, and came back Sun evening. It was good for him to get a feel for the company and start helping the company reach out through social media right away. This week is his last week at Novell where he will find a replacement for his internship position. He "officially" starts his new job a week from today. HOORAY! We will most likely be looking to buy a house in the Springville/Spanish Fork area in the near future.

We are looking forward to a festive fall season and hopefully I can keep this thing updated more often so I don't have to do these LONG time-consuming posts all the time! ;)

Washington Trip

2011-09-02T10:48:00.000-07:00

LOTS OF PICTURES AHEAD!

After graduation (See post about graduation Here) and the blessing and all that's been going on with Alice, we decided we wanted/needed a break! We could have gone anywhere, but we wanted to go home to our roots in Washington where we first fell in love and started this whole adventure together!

Ben's parents left Utah on Wednesday, Aug 17. My parents left Utah on Thursday, Aug 18. Our plan was to leave on Friday, Aug 19, but our plans were thwarted! When Friday rolled around, we felt like we weren't ready to leave yet and that we would use that day to get things ready a little better. So we decided to leave on Saturday, Aug 20 early in the morning. Well, that didn't happen. Ben woke up that morning with a bad case of food poisoning. Later that day I had to take him to the doctor to get some IV fluids because he was so sick! Poor guy. It took a few days for him to recover, so on Wednesday, August 24, we finally made it on the road! We made the 800 mile trip all in one day with both the girls! It was doable because we left early in the morning. The girls did great! We stopped about every 2 hours to stretch and feed Alice. It was only the last hour or so that the girls had had enough and both of them let us know!

The girls all loaded up and ready to go!

Merrilee kept busy and happy reading her favorite books

Still happy after about 7 hours on the road!

We arrived at my parents house at about 8pm and put the girls right to bed!

The next few days we spent with my parents and my Aunt Karen who was in town for a few days. We went blackberry picking, on long walks in beautiful Ridgefield, played games and had fun just hanging out.

Blackberry picking by the side of the road. Blackberry bushes grow like weeds here! They are everywhere! Oh how we miss blackberry picking!

At the park!

Merrilee with Nana

Merrilee with Aunt Karen

Blackberry picking Again (Second time). Don't mind my weird pose.

On Friday, Ben's cousin got married. Ben went down for the sealing at the Portland Temple and I met up with everyone at the luncheon afterwards. We didn't get any pictures for documentation, but it happened. On Saturday, we took the girls down to Portland to the Saturday's Market and Powell's books.

We saw our good friend Whitney at her booth at the Market. She makes the cutest little girl stuff! Check out her etsy shop Here.

Bucket drummers and dancers. Fun!

We were going to go to VooDoo Doughnuts because apparently you HAVE to go try their donuts if you are in Portland. The line was WAY too long on Saturday, so we went back a few days later and got some. They were good, and interesting, but I still don't get what all the hype is about!

Merrilee checking out Portland from her comfy ride.

We walked down to Powell's City of Books. I LOVE this place! It is a whole city block full of new and used books! I wish we could have spent a little more time there, but the girls were getting fussy and it was almost impossible to maneuver a stroller there. Merrilee (the book lover) was in heaven when we went to the children's section. We got her a little book about puppies. She loves it.

We saw many street musicians and performers, but this guy was the coolest! He played the most awesome, captivating cello music! There was a big crowd around him. We were tempted to buy his homemade CD for 10 bucks! We didn't but now I'm kind of wishing we did! He was Amazing!

We got some yummy greek Gyro's for lunch! Gotta love Market food!

Sunday, We went to Church at Ben's parent's ward and then went back to my parents for lunch and to pack up. We spent the next few nights with Ben's parents.

Monday morning, Ben woke up to a phone call from a recruiter he's been working with. A company he interviewed with in Provo a couple weeks ago wanted a second interview either that day or Thursday! He obviously could not make it on Monday, so we decided to cut our trip short to make it back by Thursday. Monday morning, we went to the Salmon Creek Trail with the girls and Ben's mom to pick more berries. (Can you tell we like picking berries?) We love this trail. Ben and I have been on many a walk and many a run on this beautiful 3 mile trail. We barely went a half mile on the trail, but we sure got a lot of berries!

This is just the beginning!

Merrilee was surprisingly very well behaved sitting in her stroller for so long!

Alice decided it would be a good time to take a nap!

You can't see it that well, but I tried to take a picture of a blue/gray Heron.

I even taught Merrilee how to pick berries and she helped add to the loot! Gotta start em' early!

Blackberries EVERYWHERE!

Monday Evening, we went on a walk on the Columbia River Waterfront. This is where Ben and my romance blossomed. It is "Our" spot. This is another place we've been on MANY walk and talks together. This is the spot where we decided we would marry each other after Ben got home from his mission! It sure is beautiful and peaceful.

The girls loved the walk.

The obligatory kissing picture at the waterfront.

Monday night after the kids were in bed, Ben opened his graduation gifts from his parents. He has officially stepped into manhood now that he has TOOLS! Yay! Thank you Mom and Dad Brewer!

This is just a tiny sampling of the generous loot he got!

Tuesday we went to the Oregon Coast with Ben's Parents. It was so much fun! We went with them last August to the beach also...its starting to be a annual thing! Merrilee LOVED playing in the sand. We had fun just relaxing, eating a picnic lunch and enjoying the girls.

Daddy and daughter on the beach!

Alice was a little fussy at first.

Then she calmed down and dozed off

Playing in the sand!

After she got a nap, Alice was as pleasant as can be!

Merrilee found her favorite "spot" on the beach where she played, relaxed, and watched the ocean waves in this position! Funny girl.

Sorry, another obligatory kissing picture. We went on our honeymoon to the Oregon Coast!

After relaxing on the beach for a couple of hours, we drove to Seaside and walked the main drag.

Salt Water Taffy!

Wednesday, we started the drive back to Utah to get back in time for Ben's job interview. Instead of doing the drive in 1 day, we decided to take 2 days to get home. It was a little more relaxing. We stopped in Jerome, ID Wednesday night and everyone had a good night's rest. We got back yesterday (Thursday) around noon and got Ben off to his interview. We are a little sad we had to cut our trip short. There were lots of things we were planning on doing, including hiking in the Gorge, going out to eat, playing golf, going to the temple, and enjoying more time with more friends and family. Oh well. Hopefully this job stuff works out for Ben! We are looking forward to a fun Labor Day Weekend! :)

Graduation, Baby Blessing, Family

2011-09-02T09:00:00.000-07:00

Its about time to catch up on this blog!

WOOHOO!!! Ben graduated from BYU on August 11-12!! I am so proud of him! He's been a trooper going to school and working and trying to raise a little family. He's had quite the load the past few years...but now there is one less thing on his plate. Ben's parents and one of his brothers (Matt) came down from WA for the graduation. It was too hard to juggle kids and take pictures, so thank you Dad Brewer for the pictures! :)

Graduation Day 1: Commencement

Alice did not like this ceremony at all so I spent most the time out in the hallways of the Marriot Center with her. Luckily the sound was piped to the halls and there were TV monitors so I could see what was going on.

Graduation Day 2: Convocations

Alice liked this ceremony a little better...and so did I. It was a lot more intimate in the De Jong Concert Hall and the lights were low so Alice could sleep most of the time! I was so proud of Ben walking across that stage!

So its official. We are both graduates of BYU! We both even graduated from the same "college"...The College of Fine Arts and Communications! Ben has been loving NOT having homework and getting to spend that time with his family.

The Weekend of graduation, we also had Alice's baby blessing at church, on Aug. 14. It was nice to have family from both sides there to participate and witness the blessing.

We had a little bbq lunch after church to celebrate. Check out my sister's awesome shark melon!

Adam and Kylie came down with their little 1 week old baby William. Alice is not much bigger than a newborn!

Nana with Alice and Merrilee

Nana with Alice and Ellie

My cute little Alice!

We spent the next few days spending time with both sets of parents. Ben went golfing a couple of times with his Dad and brothers.

After our parents left, we decided it would be a good time to go up to WA to visit them again! More blog posts to come about our trip!

The plan + camera fun!

2011-08-10T20:42:00.000-07:00

We took Alice to the oncologist today. The plan for now is to get a urine sample every month and an MRI of head, neck and chest every 2 months just monitor things. If the levels of the VMA's and HMA's go up again in the urine samples, then we might need to scan her whole body via CT scan to see things further. If the levels stay good, then we just keep monitoring...for who knows how long!? Its seeming like Alice has the kind of Neuroblastoma that might go away on its own without any treatment! That's good news! Of course with anything medically related, there is never a 100% surety of what is going on...things just "seem" certain ways. So that's whats going on for now with Alice. We sure have felt lots of love coming our way these past couple of weeks and we very much appreciate the kind thoughts and prayers. We can definitely feel Heavenly Father's hand in this and an overwhelming sense of peace and love. We know He is watching over his little Alice and our little family! :)

This past weekend, we went on our daily walk(s) in the park(s) as a family. We have recently installed Photoshop and some other editing software on our computer. These past couple of days I have been learning a little bit of how to use these programs! Its SO fun! I think I have a new hobby. Here are the fruits of a couple hours of dinking around... I still have lots to learn, but I'm pretty pleased with my first attempts at editing. Enjoy! :)

Life

2011-08-08T16:12:00.000-07:00

.Life is funny. It seems like Life is a big ocean of waves...sometimes it swells with huge waves of excitement and happiness, sometimes it just glides along smoothly until another wave comes, and sometimes we get waves of trials. Lately, we're riding on some unusual waves of both trial and excitement.

Excitement...

Ben graduates next week! YAY! Finally! We are excited for this great accomplishment and for the next phase for Ben...finding a job/settling down somewhere/livin' the dream. For now, Ben will stay at his paid intership at Novell until he finds something else.

We have a new nephew! Adam and Kylie had their little baby boy this week and we are so excited for them!

We are having Alice's baby blessing next week and we are very excited to be celebrating both the graduation and blessing with lots of family who will be coming into town!

Trial...

We found out Wednesday that Alice might have childhood cancer...Neuroblastoma. We don't have an official diagnosis yet and we need to do a lot more tests and scans to find out more about what is going on exactly. For now, all we really know is that she likely has it.

Alice's story so far...
It all started because since birth, she has had one eye smaller than the other. The pupil is small, the eyeball itself is a little smaller and the eyelid kind of droops down a little bit. At her 2 mo. checkup, the pediatrician referred me to a pediatric opthomologist, who checked out Alice's little eye and then suggested that we get an MRI. He said it could be nothing and chances are small, but her eye might be like this due to a tumor on a nerve that affects the eye.

The opthomologist relayed this info back to our pediatrician and our pediatrician wanted to get a urine test done to see if there were certain elements elevated which could indicate a tumor. We got the lab results back on Monday and indeed, both markers they look for were elevated.

So, Wednesday we took little Alice to get an MRI. Poor thing had to fast before her appointment at 6:30am. She had to be sedated with some medication via IV fluids. She did well and was drowsy for the rest of the day due to the sedation medication.

We left the MRI appointment at about 11:00am and headed up to Primary Children's Hospital in Salt Lake to meet with an Oncologist. Our pediatrician made the appointment for us after he got the results from the urine test. As we waited for our appointment in the waiting room of the oncology dept., Ben and I looked at each other with a "This place is kind of sad" look. There was definitely a different feeling in there. It was a mix of hope and love with sadness and suffering. Overhearing people talking about bone marrow transplants and big medical words that sound scary was a little overwhelming. Alice seems healthy and strong...its just her little eye that is her only symptom. Seeing some of these small children with no hair from chemo or pic lines in their arms was really sad and overwhelming for us.

We finally got called back to an exam room and talked to a Dr. He just got a general history of Alice's health and did some checkup type things like you would see any Dr. do at a well-child checkup. Then he left the room to go see the results of the MRI and talk to the attending Dr. We waited in that room for over an hour. We were so exhausted from being up most the night plus waking up so early that we all dozed off for a few minutes. When the Dr. finally came back in, he brought another Dr. with him. I guess she was the attending doctor. He must be a resident or not as high up doctor or something. Anyways, this new doctor explained to us that the MRI showed a tiny little lymph node thing on a nerve in the neck, but didn't think it was anything of significance.

Then she proceeded to tell us about Neuroblastoma and how it is a pretty mysterious cancer in children. It can manifest itself in so many different ways in so many different parts of the body. Sometimes it even goes away by itself! In children under 1 it is very curable/treatable if it doesn't go away by itself. In kids 2 and above, it get a lot harder to treat.

After she told us about Neuroblastoma, she told us that they would like to do some more tests and scans on Alice to see whats really going on. There could be a tumor somewhere else. With this disease, tumors usually originate in the abdominal area. So she gave us some papers with all sorts of orders for all sorts of tests.

Before we left the hospital, we took Alice downstairs to the lab to have some blood drawn and another urine sample. We just got the results today and her urine test is now normal, but there are elevated levels of dopamine in the blood test. I guess that can also be an indicator of Neuroblastoma. This is now even more confusing! Why would the markers for a tumor be so elevated a couple of weeks ago and now be normal?

So basically, we still don't know much and we'll hear from the doctor probably tomorrow about what the next steps will be. Maybe this is a crazy fluke and maybe it is something more...either way, its pretty crazy.

August is going to be a crazy month, but we are very hopeful and very grateful that this was caught so early in Alice's life. She is still happy and isn't showing any other major symptoms so that is comforting. For now, life goes on as normal except with a lot more doctor's visits. Ben and I are doing well and we feel the Lord has and will prepare us for what lies ahead...whatever that may be. We will continue to document this new journey on our blog as this story unfolds.

Our happy little girl giving us smiles! :)

We went to the Zoo......

2011-08-01T15:59:00.000-07:00

Maura's start to the Post......

Last Weekend was Pioneer Day. "What is Pioneer Day", you ask? Well, it is a Utah state holiday and a day celebrated by members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints to honor the pioneers who suffered great persecution crossing the plains to get to a place of peace where they could worship without fear.

Anyways, Ben had a 3-day school weekend, but unfortunately still had to work. We had a great weekend though! We thought it was about time we took Merrilee to the zoo. Lately she LOVES anything and everything that resembles an animal. Any book with an animal, any dog she see's on a walk, any picture of an animal on a poster or sign...she loves. So Saturday we geared up and headed up to Salt Lake Hogle Zoo.

Ben finishing the post.....

So....we went to the Zoo. I think it was a lot more work then anything else. For the first hour we went about 100 yards trying to keep the kids happy and fed. I like the zoo, at least as a kid I did. I was really excited once we got in because I thought "Cool I love seeing exotic animals and those funny monkeys!"

So first we go past the monkeys...all asleep. No funny monkeys. Then we went by the elephants. The baby elephant was moping around, but the mom was in the back corner with only her butt sticking out. (She was in the same position 3 hours later when we left the zoo). The rhinos were, well, rhino-y, really not doing much. Then we went to the Leopard, tiger, and wolf area! Nothing. The tiger just laid there, the leopard was hiding in the shade, and the wolf was just hiding. Then we saw the giraffe. Well first, we went into their waiting pen inside because it was air conditioned. Merrilee pushed the stroller up and down the aisles. She got mad when we left. It was really funny.

The Giraffe's were cool. They didn't do much either, but the fact that they were so tall was cool. So after all that, we came to the camels. This was the day saver for me. The camel was walking around with its two funny humps flopping around. Even Merrilee kept saying, "What's that, whats that!?" over and over and over again.

I guess we choose the part of the day that animals sleep. (Isn't that all of the time? We saw a really cool bird show and the babies made it through it ok. The birds would fly right over our heads! I was grateful I didn't get pooped on, because there was a lot of pooping going on. I think it was worth the $9 a person to watch Merrilee chase a bird around and see the cool camel. I've concluded that Zoos are for kids and that parents get joy out of watching their kids interact with the animals. It would have been fun to watch Merrilee interact with the animals...if they were only awake. :)

Merrilee getting tired

The awesome bird show

Alice Enjoying the animals

Merrilee chasing around a bird

Our attempt at getting a picture of the girls together

Mornings with Merrilee

2011-07-30T11:11:00.000-07:00

Merrilee is such a good little girl. Every morning we take her out of her crib and let her kind of roam around to play and do whatever. Without fail, every morning we see a scene like this...

Merrilee will sit and read books for an hour at a time! She is usually very gentle with her books and we've only had one or two book casualties from moments of despair. She'll turn the pages and "read" to herself. She even does cute little voice inflections like she's reading in her own baby language. Lately her favorite book is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom. She'll read it by herself, but she will also bring it to either me or Ben several times a day for us to read it to her. We are proud parents of our little reader! :)

Baby Stats

2011-07-30T11:03:00.000-07:00

Last Friday I took both the girls to their Pediatrician for their respective 2mo. and 18mo. checkups. It was quite an experience taking two babies to the doctor in one visit...but the stats are in...

Alice is still itty-bitty newborn size to some people, but to us she is getting huge! ( I guess your perspective changes when you have a little 5 lb baby!)

Weight: 8lbs 15 oz. --> 2nd %tile

Height: 21.88 in. --> 26.7 %tile

Head: 14.1 in. --> 0.78 %tile

Aren't baby proportions so funny?

Merrilee has slowed way down in her growth, but is still healthy and strong! I've never seen her more upset than at this doctor's visit. She liked the doctor ok, but she had some serious issues with the nurse who took all of these stats...she didn't like it either when the nurse was taking Alice's stats. Cute Merrilee, looking out for her little sister.

Weight: 22.2 lbs --> 22%tile

Height: 31 in. --> 35 %tile

Head: 18.3 in --> 51 %tile

We love our girls!

Alice

2011-07-20T11:40:00.000-07:00

Alice is growing like a champ. She officially turned 2 months on Monday. I don't know how much she weighs as we don't own a scale, but I take her in on Friday for her 2 mo. checkup, so we'll get the stats soon. Lately she loves looking at and smiling at her Mom, Dad, and sister. it is so adorable to see a teeny, tiny person have such grown up facial expressions sometimes. :) Alice is a very wiggly baby. It seems like she's always moving, but she is also pretty mellow in temperament. Although, she definitely lets me know when she's hungry! We love our little Alice and don't know how we ever lived without her in our family!

Our little wiggle worm

4th of July!

2011-07-20T11:23:00.000-07:00

I know this is a little late, but we had a great 4th of July Weekend! My parents came down from WA and spent the weekend with us. One of the benefits of living in UT is people are so patriotic here! I love going through the neighborhood and seeing a flag in every yard and red, white, and blue painted all over the town! We had a fun time with my parents experiencing all of the festivities around here. At the park across the street from our house, there was a "Colonial Fest" where the park turned into a colonial village including a schoolhouse, broom maker, bakery, militia camp, lace maker, blacksmith, etc. It was a lot of fun to walk across the street and feel like we warped back in time!

We also went down to Provo for the Freedom Festival. Provo knows how to celebrate the 4th! We got in the patriotic spirit enjoying the hot summer day with vendors, music, historical sites/re-enactments, and wearing our red white and blue!

Exploring with the wheel of the Mayflower

Having fun with some prizes from some booths.

Burping the baby. Just wanted to show how tiny Alice is...all of the pictures we have are up close so it is hard to tell how dainty this tiny girl actually is! :)

Cute. :)

We stopped and watched some of the "entertainment". It happened to be a clogging dance group. Merrilee LOVED it! She was dancing and running up to the stage and laughing the whole time!

Captivated by the dancers.

Saturday night, after the kids were asleep, my parents stayed with the girls while Ben and I went and watched the Stadium of Fire Fireworks display. It was nice to get out with just Ben for the first time in a LONG time...even if it was only 45 mins. :)

On Sunday, July 3, Ben sang with the Orem Chorale in a patriotic service at the Scera Shell, (same park the colonial fest was at) featuring some of the founding fathers. Unfortunately we forgot our camera so this phone pic is the only documentation we have of it. This is the choir warming up...

Monday, the 4th, morning Adam and Ben woke up at unheard of hours and went down to Provo to stake out a spot for the parade. People around here are so crazy when it comes to the July 4th parade! People were camping overnight and the streets were already full at those wee hours in the morning! They managed to get a pretty good spot though and we all enjoyed the parade.

Enjoying muffins!

Merrilee loves her uncle Adam.

Loving the horses and making her "animal" sound...a mix between a "quack" and a "woof"

Awesome Star Wars flag display...

And the Star Wars Float (for some reason this was the only float we got a picture of!)

Isn't July the best!? Looking forward to this weekend to celebrate Pioneer Day! :)

Lately

2011-06-27T12:24:00.000-07:00

We've been having fun this summer so far. We've been pretty bad at taking pictures to document things but here's some happenings...

Orem summerfest...A celebration of the city we live in with food, booths, rides, entertainment, fireworks, etc. We walked around the festivities, found a nice spot in the park and ate lunch, and watched the fireworks later that night from our house. Here's a few shots from our picnic. Notice our new double stroller! We LOVE it! The part that holds the car seat can later convert into another chair like the front. This stroller is perfect for having two babies so close together! :)

Merrilee can now WALK!!! FINALLY! She's been taking steps for the past 2 weeks. She is getting better and more controlled at it and it is so cute to see her toddle around!

Alice is growing and getting bigger too. It may not seem like it to some people because she is still so tiny, but she really is putting on the chub and she is growing longer too! It has been hard to get any good pictures of her, especially when she is awake, but here are some decent ones of her sleeping.

next to Daddy's foot!

putting on the cute baby chub!

Sleeping soundly

Alice turns 6 weeks old this Wednesday! Wow how time flies!

Alice is still sleeping 5-6.5 hours in the night. She has started going to sleep earlier too! She'll fall asleep for the night around 8:30 or 9 instead of 11or Midnight as she was doing before. It seems like things are on the right track in the sleeping department! Another awesome thing about Alice is that she now smiles at us! And I'm not talking "gas bubble" smiles, she has now started REALLY smiling. It is so cute. She is becoming more active and is awake for a lot longer during the day now. It has been fun to get to know her. It is amazing how different each child is. If you look at pictures of Merrilee at the same age as Alice, there are some MAJOR similarities, but Alice is such a different little spirit than Merrilee. I love having 2 sweet little babies in our home. I've never been happier! :)

Other fun things...Ben ran in the Wasatch Back Ragnar Relay last weekend. Him and a team of 11 other people ran from Logan to Park City...about 192 miles. Crazies. His team asked him to fill in for someone who dropped out about a week and a half in advance. Ben obviously didn't have much time to train, but he had fun. He had 3 legs to run for a total of 20 miles. 5am, 3pm, and 3am were the approximate times of his runs. Sounds crazy hard, but crazy fun too! I drove up to Park City with the 2 babies to meet Ben at the finish line. I must say I was quite proud of myself hauling 2 little babies through the canyon for an hour drive by myself (Merrilee threw up on the way there...I think it might have been the elevation change or something) and then carrying both of them onto a shuttle that went to the finish line. It was fun and worth it and now I think I can do anything with the 2 babies by myself. :) I'm hoping next year to participate in this run with Ben.

This past weekend, Ben and I took the girls to Bridal Veil Falls in the Provo Canyon. It was a beautiful day and perfect conditions for a nice walk. It was crazy crowded there and we didn't get many pictures of the beautiful falls. Oh well. The Provo river was ROARING though! I've never seen it so high and fast! Kind of scary! There have been quite a few drownings in rivers and reservoirs around here lately. Because of the warm weather coming late and more precipitation than usual during the winter/spring, the rivers are overflowing! Here's some pics of the day...

Next to the Provo river

This is what Alice thought of it all. Just kidding. She actually LOVES the outdoors and is the most calm and peaceful when we are outside.

Mommy-daughter moments

Ben started his last Semester of classes last week! He graduates in August! How exciting! He has been looking for Public Relations jobs. Hopefully he can find something before he graduates!

Well, that's some of what we've been up to lately. We're looking forward to the 4th of July weekend!

3 Weeks old!

2011-06-08T12:34:00.000-07:00

Wow! How time flies! I can't believe its already been 3 weeks since Alice was born! The last 3 weeks have been great! I love having a little newborn around. Her soft tiny head resting on my shoulder, her tiny hands and feet flailing around, and her teeny tiny bum are just so irresistibly cute! Her sweet little spirit adds so much to this home...how did we ever live without Alice?

I forgot some things about newborns....
-how much they poop
-how much they spit up
-how often they eat
-how much laundry there is!
-how much all of this is worth it! :)

ALICE
At Alice's 2 week checkup last week, she weighed in at a whopping 6lbs 4oz and 19 in. long. She's growing like a champ! She has taken to breastfeeding a lot faster and easier than Merrilee did, which is so nice. She's already starting to sleep longer at night. 2 nights ago she went about 5 hours straight and last night she slept for 6 hours straight! Alice is very mellow and calm and rarely cries. Hopefully all of these good trends stay good! :)

MERRILEE
Merrilee is warming up to Alice. At first Merrilee just wanted to know what Alice was..."Was dat?" (She says that about EVERYTHING throughout the day.) Now she understands that Alice is here to stay and is another human being. She has been a lot more clingy to me lately and wanting more love and attention, which is to be expected, but no tantrums or meltdowns yet. Merrilee is also starting to be a great helper. She'll hand me a burp cloth, diapers, wipes, etc. anytime of day, not just when I need them! She will come over and pat Alice on the head gently and then go off playing with something else. Other big news for Merrilee... This past weekend, she STOOD UP in the middle of the yard all by herself without holding on to anyone or anything! YAY! She loves to show off her new trick now and flashes a big cheesy grin while clapping for herself every time she stands up now. So cute. She is that much closer to WALKING!

Merrilee standing up and showing off!

This was taken just a few days before Alice was born. It was just too cute not to post!

We made a little play area for the girls! Merrilee loves it!

MAURA
Recovery has been fantastic this go around. Way easier recovery than with Merrilee. I was really sick when I had Merrilee and then she got admitted to the hospital when she was just 8 days old so the stress didn't help either. This time, everyone is healthy, Alice was smaller (which helps a lot with recovery!), and its springtime (not winter) which means its sunny and warm outside so I can actually go outside with the baby and not be cooped up in our little basement all the time! My energy is coming back and I'm feeling great! I can't wait to start running with Ben again to shed the extra 5-10lbs of baby weight I still have.

BEN
Ben has been fabulous helping around the house with household duties and baby duties. He has been very busy with work and school, but when he's home, he is so helpful. What a man! It is so fun to see him come home and play with Merrilee and then come get Alice and play with her too! He's a natural daddy. :)

We love having two little girls in our family! There is such a sweet spirit in our home with these little ones!

Merrilee giving loves to Alice.

"Was dat?"

Meet Mrs. Alice Mae Brewer

2011-05-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

Here a few pictures of Alice. She is a beautiful baby! Mommy and baby are doing well and we hope to hed home tomorrow! More to come....

Training wheels for walking

2011-05-09T21:43:00.000-07:00

Merrilee is still not walking on her own yet, but today she showed promise as she walked pushing her little train! Up until now, she would not walk unless holding on to someone's hands or cruising along furniture. We've tried to get her to walk with this train in the past, but she always seemed nervous and wouldn't try. Today she made our day! Keep it up Merrilee! You'll be walking in no time! (Preferably before baby #2 comes!)

Easter + current goings ons

2011-05-07T09:05:00.000-07:00

I know this is a little late, but here's a recap of our Easter Weekend festivities.

My parents came in town for my little brother's graduation from BYU. We had a mini-family reunion at Chick-A-Rama with my grandparents and some Aunts and Uncles who live in Utah.

It was past Merrilee's bedtime and she was being a little crazy! :)

Grandma and Grandpa Dunn (right) with Aunt Eileen and crew.

My parents went to Jesse's Graduation. Way to go Jesse!

We went on a fun walk to the park with Merrilee and she discovered the bark dust! (and how to eat it)

On Easter Sunday my sis and I split up the cooking responsibilities. I did the ham, green beans, and rolls. My first time ever attempting to do a whole ham and my first attempt at homemade rolls! I think they turned out pretty good!

(Thanks for the roll recipe Jer!)

That afternoon, my sis and bro-in-law set up an awesome Easter Egg Hunt for the kids in the yard. Ben helped hide the eggs and everyone had a great time.

Ben even managed to get a belly shot of me!

As of yesterday, I am 37 weeks along! I could pop any day now! We are excited!

In other news, Merrilee's room is under construction. There was a pipe leak in the house that affected my sister's kitchen and Merrilee's bedroom. Currently, her room has no ceiling or carpet (it all had to be ripped out.) She was sleeping in our room in a pack and play, but last night we moved her to her crib in the living room. Hopefully her room can get put back together before the baby comes!

And just to end with some cuteness.... :)

My Royal Wedding. Happy Anniversary!

2011-05-03T09:40:00.000-07:00

So this past Friday was the "Royal Wedding." I didn't really get that into it, but I do admit that I did watch some parts of it online throughout the day. It certainly was fun to see a "Prince" marry a now "Princess". I thought Kate looked very elegant and all of the tradition and pomp surrounding the actual marriage was rather intriguing and beautiful...the grandeur of the building, the long walk through the Abbey, the Carriage awaiting the newlyweds, the balcony wave and kiss, the feathered hats, and of course the dress. William and Kate had the world watching their wedding and their every move...

3 Years ago, today, I got to have my own "Royal Wedding". It didn't involve crowds of people, carriages, or fancy hats, but it very much was a "royal" occasion. Ben and I were married for time and all eternity in the Portland, Oregon LDS Temple, a beautiful castle for our Savior and King and his royal children.

There was not a huge, elaborate ceremony with long walks down the aisle or fancy hats, but a simple, intimate gathering of our most loved in a single room; and a sweet, perfect covenant to join two hearts, souls, and lives as one.

This is a picture of the Vancouver, B.C temple sealing room, not Portland, but the room we were sealed in is very similar.

There were not huge crowds of people watching our every move, or waiting for us outside of the Temple, but I'm sure there were many spirits rejoicing in heaven to see us together in the Temple.

Of course we had a Celebration later that evening with all of our friends and family who could make it!

OUR STORY
Ben and I met in the year 2000. We were both Freshmen in High School and we were in the same early morning Seminary class. I thought he was goofy and immature and didn't really care for him as anything more than an acquaintance. I'm not sure he even noticed me back then. :) He was really good friends with a lot of my girlfriends, but I didn't really get to know him until our Junior year in High School. We had always been in the same Seminary class and by Junior year, it seemed like a lot of our friends were mutual. Towards the end of Junior year, our groups of friends started hanging out together and we started developing crushes on each other. It was around prom time and there were rumors among friends that Ben was going to ask me. Well, he didn't...he had some excuse like he was too busy or something. ;) So I asked him instead! Junior Prom 2003 was our very 1st date. It was lovely!

Junior Prom 2003

We dated all of Senior year. From here, the rest is history. I went to BYU, dated other guys, Ben went on his mission to the West Indies. The first time we spent some time together when he got back from his mission (July 2007), we both knew that we would get married.

This is Ben's first night after he got home from his mission. We knew we were meant to be!

Ben proposed on August 18, 2007...just before I headed back to BYU and he stayed in WA to work and do some school at the community college.

Right after he proposed!

Ben moved down to Utah in January of 2008 and we got to spend the last 4 months of our engagement actually in the same vicinity! We were married in the Portland, Oregon Temple on May 3, 2008.

Since then, I have graduated from BYU, taught a year at an elementary school, we took a trip to visit Ben's Mission, we had a baby girl, we lived in Washington D.C. for 4 months, we are about to have our 2nd baby girl, and Ben is almost done with school at BYU. It has been a fabulous 3 years and I look forward to the rest of eternity with my best friend!

Oh Spring...Where are you?!

2011-04-11T11:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was General Conference for our church. It was so uplifting and inspiring and I am resolved to be a better person. Saturday was a beautiful day with sunshine and temperate temperatures. Sunday morning we woke up to this.

SNOW! On April 3!

It all melted off by the end of the day, but still....seriously?! We bundled up Merrilee and let her play in the snow for about 10 min. before the Sunday morning session of Conference started. She had a "what is going on?" expression on her face most of that time. Although, she did discover that she could eat snow!

This weekend it snowed again. But at least it didn't stick. Oh spring...where are you?

The pregnancy is going well. I'm 33-34 weeks along and getting quite uncomfortable, but all in all feeling pretty good. We realized we haven't really been taking belly shots at all this whole pregnancy, so Ben so lovingly took some last night...

Yes, I'm pretty sure I'm looking a lot bigger this time around. I think I was about this big (maybe just a tad bigger) when Merrilee was born. Here are some pictures of the day before Merrilee was born. (Who knew I would go into labor the next day!?)

Merrilee was born early at 38 weeks, so if this baby comes early like Merrilee, we only have about 4-5 more weeks! That would be preferred. I'm getting to the point where I just want this baby to come! But if she doesn't come early, I'll just have to stick it out for 6-7 more weeks and try to keep myself busy "nesting" and all of that. We're getting really excited!

Merrilee: 2025 Dancing with the Stars Champion!

2011-04-10T21:12:00.000-07:00

Merrilee Busting a Move with her new toy! We finally used a birthday gift card from her Grandma and Grandpa Brewer! Enjoy! :)

Springtime!

2011-03-28T10:47:00.000-07:00

The weather has been teasing us the last few weeks. It will be sunny and Spring-like and get me all excited and then it will have an identity crisis and rain with snow mixed in and decide to be freezing! I decided I needed to help Spring truly find itself by making this banner to hang on our fireplace. Maybe it will inspire spring to come out once and for all! :) It looks like spring might make a true appearance this week. We will see...

Since it has been somewhat "nice" outside, we have been going on more and more walks. Merrilee loves walks and it is good for me to get out of the house and get some kind of exercise.

Ben and I went to a BYU baseball game this past Saturday. Ben got free vouchers somewhere and it was a lot of fun! Merrilee loved it. They would play music between innings, or if they were switching out the pitcher and Merrilee would dance and laugh. Just watching baseball and singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" got me so excited for summer to come! BYU won the game.

Before the game on Saturday, Ben said if we got all our chores done, he would take me to IKEA! That was kind of an unexpected surprise! We got most (not all) of our chores done, but we went anyways! It was fun to dream of having our own house and talk about the kinds of furniture and rooms we will have one day. Hopefully it is in the near future! We ended up buying just a few items that we needed, like a new dish rack, Tupperware, and a $5 lamp for Merrilee's room. The lamp came just white and boring, but I spruced it up a little bit with ribbons and hot glue to match Merrilee's girly pink room.

Last night I made a crock-pot dinner and Ben was in love with it! I decided I'd share the love in case any of you have husbands like mine who salivate just thinking about meat! :) Enjoy!

Slow Cooker Italian Beef Sandwiches

(Prep time: 10 minutes, cooking time 8-10 hours on low, 4-5 hours on high)

2-3 pound beef bottom round or eye of round roast

1 (32 ounce) box of beef broth

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon dried oregano

1 teaspoon dried basil

2 garlic cloves, minced

1 teaspoon dried parsley

1 (.70 ounce) package Italian salad dressing mix

Place beef roast in a slow cooker, fat side up. Pour broth into a medium saucepan and add all other ingredients. Stir well and bring to a boil. Pour broth mixture over the roast. Cover and cook on low 8-10 hours, high 4-5 hours. If possible, turn roast over after 5-6 hours. Prior to serving, flip roast over again and scrap off any visible fat. Remove the roast from the slow cooker and using two forks “shred” the roast. (Or just buy a pre-sliced roast like I did and use the slices instead of "shreds"...so much easier than having to shred meat.) Return the beef back to the broth in the slow cooker. Serve on Italian rolls with sautéed green peppers if desired.

Serves 6-8

(We melted mozzarella cheese on top of the meat and then put on the green peppers and a spoon-full of broth. YUM!)

Serve with sliced apples and oranges and watch your husband melt! :)

Growing Up

2011-03-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

Merrilee is growing up so fast! She is just so cute! I can't help but smother her with loves all day long with her long crazy hair, cute teeth and chubby cheeks! Her daily routine consists of waking up and playing anywhere from 45 min. to 3 hours. She eats somewhere in there and then goes down for a nap (sometimes). Sometimes she skips her morning nap and plays even longer until afternoon nap time. Sometimes she skips her afternoon nap if she's already had a morning nap. She is basically all over the place with her nap schedule.

She loves music! (YEAH!) she loves strumming the guitar, beating drums, and most of all she loves playing the piano. If I ever try to get a few minutes of practice or pleasure playing in, Merrilee is standing right next to me plinking away on the keys. Sometimes she'll start to cry or whine until I pick her up and let her sit on my lap to play. When this happens, she immediately removes my hands from the keyboard if they are on it. She wants to do it all by herself. Of course, as a former public school music teacher and current private piano teacher, this enthusiasm for music from my firstborn makes me extremely happy. :)

Merrilee's 1 year molars are all coming in at once. She had a few days where she was very irritable. Poor thing. But she is over the worst of it I think.

We hope Merrilee will start to walk before the new baby comes. I think she is pretty close, but she sure likes to take her time with these milestones! She is a little Speedy Gonzalas when it comes to crawling though. She likes to chase her daddy and mommy around all day long and likes to have crawling races with her daddy. Daddy will crawl around on the floor and Merrilee laughs and laughs while trying to keep up with him. So cute.

Lately, her favorite toy (besides the musical instruments) is a little train that has lots of buttons and plays music. Her Nana Dunn got it for her for Christmas. That thing will keep her occupied for a good amount of time!

Another one of her favorite things is Bath time! If we leave the bathroom door open while not in use, she will most certainly crawl in and stand up next to the tub and giggle and talk about how much she loves baths. I don't bathe her every day, but I'm starting to be tempted to just because she loves it so much. She only has one bath toy, a pink rubber duck. I think we will need to invest in some more bath toys! My favorite is doing awesome hair-do's to her hair after bath time, as demonstrated below...

I can't wait to have another sweet little girl to add to the cuteness in our house. Girls are so fun! About 9 more weeks to go! (give or take...still questionable on the due date)

P.S. The above photos are products of experimenting with editing photos at this free website.

Clarification, Crafts, and Cuteness

2011-03-03T12:46:00.000-08:00

So I think some clarification is needed...

There has been some confusion about the "Kicking of the Dog" incident that Ben posted about. The dog was not harmed and it wasn't a WHAMO kick that Ben depicted. Ben merely lifted his leg as the dog was near it and the tip of his foot brushed the nose of the dog. The dog did no whimpering and no harm was done.

Now that that is clarified, on to other things.

Merrilee was sick again this past weekend. Poor thing. Seems like she gets sick a lot, but she is over it now. My mom was also in town over the weekend and it was fun to see her and spend time with her.

I have been feeling quite crafty lately and I have finished a few projects.

Crochet Project #1--Kylie, my Sis-in-law, was crocheting cute headbands for friends over Christmas and it inspired me. I got some yarn and crochet needles and tried my hand at it. For the headband, I didn't exactly follow a pattern, but just experimented until something kind of resembled what I was going for. For the flower, I did follow a pattern I found on youtube. It turned out Merrilee size, but it can also stretch to my size. Both Merrilee and I have worn it. (I'm wearing it in the pics on the last post.) Its a little rough around the edges, but it works!

Crochet Project #2-- Star stitch hat with flower. The pattern for the hat can be found Here. I added a row or two to make it adult size. The flower is the same pattern I used for the Headband and can be found Here. I think this hat turned out really well and I'm kind of proud of it.

Crochet Project #3-- Slippers. One of them got weird at the toe and I'm not sure what happened, but overall I think they turned out ok for my first attempt at something like this! I found the pattern on the Red Heart yarn website Here.

My next crochet project will hopefully be something for the new baby...we'll see!

So I threw a Bunco party just before Valentine's Day and for some of the prizes I made some magnets and put together some frames...Of course I couldn't resist making some for myself to keep too!

For the magnets I bought some flat backed clear gems, some magnets, and some clear tacky glue. I used some scrapbook paper that I had for the designs. Its as easy as cutting the paper to the size of the gem, and gluing it to the gem, and then to the magnet! So Fun!

I found the design for the print at this site, printed them off at costco, and stuck them in some cute frames.

My latest project has been a cork board. Our desk/office area gets so cluttered sometimes I want a place where we can hang our important things up so we will see them and take care of them right away, or just to have up as a reference. I found the most amazing site that has tutorials on all sorts of amazing crafts! This tutorial covered the frame with fabric, but I used some scrapbook paper again. I still might switch out the ribbon I used for a more brown satin-y type ribbon (like the one on the tutorial) which I think might look a little better with the colors I used. I still need to hang it up.

There you have it folks. I don't take credit for any of these ideas, I just steal good ideas from other people. :)
You can go ahead and steal the ideas too, they were all free online!

In other news, Merrilee has been protesting her afternoon naps...she throws her blanket out of the crib and cries like its the end of the world when I put her in her crib for her afternoon nap. Even when she is obviously SO tired (bags under eyes, rubbing eyes, crying at everything), she protests! I don't know if this is a phase or if she is deciding to switch to a one nap schedule. I guess we'll see. Here's some more pics of the cutie...

She LOVES books!! :)

What a great weekend!

2011-02-22T12:05:00.000-08:00

So if you haven't read Ben's post below, I highly recommend it. It is quite humorous and really shows Ben's fun personality. My life would be so dull without him! :)

Anyways, I know I promised a 1 year birthday post for Merrilee, but the pics we have of it are on Ben's phone (not a smart phone) and it is a process getting the pictures off of his phone. Merrilee was sick on her actual birthday...poor girl. She was running a fever and very tired for a few days. A few days after her birthday we just had a few family members over to sing happy birthday and eat cake. Merrilee really liked her little portion of cake! She scarfed it down like there was no tomorrow! I wish we could have gotten a video of it. Oh well.

This past weekend was really fun and it was nice to be able to spend some time together as a family. Saturday we went out shopping together as a fam getting errands done, buying groceries, etc. Ben and I really enjoy doing these things together...in fact it is one of our most favorite things to do together.

Sunday we went to church, cooked together, played games, and watched church movies together. So nice.

Yesterday (Monday) Ben had work and school off so he got some homework done in the morning while Merrilee took her nap and in the afternoon we went to Provo Canyon for a nice walk to Bridal Veil Falls. We don't have a jogging stroller or anything but we still trekked in the snow with our stroller and Merrilee and it was so fun! It was really refreshing to be out in nature together and just get away for an hour or two. After our little walk we drove to one of our favorite spots in the canyon (where we have gone snowshoeing, hiking, and picnicking before) and sat in the car and ate some snacks we packed. Our surroundings were so majestically pretty and it was fun to watch kids sledding and people enjoying the outdoors.

As we were eating and enjoying, we saw a family with 7 kids pile out of a huge van and start gearing up to go snowshoeing together! The oldest kid was probably 15 or 16 and the youngest looked about 2 or 3 and we couldn't quite tell, but the mom kind of looked pregnant under her coat! We were amazed! We decided we want a family that awesome! Taking all our kiddos (however many that will be) out on family adventures like snowshoeing! Those are the most memorable times together!

Not much else going on...Like Ben mentioned below, we had the ultrasound and we are having another girl! YAY! The due date is still a little questionable...there are 3 due dates...May 19, May 22, and May 27. So somewhere around then is when we will have the baby.

Here are some pictures of our outdoor fun-ness! (Beware...there are a lot of pictures...Merrilee was being so cute and fun we couldn't resist taking so many pictures of her!)

Why yes, I did crochet that headband...the very first crochet project I've ever tried/finished.

26-27 Weeks along!?

Ben thinking he is so smart with my glasses on!

Lessons for Life: "Don't Kick Dogs in the Face!"

2011-02-19T22:35:00.000-08:00

So there I was, enjoying a nice stroll with my family on a Sunday afternoon, when I saw two little puppies running down the road. Ok, so they weren't exactly puppies. They were those little dogs that you have always wanted to kick through the uprights. As they came nearer, I had an odd feeling that I would get to do something I had always wanted to do. One of the dogs, conveniently a "Shnouser"(Dog with big nose-face), decided to attack me. I could have put the stroller between me and the Dog, but I'm afraid Merrilee would have had a permanent fear of dogs. So I took a step forward and Wammo! It was like kicking the sweet spot on a football. The Shnouser (Dog with big nose-face), defeated, yelped and ran to his owner who was only a few yards away. Oh crap. What made it worse was the fact that the owner was a cute old man. Crap crap. So I began to feel a little guilty until he said, "you kick that Dog!" meaning, kick him when he is naughty. I felt bad for the predicament I put the old man in, so I told him he had a nice dog, even petted the stupid pathetic thing, and went on our way.

The next day we found out the sex of our baby. Thankfully I didn't kick a dog in the face. Anyways,....

From the moment I walked into the ultrasound room, I had a feeling that I wouldn't see anything "between the legs," if you know what I mean. And sure enough, the doctor said, "can you tell what it is!" Yep, a giant blank spot. Well, I am happy to be outnumbered three to one. I've always liked girls more then guys anyways. :) (Nothing to do with the fact that I was relentlessly teased for the first 18 years on my life)

So Merrilee is probably the funniest baby I know. Today while out shopping, Merrilee blew her tongue at me. It was awesome! I love teaching her things that will be useful throughout her life. I hope Maura can learn to do those things too.

Merrilee climbed all the way up the stairs! We are trying to get her to be able to do this on her own before the next baby comes. Can you imagine Maura carrying two babies up and down our stairs!? I can. :)

So the internship has been going well. I like working at Novell. I feel pretty awesome working with all the executive folk. I am know as "just the intern." A suitable title I guess. I hope to be there for a while because this internship actually pays.

So I watched Alice in Wonderland for the first time in my life. If you want to see the inside of my brain, watch Alice in Wonderland (the new version.) How can anyone go throughout the day without seeing the funny teeth on the manikin and thinking they haven't been to the dentist for a while, or seeing the guys on campus practicing sword fighting and actually thinking it is cool. (Don't mess. Those guys are awesome.)

Its just nice to look at life differently you know.

If you need help learning how to see life differently....Find a Dog, and kick it in the face.

Bye.

-Benjamin

Almost 1 year!

2011-01-31T10:05:00.000-08:00

Merrilee turns 1 on FRIDAY! Can you believe it? This year has gone by so fast. Here are some pictures showing how Merilee has grown this past year.

Feb.4, 2010, Merrilee Anne Brewer, 6 lbs 13 oz. 18 in. long.

As you can probably tell from the pictures, Merrilee truly lives up to her name...She is a constant joy and is almost always smiling and happy. We are so blessed to have her in our lives. Look forward to a 1 Year Birthday post coming soon...

Catch up

2011-01-28T09:54:00.001-08:00

So It has been pretty crazy the last month as we have been transitioning from DC back to Orem.

A quick look at how it went down:

-Dec. 13 Sold our car

-Dec.12-14 packed all of our belongings into 5 huge boxes

-Dec. 15 Flight to Chicago then to SLC...Stayed at G&G Brewer's because our apartment was still occupied.

-Dec. 16 Errands around town and Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert that night. (Awesome by the way!)

-Dec. 17 Flight to PDX

-Dec 17-28 Family time with Brewers and Dunns and Christmas festivities

-Dec. 28 Fly to SLC in the evening...come home to empty apartment

-Dec. 29-Present Still trying to unpack and get things in order.

   -Dec. 31-Jan. 1 Loni and Jordan spent the night with their 2 little ones and we had a Fabulous time bringing in the New Year

   -Jan. 4 Ben started semester at BYU taking 18 credits. (and Merrilee turned 11 months! And baby #2 turned 20 weeks brewing in the oven.)

   -Jan. 17 Ben turned 25...Dinner and games with friends. (Oh, and MLK Jr. Day so no school for Ben!)

   -Jan 20 Ben interviews for another PR internship in Provo...this time its paid! Thank Goodness.

-Jan 24 Ben receives offer for PR internship with Novell in Provo. YAY!

All in all, we are settling in and it is nice to be back in Orem, although we do really miss being with Mike and Song. And in case you didn't catch it in the above chronology of our last month...I'M PREGNANT!!! I'm already 23 weeks along. We haven't found out the gender yet, but are planning on it soon. Merrilee and the new baby will be 15, almost 16 months apart. We are really excited to have TWO little ones! As Ben put it the other night..."Right now we have a cute little family, but when the new baby comes, we will have a REAL BONA-FIDE family!" Haha.

Below are some pictures to catch you up to how cute Merrilee is!

Daddy, Daughter time at G & G Brewer's house.

Opening presents on her 1st Christmas! (Please don't pay attention to my leopard print PJs)

Ready for Church!

Thanks Nana Dunn for the CUTE dress! :)

Enjoying a banana in her Bumbo.

Merrilee talks all day long to whoever will listen (her toys, parents, bookshelf, etc.) and cracks herself up. She is a fast little scooter and sometimes gets into trouble because we haven't completed baby-proofing yet as we are still unloading boxes, organizing etc. She still doesn't have a high-chair, so we stick her in the bumbo on the kitchen table to feed her. This isn't working out too well because now she knows how to crawl out of the bumbo! I guess we are just going to have to bite the bullet and fork over the $ for a high chair.

We have been really bad about taking pictures lately...Merrilee changes everyday it seems like. Hopefully we can be better so we can keep you all updated more frequently.

More fun adventures in Washington DC!

2010-12-06T12:38:00.000-08:00

Hello Everyone! We still can't believe that another month has come and gone. We had lots of fun adventures with the Brewer clan this month. Here is a synopsis of our travels:

Cute Merrilee just being cute.

The Mike Brewer family enjoying a fall walk

Merrilee was a cute Ballerina for the ward halloween party.

This is the Sunday dress Merrilee wore on Halloween Sunday.

Cute Ballerina!

We went to Mt. Vernon for Carmen's 6th Birthday. Merrilee really enjoyed this little garden.

We went to help Mike and Song pick out a Christmas Tree. It was so windy and cold! The kids were good though and we got a fabulous tree! Here Ethan is being a stud!

Mike cutting down the tree.

Trying to stay warm

The whole gang

Yay for Christmas!

Some other noteworthy experiences:
* In early November, we took a weekend trip up to New Jersey to visit Maura's Uncle Rick and Aunt Silvia and their kids. All in all it was an enjoyable visit, despite Merrilee running a fever and not being able to keep any food down the whole weekend. Poor baby.

* Ben got to sing for the Romanian Ambassador at a special Thanksgiving dinner that the LDS International Affairs office hosted for the Ambassador. Maura joined him at the dinner and accompanied his singing of the Josh Groban song "Thankful". It was a very fancy, formal affair and a great experience for all.

*Thanksgiving was nice with the Brewers and 2 other families from the ward. We had a late dinner so that Mike could join us...he had to work at the hospital that day. Everyone brought/made their best stuff so it was VERY yummy.

* The last big event of the year for Ben's office was Festival of Lights this past week. Maura got to go on night 1 and help out. It was a nice ceremony where the Christmas lights at the temple/visitor's center were turned on. There was music, ambassadors from other countries, prominent LDS members, nativities and decorated trees. It was a great way to kick off December.

*Merrilee is 10 months old now and is starting to scoot around and is very close to crawling!

* We are trying to sell our car within the next week because we end our journey here in DC next week! We can't believe how fast the time has gone. We will miss Mike and Song and some things about the area, but Ben definitely will not miss the commute and traffic everyday! We are looking forward to spending Christmas in the "true" Washington (state) where both of our families are. Merry Christmas everyone!

Baby is growing up so fast!

2010-10-22T13:42:00.000-07:00

So, since last post, we've done a lot of things. We've been to downtown DC quite a few times to enjoy more sites and all the while, Merilee is growing up so fast right before our eyes! In the last post there were pictures of Merrilee with one little tooth. Now she has 2 teeth with 3 more cutting in! She has learned how to sit up, roll all around the room, make more sophisticated baby babble, feed herself a baby biscuit, and she still just smiles at everything and everyone! We think she is learning that she is supposed to smile for the camera because almost everytime we point it at her, a big grin comes across her face! Here are a few pics as evidence...

sitting up

Us at the Jefferson Memorial. If you look closely, you can see Merrilee's two bottom teeth poking out.

More Jefferson Memorial. Nice hair baby.

Family Photo at Jefferson Memorial...with Mike trying to be superman in the background.

Baby needs her rest when we go on these outings.

At the FDR memorial. If you zoom in on this one you can see her little teeth again! :)

On Conference Weekend, we went to the DC Temple visitor's center on both days. On Saturday we just walked around the temple grounds and the visitor's center before conference started and came home to watch it with Mike and Song on their computer. On Sunday, we went back and watched one of the sessions at the visitor's center and then came home for the other. It was a good way to spend conference weekend!

Merrilee enjoying the Temple grounds

It was a BEAUTIFUL day!

Still enjoying Temple grounds in her cute outfit!

Some other things we have done recently include visiting a few of the Smithsonian Museums, the Lincoln Memorial, WWII memorial, Vietnam War memorial, Korean War memorial, and probably other stuff I'm forgetting. We got asked to sing in church this past sunday...Ben and I sang "Be Still My Soul". It was nice to sing together and practice for it...it gave us music in our lives!

Speaking of Music...I figured out how to get Ben's Impossible Dream video on here! Enjoy! :)

Our most current goings ons

2010-09-20T12:10:00.000-07:00

So we started our road trip on Sunday, Aug, 22 in the afternoon. we drove about 6ish hours until we got to Laramie, Wyoming. The exciting thing that happened on that day was it rained off and on during the drive, creating the biggest, most vivid rainbow Ben and I have ever seen. We chased the rainbow for a few hours until it got dark. We had no idea where wehad packed the camera, but we did get some documentation on Ben's phone camera. Our hotel in Laramie (Best Laramie Inn) was fine...but WAY overpriced for what it was. The pics online looked really nice, but it was probably the quality of a Motel 6 or less but cost as much as a La Quinta or Best Western. Anyways, we got enough sleep and started on our way in the morning.

The next 3 days, we drove 8-10 hours per day. We stayed in Des Moines, Iowa, and somewhere just outside of Chicago that I forgot the name of. It was fun to see the midwest again (I lived some of my childhood days in Minnesota). The next 2 hotels were very nice with very nice rooms and continental breakfasts. We were pleased. Iowa was by far the most humid and the buggiest. We could barely see out of our windshield once we got out of Iowa because of all of the bug splatter. Here are a few random pics of the drive.

We're on our way!

Pit stop

RV pulling this= Awesome! :)

Pretty scenes

Another pit stop

Fun at a Hotel

Its a game called FIND THE BABY

Since we've been here in Springfield, VA, we have had lots of fun with Mike and Song. We have been on many a walk on pretty trails...

We also have been to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson's home. I really loved it there. Monticello means "Little mountain" or maybe it means "mountain of beauty"...either way, it was beautiful. The house is situated on top of a "mountain" (in reality it is just a hill, but out here I guess it is considered a mountain). From the house there is a 360 view of the land round about. Truly breathtaking. I learned so much about Thomas Jefferson just by touring his house that he was the architect of. He was a man of science and education and wanted to educate others from the moment they walked into his house! In his entryway there are/were maps of the world, artifacts from native americans, a calendar/clock that he designed and lots more. His study room also impressed me...full of books. It was really inspiring to learn about his personal life on his estate. I think Thomas Jefferson was truly an inspired man as he drafted the important documents that define our great nation. We couldn't take pics inside, but here are some from the outside...

I has been nice to be able to trade off babysitting with Mike and Song so that we can get out together. One night, Ben took me on a date to downtown DC so that we could see some of the monuments lit up at night. It was really fun.

Washington Monument

WWII Memorial

White House

The weekend after Monticello and the night DC trip, Mike and Song took us to Fort Washington. It was originally built to protect DC from the river, but was never used (as fighting grounds anyways) because new technologies and other fortifications were built. It is now a recreational area/historical site. It was cool.

Us at Fort Washington

Merrilee just loves these outings!

Michael and Carmen enjoying Fort Washington

On Sept. 11, the LDS church public and international affairs office (where Ben is doing his internship) along with the Marriotts (as in Marriot Hotels) hosted a Western Family Picnic for international ambassadors and their families at the Marriot Ranch in the middle of VA. Ben worked really hard on designing the program that we handed out to people and calling embassies to confirm RSVPs and inviting more ambassadors. The day before the event I went in to the office with ben to help with little things such as centerpieces and taking tags off of hats and bandanas and stuff like that. At the actual event, I helped out Ben at the nametag table as guests arrived and I also went early with Ben to help set up. There were lots of crafts and things to do for the kids as well as yummy food and a nice program. Ben had his part in the program when he held up signs to shoe everyone how a cowboy talks (i.e Welcome = Howdy! and Goodbye = Happy Trails, etc.). He also got to show all of the ambassadors and guests how to strut like a cowboy! He did great and everyone had fun. Every guest recieved a cowboy hat and a bandana to get in the "Western" spirit. It was fun to see all the people of other countries and nations dressed up like they were in an old Western film or something. Jay Jensen of the Seventy was there and gave some remarks as well as Senator Bennett, the Marriotts, and other LDS hosts. One funny story of the day was when the ambassador and his wife from Bulgaria came to the nametag table... Merrilee was in my arms giving smiles to all of the guests. The wife of the ambassador was oohing and aweing over Merrilee and Ben told her she could hold her. The wife was quite pleased and held Merrilee for a minute or two and when she handed the baby back to me, she started crying uncontrollably! She didn't want to come back to her momma! :) It was quite funny. We didn't get too many pictures of the actual set-up of stuff, but we got a few of us.

Ben showing off

Gift table

This is us with a few of Ben's co-workers

This past weekend we went to Mt. Vernon, George Washington's home. We didn't actually tour the mansion because it was the craft fair day. We did get an annual pass though, so we are most definitely coming back...we didn't even see half of the place! The craft fair was really neat. It was kind of like a farmers market, but for period handmade crafts done with period tools. The artisans were dressed up and selling their stuff while making things at the same time. It was really fun. We also went on a boat tour of the Potamic River and learned a little more about George Washington's estate. Good thing we got the annual pass, because we really want to go back and see the actual mansion! Here's some pics to enjoy...

Colonial choir

Spinning a spool of linen from Flax

"George Washington" talking about the role of music in colonial times, especially during the revolutionary war. I love this Itenerant Band...I've always loved that kind of music!

The Rat Catcher of the estate :)

On the Boat Tour

View of Mt. Vernon from the Potomic

I just have to end this post with this picture of Merrilee...ever since her little tooth has come in, her cuteness factor has shot WAY up! :)

Summer up to the move

2010-09-08T11:30:00.000-07:00

Well, I'd say it is about time for an update, so here it goes...

This summer we had a lot of fun both being unemployed and Ben only taking a couple classes. We had a lot of good times together. We went camping a few times with Merrilee and once with Adam and Kylie. We found some good places in Provo canyon and Springville canyon for hiking and camping.

We also hiked the Y with Jesse...

Merrilee went swimming for the first time this summer and loved it!

Ben took History of Creativity this summer and for his final project he dressed up like Thomas Jefferson and sang "The Impossible Dream" from "The Man of La Mancha" with a patriotic slide show he put together. Of course I got to go and accompany him on the piano. He looked quite authentic. :) I wish I could figure out how to upload videos because there is an awesome video of Ben in action at his final. Everytime I try to upload it, it doesn't work. Darn.

Ben's family came into town at the beginning of August for a family reunion celebrating Grandpa Brewer's 80th Birthday. Ben and I helped Grandpa put the final touches on his personal history with pictures and formatting and such. We had a wonderful time getting to know him on a different level by helping him with that project. Uncle Ron took family pictures at the reunion...If I find them, I will [INSERT HERE]

The second week of August we started packing up our house and getting ready for our move to DC. We are renting out our basement apartment while we are gone with the furniture and such in it so we don't have to worry about storage for the big items, which is nice. We got a lot of stuff done that week, including Merrilee's 6 month shots! We were nervous she would have an adverse reaction like she did from her 4 month shots, but everything was just fine, thankfully. On August 12 or somewhere around there, we drove to Washington state with Adam, Kylie, Me, Ben, and Merrilee in our 5 seater car. We did the 12 hour trip all in one day and Merrilee did just great until the last hour of the trip. But hey, one grumpy hour out of 12-13 isn't bad! I had no complaints. While in Washington we had a fun day trip to the Oregon Coast with Ben's family...We had a fun time on the beach, got some taffee in Seaside and climbed up the Astoria column.

We also had a great time with my parents...We went to the Clark County Fair and watched diving dogs and the demolition derby, went to restaraunts, and I went shopping with my mom. Thanks to my mom, Merrilee now has some clothes that actually fit her! Thanks mom! :) My mom's new iphone has pictures of our time with them on it...so I can't put them on the blog right now.

The next Friday, August 20, we packed the car with all 5 of us and made the trip back to Utah...Thus began our coast to coast road trip. We made it back to Utah the same evening. The next day, August 21, Heidi, one of my best friends got married! We had a great time attending all of the wedding events while packing in between.

The next day, Sunday, August 22, we finished packing up the house and car and started on our way to DC for Ben's internship! The trip will probably be a separate post, so come back soon for more updates on our trip and what we've been up to these past couple weeks in the DC area!

Going to DC!

2010-07-18T19:28:00.001-07:00

Thats right! We are going to Washington DC this fall. I have an internship with LDS Church Public Affairs through the fall. Michael is nice enough to let us live in his garage while we are there. JK :) Maybe he will let us stay inside when it gets cold.

Thanks to everyone that prayed for us. It was quite funny when we started telling people that I got the internship. Some reacted and said honestly they didn't think I would get it. (Or in Maura's, G & G Brewer's, and Maura's sisters case, they were hoping I wouldn't get it :)) I fink I ame smartre then thye tink I am!

We are excited for this new adventure in our lives.

THE END

the waiting game...

2010-07-14T13:55:00.000-07:00

So, since the beginning of June both Ben and I have been unemployed. Luckily, I got my "summer pay" at the end of May so we are ok for a while. Ben applied for an internship at the beginning of June with the church (Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints) in Washington DC. We have been waiting and waiting and waiting to hear back from them. Ben has e-mailed and called multiple times...FINALLY last week they contacted him back and set up an interview almost a month and a half after he turned in his resume. He had his interview yesterday. He feels like it went well. We should find out by the weeks end. More waiting.

Meanwhile, I've been waiting to build up my piano studio and recruit more students because we've been waiting to hear about the internship. I don't want to get a whole bunch of students and then leave them in a couple months. I still teach my two kids I've been teaching for 2 years.

Ben is taking summer classes and is really busy with it. He has been applying for jobs here and there, with no luck, mostly waiting for this Washington DC business.

We've been waiting for Merrilee to roll over on her own any day now. She has rolled from her belly to her back a few times (a couple of which were when we weren't looking of course), but it seems like she's forgotten how now. She is so close to rolling from her back to her belly! She will roll to her side and a-l-m-o-s-t but not quite make it to her belly. I think she likes playing this waiting game. "Wait until mommy looks away for one second and THEN I'll roll over!" or "I think I'll wait to show mommy and daddy I can roll over until they find out about Washington DC, THEN I'll roll over to celebrate!".

While all this waiting is going on, Merrilee is content to play all day and sleep all night. She still likes to be swaddled up. Here is a peek of her in the middle of the night. The flash didn't make her flinch at all. I love the roundness of her cheeks! More to kiss!

More things we've been up to while waiting...

Ben went to nauvoo for a week with BYU's Daily Universe and did some newspaper stories and played some golf.

Ben Ran in the Ragnar Relay on a team of 12 people for 188 miles...From Logan, UT to Park City, UT. He's so fast he is a blur in your vision field.

Merrilee has just been so happy that her daddy goes to BYU and her mommy is BYU Alum.

Fourth of July Festivities...Parades,food, and naps...

Pretty walks in Provo

And just enjoying Life! :)

UPDATES!

2010-06-18T21:19:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone! Sorry for the lack of posts lately...Here are some updates since the last post:

Baby Blessing!

Both sets of parents came down to Utah at the end of March for Merrilee's baby blessing! Sadly, we don't have pictures of this event on our own camera. We are waiting for other family members from both sides to send us their pics! (Hint, Hint). Merrilee was so beautiful in her little white gown that her Nana got for her! If we ever get pictures, we'll post them! Merrilee's blessing was lovely. She was blessed with lots of beautiful things, but some that really stand out to us (we already see them) are her happy countenance and spirit of love. She is so happy, smiley and giggly all the time! She is very calm mannered and just a joy to be around! She loves being around people and will give you a great big gummy grin! It just melts your heart! :)

Maura is a stay at home mom now

After Maura's maternity leave of 8 weeks, she went back to work teaching the little kiddos at the elementary school. She LOVES teaching music...it is one of her passions. She had to make the very hard decision of whether to keep working as a mom, or stay home with the little one. After a lot of pondering, praying, and heartwrenching processes, Maura made the decision to stay home with the baby! She was really torn, but we feel like it is the right thing. Every family should have a mother to stay home to tend and nurture her children if possible. She is at peace with the decision and knows other opportunities to teach will come! (Hopefully she can teach private lessons at home and maybe start up a music preschool on Saturday mornings or something. Those are some goals.) Here are a few pictures of her "Pirate" themed music classroom she is dearly going to miss.

Adam and Kylie got Married! (On April Fool's Day!)
Here are a few pics from their special day...

How Handsome...

It was so cold! Maura and Hoku were trying to stay warm, but to no avail.

Awesome...

Aww...:)

Merrilee is Growing up so FAST!!!

Here are some pictures from the last couple of months. Notice the growth of the chub cheeks...we love them! :)

What a Pretty girl!

Enjoying the canyon with daddy.

Merrilee with her uncle Jesse.

Merrilee sporting her Daddy's hat.

Daddy's hat just wasn't cutting it, so Merrilee had to get her own pretty little hat!

Merrilee is 4 1/2 months old already! Where does the time go? Merrilee has been sleeping like a champ! She started sleeping through the night at about 2 months old (as mentioned in previous post) and has let her parents sleep ever since! Instead of 6-7 hours a night, she now sleeps 8-10 hours! WOW! What a blessing! She talks and smiles and giggles all day long and is starting to hold toys (and put them in her mouth!) She is getting stronger every day! She used to HATE tummy time, but she is getting more used to it now and she actually SMILED during tummy time the other day! Next will be rolling over! She LOVES the outdoors. Anytime we are outside with her she just looks around with this sense of wonder and awe on her face and then she baby babbles to us about how much she loves it. Her favorite is when I put her on a blanket under a tree so she can look up at the tree and sky. This is when she is the happiest! :) So CUTE!

Well, there are more updates, but they will have to come later...I think this post is long enough already, plus...it is bedtime. Goodnight!

Happy Birthday Baby!!!!!

2010-04-04T08:05:00.000-07:00

Hello everyone!

Our little girl turned 2 months old today. She was born February 4th. I can't believe how fast time has gone. As our little girl woke up this morning, she did some BIG stretches. You could just see her growing as she did this! She has grown so much since her birth-day. Of course she is still a baby, but I am afraid that she may wake up tomorrow as a toddler!

Merrilee has been sleeping very good. She averages at least 6-7 at night and a few extra after I leave for work each morning. Maura is especially happy with this....(all mothers will understand). She likes to smile and give little baby laughs. Having a baby is probably the neatest thing we have done in our whole life!

I didn't blog about our 3 week stay at the hospital after baby was born when she got RSV and Pneumonia. It was too depressing. It was hard to see her with those little tubes in and on her. It is so great to see her happily moving around and sleeping through the night.

Here are some pics!

The next conductor of the family!

Baby is home!!!!!

2010-02-08T12:54:00.000-08:00

We brought baby home on Saturday night. It has been nice to have her home. Her and Maura have been resting well. Maura and Baby went out for the first time today to buy baby stuff! They are a cute pair and they are all mine. Baby slept pretty well last night despite staying up till 2:30 am. She doesn't cry very much...yet. We love her so much! I look forward to all the funny things that she does over the years. Maura and I are a little frantic trying to get everything that we need for baby. She come a little unexpected, especially after the doctor told us the day before her birth that baby will come on her due date. I hope to upload some more pictures soon!

BABY CAME EARLY!

2010-02-05T06:50:00.000-08:00

I will keep this short. Merrilee Brewer came last night just before midnight on Feb. 4th. She weighed in at 6 lbs and 13 oz. She is a very cute baby and quite too! She let us sleep well last night.

Here are some pics and hopefully a video!

Thnaksgiving fun

2009-11-29T20:28:00.000-08:00

Maura and I have returned home from our trip to Vancouver for Thanksgiving. It was a little different from last year. Maura's parents moved into a mansion a few months ago! It felt like staying in a hotel. We had a lot of fun being with both families. I saw my little bro Adam for the first time since he came home off his mission. Well, I kind of saw him...he was mosly out with his soon to be wife! I guess that is how it goes. Our family continued our thanksgiving tradition by going to a blazers game. It was a pretty sad showing by the blazers! When a team as bad as the Vancouver Grizzles have a 32-2 run against you, your team has a problem. Thankfullt he blazers played almost worthy of the millions they make to make the game somewhat entertaining. It was fun watching the BYU game. I thought that we were all going to watch it togethet, but Maura and I ended up watching it by ourselves. Thats ok though, it was still an awesome game. We are kind of bumbed that we had to sel our tickets before we came home. Our baby is doing pretty well. Maura is a little more tispsy now. I havw had to catch her on multiple occasions before she falls! We are happy to be back in Orem. I have 3 more killer weeks of school until christmas break. We will be heading back to Vancouver once more! This time for 8 days! To the bros... We are planning something really cool for Mom and Dad. It is fun to od nice things for them. They did such an awesome job raising 6 sons. It is quite the accomplishment. Now it is time for us to give back to them.

Maura's cute belly and a sad football game :(

2009-10-31T22:35:00.000-07:00

Maura's belly is growing! I wonder what is inside? It is kind of like buying one of those suprise bags at the store. At least I know a girl is inside. Maura is now at 25 weeks.

Look how cute she is!
She has gained a whole 10 lbs! Sometimes she will start bitting me in the middle of the night so I have started rubbing down her body pillow with butter. JK....That just made me laugh really hard with the thought of it. I love Maura. What would she possibly do without me? (As she is glaring at me while I write this post).

Here are two funny pictures from BYU's embarrassing loss to TCU. Guess which one is before and which one is after?

PUMPKINS!!!!

2009-10-31T22:15:00.000-07:00

This was the highlight of our Halloween day and the last thing we did too. SO, we bought these pumpkins like 2 weeks ago. We put off carving them everyday because of school or work. Finally it came to Halloween evening after we went with our little nephews and niece Trick or treating. I went to pick up Maura's pumpkin and my finger went right through the bottom! Sick! There was a huge rotton spot on the Pumpkins bottom. Yes her pumpkin had a rotten bottom. So, natural I cut it off. Now he has a big hole. We used our sweet new carving kit with a little help from some pre-made patterns. Maura made the witch and I made the monster looking guy. Here are some sweet pix of our "strenuous"labor.

Maura's Cool Halloween Classroom

2009-10-31T22:04:00.000-07:00

As an elementary music school teacher, Maura had the opporunity to celebrate Halloween for a whole week! Well, Utah basically celebrates Halloween for a whole week. It is second only to Christmas here. (weird)

Maura did fun activities, turtorous songs, and a human body carving contest....well, ok, maybe not....But she did have really cool activities and a really cool looking classroom thanks to her awesome amazing handsome cool um um (I can't think of anymore :) ) Husband. Well, basically I just did the awesome spiderwebs. Maura makes a great fairy-witch.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

2009-10-31T21:20:00.000-07:00

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!
Maura and I had a fun Halloweens week. Yes, in Utah, Halloween goes for a week and is second only to Christmas! People are pretty intense here about there Halloween. Maura, being a school teacher, got to enjoy to enjoy haloween all week because of class parties. She has eaten so much candy that we had to glue in those fake teeth into her gums! HA ha. Just a joke. Thats actually probably true for me... I hid the candy from her all week and have been having a piece...maybe two...with every meal. Yum!

Maura and I first went to the corn maze on Monday for FHE at Thankgiving Point. Here are some good picks from our adventure!

Maura and I completed the Maze in record time! Well, not really. We actually just wandered around for half an hour (it is a huge maze!) then decided it was time to leave. I don't know if we were going the right way, but we did find the exit, by following some little kids! They were quite scared of me...I'm mean look at the above picture! I can't blame em'. There was a lot to do after the maze. We watched pig and goat races, went to a 3D spook house (thus the picture with the stupid glasses) went on a hay ride, a train ride, took a little kids candy...twice, had hot apple cider that Maura loved but I thought was like drinking liquid plastic, look at cool jack-o-lanters, and last but not least, the pumpkin princess carriage (my personal favorite part). Yep, it was a fun evening, and Baby's first Halloween!

Updates...

2009-09-15T19:51:00.001-07:00

So...Its probably about time we update this thing.

Well, since our trip to the Caribbean we have had some other noteworthy adventures.

First of all, a couple of weeks after our trip we found out that I'M PREGNANT!!!! YAY! We've been trying basically since we got married and ten months later...YAY! I'm due in February. I was getting nauseous on our trip, but I just thought it was a new environment, etc. I wasn't extremely sick or anything, but then it didn't go away after our trip and lo and behold...there's a baby growing inside of me!

At the beginning of August, we moved from our tiny apartment in Provo to what seems like a mansion in Orem. 2 bedrooms, huge living room, kitchen, etc. We still do not enjoy luxuries like washer/dryer, dishwasher or disposal, but the extra spaciousness is worth it. Plus we're going to need the extra room :)

I started my job as a full time music teacher at Amelia Earhart Elementary in the middle of August. It sure is exhausting, but so much fun and exhilarating at the same time. I love sharing my talents in ways that bless the lives of precious children. They are so cute! I teach every kid in the school...k-6 plus 3 special ed classes...about 576 (or something close to that) names, faces, and personalities to learn! I see every class 2 times per week. Wow! It sure is a lot to keep track of...and takes a lot of energy to be doing a song and dance all the time with the kids (literally). Its not like a regular classroom where the kids can sit quietly and do silent reading or quiet work time while the teacher can kind of take a breather from being "on stage"... music teaching is a high performance job, but very worth it.

Ben started his semester...he's applying to his major (Public Relations) this semester and hopes to start the major Winter Semester. He is enjoying his classes and he is still working part-time at LogoWorks (I guess now it is technically Marketsplash by HP or something like that). He now also has a gym membership...he hopes to lose all of the baby weight he's been gaining. I guess he has been having "Sympathy Symptoms" :). No...he really hasn't gained that much weight since we've been married, but enough that he's determined to start working out again.

I got a new calling just a couple weeks into our new ward (apparently the bishopric heard through the grapevine that someone "musical" was coming). You guessed it...Ward Choir Director. So basically, my whole life revolves around music making with people. Oh yeah, did I mention in my spare time I teach piano lessons? Gotta love it! I think Ben is getting a new calling this week...but I'm not sure what it is yet. Someone came over to talk to him a couple days ago about it. We'll keep you updated.

All in all, we're enjoying life, having fun, and looking forward to new adventures.

Sorry for lack of interesting pictures and such. Look forward to pregnant lady pics and other fun stuff! We will try to be better about updating this now that we're kind of settled in and in a routine.

Caribbean Trip

2009-06-17T19:32:00.000-07:00

(So... Ben Started writing this post right when we got back from our trip 2 months ago... I'm (Maura) going to finally finish it so we can finally write about other things...)

We're back!

After a fun 10 days, it was time to come home.... :( By the time we left, even Maura was talking with an accent! I guess I will give a fun recap of our trip.....

First day.....We spent all day Saturday flying and got to Trinidad and Tobago in the later part of the evening. We then found that they weren't going to give me the car rental for the week! Lame....I had been emailing back and forth with the car rental representative to ensure that we could have the car rental. She said we could, even though I am only 23 years old. Looking back, I am glad we didn't get the car rental....People drive crazy in Trinidad! I was holding my breath half the time the taxi was taking us around.
So, our first night, we stayed in the Marriott hotel. It was a good transition for Maura. The moment we step out of the airport, we began shedding layers of clothing. I was drenched with sweat by the time we reached our taxi, 100 yards outside of the airport.
The next morning, we went to Church in a city called Chaguanas. No one knew we were coming, so it was a huge surprise when we walked in the door. The first face I saw was very familiar....He was the father of a family we baptized two years earlier. He is now in the branch presidency. Him and his wife are very active on the church. It was so good to see them. Their little boy didn't recognize me at first, but then he got a big smile on his face and yelled, "Elder Brewer!" (I don't think I was called anything else the whole trip.) It took us a while to sit down, as more and more familiar faces entered the church. It was funny to see their reactions when they saw Maura and I standing there. I think everyone was more excited to see Maura then me! It was fun to be in a tiny building with the church members...about 40 of them. The branch president whom I served with while I was in Chaguanas, is now the first Stake President of the West Indies...well it is actually a stake of the island of Trinidad....the rest of the church members are still under the watch care of the mission presidency.

The cutest part of church, that made me cry, was when a boy named Satysh Deonerinesigh

came walking by, not recognizing, when someone pointed at me and said to him, do you know who that is, he grinned, ran over to me and through his arms around my neck...and he wouldn't let go! He then gave Maura a big long hug...it made us both tear up.

(Maura's insert here: The whole time I was at this little branch I was teary eyed. The faith of these people is incredible. The children were so adorable and the spirit was so strong. The people have simple testimonies, but they are strong. Also, Bro. Ramdath (the first person we saw) asked us to teach the youth class for sunday school after sacrament meeting. That was cool. Everyone loved Ben so much and were so glad he was back. I could tell he did a lot of good in this area.)

After church we went to stay with the Lackin family. They are an older couple in the branch who have a pretty nice house for Trinidad standards. (See picture) We really enjoyed our stay with them. We spent the rest of the day at the Lakins. They fed us so much food on the trip, I felt bad for Maura! When they weren't looking, I often took a few scoops from her plate and put it on mine....Man I sure gained a lot on our trip....The lakins took us to some sightseeing sights Sunday afternoon. We saw the huge hindu monkey god and the Temple in the middle of the sea.

On Monday, I took Maura through Chaguanas. It was fun, but it sure rained a lot......here is a video and some pics for your enjoyment.... Please try not to get motion sickness from the video. We are obviously beginners at video taking while walking.

The next few days we spent visiting other cool places....Maura got eat lots of fun food and meet lots of my friends! This is Sister Verra Doon and her daughter Johanna. Johanna is really Skinny! She has a heart defect that keeps her really skinny. This is the first family I met on the island of Trinidad. Sis Doon was pivotal in the conversion if the current branch president of the Chaguanas branch. When I first arrive in Chaguanas, there was a family named the Gopauls being taught by two other missionaires. They believed the church was true and the book of Mormon was true logically, but they were waiting for the spiritual confermation. The missionaries promised them that if they went to every sesion of conference, they would receive their spiritual confermation. Well, they went to every session. After the last session, they were happy they went, but were a little discouraged that the spiritual confirmation hadn't come as promised. We were there as well with a recently baptized member named Sister Doon. We felt inspired to have the Gopauls give her a ride home. Here is the rest of the story, according to the Gopauls.....We were driving sister Doon home and it was quite in the car for most of the way. When we were a few minutes from her home, we asked her what she thought of coference. She just began to share her strong testimony and belief that she had joined the true church and that she knew that she had just listened to a prophet of God. As we dropped her off, we just sat outside of her house, and we couldn't move. We lookd at each other and said, did you feel that. (They both had.) It was the spirit! They recieved their spiritual confermation. They were baptized two weeks later.

Maura and I had the opportunity to go to a beautiful beach in Trinidad! We went with a family I taught and baptized while I was there. They are called the Ramdath family.

There story is really cool as well! I was just finishing up my first transfer in Trinidad. It was quite ruff. I had been in Guyana the previous 10 months and I was missing it there. My comp and I had just come home from church where we had to investigators there. Any missionary knows that is a hard moment because it feels like your whole previous week was a waste. I was sitting on the couch and really had no desire to go out and work in the hot sun. Elder Gibby and I had a little pep rally and decided to pray to where to go. We received and answer that we needed to go to an area called Felicity. We made a goal to teach every family that we walked past.On our way to geta taxi, I felt a strong impression to walk a different way just before reaching the taxi stop. We walked to an area just behind the church building. There, sitting in their front yard, was the Ramdath Family. We walked up and said, hello we have come to teach your family. They just stared at us and we sat down and started teaching. It was a powerful experience. Missionaries are a lot more powerful when they have been humbled, which we felt after church. When we were done, we commited them to baptizm. Suprizingly, they said yes and yes to a date as well! We then left. Now read this....As it turns out, the Ramdaths had skipped their church that day and where deciding if they should go back to that church or go to another. They were deciding to go to another, when we showed up. Pretty cool huh? The wife was the most dilligent. We taught her and she came to chuch off and on for a few months. The husband was supportive but was progressing very slowly. He didn't have anything to overcome, he just wasn't that interested yet. He became interested in a funny way. It came time for Sis Ramdaths inteview for her baptism. An Elder came and interviewed her and deemed her ready for baptism. So we get to the baptism....There was 20 people, including are the awsome supportive branch pres, who is now the first Stake Pres is Trinidad, a few senior couples who helped teach them, and lots of her friends. So we are about to start, and my comp feels he needs to fill out the baptism record. So he goes to ask Bro Ramdath for his marraige date. And he says, "Oh, we arn't actually married, we just tell people we are." My companion came over and told me....I wanted to crawl up and die. We had to call off the baptism. Man did I feel like an idiot. But when I was explaining to Bro Ramdath why his "wife" cant get baptized, he had a change of countanence. He said, "I want to be ready when she is ready to be baptized." Wow! So I guess it needed to happen. They were all baptized a month later.

I will do the rest in another post....

Long Drives and Lobsters

2009-06-03T09:00:00.000-07:00

The rest of Monday was awesome! We took taxis and visited some of Ben's friends. We had Family home evening with the Deonerinesingh family (a family that Ben baptized). Sis. Deo taught us how to make roti...Maura was better at it than Ben. Tuesday, we went with some other friends to the beach! It was about a 2hr drive from Chaguanas to the other side of the island. The roads were covered with pot holes...a real wonder because Trinidad produces 70% of all the world's pitch for roads! The roads were wound around the jungle and through villages. Spectacular sights. We made it to the beach and loved being able to play in actual WARM ocean water...not like the beaches at home in WA and OR. Because we went on a weekday, we had the beach pretty much all to ourselves. We put on sunscreen, but still came home as lobsters...oh well...it will turn into tan, right? Today is our last day in Trinidad. We are going to visit some more people and do a little more shopping. Tomorrow morning we will fly to Guyana...a whole new adventure.

Trip Beginnings

2009-06-01T11:19:00.000-07:00

This post will not be too detailed and will not include pictures, but just wanted to keep you posted on what we've been doing.

We arrived safely in Trinidad on Saturday evening. The flights were very enjoyable and didn't seem too long. We were unable to get the rental car that we were assured we were going to get because Ben is younger than 25. Lame. But it has been AWESOME so far. We got a taxi to our hotel and Maheas was our very nice driver. Most all of the cars look brand new and sweet. The driver sits on the right side and drives on the left side of the road. Maybe its a good thing we aren't attempting to drive because it is pretty much crazy out there. Maheas picked us up Sunday morning to take us down to Chaguanas for church. We will post more about our church experience later....it was SO COOL! The Lakans took us in for lunch and Maura had Trini food for the first time. DELICIOUS! We did a little religious sight-seeing as well (more to come).

This morning Sis. Lakan made us sowine, they call it a porridge....noodle things in sweet milk with cinamon type spices. YUM!!! Last night we snacked on some spiced chauna. Today we have been walking the streets of downtown chaguanas being immersed in the culture. We are taking a break at an internet cafe right now. We are planning on going to a "doubles" stand for lunch and then visiting some friends of Ben's. We are hoping to make it out to the beach Tues. and Wed. Today is very warm and humid and rainy. We like it....a lot. In fact, we've decided we're not coming home. So keep looking at our blog to see our life in Trinidad. :) haha.