Hiking

Sara, Lowell, and I decided to go and hike Squaw peak.  Dan decided that it was too early in the morning to get up on a Saturday so I left him at home to sleep.  In fact I left, hiked the mountain, and got back before he even got out of bed!!  Anyway, it was a fun hike.  It’s about 1.5 miles one way and it is pretty much all straight up (goes up to around 1200 feet in elevation).  It was crazy to see all the people there that were hiking.  Some more ran up and down than hiked.  In fact some crazy people we saw run up and down more than once!! WOW!!

Here are some pictures from the hike:

Lowell, Sara, and Mary about 3/4 of the way to the top.

“Yeah, I made it to the top!!”

 

Yep, Sara made it too!!

Look at the view! It makes the hike so worth it!

 

The next weekend we decided to go hike Quartz Peak.  It’s supposed be a double dose of Squaw Peak.  We left around 5 in the morning in order to get to the trailhead  before the heat of the day started to set in.  It was about a 40 minute drive according to the directions we found.  However it took us about 2 1/2 to 3 hours to find the trailhead.  You have to take a bunch of dirt roads and there aren’t really any signs pointing you in the right direction.  Since it was nearly 8 am by the time we got to the trailhead we decided we better not start the hike.  It’s about 3 miles one way and goes up to over 2,000 feet high.  Also there were these tiny black flies that covered you when you were outside.  There was a constant buzzing around your head.  I don’t think any of us could have dealt with that all the way to the top!! 

Since we couldn’t hike Quartz Peak we then just went to the Estrella Mountain Park and did the Baseline Trail.  This one is only about 2.4 miles round trip and is pretty flat.  It was also probably good we didn’t hike Quartz Peak because on the Baseline trail Harrison kept saying, “this hike is annoying!”

Well, better luck next time!!

Building A Pool

So the good news is. . . .we are finally building our pool in the backyard.  This is something that Dan and I have been dreaming of since we ever thought about buying a house.  Needless to say, we are SUPER EXCITED!!

Anyway as we go through the process we have decided to try and take some pictures of the different stages so that we can document this awesome transformation of our backyard.

So here it is before they have started anything in our backyard.  We forgot to take a picture of our front yard before Dan had to rip out three of our plants and move the rocks.  Oh well. . .

Our side yard. . .

The layout of the pool . . .

 

Say good-bye to the grass!

This is after Day 1 of excavation.  They left all their big equipment in our backyard overnight.   It was kind of crazy to see the equipment along with the quick transformation of the backyard.

Day 2 of excavation:  It only took them two days to dig the gargantuan hole that is now our backyard.  WOW!!

The deep end will be 7 feet deep when it’s all done.

Boy am I excited to be swimming in that deep end!!

Plumbing:  They finished the plumbing in one quick day. 

However they’re going to have to come fix the placement of the pool equipment because they have taken up half of our side yard and that definitely wasn’t the plan!!

 

Say tuned for the next stage of building the Merrill pool. . . rebar.  Wohoo!!

Family Snow Trip

Well I am now almost caught up on all the crazy stuff going on around the Merrill House.  However I have yet to post about our AWESOME trip with the Ellsworth Clan up to the snow.  I have been using my creative energy putting a book together as a thank you to Mom & Dad for making the trip possible and this is why I haven’t posted about the trip yet.  The book turned out pretty cool and is a great sum of how much fun we all had.  I did learn a good lesson while doing the book too. . .  We all need to be better at taking more pictures.  Sara did a really good job but Dan and I didn’t take a single picture.  Also there weren’t a ton of cool posed pictures for the book.  I pretty much used every good picture in the book and I think we could have used a few more.  Moral of the story: Take More Pictures!!

Mom and Dad rented a really nice cabin at the Brian Head Ski resort in Utah.  The cabin was big enough for each family to have their own bathroom and bedroom (Griffins, Ensign, Merrill, & Ellsworth).  We were pretty bummed that Danny wasn’t able to miss work to come on the trip but next time he better come.  The cabin was right on the ski resort and we were able to ski in and out of the property.  It was pretty neat to be able to come home for lunch.  Also in the morning when you were ready to get out on the slopes you could just get dressed and walk outside.  Pretty cool!!

Anyway here are some of the pictures to show how much fun we had:

Here is Dan and I at the top of one of the slopes.  We sure had a good time.  Dan & I recently bought our very own snowboards.  We are getting pretty good at the whole snowboard thing.  Too bad the season is already over and we have to wait until next year to do it again.

Samantha & Harrison are pretty good skiers but this time they wanted to try snowboarding.  They had a really good time in lessons for two days.

Joe came down from Provo to join us on the slopes.  We had a good time seeing him and we were a little jealous of his mad snowboarding skills.

Jonathan decided to snowboard on this trip as well.  He was got pretty good by the end.  In fact he was in lessons on the first day but he was so bored by lunch that he didn’t go back to lessons and stayed with the rest of us for the remaining of the trip.

These are two of my most favorite pictures of Trentten on the trip:

Here is Trentten at the top of Giant Steps.  He was an awesome skier and was fearless!!  But he did get a little tired. . . .

Here he is on the ski lift.  Isn’t that smile priceless?

When we weren’t out on the slopes we were playing in the snow:

Of course only Daniella is crazy enough to go out with no shoes on!!

I met a Devil Snowman while out in the snow.  Those tomato eyes were what gave him away.

Of course we had great food as well!  Here’s the cooking crew:

February

February seemed to fly by even faster than January. I do realize that February is shorter than January and that may have something to do with it, but there also was lots of stuff going on then too. Two weeks after our Colorado trip, we were off to San Francisco to visit Ben and Anisha. Once we got home, I started a new part-time job at the local hospital and Dan left for a business trip in Michigan. Once I started working at the hospital (I basically worked on every day I had off from CVS), the days sure seemed to fly by even faster.

Our trip to San Francisco was short but a lot of fun. We flew in on Friday and Ben picked us up at the airport (Anisha was at work) and showed us a few sights before having to go to class.

This is the few of downtown San Francisco atop a hill not far from their house. Pretty cool huh?

Then we went to the beach. After seeing a few things we took the shuttle down to campus and then the Muni downtown and walked around. It was fun the see the city and all the different wharfs as we walked around. Of course we ended our walking tour at Ghirardelli Square.

Too bad I am not the biggest fan of chocolate :( Oh, but don’t worry they still served some pretty yummy ice cream!! Yum Yum!

Ben then picked us up and we went and stopped at his favorite donut shop to see the giant donuts (they’re as big as cakes, wow!). They didn’t have any giant donuts left so we got regular sized ones for breakfast the next day. As for dinner that night, Chinese take out was on the menu.

We had a hard time finding a parking spot when we got to the restaurant (We found out this isn’t that uncommon there in San Francisco), so we left Dan in the car while we ran in to order the food. We had parked in front of someone’s garage but when we got back to the car to wait for the food to be done, Ben turned the car off while we waited. BAD IDEA. . . We couldn’t get he car to start. Then the owner’s of the garage we were parked in front of came home and we couldn’t move. Luckily he was able to jump start our car and we got out of there!!

Saturday morning was spend getting a new battery for Ben’s car. . . . Then we were off to hike in a red wood forest on the other side of the golden gate bridge.

The trees were amazing!! and huge!!

Here’s Dan inside one of the trees. . . . . . .

There was one last pit stop before we went back to the apartment.

As you can tell from the photos, it’s a littler greener there than here in good old AZ.

That night we went to the Cheesecake Factory on the top floor of Macy’s. No pictures from dinner but it was an interesting experience trying to find a parking spot (well actually there was one particular parking garage that Ben was determined to find that we drove around a while trying to find . . . we found it in the end!) and walking through many floors of women’s clothes to get to the top of the department store for the restaurant. On the plus side, there is plenty of things to look at while you’re waiting for a table!

Sunday we went to church and then we came home so that we could be rested and ready for work the next day. We had a great time in San Fran and can’t wait to go back and hike through the red forests again!

NOTE: We need to get better at taking pictures. We didn’t have any good group photos of the four of us :(

Ooops!

I forgot the best picture of the whole trip to Colorado. . .

And yes, the brownies were as good as they look!!

January

The month of January seemed to fly by.  After recovering from Christmas we were off to Colorado to visit Liz and Dave and their kids.  We really wanted to get some snowboarding in this winter and thought, “what greater place to snowboard than Colorado?”  So off we went to Colorado.  It was quite an adventure trying to get out of town.  Of all places, the Phoenix valley was getting hit pretty hard with rain and super fast winds.  Because of the wind, every flight out of Phoenix was cancelled the night we were supposed to fly out.  BUMMER!!

After calling Southwest, the only flight available was the next day, leaving at ~9pm.  We were super bummed and even toyed with the idea of driving instead.  Dan and I went home and chilled while torrential rains were coming down outside.  Around midnight we decided to check all the flights for the next day and there happened to be two openings on the first flight of the day leaving at 7 in the morning.  We quickly called Southwest and told them that we would gladly take the last two seats on the plane. 

We soon realized that it was after midnight and we didn’t have a ride the airport in 4 hours.  We quickly got some rest and then drove ourselves to the airport.  Just before take off, we called mom and begged her to pick up our car from short-term parking. 

Well we finally made it to Colorado, what’s next you ask?  More fun. . .  We had told Liz that we weren’t coming in until late that evening so she had to work.  So we rented a car (that’s a completely different fiasco for another time) and drove straight to the ski lift.

We then spent the afternoon at Loveland Ski Resort snowboarding in the wonderful snow with the sun shining above us.

The rest of the trip wasn’t quite as crazy but we really had a great time hanging out with Liz, Dave, Andrea, Sophie, and Nadia.  We got to practice our snowboarding skills, do a little ice skating, take a hike at Roxborough State Park, and give my little brother a break from the crazy Air Force Academy.

Here we are ice skating outside on a real lake.  Pretty cool, huh?

I’ve never ice skated on a real, frozen lake before.  You see in Phoenix we only have indoor ice rinks.  It was really fun.  However it was a little windy, and I’m a wimp from Arizona so I thought it was pretty cold.  The kids out on the ice didn’t seem to agree with me.  There were some crazy kids out there in short sleeved shirts and others in skirts with tights!!  Crazy!!

Here are three pictures from our short hike at Roxborough:

Funny story is that Seth only had his “blues” for clothes so he had to borrow a pair of Dave’s sweat pants.  The only problem is Dave is a little shorter than Seth. . . . Oh well, good thing he wasn’t pickin’ up girls on the trail!!

Sophie was fun to hike with, she sure has a lot of energy!

I think Seth really enjoyed spending the day with the family.  He enjoyed the company, the civilian clothes, and the freedom!

When we took Seth back to the Academy, we stopped and showed the Ohsieks around the campus.  We stopped at the top of the hill where you get a pretty good view of the campus.  Only problem is it was FREEZING up there (if you can’t tell from our faces!) and the wind didn’t help either.

Overall we had a really great time!!  Can’t wait until we get to go back.

Christmas Day

So I realize that it is now April and I am now just writing about Christmas.  Oh well!!!

Christmas Day everyone came to our house for yummy cinnamon rolls and to open presents.  I don’t actually think I have a picture of the cinnamon rolls.  I’ll be sure to take a picture next year. 

Here are some of us opening presents.

 

Trentten was very excited about his water spitting dinosaur.

Daniella was super thrilled about her new princess pajamas.

Here is just a good shot of everyone one enjoying the craziness of Christmas morning.  It sure doesn’t look like there’s a lack of presents under that tree.  Oh and Joe surprised us all and drove down from Utah to celebrate Christmas with us.  Boy are we lucky!!

After all the presents were opened we decided to run/walk a 5k around Litchfield Park.  It was really nice to get outside and enjoy the great weather. 

Here’s everyone who participated in the run/walk.  Joseph and Mom took on the role of photographers and drove the loop snapping pictures of everyone running.  None of us really looked that great in action while we were running so all you get is the posed picture after it was all over.   Sorry!

Christmas Eve

Every Christmas Eve since Dan and I were engaged we have spent with the Merrill side of the family.  It is tradition in their family to have a big yummy dinner with everyone dressed up.  We then read the story of Christ’s birth out of the scriptures and sing a myriad of Christmas songs/carols.  After singing time it’s present time!!!  It is always fun to see how excited the kids (and the adults of course!) get about opening all the presents.  Overall it was really fun!

I like to think of making tortellini at Christmas is somewhat of a tradition in the Merrill family as well, although we don’t seem to make it every year.  We make the traditional tortellini with red sauce mostly but one year we made butternut squash tortellini (that was really yummy!!!)

So here we are making tortellini:

I have to admit though that this year Cristina made most of the tortellini.  We showed up a little bit later than we were planning and so she had shaped most of the army before we even got there.  Dan ended up counting all of them and there were well over 200 tortellini by the time we were done.  I think it was around 270ish. Yum Yum!!

And at dinner for Christmas our drink of choice is. . . ginger ale and apple juice.  I swear there’s no alcohol in it although it may seem otherwise:

Even all the baby’s enjoyed all the yummy dinner!

 

John A. read us the Christmas story this year and even the kids listened intently.

I think Doris was most excited about the presents though!

The Terek boys all got Bioncles from Dan and I.  They were very excited and Simeon couldn’t even wait to open it.  He made Dan help him put together his guy before he even left grandma’s house!

After a full evening at the Merrill’s Dan and I made our way home to make cinnamon rolls for Christmas morning.  Mmmmmm. . . .