Bryce & Elaine

I don't have the best of luck with picture taking...when I say "ok everyone look here and say CHEESE!" this is what I get







But luckily every picture I get just makes me melt and sometimes...few and far between I get real smiles! I adore my children..cheesy faces and all!

One night before bed Kate decided to teach everyone gymnastics. I was surprised how well everyone responded. Even little Hailee had to get in on the action!

Sorry to many of you who gave up on me ever updating my blog, but for those of you who still check in once in a while, I'm trying, but life has been a little crazy lately! Let's see...where to begin. TUFF BUCKET...the main comsuming factor of my life lately. Our little business that started with Bryce and I playing around with canvas and a giant sewing machine in our garage in OR has grown far beyond what I ever anticipated it would. We recently had a large turbine manufacturer buy our bags for all there sites in the US and Canada. When I first began discussion with this company they said they would want maybe 50 each of 3 styles of bags we carry, then he called me back and said well maybe 75 of each. I told him that would be no prolem and we could have that out with in 2 weeks. Bryce just laughed when I told him what the company wanted. He said they have around 75 sites and they will need anywhere between 20-40 bags per site...so you do the math...it is NOT 75 of 3 styles. Well I didn't want to get my hopes up so I just moved forward with what they told me. SOOOO 1 week from the day we talked about 75 bags I get a call from my contact within the company. He informs me that he just signed a company wide memo stating that they are no long authorized to use any bag unless it is a TUFF BUCKET bag and we should be seeing orders coming in before weeks end. I'm acually surprised I kept concious while on the phone and managed to still sound professional. By weeks end we hard orders for over 700 bags. By the end of the month we were looking at 1400. We currently have sold and have ordered over 2000. Needless to say I made arrangements to come to Idaho and help see at least some of these orders through and help out any way I could. While here we decided to move the location of our business from the remote farming community it resides in now to a larger town close to my parents. I was thrilled, but then the reality of moving a business, having more employees, larger costs, and everything involved with that started to settle in. So we have made some big decisions, one being that Kate will start school in Idaho and stay here at least until December, or when we feel the business is running smooth enough without me to be here constantly. It's crazy I know but we feel good about all of it so that is what we are going with for now. I am going on about 3 weeks without seeing my wonderful husband and I can tell it is wearing on both of us. Sorry for anyone who has to deal with us directly, pardon our grouchyness!

Eli REALLY wanted to blow bubbles easter morning...a little snow didn't stop him :)


We thought it would be cute if we all 3 girls had matching toes..but it is much harder to get that picture than you think!



Gotta love those chocolate bunnies

She is such a cute cheesy baby!

I can't ignore this large knot in the pit of my stomach lately. I just feel like our family is approaching a large crossroads in the near future and I have no idea what to do. But the strange thing is I don't even know what I am deciding on. It is a very strange feeling...I feel like we have a lot of major decisions coming, yet I can't really comtemplate what to do because I'm not really sure what I'm deciding between. I feel very stressed and streched very thin a lot more often these days. The business is constently on my mind, it weighs very heavily on everday decisions we make. I feel personally obligated to see it become successful for all parties involved. Many days I'm proud to be a business owner, but many days I feel overwhelmed and wish I could just give it all away, I try not to dwell on those thoughts long. I know life is just more stressful than usual because of a large, expensice tradeshow coming up very shortly. I hope this is the main cause of my stress because come the end of May, it should be alleviated. But I don't know that this is all. There is a strange feeling when things are so unknown. I wish I know where we were going to be in 5 years, 3 years. Sorry, this is not a cute story about my kids, no update about life in general. Just me trying to place a thumb on my emotions lately :)

Five years ago I was in the hospital, holding and admiring my sweet baby girl. At this point 5 years ago she still didn't have a name. Since then we have had a crazy whirlwind. All along the day today I have thought back to that day 5 years ago our lives changed so much. Kate was always such a great baby. At 2 weeks old she started sleeping 5-6 hrs a night and at 6 weeks she was sleeping a good 8 hours a night. She spoiled me rotten! She was always a very somber child. She was happy, but very serious and thoughtful, she had and still has the most exppressive eyebrows. I love seeing her littler personality develop over the years. Some of the things I love about my daughter.
When we are cleaning up and I threaten to throw away toys, Eli says "OK" throw them away and Kate frantically runs to the garbage and fishes out whatever I threw away. Explaining that "Eli dosen't know the consequences, he really does want this toy MOM". I think it is so sweet that she thinks so much of her brother to always rescue his toys.
Kate LOVES to be tucked in. Every night she must have a hug and a kiss, and covered up in a specific order of blankets, then I have to say "I love you Kate, Goodnight, see you in the morning" If this specific pattern is not observed we are in for a long night.
Kate is 100% GIRL, she loves Pink, sparkles, princeses, jewerly, make-up, babies, cooking, cleaning (I don't think she got that one from me), horses, and recently she wants to be a cowgirl! We did have a good laugh because she was indecisive about what kind of party she wanted. A princess, no a cowgirl, a princess, nowait.. a cowgirl. We finally settled on a cowgirl party when she declared "I have a great idea, I will have a cowgirl princess party!" Bryce had a look of fear as he said "no please kate...no rodeo queen!"
I am so proud of my sweet little girl. She is a great big sister, she loves her brother (which can be hard to do somedays), she adores her baby sister, she is the Best helper. I am not ready for my little girl to head off to school, I don't know what I will do without my girl here. Eli will also be suffering some withdrawls, but she is beyond excited! Well I know this was lots of rambling but I am still adjusting to having a 5 year old. I will have to post bday pics later!

Bryce was out of town for a little while, and as always, I have trouble sleeping when he isn't here. So I stayed up late doing cleaning and other tidbits around the house. As always the kids ate dinner, took and bath, and by 7:15 were off to bed. They went down without any fights and I took a hugh sigh of relief thinking I had a very productive night ahead of me...THEN, at 11:15 I heard the old familiar pitter patter of little feet coming down the stairs. Kate quickly snuck over to the couch as I cleaned the kitchen. She observed for a few moments then hurried in and asked if she could help. I put her to work scrubbing the fridge, cupboards, stove as I cleaned the floor. She said with excitement "what a Great cleaning party mom!" After I finished scouring the kitchen it was back to bed with her. I tucked her in and headed back downstairs to work on the living room. After 15 minutes I heard once again the pitter patter. This time it was Eli. We talked for a few moments, when he finally revealed the fruit snacks he had hidden in his boot. He gently asked for a bag to put them in because "his boot is kinda stinky". I decided that was a pretty good idea. Shortly after that Kate joined the party and I realized that my kids just had a 4-5 hr power nap! So I once again, put them to work cleaning and putting away toys. They were so excited to be awake, they did whatever I asked. Around 1 o'clock I decided it was time to wind this party down. I told the kids to get their pillow and blankets and head to my bed, they shrieked with excitement and ran quickly to their rooms. As I got upstairs I noticed my blankets and pillow preped nicely in the middle of my kids blankets. They were so excited as we all settled down for our "slumber party". After 20 minutes we were all fast asleep, as I thought we should all be sleeping in at least until Hailee woke, I was DEAD wrong. Eli started to stir around 6:00-6:15 and eventually devoured 3/4 box of fruit snacks by the time I drug myself out of bed. Fruit Snacks it is for breakfast. As much as I missed my husband it was a wonderful to have a little cleaning sleepover!

As always our life has been busy and when life gets that way the first thing neglected is my blog. We had an enjoyable Thanksgiving, getting to visit lots of family in Idaho. We started the weekend at my parents with most my family coming to visit. We enjoyed a couple hands of 31 and some late nights with Lori watching movies. Friday Bryce got up real early and hit some Black Friday sales, he was a trooper and hit Best Buy and got me a great deal on a new laptop, he' so awsome! Friday we ventured out way on to Bruneau where Bryce and the younger brothers (and even some uncles) spent the weekend building a shop at his mom's house, they made a lot of progress and got all the wireing done. But I was able to enjoy the company of Lee and Katie from California (which we don't get to see near often enough) and Zach and Rochelle. It was great seeing all the family (including many Aunts and Uncles from out of state). I was really lucky to get to spend an extra week in Idaho and then my parents drove me home. From then the time passed quickly and Christmas was upon us. We definetly experienced a white Christmas this year. From yesterday morning until now we have received 8-10 inches of new snow. We keep telling the kids once their rooms are clean we will go sledding. But I think tomorrow mom will dig in and help them get cleaned and we'll finally get our sledding in. Since the kids are decked out with really nice snow clothes grandma got them last year for Christmas, we have to take advantage!
We had a lot of fun this Christmas, we started off Christmas eve with a gingerbread house. The kids enjoyed decorating it, and more importantly eating the candy. That night we talked about why we celebrate Christmas and reminded the kids that just because they asked Santa for something he dosen't always bring it :) . After the kids opened their pj's, Kate told us she was sleepy and was pretty sure it was bedtime. They went to bed quickly and never made a peep after 7:15! That night Bryce started getting calls around 3 am for work. When the 4th call came in at 7, we decided to get moving for Christmas. Eli excitedly woke Kate and it was a blur from there. Eli was excited to see his favorite toy this year...his robot! He loves it so much the batteries are already dead (much to my relief) We enjoyed a great Christmas this year. We had a blast with the kids, they were so excited with everything.

My Christmas Cuties!



Eli's beloved robot!

Kate LOVES playdough


My cute Christmas crawler!

Some of you may know this is Iron Man..but to Eli it is "just Tony"

Princess Aurora...or as Kate insists..."No..she is just Sleeping Beauty"


Our Little Lady Bug...she is so sweet!


Cute Princess Aurora, our little lady bug, and IRON MAN!

My little Hailee turned 3 months old on the 21st. We have been blessed with such a sweet baby girl. She is so happy and a content baby. We have been absolutely spoiled. Here are a couple pics, I need to dress her up a little and take some more pics :)

We have been working very hard to accomplish 2 things these last few weeks
#1- Potty train Eli

#2- Get Eli to stay into bed at night.

One night Bryce and he had a nice little heart to heart chat and they decided if Eli could accomplish these 2 tasks we would go fishing. We are very happy to say Eli has taken this to heart and well, he REALLY wanted to go fishing, so we went! We didn't catch a dang thing but we learned a lot and next time we will have moe time and a much better spot.

My dear sweet husband decided to surprise me with flowers after a particularly difficult day potty training Eli. It was a very sweet surprise, and that is one of the many reasons why I love him

Hailee is now 2 1/2 monthes old. Crazy how fast the time has gone by. She is smiling and laughing. She loves to coo and try to talk to you. She is such a wonderful little baby, we truly are blessed to have her in our home. She is sleeping through the night and on a pretty regular schedule.

We spent this last week traveling to Montana to finish the final details selling our house and she traveled so well. she ate before we left and slept until until we all stopped for fuel and dinner, I fed her again and she slept until we reached Montana. Bryce and I really have been blessed to have mellow easy going babies (it's when they hit 1 that they get a little crazy like Eli, fingers crossed she will stay mellow)

I have also been playing around with my new camera. I am still getting the hang of it but so far LOVE it! hopefully I can have a better feel for it by the time Hailee needs her 3 month pics, and get some good pics of the kids together!

It's a little late but we had a wonderful 4th of July this year. We started out nice and early and headed to the parade with our dear friends Tammy and Arayia (not sure I spelled her name correctly). Afterwards coming home for some good ol' packing. We tied up a lot of little loose ends at the house. Then we enjoyed some home fireworks with our friends from Conrad, and ended up at the baseball field where everyone in town gathers to light off their fireworks. It was acually a lot of fun and so many people had really big fireworks.
Eli was terrified of the fireworks. Earlier in the day he was caught off guard by some firecrackers, so he decided to keep safe inside the suburban hunkering down behind his carseat. He would peak his head out every and watch the fireworks in the sky..then duck for cover when loud ones went off. We finally convinced him the fireworks would not burn him as long as he was careful and he managed to come out and enjoy the end of the show with us.
Kate had a blast bouncing around, she finally gained enough courage this year to hold a sparkler. Our little Hailee was such a good little baby and slept through nearly everything!

On Sunday June 21st (Father's Day) we got to bless our little Hailee Ann. Bryce did such an amazing job and we were so lucky to have some wonderful friends in our ward stand in as well as my dad. We were also very lucky to have Bryce's mom make the long journey up here to be apart of the wonderful day.

Bryce did such an amazing job as always giving Hailee her blessing. He blessed her with health and strength as she continues to grow and as she does so clarity of mind, that she may make wise choices. He blessed her to be an example to her brothers and sister both here and yet to come that she may be a like a pillar of light. He blessed her to fulfill her education and one day be a mother.

We were able to come back to our house afterwards and have a great get together with friends and family. We had a great time visiting with everyone and was so thankful for the friends we have made here in Conrad. We will definetly miss them dearly!

Thank you everyone for sharing in our wonderful day with us! We are so blessed to have this sweet little baby girl in our home. She truly is a special little spirit in our family. I can't wait to get to see her as she grows and developes her sweet little personality!

Last night as we were headed out to eat dinner we heard this loud siren going off. Rather new to the area we had no idea what that meant, but we assumed some type of a storm warning perhaps a tornado. As we were eating dinner we started to notice out our window very large flashes of lightning. Being up for an adventure we decided to go for a drive and found our way up a little hill and parked a while to watch he lightning. We witnessed one of the biggest thunder and lightning storms I have ever seen. We quickly realized we had lightning getting very close on 3 sides of us and decided being on top of a hill parked in a car was not the best place to be. We quickly headed down as it started to rain....very hard. The rain quickly turned into hail so large and loud that Bryce and I had to yell to hear each other talk in the front 2 seats. Poor Kate and Eli were scared to death in the back, wide-eyed with their hands covering their ears, at one point I saw Eli had the hood of his jacked on and his hands covering his ears. With the visibility very low because it was raining so hard, the trip home was slow but we finally made it. We pulled into the garage and got the kids out, just then I head the loudest crack of thunder I have ever heard which actually made me jump. Poor Eli instantly broke into tears. We quickly made out way inside and snuggled up in blankets by the window and watched the lightning. both kids were a little traumatized by the time we got home so we knew we needed to do a little damage control. We sat there holding the kids talking about thunder and lightning for the next hour. Needless to say by the time we were finished they had decided that lightning was pretty cool and not so scary after all. It was so much fun to sit there as a family and talk about the thunder and lightning and listen to Kate and Eli exp0ress their fears, and soon turned into fascination as the sky turned bright whites and purple depending on where the lightning was hitting. We did laugh when we later learned that the siren means severe weather warning please take cover....as we headed out :) guess we'll know better next time!

My little Hailee is growing so quickly, I can't believe it. She is such a good sweet baby! She is sleeping close to 6 hours at night and her older siblings just adore her. Anytime she makes any fuss at all they are running to her aide to plug in a binkie.
Our trip to Wyoming went surprisingly well. I was surprised how well we all traveled just me and the 3 kids ( Bryce drove his work truck so we could leave it hear). Everyone did really well, we only had 2 30-40 minute stops for the 8 hour drive! My kids are such troopers! Unfortunatly blogger is being retarded and won't let me upload pics...so I will do so as soon as we get back to Montana...which will be Tuesday

Aunt Shelly was so amazing and bought the kids little super hero capes and the LOVE them! Kate decided she wanted to be "pink super girl" and Eli wanted to be "bucket boy" They had so much fun! "THANK YOU AUNT SHELLY"

After 38 and 1/2 weeks of pregnancy, I am finally able to enjoy my sweet baby girl. Hailee Ann Merrick arrived into our family on May 21st at 1:30 in the afternoon. Her labor has shown me that past pregnancies/deliveries mean little when it comes to this. I should have know because all along this pregnancy was just a little harder than the rest. I was a little more sore, a little more tired (much of which I assumed was because I had never been pregnant chasing Eli before either). I should have known that this would only mean my labor would be a little harder as well, but being the optomistic person I am, I assumed it would be just like Eli and 3 hours into labor I would be holding a little baby that came out with 2 easy pushes. Well...this was NOT the case.
Hailee's delivery story really starts the day before I had her. Because I was being induced 11 days early I needed to have an amnio draw the day before to ensure her lungs were mature. I went into my appointment and as the doctor was doing the ultrasound to determine where he could insert the needle he realized her head was not even engaged (apparently this makes it more difficult to preform because her head was where he wanted to put the needle). He was finally able to find a small pocket up by my ribs to insert the needle. After he had the needle inserted into my stomach and through the uterine wall (which hurts a bit!) she decided to start moving around making it impossible to get the amnio draw done. After talking with my doctor he was confident she would be developed enough and to move forward with the induction.
So Thursday I was a little too excited to sleep and woke up around 4 am and decided to take a bath since sleep was not going to find me anytime soon. Around 5:30 Bryce and I started on our way to Boise. We checked in and eventually made our way back to my room where they broke my water and started me on pitocin by 7:45. After an hour or so of pit I started feeling contractions coming a little hard and requested my epidural. the doc came and gave me my wonderful drugs :) (he did an amazing job getting the epidural in and was very fast!) All downhill from here I remember thinking....I should be having a baby here in a couple hours, more than likely before noon!
About an hour later they checked me and I had only progressed to a 5, which surprised me but I wasn't too worried. Shorlty after this we noticed Hailee's heart rate dropped down into the 60's, my nurse was in my room instantly, repositioned my monitor and realized the monitor hadn't slipped but that her heart rate was acually that low, so they quickly moved me to my side and her heart rate came up immediently. This happened several times during the course of delivery. Twice because my blood pressure dropped, which they corrected with ephedrine and oxygen. A couple times I rolled from side to side to relieve pressure, and finally we had to turn of pitocin and just let her rest. After two and a half of this I had finally progressed to a 9. My nurse called my doctor and told him we just needed to get this baby here, he agreed and was over shortly. When I started pushing they realized she was face up rather than face down, which causes the baby to get stuck on the pubic bone coming down the birth canal. But lucky me, I apparently have a bone that sticks out more than most and she also got caught on that (I honestly don't remember which bone it was becaue I had been pushing for 30 minutes or so and still didn't have a baby, so I really wasn't listening to my doctor explaining it) Finally after 40 minutes of pushing my doctor got the vaccume to help get her out. Another 10 minutes of very hard pushing and she was finally out! I was so focused on pushing and trying to breath that I hadn't noticed the 6 extra nurses in the room. Hailee was only set my stomach briefly then rushed off to the table where all the nurses were. We had a couple NICU nurses there because of her low heart rate. They kept her longer than usual and seemed to be examining her extra close. Turns out they though she might have Downs Syndrome because of how swollen her face was made it look like characterists of Downs (we have since found out she is fine)