I looked out the window...

and what did I see..

Jordie and Leia, our two friendly Great Dane neighbors!

I constantly have drool all over my front and back door windows from these two, AWESOME, horse-sized dogs.  The kids love them.  They call them "the girls".  And the neighbor calls himself my hairy, house-wife friend!  He stays at home and does medical transcription so we hang out quite often.  He even keeps a stash of super-hero popsicles in the freezer for the kids.  His name is Josh.  He also takes Isaac with him sometimes when he takes "the girls" for a walk around the neighborhood.  He came back laughing one time when Isaac kept telling him his tummy hurt and then began saying how hot he was and then went on to say, "I think a popsicle would make me feel better."  I had to explain to Isaac that from now on he is to simply ask Josh for a popsicle instead of going on and on with little white lies to try to manipulate one out of him!  He's been putting that advice to good use ever since!

Isaac and Georgie were playing naked in the backyard while I was finishing up the paint job (I had no idea they were naked...the little exhibitionists:).  They knocked over a storm window that Joey had left propped against the porch.   They then proceeded to add a water hose to the mix...glass, water, naked...sounds like the ironing bit from Brian Regan!  Isaac, of course, slipped and broke the glass with his bum and managed to somehow get a deep slice on his upper back.  The story is pretty long but basically we heard him screaming bloody murder from outside.   Like the good parents we are, we ignored him for about 10 seconds because he so frequently cries "wolf" that we figured it was nothing big.  He then began to scream, "I'm bleeding" and that got my attention!  Blood dripping down his back and body, I instantly felt guilty for rolling my eyes at his previous blood curdles.  But he was such a brave boy and didn't cry at all when Joey put a stitch in his back without any anasthetic (how do you spell that:). We just keep thinking how much worse it could be.  But, thankfully he's all better now and has given us a great story to tell about our neglectful parenting skills!  And if that's what you're thinking, keep your comments to yourself;)

Our karate boy in the natural stance.

And here Karate Kid is teaching Georgie his tricks!  I just have to add that the best part of seeing Isaac in Karate is watching him bow at the door...hilarious!  I didn't know they did that but it is soooo funny! 

Before and After

I PAINTED MY

NAUGHTY, NAUGHTY {knotty} PINE:)

Before.....

AFTER...

Here's Joey jammin' on the guitar with Elder Urich whom we LOVE by the way!  He comes over quite often and loves playing JOey's guitars.  Here they are planning a musical number for sacrament meeting...Come Thou Fount!
This is the new Elder, Elder Young but this gives you another good look of the other wall.  I"m still not sure about the color but I think when I get some pictures up it will come together for me.  Mom, where are you?!

You can see more before pictures in my August post but you get the idea here.  The next big project will be left for Kerry to do.  Tile and a new sliding door!  Most people would just jump in and figure it out for themselves, but why when we have Pop-pop to do the job! (I'm sure we'd ruin it anyway) 

A Journal Entry

Since my intention is for this to be a family journal, I'll go ahead and make a regular old, what we've been up to and how we're feeling kind of entry:

I began sanding down our knotty pine room, a project I was waiting to start until Kerry could come and do the tile but since he can't come until Thanksgiving I decided to go ahead and get'er done.  I've spent two+ days sanding it down and this afternoon, the angels sang when I FINALLY finished!  My house has about a 1/4" coating of dust on top of everything and I'm sneezing saw dust.  I wash my face and I can just feel all my pores turning into blackheads from all the grit.  But it will be soooo worth it!  I can't wait to give this "cave" some light!  I don't mind doing the work at all but I don't think I could live in a house while it was being renovated. I'm a little too much of a clean freak for that.  

The kids did a great job of letting me work.  They played outside in our backyard and then came in about 20 minutes after it started to rain on them.  They LOVE the backyard.  It's funny that at our old house we had a playset and a small swing but they didn't go out there much.  In this house, with no playset, they love to play outside.  All the years of growth on this old house and yard really give rise to their imagination.  They fill pales with rose petals, old pecans (from our pecan tree), dirt and water and play everything from Thomas the Tank Engine (and the magic Gold Dust) to Knights in Shining Armor and Fairy Godmother.  They really play well together.  Life with them is getting so low maintenance that sometimes I find myself being really selfish and rolling my eyes anytime they ask me to do anything for them...FEED YOURSELVES;) J/K! But seriously, I was thinking just today that I need to spend more quality time with them...doing crafts or working on letters and reading with Isaac.  If any Moms are reading this and have any good ideas on how to work good quality time in each day, let me know.  How much time do you spend just playing or being with your kids each day?  Other than the bed time routing, lunch and dinner, I've been pretty bad about it lately.  I'm constantly telling them "I'm busy, just let me finish this and then I'll do that with you."  Am I selfish?  It just seems that  there is always something else I need to be doing.  But when I really think about it, Isaac and Georgie are why I'm at home...to be with them.   

Change of subject...Joey is doing great at work.  Every where I go I meet someone who has been to see him and really enjoyed him as a doctor.  One lady said she hadn't seen him yet but she was really looking forward to it because she heard so many great things, specifically his reticence to give drugs and antibiotics and that she'd heard he was really cute;)  I thought that was funny that she told me that.  I enjoyed hearing it!

The ward here has a book club and this month we're reading The Peacegiver by James Ferrell as couples.  Joeys halfway through and I haven't even started it yet.  I've been trying to finish up Man's Search For Meaning and my George Washington biography first.  I don't think I'll succeed on the George Washington book.  It's just not catching my attention.  Man's Search for Meaning is really great.  He brings up some really great points and analogies...makes ya think.  I've really been trying to decide lately about what it is I want to do when I go back to school in a few years.  I thought this book might give me an inkling of whether or not I would really like Psychology.  I know this one book isn't the only way to find that answer but I figured, "Hey, it's sitting on my shelf, its a classic, let's see what I do with it."  I'm a little disappointed in myself.  I'm just not eating it up like I'd hoped.  When I pick a career path (who knows how much I'll actually end up working) I want to study something:

a)  that I LOVE to study...something that excites me to get back to the books and 

b) something that I can be proud of in the way that it helps people...really helps people

And thats why I hoped I would eat this book up!  What better thing for me to do than to be a clinical counselor.  But its just not doing it for me.  I hope I don't offend anyone here when I say that I guess I'm just a shallow, design loving female who craves an outlet for my minute amount of creativity.  I really want to do graphic design.  For some reason I've been fighting it, but I keep coming back to it.  And, hey, there's nothing wrong with that, right?!  I wish I loved psyche and sociology more, I really want to...but I just can't get it to click 100% for me.  But I have a few years to worry about that. 

That's enough for now.  Next time I'll write a little more about the kids...I had no idea that "regular old, what we've been up to" would end up like this.  But here we are...and I'm spent;) Goodnight!

Georgie says....

Georgie woke up early this morning {what's new} so, of course, so must I.  Here's her conversation with Dad as he politely kicks us out of the bathroom, shirt off, to take a shower:

"Daddy, dose your nickles?" {nipples}

"Yep, those are my nickles, Gi-ga."

"I hab a bagina..." struts off with great confidence

Puff The Magic Dragon

Puff the Magic Dragon is practically a member of the Merback family now and here are the videos to prove it!  Uncle Bob, hippy that he is, sang and strummed it on the guitar to Joey and all his cousins as kids and now Isaac and Gigi ask Daddy to sing it to them every night at bedtime.  We didn't even realize that Georgie new the words until we caught her (on tape) flipping through the "Puff" picture book, singing to herself all the verses.  And there are a lot of verses!  

On Saturday, our church Primary had a little talent show for the kids and Isaac performed the song while Joey played it on the guitar.  (Which brings back memories of Zach doing Elvis at our White Oak Ward talent show...oh what good swooners my cousins and I were!...Aunt Kath, do you have that on video?)  I had my video tape reeling the whole time only to discover at the end of his OH SO CUTE, perfect performance that I had the dial on "playback mode" instead of record...I'm retarded.  So this is a video of him practicing it before we left. 

I caught this one of Georgie a few days earlier when I was playing around with our MAC eye cam.  I think its pretty classic of our spunky little toe head!

Nostalgic for San Antonio

HOME SWEET HOME 

Nostalgia kicked in as we looked through pictures this weekend and came across so many of our previous home, San Antonio.  I thought I'd do a little tribute to the places and people we love.  It's a pretty poor showing since I rarely take pictures, but are a few memorable ones:

Sea World...we sure wish this was still 5 minutes away!

Isaac and Samuel at Halloween last year.  I wish I had a video of their embrace just before this picture was taken.  Samuel lived just around the corner from us so they played together a lot.

Isaac and Abby Morrow...best buddies!

We did a stake musical production and had such a good time.  Here are some of my cast mates and friends.  Mary Morrow, who I wish I had more pics of since we hung out all the time!  Tovi Cain and Becky Hunt, another great friend that always came around about 30 minutes late!  But at least she came;)  We hung out with the Hunts quite a bit too.

Anne-Marie, Zeffy and I in about the only attire we ever saw each other in...our running clothes!  These were my girls in San Antonio and we spent a lot of time together running, doing park workouts, playing tennis and letting our kids play together unsupervised in the park.  Its a shocker that any of them are still alive and without sexually transmitted diseases from the previously chewed gum they so often enjoyed.  And don't forget all the used condoms we saw lying around...you gotta love Westcreek! (our neighborhood)

Joey's graduating class...some of them

Jumping with more than 2 children at a time, a water hose added to further increase the risk of an un-netted trampoline...once again, its a wonder any of them are still living.  At least there's no danger of STD's here!  The Feists had the best backyard.  Almost anything I know about gardening (and knitting, which is very little)  I learned from Zeffy!

Our farewell dinner party.

Isaac and his very best buddy, Samuel Huddleston, in drag.

Georgies buddies!  We were all pregnant at the same time and watched the girls grow up together.  Emily, Georgie and Olivia.

These are just a few of the great memories we have of friends and places in our old home town. We miss you San Antonio!