Our Niece

Merrill's brother Stuart and his Wife Genevieve just had a little baby girl. Chiara Sophia Larsen, born 11/08/09. 6lbs 12oz, 18 1/2 inches.

What we have been up to!

I don't know if I have mentioned on the blog that Merrill accepted a job offer in Seattle. He starts January 5th. We are very excited. We really wanted to move to the northwest. My family lives in Oregon, so we won't be very far from them. And Merrill has discovered how wonderful the northwest is. :)
We have a very busy couple months ahead of us. We are going to Oregon for Thanksgiving, and apartment hunting in Washington just before. Then after our trip to Denver for Christmas, we are leaving Utah!
Here is what's been up the last couple weeks:

She loves her jumper!

What a little cutie!

Darci is now starting to sit all by herself. This is her sitting in the high chair at Village Inn drinking her bottle.

Merrill with Darci and Hunter (our friends little boy)! How cute!

My pumpkin. I finally got it carved the day before Halloween. It wasn't easy, we didn't have pumpkin carving knives, so it took forever and I had to be creative to carve the small areas with a big knife. Then I forgot to put it outside until halloween night, and we were gone, and then when we got back, we saw that someone had smashed it, and not all the pieces for the pumpkin were there. And it was the only pumpkin smashed in our whole apartment complex. Weird! I wasn't very happy.

Sitting up, go Darci! With the pillow just in case she falls.

This is Darci's new thing. She does it all the time, even when I am feeding her rice cereal. She really concentrates on doing it, its cute.

I thought this we cute. She was too tired to hold her head up.

For halloween we went to a friends house for Cheese and Chocolate fondue, and we watched Scream. And for some reason the guys got out the big knife (maybe that had to do with the movie, creepy) and the apples left over from the fondue stuff. After this there were apples everywhere. The video is Merrill slicing an apple in the air. I did it too. I got a really good slice, after the first one where I only cut off a small chucnk, and the big chunck hit me in the head. But no one video taped me. :(

Pumpkins

On Saturday we went with some friends to a pumpkin patch to get a pumpkin. They had a "tractor ride" from the barn to the pumpkin patch. We had fun, and since we don't know what we are doing for Halloween, I used this as an excuse to get Darci a costume and dress her up to take pictures. We didn't get very many.

On the tractor ride to the pumpkin patch. Darci's hat keep falling, it was a little too big.

Our friends, Jessica and Scott.

My cute little pumpkin!

Me and Merrill with our pumpkins! ;)

She was so cute in her pumpkin outfit. We were getting some ice cream and she was in her stroller, and this little boy came up and tried to give her a kiss. And his mom kept pulling him away and he kept trying all different angles to get in there for a kiss. Then his mom finally just pick him up and he got so upset and was screaming cause he couldn't give my cute little girl a kiss.

After the pumpkin patch we went to Merrill's brother's house to carve the pumpkin we got.

Merrill, Stuart, and Genevieve (she is having a baby in just a couple weeks!)

Merrill carved this pumpkin while I took care of our little baby pumpkin!

All the pumpkins that everyone carved!

Merrill with his pumpkin

Merrill put all the candles in his pumpkin so he could get a good picture! He did a good job!

The park and giggles

There is a park around the corner from our apartment, and we took a walk over there with Darci. She likes going on walks and looking around. She didn't have much of a reaction to the slide, but she liked the swings.

leaving for our walk

going down the slide with mommy!

She fell sleep on the walk home.

We finally got her laughing on video. Its so cute. She laughs when we kiss her face tons.

Darci's new toy

When we were in Oregon, my mom had one of these and Darci loved it. So, with the help of her Grandma Bird, we got her one. Here is a video of her bouncing in it. The tv is on in the background, and its a bit blurry, so its not that great of a video, but its still so cute.

Oregon and Washington

Darci and I took a trip to Oregon and Washington. It was Darci's first plane ride. She did great! Basically she slept both times, except for a little bit of the first flight, and barely fussed. I was so happy.
We were in Oregon for a couple days, then drove to Washington with my parents and went to my cousin Shadd's wedding. And spent a week at my Grandma's house. While we were there we drove around a lot to different things. And we went to the Othello Rodeo. My brother Randy competed in the Wild Cow ride. He did it last year and won. But this year they weren't so lucky. They got an insane cow both nights, it just ran around the whole time, and they could not catch it.
After all the fun in Washington we came back to Oregon for a couple more days and then came back home.
Merrill came with us to Oregon then drove up to Seattle the next morning to check out a job there and then he came home a couple days later. He did get the offer from this job, which he is sure he is going to be accepting... More on that one later!
Here are some pictures from our trip.. and of course, they are all of Darci!

3 months old, her hair is getting so long.

She sits up so well, even with very little support.

That's my mom's cat, he is huge! And for those of you who have seen Darci recently, you know how big she is..

Us at the rodeo

My cute little nephew

My parents and their grandkids.

My brothers

Cousins, they are so cute together. Wyatt is so good with Darci, he just loves giving her hugs and kisses.

Wyatt playing around the tree at Shadds wedding.

Darci, me, Grandma Calder, and Mom

Randy (my brother), his son Wyatt, Me, Darci, Brandon (my cousin), and his son Gavin.

Funny Noises

Darci makes the funniest little noise when she is trying to "talk" with her pacifier in. Here is the Video.

Colorado and Darci

Darci had her 2 month Doctor visit the other day. Everything is great. She weighs 13.8 pounds and is in the 99 percentile! She's our little chunk!
We've been living in Colorado with Merrill's parents since the beginning of July, while Merrill does an internship. This is our last week here. We are going back to Utah so Merrill can finish his last semester at BYU. We've had fun while we've been here. We didn't take a lot of pictures, just of Darci. While we've been here, we went to the Denver Botanic Gardens, the Denver Aquarium, I went to the Denver air museum with a friend, Merrill went to the air show at the rockie mountain airport, we went to a Rockies game against the Giants and it was awesome! We spent a lot of time at home doing puzzles, mainly me and Merrill's mom. Somehow I am still not bored with them. We did about 30 all together.
Well, her are some pictures that I did take while we were here, and some of Darci.

Darci Sleeping on the grass.

Sleeping with Grandpa Larsen. She liked spending time with Grandpa outside.

Sitting up by herself, only for a sec.

Making faces at Mommy

Darci's little noises

My roses for our 2 year anniversary!

All 14 puzzles of Thomas Kinkade paintings that we put together. A total of about 5350 pieces.

Merrill at the air show

At the Denver Botanic Gardens

I took a break from posting and went downstairs to play with Darci. And just as Merrill got home, we discovered that Darci can stand. Obviously not completely by herself, i have to support her from falling over. But she holds her weight herself.