April Showers?

We have been trying for months (maybe even years) to get Merrick to take a shower. Over the past few weeks he's been talking about the shower and will come open the door when you are taking a shower (let me tell you that it's not easy to take a shower with someone opening and shutting the door the entire time). So tonight I actually talked him into coming into the shower and he LOVED it! He actually didn't want to get out. Although I think he still prefers the bath. Here's a picture of where I found him the other morning...

Usually when we can't find Merrick he is "hiding" in his room. He loves to climb into the rocking chair, grab a book and "read"

Easter

We headed to Seaside to celebrate Easter weekend with Poppa, Grandma Bec, Aunt Meg, Jasper and cousins Jaley and Genna. Thankfully the drive over to Seaside on Saturday morning was pretty uneventful, although about 20 minutes before we got into town Merrick started getting pretty antsy. When we pulled up to the Condo and I went to hand off Merrick to Poppa, I soon realized why he was being so antsy. He said to me as I pulled him out of his car seat "I pee pee" and sure enough, he had. The poor thing had leaked through his diaper. Poppa took him to get cleaned up and Travis and I went to park and unload the car. For those of you who have kids, you know that whether you are going for one night or two weeks, you still have to pack the same amount of stuff, which is a lot! We were getting settled in and had been there about 20 minutes and all of a sudden the fire alarm starts going off. So we stick our heads out the door to see if anyone else is leaving, no one really was so we thought we'd just wait it out, then we looked again and people were starting to be evacuated. So we got our coats and shoes and headed outside. Thankfully we were blessed with a nice day, so we didn't have to stand outside in the rain. We decided that since we were outside that we should take a walk on the beach. Merrick loves being outside, so it wasn't hard to convince him. We played on the beach for a while and then headed upstairs for lunch and a nap.

Unfortuately Merrick decided that he didn't want to take a long nap, so just as mom was getting to sleep, he woke up. We decided to head back out to the beach and play with our new sand toys. Well... that didn't last very long. I knew as soon as Merrick was telling us he wanted to go inside that he had not slept long enough.

So we headed back inside and Merrick played with Poppa while Mama and Dada went to check out the deals at the outlet mall. While shopping we called to check in with Poppa and learned that Merrick was laying on the window sill saying "night night" so we gave Poppa the okay to put him down for another nap. When we got back from shopping we all decided to go for a swim. Merrick was not really sure of the little wading pool, but loved being in the big pool with Mama and Dada. He even checked out the hot tub with all of us.

Sunday morning we got a disappointing call from Aunt Meg. Jasper wasn't feeling well, so they weren't going to be able to come over and join us for Easter Dinner. We were all bummed about not getting to spend the day with them. I think we were also a little bummed about the rain. Us Oregonians get tricked so easily by nice weather! We had a very quiet Easter dinner and after checking out Merrick's Easter basket, we headed back home.

Babies, Babies Everywhere!

We have enjoyed lots of wonderful baby news over the past month. Our friends Jonathan and Karyn welcomed the arrival of their beautiful daughter Joyce Caroline on February 26th. Then on March 9th we heard that my cousin Julie and her husband Brian are expecting a baby in November. Merrick will have a second cousin to play with when we get together for the holidays! On March 16th our friend Rebecca and Corey welcomed the arrival of their beautiful baby girl Olivia Jean. Not to be outdone, our friend Kelly and Alyssa welcomed their beautiful daughter Addilyn Jean on March 18th. Did I mention we had lots of baby news? Merrick's day care provider Nazzy and her husband Tony welcomed the arrival of their sweet baby girl Shodya on March 21st. Merrick has quickly learned the word baby and thankfully he hasn't been jealous at all when we've gone to visit all of these precious little ones.

Joyce Caroline

Olivia Jean

Addilyn Jean

Keeping up with the Yates Family

So we decided to start a blog for a few different reasons...

1. Everyone is doing it, so shouldn't we?
2. It's much easier to keep everyone up to date on what we are doing.
3. Not that we don't love emailing and seeing all of you and telling you what we're up to... but did we mention this is much easier???
4. It might actually allow you to see recent photos of our family... at least we're hoping that will happen!

So stay tuned for all the latest news from the Yates Family