Twilight Movie Premiere and After Party,Midnight Show and Tanners 1st teeth

SOOO awesome things happened this past week...................

1st. I got the chance to attend the Hollywood Premiere of Twilight on Nov.17th and attend the after party where I met everyone and I mean everyone that was in the movie. The director and of course Stephenie Meyer herself. I would just like to say that they are some of the nicest and most down to earth people I have ever had the chance to meet. I got to talk to Kristin Stewart (Bella Swan) for a few minutes and she is sooooo nice and very pretty in person and she seems really down to earth. I also got to speak with Catherine ( Director ) for a little while and she asked how I got into the Twilight series I told her my husband introduced me to them and she thought that was the coolest thing. I also got to talk to Jackson (Jasper) and Kellan (Emment) for at least a 2o minutes each. they totally chatted with me like we were old friends and they were all so genuine and nice. Now on with the movie. I actually liked it a lot, but it was better the second time around..... They did a good job trying to stick with the book and where they deviated from that it was great. Ohh also the girl that plays Alice (Ashley Greene) said I had a really pretty dress... it was great. I got lots of complimants that night :) . I also just found out for sure they are doing New Moon... Yes!!!

On thursday night Nic and I went and saw the Midnite Showing and went to wait in line a 7:30.... it was a long 5 hours but good thing we did otherwise we would've had crappy seats... it was a lot of fun.

Also Tanner has his first 2 teeth that FINALLY came through. He is getting big so fast!!

Lastly I just wanted to say thanks to Meredith and Nic for making this last week so much fun!! I love you both. also PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE dont take the few select pictures I post from the after party, there personal and they mean a great deal to me, thanks!

Twilight Rocks!!!!

Ok so here are a few pictures that we have taken since Sunday. Tanner is becoming more and more fun as he DISCOVERS new and awesome things. The first picture of things discovered is that he can Arch his back and if not put in the restraints right he can throw himself from a stroller, that what happened in this first picture

Second He has been learning that he can grab and feel. His newest thing is to grab your hand and put it to his face or feel you face he especially likes hair.

These last three are to Celebrate his first Halloween.

You Can see him ask, "Can I have This one MOM?"

Just a Chilling me and my pumpkins

Wait Where did I go?????

So here is a picture of my father right after his surgery on Tuesday. Everything went as planned and just like the obstinate P.I.T.A. that he is he is already trying to do way more than he should. They went in though his neck and did all the work to his spine through a little hole that is now completely covered by that awesome white bandage that he has to have till it falls off by it's self.

This second picture would be Tanner's first "Big Boy Food" as mommy calls it. It was a feast of sweet potatoes and then some more sweet potatoes. I didn't get to watch it but I hear that he absolutely loves them. If he could he would shovel the whole thing in his mouth as fast as baby possible(i was thinking humanly but he doesn't have the control as much as he will some day and babies eat a lot less.......except for Tanner) he would have. His looks and actions, like grabbing mom's hands would suggest that Caitlin is slow to feed. We are still doing well just looking for a place of our own to get out of our parents hair.

Well it is Getting to that time of year again when we look at all we have to be thankful for and to be honest I don' t think I could ever be thankful enough for family. As some may know and other do not, my father will be going under the knife to have 2 vertebrae removed and two cadaver vertebrae replaced in his neck. this will happen on Tuesday the 21 of Oct at 7:50am. I have family that are traveling all the way from Wyoming to be here in support of my father and plenty of fam and friends that are praying for him, So thanks. Tanner just had his 4 month appointment and after examination found to be growing and achieving the milestones just like he is supposed to. As for our family...well we are living in Kingman trying to find somewhere to live and will probably live here till around may-July depending on when i find a job and somewhere to live in Tempe area. For now i guess that is all. I put two picks up the first is tanner playing with some pumpkins just having good ol' fun and the second is the Merritt clan having some good ol' fun. hope you all enjoy i will be updating to let everyone know about me pa and also about our living conditions.

WOW What Fun

So I don't even know where to begin......I know that it has already been a month since i have last posted anything and I would bet that everyone is just itching to know what is happening with out little family. Well as of right now we are in Kingman with our stuff scattered in Cedar City, Springdale and of course here. We are headed down to pheonix to look for a job and also housing today. Wish us luck I will write later in the week to let everyone know how things are going.

Fun I guess

So we have begun packing all the stuff that is not immediately needed. Things like the extra set of dishes and the curtains. As some of you may know I will be headed down to Arizona during the week to help out my Dad's business. Then if everything goes as planned we will be able to move the majority of the boxes and furniture into storage as we don't want to move anything until we are sure where we are moving. We are hoping as I stated in last weeks blog.....that housing and jobs will work out and that we will have both in place here soon. Tanner is doing well and like always growing way to fast. He has now found out how to rub his eyes and in doing so realizes that he must be tired and to throw a fit if we hold him because we are trying to have him sleep. On Monday, tomorrow the 18th of August he will be 10 weeks old. Can you believe it........neither can we.

SORRY

So a lot has happened since i last wrote. It always seems like that, i guess. So i will just abbreviated all of it and go from there. So nothing really happened until the 24th of July. We headed down to San Diego for a family Vacation. Then on the 30th of July we found out that we are no longer managers and had 30 days to move. However with no housing available till as late as December the owner will let us stay until we CAN move. Today we looked for apartments and also work as i am still unemployed. We even went down to St George to look.....and we might have found something...SO PLEASE keep us in your prayers we really need this to work out for us. Hope all is well and soon we maybe closer to some and father away from others. We miss and love you all wholly and completely.

I don't Even know where to begin these last two weeks have been full of things happening....if one didn't know better you would think that it was summer.....oh yeah thats right it is. So let's see I think that i will begin on the 1st of July. My family came through on their way up to Wyoming for our annual Merritt family Reunion. They picked up air and then were on their way. The folowing Caitlin and I loaded the car and Tanner into the car and began a grewling trip up to the reunion. I only say grewling because Caitlin was still healing from the whole child birth thingamabob, and I-15 north of Salt Lake City was rougher than the back road to my grandmas. We stopped at Greatgrandma Dolly's house and that was a lot of fun, then we went straight, or at least as straight as we could with a 3 week old baby in the car, to Wyoming. We stayed from Wednesday all the way till Saturday the 5th. We had loads of fun and found out that the mosquito wipes work well on kids and they don't mind them to much. We came home and on the 6th blessed tanner in the cedar 7th ward. It was a very nice Sacrament meeting. We took pictures and then Caitlin's Family made lunches for my whole family her Family and also the Reimschiissels. The Following day we had our good friends the Skinner come down to go to some plays of the Utah Shakesperian festival and visit of course. We had a blast and even got to compete at guitar hero Aerosmith it was awesome. Then we had 3 days to ourselves, Caitlin Tanner Ariel and Myself, till on friday my Mom came up to go to a roping in Panguitch Ut. To our suprise and displeasure mom annouced that our Nanny, Ariel, would be again returning to AZ. We missed her the minute she left, and no I am not Butt kissing, Caitlin and I now Have to change ALL of Tanner's dirty diapers. Ariel was such a big help. They packed Ariel's things and left Sunday afternoon. A house all to our selves......you would think that stress was releived and we would be able to sleep but no for 3 consecetive night I have had Insomnia and every time I start to get tired Tanner thinks it is the perfect time to wake up. So here we are to the present .....oh i forgot one thing......one tradition that we have when family(babies) go to wyoming for the first time we put their feet into the creek to help them like the cold, I guess. So now we are up to date on everything i will post pic's of the last two weeks in order the best i can.
here is Grandma(Caitlin's) Dolly

Tanner with his feet in the Creek

Caitlin and I holding tanner after
his blessing

Ms Skinner holding Tanner

Tanner's First Bike

So today we received Tanner's baby wrap which Caitlin picked out so that it was manly enough that Nic will wear it with the rocking Motorcycle. Now he is styling and ready to ride.......all is well and we are happy

2 WEEK CHECK-UP

Today we had the opportunity to go to Dr Newman for Tanner's 2 week check up and everything went alright, i only say alright because today was the day we had to do his 2nd P.K.U. test. For any of you mother's out there you know that to be able to do that test they prick the bottom of the foot and SQUEEZE the blood out enough to do at least 30 diabetes test. But on the bright side of Tanner being picked on they also weighed him expecting that he would have fallen in weight considerably below birth weight and just now getting back up to were he was at 6 lbs 15.2 oz, however, he has actually gone up a lot more he is now at 7 lbs 13 oz now and has grown to 20 7/8" from 20 " all in two weeks. An interesting Fact about babies in general, Yeast infections are available for all and are not fun to have always being rubbed by a diaper. Yes tanner has one and had to be put on prescriptions to help heal, it is alreay getting better. Pictures next week no promises as to when..... love ya all.

Friends

Today we got to have a friend of Caitlin's from high school, meredeth, come and visit us for a couple hours. I have come to find that no matter who it is or when they visit or for however long they visit it doesn't ever seem to be long enough when you love them. The summer has officially hit here is Cedar City Ut with a high of 92+ degrees it sure is heating up and Caitlin said the other day, "boy am I glad that I am not going to be pregnant while it is hot!" She missed it by only 9 days. well all is well just missing our love ones that are far and away, just wish we could all be close to one another and never have to say good bye for more than a couple of hours, If we want to.....sometimes, time away makes us the most fond of what we have because we can't have it caused by the distance we have between us. I personally can not wait till i can apparate from one local to another.

ASK and ye shall RECEIVE

Well after a long day of Tanner being kinda of sick but with no temperature....After about the 4th time of him throwing up, just a little extra milk, we all decided to give tanner a bath at 10:30 at night. Right before we started with him all stark naked I made a mention that to help us top off the night I looked at Tanner and said, "you should just let the pee fly and land it right on me!" Well it all went fine we washed him and dried him off and the applied a little lotion. I picked him up and right on cue on the way to put a diaper on and clothe him he "let the pee fly and landed the pee right on me here are the pics to prove it

Nic's 1st Father's Day

So today I had the blessing of my first official father's day that went just as i would have it. The above are two pics that we took and that we just fell in love with. the first happened during a TV show Americas best dance crew and they were doing what is called the motorcycle which looks like what tanner is doing. The second is when he was waking up about 1115pm he was making all kinds of faces and this is the one we loved the most. Happy F-day to all you fathers. And having Ariel my little sister here has been a HUGE blessing to my wife and I.

First Doctor's Appointment

So yesterday we went to Tanner's first Doctors appointment. They weighed him and told us that most babies lose up to 9 oz and that tanner had only lost one oz which was awesome. Also checked his jaundis which has cleared up completely from the assesment of the P.A.. He has been sleeping a lot except at night which he thinks it is fun to keep us up all night and just when we are just about to fall asleep he lets us know that again he is hungry and maybe has a messy diaper. It has been loads of fun and i think that we are finally getting used to the very different scheldule of every two hours waking up to make sure he is doing ok. The other picture that i posted is one of him in a little beenie with bear ears on it that says "all natural." we felt it appropriate for him.....I can not express the love that I and his mother feel for him. Caitlin said it was hell, to go through the labor and more so the after labor but would do it again in a heartbeat for him.....and if I could I also would go through it for him. What a blessing to have a little addition to our family, and feel the support of our families, the support we have had since we were born 24.5 and 22.4 years ago. Thank you to everyone you are all awesome especially to our parents, Kit, Gina, Dianne, and Greg, in no spaciffic order of course how could anyone put an order to love of parent. again we love you and thank you more than you will ever know.

HOME SWEET HOME

So we thought that we would have been released early yesterday after being in there for 4 days......boy were we wrong. Caitlin wasn't doing to well and look like she was going to pass out so they took a blood count and found that she was real low on blood so they had her walk around and she almost passed out, Because she was so low. so around 1:30 pm they began giving her one of two units of blood. After the 2nd unit they had to do another blood count and found she was still low on some levels, however they allowed us to leave at 8:50pm. So now we are home and everyone is doing better and Caitlin finally got to take a shower.

TANNER NICOLAS MERRITT

So It all began on a windy wet......oh sorry that's not what you want to read is it...ok so she started going into labor on Saturday around 4 pm. As the night fell it slowly picked up until at 2 am sun morning we decided to go to the hospital. they found that her blood pressure was super high so the put her on magnesium to help bring it down. Because of her BP they decided to induce labor with patosim. She labored to a 3+cm and the asked for the epidural and then rested till about 1245 Mon morning she started pushing and within 50 min Tanner Nicolas was born weighing in at 6 lbs. 15.2 oz. and a whopping 20 inches long. mom and baby are fine and still at the hospital so i will write more and send pics when we get home hopefully tomorrow the 11th of June.

JUNE 5th WHAT A DAY

Well it all started early this morning. Caitlin and I haven't been able to sleep until about 2:00am and as I was getting things ready to go to bed I walked to the window to let down the blinds. As I did so this is what I saw..... On a lighter note and some news that will be expected by many...at the docs office yesterday he said that Caitlin had only progressed 10% and was at 90% effacement. Because of the little change we have an appointment on the 10th of June at 6:00 am to go to labor and delivery to be induced. Other than that nothing new......Just in the midst of this "global warming" I guess even though it is officially summer and we are still getting snow. Al doesn't know what he is talking about poor guy. I will try to add as we get closer if I find anything new to write about.

Pictures

Here is Caitlin just a couple days ago. Tomorrow she will be full term at 40 weeks and she is still not having any contractions. We will have to see what happens in the next couple days hopefully she will start to go into labor so she can once again "have a stomach!" that is according to her. We are both super excited for our new arrival. Don't know if we can wait much longer.

How Much Longer

Well today we went to the doctor to do a check up on caitlin and see how she is coming along. She is officially 40 weeks this Saturday and it is looking like Tanner doesn't want to come unless he makes an entrance. Caitlin is 80% effaced. That is up from 60% a week ago but still not what she was hoping for. I have pictures to post and will do that soon. I don't dare say when last time I did I never got around to it.

Check out HE@#(@=c #=k)

What a couple days we have had. On Wednesday we went to the doctor for Caitlin's check up. She is 36 weeks and is about to be done and is more then ready when ever Tanner feels it appropriate. Yesterday and today have been a complete nightmare for us. We being the managers have the resposiblity to check every apartment and clean when everyone is moved out. Thanks to Caitlin her mom, Dianne, her brother, Iain and Carrie, the old manager, and roger the owner we have all but 3 apartment cleaned and ready for people to move in with the exception of cleaning the carpets which won't be done until monday so the night mare lives on. But thank you to Dianne and Iain for all your help. Tommorrow i will post pictures so be ready

ONE AWESOME WEEKEND

Let us begin by saying thank you to everyone. We can definately feel the love that you all have for us. It all started on Friday around 6pm. That is when Candice, Caitlin's sister, got in from her flight from LA. We went over and spent time with the McDonald family and the girls made cookies while Iain and I played with both dogs, Bently and Kokoa. On Saturday, my family came and arrived around 1:45pm. We unloaded and at 2pm all the girls went to Caitlin's baby shower and my father and I went to go golfing. Cedar Ridge was closed for some turniment so my dad and i went to Mt Carmel's Golf course which is mostly a par 3 with 3 or 4 par 4. We had a blast and ended up playing the nine hole 3 times. My family, except me and my dad, went to sizzler and Caitlin and her family went to Ninja. My dad and i returned around 9:30 after looking around for land and animals. It was pretty cool we saw a lot of deer on the utah89. We, me and my father, went to eat at Don Miguel's Mexican Food. It was good and we then headed home. Caitlin began showing me all the things the all you awesome people got for us. We only got through about half of all the stuff and we called it a night

Sunday we all slept in except dad who went to sacrement. When dad got back I began making my infamous Crepes that everyone wants me to make everytime we have any visitors. We then all went to the front room to watch Hairspray. Almost all of us fell asleep but enjoyed the time together. After the movie Dad, Mom, Grandma, Aunt Laura, and Ariel all packed up and got ready to get on the road. They got on the road around 5pm and arrived safe at home by 10pm that night now a new week still looking for a job. Wish me luck.

The latest news...

Well a lot has happened since our last posting. as some of you may know we are managers at a student apartment complex. And it is a great thing. the best part of all is that we no longer have to pay any rent. The baby's due date keeps getting closer and we are trying to prepare for the arrival of Tanner (4-6 weeks left). also some recent news Nic was let go at his job from Wells Fargo which created a problem, we no longer have insurance for the baby. so we ( meaning me) are really stressing out about that. Nic is currently applying for jobs like crazy, hopefully one will work out soon. He also filed a complaint with Human Resources of Wells Fargo contesting his being laid off. And they offered him Severnce pay until the end of May which means we will have insurance until the end of June, so hopefully before June is over he will have a new job with insurance. well that is all that has gone on lately, we are really looking forward to having a new addition to our family soon.

What A Vacation

So we are home again after being able to spend almost a full week in Arizona with my Family. We left last Friday the 7th of March and we came home on Thursday the 13th. While we were down there a number of things were accomplished. The most important things are that I and my father were able to finish the crib that we started at Christmas and because my family will be up with Kera around the time that Caitlin will be having her baby shower, my family through her a surprise baby shower what follows next are the pictures of these two events

SORRY

So I feel real bad to those of you that read this as an update to our family. I haven't written in a real long time so i will try to do better. My wife and I went to AZ for Cmas. I started a crib for our first child, which we found out right after Cmas that we are have a boy(tanner tristan). My job still goes the same and i am still employed at Wells Fargo. The only big difference is that we have moved and once we clean it up I will take and post picks on here of our new and old place just to show a good comparison. We just finished getting all the stuff moved over here yesterday and still have a lot to go through, so until then. love ya all.