Leaving On a Jet Plane

Next Wednesday we are flying to Missouri for two whole weeks. We are going for Christmas, but also Brendan's brother and sister are getting married (not to eachother, even though they are from Missouri, JK). We are both very excited to hang out with family.

This is going to be our first plane experience with Cruz so I am of course a little nervous about the how things are going to go. I need some traveling tips. Such as, if you gate check your stroller, does it count as a carry on? If you check your car seat does it count as one of your bags? Can you carry baby food through security? Any other pieces of advice would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks for ThanksGiving.

Do you think it is un-christmasy (i am sure that this is not a word) to not want to celebrate any Christmas activities until after thanksgiving? It almost makes me sick to hear a Christmas song pre-thanksgiving. And because of this I have recently been labeled the holiday grinch...... (more than just Christmas, I am not a big fan of carving pumpkins and this year I didn't dress up hence the label...) Did you know that one of the reasons Thanksgiving was moved to the last Thursday of November is so that the shopping season could be extended? I look forward to your comments....

We had a great Thanksgiving. Nice and long, we left on Tuesday after I finished a inspection and drove to Portland. Wednesday we watched Twilight, I have not read the books so it was ok and it very very very very slightly gave me the desire to read them. But it was fun to go out with the Bros and Sister-in-laws while Tatems parents watched all of the Grand kids, all 10 and no fights. It was fun to see how Cruz likes to have other little people around.


Thursday- was the normal Thanksgiving stuff, food, football and wii.

Friday- Tom and Monique were able to come spend a few hours with us. It would have been great to see them more. But anytime is always fun. We need to make our next trip to San Diego to visit next.

Saturday- was great. Tatem went and did the annual Sister-in-law and children Gingerbread houses. I went shooting!! it was great and I have the shoulder bruises to prove it. We shot targets, clay pigeons, apples, bells, trees, well just about any thing we could find to shoot, now I want a Gun.

Sunday was church and then back to real life.

Up and over

Time passes so quickly, Life in the Marchant house gets crazier every day!!! I thought I would post a quick video for everyone to see. Since so many of our friends are making post with their children doing baby tricks I thought we would jump on the bloging bandwagon and show ours as well. But....... Cruz does not do tricks on command. He is such a independent little guy and every time he starts and the camera is out he stops.

So I decided to post a video of him crawling to his favorite item in the house, my guitar. Usually he dances when ever he see's it, but of course he is not willing to share his sweet dance moves on the web.

Happy Halloween!!!

Halloween was so much fun this year! We drove down to Portland and went trick-or-treating with my brothers, a tradition they have been doing for years, but I have always been unable to go. It was a quick trip, drove down Friday afternoon and came back Saturday morning. Cruz was so cute in his little gator costume and I went as the Evil Queen from Snow White. Brendan of course did not dress up because he is a big fat party pooper!!!!

Aren't I scary? Cruz sure thinks so.

Cruz is thinking, "Uh guys, what's going on?"
My cute little gator or dragon or dinosaur, whatever you think he is.
Cruz with the cousins plus a few additional cousins from my sister-in-law's side.

Destination Blogging.

Do you ever feel like some of your adventures are just so you can have a fun blog post??? Well Tatem and I have discovered that we are destination blogger's. Our fall has been great, and it feels like we have had less rain this year than previous ones and hopefully it stays like that.

We have been so busy, a few weeks ago we had a great time at Lattin farm's, it is a local pumpkin/apple farm that has great apple cider. Cruz's favorite part was the weeds growing next to the pumpkins. I guess we have a easily entertained boy.








Cruz is growing so fast, and has discovered that he is not limited to crawling on the floor, he now pulls himself up on everything. No matter how high we put things he somehow finds away to get to them. We went to visit Tatem's brother in Bellingham yesterday to visit and see their new baby, now Cruz doesnt look so little any more.



Tatem is really excited for Halloween, I think it is just so she can steal all of Cruz's candy!!!! (She has been staying away from the sweets so it is a great excuse to indulge)

She ran her first 10k in Portland last weekend. She had a blast and was able to run it much faster than she expected. (Just barley over an hour) She ran it with her brother and Sister-in-law and now is looking for the next race to run in. Her goal is to run the Seattle 1/2 marathon next November.


I have been working hard getting helping to secure our future in our business, I spent last weekend enjoying a great Pillar To Post meeting, we also got the Scion wrapped, I think it looks great and hopefully will help with our marketing efforts. The real estate market has definitely been a fun ride, but hopefully after the election things will calm down. The media certainly loves to mess with us. They are so biased it gets me frustrated!!

Growing Up Baby!

Cruz is the big 8 months old now!! I can't believe it, where has the time gone? Everyday I tell him he is not allowed to grow up, but he just won't listen to me. This little guy has won me over and he has me (and his dad) tied around his little finger. These are just a few pics that I took in the back yard.


He is a busy little bee, army crawling every where we will let him go. It is so cute watching him crawl around and make airplane noises. He is starting to get up on all fours and rock back and fourth, but he quickly plops back down onto his stomach. A second tooth as made an arrival and luckily there wasn't hardly any fussing involved with this one. There will be pay back for his high pain tolerance though. This kid is not going to know when to stop, because nothing hurts him. We're going to have to keep a close eye on him the more mobile he gets. He has discovered dogs and loves them!! He occasionally gets to see "Nona" the chihuahua on Tuesday's and chases that that little puppy around the house. There is also a golden retriever across the street and once Cruz saw her he started cracking up. I could go on and on about how cute this little guy is, but I'm sure no else thinks he is as cute as I do, so I won't bore you.

And, Ann Marie I'm still trying to get a good video of him crawling. Every time I turn on the camera he stops and stares at it.

Eagle Crest.

We are back...... From another weekend adventure.

This Labor day weekend was great. Tatem, Cruz and I had a great weekend in Portland and Bend. We left Thursday afternoon and stayed the night at the Livingston hacienda, and then off to Bend friday afternoon. A few of our previous Bend trips have only been Tatem and I so we thought that it would be fun to invite more of the family to come. Well it ended up being a full house with all of the nieces and nephews except for one as well as Tatem's mom and brother. Somehow Tatem's other brothers and sister-in-laws had other things to do, but their children's schedules were wide open so... we got the great privilege of enjoying the little kids with out their parents (vacation conspiracy I think so!!) It actually wasn't to bad and they all love to go to Eagle Crest.



Cruz didn't have a very good weekend though, he has been trying to push a tooth for the past few weeks. It has finally made its appearance a few days ago and the good news is we now have a much happier baby. Hopefully the rest will come in much easier.

We went on a few Hikes while we were there it was great to get out and enjoy nature. We also discovered Smith Rock and now that we have seen it I really wish we had discovered it sooner. Smith Rock is a world famous climbing area. It is so crazy to see what some people will do for a rush. Along with the rock formations there are miles of trails to hike, So next time we go we will defiantly be spending more time there.

We Have been invaded by the Army Crawl

We are no longer free to put Cruz on the floor and expect him to stay in one place. He has become very mobile!!!!! Not only is he mobile but he has really found his voice and the volume control has been stuck on loud for the past few weeks. I am sure that he is only going to get louder. I have found it really interesting to see how much he changes from day to day, it seems that he learns or does somthing new everyday, for the past few weeks his favorite thing to do is to stick out his toungue at everything and everyone. Well enough about Cruz




Tatem and I have had some fun adventures these past few weekends. Last Saturday we went and watched a pro-wake boarding competition. It was great, we met our friend Scott at the lake and enjoyed the really warm weather. We watched the competition on a really long dock and every time the boat would pass, the wake would come up and cool our feet off. Our summers here in the great NW are so mild that when ever it gets above 85 degrees we seem to melt away.

Our latest adventure happened this weekend. Our original plan was to go and see deception pass but none of our friends were able to go, and since we want to experience this with others we decided to explore Bainbridge Island. We needed to go to Issaquah and check our mail box and thought we would make a day out of the drive up to Seattle. Bainbridge is a short 30 min ferry ride away from down town Seattle. You can enjoy long walks around the town square, shopping, tons of food choices and a relaxing stroll down the waterfront trail. (wow I should write brochures) It is a fun little town, we had pizza at a little shop and spent the afternoon walking around the city. It is very touristy with little shops and lots of small cafe style restraunts. The water front is really cool, the small harbor was full of boats, and made for really great pictures.

We drove back to Olympia along the Olympic Pensulia and were able to see some more of our new Inspection Territory. This territory is huge I am constantly overwhelmed, somtimes to the point that I am not as effective as I could be. Otherwise life in the insepction world is good. We have had a very productive month and hopefully it continues.

Another week has come and and another post is gone........

Interesting Title

(Cruz and his Poop face)

So nothing very new and exciting has been going on at the Marchant home over the past few weeks. We were officially inducted to our ward today. We got to speak, yaaa!! It went well, but it is always a better feeling after it is over with. Brendan drives me crazy though, he maybe spent two hours on his talk and he did amazing. Me, I have been working on mine the past week every time Cruz has been asleep and I still didn't feel like I did the greatest job. Oh well, at least I know that all people will remember from our talk is that we spoke a few Sundays ago.

Brendan and I have discovered the drive-in theater. Last night we went and saw Wall-E and The Dark Knight (both great movies by-the-way). It worked out perfect with Cruz. We just packed him up in his car seat and he slept the whole time. We haven't been to a movie since Cruz was born, because we were so afraid of being those parents that bring a crying baby to the movies. $6 a person wasn't a bad price either for two movies too.


Cruz is growing like a weed and everyday it is so fun to see what a personality he is getting.
-He is now an ambidextrous roller.
-He is slowly getting better at getting to the things he wants. He talks more and more and loves saying, "bah, bah, bah," and 'da, da, da". I sometimes wonder if he is talking to someone with how much he talks.
-He now thinks peek-a-boo is funny.
-Is getting more ticklish everyday.
-He has a very high thresh hold for pain. I was changing his diaper the other day and his bum was a little raw. I started wiping his bum off and I thought he was having an allergic reaction and couldn't breath. Being the mean mom that I am I continued to wipe his bum and he breathed in again like his throat was almost swollen shut. "I don't want to cry mom, but HOLY COW that hurts!!!!!!!"
-Cruz has decided that he doesn't need to sleep as much as he used to. Up until about two weeks ago I could count on Cruz taking two naps a day that lasted over two hours. Now he is down to two naps that are about a hour-and-a-half. I know I shouldn't be complaining that he is only sleeping an hour and a half, but I have really enjoyed those hours to myself. At least I'm not so house bound now. He is staying up longer between his naps and I can run a few more errands without running into his nap time. I definitely don't get as much done around the house now though.

I am a little hesitant to put his out in the open with the fear of me not sticking to it (which happens a lot). But, I have been inspired to run a 10K (6.2 miles for those of you not from Canada). For some 6.2 miles probably is nothing, but I have never been a strong runner. I needed some motivation to get back into shape and I have been wanting to run a race, so I decided this would be the perfect opportunity. The race is October 19th in Portland and I have enlisted my brother and my sister-in-law to run it with me. I think more to have someone there to call 911 when I collapse. This definitely will not be a competitive race for me. I just want to say that I did it.

Marchant's Envasion

WARNING!!! SUPER LONG BLOG AHEAD!!!

So the last couple of weeks have been a blast. The Saturday after fourth of July all seven out of nine Marchant family members came to visit us from the great state of Missouri. It was a full house at the Marchant's. Cruz never got put down the whole week they were here. I had to threaten a few times to set a timer so every one could have an equal amount of time with Cruz. And I'm not talking about just threatening the siblings, I had to threaten the Grandparents as well. It wasn't until the night before they all left that they finally let Cruz roll around and show them how mobile he is. They were all so astonished. "Did you know he could do that!", ya and you could have too if you had put him down earlier. Oh well, Cruz loved all of the attention and it was nice having a break for a week. All I had to do was feed Cruz and every one else did the work.

We went to the beach on Tuesday. This was the first time a lot of the siblings had been to the ocean. I tried warning them that the Washington Coast was nothing like California. Needless to say they did not come prepared. Half of them didn't bring jackets. Brendan, his brother's Scott and Brian, and I rented mopeds and road them on the beach. That was a blast. While the rest of them huddled in the van sheltering themselves from the cold (they still had fun).


Wednesday and Thursday we went up to Seattle and did all of the fun tourist stuff up there. Lunch of course is always at Ivars, followed by Pike's Place. After that we went to the Ballard locks. We got to see a tugboat go through. Wow, those are a lot bigger then I thought!! I guess the big Cruise ships just dwarf them. We celebrated Brendan's brother's 18th birthday at Aqua Verde (great mexican restuarant by-the-way). Wednesday we went to the Seattle Aquarium and then the City Center to see the Space needle.


After all of that fun the fam left early Friday morning.

Last Sunday we celebrated Cruz's 6-month birthday (not really celebrated). I can not believe that the little guy is six months old. It feels like he has been with us forever. He is getting funner to interact with everyday. He has really found his voice and is super loud now. He loves to talk and sing. Brendan likes to sit in bed with him and says,"ba-ba-ba" and occasionally you can hear Cruz really put an effort in to copy him. He rolls over from his stomach to his back now, but only to the left. He'll roll until he runs into the couch or the wall and then he is stuck. It is really funny to watch, I am sure that he will figure out the rest really soon.

Cruz also wend to the Doctor this past week for his 6 month check up. Here are his Stats:
Weight: 17 lbs 1oz -- 45th%
Length: 27"-- 75th%
Head Circumference: 42 cm -- 10-25th% (He's got a tiny noggin, but it sure is a cute noggin)

We were concerned that he was getting a flat head, but the doc said that it is looking good and that he would not need a helmet.

He is healthy and happy and life is good.


We also have a new addition to our family. Last week we found out that our truck was in desperate need of a new transmission. We knew that it was starting to wear, but thought we could get another 10-15k miles on it before we needed to make any changes. So a few weeks ago we started casually looking for a new vehicle but really had no intentions of getting anything soon. We were interested in replacing it with something that would get better gas mileage but also be a functional work vehicle. The 2 vehicles we settled on were the Honda Element or the Scion XB both had enough room for the ladder to fit as well as all of the other inspection equipment. The Element has more storage room and seemed to be built a little tougher but gets worse milage from the xb and a 06 was the same price as a new Scion xb, Well if you cant tell we chose the xb, it is really fun to drive and is much more sports car than the truck. Plus we got a brand new car that we can hopefully enjoy for many years to come with out any concerns. Brendan misses his truck but is enjoying the new vehicle.

We are Officially Olympians

Brendan, Cruz, and I are officially living in Olympia now. We had our doubts if it was really going to happen (as many of you know last year we were suppose to move to Maple Valley, and things fell apart the day we were suppose to move. I guess it wasn't suppose to happen). There is so much to recap on.

The Wednesday before the move I went out to dessert with a few of my friends. It was so fun having a last get together before I left. I already miss you guys. I pray that I can find as fun of a group of girls in my new ward.
My mom was nice enough to come up, from Portland, the day before the big move and helped me finish cleaning and packing. I don't know what I would have done without her there. Cruz was a sweetheart with all of the chaos going on at our home. He just slept and played all day.

We had finished packing everything up at about three and the ward wasn't coming to help us move until six. So we decided to get a jump start on packing up the truck. We should have waited and gotten all of the big stuff in first. We got about half of the boxes and the couch in and the truck was still very empty. When a few guys from the ward came we told them that we really didn't need to pack up that high and so we didn't. Lets just say we barely fit everything in the truck (and we had a 22 footer) and we had to stuff Brendan's truck to the rim. But, we still had to leave a couple of things behind. My mom didn't have a very comfortable ride down to Olympia, we had to pack around her.

Brendan, Cruz, and I said good-bye to our home of 2 1/2 years and we were off to Olympia.
Being the procrastinators that we are, we weren't able to get any help from the ward to move us in on the Olympia side. On the way down my mom called my older brother Jeff, knowing that he was driving down from Bellingham to go to Portland, to see where he was. Thank goodness for family!! He just happened to be seven miles ahead of us and at 9pm, he, his pregnant wife, and two kids stopped to help us move in. My sister-in-law is awesome, she is an example of who I need to be more like. Jeff wanted to keep driving so he could get his girls to bed (of course an excuse so he wouldn't have to help, I would do the same thing), but Susan said, "No, they're family and they need our help!" It only took a little over an hour, but we were so thankful for their help.

This past week has been an awesome week for work. It is sad to admit it but I think this is the first week in 2+ years that Brendan has spent the full week working away from our home office. It was awesome and we are really excited to see how well we will do here in our new Pillar To Post Territory.

Cruz is now eating big boy food. Yaaa!!! I really wanted to wait until he was six months, but the boy has decided that he doesn't want to take a bottle and since I still work two days a week, we needed to figure out a substitute for one meal a day. The other meal I will just have to come home to feed him during my lunch. He caught on really quickly. I was feeding him tonight and all of a sudden he figured out to open his mouth when the spoon was in front of him. After that he was actually swallowing most of his food. Such a smart boy.

An even bigger ya is that Cruz is sleeping through the night! Before Cruz was consistently waking up at about 1am and 3am to feed, so I knew he wasn't hungry, his little clock was just stuck. We gave him a few nights to adjust to his new room and four nights ago I let him cry it out. It took one night of crying and the past three nights I have only heard him once for just a few minutes. Knock on wood that it continues. It is so refreshing to get a full nights sleep. I have almost forgotten what it felt like.

Well as you can see this is only a small sample of our past few weeks..... but we are happy and life is good..... Sorry there aren't more Cruz pictures.

Life Can Change in an Instant

It is amazing how quickly life can change. There has been so much that has happened in three weeks it almost feels like it should be an eternity. Last week Cruz learned to roll over. Brendan and I have been waiting for this day for about a month now, because Cruz has been struggling so hard to roll over. Then like that he did it. After he made it over once, it was like he had been doing it since he was born. I think my payment for having such a good baby is that he is going to be a little mover that will never stop. You can already tell he is trying to work those little legs so he can crawl.

This is one of Cruz's first attempts to roll over:


Not to successful.

Here is an actual success, to bad it is a week after he learned to do it:


Now he is a rolling over fool!! Once I lie him down, he is already on his stomach.



The biggest change that has happened over the past three weeks is that the Marchant's are moving!! In past three weeks we have sold our business and have bought a new Pillar To Post franchise in the great area of Olympia, WA. Well, actually an old business, we bought an existing franchise that has been running in Olympia area for the past eight years. Along with the county Olympia is located in, we were able to purchase three other counties.

If you had asked us four weeks ago about buying this we would have said, "HECK NO!!!". We were so happy with where we are currently at and didn't want to have to start all over again. What made us change our minds? A number or reasons, but I believe we were really guided to make this move. As we negotiated and looked farther into things, everything just made sense of why we should be doing this. What is amazing is that I feel so good about this change, even excited. Usually the thought of change stresses and scares me to death. I hate change!!

As sad as we are to be leaving Issaquah and all of our friends, we are so excited to start this new adventure in our lives. Short term it is going to be tough to really get this up and running again, (the guy we bought it from hasn't been working his territory for the past year), but the long term benefits far out way the hard work we are going to have to put in. Our projected move date is about June 20th and we still haven't found a place to live. Ahhh, we have so much to do!!!

4 Month Check-Up Results

Cruz had his 4 month check up this past week and his a growing, healthy boy. All except for he is getting a flat spot on the left side of his head, so we have to work on that so it doesn't get any worse.

Weight: 15 Lbs (50-75%)
Height: 25 inches (50%)
Head Circumference: 41 cm (25%)

Fun in Portland

I am such a procrastinator!!! Its taken me a week to post this. Last weekend Brendan, Cruz and I drove down to Portland to go see the family. It was a lot of fun. Brendan went out on an inspection with one of my brother's on Friday so me and my mom got to hang out a good part of the day doing girl stuff. These t-shirts are the result of me and my mom hanging out alone. They are so cute. The turtle wraps around the back as well.

Caden, Cruz, & Jack (these three are going to be trouble makers)

Saturday morning we went and watched my six-year-old neice, Gillian's softball game. She is going to be an amazing softball player. It was so cute watching them run around. They were still trying to figure out the game, so there wasn't a whole lot of rhyme or reason to what happened. But, it was still fun.



That afternoon the fam got together for dinner. We had fun talking and laughing.

Thats me rushing to Cruz's rescue, because if little Caden can get his hands on you he pinches and will not let go.



We also had our first unofficial family photo shoot after church.

Brendan always has to go check out the waterfall and fishes.

Cruz has become such a good traveler. He slept the whole entire car ride home. What a sweetie.


Here are a couple of extra pics for the Marchant clan.

My New Favorite Website

Has anyone heard of Etsy.com? Well, I am now obsessed with it. It is kind of a spin off of Ebay, but almost everything sold on it is handmade, and there is no bidding. Anyone can get on it and sell what they wish. I love scrolling from page to page looking at baby/kid stuff. There are a lot of really cute ideas out there that you can easily make yourself. It has really gotten me in touch with my crafty side. I recently made a appliqué onesie. When you think of appliqué I always thought of my grandmas quilts, but you can do so many cute things on onesies or t-shirts using the same process. This was my first attempt at appliqué, so it it is still a work in progress. Etsy has so many cute ideas that I want to steal, now I just have decide where I want to begin.



So Cruz likes to get into fights with himself. The two scratches on his nose look way better now, but the scratch on his temple is huge. He had blood on his sheet, he scratched himself so good. No he didn't punch himself in the eye, it is red because he is tired.

I am a big believer in swaddling so Cruz has never had a chance to scratch himself when he slept. But, now he is getting a lot more coordinated with his arms, so I decided I would start wrapping him with one arm out and see how he did. Also because recently he has been a little Houdini and brakes free every night around four in the morning. For the most part he has done really well at having an arm free while he sleeps, and hasn't been waking himself up, even when he gouges his face. After he gets used to the one arm being free at night, I'll let the other one loose too.