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.

I Thought it is Suppose to be Spring?

What a week. We went from last Saturday being 80 degrees, to today there being an inch of snow on the ground (and still snowing as I write this). What is up with that? I think Al Gore is full of crap with all of this global warming stuff. Because it certainly isn't warming up around here. I want it to be sunny out. Cruz and I need to get out of the house. At least last Saturday we took full advantage of the sun. Brendan, Cruz, and I went and walked around the Arboretum by University of Washington. It was the perfect time to do it as well because all of the trees were blossoming. Cruz got to enjoy his first real bits of sunshine as well. The Arboretum is definitely somewhere we are going to go again.

Cruz loves his stroller

This story might be a little embarrassing for Brendan, but it is to funny not to tell. As many of you know Cruz's crib is right next to our bed. Well, the other night I had just put him down for the night (and he was already sound asleep) and Brendan and I were just finishing our prayer's when Brendan farts. Cruz starts laughing in his sleep, so Brendan farts again and Cruz laughs even more and then Brendan farted again and Cruz laughs again. Brendan was all out of farts so he tried to make a fart nose with his mouth and that just wouldn't cut it for Cruz, he didn't think it was as funny as the real thing. Brendan and I were trying so hard to muffle our laughter, I had tears running down my cheeks. All I can say is Cruz is all boy. What am I going to do? I'm out numbered two to one.

Here is a little video for anyone who might be interested (mostly the grandparents, aunts and uncles) of Cruz laughing. We have been trying so hard to get this little guy to laugh and this is one of the first times we have been truly successful (or let me say I was truly successful. Brendan has always been able to get Cruz to smile and talk more then me). I guess he only thinks farting is funny. Please excuse our pile of diapers in the background and don't laugh at how much of a dork I am. P.S. he only really laughs till about 50 seconds, after that its just me making a fool of myself.