Christmas has come and gone.

My brother Doug and his wife Yumi came to town for Christmas, so we all got together for an impromptu party on Christmas eve at my parents house. It's not that often that we get to be together as a family. We had a great time.

Dad read Luke II from the old family bible.



Yumi and Doug brought their dogs, Alex and Conan. I'm sure to Asher Alex looks like a full sized Doberman.

Christmas Day
Julie says this is a good picture of me. So the next time we go out I'll just remember: Half dressed, messy hair, sleepy with eye buggers is a good look for me.


Friendly cooperation before the all out war of "Dart Blaster" supremacy.

Whether it makes you sad or relieved Christmas has come and gone. The anticipation, the magic, the bills and, headaches. Christmas has come and gone. Now we are left with the paper and boxes. I guess that's not all that is left. We have lots of pictures, and we are grateful that we have a large family to share them with. For the last time this year, Merry Christmas everyone.

Santa

Julie took John and Will to get their pictures taken with Santa. I guess he is the biggest toddler rock star their is, cause they would wait in line for hours just to take a picture with him.

I don't know if I like this picture or not. The boys are clearly head and shoulders taller this year compared to last year. You know what? I heard that because of Osteoporosis older people begin to lose bone density there by become shorter. Santa must me pushin' 2000 years old. All the cookies and milk in the world couldn't give him enough calcium to keep him from shrinking away. Wow, that makes me feel a lot better knowing that Santa is shrinking and that the boys are not getting bigger.

A Condie family Christmas

We had the Condie family Christmas party at our house this year. I must admit I felt a little like Clarke Grizwald hosting the party this year. Accept my family lacks crazy senility, mostly likes each other and has learned to at least be civil if all else fails.

The day started with watching ASU beat BYU in basketball 76-75. I went to ASU.


Katie, Ryan; Brian, Brett; Sue, Charlie; and Dad.

Sue and Charlies youngest, Asher, is the most adorable little boy. I still can't figure out why they gave him bricks for Christmas.
Brian and Brett's youngest is Breanna. She is so sweet and cute, yet she bangs with the rest of the kids.

The day ended the way it started. We watched UofA beat BYU in the Pioneer Bowl 31-21. Brian went to UofA.

Merry Christmas to all.

Like everyone else we have been enveloped by the Holidays. We put up our tree last week, every once in a while another piece of decoration finds it's appropriate corner to sit in. By the time we are finished it will be time to take it all down again.



One other thing. The first post election gun show was this weekend. Talk about some nut jobs. All I wanted to do was buy a few thousand rounds of ammunition and maybe an assault rifle or two and go home to my family. Sometimes I think they take this stuff way too seriously.


I can't show any more than this or "they" will revoke my membership to the Tin Foil Hat Club.
Have merry self regulated Christmas.

Lucky number 14

Last Wednesday was our 14th anniversary. I asked Julie if it was starting to feel like eternity yet. She told me "no", so I thought I should at least negotiate another 14 years. We filled the boys backpacks with a change of clothes an a couple matchbox cars and kicked them out of the car as we passed in front of my parents house (Hey, we slowed down first. Don't judge us.). We stayed at a completely out of our league Scottsdale resort for the weekend.

Here is our room. It was very romantic. One of the first things we noticed was a single apple left on the counter. Julie thought it was nice of them to leave us something to snack on. I figured it had a much more symbolic meaning to it like celebrating the agricultural heritage of the City of Scottsdale.
This is the Red Bar. We didn't go there, because we don't partake in that sin.

They wouldn't let us into the pool. They said something out age restrictions. You have to be older than 18 and younger than 24.

If you are within the age limits and have figured out how to crack open the trust grandpa left for you, you can rent a cabana by the pool like this.

We would like to thank my parents for watching the boys, so we could get away for a nice romantic anniversary weekend. We would also like to thank the Mondrian Hotel, and a special thanks to Expedia.com for giving us a price less pretentious than the Hotel itself.

Well, you know....we're five.

No pictures, but I have to relay something from yesterday.

The boys were playing outside and John came running in announcing a magnificent discovery that the neighbors two houses down had a bouncy house in their back yard. I asked him how he saw it. "Well, William and I climbed the block wall." "The seven foot tall wall?" I asked? "How did you climb the wall?" With a very casual and matter-of-fact tone he replied. "Well, you know....we're five."

They were almost Frank and Stein.

John and Will missed being born an Halloween by 5 hours. So now Birthday parties and Halloween seem to just roll into one fun weekend.

The boys have always been the same thing for Halloween. We have 2 lion costumes, 2 Buzz lightyear costumes, and 2 Spider man costumes. We were so happy when this year they decided do to pick separate costumes. Will wanted to be Darth Vader, and John picked Anakin Skywalker. I guess they still are the same person, just at different times.
They wanted to help make the birthday cake. Julie watched them close. They didn't add any "special" ingredients.

The Merrell grands came for the birthday.



Yeah, more toys.

Tractor Show

As some of you know My dad and I are both members of an antique tractor club. Actually right now I am serving on the board of directors as the Public relations director.

We had a show this weekend. I had the boys for most of the day to give Julie a little alone time.
The first thing John did when he got to the show was find this survey flag on the ground. He picked it up and declared it his "tractor flag". Since we have all orange tractors I cold not bring my self to take it from him.


There was a booth selling "shaved Ice". I wanted to get all snooty and tell them "look pal, I've been to Hawaii and it's called 'shave Ice'. Your in the business, you should know better." But then I thought better of my kids eating spit. That, and I'm really not very confrontational.


John and Will. I think those are like 5 year old gang signs.





Brinley and Brianna climbing on grandpas crawler. If you are saying to your self "wow, that is a pretty tractor." You must know I painted it, applied the decals and shook my head disapprovingly every time My dad wanted to cut corners in it's restoration.


By the way. I know this is an annoying song and it will not be here for very long.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith

In June Jana Chad and Owen came to visit on there way to Cali. We got to spend a few days with them and even took in a D-back game.I love my picture taken. Is that what this look says? I think John finished that whole drink himself. I swear, the boy has the bladder of a Clydesdale.

The boys were so exited to be able to play with cousin Owen. However, we now know that the time limit before Will and Owen start to impose dominance on each other is about 26 hours.

If some is good, more is better.

I got a request for another picture.

J and D Merrell.

I could not resist putting this one on here. It is my favorite.

What's next?

First comes love. Then comes marriage. Then comes.....what comes next? Yeah it took us awhile to get with the program. After nearly ten years of trying we were blessed with twin boys. John and will.

We were only a small part of the Merrell baby Storm. Within a few years 5 grand babies took over.

The beginning

I'll start at the beginning. For me, that is the year Julie and I met. We were both going to Rick's college in Rexburg, Id. One of my roommates was stalking...er I mean infatuated with one of Julies roommates. He would drag me over to their apartment complex at least once a day. Let me back up a little.

When I applied to Rick's College I heard that the boy to girl ratio was 1/12. In my crude understanding I thought " Great, 12 ducks for every hunter". I was wrong. It was 12 hunters for every duck. After a few encounters with...shall we say "aggressive women" I decided love was not for me, and to forgo this part of the college experience until after I served a mission.

So here I am being drug around as a stalkers wing man and hang out all day in an all girls apartment. Okay, so I guess it wasn't all bad. So Julie and I started to spend a lot of time together. After a while Julie asked me to a preference dance. The dance was not for a few weeks but I thought maybe I should get to know her a little better. After all, we will have to slow dance together. We went on a couple double dates with stalker and Martha. We saw Dances with wolves and had some Ice cream. Any ways a few days before I thought that maybe I should hold her hand at the dance. That was it just "hold her hand".

All I have to say now is we have not let go. I went on a mission to Mississippi. She waited for me and we got married 2 months after I got home.
November 19, 1994 we were married in the Seattle, Washington Temple.

Introduction

Well, with the inspiration of Karen Hyde I decided to start our own blog. I'll start off first with a couple pictures to prove that I was young and thin once. From now on, you will mostly see my family. It's better for both of us this way. A better ,more formal introduction of me and my beautiful family will come soon.