tulip time!!

james and i took scott to Pela, Iowa yesterday to see all the tulips. there were SO many and of course tulips are perfect because they mean it's spring. and spring is perfect, too.
(scott has finally learned how to cheese it up for the camera...)

pella is also home to the nations tallest windmill. james still doesn't believe it, but i have the pamphlet to prove it. we hung out with our friends the muetings and the palizzi's. scott was so funny - he had to hold my hands the same way that andy mueting was holding marie's hands. he's a little copy cat.

everything was in bloom. it was so beautiful.

scotty loved playing with all the deliciously soft tulips. and he climbed right into the big danish shoes.

naturally, we had to get a family picture in front of the tulips. don't we look so nice and pleasant?

and here is what we really look like as a family. scott has mastered the "terrible two's" a month early.

another thing scott and i have been doing with our summer weather is going to the zoo. i got a season pass (because it works at the cleveland zoo too) and we have been going as much as we can. scott likes the giraffs.

and the fishes.
and i don't know what was behind the glass in this picture but he was LOVING it.

So, a couple weeks ago scott got Hand-Foot-Mouth-Disease. It sounds a lot worse than it is but he was really contagious so i had to keep him in isolation for about 10 days. scott was secretly so excited when his little friends across the street got it too (even though we feel really bad if we gave it to them) because he could finally have someone to play with.
these are our little HFMD kids.
thankfully he's over it now - but who knew that ten days in isolation could make you so crabby? he's had a hard time reentering the real world and learning how to share again. and i'm just crabby because i had to entertain him for ten days straight. because if scott's in isolation then SO AM I!!!!

spring fever!

just catching up again with all the fun things we've been doing lately. our biggest adventure was going out to cleveland ohio to look for housing. scott would agree that hitting up ten apartments in two days wasn't the most rip roaring part of our trip. (so we have no pictures)
but we went to columbus to visit james' brother bryan, his wife annie and their cute little girls. and we have lots of pictures of that!
scott loved hanging out with his cousins julia and audrey. i was nervous how he was going to be around two girls but he coudln't get enough of them. they were so good to him.

scott definitely thought this was the better part of the trip.

this is a picture of us all eating at some really cool market place downtown. they have every type of food you can ask for. james got italian. i got indian. and the other palmers shared viatnamese! i don't even know if i spelled that right.
did i mention that we DROVE to ohio? twenty four hours of driving in six days was a bit much for this little kid. but i have to say, he did a really good job with it. this picture was taken in the hotel we stayed in on the very last night of driving. we tried giving him a cookie for being so good but as you can see, he was even too pooped to eat that. now that's tired!

back in iowa the weather was turning into SPRING! and scott discovered (all on his own) that dirt is really really cool to play in.

with spring comes easter and with easter comes the EASTER BUNNY! we went and visited him at the mall with the jones' and scott did pretty well with him. i kept trying to get him to look at the camera but he was a little unsure and wasn't about to take his eye off that bunny.
the jones' also came over to color easter eggs with us. this was the first year that the boys have really been able to help. we only ended up with 3 or 4 cracked eggs at the end of it!
and this is my favorite picture of scotty's little hand putting stickers on the eggs. he got really good at manuevering those iddy bitty stickers.

i just had to include these videos of the easter presents both grandma's sent us in the mail. scott was in seventh heaven.






when scott isn't outside playing in the dirt (or with the neighbors basketball hoop that he is absolutely obsessed with) he loves watching movies in his little chair. we got him this chair because his cousin allie got one for christmas and scott loved it so much when we were visitng. this is just a classic picture of him watching so intently with his little hand propped up on his cheek. his favorite movies are cars, elmo and tarzan. (or in scotty language; gars, melmo and mo - don't as me.)

another fun thing that we've had going lately is our babysitting club. every friday scott goes and plays with a bunch of neighborhood girls (katelyn and kylie fowler, shalie and millie johson and devi northcott). he is really learning how to play with girls and discovering that they play a bit more softly than boys. once a month we have all the girls at our house. it's a full house!

james is such a good babysitter. the girls LOVE him.

scott loves it too but he is very protective of his chair. this is a shot of shalie trying to sit down in it and scott booting her off.

life is a party.

Lesson Learned

don't write a post announcing to the entire blog world that you are pregnant the day BEFORE the appointment where you're supposed to hear the heartbeat. because sometimes things don't always work out the way you hope. and then you have to write awkward blog posts like this one. :)
in other words, i'm not pregnant anymore and even though it was a very sad and rough week for our family we are moving on and excited for what is in store.
thanks to everyone for all your love and support.

p.s.

there's a good chance that the main reason for my two month vacation from blogging was the fact that for the past two months i've been experiencing the first trimester of my 2nd pregnancy! Yep! that's right! i'm pregnant again! he/she is due august 27th!

back from a 2 month blogging vacation

there's really no reason for my two month blogging hiatus... i guess i just needed a break. the whole uploading pictures/figuring out what to say/and releasing it to the blogger world thing just got too overhelming for me for a while. but i'm officially back.

and since i uploaded my pictures from present to past you will get the last two months in reverse order. here are the highlights...

we've been up to all sorts of fun everyday activities like-

giving scott a haircut - in the bathroom sink.

having sunday dinners with the jones's and the callahan.

puddle jumping.

sledding

even against scott's will...

pulling a new carton of eggs off the counter when mom turned her back for a nano-second.

wearing bowls on our heads.

learning a new trick...


going to the science center with the palizzi's.

seeing a real live snake for the very first time.

and having way too much time in the water.

back in december over the christmas break we went to utah to visit family.

scott and his cousin allie had a lot of fun discovering everything they could about each other.

like their bellybuttons.

their big cheeks

and just each other's company.

they were best buddies.

up in draper with the keyser side of the family we did some service projects...
and frosted cookies.

we even got to see our good friends the maugers.

but most of all scott loved hanging out with his grandma's

(this picture was taken just before we left for the airport... at 4am!)
thanks for the great christmas vacation everyone!

my new favorite song

ok, i don't usually do this. i don't usually blog about anything other than what we've been up to or the cutest thing scott did today but i just have to put the word out about my newest musical interest. its the first song playing on our playlist when you click on our blog so if you don't have the volume up on your computer you'll have to turn it up. it's this guy and he calls himself "owl city" and this song is "fireflies" but i like others (that are also in random places on the playlist) the first time i heard this song i thought, "good, not great." But it has completely grown on me. so visit my blog a few times and give it a chance and let me know if you fall in love with it too!

little christmas train ride

such a sad picture for such a fun outing! anne and i took the boys to the mall today to ride the christmas train but we decided to ride separately so that we could take pictures of each other. these were scott's feelings about that idea...

scott cried through out anne and brody's entire train ride. for any of you that knew me as a small child this video may remind you a little too much of myself. (for those of you who didn't know me as a child we have many home videos of me crying because i couldn't go on the rides with my older brother and sisters. scott and i have such hard lives!! :))

but scott did finally get his turn and he loved it! he cried again when he had to get off. we may have to make a couple trips to the train this year.

then we let the boys roam around the mall a bit. they just have so much fun together. i love it so stinking much.