new hair!

ok, i have to post a picture of my new hair so that my family recognizes me when we come out to utah for christmas. i also need to explain that i didn't know it was going to end up this dark!
at all!
my hair stylist neighbor did it at her house so there was no mirror! the poor girl about cried when she finally held the mirror up in front of me and i was absolutely speechless. but i have to say its growing on me. i love the cut! and the color... well, i'm a blond at heart but its fun seeing the world from a brunette point of view.

me as a blond (with nasty dishwater color roots) and me as a brunette!

oh what fun!

i can't believe that thanksgiving is already over and the christmas season is here! time has been wizzing by for us so i apologize for my lateness in posting these thanksgiving pics. especially because there are SO many of them. but i just can't leave any of the memories out! a few days before thanksgiving was the big university of utah vs byu game. we had a big game watching party at the kearn's house where james and i (and scott of course) were the only true U fans. we don't want to rub it in any of their faces... but we're secretly happy that the U kicked BYU's trash. the night before thanksgiving was an event as well. the boys took the kids so that us girls could go out and see TWILIGHT!! my synopsis is that there were multiple laugh-out-loud lame parts when you literally look at the girl next to you and say, "are you kidding me?" but i'll totally buy it when it shows up on the $5 shelf at walmart.
L-R: leiloni, christia, jamie, me, shalise, ashley, rachel

thanksgiving day was very low-key. but we loved it. we had a tasty meal that james' school put on. there were no yams and no corn but it was completely free and i had to do absolutely zero cooking and zero dishes so it was totally worth it! besides, most of our friends were there anyway, so we had a really great time.

here is james dishing up food with some of our friends. they even gave us containers to take leftovers home! don't worry, we didn't really feed scott stuffing. we just faked him out for a cute picture but we all felt really bad when he so naively fell for it.
thanksgiving was so quiet that we even had time to decorate our house for christmas! we put up our tree

and the nativity scene.
and that's about all we have room for in our tiny cozy apartment.
apparently james and i got a little drunk on cranberry sauce because we decided to stay up late with our young and hip friends and go shopping at midnight! scott slept the whole time but it took james and me a good three days to recuperate from the late night. we're just not as young and spry as we used to be.

here's a picture of james and devin inside the mall. there were so many people there!

the next night we went to the festival of trees with the cooks, the kearns and the palizzi's (who are not pictured here) and naturally i bragged to all of our friends that i used to perform at the festival of trees for singers unlimited! i'm sure they were all secretly impressed. (james and i are dressed up in this picture because we had just come from a baptism. there were TWO baptisms in our ward over the past week!)

the rest of the weekend was just nice and relaxing.

scott loved having his daddy around so much.

they played and played.
scott seriously sat in this position on james for like five minutes. it was so cute.

and by the end of the weekend poor little scotty boy was so tuckered out that he fell asleep on the floor while playing with his toys. he has NEVER done that before. it was so funny.


needless to say, it was a fabulous thanksgiving and we can't wait to post pictures of our next holiday in utah! yeah!!

home sweet home

i know this is a little late but i'm finally getting around to posting some pictures of our apartment for those friends and family that live far away and would like to see what its like. james took some nice pictures of our apartment the night we moved everything in (back in August) and i took some pictures the night my mom came to visit (since it was the one time that every room in the house was clean at the same time!) so i can show you some nice "before" and "after" shots.

our front room - before
our front room - after
the amazing thing is that i somehow cleaned this whole front room in one day while scott miraculously took a really long nap. sometimes i think of that day and

marvel that i was able to do so much that day when its so hard now to just get the dishes done!

kitchen - before

kitchen - after

dining area/washer & dryer closet - before

dining area - after

master bedroom - before

master bedroom - after

scott's room - before

scott's room - after

and for a complete slideshow of our home take a look at this:

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Big News!

scotty boy got his first tooth this week! it's only about a millimeter tall but i'm reminded that it's there every time scott bites down on my finger and a tiny jagged sharp thing digs into my skin! the following picture is of scott sporting his brand new hat made by my friend christia palizzi (you can go to her link on my blog if you want to buy one of your own!) I think its just about the cutest hat ever and of course scott makes it even cuter. my favorite thing about this little tyke is that despite the fact that he's teething and has been sick for the past few days he is still so pleasant to be around. aren't we all relieved that he got his dad's disposition and beautiful blue eyes?

our little boy is growing up.

this past monday for family home evening we took scotty boy swimming at the local ymca. these first two shots were before we actually put him into the pool. we were just getting him used to being shirtless i guess. and since he loves being naked, he was happy as a clam. he wasn't quite as excited when we actually put him in the water. it wasn't quite as warm as a nice bath at home. but he got used to it over time.

here he is with his cute little daddy playing in the water.


and for the past week or so scott has been getting really close to rolling over.

yesterday i laid him down on a blanket on his back and ran upstairs for a couple minutes. when i came down he was on his STOMACH! so basically i missed seeing the first time my little boy rolled.

but tonight he decided he was done staying put. he was rolling all over the place so we got it on camera. take a look...

batboy!!!

here he is... the amazing little bat boy who against popular belief actually loved wearing a mask!
this is the mask that i tried to make him. but it was such cheap material that by the time i wrapped it around his head it literally fell apart in my hands. (you can see the frayed edges in this picture)
but that was okay because he didn't like it much. he would only wear it when he was being fed. and even then he was a little sketchy about it.
that's why i'm the only one with a mask on in this picture at a halloween party for our kids. he screamed and tore it off so i gave up. but i'm all decked out as batwoman as you can see. too bad i was one of the only adults that even dressed up! so much for me wearing black spandex and a cape.
but scott liked my mask more anyway so i got a cute picture of he and james in their masks at our ward halloween party. you've heard of batman and robin. well this is batman and BATBOY!!!


and i had to add this cute picture of james. he made us such an amazing sunday roast dinner today. it was delicious!

today is scott's five month birthday!!!

BubbleShare: Share photos - Craft Ideas

suzan g. komen race for the cure

this past saturday my friend jamie and i decided we were going to race for the cure for breast cancer. though it has to be said that we raced from booth to booth getting free food and stuff more than we raced on the road... but i like to use the excuse that jamie is pregnant so we couldn't overdo it. :)today i dressed scotty up in his iowa outfit to give special honor to iowa as it freezes over. james happened to throw on his university of utah paraphernalia when he got home from school so i thought it would be fun to take a picture. it ended up even cuter than i had hoped.

and here's our little palmer family.

growth chart

here's a picture of scott back in august and one of him just a couple days ago. you can see how much he's grown by looking at him compared to the warning tag to the left of his head as well as noticing how far his feet now stretch beyond the black and orange button at the bottom of the carseat. (wow talk about a run-on sentence) he is getting to be such a big and STRONG little boy!

howell's pumkin patch!!!

yesterday scotty boy and i went to the howell's pumkin patch in maddison county with our friends jamie and kaleb bingham.
this is us all on the tractor ride. it took us on about a 1/2 mile ride to and from the pumkin patch. when we first got there we walked through the corn maze. about ten minutes into it we decided to turn around. because the corn stocks really just looked the same all the way through.
then the boys got to play in the wheel barrow while we picked pumpkins.
scotty loved riding his very own mini tractor.

but he had to ride with mom on the BIG tractor!
we even got to swing in a tractor tire!
and i got to have some fun on my own while scott slept...

we also went to a covered bridge. maybe some of you have heard of the move "bridges of maddison county". well this is one of the bridges of maddison county! we're so famous here in iowa!
it was just an all around great autumn day!