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.

we're finally out!

we are finally able to get out of our house and drive on the roads again though they are still really icy and kind of scary. but here are some more pictures of when we were trapped inside.
thursday morning james and his car-pool buddies got up early to dig themselves out of the parking lot. they ended up digging this lady out while they were at it. (i was safe and warm up in our bedroom taking the picture. :)) this is one of my favorite little pictures of scotty looking out at the snow. he was so mezmerized by all of the white stuff building up outside our window. he wanted to go out and play so much until he realized how freezing cold it was.

after a while we decided to do some baking but we didn't have access to the stores. luckily jaime mayo and emily crofts gave us their recipe for these delicious chocolate ball things so we tried them out. no - scott hasn't grown three feet in the past week, we just pulled in a stool for him to stand on. he was such a good little helper.

here i am mid-roll.

this is a REALLY long video of our chocolate ball making. don't feel pressured to watch it all - or any of it for that matter. i just love the memory of this day.

and this was the final measuring of the snowdrift outside our house. as you can see, it almost comes up to james' shoulder. its been four days and the wall is still there. its just so cold here that i swear its never going to melt away.

snow day!!!

i haven't experienced an official snow day since i was in seventh grade. i have always had that day in my memory as the most perfect day and now i know why. isn't there just something special about being trapped inside the house with your family because of white fluffy cold stuff that's building up around your windows? i love it!
so here are a few of the things we've done today to keep ourselves busy:
first we decided to make some chocolate treats (because you can't very well have a snow day without chocolate treats). scott LOVED licking off the spoon. he was seriously in heaven.
our fudge-face boy...

and then we played a little bit of dress-up with mom's glasses. doesn't he look old? not like 3 or 4 years old, like 67 years old.

and of course we had to get some more footage of the snowdrift outside our door. its so cool looking! (and even high now than it was when we made this video) we literally can't see outisde our windows unless we are standing on the couch.

(movie not uploading on blogger. hopefully coming soon!)

scott's first tromp through the snow

we've had a lot of snow in des moines today. it makes me glad that i bought this door wreath a couple days ago. and this just shows the dedication of my husband to run barefoot out into the snow drift to show how high it actually is (it wasn't my idea, i swear).

but earlier today, before things started getting crazy, scott had a nice little tromp through the snow. (tromp? did i make that word up?)

the box

its amazing to me how much fun two little boys can have with a box.

we love having sweet brody over.

to complete thanksgiving weekend...

this post is a bit of a catch up of how we finished out the thanksgiving break. of course we watched the utah/byu game with our peeps. (some of them more our peeps than the other depending on who they cheered for. just kidding!)


















scott loved running around getting attention from everyone. and he also loved watching the game with his dad. he just loves the utes. that's why he picked out that red shirt to wear. he just can't get enough of them.


















another highlight of the weekend was when scott got to meet santa. it was in the middle of the afternoon on a monday and poor santa had no visitors so he called us over to read a book with him. scott was a little hesitant and he needed his dad right there by him but he actually did a pretty good job with it all.


















he even got to give santa a 5. we kind of think he might be the real santa.


















james and i also got to go to the winter quarters temple in omaha. the jones' babysat for us so we didn't even have to switch off with scott. thanks anne and b.j. and brody!























and my personal highlight of this winter season was buying scott this head sock! i was so worried about his little cheeks, neck and back getting cold where his coat and other hats didn't quite cover. this was the perfect solution! and he only hated wearing it for like twenty seconds!


















and this is big... scott is starting to smile for the camera again. its a miracle!

this is just a fun little video of scott in the mall car cart. its not that exciting but he seriously looks so cute.

thanksgiving day pop quiz!

this thanksgiving has had one major theme to it... we are thankful that james doesn't have a test for a full week!!! this semester has been pretty grueling (i haven't had to take a single test and i'm worn out so you can imagine how james must feel!) so we have been pining for a holiday! here we are on one of our many winter night adventures...last thanksgiving scott was too young to enjoy the food so we made sure he got his fill this year. we went to james' school for thanksgiving dinner again this year since it is free and requires no work at all on our part. (woo hoo!) so i boycotted all cooking this year but james pulled out his amazing baking skills and made a delicious pumpkin pie. (it really was delicious, i'm not just being nice.) you can probably tell that i was trying some new editing techniques with this picture. its kind of weird.and last but not least, today was so special because not only was it thanksgiving but it was also scott's 18 month birthday!!! he's such a handsome little boy but he's just too cool for the camera these days.and of course the little brodster is 18 months old today too! brody was gone for a whole month and scott would literally cry when we couldn't go over to his house. shopping is just so much more fun when you have a shopping cart buddy.we are so glad the jones's are back in town! and as a little 18 month birthday celebration i'm going to conduct a little pop quiz about our boy scott. let's see if you can get them all right (the answers are in the comments section):
1. what is scott's favorite animal to immitate?
2. which of these words can scott NOT say yet? a)hot b)bye bye c)hi d) ball e)ma ma f) da da
3. what is scott's favorite lullaby?
4. what is scott's mom most proud of about her little boy?
5. what is scott's favorite movie?
6. who does scott prefer out of his mom or his dad?
7. what is scott's favorite thing to give people (even complete strangers)?
8. true or false: scott LOVES putting on his winter coat.
9. what color is scott's favorite blanket?
10. out of the following items what does scott NOT like to eat: a) pretzels b) oatmeal c) cheese d) bananas e) pizza

happy 18 month birthday scotty boy!

hole in the couch treasure hunt

so anybody who's been to our house in the past few months knows that us palmers have sort of an issue with losing our remote controls. so far we have lost two t.v. controls and one dvd control. we've searched high and low over the past little while for them all but always concluded that "scott must have thrown them in the garbage." even though we've never actually witnessed him throwing anything into the garbage we didn't know what other conclusion to come to.
until today.

after realizing that we had officially lost the third control james got a little investigatory. he was so determined and strong as he practically lifted our couch over his head with his bear hands (slight exaggeration) and as he did we could hear multiple objects bouncing around in the under boards of the couch.

we had obviously searched the couch many times before as that would be the most logical place for the controls to be. but what we didn't know until today was that there were super secret crevices for the controls to sneak down into the unknown black hole of the couch.

after a little snipping and much searching we found all sorts of wrappers, toys from the last couch owner and our two favorite treasures....

ta da! two out of the three missing controls. this is the dvd control and the first control that w lost MONTHS ago. as for the third control... scott probably threw it in the garbage.

super scott!!

this halloween scott decided he wanted to be superman (ok, i decided.. but its pretty much the same thing) and even though it was too cold to take him trick-or-treating he had PLENTY of opportunities to wear his costume.

first we went to a halloween party with a bunch of our friends in the club house.

scott especially enjoyed the food.

there were a ton of kids there! and there's a good shot of his cape.
james had three tests the week of halloween so scott and i tried getting out of the house a bit so he could study. here we are at the "night eyes at the zoo". only, we went during the day.


my favorite part about this picture is that it looks like his cape is stuck in his underpants. the original costume came with boring red pants. but i spiced it up a bit with blue pants and red underpants on top. it was the best thing ever to watch him walk around in big boy underpants.

here's our poor awkward kid trying to negotiate the slide.

but i was so proud of him when he acutally climbed up this big latter thing all by himself!

look how high it is? he really might be superman!

right after the zoo we all went out to dinner with our friends to texas roadhouse. scott was the life of the party in his costume.

then there was ANOTHER halloween party at james' school. this is a picture of scott and his dad and his adopted uncles ryan and devin. he seriously loves those guys.

then a very exciting thing happened. the fun really began when my mom came to visit!!!

so we took her to a pumpkin patch. this is all of us on a tractor ride (we wanted her to see the real side of iowa.)

you may have noticed that scott rarely looks at the camera for pictures and even more rarely smiles when the camera is in view. i'm hoping its just a phase but in the mean time i'll have LOTS of memories of this anti-camera phase of his.

here are more goats. scott loves the goats. there are so many goats in iowa. who would have thought?

this place was extra cool though because we could actually go IN to the goat pen.
i love this picture of scott running away from this goat. look how scary it looks!!
and of course... live footage.


halloween night featured a talent show/party at our church. i'm in the young women program now and we put on a skit for the talent show. here we all are (L-R Rebecca, Michelle, Kathy, Becky, Isabel, Megan, Amelia, Kassie, Me) i'm not in costume because i was just in charge of the music... which was a much harder job than you might think!
scott even did a talent (after everyone was gone)

and these next couple things don't have to do with halloween but i really did walk in the kitchen one day to find scott doing this:

(i'm just glad he felt the need to pull everything out of the cupboards before sweeping the floor.)


and this is a fun video of scott and brody. brody is out of town for a whole month and we miss him so much! come home brody! and bring your parents with you!