Big Kids and our New Home!

It's hard to believe that its already the middle of October!  I just look at my kids and our house and our life and i can't believe how the time is flying.

Scott started his second year of preschool this year (i get emotional when i think of him being in kindergarten next year!) and he is growing so big and tall.  And our little sara girl is growing like a weed!  she's already coming up to scott's shoulders.  its amazing to think that a year ago she was still a little baby.

here's our scott man all ready for preschool.  he carpools with his buddy luke and i'm pretty sure that makes his life.  

another huge developement in scott's life is getting a Big Boy Bike.  scott and i got up early a couple saturdays ago to go garage sale searching for a "new" bike.  we ended up with this bad boy for $15.  he struggled a bit at first (scott inherited his mom's patience with difficult tasks) but he has conquered it and LoVeS to ride it whenever he can.

sara gets really  jealous when scott gets to ride a bike and she's stuck in the stroller so we give her a turn now and again...

and look at these kids having oreo cookies with friends (luke and dane) on our back porch after swimming.  they're such social kiddos.  and it has to be said that scott (who's official name, by the way, is Batman Scott James Palmer... and he tells this to anyone who will listen) anyway, scott taught himself how to swim this summer.  When we first moved to AZ he wouldn't leave the steps in the shallow end of the pool and now he swims all over the place and does cannon balls and dives and all sorts of tricks into the deep end of the pool.  we still watch him like a hawk (of course) but the kid has seriously impressed me and made life so much easier!

sara has been undergoing a lot of changes lately that have been a bit hard to handle.  not only does she have to say goodbye to scotty for six hours a week while he's in preschool but her body is going through all sorts of changes.  she has gotten the last of her teeth and she's constantly fighting allergies.  she's learning to talk and wanting to fit in with the big kids.  she's still a sweet little girl but sometimes her evil twin surfaces when she has really bad days.  at times i wonder if she's experiencing early pms.  and while i know that's not really possible, it makes me dread the day that she experiences it for real.

something that has been instigated in full force with our new home is Chores.  scott is responsible for emptying the clean silverware out of the dishwasher, cleaning his room and picking up toys around the house.  sara is responsible for putting away all the shoes that are strewn about and taking out all the toys, books and (pretty much anything) that scott and i have put away and placing it back on the floor.  in order to make clean up time more fun we have started taking "before" and "after" pictures so scott can see his progress.  here is one example of a "before" picture of his messy room.

and here is the "after" picture.   i have been really impressed by this kid.  he really did clean it up all by himself.  it takes a while for him to get into motion but once he gets there he is very serious about his cleaning.  he'll shut his door so noone can see and he makes sure everything is put away really nice.  i still help him make his bed but he does everything else (including making sure his chairs are folded and set against the table... which i find hilarious.)

and finally... here are pictures of our new home.  (though i realized as i was doing this blog that i forgot to take a pictures of the front of the home. duh.  but we're still working on the landscaping anyway, so i'll post that when we're done.)
This is our main living room.  our house is pretty small and only has one living area.  but its a really open concept with vaulted ceilings so we like it.

the kitchen... i love the high ceilings and the breakfast bar but the cabinets HAVE to be redone.  someday it will happen i hope...

our lovely new piano that i got off craigslist.  and with this piano i've started teaching piano lessons!  something i've always wanted to do and i'm really enjoying it. 

our library.... okay, its just a wall of books but it was my moms idea to make it look like this and i really like it.  speaking of which, i have to thank my mom who came out for our move and seriously got to work in helping us move in and make our house a home.  she was such a blessing.  thanks mom!

here's our back yard and our pool... our pool... i still can't believe we have a pool.  but its so nice to just hop in whenever we want to and hop out and go right inside our house.  we've really loved this thing.

and of course we have a teather ball pole.  we had to buy the ball but i had no idea how much fun this would be for the kids... until they get wacked in the ball with the head... which is pretty much inevitable.

and here is one of our garden plots.  we have three different areas that we have planted vegetables and fruit to see where it grows the best.  so far... okay.

i do have a picture of the front door of our home.  but that's mostly because i got this fabulous wreath off craigslist and i love it. 

our master bedroom... the one room in the house that's not quite done yet.  i'm still searching craigslist for a dresser so i can organize everything better.  but i posted this just so you'd have an idea of what it looks like.

our master bathroom... so light and open. i love it! 

sara's room.  i love this room.  its all princess's and fairies and i love that she finally has her own girly room.  though, it won't be her own for long!

i already posted a pic of scott's room ealier in this blog so i won't repeat but this is the little corner nook in the hallway outside the kids' rooms.  i'm proud of this area because it was a serious eye sore when we bought the house and now i think it looks so warm and nice (again, thanks to the help of my mom).

here are a couple random photos to tag on at the end.  my cute family eating a yummy chocolate dessert that daddy made.  (this photo was taken today actually.)

and a kind of sad but kind of funny photo of scott after he (very secretly) got into the face paint.  this would have been funnier had he not "cleaned" his hands off on our very light colored carpet after.  i was a little more than unhappy when i finally found him.

and here's the cute kid with his lincoln logs.  i love that he's old enough to build and play with the cowboys and indians.  though ironically enough, sara is now at the age where she tries as hard as she can to demolish anything he builds.  poor kid.  but he's nice about it... sometimes.

and last but now least our funny little sara girl.  she is seriously hilarious.  i could just sit and watch her all day.  i can't help but wonder what these kids are going to be like when they get older but mostly i just hope the time moves as slowly as possible!

highlights from the past four months

So much has happened over the past four months that it is impossible to post about it all (especially since i've sort of been a blog slacker lately)  but hopefully this post will incapsulate how much fun we've been having and everything that has been going on.

May was our month of saying good bye.  It was so sad to leave Ohio and all of our good friends.  Here I am with my best buddies: Joslyn, Erica and Kaitlyn.

And here's Mr. Scott with his buddy Michael.  We were lucky to have such amazing friends.

A last minute surprise before we moved was one of my oldest friend, Lindsay Howie, coming to visit me from Boston.  We hadn't seen each other for 10 years so she had never met James or the kids.  Scott absolutely adored her and i loved catching up with her and letting her help me pack!

Next stop was driving to Iowa for James' graduation.  It was so fun to see old friends.  James' mom met us there and was so nice to stay with the kids at night so we could join in on all the graduation festivities.  Thanks Patricia!  This is James with his school buddies Ryan, Andy and Devin.  I love that we have med school friends that i truly feel we'll have for the rest of our lives.

And the big graduation day was a lot of fun.  It was great to see James in his get-up and see him accomplish such a huge event in life.

After graduation me and the kids flew to Utah while James and his mom drove (thanks again patricia!).  And of course Utah was a constant adventure as we reunited with family.  Scott is finally getting old enough to be able to gel with his older cousins and he loved every minute of it.  This is scott with some cousins on my side of the family, katie, josh and kenzie.

And finally a good photo of my mom and sara.  i swear i could never get them both smiling at the camera at the same time.  i felt so accomplished with this picture!

Down in Salem with James' family we all went to see the Lorax.  Scott was in seventh heaven with his drink, popcorn and his best cousins.

And scott LOVEd watching his cousin allie in her dance recital.  i'm pretty sure he wanted to get up on the stage and jam it out himself.

And of course when we go to Utah the grandma's spoil us with new clothes and toys.  this is sara in her new outfit consisting of gifts from both grandma palmer and grandy keyser.  thanks everyone for making us feel so special when we were in town!

this photo is out of order but it needs to be said that while daddy was graduating from med school scott was graduating from PRE SCHOOL!  yes, scott completed his first year of preschool and we had the wall to prove it.  his bedroom wall was covered with all his work.  we're so proud of our scotty man!

After a couple weeks in Utah we made the 10 hour drive to Arizona.  Besides scott having to stop every few hours for potty breaks (he had a sick stomach) the kids were seriously amazing.  Sara slept most of the time and scott was such a great kid in the back (he didn't even have a dvd player or video games) he just looked out the window and was mezmerized by all the cacti!

We're so excited that we have family in arizona!  my good cousin, cristy, and her family live in tucson (about two hours south of us) and we were able to spend the fourth of july with them.  here is scott with cristy's kids, leila and tyce.  scott asks all the time if we can go back to "tyce and lola's house."  it cracks me up every time.

and now we just spend our days with the four of us again.  but our little family is getting used to starting new in a strange town.  we're loving phoenix, though, even if it is reeeally hot.  we go swimming a lot and love cloudy days like this one in the photo below when we went to the train park.  scott and sara got SO muddy but they loved every minute of it.

and james is loving his residency here (thank goodness!) and spends every spare minute he has with me and the kids.  we feel so lucky to have such a great dad.

another picture that is months out of date but my camera broke back in february and i never posted about the james' sister amanda and her family coming to visit us in ohio.  we had so much fun with them and it breaks my heart that i don't have more pictures to remember it by (i stole this pic from amanda's blog).  we are so appreciative when family comes to visit us because we know its not easy to travel.  thank you so much for coming out and please know that we always want visitors in sunny arizona!

that's all for now but we did just but stay tuned for pictures of the new house!  (as soon as i get it to a place that i can take pictures of it. :) )

Winds of change...

March came and left faster than I could believe.  Along with all those March winds came a whirlwind of change and excitement for the Palmer family. 

First of all our little sara girl decided to start walking and she has become our little road runner ever since.

we had some beautiful "summer-ish" days in March that got us excited to pull out the summer shorts and tee shirts.  We even gave sara her first pair of crocs (though sadly, sara also learned this month how fun it is to throw random items into the garbage can and before we realized what was happneing one of these crocs along with a couple other shoes got lost forever.) 

Scott man has really grown over the winter and he is becoming such a good helper.  James taught him how to prune our garden and he was immediately put to work.

These two have so much fun playing together.  Its amazing to think that scott lived almost three years without his best playmate. 

One sunny afternoon we met up with some friends at Crocker Park (a nearby outdoor mall in Westlake)

Scott and sara loved running around the chess board with their friends paige and natalie.

and these kids were so cute acting all grown-up with their game of chess.

and i couldn't resist this picture...

my birthday is in march and a big goal i had for myself was to run a 5k.  so on march 17th i ran in the Lakewood St. Patrick's Day 5k.  For anyone who truly knows me you know that running in any kind of race is a huge deal for me.  But I really wanted to do it and i really wanted to finish it in 30 minutes.  The day of the race I wasn't feeling as in shape as i was hoping to so i began hoping to finish it in 35 minutes or just finish it at all.  But in the end I felt great and finished it in less than 30 minutes!  I was very stoked and very grateful for james and the kids who were there to support me.

And the biggest change that March brought in was that we found out that James matched to Phoenix, Arizona for his pschiatry residency.  He will be doing the bulk of his training in Mesa and some in Phoenix itself.  We can't wait for our new adventure and scott's new favorite thing is to say, "Tell me more about Arizona."   

Congratulations James!  And thank you for working so hard for your family.  We love you!!!