utah trip 2010

scotty got to ride in his own seat on the first flight to utah. he felt like such a big boy.
we got to utah before daddy so we got to hang out and play at grandy keyser's house for a bit. scott LOVED taking baths in her big bathtub.

he was constantly dragging me downstairs to play in the toy room. and once we were in the toy room he would drag me into the tent. he loved cuddling in there and i loved being able to take "play" naps while he rolled around.

for mother's day my sisters and mom and i all went and got massages. can you tell how relaxed we look in this picture?

james flew in a couple days later and we headed down to salem for the main event of the trip. Phil, James' brother, is going on an LDS mission to Tuscan, AZ next month. So the entire family flew out to go through the temple with him. It was so fun to have everyone together. this is a picture of all of james' siblings with his mom and grandpa. he said its been a LONG time since they've all been together like that. (L-R bryan, amanda, grandpa ross, phil, patricia (mom), james, jason)

we were only with the james' family a couple days before he had to head back to school but we made the most of what time we had. phil was such a good uncle to scott. scott seriously LOVES him.i love how audrey is hugging scott and scott is like "where are your pants?" one afternoon we all went to jason's house for a bbq. they have a huge yard with all sorts of animals. scott was in seventh heaven.

he even got to ride a horse with his cousin dustin. but he didn't like it very much so we hurried and got this picture before he started to cry.

and at the end of the day we had to take off scott's muddy shoes and pants and hose him downscott and i stayed for another week after james left. so i got to see a lot of people in utah that i don't usually get to spend time with. i had a game night with my sister steph's family (L-R courtney, steph, kenzie, katie, kelly and josh) and got my trash kicked in a game of Ticket to Ride (that sad part is that i actually thought i was going to win and i came in at a distant THIRD place!)

i also had some time while everyone was at work and school to take scott to the neighborhood that i grew up in. this was the park that i used to play in when i was little. since all the kids were still in school scott and i got to go see a bunch of their recitals and baseball games. i had to get a picture of this... this was the first time scott had even seen my nine year old niece kenzie this trip. and the first thing she did when she saw him was say, "hi scott" and put her hand out for him to hold it. he latched right on and they walked all the way out of the school like this. for anyone who knows scott... that is amazing.

one night my mom took us to the In and Out Burger that has graced Draper, Utah with its presense. I'm always surprised by the lack of choices at that place. but the food is truly delicious.

and of course we went on lots of walks with grandy keyser.

one morning my good friend jenn mauger and her son alexander came and played. they were so cute together.

and another day we drove up to bountiful to meet up with my old work buddies. here's a picture of all our little boys. (L-R scotty, julianna barney's son - owen, and becca morley's son - luke) they all did a really good job of saying "cheese" for the camera.

this was just a shot of scott eating but he lookes so darn cute. and also, he's sitting in the chair that i used to sit in when i was little. love it.

here's a priceless shot of scott playing with my grandma (grandma lola). they were playing catch and my cute grandma was having so much fun with it.

even though james was back in iowa i was able to meet up with his family a couple more times while i was out there. one afternoon we went swimming in Lehi. scott wasn't too thrilled to be OUT of the water.

and another day we all went to the petting zoo at thanksgiving point. (L-R me, scott, patricia, amanda, allie, phil, my mom)

i was amazed but this time scott actually wanted to ride the pony! (probably because he secretly knew that this time it cost money.)
i liked this picture of our moms.

and again... here is scott having so much fun with his uncle phil.

this is a picture that phil took. no one can get him to cheese for the camera like phil can.

f this photo breaks my heart. its of scott waving goodbye to phil. he won't see his favorite uncle for 2 whole years while he's on his mission. we're going to miss you phil!we ended the week with a birthday party for scotty at my sister kim's house.

scott had so much fun on the trampoline with all of his keyser side cousins.

and of course there was cake and ice cream.

thanks everyone for making our trip so fun!!!

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.