Tis the season

Wow, I cannot believe it has been a month since I last wrote something. Time really does fly the older you get older and the busier you get. I love Christmas time and have been thinking quite a bit lately of just everything that I am thankful for and how much I have. Christmas time for me is a time to reflect on the past year and hope that I have made changes for the better. I am trying to teach the boys that Christmas time is not about getting presents. It is about Christ and giving. We had a family home evening about this and Michael is really good about what the true meaning is Christmas is about...Logan on the other hand is all about the toys and what he wants.

I told the boys that I was going to work at a Women's centre to help people who do not have lots of stuff and told the them that before Christmas they needed to think of some of their favorite toys and things to do and we would go to the store to get them for other people and deliver them as a family to the centre. They both have been very excited about this and the other day asked "mommy when are we going to go give presents to other humans that don't have lots". I just love the stuff that comes from his brain. He considers other people that are not in our family "humans" I am just glad that he has stopped asking for stuff and is not wanting to give stuff to others who are more in need!!

I am so grateful for everything that I have...I love my wonderful husband and my 3 boys, and am thankful that Jared is able to provide for our spiritual and monetary needs as a family. I am grateful that my sister is able to live here in Canada with me...I was lonely without any of my own siblings:) I am grateful for all the wonderful friends I have and for all that they teach me. And most of all I am grateful that Christ was born, was my example, and died for me so that I might return to live with him someday. My wish is that during all the commericalism of Christmas that we all remember the most important part and take time to give as Christ would.

Love you all and have a wonderful Christmas!!

I was tagged

So my wonderful sister in law tagged me and I thought I should answer...it is so nice to be thought of and included in a tag (ha, ha)...now I have to think of 7 random things about me. Might be hard since I am so normal and never random:) Here it goes:

1. I am probably the biggest girl sports fan ever. I love all sports and would watch and play 24/7 if I could.
2. That I met my hubby at a family reunion (not my family)...my best friends family reunion. We loved telling people in the south that is were we meet because many of them do marry their 1st cousins:)
3. I hate arts and crafts and because of that my poor boys suffer. They even just had a assignment at school to decorate a bear with messy stuff from your house. I put it off so long, I forgot about it and they did not get it in on time:( I know bad mom, but I really hate clue, scissors, etc...
4. I love food and almost any type of food. When I was in young women's I only went to the activities were I knew there was going to be a good dessert...how pathetic!
5. I stay up way to late each night...it is my me time and I eek out every last second without my 3 wonderful boys (4 if you include my wonderful hubby), needing something from me...I always regret it each morning and tell my self I am going to go to be early. Guess it did not work today for I am writing this at 11:30 pm.
6. I am a weather junkie and I check the weather channel on line about 5 times a day (as if it is going to change from the last hour). And to make things worse I look at the weather in San Diego were I grew up and in Charleston where Jared did his dental school and just get sad at how warm everyone else is why I am freezing my butt off here in the frozen tundra. Jared really hates that I am sooo obsessed with the weather and wonders why I kill my self by looking at it all day long. I guess he is right, If I did not know what great weather I was missing, maybe it would not be so bad that I am freezing here in Canada...not very likely thought:)
7. No so random, but most important... I love my family and friends. I hope they all know who they are!! There are many and they are scattered from the west coast to the east coast, they are in Canada, and right here in my house. Family and friends have taught me many things about who I am and have helped me get through some of the toughest trials and been there for the good times as well. I cherish my role and a wife, mother, daughter, sister, and friend and they are some of the most important relationships (other than the gospel) that I could not do without.

Now I get to tag other people to answer these questions...so, I will tag people who I know read my blog,

Carla
Kira
Chelsea
Sara
Susan
Mom
Teresa

I will totally understand if you do not respond to your tag...hey I have been tagged more than once and this is the first one I actually completed:)

Busy, busy October

So this month has been crazy. I do not know how life can be so busy with little ones, I thought all that being busy was when they were older, if it gets worse, I do not know if I can survive. Pictures are not necessarily in the correct order...this month Jared and I took the baby and went to Ottawa for a wedding and it was wonderful. Ottawa is so pretty, it really reminded me of being back in South Carolina. There was so many trees, rivers, canals, waterways, etc... We went to 3 museums and I learned a lot of Canadian history. The wedding was held at a maple farm and it was just beautiful, so the picture of the tree with all those pipes and the one of the red building was out at the maple farm. We learned it takes 20 gallons of sap to make 1 gallon of syrup. Real maple syrup is so yummy:)

A good friend of mine (Chelsea Hansen) came by a took pictures of our little Carter. She is a wonderful photographer and above were some of our favorite pictures. It was so much fun and he was so good. I will send the rest in a few weeks when I have more time (if I get some)!!

Jared's sister also came up for a visit and brought her new little baby. Jared parents now how 5 grandchildren and from the pictures you can see they are all boys. It was so fun to see all the boys together and so that is what the picture of the boys is all about. Carter and baby Austin also took a few baths together, it was so cute to see them pretty much doing the same things...legs bent in, fist in mouth and hands in fists and Jared thought it only proper to blur out their little pee pee's. Austin is just 10 weeks younger than Carter, but only weights about 1 1/2 pounds less. He is so cute and we are excited to have boys so close in age.

Carter has been so hungry the past few days and he is barely going 3 hours between bottles and started to wake up more frequently and earlier than usual, so I am thinking he is hungry and the bottles are just not enough, even thought I have increased how many ounces he gets, so I decided to feed him a little rice cereal. He loved it and smiled and started kicking his legs like crazy (much different then are last baby).

I know most people say you MUST wait until they are six months...but after talking to my Mom about other advice that professionals give...MOMS always knows best. Back in the day when I was little they did not have a set limit of when to start rice cereal, they did not chart our growth, we did not sit in car seats until we were 7, etc..... and me, my siblings and all my friends are healthy adults who are all still alive. So, I feed little Carter some cereal and he slept the entire night through it was great. He is 4 1/2 months and I think he will still live.

Sorry for the ramblings, my posts are not very witty (mainly because I am not a witty person:)), they are not full of great insights, just little updates on my wonderful family and pictures. I hope those that care, enjoy!!

Commercials

So up here in Canada there is a station called Treehouse and it has lots of little kids shows, cartoons, etc...and there are no commercials. We also have Tivo and we never really watch commercials with our shows either and if there ever is one the boys ask to fast forward it.

Logan is obsessed with Transformers, he talks about them all day long and carries his favorite one of the day with him everywhere. He wants to bring it to school everyday. The boys have been getting bored of treehouse and it is a little young for them now, so we have let them watch the family channel.

So, anyways, yesterday I was busy trying to put the baby down for a nap and Logan comes running up the stairs almost in a panic..."mommy, mommy, did you know that Transformers are sold separately". I just laughed. Then, last night we are putting Michael to bed and he asked us the following "mommy and daddy what does batteries not included mean?" We just looked at each other and laughed. We know now why Treehouse is such a good channel..no commercials. We just can't wait for them to start asking us for everything they see in the commercials!!

I sometimes wish to much for the kids to grow up so that my life can be "easy" again, but I just love the things they say at this age and the things that they think.

Summer of fun

So it has been a month or so since I have written anything or posted any new pictures of the family. It has been a very busy summer. I forgot just how much time little babies take and most of my day is spent taking care of little Carter. This summer has been great, with the addition of our new little son and Karalee coming to live with us...our house is very full now:)

We have done a lot of traveling this summer. Carter has already been on two hikes...one about 8 km (@6 miles) 5 weeks after he was born and another one a few weeks later, but not so long. We spent a few different weeks/weekends in Waterton, my favorite place in Canada. It is so beautiful and peaceful and I can just truly relax when I am there with family and friends. Susan, my best friends from San Diego came up with her 3 children for 10 days and enjoyed some of the sights in Calgary and then we all went to Waterton. Everyone just had so much fun.

We also blessed our little baby and it was nice having so many family and friends able to be there to celebrate the blessing of Carter. Everyone knows just how badly we wanted one more little Palmer in our family and it was just such a happy time to be blessing him.

Jared's mom lives on a ranch with horses, cows, and so much land...the boys and especially Michael just love it out there. I always wanted to have little surfer boys, but I think Michael is having a mind of his own and he wants to be a farmer (hence the picture). I think now that we live in Canada on a prairie it might be hard to have a surfer boy:) He loves to feed the horses, help grandpa Mark with all the chores and will stay out side from sun up to sun down.

Some of the other pictures are from a local petting farm that we went to in the beginning of the summer. Just love the ones of my 3 boys with there heads on pig bodies. We are such cruel parents putting our new born baby in that picture, but is was just too cute to pass up. Carter just recently started smiling at us all the time, so I had to include one of those pictures as well!!

I am very sad to see the summer go..other than the fact that I might get a little more rest with both Michael and Logan in school all day and no more traveling each weekend. I love the warm weather and it does not last long in Calgary. The fall weather is already here:(

So, that was our summer in a nut shell. I loved spending time with family and friends and I am very thankful for my 3 little boys and my wonderful husband. Even though having 3 kids is harder than I anticipated, I am grateful to have another son. My mother keeps reminding me that I need to take one day at a time and when I do listen to her great advice, it really does help me be a better wife and mother that day!!

Love to all and hope you all had wonderful summer's as well!!

Dentists in training. (Just what we needed)

(Jared) I had to go to the office to help my dad clean out a room. The boys came with me and entertained themselves. When It was time to go, I went to find them and this is what I found. Both boys had on gloves, they had gotten the demonstration dolls down from the cupboard and they were pretending that they had patients and they were brushing their teeth with huge toothbrushes.

sweet little Michael

I just needed to write down a few things that Michael has done lately and just what a sweet little boy he is. It reminds me that I need to not always focus on all the crazy things he does. He might have a ton of energy, but he also has such a tender heart and is always thinking.
The other day we had a little mishap here at the house and I started to cry (crazy post-pregnancy hormones) and he would not leave my side for about 1/2 hour, he even started to get a little teary eyed and really wanted to make sure that I was okay. He also just loves baby Carter and whenever he cries he is always there to try to console him and at one point he thought that since Carter was just in heaven his favorite song must be " I am a child of God", so whenever we are in the car and Carter is crying, Michael will sing I am a child of God over and over again it is so sweet to listen to.
And this is the real kicker, it really makes me take a step back and look at how I treat my kids. Do I yell to much, do I do enough with them, am I too hard on them, do they know I do love them,etc....
BUT, this past weekend we were at out cabin in Waterton for a Palmer family reunion and we were hiking what was called the bears hump. Now Michael and I had never done this hike before and you do it at night. Many of you know how over dramatic I can sometimes be so it was pretty dark (11pm) and we were making our way down and I was just asking Jared if he was sure that there was no bears out here and what we would do if there was, etc.... Michael was leading the way with the flashlight and as he heard me asking Jared about the bears and I am sure he could sense my nervousness he chimed in with the following " mom, don't worry I will jump in front of you to protect you from the bear and I will die for you" after he said this I said Michael no you are little and have much more of life to live them me and again he persisted "mom I love you and I want to die for you" it made me cry. Maybe I am not such a horrible mom after all if my little boy wants to die for me:) I really need to remember these moments when my boys are driving me crazy and that they are just wanting to have fun and not trying to drive me crazy. They really are just as sweet and my new little baby Carter, but in reality it has not been long since they were in Heaven as well!!

Welcome Carter

Welcome Carter to the Palmer family

Hello to all...many of you have been asking for me to start a blog, so here it is!!!
We just welcomed the newest little addition to our family. His name is Carter William Palmer and he was 7lbs 12 oz and 19 inches long. As you can see from the pictures he has a ton of hair. He looks like Logan, but with much more hair and it is not red. I had lots of help the first few weeks as I have to have c-sections. I did have is scheduled, for Sat. the 21st of June, but I went into labor on the Tuesday. I was really hoping that I would go early and I even helped it along a little:) I taught my weightlifting class just 4 days before he was born and I cycled the morning he was born:) I really did not want to be pregnant anymore.

Most of you know how much I love to work out and it will be 3 weeks tomorrow since I had Carter and needless to say I am going a little stir crazy. I am missing the gym, my friends, and teaching my classes. But, it has all been worth it!!

I also attached a photo of our big boys, they have been great with the baby,especially Michael. they are a big help most of the time. Summer just started a few weeks ago and I am going a little bit out of my mind with all the kids home. Trying to find things to do with the big boys in between feedings, sleeping, etc... I feel a little sorry for Michael and Logan this summer. We are going to our cabin for a weekend in July and a week in August and they will be going to gymnastic summer camp for a week in July as well, so hopefully that will help the boredom somewhat.

Well, that is what is going on with the Palmer clan. We are so thankful for our new little guy....he is a little miracle. Sometimes when I stare at him and I amazed at our modern day technology. We started the in-vitro almost 3 years ago and our little Carter was our last frozen embryo and he sat frozen for 2 years before the last procedure, so he is amazing:) We love him and all our boys which all took quite a bit of effort.

Hope to keep up with the blog, so check back often!!