Lucky, unlucky kids!

My kids must be the unluckiest lucky kids alive. Is that possible? You see, my brothers are the coolest uncles ever! (Lucky part.)

Uncle Gus has played with them tons since we moved here, and this was one of their favorite games before he and my parents moved -- he would hang over the stairs, and the kids would remove his hands one at a time to watch him fall. That one NEVER got boring:

Well, none of these uncles now live nearby (unlucky part). Dustin moved to Salt Lake City, so we'll see him much less. Mind you, he has been pretty busy with wedding plans for the past few months anyway -- you know how engaged people are. :) Ryan is in St. George, and Brandon is in South Carolina.

So my kids go crazy any time they get to play with one of these fun uncles. And since all of my siblings attended Dustin's wedding, my kids got some fun uncle time.

Here Tyler, Zachary and cousin Nicholas hang onto Ryan as he tries to jump into the air:

(By the way, he got off the ground, but his pants didn't. Good thing he didn't get very far off the ground. :)

Here they are having Uncle Brandon swing them all around in a blanket:
(Zachary)


(Tyler)


(Shayla waiting for her turn)


(Shayla and Zachary)


Since Brandon came over on Sunday for his last day in town, they got lots of Brandon time. Needless to say, I don't think they could get enough of Uncle Bup. They said, "Can you teach Daddy how to play with us like this?" I got tired just watching them ... but as you can see, they LOVED it:


And when Uncle Brandon left, somehow it just wasn't nearly as fun:


Lucky, unlucky kids!

A girl and her baby

Shayla LOVES her doll (Ellie or Ella, depending on the moment). She was lucky enough to get matching dresses for Christmas, and she is in heaven. How can you not have fun with little girls when they're this cute?

Christmas was awesome!

So, there was nothing unusual or especially exciting to make this Christmas great, but it was anyway. Here are some pics from the big day ...

Actually, we'll start with Christmas Eve. We let the kids open their gifts from G&G Palmer so we could video chat with them while the gifts were opened. They each got a build-a-bear item: The girls got clothes and the boys got bears. We bought the items with money from my parents, and when we saw the Cinderella dress, we knew we had to get it for Shayla. Then we came home and she was in her own Cinderella dress. Needless to say, she LOVED it:


Zachary and Tyler's bears (who will eventually be Jedi bears) got names they requested for baby Austin. Zachary's is Zane Cooper, and Tyler's is Ty Jared. They LOVE them:


Becca got a couple of shirts and accessories. She was happy:


Then we got to making "gingerbread" houses. Don't tell my kids that graham crackers aren't real gingerbread, because they're happy with them. Mind you, they didn't look nearly as good as they do when Grandpa is in charge -- he cuts out cardboard houses for them to "glue" their crackers to. But they turned out okay anyway -- especially since they had all that pinata candy to use:


Christmas Eve we have a tradition of getting new pj's. I'm glad to carry this tradition over from my growing up years -- then the kids look great in their Christmas pics and they get new jammies once a year (something I may never spend the money on otherwise! :). The boys got Ben 10 jammies (he's some cartoon action hero kid), so they had to pose ... which means of course that Shayla had to pose, too. In fact, when she just saw the pics of her and Becca alone, she asked me what she was doing. Who knows! :) Becca loves the bow on her pants. I thought she would:


Paul and I hadn't wrapped any presents before Christmas Eve, and we didn't want to get caught, so we figured we'd let the kids fall asleep and get to it. Then we forgot to get to it until 11 p.m., so it took us until 2 a.m. to wrap all of these:


Not bad, eh? I love how you can see Christmas Story on the TV in the background. LOVE that movie. How can anyone have not seen it? I think TBS runs it for 24 hours straight on Christmas.

Anyway, I think one of the joys of the season is that my kids are very easily pleased. I mean, look how happy Shayla is to open a gift she wrapped herself (a stuffed animal she got at Disneyland more than a year ago, but wrapped a week ago to get more presents under the tree):


And it's not the Lego set Tyler requested, but he's giddy anyway:


Here's how the temple pic turned out for Becca, and she likes it:


Shayla's favorite gift (although you can't tell from her expression) was a CPK that looks like her:


Too bad the originals 25 years ago didn't have Black Friday specials for $10 like we got this one. But I will say that Shayla's has a tooth just like mine did 24 years ago. Was it really that long ago? And how do I still remember that mine was named Roxy Nina? We let Shayla name her own, so she goes back and forth between Ellie and Ella.

The boys got a REALLY cool race track, as you can see on Zachary's face:



Yes, we had a very relaxing, merry day! Of course, it was made even better by a cool gift from my kind hubby (a digital scrapbooking class) and the enjoyment of eating and drinking whatever I wanted (within reason, of course), instead of following my diabetic diet. Too bad I have to wait a whole year to enjoy Christmas again. :)

Happy Holidays!

Love,

Palmer Pinata Party

Every year my family has a traditional pinata party. This began when we as kids were growing up and my parents did a pinata every Christmas Eve. My parents carried on the tradition with grandkids, and with the growth of grandkids (more than 20 now), they have gone to getting a pinata per family. For a couple of years they did them individually with families, but recently we have gotten together at my sister's church to do them all on the same night. The kids LOVE pinata night! We generally do it right after Christmas now so everyone is a bit more relaxed, but with my parents in town only two nights -- and one of them being my brother's reception -- we just HAD to do it Friday night. We each got our own pinatas this year, and it was so much fun!

Grandpa pulled out his big remote-controlled truck to chase the boys around with again -- and they love it:


Kylen (my niece's baby -- and the only baby there since 1-week-old Aspen couldn't make it) got lots of attention from Great-Grandma Palmer -- she even let him chew on her nametag. I forgot when I was on my mission how much kids go for those:


I loved this picture of Kylen next to his pinata. Yes, they're both standing up:


My kids loved that we got a Christmas one this year. (Handy that they were 25 percent off at Partyland :). Shayla had fun hitting it, but sometimes tried with her eyes closed:


Zachary got in a few good hits and even more smiles:


Tyler got in the killer hit -- what a swing:


I figured since Tyler had broken the pinata and Becca just got to finish it off we wouldn't get any of the good "concentrating with my tongue out" poses, but I was wrong:


Anyway, the kids had way too little sleep this weekend and tons of fun! I didn't hear, "How many more days until Christmas" all weekend. :)

The Wedding

This weekend was my baby bro's wedding, and it was awesome! The weather cooperated (other than being cold), and everyone made it here safely. The sealing ceremony at the Mt. Timpanogos LDS Temple was awesome, and we feel very blessed that Heidi will be joining our family.

This was the first time in 3 years that all of my siblings have been together. It was a fun time that flew by all too quickly ...

Anyway, here are some pics of the happy day:











And now for the reception. Something happened with their original backdrop, so they asked me to be in charge of decorating the one they got from a friend. I stressed about it, because decorating is NOT my thing. But I think it ended up looking nice in its simplicity. Phew!

Here is the Palmer family together for the first time in years:


My 3 brothers. The oldest (left) lives in South Carolina and the middle (right) lives in St. George. They both left a wife and two daughters at home. Anyway, we get those two to move back and we'd all live within about an hour of each other:


The cake. We gave my sis-in-law a hard time for not making the cake since she had a baby a week ago ... but I guess this one was pretty anyway. :)


Dustin's best friend Charlie is a caterer, so he took care of the catering and everything. It was delicious and totally not on my diabetic diet. :) I enjoyed it all. :)

Charlie is on the right (his bro on the left):




And yes, the car did get decorated. I think Charlie is to thank for the raw meat thrown on the windshield:


And the leftover pinatas from the family party the night before definitely came in handy:


It was awesome to see all of my siblings and my parents! The weekend flew by, so we'll have to plan another get-together soon -- but next time with all the missing girls, too!