White Pass Winter Carnival

We could really get used to the weather here. We have not had any "real" snow since the first of the year. Most days are a perfect 50-60 degrees. What makes it even better is if we WANT snow it is only about 50 minutes away. We had heard that the local ski resort does a Winter Carnival every year for the kids and we put it on our "must do" list. It was really quite fun and....FREEE (you know how that is my favorite). Little Annie had to immediately "taste" the snow to be sure it was "good" (yuck). She decided she liked it :) We are pretty lucky that we have another kid that is pretty happy to just GO!

Here is one of the snow sculptures. It is a big bear surrounded by a "crystal" fence (broken icicles).

This was a really cool troll sculpture. There was a pretty dumb volunteer that on her shift decided to let the kids climb on the sculptures (that people were competing with and had spent days and days on). Keaton KNEW it was too good to last (and it was....she was corrected about 2 minutes later) lucky for him he had already scurried to the top.

This is Savannah and I in front of some kind of lizard thing?

There was a huge castle that you climbed to the top of and then you could slide down on tubes. There was also a cool tunnel going under it. I suggested Lee take Savannah down the tube hill. He reluctantly agreed.....

He shouldn't have......(luckily he kept her upright and she didn't freak)

Keaton was a pro and could have gone all day!!!

Here they are waiting in the line. You can see Annie peeking through the "teeth" of the castle.

This is Keaton in front of the dragon sculpture. He has a big hunk of the ice they used. It felt weird, like they treated it with something.

It was a pretty fun event. Next year if we are still around we will bring our own sled's so we can go down one of the other hills so we don't have to wait so long for the castle hill. Beautiful clear day....a pretty good day for the Palmers!

Loaves and Fishes

(picture from crossroads initiative)

These last couple of weeks I have been caught up in a church assignment. I still don't have a calling so it was nice to be "needed" for a special project. It was kinda a crazy assignment though. They wanted me to make the dinner for a Relief Society party for 60 people. That wouldn't have been that bad until you add in the budget of $60 (without having anyone bring anything). I am about as frugal as they come so I took it on as a challenge. I looked at spaghetti but even if I thought a pound of hamburger could be stretched for 10 people 1/4 of my budget would be hamburger. I went through 100 scenarios like that and was getting pretty frustrated. A buck a head just isn't very much. We had a pretty good ad though and I got 5 pound bags of potato's for 75 cents and 2 pound blocks of cheese for $3 and so I did potato cheese soup with my strawberry salad (really toned down), homemade breadsticks, and pavlovas for dessert. The only way I was going to pull it off was if I hand made rolled and twisted all the breadsticks and put a tray of pavlovas every night in my oven to dry.

I poured myself into the whole thing and worked like crazy to pull it off. I had 3 ladies come over one morning to roll about 1/2 of the 130 breadsticks (which we individually froze then put together in a container) and I took 4 ladies "packs" for the soup so I didn't have to do that but otherwise I did the rest.

My health had started to turn on this pregnancy and so I was sure I paced myself to pull it off. Imagine my horror on Sunday evening when I took Savannah's ice cream cake out of our deep freeze in the garage and it was mush. Luckily the breadsticks and pavlovas were fine. Lee cleared the compressor area and we thought we had solved the problem. Monday I went out there for something and I realized that the breaker had flipped and we had no power to it. The breadticks were in a block of mush. I was hoping when they refroze the flour would let them be pulled apart. No luck...I went to check on them later and they were a solid block of breadstick mess. I started to panic. This drove my blood pressure even higher. It was getting to the critical stage where I would need to call the Doctor. I stayed up all night worrying about it (because if you are an Earley woman in your brain you think that helps).

The next morning my BP was even higher. I figured I would try my best to get them apart and then if I failed I would have Lee get Costco rolls (and blow my budget). I e-mailed my kind friend Sara who was over the event and told her what had happened. She immediately called and said she was on her way to Costco and to go lay down and not worry about the breadsticks. I cried over the loss... (seriously all the time and effort and ingredients) then took a 2 hour nap.

When I got up everything went perfect. I loaded the van quickly, and when I went to go through the 800 boxes in the garage to find stuff for the table I found what I was looking for in the FIRST box.

Everything went smoothly at the church. 3 of the 4 soups showed up and they were great. The 4th soup showed up about 1/2 hour before the event. It was all black and completely burned to the bottom (which she had scraped to get up). I panicked a little. Her soup was inedible. We decided to dump her soup and take the milk and cheese we were going to add to it to the others to "thin them down a bit". My portion sizes were a little small I thought (15 people for one lg crockpot) so I was worried. We boiled some water just in case we had to throw some powdered potato soup in. The ladies arrived and we put out our goods (the table looked great if I do say so myself). They ate, they made yummy noises, they asked for recipes, they ate some more. When all had eaten and were full we went into the kitchen and there were still 2 crockpots full. I kinda chocked up. I thought of the scripture story of the loaves and the fishes: And they did all eat and were filled: and they took up the fragments that remained twelve baskets full (Matthew 14:20).

When I got home my BP was back to normal, the job was over. I was reminded once again though that this is His church, He is in charge, He cares about me (and will send a dear sister to care for me), and He will make everything o.k. if we do our best. Miracles happen even today. He has not forgotten us. He will come in our hour of need. Even when he has such heartbreak and need in Japan He cared enough to help Kira...after all she could do.

Florida Part 2

Lee and I are pretty bummed at ourselves. We really didn't get a great picture of our family at Disneyworld. I guess we will have to go back :) Here is a look at our Disney adventures.

This was taken at Downtown Disney. They have these ladies sprinkling "princess dust" on the kids. It makes them stop I think and look in the store. We had them do a dusting on Annie but Keaton wanted in on the action. Good thing the other lady had a "pirate duster" :).

This is the fountain at downtown Disney. You can't see the fountain well but this shows:
A. the great weather (at night even we were fine in short sleeves)
B. look at that girls hair! All I do is comb it and it comes out like that. I am just amazed at the convenience since I don't know that I have the patience to put a lot of time into kid hair :)
C. I forgot to flip some of the pictures...ugh.

This is the kids and I with the classic Epcot shot. I was surprised at how well we liked Epcot. We LOVED Soarin', and Keaton and Lee LOVED the Mission to Mars ride.

The back part of Epcot you go "around the world" and can stop at an attraction in each "country". Our favorite was Mexico. It had a fun Donald Duck ride that was fun for all of us.

Savannah has a great ability to sleep anywhere. That is what makes it possible to do so many fun things with her. It is a pretty convenient feature of this little lady!

This is Savannah and Keaton "testing" the Dumbo ride at Magic Kingdom. Savannah still thought it was "TOO SCARY"!

We really liked the Animal Kingdom! Keaton loved the Dinosaur fast ride (although Keaton loved EVERY fast and scary ride). They both loved to climb on these big statues!

This is waiting for the Kilimanjaro adventure ride. We got fast passes so we ate our lunch while we waited (we brought tons of lunch stuff and snacks in a cooler to keep from buying food there). The Kilimanjaro ride took by Jeep through Africa and showed many animals. Savannah was a big fan.

Our FAVORITE part of the Animal Kingdom was the Lion King Show. OH MY GOODNESS it was great! Keaton even got to be a part of it. Not so sure how "ready" for show biz he was though. He kept that one hand in his pocket the whole time with an "awkward" look on his face. He was glad he did it though.

The boys had to go on the fast Dino ride ONE MORE TIME so Annie and I waited for them. She was a pretty good sport with whatever and when worse came to worse a Dumdum sucker would buy her love again :)

P.S. We also LOVED the bug show at Disneyworld. It was 3-d and interactive. Pretty great!

This is Savannah and I on Small World. ABSOLUTELY her favorite ride. I think we went on like 6 times! I didn't really think about it but most of the rides (even the kids rides) have a "SCARY" element. She would whisper in my ear SCARY! She was a pretty good sport but Small World she couldn't get enough of.

She also loved this outside play area. I hated to spend a ton of time there because it was just a little park (that we could go to for FREE in any city).

We really loved our trip and mostly loved spending time as a family. We are thinking in 10 years or so we will have to go back....we HOPE we can wait that long!

Florida Part 1

We went to Florida to do the Disneyworld thing and got back about a week ago. It has taken this long for me to get it together to get this on here....sorry. I am going to do it in a couple parts. This serves as our family journal as well so I want to cover all our fun!

We were bumped from a flight when we were looking for a house for Lee's new job. We took the $1,200 in vouchers and figured we had just partially financed our Spring family vacation. I looked for a great deal and found Florida in Feb was pretty darn cheap. Our flight was only $238 a piece (cheaper then Denver) so we can take another small trip in the summer. Above is a picture of the lovely trees. I LOVED all the moss growing on them. So pretty.

These pictures were taken at Fort Christmas (in Christmas, FL). To say Keaton wasn't disappointed when Santa wasn't there is an understatement :) They have a nice playground, the original fort, and then a whole homesteading village in the back. It was my favorite price (FREE) so we checked it out!

Savannah has a special little place in her heart for all animals. She loved these little chickens. Lee and I sat on a bench and watched her look at them for quite awhile. Lee and I really could see the benefit of this lifestyle. Can you imagine how much time you would have to teach your children, play with your children, and learn if you didn't have the Internet, tv, etc.? As we sat there Lee and I made a goal to "unplug" the first week of May (I think we chose May because it is a ways off :).

This is Savannah and I in front of the fort. Savannah is showing you "gunkey" (the monkey). She took Gunkey everywhere.

This is a lovely orange orchard. Lee and I joked that Orlando and Yakima are as different as apples and oranges. Yakima is just like this but the apple orchards in Yakima seem much cleaner but just like Orlando they are all over the place.

This is the Senator. It is a 3500 year old tree. It is 17 1/2' wide and 118' tall. Lee was horrified when I laid down on the boardwalk with my hands up and made Keaton and Lee line up with me. We figure the three of us end to end with our hands in the air is how wide it is. Savannah just stood back and pitied us :)
In the next couple of days I will post the Disney portion. What a nice week we had with fabulous weather. Great memories for sure!

A Nice Week!

This week has been nice. I really feel like I am starting to get in my groove. I feel we have been sent here for some important lessons I need to learn. I am learning the importance of my little family. I am learning to rely on my wonderful hubby. I am also learning that I can ask other's for help and they are willing. I am also learning to keep a pretty clean house. Maybe this seems odd but I have always been "too busy" to care too much. I kept it O.K.ish but had so many other things going I didn't have any kind of a schedule. Here I have been able to slow down and keep my house clean, the beds made, and the toilets scrubbed. It is nice to know that anyone can drop by (not that they do) at any time and the house looks nice. It also makes me much happier.

As for events we had a pretty slow week. My health has not been great this week so I have had to take it a little slow. Here are some fun pictures of what the kids are up to though!

I don't really worry about my kids eating. I know most Mom's make their kids clear their plates, etc. but I don't. My kids are not picky eaters so I am pretty blessed. Savannah though defiantly has "eating days" and "not eating days". I try not to worry when the whole day she will only eat a couple pieces of lettuce, an orange section, and a slice of apple. TODAY was her "eating day". I guess I didn't put enough peas on her plate because when I went back to clear the table she had pulled the pea dish over and was shoveling it in with the serving spoon as fast as she could. I guess she liked them :)
Savannah has also decided she likes to use the computer....ugh. We tried turning off the monitor....she figured it out. We tried locking it....she can unlock it. No idea what we are going to do about this one.

One more Annie picture. I thought as her hair got longer it would straighten out a little. If anything the little curls are getting tighter and tighter. She is getting quite the head of hair!

Like I said I am really trying to keep the house clean. This week I mopped the kitchen floor on my hands and knees (the ONLY time I was grateful for a tiny kitchen). Keaton thought that was pretty cool and BEGGED me to let him do the bathrooms. Who am I not to give my child ALL of his hearts desires? :) After a quick lesson I turned him loose. I came back to check on him 5 minutes later. He had put on his swim suit and instead of squeezing it out in the bucket he decided it was better to squeeze it out on the floor. There was quite the flood. He cleaned it up and still wanted to do my bathroom (he promised he NOW knew how). I go and check on him there and he has ditched the sponge and was mopping my bathroom with his bare feet. "It works much better this way Mom" was his response. Whatever....cheap fun I guess!

Keaton also told me today he was skipping church. "What does that mean?" I asked. "You know...like rocks skip on water". Needless to say he went to church :)

Livin' for the Weekend!

We are really into playing with Daddy on the weekend. There are so many places to explore and Lee doesn't want to miss out (and he makes a GREAT driver). The kids and I got out and about during the week again. People say there is nothing to do here in Yakima but I am surprised with how much there is to do and it is all FREEEE...(my favorite word). We have been to a lot of great places that didn't cost a dime. It seems in SLC everything has a price these days.
I think the coolest thing we did during the week (sorry no pics of this) is we headed over to the Arboretum. It is a 40 acre botanical garden. You guessed right...it is FREE! It has lovely trees and ponds (I am sure in the spring it will be spectacular). It also hooks up to a very lovely stretch of the Yakima River trail. When we went a bit on the trail we came to a large group of trees that had FIVE Bald Eagles. You don't see that everyday! Keaton would also like to say it had lots of small ponds that he could, "crack the ice" on. That is his favorite activity these days.
On Saturday we headed over to the Outlet Stores between here and Seatle. I got all of Keatons back to school shopping done and lots of great deals on "cute" stuff for the girl. This first picture is of a rest stop near Selah, WA (just barely outside of Yakima). It is pretty cool because from this bench you can see Mt. Adams and Mt. Ranier. I think what you will REALLY appreciate is that I didn't get EITHER mountain in this picture. I am just cool like that....sigh.

Right by the outlet stores is a "walking" train museum. You guessed it...FREE. It is spread out over about a mile. There are tons of old trains and info boards on them. It is on a nice walking path and except for the time when Keaton was OFF the path and slipped in a patch of mud it was pretty cool. We will defiantly need to head back though when we have more time. It was getting dark before we saw it all.

Lee and Savannah on a train platform.

We also went back to Snoqualmie Falls. They are really lovely falls but the thing I like most is that they are using nature to power their city. In the picture below you can see the break towards the top of the falls. They have wheels inserted in there to generate power. They say they generate enough power to take care of the area. I love clean renewable power like this.

Here is a sample of one of the wheels. Keaton thought it was cool to climb through. Savannah thought it was cool to not look at the camera...argh.

My little family. I can't believe they are ALL looking. I think I am usually just not patient enough.

These were taken when we came up looking for a house. They were taken when Savannah was actually dressed well (just to prove I SOMETIMES try).

1/2 asleep I guess.

Annie and her Daddy. She really does usually prefer him :)

Finding our groove!

Things are going much better here in the Pacific Northwest! I am finding things to do to get out of the house and we even had a family from our ward over for dinner tonight! We are still exploring all the cool things there are to do around here. Yesterday we went to the Columbia River. It is a little over an hour away. Lee can't wait to go Steelehead fishing there! We went for a nice walk on the trail. It was over 50 degrees but raining like crazy. We didn't last too long.
This is a hollowed out tree along the river. Keaton and Annie needed to check it out (see how wet Keatons jacket is?)!
Lee contemplating all the time he is going to spend fishing this summer :)

This is a fun little duck pond on the Columbia river.

We also went to the museums story time. It is a free thing sponsored by the Catholic Church. They give the kids a free book, a snack, read them a couple books (in English and in Spanish), let them do a craft, and then they can play in the Children's part of the museum for free (granted it is no Discovery Gateway but my kids had a lot of fun). We went with my cousin Matt's sister-in-law and her kids. The kids had a great time.

Savannah has decided that she will only drink out of a bottle since we moved here. She really has no shame about it. This is my project in the next couple weeks...re-break her of the bottle. The REAL funny thing about this picture is Keaton. He is on this kick this week to become his Dad. He decided he needs to wear his church belt everyday like Dad (although Keatons pants are not really going anywhere), and he decided when he comes home he needs to put on shorts....:"Dad and I are warm-blooded Mom. We wear shorts at home". Each day he tries to do something a little bit more like Lee. I guess he is not too bad of a role model for my little guy :)

I think the thing that has helped me the most this last week or so is our walks. Keaton and I have been walking on the Yakima river almost everyday (one day it got up to 65!). Keaton rides his bike and I push Annie in the stroller. It is just about right pace wise (especially since he has to stop and check a lot of things out). It is a well maintained path with lots to see. We LOVE it! Doesn't it look like something out of a picture?

There are 3 parks along the path. This is an all wood one I find particularly cool (although I did NOT find the pit toilets particularly cool).

This day when we went the ice was starting to break up. Keaton and I were fascinated by the ice floes. Some were as big as our mini-van!

I thought it was pretty neat to see a bald eagle checking us out. When he took off in flight I nearly cried (to be honest that is not that big of a surprise....I used to always go to the bird show at Seaworld and ball my eyes out....birds in flight get me).

We also checked out the DairyGold Cheese plant tour. I am only including this to tell you it was the lamest thing we have ever gone to. IF you find yourself in our neck of the woods please don't waste your time. Clearly the chocolate ice cream was the best part if you ask my kids.

Keaton also had a Primary buddy over this week. We are finding our groove and making this a home. I am glad I am getting over the first couple month blues!