Videos

Well, I finally figured out how to copy videos from my camera to my computer, and I've started uploading the first few to youtube now. Sure, they're over a year old, but hey, better late than never, right? http://www.youtube.com/user/palmer1112

Happy Birthday, Eric

As I print off my first homework assignment, I would like to take this moment to wish my brother a wonderful birthday. May this year be as good, if not better, than the last, as you enjoy your time with Stevie and little Allison. Hugs and lots of love from Emily.

Happy Birthday Eric

Have a happy birthday.

Sincerely,
Nathan

Birthday Weekend

Stevie is sitting on my lap as I type this, trying to hit the keyboard and getting dangerously close to breaking more keys than those he's already broken. He's taken to the "terrible twos" like no other. But we love him all the more for it. We're just hoping Allie will survive it.

Speaking of Allie, she has an umbilical hernia which is basically a major outtie belly button. It's scary looking but it shouldn't be a problem. Laurel's taking her to the doctor next week to make sure she doesn't need surgery.

Stevie and I are having cake and ice cream tomorrow. I got books for my birthday. Stevie got toy cars (we took him to the toy store yesterday).

Thanks for the birthday greetings yesterday. Stevie loves all of you. He's a sweet boy. He means well, he really does. We'll get some updated pictures of the kids (gee that seems strange to type: "the kids"...) up soon.

Happy Birthday Stevie

from Jared, Michelle, Brooke, and Bryan

misc

Happy birthday to Stevie! How is he doing with his new baby sister? I agree that more pictures of Allison would be fun. Summer and I have been keeping up with the pictures of Joshua.

I do have more pictures of Summer from the past few months, but I don't know how to use our new photo program yet (or even how to get them attached to an email so Mindy could post them). We will be getting A LOT more pictures next weekend - we're going to Florida for Labor Day for a wedding, and Summer is one of the flower girls. Should be interesting! We're also stopping in Georgia to visit Adam's sister before she deploys to Iraq next month (she's in the Army). I'll get those up (or to Webmaster Mindy anyway) as soon as possible.

Jared, I don't know if this is the type of geek you're looking for, but Charles DeMar on "Better off dead" is the king of ... whatever category he belongs to. And of ALL TIME? That's a bit extreme considering there are billions of movies out there that none of us have ever seen.

Mom, are you serious? People actually ask you if you have a favorite child or grandchild? How lame! I knew a family once upon a time who had each of their children in a stereotypical category, including the kid who could do no wrong, and the kid who could do nothing right. It was awful, and I vowed I would never ever do that to my family.

Pssst ... it's Mindy and Clarissa's turn on the sisters blog.

Small random question...

I have a random question for all of you... Who is the greatest movie geek of all time? I don't want to know which of us has seen the most movies though; I want to know which character is the geekiest. Thanks.

Running around

Well, school has now started, and so today I was rather busy. Okay, so classes started yesterday, and I had one, in which we were assigned 77 pages of reading and a short paper on it by Tuesday. Go figure. There are only six people in that class; half of us are writing 25-page research papers.

Today, I had biology. The class was huge -- well huge for this school, meaning over 40 people showed up. There will be two lab sections, but we meet together for the lecture. Then I had to buy a few supplies (namely notebooks . . . and chocolate) before I headed off to listen to the president of the university ramble. It went over (again, go figure), so I didn't have much time to eat lunch and I was a couple minutes late for German, also because I couldn't find it. Class consists of nine girls and Steve. (Two other guys who were in the class are on missions; I hear they're MTC companions before going to Frankfurt.)

After German, I had some other errands to do -- sign up to see the play this weekend ("The Crucible"), and check in at the financial aid office, and buy one more textbook that wasn't there on Tuesday. And now I'm checking some stuff on the computer.

This evening, there's a barbecue hosted by the Institute.

Well, this gives me an idea of how busy days are going to be from here on out. No more time for playing around on my computer all day. I haven't even gotten to the reading quite yet, but I intend to have a chapter read before dinner.

Eric and Laurel, wish Stevie a happy birthday for me, since I doubt he can read this.

-- Emily

Notes from Home

I've been home almost a week now and am beginning to get things under control. I worked Monday and Tuesday - training for a curriculum to use with our autistic children. I went to the eye doctor to figure out what's wrong with my eye. I've had this huge floater in it for about two weeks. It should go away eventually so until then I just have to live with it. I've been updating my webpage; I answered a new question and checked off a few more things on my 100 list.

For some reason I can't seem to make comments to your posts so I'll make those comments and a few others here.

Frank - I'm glad I'm home because, although I had a great summer I missed you a lot.

Trina & Adam - I don't think you've stolen Trina away, you've just added a new son to our family and as a result soon to be 2 beautiful granddaughters. Good luck on finishing your class, Trina. I hope Summer lets you work on it.

Eric & Laurel - Please post more pictures of our beautiful little Allison. She was growing and changing so fast while I was there that I'm sure she's changed in the past two weeks. I wished Stevie a happy birthday this morning but you can give him an extra hug and kiss from Grandma.

Jared & Michelle - I think your musical will be a good one. I'm anxious to hear how your opening song works out. It sounds rather complex but I'm sure you can pull it off. Let us know how the kids first day of school goes. They're growing up so fast.

Tawnia - Have fun with your dancing and other activities and work hard at school. I saw a job here where they said they wanted someone with a masters in speech but would consider a bachelors degree.

Emily - Good luck with all your classes. Keep us posted on how they're going and don't get so caught up in the present that you forget to think about what you'll be doing after you graduate. Let us know if you're on the Quiz Bowl team and how that's going.

Nate - It was great to see Joshua again. He's getting so big. The eulogy for your fan was rather interesting. I'll see you tomorrow so we can can peaches, together.

Mindy - Remember our clothes project. Put me on your calendar real soon so we can figure out what I need to get rid of and what I should replace it with. I'm glad you're here.

Clarissa - Keep up the good work on your job search and your mission prep. I love our nice long talks.

Love always,
MOM

Happy Birthday Stevie!!!

happpp;y birthdayh cuz. ,love joshua

my life

I thought that it might be a good time to update everyone on my life as well. So, school's started & I'm taking the usual 15 credits. 6 hrs. each Tuesday and Thursday (11am - 8pm) and 4 hrs. Wed. (6-10pm). Which leaves me time to work three days a week. I've applied for a research position at the War Crimes Research Office on campus which requires 20 hrs. a week. Monday, Wed. & Friday will be just fine for that. I also have a 30 pg. paper due by December (I hope to have it done by Oct.). And there's the usual club obligations and whatnot. And I've decided to convince the Dean to put on a very large and very expensive conference in April on what I think is a gaping hole in international law. So I'm busy writing my proposal & drafting various organizations on campus to support me as I go to the dean. And I hear that there's a baby due sometime in my future. My family would probably like some more attention too. But I feel your pain Tawnia. I really do.

P.S. Sleep is good. So is Trina. She's awesome. Thanks for letting me steal her away from you all.

Crazy Busy

So my life just got incredibly crazy and busy. I started work officially last Thursday with two days of inservice. Today was the first day of school... and these kids are going to require quite a bit of energy. I only taught three hours today, but I'm exhausted.... plus it was basically the same lesson over and over. But I have some very supportive teachers to work with.

My college courses don't officially start until next Monday but I am already starting to do the reading for them. I would much rather be ahead of schedule then behind. Plus most of them require several chapters to be read each week... (And these are 50+ pages long and with small type!) I also have a test the first week and two quizzes and two assignments. So I figure the more reading I get done this week the better.

With all of that I am also still taking my two dance classes (which amount to about 4 hours in each week.... because I TA for a class and I have an extra class I go to every week.)

And I have two callings at church. FHE committee and Choir director. And I try to go to institute on Wednesdays... I was also thinking of signing up for a class on Mondays... but I'm still thinking about that one.

And to top it all off... I am tutoring on the side. One student for just an hour each week... and another one for three+ hours each week.

And I'm supposed to eat and sleep sometimes, and be social. Yeah... right.

So that is what I'm up to.
Love,
Tawnia

Ten Years!!!

Congratulations Eric and Laurel!!! I hope that you guys have another few years in you.

This was the sunset a couple of nights ago. This picture was taken over by our dumpster. Not an ideal place to take a date, but the view was beautiful.

help on a project for Summer

First of all, happy birthday to Bryan a day late. Sorry about that. I meant to call yesterday, but things got a bit out of control around here. As usual. I did go through the party pictures - looks like everyone had a great time!

The project assistance is for a quiet book I want to make for Summer for church. She's getting to the stage where sitting (or playing) quietly through sacrament meeting is more and more of a chore. Her regular books and quiet toys are getting boring for her. So my thought is to have some specific things just for church. She does like looking at our photo albums, so I'm going to make a small family album with pictures of all of her aunts and uncles and cousins. One reason is of course to keep her quiet in church. The other reason is to familiarize her with all of your faces - when we finally are able to visit everyone (hopefully before the 2009 reunion), you're not complete strangers to her.

Now, there are lots of pictures of the cousins here on the website, but very few (if any) current pictures of all the grownups. So that's what I'm looking for here. I don't need individual shots of everyone - group/family pictures are fine. So if everyone could send me some CURRENT pictures in the next couple of weeks or so - either snail mail or email, I don't really care which (or refer me to your favorite pictures on the website) - I'd really appreciate it. Otherwise, I will be forced to draw stick figures, and you don't want that.

I was originally planning to do this as a Christmas gift for Summer, but Adam and I think it would better to have it sooner rather than later. Summer is really getting antsy about halfway through sacrament meeting, and has taken to crawling under the benches to the front of the chapel. Good thing we usually sit in just the 4th row or so.

Anyway, thanks in advance for your help!

Happy Birthday

Yes, I took pictures at Bryan's party. They are up on my page. Thanks to those who have called/blogged/emailed with birthday wishes!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BRYAN!!!!!

I hope Bryan is having a wonderful time at his party. I talked to him for a minute this morning but his cousins were there a little early for his party and he wanted to play with them. Real live cousins are much more fun than a Grandma on the phone. I can understand that. Have a great 5th birthday Bryan and enjoy yourself all year. 5 is a wonderful age to be.

I'm sorry I haven't done near as much posting on the computer as I had planned to do while here in California. Today we are heading to Cheryl's and over the next week we'll amble home. We'll see Jen and Ben on Monday and then on through Utah to see Tawnia and do a bit of genealogy in SLC. We should be home by next Saturday.

We'll miss Stevie and Allison but we're looking forward to seeing Joshua again. He's grown so much while I've been gone. Take care everyone and enjoy the rest of your summer.

Love ya,
MOM

President Faust

http://deseretnews.com/article/1,5143,695199591,00.html

I hope this doesn't come as too much of a surprise to anyone - that you've already heard by now. President Faust died last night, and the link is an article in the Deseret News about it. It's a very nice profile.

It's Cranky Day around here. Summer got shots yesterday so she's had a fever off and on and is very clingy. We also think she's cutting another tooth (#8). Adam is super-stressing about job applications and potential interviews for next summer (yes, the law firms do this a year in advance). And I'm trying to stay out of the line of fire while preventing these 2 from killing each other. Good times.

We hope that Bryan's party tomorrow is fun! Post lots of pictures!

I'm Baa--aack

Hello my favorite family!

I am alive and doing... better. I can't say well, because I still have moments of vertigo and feeling like I'm going to puke (nausea, naseau, naseua... whatever.) I actually drove myself to FHE last night so that was a big deal.

So... let's see... in the last two weeks I have spent a lot of time reading, watching movies, working on Allison's Christmas present and sleeping. That's about it.

Now that I'm back to feeling healthier I have to get ready for both work and my classes to start. Work starts August 16th (school starts Aug 21st) and my classes start August 27th. So I'll be extremely busy by the end of this month. My biggest issue right now is trying to figure out the best way to earn enough money to survive. It should be interesting.

Well... I think my laundry should be dry by now so I need to run.
Love,
T

fireside notes

We went to a really awesome fireside tonight up at the temple visitor's center, and I wanted to share my notes with you all. The speaker was Elder Clayton M. Christensen from the Seventy, who is also a professor up at Harvard. We went, in particular, because one of Adam's mission companions was his son. Elder Christensen has also written articles for the Ensign (the most recent was in Feb. 2007) - they're really excellent.

Anyway, the fireside really made me think a lot, and one of my thoughts was that I should post my notes on the blog for everyone to see. I hope you can get something out of them as well.

Overview: If we try to obey and gain a testimony of the commandments by focusing on them one at a time (tithing, geneology, etc.), they can be difficult or onerous. If we get to know the author of the commandments and the gospel - Christ - the commandments as a whole become easier to obey, less of a chore, and more of a joy. Some ideas on getting to know Christ (that, quite frankly, had never really occurred to me in this context) ...

1 - Teach about Christ. Focus more on Christ when teaching in church meetings, in the home, etc. Every sermon in the Book of Mormon - no matter what it's about - has the core of teaching about the Atonement and that salvation comes only through Christ.

2 - Introduce people to Christ. (He didn't say specifically that we should set a date, but the examples he gave all involved setting a date. Set a date to have the missionaries teach someone in your home.)

3 - Love and forgive as Christ loves and forgives. Forget the sin - focus on the present/future. Satan tries to trap people by holding the sin over your head, telling them that they can never repent, focusing on what they have done in the past by perpetuating the feelings of guilt and unworthiness. Christ lets it go, and focuses on the future and getting beyond all of that.

4 - Serve like Christ served - by focusing on the individual. Christ's sermons to the masses were very few compared to the stories in the scriptures of how He took the time to focus on people one at a time. Focus on blessing others within the context and talents that you've been given.

Two other thing that he discussed, in the midst of his 4 points, was how to really focus on studying the scriptures, and what to include in prayer.

Scriptures:
1 - Pray before beginning to read for the Spirit to instruct you in getting answers to whatever questions you have at the time.
2 - Read.
3 - Write a rough draft of your answers that the Spirit gave you. (Thoughts and impressions that came as you were reading.)
4 - Pray again to discuss/clarify your answers.
5 - Read the same scriptures again.
6 - More writing - revise your answers as further thoughts come.
7 - Pray again to know that what you've read is true.

Prayer:
1 - Before you begin prayer, ponder how the Lord has blessed you and shows His love for you.
2 - When you are praying, expressing intent (i.e. "real intent" in Moroni 10:4) is to tell the Lord what you intend to do with the answers He gives you.

Conclusion: Our calling is to be a Christian - to be Christ's hands, doers of the Word.

I definitely have more pondering to do about all of this, and some things to discuss with Adam. But I wanted to get this all out to everyone while it was still fresh. Enjoy!!