What about Clarissa?

So I get this phone call from Clarissa and we talk about how she's getting married, and I haven't heard a word about it since.

What's going on?

Any news?

I know Clarissa has been blogophobic in general, but I'm surprised at the overall lack of comment. (So feel free to comment on this post.)

In other news, I'm looking forward to vacation. I'm excited to see everyone and have a good ol' time in Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. Yes, we're tacking a little Idaho trip on the end of our vacation.

Talk to you later.

Love,
Eric

My Purchases

So far this weekend I have spent a large amount of money. First I went to the dollar tree and get a bunch of stuff for school. Then I went to Sam's Club where I bought groceries, gas, and a digital camera and memory card. Then I went and bought more groceries at Macey's and pizza at Little Ceasers. Oh, and in between the two shopping trips I got on the internet and bought Emily and Clarissa plane tickets so that they can come stay for two or three weeks at the end of June and beginning of July. Needless to say... my bank account is just about wiped out. Good thing I get paid next Saturday.

Oh, and my ticket for Disneyland arrived in the mail! I was pretty excited about that one. And I got the camera because I wanted to have my own camera for my trip to Cali and for the reunion. It's a pretty nice camera and it fits in my pocket.

This week is the last week of school. The kids will be there in the mornings for four hours, and then I will stay for another three hours cleaning, sorting, grading, assessing new students, and having meetings. And the last day of school is next Saturday. So far I know of about five or six students that will definitely be there and several that will definitely NOT be there. It should be interesting.

So that was my expensive weekend. I should probably not go to any stores on Monday... but I think I will be anyway.

Love,
T

My New Page

Well I finally got it up and running. I've been trying to get it to work all day. I left a lot of the things on there but I arranged them differently. Maybe I should change the title, too, but I haven't decided what to make it yet. Any suggestions?

If someone wants to put the picture of the tutu on the movie page you're welcome to. You can delete my comments if you want.

Jared, how are your changes coming? I keep checking to see if there's anything new

Summer, I love your new blog and the name of it is very clever. I love your pictures and all the comments.

Nathan, are you going to finish the story before you leave for Europe? I keep checking back and it hasn't changed yet.

Let me know what you think of my changes. I'll try to keep it updated more often.

Love ya,
MOM

Changes to Summer's Page

Changes have been made to Summer's page. Go check it out! (Please. Summer will look upon you favorably if you do.)

What is your favorite type of clothing?

Socks. Definitely socks. Belts run a close second, though.

pictures

The pictures of Summer taken at the hospital are up - 13 of them.

Tawnia and Mindy - we got your package yesterday. Thank you! The outfits are very cute, but she won't be able to wear them for a while because they're way too big. The 0-3 month size is apparently assuming that you start with a 10-pound baby, and Summer is just now hitting 7 pounds. Her doctor appointment on Tuesday weighed her in at 6 lb 15 oz. She put on an entire pound in 12 days, since she was at 6-flat when we were discharged at the hospital, so she is putting on weight at a good pace but she's still pretty small.

Field Trip

Today my class went on a field trip to Red Butte Gardens in SLC. It was fun, but we got lost. And since I had printed off the directions for ALL of the parents who were driving... EVERYONE got lost... but at least we all ended up in the same area, and one person did know how to get there. After getting up there we went on the two hour hiking tour. It was pretty cool. I'm excited to take my fourth graders there next year. It was all about classifying plants and animals.

I can't believe that we only have eight days left of school.... and the five days next week are all half days. So we only have three full days of school. It's pretty crazy. My first year of teaching is almost over. Part of me is SO excited because I am ready for a break and I want to be able to put things together for next year. And part of me is sad because I love this group of kids. They really are great.

Other than work, I have been trying to be social. Mindy and I are having a group of people over for games tomorrow evening. It should be fun. We're also enjoying tap and ballet... well, at least tap. Ballet was really hard last week. It could have been our last class, but we had already paid for the next eight weeks. Oh well... I just know that I'm the worst one in both classes... but I don't care, I'm still going to do it anyway.

I am enjoying the wonderful summer weather we've been having. It is nice to get out and enjoy the sunshine. I go for walks a lot, mostly when I'm talking on the phone, even though I get reception in my apartment just fine. It is just to nice to stay inside.

Anyway, I am going to save some stuff to post of the sisters blog, so... for the continuing story... please check there.
-T

Summer update

Summer's pictures are almost ready - Adam put a set together in a slide show format, but has run into a glitch. As soon as he gets it figured out and fixed, the first bunch from the hospital will be up.

Friday and Saturday were a little weird for Summer - Friday, she slept ALL DAY. It was tough to wake her up even to eat. Saturday, she was awake and wanting to eat every hour. I barely left the chair all day. But she's doing good over all. She's starting to catch on to the day=awake, night=sleep thing. The last 2 or 3 nights, she's gone for 2 or 3 hour stretches of sleeping, instead of waking up every 45 minutes. She's also been awake for longer stretches during the day - she's now been up for 2 1/2 hours, and is currently laying on her play mat. (And looking at the wall. Go figure.)

She also went to her first party last night. A friend in our ward graduated from medical school yesterday, and there was an open house for him. Enough people to get Summer introduced to a crowd scene, but small enough that she didn't seem to be overwhelmed with the noise or being passed around. Tomorrow, it's yet another trek to the doctor's office for yet another check. And then we don't have to go again for 3 more weeks, which will be nice since I'm already tired of going back and forth to sit there for an hour just to stick her on a scale. Sheesh. I KNOW she's eating enough, because she goes through a pack of diapers in less than a week.

Drawing

My first drawing in a while, and I had to share. It's of one of the girls in first grade at Reagan. She isn't from my class, but she ended up in one of my photos, and was just too cute to pass up. I added her to my webpage, but since there's a lot there I figured I'd show you here, just to be sure you can see. I'm pretty pleased with it.

To answer Mom's question, my favorite type of clothing to wear is jeans, a cute shirt, and flip-flops (for summer time anyway). I like to wear clothes that fit - after I gained some weight, and didn't change my wardrobe, I had really low self-esteem. Once I had clothes that fit, even though I wasn't any smaller, I felt a lot better.

My summer plans include a job - what it is yet, I'm not sure. I'm really looking forward to the reunion, and seeing everyone - that's the real high-light. In August Tawnia and I are planning on moving to Springville, where we will both be working at Reagan again. I'm also looking at getting my associate's degree, starting in the fall.

happy graduation day

Today is Adam's graduation day at Georgetown - hooray! He isn't walking in the ceremony this afternoon - sitting outside all that time would be too much for Summer and me. He finished all of his classes in December (his official graduation date was Dec. 20), and he's going to walk at the end of law school. But I wanted to get this added to the list of everything else that's going on around here. Hooray!! Hooray for being ALL the way done with undergrad, and finally getting his certificate for his degree.

As for clothes ... my favorite dress code is jeans and sandals and a t-shirt. I look forward to getting back to that on a regular basis soon.

Changes on the horizon

I have decided that my page needs an overhaul. I will soon be removing much of what is on there and saving it on a disk. I don't want to lose all my work but I feel it's getting a bit cumbersome. I just thought of it this morning and figured if there's anything you haven't seen you might want to look at it because it will soon disappear into the Palmer Vault.

I have finally gotten busy working on costumes. Yesterday I made a red tutu for Brooke. I think it turned out very well and I hope she likes it. My next project is to print the icons on t-shirts and capes so if any of you want either of those -please let me know.

My last question, about the various homes you've each lived in, got somewhat lost in the excitement of Summer, but that's how it should be. Anyway - it's time for a new question: What is your favorite type of clothing? I'll be watching for your answers and waiting for other Palmer news.

Love ya,
MOM

random silliness

A co-worker who works with me
Like to tell jokes to fill us with glee
The ARC is his tool,
But he is no fool.
This month he sent this pic to me!

Tap Dance

Last night, Tawnia and I went to our first tap class. We were very excited because neither of us had any idea of what we would learn. In the course of an hour we actually learned eight steps - Irish, maxi, essence, waltz, etc. We immediately came home and practiced them for another hour. I even practiced at recess today, and showed some of my kids how to do things. It's much easier to practice tap at random than ballet (for me, anyhow). Our teacher laughed at us a lot, since Tawnia and I seemed to take longer to grasp things than the other girls, but we know it was all out of love. It was very fun, and I'm really looking forward to next Tuesday's class. In the meantime I get to go to ballet tomorrow! I hope I don't get anything mixed up with the new tap stuff.

New Stuff

I've spend today design and making a few new pages for the website. No, all of the pictures of Summer are not up yet. But they are coming. I've been working on overall designs, so now that I have that out of the way, I just have to edit the pictures and insert them into the pages. I've also had to relearn how to code, as it's been a year since I did anything with HTML, Javascript or Style Sheets. Summer is more beautiful than ever.

Adam

Is the opposite of "Updates" "Downdates"?

This post is actually serving two purposes. First and foremost, I'm
testing my newfound posting ability. Hello? Hello? Am I
on? Good. Secondly, I am announcing the non-updates on my webpage. I had
a couple things in the works, but my jumpdrive crashed and all my work
vanished into the unfathomable void. So I get to start over from scratch.
I was even going to include most of the old stuff that had previously been
removed, but that's all gone too. Yep, gone. Never to be seen again. An
already fading memory in the depths of insanity. So whatever I eventually
come up with for my page, you can rest assured it will be... something else.

Updated!

I'd just like to tell everyone that I updated my page tonight. I had updated a couple sections a week ago, but didn't mention it, so I could do more of it all at once. I still need to finish my big Russia section, but that's still taking a while, so I put everything else up. I spent a lot of time, and had a lot fun, so please look around at everything and post how cool it is, so everyone else will want to go look too.

New Movie

Good evening family. This is just to announce that there is a new movie about Stevie I posted a few minutes ago. I hope you like it.

Check it out while it's up!

It's going back into the Disney vault before long!

Last day in D. C.

Hello, Family.

Well, I spent today playing tourist, running around at the Smithsonian. It was a beautiful day. I looked at the rockets at the Air and Space Museum.

And I stopped at the modern art museum. There are sculptures outside. They make the dead horses outside the Portland Airport look good. At least you can tell those are supposed to be horses. Then I went inside. The carpet of the lobby has very colorful, striped (eye-smarting) carpet. Then I went upstairs. My first thought was how . . . gray. Black and white photos on the wall (such as animals or Henry VIII and his wives), gray walls, gray floors. And downstairs there was a theater showing some modern dance. The weirdest thing I saw was called "Reverse Spit." It showed people spitting out water, only played backwards so it looked like it was going into their mouths. Five minutes of this. Like I said, it was weird. And the best thing about the museum -- there's a great view of the Mall from the third floor.

I wandered to a couple of other museums -- Natural History and American History. My favorite exhibit at the Natural History Museum is the geology, minerals, and gems exhibit. I went there on Wednesday -- I also saw the mummies and stone age tools there. But today I looked at the exhibit on mammals and the insect zoo. And at the American History Museum, I looked at a couple of exhibits on science and technology and computers.

Well, I've had fun. And tonight, we're going to have pizza and watch a movie.

Dentist

Today I went to the dentist. It was the fastest appointment I've ever had. I stopped at home to brush my teeth before heading over and was back at home within 30 minutes. While at the dentist my 28 year streak of cavity-free teeth came to an end. I will have my first filling ever on June 5th. After learning about my cavity I guess I forgot how to spit properly or else the dental assistant forgot to put the little air sucker thingy into my mouth all the way or something. As she went to rinse out the polish from my lower teeth I got a little bit of spit on the corner of my mouth and so she had to wipe it off. I laughed a little and then she cleaned my upper teeth. This time when she went to rinse I know for sure that the sucker thing wasn't all the way in my mouth and I think it ended up blowing instead of sucking... I ended up with spit all over my face. She even wiped some off of my forehead. I just laughed and said that I was a failure at spitting today.

I've been in an exceptionally good mood today. I was silly with my kids quite a bit, even while being strict. I am a little sad that I only have 15 days left with my class. They really are great. And tomorrow morning I'll be spending the day at a different charter school observing. They use some of the curriculum that we'll be using for the first time next year. Plus the entire last week is half days... and our last day of school is actually Saturday, June 3rd. I know, weird to have school on a Saturday, but it was either that or have just one day the next week... Saturday really does make sense. I'm not sure how many kids I'll actually get that day, but we'll have fun with whoever shows up.

Ballet is HARD and my body is SORE from it, but it's a good sore. I'm just looking forward to tap dance next Tuesday! It'll be great.

I'm glad that Summer and Trina made it home. When I called to ask Emily if fillings hurt I learned that they were home... and then talked to Trina for a while. It was good... though it doesn't make me want to have children any time soon.

I'm looking forward to July!
Love,
Tawn

My turn...

to tell a funny story. First off I am posting because Jared's funny story made me think of a funny story. Also I am supposed to be working on my final final. And before I get to the funny story I just wanted to let Trina know that the sister in my ward (we'll just call her Lisa) had her baby on the fifth, so when I mentioned her on whichever day I had, I think she had already given birth. But if I remember I will let her know about water. Though I think she has heard of it.

Ok...

the funny story...

This morning Amanda had to be at work at 8. Usually she does not have to be anywhere until 10, so she doesn't even get up until 9 or 9:30. She was frantically getting her things together while I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth. I heard her ask where her purse was. I thought about the last place I had seen it, and that was when we were coming home from the dining hall the night before, so it was probably in the front room. I stepped out of the bathroom to tell her what I knew. As I did so she was going into the kitchen to check in that direction and I saw a funny thing. Upon her shoulder was her purse strap, and on the end of her purse strap was her purse. Who knows how long she had been holding it and looking for it at the same time? I thought it was pretty funny.

and Jared... you didn't have to be there to think your story was funny, because I wasn't there, and I thought it was funny.

Nathan