November 2016

Still playing catch up.

I don't know why Olive was taking a bath in the sink but it's my first picture from November:

On Dan's birthday he got up early and he and Kevin went to the Conference Center to meet with a guy who does a lot of filming for the church. They set up the cable cam and had a group of people there to watch it in action and talk about if it could be used during concerts and events:

It was a pretty exciting opportunity, whether they buy it or not. Dan got to see all the backstage stuff and climb around in all the filming places.

That night the girls stayed with Lorna and Mark and we used our free night at the Cliff Lodge at Snowbird for Dan's birthday.

The girls were really into playing school for a while and would take turns being the teacher and principle. Olive loved to play along:

 Beck driving Olive around:

 Meat-a-palooza 2016. Tommy went all out again and made some amazing food and we all brought side dishes. We spent the evening talking and laughing and walked around the Capital after eating tons and tons of food. We love this tradition:

I met some friends at the children's museum one day and ended up staying long after everyone else left. Olive was having too much fun:

I took Alta and Ellie to their first Great Reads for Little book club at the library. We had fun reading the book (Franny K. Stein) together the week before and then having a mini-discussion at the library with snacks and crafts. We don't make it every month but we try to go to as many as we can!

This must have been the first real snow fall. Olive was thrilled:

Thanksgiving Point put on a new Christmas light show in the gardens this year called Luminary. They offered discounted tickets to members before it officially opened. We got our tickets well in advance but when our night came to attend, it was freezing and rainy. We didn't want to waste the tickets though so we bundled up and headed out. We found out half the lights weren't working because of the rain so they let us in but didn't take our tickets and told us we could come back any other night. 

We did a quick walk through and even with so many lights out it was much more impressive than I thought it would be! I only took one picture though because I never wanted to take my hands out of my pockets in that miserable rain. 

Everyone was so cold by the end, but we were excited that we'd be able to come back another time!

For Thanksgiving we had originally planned to have all the Palmers meet in California at Jamie's and Alisa's. With my dad's diagnosis and surgery and treatment we couldn't go, so everyone decided to come to Utah instead. We haven't all been together for Thanksgiving in so long - I can't even remember the last time! 

On the Tuesday before Thanksgiving Alta and Ellie went with my parents and some of the cousins to bowl at BYU:

On Wednesday Dan, Andy, and Matt took all the older kids to the Provo Beach Resort and played all the games there for hours, including laser tag:

While my sisters and I stayed home with the little kids. Playing Go Fish:

We had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal with so much delicious food. That evening we drove down to Riverwoods to walk around and see the Christmas lights. It was cold!

And then on Friday morning we all met on the south end of BYU campus for a family picture session. We took pictures of individual families and then our whole group. Trying to get everyone situated was a little crazy:

 The photographer wasn't thrilled with the lighting so we decided to drive over to the old mental hospital (it has a real name but that's all I know it by!) in south Provo and took some more photos there, and then some more in the orchard on the way out. It was a loooong morning, 3 hours of pictures, but I'm glad we did it. Dan snapped this of the girls near the end - they were so done:

 And my favorite of our family. I'm pretty sure she had to photoshop Olive's face from a different picture because we could not get a single photo with all of us looking normal and happy! Ugh, this is probably why I never get pictures taken.

We had a second big family dinner that day and hung out with everyone at the house.  Olive loves playing with Everett and Elizabeth. They were playing Bubble Gum Bubble Gum:

At one point in the day Dan, Brian, Jim, Andy and Matt all decided to go down to the archery range but came back around 10 minutes later with the story that will go down in Palmer family history. Apparently there was a lot of joking and messing around that kept getting more and more personal until at one point Andy, sitting in the front seat of the car, turned around and punched Matt in the face. 

Jamie worked her ER nurse magic and patched Matt's eye as best she could without her suture kit.

All was forgiven right away but we still laugh about it all the time.

Olive loved coloring with her cousins but all her pictures looked like this:

Everyone drove back home that weekend but we loved all the time we got to spend with them.

Going through the pass-around clothes from Alisa and Olive found the leotard that Ellie was obsessed with:

And at the end of the month we got some good snowstorms and the girls wanted to sled all the time. We'd go at night after Dan got home and they still loved it even in the dark and cold:

And my very last picture from the month are these post-nightime-sledding red-cheeked faces: