And one more thing...

Lisa convinced me that if I don't post other news tonight then Jessie may be finishing highschool before I post anything saying that she just started Kindegarten. Jessie was really excited for her first day of school and was so excited to ride the bus for the first time ever. Jessie started school about a week after Bree was born. She, of course, woke up early that day and was all dressed and ready to go an hour or so before the bus was supposed to come and pick her up. We offered to take her to school on her first day, but she wanted nothing to do with that. Even though we only live about a half mile from school, there is one section of road without a sidewalk so they bus the kids in our neighborhood. Our little Jessie is growing up.



One thing to note about kindegarten though, I think the teachers tell the kids to not tell the parents anything about what they do in school each day. That is my conspiracy theory. I know when my parents asked me what I did in school each day I probably said "nothing." I had to have learned that response at an early age before I would remember where it came from. Now that I have a child in school and whenever I ask her what she did each day she will respond "nothing." I think the kids are taught by the kindegarten teachers what their response should be to that answer. I can usually bribe her with dessert in order to get an answer because she is still young, but I think that response is definitely learned.

New Family Addition

As many of you have commented and realized that we (Patrick) aren't very good at keeping this blog up to date. Most of you know by now that we have had a little addition to our family. Breana Brooke Palmer was born on August 20th. She weighed in at 8lbs 5oz and was 20 inches long. She is now demanding all of our attention and has found out that she sleeps best when she is on top of either Lisa or myself. Actually it is mainly just Lisa because I'm pretty sure she's not very fond of me. Anytime I hold her she will always wake up within a couple minutes and start crying. She could be in a deep sleep but she knows when I have her. I guess I should shower at some point in the near future. On nice thing about having a baby is that she can't run away when I try to take any pictures. The other kids see the camera come out and they stop doing anything that seems noteworthy and won't even turn my way. This little one doesn't have a choice.

And the color version just for Lisa

Utah

As most of you know I got a new job in Utah and started on the first of February. This meant we had to leave our wonderful friends in Texas and move to the cold weather in Utah. We are currently in a temporary living apartment in Midvale and are looking for a more permanent place to live in after someone buys our wonderful home in Rockwall. We are really happy that the weather in Salt Lake City has been warm for the year but there are still bodies of water with a little bit of ice as shown here. We are staying busy on the weekends with going to Temple Square last weekend and this weekend we went to Thanksgiving point. If there are other things that any of you like to do in the area, please let us know so we can enjoy it too. I'll have to post more pictures once I get my computer from storage and have the ability to process the pictures. Until then i'll just have to post the pictures raw out of the camera.

Action

I've been playing around with my camera a little recently. On our family walks I have been trying to work on panning. In order to achieve the desired effect one should set their camera shutter speed fairly slow and move the camera at the same speed of the object you are trying to take a picture of while snapping the picture. In theory this will result in a background that looks to be flying by while the moving object you are taking a picture of will remain in focus. Out of roughly 200 shots recently, I may have 4 or 5 keepers (thank goodness for digital cameras). These may be my best.

Plano Balloon Festival

Parking at Balloon Festival: $10

4 Tickets to the festival (even though we could see the balloons from our parking spot): $20

1 bag of cotton candy and a drink: $10

Finding the best spot at the festival to see the balloons fly directly overhead: $0


My kids missing the entire experience because they were too busy doing exactly what they wanted to do (something they could do at home for free!): $$priceless$$

Hawaii

Life has been pretty busy for the Palmer fam since the last time I wrote on this blog, so just to recap: We went to the big island of Hawaii for a week and a half at the end of August. We had a great time with my parents, brother and sister and their spouses. Our kids loved being on the beach. Jessie is still asking that we move there one day. Jessie loved snorkeling with the whole family and I was very surprised that the salt water didn't phase her. I think she was too interested in looking at the fish and turtles to even realize that the water was salty. We also took the kids on a submarine ride and to a luau. They loved both of those activities immensely. As we were packing for the trip it was funny to realize that we were taking three different cameras to Hawaii. Of course I couldn't leave my nice camera home, the problem with this camera is that I prefer to actually do things and not just be the photographer so I hardly took any shots with it the entire time we were in Hawaii. We also brought our scuba diving camera which I used on only one of the dives we went on because I got tired of carrying it around while I was under water, and then we also brought our all around workhorse indestructible waterproof Olympus point and shoot camera. This one got by far the most usage even though it probably takes the lowest quality pictures out of the three cameras that made the trip. We all had a really fun time and hopefully we can go back to the big island. Who knows, maybe a job will open up there soon that I just can't resist.

Jessie loved snorkeling, even with the water almost filling her mask.
We were able to snorkel on a daily basis with many turtles which made both Jessie and Payton really happy.



Jessie loved learning the hula at the luau we went to. Payton had a good time seeing the fire dancer later on in the evening. When the fire dancer first came on Jessie yelled out as loud as she could "Look! He's playing with fire!" This of course made the entire crowd laugh and the dancer stopped and had a chuckle too before he continued on with his routine.





Jessie and Payton had a great time together.



Payton and Jessie loved any chance they could get to either be buried in the sand or bury anyone else in the sand. They loved playing on the beach.

SPIDER!!!

We played an intense game of kickball this evening with the kiddo's (at least as intense as you can get with a 2 and 4 year old), and after the game the kids were driving their four wheelers around the yard. As Lisa and I were helping Payton get around on his since his battery was dieing Lisa noticed this large spider getting comfortable in the back corner of our yard.


Just imagine this thing crawling around while you sleep at night...


Well, I hope everyone gets a good night's rest.