Family Pictures (and Palmer 12 Month Pics)

My wonderful sister Kendra, did a fantastic job taking our family pictures at the end of December.  Here are some of my favorites! 

My One Year Old

Palmer turned one years old on December 20th!  I can not believe that I have a one year old.  My baby grew up so fast!  A few things about Palmer when he turned one:  he is showing so much personality; he cracks us up daily.  He continues to try to walk, but is really only successful a couple steps at a time.  He has really turned into a daddy's boy and gets quite upset when Brad comes home and then has to leave quickly to go to scouts or something of the sort.  He is still in the 90th+ percentile for his weight and height.  He weighed in at 26 lbs. 10 oz.  and I'm still hauling him around!

We didn't do too much to celebrate his birthday on the 20th due to the craziness of the week.  We gave him one tiny present, sang him "Happy Birthday", and that was about it.  We then had a party with both of our families in January when life had calmed down a bit.  Palmer did so good at his birthday party and loved all of the attention.  I think he loved the cake even more!  He was spoiled by his parents and other family members with more gifts than what he needed but I'm sure he didn't mind.  He was so cute with his cake.  When we sang "Happy Birthday" to him he just looked around in awe.  Then it took him forever to dig into his cake.  He would poke it but wouldn't do more than that.  He would look at me as if he wanted my permission to dig in more.  We eventually had to demonstrate how to eat it.  Once he took a bit he didn't stop for awhile!  Here are some pictures of the celebrations!

On his actual birthday:  He was so funny and would pull a cheesy grin whenever I pulled out the camera. 

What a cutie!

Grandma Leann, Great Grandpa Jerry, and Grandpa Bob

Opening Presents

First taste of cake!

Aww man I love this kid!

Can you tell he loves his chocolate cake? 

Being a big boy and using a spoon!

With Grandma & Grandpa D

The Holidays

Please apologize for my late posts...we have been doing a big remodeling project of our front room and that has consumed our lives. We're almost done so pictures coming soon (hopefully)! We had a WONDERFUL holiday season! It was so much fun to be able to experience it with a child. I know he was too little to understand what was happening but it doesn't mean that he didn't love watching us turn on the Christmas lights every night, have a blast with the wrapping paper and his new toys, and love all of the parties and people! As always it went super fast and I always have all these things in my head that I would like to do but they just never seem to happen. Here are some pictures of the highlights of our Christmas season!

LEADING UP TO CHRISTMAS:

Palmer got his first "big-boy" haircut.  I had no idea what I was doing but I thought it turned out pretty well!

Seeing the lights at Temple Square- it was freezing as usual so we took a much needed break at the JSMB! 

Palmer does not usually cry with pretty much anyone and everyone; except Santa.  Luckily at the second party he just looked at him curiously.

Best. White. Elephant. Gift. Ever. at our traditional Wallace Party gift exchange.

Brad was able to get together with the "Creekside Boys" (as my roommates and I called them).  It had been way too long since they had all been together.  It was fun to see them have a blast!

Christmas Eve!  We went to my parents house and had our traditional feast.  I LOVE Christmas Eve and this year was the best!  There is Palmer in his new pajamas!

CHRISTMAS DAY:
 Christmas was so much fun!  I absolutely love that we do our own thing Christmas morning.  We totally take it at our own pace and drag it out as long as possible.  This year was a little different with it being on a Sunday and going to church at 9:00 but it made it a great start to the day.  After church we went downstairs to our little tiny tree and gifts and let Palmer open a couple of presents before he went down for a much needed nap.  He was so cute!  He LOVED all of the new things to look at and he knew exactly where his presents were and crawled right to them.  He then took a very long nap while Brad and I had a nice breakfast, opened most of our gifts, and just relaxed together.  When he woke up he opened up some more of his gifts and loved every minute of it.  We then went to my parents for the day where we relaxed and watched a movie.  What a wonderful and fun day!

Palmer loved his little car that he can ride around on.  Here he is making his "car noises".

Loving the gifts- he is impossible to get a good picture of these days because he wants to be moving all over the place!

He wanted to eat all of the paper of course.

 

FOLLOWING CHRISTMAS:
The next day was even better because we didn't let ourselves do any sort of work on remodeling the house or anything and just relaxed around the house.  We were lucky enough that Brad was able to take off the whole week from work so we had a lot of great family time.  We had my family official Christmas party when my sister and her family were in town.  It was a great party and we had fun exchanging gifts, eating our homemade Cafe Rio salads, and being surrounded by the craziness of babies and kids!  We went up to Brad's parents over New Years weekend and had a blast up with them.  We were disappointed that there was no snow to go snowmobiling or sledding but we managed to have a fun time anyways. 

We were so blessed this Christmas season to be able to spend so much time with family and friends!  We felt so loved and spoiled.  Last year we brought our sweet new baby boy home from the hospital on Christmas Eve and we have had a fantastic year filled with unforgettable memories!

Thanksgiving Weekend

We had a great Thanksgiving weekend with time split between both of our families!  We were up with Brad's family in Deweyville from Wednesday to Saturday.  We had fun with our new tradition of taking snowmobiles up in the mountain and cutting down our own Christmas Tree.  Ours this year was a little tiny one, and Brad's family had their doubts when they saw ours, but it turned out pretty darn cute in my opinion.  We also had a delicious feast, some Black Friday shopping, movies, and games.  We had a good time up in Deweyville this Thanksgiving.  Happy Thanksgiving!

We then participated in the Davis Family Annual Gingerbread House Event.  The theme this year (chosen by Kendra & Kris) was our own homes at Christmas time.  It was fun building a mini version of our house!  I think we did pretty good!  Here are the pictures of the homes that were done this year!

Lorraine Ave (Our Home)

A Picture of Our House To Compare

The 13th East Home (Kent & Erin)

The Rigby Mansion (Kendra & Kris)

Chris Lane Wonder (Andrew & Rachel)

The Parkridge Pad (Sterling & Ashley)

The Wentworth Retirement Center (Jaren- what he feels like he is living in)

Halloween with Palmer was such a blast! He was great at wearing his little bumble bee costume and he absolutely loved going Trick or Treating. We were only planning on going to a couple of homes but he was having so much fun that we stayed out longer than we planned. Unfortunately I didn't get a great picture of just him in his costume because it was impossible to get him to stay still...but I have a few that capture the events of the Halloween week!

Here we are at a friend's Halloween Party. The little bee family (I'm supposed to be the beekeeper's wife).

Visiting Daddy at work!

Trick or Treating!

10 Months

I can't believe that Palmer is already 10 months old. 2 more months and we'll have a 1 year old! Here's the update on our lil' Palmer-buddy:

-Palmer is really becoming his own little person. It's so much fun to see him develop his personality and figure out stuff. I feel like he is really just starting to "get it". -He has 7 teeth that are currently showing! The last tooth that came in was not pleasant for all in the house but you feel bad for the poor kid.

-He is still extremely large for his age :) but I feel like he's starting to lose just a little bit of pudge (mostly around his face). He is wearing 18 month clothes. Holy moly- it freaked me out when I looked at the tags of some of his clothes and it said "toddler".

-He crawls all over the entire house pulling himself up to anything and everything. Unfortunately some of those things aren't very stable- such as the cheap Ikea chairs in the picture below, our garbage can which came crashing down along with him and spilled dirty garbage all over him. Guess he'll just have to learn! He's getting so tough though; so many times he'll fall and hit his head and just get right back up to doing whatever he was doing before the fall.
-He now can entertain himself for quite a long time which is great for me getting stuff done around the house. Too bad a lot of that time is fixing the things that he has undone!

-For awhile he was a pretty rough sleeper during the night. He would wake up and not go back to sleep for a couple of hours. Luckily this week he has improved dramatically and we've enjoyed sleeping through the night again.

-When he waves good-bye it's so cute because he waves at himself rather than the other person.

-He's still spitting up! Aargh! For awhile he was doing so great and I thought he was over it. Nope! And now he plays in it, crawls through it, and makes a mess everywhere.

-Often when we hand him any sort of vehicle with wheels (tractor, car, truck, etc.) he makes an engine sound. Guess he learned to love these things from his daddy!
-For the most part he is a great eater and now wants to grab the spoon before it gets to his mouth and feed himself.

-He claps his hands when we say "yay".

-He's learning how to throw a fit when I take something away from him.

-When I start up his bath he will come crawling up to the bathtub with a big grin on his face and will just stand there and watch it fill up.
-He is a constant chatterbox. There is always a sound coming out of his mouth and when there isn't it usually means he's up to some sort of trouble (or he has put something into his mouth). Lately his sounds have really become more like "talking". I feel like he's really trying to tell us something. -He can now say "momma" and "dadda". Usually my name is accompanied with crying. He just repeats my name over and over again while he is upset.

-When he hears a noise outside (dog, garbage truck, motorcycle, etc.) or sees something unusual (like the snow falling the other day) he looks around, gets wide eyed, and says "Oh!"

-He is like a little puppy dog. He's always sticking something in his mouth and crawling all over the house with it hanging out of his mouth. Here are just a few examples of catching him in the act.

Here are some other pictures taken this month that I like. He's getting so hard to take pictures of because he just wants to be all over the place or he is so fascinated that he doesn't want to look up at the camera.

*Halloween Post Coming Soon*