First Christmas

Palmer's first Christmas has come and gone; she wasn't too impressed with the whole ordeal, but we sure had fun celebrating her first Christmas with her. I didn't get the best pictures, but she got way too many new toys. She also got some new clothes, pajamas and books.

We had planned to have our party with my dad's side of the family on Friday, the 23rd. Unfortunately the stomach flu decided to start traveling quickly through the whole family on about the 22nd so the rest of the family decided to stay away from us; the party ended up just being my parents and their posterity. It was still a good time with some yummy food. In the end there were very few members of the family that dodged the flu. I got it but Palmer didn't, thank goodness. Taylor has had a bit of an upset stomach off and on since last week but he still hasn't been hit fully by the yucky bug.
The next night we partied with my mom's side of the family. It was fun and crazy as usual. I sure do love all of my family, immediate and extended.
Taylor and I were up before Palmer on Christmas morning so we opened our own stuff and waited for her to wake up. She woke up just in time to "open" her stocking and presents and then we all got ready for church. After church we headed to my parents' house for breakfast with the family and to exchange draw name gifts. I also took some of Palmer's presents to their house to have the kids help open; I thought they'd enjoy it a little more than she would. I was right - they were all very happy to help her open her final presents. We spent Christmas afternoon just resting and enjoying the day. That evening we had my dad's side of the family over for dinner at our place. My grandma always had us all over for dinner on Christmas evening so we thought we should continue the tradition of having everyone eat at her house this year. It went well and it was great to see the Lyman/Black cousins since we'd missed them for the party on Friday night.

This picture isn't the best quality because it was taken with my phone, but I had to include the beautiful baby in her Christmas dress. She is so dang sweet and cute!

My Utah County siblings headed home the next day (boo), but not until Marilyn led her second Zumba class of the weekend. We started that tradition last year, her teaching Zumba at the Stake Center on Christmas Eve and the day after Christmas. I have zero rhythm, but I absolutely love it still. It felt so quiet and boring after everyone went home. I always feel some serious letdown for a couple of weeks after Christmas. I absolutely love the feeling in the air at the holidays and I love planning for Christmas and all the fun, food and festivities; it's just kinda sad when it's over and I realize I have to wait a whole year for another holiday season.

Taylor's parents made the trek down to Blanding on Monday to see us for a quick Christmas visit. They stayed for a day and headed home on Tuesday. It was nice having them visit and they loved spending a little time with Palmer of course.
Here's to everyone having a fantastic 2012!

Cinco de Palmer

Well, I blinked my eyes and my baby girl turned five months old. This little girl is so sweet and so so much fun!

She now rolls from front to back like she owns it. Sometimes she turns and twists while on her back and it is obvious that she could easily roll over onto her belly if she wanted to.
She still has no signs of any teeth coming in, which is just fine with me. She has the cutest gummy smile in the world and she's already made sure that we know that all she'll have to do is flash that smile for the rest of her life and she'll pretty much get whatever she wants from her dad and me. Her hair is definitely starting to come in a little more. She is still pretty bald though...I don't think we'll be using any barrettes anytime soon. Luckily she rocks the bald look. She gets mistaken for a boy all the time, even when she's wearing pink and flowers. It doesn't offend me; I think she's the prettiest little thing that ever existed, but it's not crazy that people wouldn't automatically know she's a girl upon first glance.
Little Palmer girl is really starting to like playing with toys and I LOVE watching her. She's so curious about the world around her and spends her days staring at everything and just taking it all in. She is starting to get pretty good with her hands, grabbing things and getting them into her mouth. She really wants to sit up and does lots of little baby crunches when she's on her back, trying to sit up. She's getting pretty good with her balance and I think she'll be sitting on her own soon.
She still tells the cutest little jabbery stories, but she's quiet more than she's talking. Maybe that will change as she grows but for now she seems content to quietly take in everything around her.
The sleep situation is a dismal one these days. She's gotten more and more needy in the night and at nap time and my level of fatigue has increased right along with her neediness. She's had a few very good nights with long sleep, but overall we're going downhill. We've now started letting her "cry it out" which is KILLING me! We've done it for three days/nights now and while we are making real progress, it is a huge trial for me. I think I've shed as many tears as she has. I can't turn back now because then all her tears would be in vain, but I am having a really hard time with the crying. Other than sleep time though, she is an incredibly happy girl.
As documented in my last post, she went on her first big vacation, to Hawaii with us, last week. I wouldn't have been able to enjoy one minute of the trip if we'd left her home and I'm so glad she was there with us.
She's still a tiny little thing. I don't know her current measurements, but, while she is growing, I think she's just gonna be a little petite cutey. She can still wear a lot of 0-3 month clothes. She wears 3-6 months too, but most of them are still a little big on her.
A few days ago I started trying to ease her into eating rice cereal. She is still a little unsure of it, but she seems to quickly be warming up to it and getting a little more used to it. Before you know it, she'll be eating pizza and ice cream with me!
I am so excited to experience her first Christmas and our first Christmas with a child. I know that she won't understand anything that's going on, but I still think it's going to be so fun. We can't get enough of our little girl; we love her so much and feel so lucky that she's in our family.

ALOOOOOHA!

WARNING - LONG post!
Well, our Hawaiian getaway sadly has come to an end...all I can do about it now is to do a blog post and try to remember how warm and awesome it was.
My parents had been to Hawaii 26 years ago, but this was the first time to Hawaii for the rest of us. Our flight was out of Vegas so we headed there on Tuesday morning. We drove with my parents and met up with Noelle, Trent and kiddos in Vegas that night. That's not the most awesome drive, especially with a baby who has now decided that she doesn't love being in the car for long drives, so we were nice and tired by the time we got there. We ate a quick dinner at the Luxor buffet (pretty good, not great) and went to bed early.

Palmer, just kickin' it in her carseat at the beginning of the trip...this was before she realized how much traveling we would be doing so she was still happy at this point.

The next morning we headed to the airport to start the long day of flying. The first leg of the flight wasn't the most enjoyable. Palmer and Denver weren't super happy (especially Palmer) so it made me SUPER nervous about the second leg, which would be much longer. Luckily they both did well for the long part (from Seattle to Hawaii). On a side note, I hate layovers in completely out-of-the-way locations; seriously - Vegas to Seattle to Hawaii? Lame! Anyway, we got to Honolulu pretty late and our Utah bodies thought it was even later than the local clocks told us. We went straight to the hotel and to bed.
The next morning we had booked a tour that circled the island and made stops at popular tourist spots. The tour was decent - we saw some things we wanted to see; all the stops were really short. I'll for sure leave some places out but we went to Hanauma Bay, a couple pretty lookouts, Dole Pineapple plantation (yummy ice cream!), North Shore (where big time surf competitions were taking place) and a couple other spots. It ended at the Polynesian Cultural Center. We spent the afternoon checking out some villages at PCC, taking a tram to the temple (beautiful!) and eating a delicious dinner. Right as we got seated for dinner, but before we got our food, a waitress came and asked if we wanted smoothies. Heck yes we did! We had paid a pretty penny for dinner so I thought the smoothies must just be a lovely option with our dinners. Not so much. Turns out they were $10 each or two for $15. We ordered first, then found out the price. We grudgingly paid for the smoothies. Well, as Trent said after the first swig of his smoothie, "Best $10 ever spent!" They were served in a hollowed out pineapple and were huge and D-E-L-I-C-I-O-U-S! Oh. So. Good. By this point in the day the babies were so tired and NOT happy with being drug all around a tropical island. I was nervous that I wouldn't be able to enjoy the show to end the evening. Well, the heavens smiled down on us and both babies fell asleep just before the show began and stayed asleep the whole time. The show, "Ha - Breath of Life," was amazing. We were all SO tired at this point so it's a good thing the show was so entertaining and loud. I think all the adults stayed awake for most of the show. We passed out on the ride back to the hotel. I'm sure we all slept like babies that night. Speaking of sleeping like babies, Palmer slept amazingly well in Hawaii! She had her three longest nights of sleep...8.5, 9.5 and 11 hours of sleep! That's right - ELEVEN! Sadly, her new-found sleep habits did not make it back to the mainland, but I'll talk more about that in her five month post (happy five months to her!).

Me, Noelle, and the babes at the PCC. Palmer's hood is on because it was raining and a little chilly.

Family photo at the PCC

The next day we decided to take it easy to see if we could lose some of our exhaustion and help the babies to get some rest. We got a slow start to the day and then headed to Hanauma Bay for some snorkeling. My parents had snorkeled there in their previous trip and had always remembered the amazing things they'd seen. We looked into the possibility of snorkeling at a couple of other spots but they weren't as easy for our group of 10 to get to, so we stuck with Hanauma. It didn't disappoint. I'd only snorkeled once before in Cabo and I'm not sure if we even saw anything there. This time was much different. There were all kinds of sea-life - big, little, bright, spiky, long, fat etc. Way cool. Maxon and Scout loved playing on the beach and the babies took little naps on their beach towels. After we got back to the hotel we got some dinner and then took a sunset walk to Waikiki beach. Beautiful! I think my parents stayed out on the town for a little while that night (party animals) and I don't know for sure what the DeGroots did, but us Harrisons went back to the hotel and crashed.

The next day was game day...BYU vs. Hawaii - the excuse for our trip :) We spent the morning shopping and spending way too much money, but loving every minute of it. The game started at 2:30 so we headed to the stadium after a little shopping. BYU took care of business and won the game pretty handily. The game was fun, but honestly it was kind of an afterthought to the rest of the trip. The bus ride after the game took FOREVER. All the kids slept the whole ride home. I'm not sure what the other peeps did after they got to the hotel, but we just ordered pizza and hit the hay. We're tired people.

The next day was Sunday, so we wanted to be a little reverent. We had planned to go to church there but we couldn't find a close ward that met at a time that worked for us so we didn't make it. We went to the Pearl Harbor Memorial that day. It was so neat to be there just a couple days before the 70th anniversary of the attack. Luckily my dad is much better at retaining history knowledge than I am so between him filling me in, and my memories of the movie "Pearl Harbor" I was able to understand better what had happened there that awful December day in 1941. After doing the standard USS Arizona film and memorial tour we took a tour of the USS Missouri battleship. Very cool to be on an actual huge battleship. Those things are amazing and crazy. My mind was blown at the magnitude of the whole thing. After that we had to catch our shuttle back to the hotel. That night ended up being date night. My parents went to dinner on their own. Taylor and I kept the DeGroot kids so Noelle and Trent could go to dinner and then after they got back they kept Palmer so we could go out. While they were at dinner Taylor stayed in our room with the babies and I went to the swimming pool with Maxon and Scout. Saying that the pool was freezing and semi-miserable would be a bit of an understatement. Seriously, it was crazy cold. It didn't help that it had become overcast and breezy, but I would never have imagined that it could be so cold to swim in any pool in Hawaii. The kids took awhile to get in the water with me, but once they did they had a lot of fun and I LOVED hanging out with them. They were so dang cute and fun - I honestly thought of stealing them to have for my own. For mine and Taylor's night out, after walking around for a while and not finding much that really appealed to us, we ended up eating dinner at a random little sports bar and grill. Our food was way good and we were not disappointed. Then we walked around and hit up a few shops before returning to pick up our sleepy little Palmer. That's the night she slept 11 hours so I'm still not sure if Noelle drugged her or not.

The next day was our last, as we were catching a red-eye flight back home that night. We spent a few hours at Waikiki beach. The weather was perfect. We swam, we lounged, we ate, the kids built sand castles and buried Trent. It was a perfect way to spend some of our final hours. After showering and changing clothes we went to Cheesecake Factory for dinner (yum) and then shopped around to kill time before catching the shuttle to the airport. I was dreading the red-eye flight home because as annoying as a crying baby is on a normal flight, I figured it would be like 10 times worse on a red-eye where everyone wanted to just sleep. Luckily both babies wanted to sleep as much as everyone else on the flight. Noelle and I decided to use our carriers on the flight because it had been so uncomfortable holding them on the flight out. She had taken her Baby Bjorn; I didn't take one because I didn't have room in my luggage. I just took an over-the-shoulder sling thing and it ended up being a life-saver for me. I used it every day most of the day. There were different positions that Palmer could be in with the sling, depending if she was awake or needed to sleep. It saved my arms and back a lot of aching I think. Anyway, I think it was a great idea for us to use them on the plane. The babies slept like champs...I can't say the same for Noelle and me, but as long as they slept it was ok. And I think we were much less uncomfortable than the flight out. Our flight home was quicker because our layover was in L.A. Before we knew it we were in Vegas and saying goodbye to the DeGroots to start the long drive home. I was kind of in a daze for the whole drive, due to my lack of sleep the previous night during the flight, so the drive didn't seem too long to me. Palmer must have been super tired too because she mostly slept the whole way home.

It was kind of awful to return home to snow and freezing temperatures, but the trip was amazing and I'm so glad we went. I loved spending time with my parents and Noelle's family. I miss the DeGroots like crazy since we've been home and I miss the perfect Hawaii weather, but at least we get to enjoy Christmas time now. All in all, a lovely vacation!