Sunday and Monday

We had a really busy weekend, so I didn't have time to post, so scroll down for all the latest from last week and our weekend!

Monday we spent around "home". We spent quite a bit of time at the pool in the afternoon and Tom went jet skiing. We ate out at a really good BBQ place for dinner.

On Sunday after church we went to a little amusement park called Alabama Adventure. We spent most of our day at the water park since it was hot out, but we did get to ride other rides later when it wasn't so hot. It was fun, but expensive...I think next time we'll just go to Six Flags where we'd probably get more for our money.

Saturday

On Saturday, we went to DeSoto Caverns with the kids. They had a good time. We got to tour an underground cave, and then the girls went on some of the rides & got soaked! I didn't realize they would get wet, so I hadn't brought their bathing suits. Oh well....

The start of Memorial Day weekend

The pool here at our apartments opened on Friday, so of course the girls were ready to hit the water! We spent a couple hours Friday afternoon at the pool, and it looks like Mackenzie could be a fish. She just swims & swims & swims. Jenna swims a while, then gets cold (even when it's HOT out!) & sits with her towel. Camden isn't real sure about the whole deal. So far every day the kids ask if the pool is open, so it looks like we'll probably spend a lot of time at the pool, although it may get interesting when I go by myself with 3 kids!



Mackenzie jumping in



Jenna attempting to float on her back

Land update

I have been so busy & haven't had time to update & let everyone know that our basement is dug at the property. They got it done Wed. & Thurs. last week I think it was. Anyways, I guess it takes about 2 1/2 weeks before the basement people will be coming to put the basement walls in, and sometime before then they'll start work on the septic I think.

So, here's a couple pictures:

What some kids won't do....

I tell ya, some kids will do anything for a free t-shirt! We took the kids to Chuck E. Cheese tonight in Birmingham (about 45 min. away) to celebrate Mackenzie's graduation. Well, on the way there, we (Tom and I) heard what we thought was just Camden passing gas. Turns out it was MUCH more than just passing gas! As I went to get him out of his carseat, I noticed "yuck" all down his leg! I immediately took him inside & into the restroom. Now mind you, I had JUST cleaned out our van last night & took all the extra stuff out, including our bigger diaper bag that had a spare change of clothes in it & hadn't thought to put it back in the van, so all I had was our small bag with just an extra diaper & some wipes. I kinda thought I'd just use a wet wipe & clean off his clothes enough to get us through dinner, but when I got into the restroom & took a closer look at the situation, there was no way I could just wipe off the clothes!!! Poop was everywhere! Luckily I had enough wipes to get his entire bottom half of his body cleaned up, but that meant we were left to just put him in a diaper. So, I left the bathroom to go ask where the closest Wal-Mart or something was to hopefully buy some cheap something for him to wear for dinner. The girl at the register was like, well, we have t-shirts here, and I just smiled and said I was looking for something cheap. So she started to give me directions, and then just said, oh never mind....I'll just give you a t-shirt & not charge you. (I had Camden with me, so she saw that he was truly just in his diaper & I had explained what had happened). SO...anyways, all that to say, Camden got a free Chuck E. Cheese t-shirt out of the whole deal!



And then there's Mackenzie....sometimes she'll do anything to get out of going to bed! (well, so will Jenna, but that's besides the point) Tonight as we told the girls it was time to go to bed, Mackenzie said her tooth was really bothering her again. (Her other top front tooth is really loose) I've heard this the past couple days & also last night at bedtime, so I didn't think too much about it. Usually I just say, well, I'll give it a pull, but it's probably not ready to come out yet. So, I got a wet paper towel & gave a quick yank not expecting anything, when to my surprise, out came her other front tooth! SO, of course this meant we had to deal with the bleeding, showing off the tooth, letting everyone hold it, etc etc etc. and in the end she succeeded in holding off bedtime probably another half hour!! Never a lack of excitement around our house I guess!

We have a graduate!

Yesterday was an exciting day here for us Palmers! Mackenzie graduated from kindergarten. It seems kinda surreal...seems like just yesterday we brought her home from the hospital, and now she's done with her 1st year of school! And she even survived having to change schools mid-way through the year :)

Here's a quick video of her receiving her "diploma" and a picture of her with her teacher, Mrs. Walker.






The graduation program was a beach theme, so that's why she's in a sundress with a leigh around her neck. A funny little story to add to the day....
Mackenzie's teacher is pregnant, and Mackenzie had told me back in April that her teacher was gonna have twins! I keep asking her if she knows what the babies are, boys or girls, or whatever, but she said she didn't know. SO....I talked to her teacher yesterday for a few minutes just to get the scoop! I asked when she's due, and she said Aug. 11 (only 3 days after me!!), so I then said "and I heard it's twins" to which she gave me a kinda weird look and said "no, it's just one". I felt horrible, cuz I was just going on what Mackenzie had told me! UGH! She just laughed when I told that's what Mackenzie's been saying, and said that she's not surprised because all the kids have been saying all sorts of things that aren't always true when it comes to the baby. Interesting....so I guess I'll be a little more careful with the "info" that Mackenzie brings home from school!

Little bits of info...

I've got a few minutes so I thought I'd post an update. Tom took the girls shopping for a Mother's Day gift (better late than never, huh??....Mainly Jenna keeps bugging him to go buy a toy for me for Mother's Day).

Anyways, Tom spent the weekend at a motorcycle training class so that he could get his motorcycle license. So I got to enjoy mother's day with the kids by myself for the most part. That's OK...they did pretty good :)

Tom went & got his Alabama license today, complete with his CDL certification, his motorcyle whatever, and his boater's certification (you have to have one here in AL to operate your watercraft if you're a resident). SO...he's all licensed & ready to go here. I've gotta go before long & get mine I guess. Tom keeps bugging me to get my motorcycle certification - why in the heck would I want that???

I've started putting Camden on the potty a few times. Nothing real serious yet, but just getting him used to the idea. Funny thing, though, is that since I've done that, he's started pooping in his diaper 1st thing in the morning before I even get him out of bed. Hmmm.....used to be he always went about 1/2 hr. after breakfast. We'll see what happens when I get serious!



We've also discovered we have to be careful what we keep at his level of reach. We've lost a few items around here because he gets a hold of things & puts them who knows where. For instance, Tom was re-charging our camera battery a couple weeks ago and Camden got a hold of the charger & unplugged it and took it somewhere. I searched & searched this stupid little apartment & couldn't find it anywhere! Finally we decided he must have thrown it in the trash, so Tom reluctantly bought a new one on E-bay, otherwise we wouldn't have had any way to re-charge our camera & when the battery ran out we'd be done. (Not a good thing when you're gonna build a house!!) Of course, the day after he bought it, guess what I found? Yep, the charger...under a chair that I swear I had looked under about 4 times!

I've finally started wearing maternity clothes. Now that the weather is warm enough for shorts, my regular shorts didn't fit, so I had to resort to maternity. So I spent the day switching out my normal clothes for maternity ones. Guess making it till 27 weeks isn't bad, though.

We're meeting with our builder tomorrow at lunch and he's supposedly going to have our house "laid out" on the property for us to approve. He got all the permits he needs today, so they'll finish knocking down a few last trees in the morning, and once we give our approval I guess they'll start digging the basement. Tom had met with the people who are doing the basement last week and it sounds like they said they can have the basement walls done w/in 3 weeks. Of course that always remains to be seen. Either way, we're at least making some progress. Here's some pics from the last couple days:

A bunch of trees marked that need to be taken down


Another view after the trees were mostly gone


And a pic from tonight of where our house is gonna sit


Now you may be wondering why there are still a couple trees in these pics that are marked with orange that haven't been taken down? Funny story - there is a cable line that goes directly across our lot which is only about 8-9 feet above the ground. We have been calling the cable company almost daily to tell them that the line needs to be taken down ASAP so that our excavator can knock down trees! Well, they finally came out today (after what, 7 days of calling??) and made arrangements with the excavator that they will come back tomorrow morning at 6 a.m. and take the line down for 1 day! Why in the world they don't just re-route it is beyond us, but whatever! So, the last of the trees will come down tomorrow when the line isn't in the way. Then I guess they're gonna come back tomorrow night & put the line back up until it needs to be permanently moved when we start the basement walls.

I guess this post turned out to be pretty long. Not sure how many of you stuck with me, but thanks for reading! Will check in later....

land pics & weather...

I didn't really realize that I hadn't posted any pics of our property on here! Sorry. So, here are a couple before we've done anything to the property. I have a few more pictures on the camera that I need to download onto the computer maybe later today that show some of the work we've done since we now own it, but hopefully these will give you a general idea of what it looks like.

Standing in front of "the porch" looking at the lake:


Standing by the lake looking up to our lot:


"the porch"


Standing by the road at the top of what will be our driveway. The driveway will be on the right side of our property.



Like I said, I will try to post some newer pics in the next day or so.

In other news, looks like we're supposed to get hit with some bad weather again this afternoon. I just got a call that they're closing school early this afternoon, so we'll see! This is the 2nd time since we've been here that they've closed school early due to severe weather. Last time we never got a thing, though :) According to the weather map, I'm pretty sure this is gonna miss us, too, but they like to be safe around here!

House/property update

It's been a while since I updated the scoop on our house/property. We actually closed on the property yesterday afternoon, so we're officially lake lot owners! :)

We met with our builder at lunch time today to go over where exactly we want the house, and what trees need to come down, etc. etc. He is taking care of getting the permits he needs today, he's already contacted whoever to get our official address, and will also take care of calling the power company to get that hooked up. There is a cable line that goes right across the property so I just called them to let them know we need that moved in order to start knocking down trees.

Anyways, the builder said he's gonna have a guy out there tomorrow to start the excavating! Yeah! That means, though, that Tom is gonna be busy tonight because he's gotta mark all the trees he wants cut down, as well as get the "back porch" that is on the property taken apart & out of the way. When I say back porch, it's a wooden porch that was just sitting on the land for some reason. It's supposedly like 20 yrs. old, but it's in really good shape! It has a metal roof, and one part is screened in. It's pretty nice, actually, but we're not sure yet how we could use it with the new house, so we're pretty much gonna dis-assemble it & possibly re-build it later. The builder said he would guess there's about $600-$800 worth of wood, so we hate to just destroy it all together.

Guess that's it for now! I'll let you know how things progress....

Another weekend...

Well, another weekend has passed. We stayed busy again as usual. Saturday morning we went to our "storage unit". It's really a huge indoor warehouse with a gazillion wooden boxes called vaults filled with people's stuff. Anyways, they had our vaults pulled & ready to go for us. There are about 5 guys who are pretty much at your beck & call to unload these vaults & then re-pack them when we're done. You start with the 1st vault, and they just pull everything out for you to look through and then I would let them know which things I wanted to take, and everything else gets re-packed. It got a little crazy as we had them unpacking about 2-3 vaults at a time since we were on a 2 hr. time limit, otherwise we would pay above & beyond our $250 fee! Long story short, it was interesting. I found that if I needed something that was packed by the movers, it was MUCH harder to find than what I thought it would be. Luckily, much of the stuff was in totes that I had labeled. When it was all said & done, we couldn't find all my maternity clothes. That was frustrating! I got a few, but most of them are winter things. Another funny thing is that we searched & searched for the bassinet. According to the packing papers, it was NOT in a box, but wrapped in blankets. Well, we searched anything that was even close to that size with no luck! Finally Tom and one of the guys just started unpacking a couple boxes that were labeled stuff from the storage unit. Low and behold, we found the top part of the bassinet in one of them. BUT, we couldn't find the base that it sits on!!! Why in the world the packer would seperate the 2 pieces is beyond me, but we never did end up finding it. SO, the new baby will at least have the top portion to sleep in....

When we got back & brought stuff in the apartment, it was interesting trying to find room to store all the new boxes of stuff, but every corner is now filled with boxes :) I also discovered that the box with Jenna's summer stuff which I had pulled aside must have gotten re-packed into a vault, because it wasn't with our stuff. UGH...guess she'll have to make do with the few outfits she has here.

So, with all that said, I guess we got enough stuff to get by on for the summer, except for maternity clothes for me. If anyone has any (or knows someone that might have some) that they'd like to lend me, let me know :) I can get my address to you. Thanks!

And finally, Tom took the jet ski out again yesterday, so the kids all got to go for rides. Camden had his 1st jet ski ride, and really liked it! Here's a couple pictures:

Camden is becoming very independent & wants to do the stairs like this now...



Mackenzie getting ready for her ride


Camden going on his ride


Although you can't see her real well, this is Jenna on her ride