In other non-reno news, Crystal’s daycare officially starts today. I have all the support in the world for her, but now know there is no way that I could do a job like that all day ever day! Luke continues to stand up and pull himself along the furniture, he’s growing so quickly it’s a little scary!

Anyway, it’s time to get to work. More updates to come, take care everyone, have a great week!

As I’m sure most of you are aware, this year was Luke’s first Christmas. So, in order to be fair to both of our families, we decided it was best to host his first Christmas at our place. So on Christmas day we had our families gather here to celebrate and spoil the little man rotten! Seriously, he now has a FLEET of ride-on toys (Pirate Ship, Race Car, Caterpillar Truck, PlaySkool Stand-n-Ride) plus a ton of clothes and more non-rideable toys. Needless to say, a great and over-the-top haul for him this year! Of course, Crystal prepared an amazing feast for us that day, and everyone went home happy and full!

That brings us to New Year’s Eve, which this year was also spent in the city (no, we’re not lazy!) celebrating my uncle’s 60th birthday party. That was a good evening with lots of family that I hadn’t seen in a while. We missed most of the party, Luke had had about enough of crowds by about 9:30, so we actually rang in the new year quietly at home as a family, so kind of a boring, but nicely different way of starting 2012.

In other news, our basement reno continues. For those out of the loop, we decided in November to completely overhaul our basement here as a daycare/theatre space. This included removing all the dark paneling and ugly ceiling tiles, and cutting in a new window. 2 Saturday’s ago my slaves….er, work crew (Jason – as always!, and my cousin Kyle) helped me install all new gyprock on the ceiling and walls. We just started the mudding process today (Crystal’s learned how to mud and fill screw holes) and tomorrow will likely see more mudding and some taping. I had thought about either hiring that part out or renting some equipment to speed up the process, but it appears that finding an affordable/quality taper/mudder and/or rental equipment, is a bit of a challenge in Saskatoon. So it looks like I’ll be winging it, at least for now. I’m not ruling out bringing in someone to tape/mud corner joints, but I think I’ll at least get a start and see how far I can get before getting frustrated and packing it in.

We were also able to par-take in a funspeil last weekend out in Hanley. It was the first annual Carl Palmer Memorial funspeil in honour of my late uncle. It was a lot of fun, we won our first game and got blown out of the water in the second, but it was great to get on the ice again. And we weren’t even that sore afterward! Who knew!!!

For those that haven’t heard from or seen us in a while, Luke is crawling around like a mad man. He’s also started standing up with furniture and even standing on his own! I think he’s getting close to those first steps, he just has to figure out this whole balance-while-you-walk thing and he’ll be well on his way. Tonight, his teeth appear to be on the move as well, so it could be an interesting night as far as sleep goes.

Anyway, that’s all I can think of for right now, I’m sure I missed some things here and there, but I’ll try to make updating this place a bit more of a priority in the coming months. I’ll also post up some pictures later of our finished work in the basement once it’s complete!

Take care everyone out there, talk to you all soon!

-The Palmers!-

Combine all of that with Crystal’s other new money-making venture, Mary Kay, and you’ve got one busy family! For anyone out there that is interested in checking out her new Mary Kay offerings, check out www.marykay.ca/clpalmer to view or even place an order online. As always, just email or call her for more info on any upcoming events, they sound fairly decent if your into that girly-sort of thing.

On the Luke front, he still keeps growing everyday. No crawling yet, but he is getting pretty good at scooting around on his bum. Between that and constant teething, our little man has a lot going on, but he’s still being a trooper with the teething pain!

December is just around the corner, which brings with it the holidays. Hopefully we get our renovations complete early in the month, so that we can celebrate our first Christmas season as a family! Looking forward to seeing all/any of you that want to hang out with us!

Until next time, take care everyone!

Looking ahead, can you believe we’re only 40 days away from Christmas!? The time really flies. Luckily, it looks like we’re slowing down at least a little bit. All of our outside yard/reno work is complete (including our new basement window, what a difference that makes!) so we can now turn our attention inside. We’re hoping to remove a bunch of the panelling down in the basement and hang new drywall, which means I’ll be looking for slave….er…volunteer labour to help out. I think I can do most of it myself, but will need a couple of extra hands to accomplish the ceiling. After that, it’s a coat of paint and we should be ready for Crystal’s daycare to get underway in January/February. Oh, and we’ll be hosting Christmas at our house this year, since it’s Luke’s first Christmas, so I hope our new basement is ready for that as well. A couple of nights this week, and I should have the demolishon work completed, then it’s just running some new cabling, and on to the drywall install. With any luck, we’ll be painting by the first of December (here’s hoping!).

Anyway, that’s all for now. I’ve included some new/updated photos of Luke for your enjoyment, he’s still growing like a weed (almost 20 lbs now!). To any of our friends out there that still read this, let’s start planning Christmas themed get togethers soon. We’ve been falling behind in our social life, so let’s plan some get-togethers soon! Take care all, I promise we’ll try to keep more on top of this place for the winter at least!

Quick time-out to take a bath while camping, loving every minute!

As I alluded to in my last update regarding friend catch ups, we haven’t been able to accomplish nearly as much as we had hoped. We met Jason & Kara for supper one evening…and that’s about all. We’re really falling behind guys so sorry . Looking ahead though, we only have the following weekend booked up for a wedding in Regina, and then we’re probably free until harvest starts, so here’s hoping we can get in some much needed (and at this point deserved!) socializing!

It seems like every summer we say “We need to slow things down and find more time…” but it never seems to work, so I’m not going to try to make that statement again. I just hope that one of these years we actually find a little R&R time to just breathe and hang out a little more than we currently are. Anyway, I really should get back to work before someone catches on to my brief moment of time on my hands being used to update the site.

Until next time, take care everyone! And to those friends out there (im)patiently waiting, let’s make some plans right now! Stake your claim on a weekend/weekday night, then we’re committed to it!

Later all!

(PS: Random Luke camping picture attached to post, just to prove he/we’re still alive out there!)

Looking forward, we’ve got another Bodnarus Auctioneering sale this Saturday, home to help out at the farm on the long weekend, Regina for a wedding the following weekend, then maybe another camping weekend (a guy can dream can’t he!?). So the Palmer family schedule continues to fill up, I think I’ve just got to learn to accept it. We are hoping to catch up with our long lost friends that have been travelling this summer as well, some gone to the USA for a month, others that were on their honeymoon in Hawaii, so here’s hoping we can get some friend-suppers going on in the next week or so.

Anyway, that will have to do for now. Life continues on, I’m trying to re-focus on work after being away for a week. Just in time for another ADESA Public Auction tomorrow @ 5:30. Should be a hot one! Take care all, until next time!

In the past week or 2 he has started trying to sit himself up, he has found his feet and he just started to really play with his toys that hang above him in his chairs or on his play mat. He “talks” alot these days and listening to him babble away is my new favorite thing to do and easily distracts me from getting anything accomplished. We think he’s going to be giggling soon, he already tries to when we play with him. Also this past week we have come to realize that there is a good chance he is teething already.

We had been trying to encourage Luke to use his legs and stand up, he wasnt really showing much interest in that and then one day this week he started standing up. This tells his daddy that its definitely time to get a jolly jumper for him so I’m pretty sure within a day or 2 Tim will have a jolly junper all ready to go for Luke.

I’m sad to say I failed at taking pictures this week, when I wasnt too busy to take them I was too busy relaxing to think about it. My mom did manage to take some though so we will have to post those pictures to the gallery soon.

We finally got some use out of the party island we impulsively bought last year during a costco trip for groceries. I think Tim and everyone else who got to enjoy it this week would agree with me when I say it was definitely worth every penny. We had a blast!

When we weren’t enjoying the beach we were relaxing at the site, playing some games, oh and we pretty much ate like kings all week…theres just nothing like campfire food…sooo yummy!

Good weather, great food, excellent company = fantastic time and we can’t wait to do it again.

Which brings us to this past weekend, and Sarah’s grad on Friday. Lot’s of family out, some of which got to meet/see Luke for the first time. Sadly, the weather really didn’t cooperate for much of any outdoor pictures, so we had to regroup on Sunday when the weather cleared a little. All in all, a great weekend, and as you can tell from the gallery, Sarah was very much radiantly in her glory. It goes without saying, but congratulations Sarah!

Looking forward, Justin & Teresa’s wedding is now under 2 weeks away, so there will be some preparations going on there. Jason & Kara will be hitting the road for another epic camping adventure starting Friday, so good luck and have fun on the trip guys. Can’t wait to hear about all the details when you’re back. I’m sure you’ll be able to follow their RSS feed to keep tabs on their adventures or head on over to jasonandkara.com. Hopefully summer gets here some day soon and we can enjoy some warm weather. Anyway, that’s all for now, check out the 300+ new pictures in the gallery, leave your comments, and we’ll see you again soon! Hopefully Crystal finds time to update this place one of these days (hint, hint!). Later all!