Vegas, Baby.

Here we go with our Vegas Christmas post. I flew out with the kids on Christmas Day and left Devin all by his lonesome for a week. The flight did nothing but live up to my worst expectations. Sophie cried for the entire second flight (about 5 hours when you include pre-board). So mortifying. The poor 25-yr-old guy next to me had a merry Christmas I'm sure. But his mom did offer to switch him seats half way through but he stuck it out with me. I had to reassure him that flying with kids is the worst thing you'll ever have to do as a parent, and I'm sticking with that. I get more anxiety over flying than I do over giving birth! But they can't dump us our half-way over Oklahoma so we made it in one piece. And there were grandparents, sisters and cousins galore to greet us!

RyRy and Soph, the cousins/grandparents.


PalmerGals, Mickey/Minnie dolls for Christmas.


Toms all around! All the rage in the West, we all got a new pair, even Eva! I have to say I have worn mine almost every day.


Sophinator.


Auntie Julie with the munchkins, baby food party!


Cooking with Grandma.


Sharing a snack with Lexi.


2-story playhouse nearing completion thanks to Uncle Cameron.


3 story chandelier at new hotel the Cosmopolitan, Breakfast AND lunch at the Wicked Spoon Buffet. Incredible. Much has changed in Vegas since the good ole' Circus Circus buffet.



Much thanks to mom and Julie for watching Eva and Sophie. We had a full 24-hours off and went to the Lion King and stayed at the Paris Hotel for a night. Words can't explain how nice it was and I think the kids enjoyed the break from us as well. My mom and Julie said they had a blast. Win-win? I think so.



Trips to the dam to see the new bridge. Devin, Sara and Jon biked down the hill from BC, past the lake, through railroad tunnels to the dam. If you're ever in town it is a great ride. And my dad will be on his way to pick you up at the bottom before you've even formulated the words to ask him to do it.




Wind blown on the bridge, SCARY!




Learning to use chopsticks at Auntie Katie's birthday party.


Adoring Aunties.

Sophie's Blessing Day

January 2, 2011. Boulder City, NV. Devin, Uncle Jon, Grandpa Palmer and Bishop Stewart gave Sophie a blessing in Sacrament meeting at my parents' ward. She was sound asleep until the blessing began, then her eyes opened up wide and she watched and listened as her daddy gave her a beautiful blessing from her Heavenly Father.




All about Sophie: At three months she is a very smiley little baby. My sister Katie describes it as a smile that makes you feel like you are the most important person in the world. She'll draw you in and before you know it you've been standing there for 15 minutes coaxing smiles out of her. She is getting chubby like her sister was. She commonly receives comments about her perfectly shaped head. She looks a lot like Devin and loves to sleep with her face buried in someone's armpit. Any armpit, she's not picky. Her favorite place is the bath and her favorite thing is a face to smile at.

Family Photo.

Adoring Grandparents.

Cardon Cousins, Lucy and Zachy.

Sara and Jon Cardon and fam.


Not pictured but present: Aunties Julie and Katie, cousins Ryan and Grace, Se nator Ha rry R eid and his secret service agents.

My mom, Julie and me on my blessing day wearing the same dress Sophie was blessed in.

Christmas Eve and Day

We booked a flight home on the afternoon of the 25th so we decided to move everything up a day. Luckily, Santa was more than happy to cooperate and bring the presents a day early. Christmas Eve was nice and low key. We had dinner, watched a few Christmas clips on lds.org and youtube, read the Christmas story in Luke went to bed.

Here are our girls in their Christmas jammies and the family by the fireplace... so very Christmasy.

Santa came! Eva quickly got over her fear of Santa Clause when she realized all the loot he brought her. (And oddly enough, about 90% of it was meant to entertain her on an airplane... hmmmm)

Eva helped me pick out the stockings at the dollar store. She picked the princess stocking for Sophie, the Mickey-Minnie one for herself, I got the Tinkerbell Stocking and Devin's was Toy Story. She never forgot which stocking belonged to each person.

For Christmas dinner we had a Bethlehem theme. It kind of morphed into Greek food but that's ok. It turned out fabulously. Greek salad, hummus, olives, baba ganoush, pita bread, homemade baklava, homemade dolmathes, spanakopita and lamb skewers. Yum!

Baby's First Christmas

"She's SOOOO CUTE!", Eva says about every 5 minutes. And we agree. There is a lot of kissing that goes on in this house.

Christmas Parties and Disney on Ice

The weekend before Christmas was a busy one in our house. With two parties (one at my house) and Disney on Ice, we were busy from Friday afternoon all the way through Sunday night.

Lucky for Eva, her interest in princesses peaked at just the right time- right when the tickets for Disney on Ice went on sale. She was so excited about her princess ticket and talked about them for days, even though I'm sure she had no idea what they were. She absolutely loved the show and I was so excited for her. I even started tearing up when the princesses came skating out! Haha. I'm getting even cheesier in my old age. (As if that were even possible.)


So excited to be going to the Princess Show!


Friday night we had a little dinner party at a Vietnamese restaurant with friends. Don't you love these photos? I have about a ka-gillion of them from 7th grade. This one is for old-time's sake. PS. Eva is not supposed to be in the picture. She was at a little party of her own but Devin went to pick her up at the end of the night.


Then Saturday we had a Minute To Win It party at our place. We put together a few games from the NBC show. Everyone had a great time. I think the guys especially liked having something to do besides socializing. And the kids had a blast running wild upstairs.

Penny-hose- grab the pennies out of the bottom of the pantyhose. I really enjoyed watching the guys do this one.

Ping-tac-toe... not to be confused with beer pong.

Face the cookie- wiggle a cookie from your forehead to your mouth using only your facial muscles. Nicole was the only one to successfully complete the task. Go Nicole!

Paper Dragon- Unravel a spool of streamers with your arm. Responsible for tons of sore shoulders the next day.