27 on the 27th

That's right folks, another year has passed and I have become older and ... well, probably just older. I had a great birthday thanks to my wonderful family and friends and all the calls, cards, emails and treats! Ryan got done with school early so we were able to go to lunch at Firebirds while a friend watched and entertained Grant (thanks Lizzy!). It was delicious, I highly recommend it. We were also able to do some shopping (you can see some of the goods at the end of this post). And quite possibly my favorite birthday tradition: the Big Fat Chocolate Cake.

For the past two years, Ryan has summoned his baking abilities to make me this cake on my birthday. It has become a tradition that I'm pretty sure we will continue unless we find a cake to top this one. One of the best parts of this present is that Ryan takes this process seriously (notice the apron) and does everything himself, from preparing the pans to cleaning the kitchen. I just get to relax, do whatever I want and enjoy delicious cake later.

Here's a nice close up of the gigantic deliciousness.

Blowing out the candle. We actually have more candles, but did not feel like pulling them out just for the two of us. And don't mind the stain on my shirt. My stomach has an uncanny ability to catch food and spills these days.

Grant enjoying some of the baked goods brought over by friends for my B-Day. Again, this is the result of "say cheese". I probably need to think of a new way to get him to smile nicely for the camera.

So after lunch we headed over to Barnes and Noble to use the $40 worth of gift cards we've been accumulating for the past couple of years (we forget we have them). We decided to increase our library with some more of the classics. Thanks to a buy 2 get 1 free sale, we were able to get all nine of these books using our gift cards. I picked out the bottom 3 and Ryan picked out the rest. We have some good reading ahead of us!

Winter Wonderland Education

I'd like to preface this post by saying that this is my first Blogspot post ever (this is Ryan posting). Erin has been asking me to post for a while now but I just haven't made the time 'til now. I've edited several of Erin's posts in the past but today I've decided to grab the tiger by the tail and go it alone!! I hope you enjoy!!

This morning we woke up to the North Carolina skies dumping snow for all they're worth! I never bothered to look at the weather channel to verify but I bet it snowed more than 4 inches or so, which was sweet! Since it was the first time Grant had ever really seen snow we had to bundle him up and give him a proper introduction to our new, and probably short-lived, winter wonderland.

The first thing he wanted to do was grab his "truck" (the yellow thing in the pic above, which is actually sort of a wheelbarrow we found down by the bike rack), put the community SpongeBob ball in it, and drive it around for a while. However, he soon found out that snow on the ground is pretty fun, while snow being blown into your eyes at 20 mph can dampen one's winter wonderland spirits. Since we didn't have goggles for him I had to show him how to make use of his gigantic hooded coat to block the snow by keeping his back to the wind. After that, it was all pretty good again.

Having completed Phase 1 of his winter wonderland education: how to keep wind-driven snow out of your eyes; we wasted no time in progressing to Phase 2: how to properly pack and throw snowballs. So I packed us each a snowball and showed him how to throw it but when he threw his and it broke on the sidewalk he stood over it and said, "Broken? Fix it? Fix it?" So I re-packed it and gave it back to him and he carried it with him for the rest of the day, as you can see in all of the post-wheelbarrow pics. Maybe Granty is destined to be a lover and that's okay by me.

How to keep snow out of your eyes, check. How to pack and throw (or hold onto) snowballs, check. Next, of course, we had to borrow somebody's sled and go down the hill next to our apartment. The snow on the hill had already been packed down by previous sledders. This was great for speed but not great for my tailbone which acted as our sled's shock absorber as we rode down the deceptively bumpy hill. As the old saying goes, it's all fun and games until somebody's tailbone catches the business end of a frozen clump of grass. Two runs of that and hot cocoa by the fire was sounding pretty good instead. Granty had a good time though and that's what it's all about.

To top things off, Grant got to see his first real, live snowman. Several had been made so as we made a loop around the complex we got to admire each of them. We even made one of our own that was ~8 inches tall and had bunny ears made of green holly leaves. Then we went inside and had hot cocoa with marshmallows. All in all, it was a great day and we were glad to finally get some of the snow that NC'ers have been telling us about for the last three and a half years!!

The rest of Christmas break

After our fun weekend in West Va with Ryan's siblings, we left for Chesapeake to be with my parents for the remainder of the holiday. My brother Ryan was the only other family member who was able to come home this year, since David is still on his mission and Sam didn't get enough time off of school for Christine, him and the kids to be able to come out. We still had a lot of fun, but hopefully next year we can all get together. As you can see in the picture, Ryan got into the holiday spirit with a festive knit vest. He found it in my mom's closet (where Grant was sleeping this trip--it was warm and quiet in there) and put it on as a joke, but ended up wearing it all day because it was so comfy and kept him nice and toasty. I won't be too surprised if I find a crafty sweater-vest in our closet in the near future, as I think Ryan may have been converted.

We had a lot of fun with my family over this break. We did not go or do anything overly exciting, but my parents were off work a lot and so it was fun to hang out as a family. Grant especially loved the attention and playing with "papa" and "munga" (we're still working on a new name for my mom, but that's what he calls her now). Grant read many books, played constantly with his cars and trucks, and enjoyed many, many rounds of hide-and-go-seek and "chase you" (which is basically Grant running and gleefully screaming while an adult chases him). I especially enjoyed when my dad would take Grant with him on short errands to the store or church. Grant loves going for a ride with papa and it was really nice to have so much free time. In this picture, Grant and papa are responding to "say cheese" with nice, big, cheesy smiles!

We definitely played many more games this Christmas than we usually do. I was in a gamey mood the whole break. I learned several new games such as Othello, Thaxx, and a few card games. Othello was fun the first game, when I beat the shorts off of Ryan. The second, however, Ryan decisively beat me due to his strategizing and my arrogant non-strategizing. I guess it is a strategic game, so I must have won by pure-luck the first game.
We also put together the lovely 1000-piece puzzle you see pictured above. My dad and my brother also played a huge role in putting this together, and it was surprisingly fun. Grant even had a role in taking the missing piece from the bottom left side and hiding it somewhere we will probably never find. After staying up late a couple of nights working on the puzzle, we all agreed that this should become a tradition at family reunions.

We had a wonderful Christmas and we all received many nice gifts from family and friends. Grant's presents increased his truck and car collection by about 200% so he was understandably pleased with his haul. One of Ryan's favorite gifts: the four cans of Nalley chili shuttled from the West by my brother, Ryan. Apparently, such fine chili cannot be found east of the Rockies.

Ryan received his ortho textbook as one of his presents this year (something he needed and was very grateful to get). Ryan did not waste any time explaining to Grant the finer points of orthodontic theory, which Grant consumed with rapt attention. Do I sense a future partnership in the making?

Running on Pure Instinct

Grant's reaction to first seeing the presents Christmas morning.

Christmas Break: West VA trip

For our Christmas break this year we ventured out to visit both sides of the family. Ryan got done with clinic the 2nd week of December and I spent the next week picking up a few shifts at work. So we were ready for a vacation when we left on Dec. 19th, for West Virginia. We were able to visit Farel, Cheryl, and Bart for the weekend and had a lot of fun catching up, watching movies and eating delicious food.

Grant always loves extra attention from whomever is willing to give it, but he especially loved his aunt Cheryl. She knew all the things that would entertain him and never tired of his wanting to "see it!" or "touch it!", which is what Grant loves to shout when he wants to see something better or when he wants to get within grabbing range of something expensive. Above, Cherrie is showing Grant how hungry the nutcracker was for baby fingers. (Thereafter, Grant could not pass up a chance to show us how the nutcracker eats his fingers.)

I now realize that Bart and Farel escaped all the pictures, we will not let that happen next time:)

We went for a walk around a pond with Cheryl one afternoon and snapped a little family shot. We're not sure why, but it seems that Grant was either mid-song or hailing passers by during our family photo.

This is the large cow field next to Farel's backyard in West VA. It's such beautiful scenery! Grant loved going outside to look at the cows and the lone wild donkey that was in the herd. The last morning we were there, the donkey came up to the fence and we were able to give him some carrots to eat. Grant was very excited and I thought it was cool because the donkey had curly hair. He was cute. Unfortunately, we only caught this boy-to-donkey carrot exchange on video and it's not quite exciting enough to brave the video uploading process onto our blog. Sorry!!