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!!

Thanksgiving and other news

I guess it's about time for me to update our blog about Thanksgiving. We were able to go up to Ohio to Christine and Sam's this year. My dad and mom drove down to Chapel Hill to pick us up and take us to Ohio, so it was really nice to not have to drive. We even left at 3 am hoping Grant would continue to sleep for the morning hours of the drive. I think he was too excited to see Grandma and Grandpa (which he refers to as "munga" and "papa"--don't ask me where munga came from), and from seeing all the trucks on the highway. So basically Grant didn't sleep the entire trip, except for about an hour at the end. He did really well though, with no real crying or whining episodes.
We had a great time at Christine's and Sams. Basically our time was filled with eating lots of delicious food, hanging out, playing Rock Band, going to the park, and eating more delicious food. We were also able to squeeze in a trip to the temple (thanks to mom and dad for babysitting), and us ladies went to see Twilight while the fellows rented Iron Man. Grant had fun playing with Maddy and Mason and loved all their cool toys. Mason graciously shared his beloved vacuum and Grant also loved playing with Maddy's toy kitchen. We had a lot of fun and were sad to leave, especially since Christine and Sam won't be able to come out to VA for Christmas this year. Maybe we can talk them into staying in Ohio for a little longer.

I guess that brings me to our next bit of news: Ryan has been accepted to the orthodontic residency at Ohio State University. Yes we are going to be Buckeyes (which come to find out is a poisonous-seed pod). The program starts in June and we are excited for the new opportunities that await us there. We are definately sad to leave NC, we have really loved it here and have enjoyed living so close to my parents, but we feel like this is where we should be going and are getting geared up for it. One thing I know we won't be ready for is the freezing cold winters (we have been spoiled here), but hopefully we'll get used to it in the three years we are there.

These pictures are from this past weekend when we had our ward Christmas party. We did a back to Bethlehem theme with a Bethlehem market and then a Christmas program. It turned out really nice. We are on the activities committee and were in charge of setting up and running a booth. As you can see "Hazeez's Cheeses" was a popular stop in the market place, and Hazeez himself is pictured in this shot. Not pictured, but present that night were Hazeezette (myself) and Wee Hazeez (I imagine you can guess that would be Grant). The place looked great and it looked like people were enjoying themselves. Unfortunately, I had to take Wee Hazeez home before the program because he was getting very tired and cranky (he was still getting over a sickness), but Ryan said it went very well with good music and Christmas messages.

Thanks to my parents for bringing the decorations and costumes with them for us to use. They drove down the Ashville this past weekend to go to the Biltmore Estate and used our house as a stopping point. It was fun to see them for a little bit and all their decorations made our booth much more authentic looking.

Family pictures continued...

Here are a few more of the great pictures Kristin took for us.

Family Pictures

We decided it was high time to get some more professional photos of Grant (our last professional shot was when he was 7 months!). Our friend Kristin took these beautiful pictures of Grant and we also got several family shots. Because the pictures are so big, the blog will only let me post a few at a time, so I will put up more in the next post. Here are a few or our favorites.

He's a talker

We get a lot of comments about how much Grant talks for his age. I think it may in some way be from all the Signing Time videos he used to watch. Most of the first words he said were from those videos. Here's a little video of Grant saying his ABC's (with coaching from me, but I think he pronounces pretty well!) I love little children's high-pitched voices, they are so cute!

Sick boy, Halloween and VA trip

Let me just say it is no fun having a sick child. For the past almost two weeks Grant has been sick, with what the doctor says is probably mono. Thank goodness mono is a lot worse for adolescents and adults than for children. Nevertheless, it has not been a fun couple of weeks. He started out with a week of fevers, getting up to 104 degrees! He also has had a sore throat, been extremely fussy and clingy and had no appetite. The worst was when for about 4 days I couldn't get him to drink hardly anything. Fortunately he seems to be over the worse of it and feeling better. He's still fussy with his teething pain, but the fact that his fever is gone and he will drink something makes me feel a lot better.

This is supposed to be my "sick child" picture. Actually this was taken before all the symptoms came. We were going to the state fair that night so I thought it would be funny to dress him accordingly in a wife beater, to see what Ryan would say when he got home. Grant did not see the humor in this. (No, I did not take him to the fair in this get-up, but he probably would have fit in just fine wearing this!)

Ryan had his VCU interview in Richmond last Thurs and Fri so Grant and I went up with him to stay with my parents for the weekend. This was during Grant's sickness so it was so nice to be there and have my parents to help me out with him. I think being there also helped to take Grant's mind off of some of his discomfort.
The days when Grant didn't want to drink anything, I was able to get some milk in him by occupying him with the TV and spooning him some milk. I couldn't get much in, but it did keep him from becoming dehydrated.
Grant had a lot of fun with his "papa" and "munga" (that's the best he can do with Grandpa and Grandma) and we are excited to see them again at Christine and Sams over Thanksgiving!

Now onto Halloween. I totally forgot to bring his costume to VA with us for the actual Halloween day, but he wasn't quite in the mood for trick-or-treating anyway. We did get a picture at our ward trunk-or-treat which was 2 weekends ago. As you can see we are all service people : secret service agent, a navy gal and a fireman. (Yes Jonnelle, I still have the costume. It's been tucked away all these years but it's nice to have a go-to costume).
We were also able to go to my parents ward trunk-or-treat which was at a ward members house who has tons of property and had hay rides. Grant actually liked it and was happy to be so close to a tractor (which besides a truck is one of his favorite things).