Catch Up!

It seems like as soon as Halloween ends the subsequent holidays sneak up on us so quickly. I can't believe Christmas is less than two weeks away.

We had a great Thanksgiving. We invited some friends over for the feast, but we were so busy with everything that we didn't take pictures of the event, :( just good memories. :) So this is a random sampler post. Enjoy!

Grant is trying to change his own diaper. I would rather he learned how to use the potty over changing his own diaper.

For Thanksgiving my family has a traditional 14 layer jello dish. This was Grant's first encounter with jello and he kept slapping and punching it.


Our friend Julie made these super cute Turkey hats.

Grant always asks me to put my socks on his feet.

We got snow a week or two ago and so I thought Grant might like to play in it. He was having fun until he got snow on his face and then he freaked out and wanted to come back inside. Maybe next time it will be more fun.

We hope everyone has a Happy Holiday Season!

A Man or Woman?

No, we're not pregnant. But evidently, this blog is 82% likely to be written by a woman. That's probably mostly accurate, since I think KaraLee does most of the posts. Care to check on your blog? Supposedly this website uses some artificial intelligence to determine whether your blog is written by a man or woman. Try it and post the results in our comments!

http://genderanalyzer.com/

Socks (Puppets), Bread, and Dancing

So, by popular demand (okay, because families have been requesting politely), this post is dedicated to recent videos of Baby Grant. Grant's at a fun age (isn't every age a fun age?!) and seems to be learning and developing in leaps and bounds. Needless to say, he keeps us on our toes and our house is constantly filled with laughter.

We hope you enjoy these videos. Just for the record, we DO regularly dress our child, but in the evenings going with just the diaper just seems so much easier. :)

Grant has really seemed enthralled with sock puppets and animals recently. Interestingly, he seems more inclined to listen to requests from the puppet, even though he KNOWS where the voice of the puppet is coming from!

Our little dough boy. He just likes to "help" in the kitchen. His helping has evolved from insisting that KaraLee hold him while she's cooking to standing on a chair next to her while she's cooking.



Lord of the Dance. 'Nuff said.

Puppets, Carving a Pumpkin, and Roaring

Lately Grant has been really interested in hand puppets. He usually asks Chris or I to put a sock on our hand and talk. And then he will want us to put the sock on his hand and he talks to us- very cute! So I decided to go to the craft store and buy some eyeballs that we could glue on to some socks. While I was there I saw a simple "Puppet Making" kit, so for the rest of the afternoon Grant helped me make some puppets.

Grant is squinting at the eyeball.

Tada! We made a giraffe and an elephant.

Ever since the stores started selling pumpkins, Grant has been calling them... You guessed right- a Ball. So we thought it would be fun when we could finally bring a pumpkin home. He tried picking it up.

And then decided it was easier just to whack it with a spoon.

And easiest of all just to watch dad carve it.

It is an emoticon winking. Basically, the easist thing we could carve with a kitchen knife.

This is at our Church's fall party. Grant dressed up like a Lion-and cried for the first 10 min. He was scared of himself. But we did get at least one roar out of him.

Ok, I am happy now!

Grant with a fellow lion(ess).

Crayons, Berries, and Squinting

We have had so much fun with Grant lately. It is fun to watch his little world open up as he explores new activities and learns more words. A couple of days ago he picked up a pencil and started drawing on the wall- so I decided it was time to break out the crayons and contain his exploration and fun to paper as he is strapped in the high chair. Now every morning before he eats he wants to color.

Last week a friend of mine invited Grant and I to join her and her son to pick some berries. I was really excited to go- I love doing that kind of stuff and I love raspberries. Even though it was cold and there were a lot of gross bugs, the boys had a lot of fun eating and squishing berries as well as chasing some "Mows" (Grant's Meow and word for cat). You can't really see it, but Grant is holding a stick- so I had to keep my eye on him, because he doesn't know that kitties can't play baseball. Oh and I am happy to annouce that I made Freezer jam with the berries- my first time!

This was a super gross spider that we saw among the delicious berries. The body was probably 2 inches long. After seeing this, I was a lot more cautious where I picked.

Lately, Grant has been doing little tricks for us. One that just cracks me up is squinting on demand.

Happy Birthday, Sweet KaraLee

So KaraLee is __ years old today! (Intentionally left blank, because she doesn't really like birthdays) I'm so lucky and blessed to have married such a wonderful girl. I really can't imagine life without her. KaraLee, I love you more each day, and me and Grant are so lucky to have you. Enjoy your birthday, sweet pea!

Here a couple of pics of her that I like (please note, there was no doctoring of these photos - she really is just that cute):

Always willing to let her naughty baby help in the kitchen. :)

You can see where Grant gets his cuteness from.

My sweet wifey and me!

Yummy

Last week when I wasn't looking at Grant, he pulled an almost empty bag of cereal off of the table. When I found him, he was cooking with it (notice the whisk) and then...

Eating it.

Rubbing his hands in it.

Rubbing his hands on his face and eating it. Well, he was cute and happy- I just had a sticky mess to clean up.

And then I just wanted to post some pics of my two favorite guys.

Grant is our little book monster.

Just another side story... this morning I found Grant dipping my cell phone in the toilet. Luckily my phone still works, but I did have to dip it in another lysol bath.

Makeshift Fun

Recently, we've been making our own fun around the house. Enjoy the videos!

Whoa!

Grant had so much fun on the slides at the playground that he decided to create one in his room.

As we have said before, Grant has baseball on the mind.

Our little helper.

101 Things You Can Do with a Spoon and Other News

Last week Grant started crying so Chris and I went over to see what was wrong. We don't know what happened but this is where he cut his eye. Poor baby.

Just recently Grant figured out how to take his diaper off. This morning I was getting ready and he was running in and out of the bathroom to see me. Then the last time he ran in to see me, he didn't have anything on. So we decided to put his diapers on backwards.

This past weekend Champaign had some rain storms that were linked to the hurricanes in the south. This is a picture of a tree in our complex that split in half due to the strong wind storms. Half of the tree fell over into the children's play area.


The other half of the tree fell onto the pool's fence (crushing it.)

Grant is dramatic- I don't know where he gets it from. Grant thinks everything is really cool so he always says "Whoa" with a very gruffy voice.

The other day I gave Grant some diced apples as part of his lunch. When he was full, the problem was that there were some apples left over. To solve this problem, he kept putting the extra apples in his ears.

Grant loves going down slides. Usually he goes down doing the splits, but this time he actually went down with both feet in front.

Anyone who has been around Grant for more than 10 seconds can guess what his favorite word is...Ball. He watched Chris play softball last week and so now he is obsessed with catching/throwing balls with the glove.

He also likes to play softball with our cooking spoons. He always hands me a spoon and then tosses me a ball. Also, try to ignore the fact that he isn't wearing pants- we had a busy morning.

Grant playing golf with the versatile spoon and ball.

Grant also likes to use spoons for moving things out of his reach.

How do you like them apples?

We are happy to be back in Champaign. Chris finished up his first week of school! Yeah, only a whole bunch more to go! We didn't have anything booked this weekend, so we decided to pick some apples at a local orchard. We picked a bag of apples (Ginger Gold) so I made Apple Crisp and it turned out pretty good.

As soon as Grant saw the apples he said "Ball". Good job Grant.

Grant picking an apple.

Yeah, Grant- you found another ball.

Grant feeding the dogs. I mean little goats.

I think Fall is my favorite season- Good luck to everyone starting school this year!