Visit to California

My younger sister Kristen and her husband Evan had their first baby, Connor, in the beginning of October. I was excited to meet her little cutie pie, so I flew out for his baby blessing on Nov. 2. It was a lot of fun to visit and sleep in their living room. On a side note, Grant slept next to me in an "Infant Travel Bed". A spare dresser drawer would have also done the job. :)

Kristen holding Grant while I got to hold baby Connor!

My mom bought the boys matching Future Missionary shirts. We thought it would be fun to get a photo of the little companions in action.

Grant and Connor at the end of a long day.

"Am I the senior companion? But I've got drool on my shirt!"

Grant and Connor listening intently. Grant interrupts, "when can we eat?"

Family Portraits

(This pic is ironic, because Grant doesn't really sit up much yet, but just slouches over his diaper and chunky tummy. But we like the picture!)

It's been nice so far to have this week "off" from school. "Off," of course, is a term of art - it means "not in class," not "no studying." With finals right around the corner and the rough draft of my note due for law review soon, there's no time to take a true vacation, but that's okay - it's still nice to have the extra time.In honor of having the extra time, and the fact that Grant is growing pretty fast, we decided to get some family portraits taken yesterday evening. Of course Murphy's law was in full effect. We had Grant's nap schedule all mapped out so he would be in a good mood for the pictures, but no dice. We had hoped to get him down at around 4:30-5:00 so he would sleep around an 1-1.5 hrs and be good for our 7:00 appointment, but we couldn't get him down till 6:00 and had to leave at 6:30 - so he was a little tired when we got into the studio. In spite of that, we feel pretty good about the pictures, because we managed to trick him into smiling a couple of times. But this meant KaraLee & I had to freeze smiles for like 10 minutes. But we're happy to get the pictures and memorialize our little family. (We've include samples in this post)

Monkeys & softballs

It's been a wild past few weeks. To start out with, Grant had his 4 month check-up a couple of weeks ago. For those keeping score, he weighed in at 17 lbs 15 oz (92 percentile) and 26 inches (80 percentile). In spite of these large numbers, his head circumference only fell in the 30 percentile. So we've got a big baby with a tiny head (kinda the opposite of Bobby from Bobby's World, but I think we've still got a great cartoon idea going here). He's our little bear!

(Grant's the one in the crib)

Grant had a great Halloween. We decided not to take him trick-or-treating this year, mostly because you just can't trust people anymore and we didn't want him eating razors. :) Or because he has no teeth. Depends on whether you ask me or KaraLee! So I wanted him to be an elephant. KaraLee got this great elephant costume a few months ago that we were hoping he'd grow into, but alas, in spite of his massive size (which would seem appropriate for an elephant costume) he's not quite there yet. Stay tuned for next year on that front.

He looks okay while on the floor....
... but some obvious problems when standing up!

So we gave up on the elephant idea and went for a monkey instead. We think this was a winner costume for him this year:He was real cute, and yes, that's a banana on his head. But honestly, as far Grant was concerned, these were just another set of snuggly pajamas. He actually slept through most of the church Halloween activity!

In further news, we had the law school softball tournament yesterday. For those who are unfamiliar, softball takes precedence over pretty much any law school activity at the University of Illinois. To give you a feel for how big it is, we have 19 fully loaded teams in the league this semester, with each time having around 13-18 players on the roster. And for a school with only about 180 students per class (and 3 classes, of course), I'd say that's a pretty significant amount of participation. Anywho, in our first game yesterday afternoon (we made it to the semi's before getting eliminated), I turned my ankle coming into home on a close play. I scored, of course. I won't lie, it hurt. Here's a little footage (props to KaraLee for having a camera handy and having the wherewithal to come out of the dugout and avoid the chain-link fence getting in the way of the picture):Needless to say, it was rough getting my shoes on for church this morning. But at least my run counted and we won the game!

Got Tagged?

So one of my really good friends, Erin, "blog-tagged" me. It has taken me a long time to respond because I had to think about 7 weird facts about myself.

1.) I can wiggle my ears- and I don't have to use my hands.

(But not as well as this little cutie pie)

2.)I know what a pigeon tastes like. And it doesn't taste like chicken.

3.) It's true, I can't turn away from reality TV competition shows. It's weird because I don't care for competition in my own real life. My favorites are Shear Genius and Iron Chef. Sorry, Big Brother, not interested.

4.) "Calling all Sulfur hot pools". My favorite secret occupation would be to work as a forest ranger in Yellowstone Park.

5.) I taught myself how to drive a stick shift, french braid, and tap a pencil on the side of my cheek to make water dropping sounds. I am now working on juggling.

6.) As a child I was a major cleptomaniac. When I was around 6 or 7 I would roam around the neighborhood, go into people's garages and take shoes that I thought would be cute. My favorite were "Jellies". Don't worry, I buy my shoes now- legitmately.

7.) Last but not least, in college my roomies and I wanted to open up a " Toast" Restaurant. We were all on tight budgets and ate a lot of toast. The perk to the restaurant would be to serve toast with different kinds of Jams and jellies. But then we realized that this has already been invented. A Bakery.