GeeGee's Visit

This week GeeGee came for a visit and we decided to head to the Riverbanks Zoo in Columbia, SC. We met up with our cousins Gini, Blyth and Alex and everyone had so much fun!

I think the highlight of the day was when "Diver Dan" fed the fish. There's video of Blyth and Gwennie checking him out. For some reason they thought he was a fish and would not wave to him. Overall it was a great day and a great visit!

Snow Day!!!

As you can see from the pictures, the snow finally fell last night so there is no school or work today! Gwennie had her first real experience playing in the snow and was so sad to go inside (Nemo bribery was the only way we could get her to leave the yard). Ruby also had a blast, Ginger on the other hand had no interest and could not wait to come back inside. Here's some pictures from this morning including Gwennie in her PJ's right after she woke up checking out snow for the first time. Pardon the crazy outfit. It was the first thing we could find in the closet!

A Trip to the ER for Nursemaid Elbow

Wish I could say I have pictures from this weekend but thus far we haven't taken any pictures. Gwennie is home with us tomorrow because daycare is closed so tune in because I will likely take some. Today we were at Staples and in a rush I grabbed Gwennie's hand to go meet Corbin and ended up injuring her with something the nurses (yes...the ER and all) called Nursemaid's Elbow. At first we thought she was just mad that we were leaving but when she didn't stop crying and wouldn't use her left arm, we headed to the Children's Emergency Room.

So....yes, I could not feel any worse about it and believe me I am still upset about not being so careful but the good news is that as soon as the nurse gave her arm a little twist, within a minute she was up playing again and running around. The nurses assured me that this is one of the most common injuries out there. They said most of the time it happens from parents swinging their kids while walking or even when trying to pull arms out of a coat. That being said, I decided to blog about this because I figured if it happened to anyone else, the facts really are helpful and hopefully it will prevent an injury.

Swimming and Baby 2

This weekend Gwennie started her next round of swim lessons at Little Otters Swim School. As always, Gwennie loved the class and was not happy that the class ended after 30 minutes.

In other news...Gwennie's new little brother or sister is doing well and we got some great ultrasound pictures. Everyone still seems to think we are going to cave and find out what we are having but we are holding strong and keeping it a surprise!

Happy New Year!

Happy Near Year! As you can see from the pictures Gwennie and the rest of the family spent their New Years Eve with our neighbors Bragg, Michelle and Stella. Gwennie and Stella are thick as thieves and their favorite pass time is watching Nemo together while jumping on the couch (which they always do when we aren't looking....knowing full well we have told them this is not allowed). Needless to say the couch gets a pretty good workout when the two of them are together. They made it to about 10 PM and then passed out and the adults were soon to follow! On New Years day, we headed back up to the Lazy 5 Ranch with Corbin this time and he got a first hand feeding experience. We all agree that the Ostriches are just too weird/scary with their neck bobbing so we just threw the feed quickly and rolled up the windows before they infiltrated the car.

We then got home in time to watch the Rose Bowl and as you can see from the picture Gwennie was channeling East LA and running around the house. Corbin and I thought it was pretty funny but before we could get the camera out she was off playing with something else. This is the only good picture we could take before she decided to take off running.

Xmas 2008

Well, we made it through another holiday with Nanna, GeeGee and PopPop, Gwennie, Corbin and I (and the girls - Ginger and Ruby). I think everyone had a nice time eating, chasing after Gwennie, eating, watching Gwennie run around the house, eating, sleeping, and more eating! Overall it was a great holiday and we are slowly trying to get the house back in order. Here's some pictures from the week and a video of Gwennie playing with her favorite gift

No No Duck!!

Today while Corbin was working, we (Gwennie, myself, Gee Gee and Pop Pop) went to the Lazy 5 Ranch to check out the driving tour and to feed all of the animals at the ranch. We hadn't crossed 2 feet into the ranch when Gee Gee tried to feed an Oryx (huge deer with big horns) and it decided to take the entire bucket of feed - good thing we had another 3 buckets to spare. We learned our lesson...roll up the windows quickly if you still want your feed for the rest of the tour!!! The emu and ostriches were also a little weird - their heads kept pecking on the windows and bobbing up and down. We figured if we opened the windows they might just jump into the car with us. We were a little nervous about feeding them but they seemed to be pretty docile. Gwennie liked the Lamas and Alpacas the most. They were very easy to feed and would let Gwennie (and everyone for that matter) pet them while they were eating.


After the tour we went to the petting zoo and Gwennie quickly learned what happens when you get too close to ducks. Not to fear....no lost fingers or toes, just a little sniffling, a NO NO DUCK and an unhappy Gwennie for a couple of minutes. The duck was not to keen on being touched so it let Gwennie know what happens when you try to mess with a hungry duck. As you will see from the pictures below, my parents tried out their new Christmas presents. I will post pictures from Christmas on our camera later.

Big Wedding/Holiday Weekend!

This weekend was a big family weekend. Our cousin Sara married her wonderful beau Mike. The wedding was a blast and Gwennie actually got to attend. She had so much fun and enjoyed hanging out with the family!

Sunday we headed over to the Burton's house for an early Christmas celebration. Lots of cousins, aunts, uncles and babies were in attendance. It was a little overwhelming but so much fun to see everyone and enjoy the holidays. As you can see the kids all enjoyed making gingerbread houses/cookies and testing out the frosting. Here are lots of pictures from the weekend.

Weekend Project

This weekend we decided to put up a "communication center" in the kitchen (nice fancy way of saying a dry erase board with a spot to charge the cell phone). Little did we know that we would need to drill holes in the wall to reach the closest electronic plug. As you can see from the pictures Corbin was a trooper and Gwennie decided to stay away and watch Wall-E. Here's some pictures from the weekend project.

The Search for a Christmas Tree and the Return of the Diaper Hat

This weekend my cousin Gini came up from Columbia to participate in the Christmas Bazaar at Christ Church down the street. Our good friend Jennifer also participated and overall it was a fun but exhausting Saturday!

Sunday we did the quest for a Christmas tree and as you can see Corbin was all about snapping pictures of Gwennie running through the trees. She seemed to have the most fun. After lots of shopping/walking/chasing Gwennie, we decided on a tree and decorated it last night. Here are some pictures from the weekend. You'll notice Gwennie is back on the swimmie diaper kick so we took a few pictures of that to use at her wedding years from now!

Thanksgiving 2008

For the second time we headed down to Neeces, South Carolina to meet up with Corbin's side of the family. As you can see it's a pretty large group and we all had a great time visiting, eating, watching Gwennie get into something and eating again!
Gwennie loves to play with Lily who was a very patient dog with all the patting/tail pulling Gwennie seemed to do every time she saw Lily. Ginger is not as patient and has now started just heading in another direction when Gwennie starts calling her name (Ginngerrrrr!!!). Ruby must have organized a toddler treaty because Gwennie seems to only pet Ruby and doesn't insist on running around pulling her tail.

Here's some pictures from the week including Gwennie sporting her new "swimmie hat". It's amazing what kids find to entertain themselves nowadays!

Cheese.....

This weekend Corbin and I picked up our Christmas present earlier. We decided to get a new digital camera and so far the pictures are great! Gwennie, Ginger and Ruby were our main subjects and by the end of the weekend I am pretty sure they were running in the other direction every time we took the camera out. Gwennie seemed to be into hats on Saturday and Sunday. She spent most of the weekend walking around with either a baseball cap or a winter fleece hat on her head. Here's some pictures from both days.

This weekend was pretty slow. Corbin was in NY visiting some friends and was back Saturday afternoon. Gwennie and I hung out with Janet, Andrew and Crawford Saturday morning and then headed to the park to work of some of her energy. Unfortunately Gwennie took a spill (which I still feel guilty about) and had a pretty big shiner all day Saturday. Luckily no trips to the hospital and she was back to her normal self after some lunch and a nap. Sunday Corbin and I decided the dogs were beyond dirty so we gave them both baths which took up about 2 hours of our morning after all the dirt was rinsed off. Here's a picture of the girls this morning. As you can see they aren't very happy that they can't play in the mud outside but we are going to try to keep them clean for a few more days.

How Time Flies!

This is a picture from when Gwennie was about a month old. Her Auntie Ashley knit this cap for her and on Sunday Gwennie happened to pick it up and tried it on. She had to really stretch it to fit on her noggin but Gwennie thought it was so funny so she wore it around the house.

Saturday Corbin headed to the UNC Football game and I headed down to Greenville, SC for a wedding shower for my cousin Sara. On the way I dropped Gwennie off to visit with her Great Aunt Nina and cousins Megan and Caroline. Gwennie had so much fun and also enjoyed a visit with Great Grandma Gary!

I also was so thankful that we have family close to take care of Gwennie. I got to enjoy catching up with the Aunts and Cousins at the Shower and Gwennie was so tired when she got home that she fell into bed and went right to sleep! Unfortunately I forgot the camera but here are a few pictures from Sunday

Halloween Gee Gee Fest

This week Gee Gee (Grandma Verna) came for a visit to enjoy Halloween with Gwennie. She also attempted potty training but about all we got was a kid that sits on the potty forever and then as soon as the diaper goes back on...she does her business! We'll tackle it again around Thanksgiving or Christmas.

Gwennie also had a Halloween party at school and given the fact that she always comes back with something on her clothes, I figured we'd make a second costume that she could mess up as needed. This was a feeble attempt at Tinkerbell. Friday night Gwennie donned the Cookie Monster outfit again and headed out to Trick or Treat with Stella (Ladybug), Charlie (Curious George) and Matty (Pooh). They older kids figured out the deal right away. After the first house everyone but Matty had Tootsie Pops in their mouths. Gwennie decided taking the wrapper off wasn't worth it so she ate the whole thing....wrapper and all. Mommy attempted to pry the sucker away but her death grip wasn't going to have any of that!

While we were piling them in and out of the wagons, Corbin accidentally spilled his beer on Gwennie's costume (never hold a beer between your arms and lean over to pick up your kid) and needless to say she smelled of pale ale all night. We called her Cookie Monster on the skids which got some funny comments from the houses. Gwennie didn't seem to mind the smell and was on a crazy sugar high all night because as soon as we'd head toward a house she'd break out in the giggles as she ran up to the next house. It was a great night and it ended with Gee Gee being the last house where Gwennie passed out and slept until 8 on Saturday! All in all a great weekend!

Daddy Got a New Ride and the Halloween Parade

On Wednesday Corbin called after getting the Jetta serviced to tell me that he was looking at a diesel wagon and wanted to potentially get one if they happened to come in. Guess what happened the very next day? Yes, we are now the proud owners of a Jetta wagon. The dogs are still getting used to the tighter quarters but they like it much more than the other car and seem to enjoy the enormous sunroof the most. I don't particularly like parking in another time zone so no one will ding the car but according to Corbin we will be getting some exercise for a while.

Saturday Janet and Crawford came over for the neighborhood Halloween parade. Crawford and Gwennie had a great time hanging in the wagon while the adults lugged them all around the neighborhood. The Jack in the Box seemed to be the big hit (although most kids cried over the mask but the nice girl in the outfit was quick to take it off while the kids were checking her out). Corbin and I thought the Phelps costume was a great idea and the disco baby was also pretty funny. Here are some pictures from the weekend.

SC State Fair Gridlock

On Friday I was perusing Face Book and noticed that Aunt Eileen (affectionately known as "E") was heading to the fair for lunch. As a junk food junkie myself, I decided we'd change our plans to go to the Apple Harvest Festival and called our cousins Gini and Russ Webb to see if they wanted to head over with us to the South Carolina State Fair (which happens to be in Columbia where they live). Luckily...Gini and I are all about the fried food and Russ/Corbin are all about people watching and football...USC was playing LSU the same day (at the same location) so they were planning on going anyhow.

We met up on Saturday morning and Russ' good buddy Wheels (he does have a real name but Russ renames all of his friends so all we know him as now is Wheels). Piled the kids, adults, double stroller and tailgating gear in the cars and headed over. The fair itself was great...Gwennie and I had a corn dog and some lemonade. Corbin decided to eat some scary chili cheese fries that I was sure would come back to haunt him later and Gini went with the ever popular Carmel apple with sprinkles route. Good think Alex (their 6 year old daughter) wasn't hungry because the adults were eating enough for everyone! Blythe (their 10 month old daughter) also got in on the corn dog action and we had heard about these fried Oreo cookies so we all were on a mission to find them. After about an hour of searching we found the stand and it was well worth it....might sound icky to some of you but we all agreed......YUMMY!
By 3:30 we were all full of junk, tired of looking at cows/chickens/sand sculptures and sick of losing money on the fair games so we headed back to the cars so Corbin, Gini, Alex, Blythe, Gwennie and I could head home. Russ and Wheels were staying for the game so they helped us pile all the kids/crap into the car and then we were on our way.....or so we thought.
We pulled out of the parking lot to the left, didn't move for 30 min so we decided to turn around and try the other way. Same thing happened to the right and we noticed these people were even more mad (because they weren't letting anyone in, had some scary looks on their faces and some were just getting out of their cars to walk up to see what was going on) so we figured we were going to be there for a while. After an hour of no movement we turned around and headed toward the entrance hoping that gate was open. No luck there...that gate apparently was closed up and the highway patrol wasn't letting anyone out. After about an hour and a half, Alex had enough and she had to go to the bathroom so Gini headed to find out what was going on and to let her poor child finally relieve herself. 30 min later Gini and Alex returned and we found out that the highway patrol was the problem. The fair wanted to open more exits but because of they weren't in charge of the streets, they were forced to leave the exits closed. So....Gini took matters into her own hands. Somehow she made friends with the head of security at the fair, got the number of the head patrolman and left him a colorful message on how much we were enjoying sitting out here for 2+ hours. Corbin and I were saying that "Crazy Gini" was coming out to make sure we were going to get out of there in record time.
Crazy Gini came through and after 2 1/2 hours and a few conversations with the police, they opened the gate, and we were the 10th person through and we were home 10 minutes later. Crazy got it done!!!!!!


Sunday we took a trip to Costco for more Thomas (Namas as Gwennie calls him) DVDs as Corbin and I are sick of the 2 she watches over and over and came across the coolest Thomas toy ever which will be making an appearance around Christmas.

Here's the pictures from the weekend and a video of Gwennie raising the roof to the new Thomas song (they've made Thomas into a rap song which was pretty hilarious). If you'd like to see a moving rendition of the original click on Rich and Jess Christenson's blog done by their nephew Conner.

Back up in Baltimore

This weekend we headed up to Owings Mills to visit with Alan, Heather and Ari and also to attend our good friend Nancy's baby shower. The shower was really fun and since Clark and Corbin did the catering, the food was great! Sunday we headed to a farm to pick out a pumpkin. They had hayrides, pony rides and all sorts of events for the kids. Both Ari and Gwennie had a great time and were pretty tired by the end of the day. Then we headed up to have dinner with Clark and Nancy. As you can see from the picture to the left Ari and Gwennie made themselves at home! Here are some pictures of the weekend and a few videos

A Visit From Ashley & Weekend Project

On Friday my friend Ashley came down for a quick visit (3 hours to be exact) while she had a flight layover back up north. Gwennie had so much fun playing with her and was pretty mad when it was time for bed. Ashley and I both tried to put her down and she was not going for it! Finally after a few tears she settled down and Ashley and I headed out to dinner while Corbin stayed home on baby duty!

Saturday afternoon Corbin installed a chandelier I have had my eye on for a while. As you can see from the pictures we were a little nervous about the wiring but it all turned out fine.

Namas and Bob

Saturday was a big day over here. We headed up to a Day Out with Thomas in Spencer, NC at the North Carolina Transportation Museum. Gwennie is absolutely obsessed with Namas (Thomas) and all of the trains/tracks that go along with him. Those Thomas folks are pretty smart...the first tent you walk into is where all the "for sale" items are and they are so nice over there.....they put these cute tracks out for your kids to play with. And they are nice enough to put price tags on everything so that when your kid freaks out when you try to leave (and you are desperate to get your kid out of there spending less than $100), you can just pay for whatever she's clutching for dear life!!! Luckily Gwennie's hands are still small so she's only got a book that she carries around the house repeating "Namas" all day.

Bob the builder was also there but Gwennie seemed more interested in watching Thomas ride around. The life sized Thomas train rides around the museum was both Corbin's and my favorite part. They take you around the whole station including the round house and all the trains they are restoring/using at the museum. It was raining/cloudy all day but here are some pictures from our outing.