A long list of little blurbs to get back on track, don't look for cohesiveness, it is sorely lacking

We went to bed at 9pm. We always say we should start going to bed earlier if he falls asleep. So we finally did. I took the midnight feeding, Kristen had to get up for the 3am feeding anyway, so she has him now...... and now I am wide awake, we both are at 3am.... I went to lay back down after Kristen got all settled to feed him, usually after this much sleep it's time to get going for the day. I figured instead of just laying there I could do something a little more useful. I've never been an early to bed kind of guy, but usually had to go ahead and be an early to rise individual, I have to say this early to bed thing is kind of nice.... great, now I need to start saying things like "back when I was a kid' or "that doesn't even sound like music" to really solidify the transition to old dude.

This week is finals week. That sounds more stressful than it really is. Last week all of the big projects were due, that was more work than studying a little for the finals. After Friday I can refuse to learn anything for a couple of weeks, maybe I'll even let my brain atrophy a little... the television has been acting lonely lately.

The last few weeks I had a couple of dance concerts to run. The first one was for my beginning class that meets 6am before school. There are about 80-90 students. We filled both tiers on the north side of the big gym at LHS, or close to it. We danced a foxtrot with everybody to a hilarious remake of an old 80's song that was turned into a "Santa is watching every step you take" kind of thing. We also had a mambo to "Mambo Santa Mambo", a Tango, A viennese waltz to "once upon a December", I had the kids all dance with their parents to another foxtrot, and dance with random people for an open swing and cha cha and finished the night with a waltz to "Silent Night", played by a string quartet made up of students in my class, then we faced the audience and had them join us in singing the song as a finale. It was a great evening. During the open swing and foxtrot I danced with my Mom. We also had a waltz by my dance team, a country swing, and traditional swing by them, Kristen couldn't make it as she was engaged elsewhere. A lot of people came up after and said some very nice things.

Last week we had "Dancing with the Athletes" patterned after Dancing with the Stars" I went to all of the coaches and found out their best athletes in basketball, football, soccer, volleyball, cheer, track, wrestling, and tennis. I made a ballot with about 80 names of students, made a couple thousand ballots and had all of the student body vote for which athletes we should invite to participate. I had a meeting with most of the 80 athletes before hand and explained our plan, and to their credit no one refused, a few were pretty nervous. When we tallied up the votes the 10 who won were shocked, and pretty scared. We gave them choreographers and partners and costumes and after 2 weeks had a competition in the auditorium. We had professional lighting design volunteered, a huge array of music and judges, and a pretty good crowd. We made just over a thousand dollars. It was a great great night. The athletes worked so hard and had a great time. Strangers keep stopping me in the halls now to tell me how great the concert was. I loved being reminded how universal movement and music were. It was a blast on too many levels to keep typing.

Sunday morning Mom made a great breakfast dish and for dinner had stuffed pork chops ready after I got back from choir practice. I dread the day when we are going to have to start doing our own dishes again and pretending to cook for ourselves. Dad is coming on Tuesday, I'm pretty excited, I think Mom is more. For choir we are just doing one Christmas song instead of the huge programs I used to do down in Spanish. The programs were great, but I'm not sure I could've handled it this year. I was very flattered when a friend said she was disappointed that there wasn't a program to come to. The song we are doing is "The First Noel" set to Pachabel's Cannon in D. It is beautiful and the choir has picked it up very fast.

At Greydon's last eye appointment the doctor said "Don't come back!" Yeah, the vessels are all grown in. There was still a little ridge of vessels on both eyes, but it was too small to worry about. Woohoo, peripheral vision is our friend.

He weighs over 10 pounds as of the last doctor visit, and certainly weighs more now. It is funny that this is the size I was when I was born, looking at him I can truly say "my poor mother" ouch I'm surprised I didn't walk out.

A friend has a baby who was born about when Greydon was actually due. I was pretty sad when I saw him last at how well he was holding his head up. I got in pretty big trouble for "comparing" when I mentioned it to Kristen and my mom, I wont make that mistake again. Greydon is holding his head up some, but man Russell was a champ at it.

I hate seeing Greydon get bigger, it's sad and exciting all at once. Today he was sitting under his little play gym thing and learned that he could bop one of the rattles with his hand. I was very proud, just a few days ago I was playing around taking his hand and hitting it for him. Go go hand eye coordination.


When we went to Grand Junction for Thanksgiving Gramma R sent us back with 24 numbered gifts, her own advent calender for Greydon, one gift per day. We've had fun opening bibs and Christmas onesies, socks, books, you name it.
I finally got the tree up this weekend and we already had wrapped gifts to put underneath it this way, so convenient. For the tree we went with an all white, crystally clear and silver with just a little blue and are calling it the "baby tree". I am so grateful that we finally got to make a baby tree.




OFFICIAL INVITATION

Of course this blog is getting so long that this section might be missed... hmmm that could be bad.

First invite, to clarify, we are now welcoming visitors to the house, no hazmat suit required. We do still ask that health be firmly in your grasp with no colds or coughs. Anyone under three feet tall still makes us pretty nervous, but we can handle it if you think they are safe. I always think of those scenes from close encounters when they are trying to get everybody out of the landing zone and everyone is dressed in white jump suits with gas masks....

Second invite.

The week after Christmas we are blessing Greydon! WOOHOO, I am pretty excited. We are going to make a brief exception to the "no public places until April" rule so we can bless him before while he still looks like a baby.

We sincerely hope and pray that all of our friends and family can make it for such a special day. This is one of those days we have always dreamt of. When thinking about hopefully having children the blessing day was always part of the dream. When we were sitting in the NICU, the blessing day was always a sign goal and a benchmark that everything would be ok if he was healthy enough to go to church for his blessing. Please come and be part of that day with us.

The blessing will be at 1pm on December 28th. The chapel is on the corner of 3rd west and State street in Lehi. After the blessing we regretfully have decided to not have a big meal fest at the house. This makes me a little sad to be honest, as that has always ben part of the plan. But this time of year it is too risky to have that many people in such close proximity to Greydon for that long. I think we are going to have some soup for those people who come from out of town. So don't be offended if you live 10-15 minutes away and don't get asked back to the house, we still love you and appreciate you sharing the event with us.

The other huge political obstacle is the circle. I would love to have all of the cousins and uncles and friends up there, but our arms wouldn't be long enough and we'd have to move the circle to the parking lot to fit everybody. So sorry again, but not all of the people we care about and love will be able to be up in the circle. Again, please oh please don't be offended or hurt, and still come.

I just read through this, and it is getting pretty long, the danger of not blogging for so long. There were also a ton of typos that I just don't feel like fixing, call me lazy.