Beautiful kids.. our nieces and nephews (minus one)

We don't have our own so we get to put all our love and kisses into these cool kids... our nieces and nephews. In all we have 5 of them, 3 girls and 2 boys.

The newest addition: Lillian "Lily" Claire Pearson (don't get her confused with our little Lily). She was born Feb. 13th and almost waited for my birthday. She is the daughter of Brandon's older bro Chris and his wife Kim. She is as adorable as she can be, and such a great baby. She didn't mind at all posing for the pics I kept snapping of her.

Isaiah Reid Pearson is Lily's older brother, he will be 4 in April. He's such a fun little guy and we enjoy each time we get to play with him. He's full of energy just as you would expect from an almost 4 year old. This boy can throw a ball like nobody's business, and I mean fast and accurate. He's gonna be a great ball player of some sort one day not to far off. As you can see, he didn't mind posing for the picture either.

Anna Belle Corbitt is Brandon's older sister Jennifer and her husband Nate's first child. She is always pretty as a princess and has the sweetest little voice. Brandon likes tickling her and I believe she likes for him to as well. Jennifer and Nate live near Asheville so we don't get to see them as much as we would like but we enjoy all the time we get to spend with them.

Ryan Nathan Corbitt is Anna's younger brother. He will be 2 in August. The first pic is a more serious pic of him than he normally is. Our camera was being slow (low battery) and when I told him to smile he gave me a big cheesy grin and then would quit before the pic snapped. The second pic is where I finally got the huge smile. He loved me taking his picture over and over again until I got him smiling. He loves to watch ballgames on TV is the world's youngest all-out Chicago Cubs fan. He is the sweetest little guy and we love seeing him when we do.

We have one more niece Haydyn, my bro's little girl (who's now 6 and in Kindergarten, I can't believe it!). The camera battery was completely dead by the time I tried to take her picture so we will have to get a raincheck and post later. So now you know how cute they are and how much joy they bring into our lives.

They are getting bigger

More pretty pics of the tulips growing... I can't get over how big and beautiful they are. They are very close to the colors I had in my bouquet when we got married. I love it!!

My most favorite girl...

I couldn't resist putting pictures of my favorite girl. I love her so much!!

Her favorite activity, especially after eating, is chewing her bone. She loves it so much after she's finished eating that we sometimes refer to it as her stogie.

Cute as she can be. Look at her front paws, seriously that is normal. I think she is waiting patiently for dinner, with her stogie nearby of course.

My Oncology family

2 of my close c0-workers have recently left the vet school to pursue opportunities in private practices. We had parties for both of them leaving. I didn't bring my camera the day Meghann left but I remembered it for the day Fanchette left.

This is Fanchette with her going-away cake.

A close-up of her cake. Notice it's "half-black". We have a running joke about "half-black" because although Fanchette is "full-black" one of our doctors mentioned some time ago about her being "half-black" honestly thinking so because is so light skinned. We've all had many laughs about that and it couldn't be passed up when she left.

When one of our special patients die we usually try to send the owners a "Dog Heaven" or "Cat Heaven" book signed by those in our Oncology service. Well, since Fanchette was leaving us, Dr. Benoit decided to make her a "Tech Heaven" book, complete with funny pics and room for us to write our last words... hilarious stuff right there!

This is my almost complete dysfunctional Oncology family, plus a few extras!!

Lucky our hamster

I will start this post out by saying that we have a pet hamster. I got her from work almost 2 years ago. She was part of a handling technique lab for vet students and when they were done she was up for adoption... hence, we have Lucky (Brandon named her!) Well, 2 weeks ago I came home from work and Brandon greeted me at the door as always, but this time he acted a little weird. He immediately told me that he thought Lucky was dead. He said that he went in to check on her around 2 that afternoon and she was sprawled out face down in her food bowl. He picked her up and held her for about 15 minutes before putting her back in her igloo (where she sleeps). He thought she was dead when he picked her up and then when she wasn't he put her back thinking she would surely pass quietly in her igloo. So when I got home and went in to check on her, she was still alive. Honestly, he couldn't believe it because of how little she was moving when he had picked her up earlier. I picked her up and she was so cold to the touch that I held her close for a few minutes. She also had both eyes closed and wouldn't respond to the peanut butter I put on my fingertip. I felt that she could have been suffering so I told Brandon that we should take her to the exotic vet to be euthanized. He wasn't too fond of doing that but said that we should put a heating pad around her. We got one from our neighbor and wrapped her up in a towel inside of the heating pad. After ~30 minutes she slowly began to open one eye. After about an hour in the heating pad she began to crawl a little and about 15 minutes later she had both eyes open and was walking out of the heating pad. We were amazed. We decided to put her back in her cage and place the heating pad underneath it. Then she started doing this weird thing where she would walk a few steps and then fall down, seemingly out of it. Then she would get back up and do it again. Brandon, being the engineer that he is, proceeded to google "my hamster keeps passing out". He found a few message boards of other people describing almost exactly what had been happening to her over the last hour or so. The responses to the messages said that she had most likely been hibernating. What.... hibernating?? It said that sometimes hamsters can go into a state of temporary hibernation, called torpor. We were shocked and happy to say the least. The website said to give her a few hours and she would be back to normal and that's exactly what happened. The next day she was perfectly fine, running in her wheel and everything. We couldn't believe it... and to think that I had actually said that we should have her euthanized, wow! She is still doing fine now. Crazy, huh?

Lily and Carlie

Lily had a friend to come over recently. Her name is Carlie and she and Lily had lots of fun chasing each other. We have kept Carlie when Jessica and Caleb have gone out of town but this time Jessica stayed for few hours with me as Brandon was a proctor for Caleb's exam. Jessica and I had a great time hanging out and the girls were so funny as they played.

Here are 2 pictures of them looking out the window at their daddys... so sweet and cute. Aren't they both so long? Carlie makes Lily look so much bigger than she really is. I'm sure Lily would welcome Carlie to come back and play anytime, and I would too!!

YM1 Lifeclass Progressive Dinner

Our Sunday School class had a progressive dinner a couple of weeks ago and we were the host house for the first course, salad. There were 22 people that attended, I think. To fit everyone we had to get creative by bringing in patio furniture, borrowing a car table, and using the famous Reynolds chairs that we got during our time at NCSU. The whole evening was great, we had lots of fun with good friends. Here are a few pics of the time at our house and at the Byrum's house for dessert. I was too busy eating Katy's ziti to take any pics of the main course.

Beautiful Tulips... my favorite!!

Tulips are my absolute favorite flower. We had lots of them in our wedding and I just love them. We had a little place out by our mailbox that we wanted to plant something in since we moved to our house. Last fall, Haydyn, our neice, was selling things for her school and one of the things was a bag of tulip bulbs. We thought we would give them a try out by the mailbox. When the ones we got from her came in we also went by Lowes to get some more. We planted them last fall (supposedly the time to plant them) and over the past few weeks we have had growth! I have been singing to them, wishing them to grow and be beautiful. And... they are!

Yard Renovations

Brandon is making the best of his time these days by working hard in our yard to make it look really pretty for the spring (my favorite time of year!) He has been working really hard the past few days digging up the bushes and monkey grass as well as moving the rocks in our front yard. He put ads on craigslist for the azalea bushes and rocks and he got so many calls he had to quickly remove the posting.... thats pretty neat.

Our front yard with snow before the hard work!

It looks great out there now, a big grassless patch. Hopefully tomorrow he will be able to till it up and plant some grass seeds. In the back yard we have lots of leaves that we wanted to clean up and then plant grass. He raked up all the leaves and gather so many bags full of them. I was so proud of him when I got home from work, I know he worked harder than I did. We are excited for what it will look like when its done.