Bryson Andrew Hill

It seems that a small rodent has taken up residence in our basement.  The first evidence was an empty package of cheez-its left in our “snack basket” in the basement. When I discovered the empty packaging, I just assumed that Dave had accidentally left his trash laying around.  But the next day- there was a full on raid of our snack basket- and it was very clear that some rodent had invited his entire family for a feast in our basement.  Nutrigrain bars, baked lays, cheez-its, quaker-oatmeal bites…you name it- they were all eaten (or tasted).  I guess since they were “100 calorie packs” the rodents felt the need to eat multiple packages.  The most amazing thing is that one of the little bags of cheez-its was carried half way up the stair case before being abandoned.  Any wild creature that can carry a bag of crackers 1/2 way up the stair case is no one I want to meet in the middle of the night! 

We are now looking in to ways to humanely remove Mickey Mouse from the premises.  The problem is that our garage door does not close down completely, so I am sure that any little rodent who gets hungry will wander back in to our all you can eat buffet.  Doh!!  I am going shopping tomorrow for some good plastic boxes for our snacks.

On a different note- we had a big weekend!  On Saturday we went to a birthday party for one of Bee’s class mates, Lucy.  It was a lot of fun to get to meet all of the kids (and parents) in Bryson’s class.  They were all young professionals who seemed pretty similar to to me and Dave.  Since we are having a hard time convincing our other friends to move to Georgia, I am hoping we can make some new friends from this network!  Of course, Bryson was pretty confused about seeing all of his friends outside of the school setting, but he seemed to enjoy running around and playing with the gang.  I think he gets a little overwhelmed by all of the activity with the kids.  After about an hour he started going up to everyone and telling them bye-bye.  We were able to keep him engaged through the birthday cake- but then it was time to go.  I guess that is understandable since he has spent so much of his time with just us. 

Another thing that happened this weekend is that we decided to say goodbye to the mullet look and took Bryson to the “Hair Zoo” for his first hair cut.  Here is a “before picture”.

I had never been in the place before- but with a name like “hair zoo”, I fully expected a cute “kids haircut” place.  You know- with neat chairs, and cutesy things around the salon.  Boy was I wrong.  This place was just another typical “Hair Cuttery” with a fun sounding name.  Of course, by the time I realized my mistake, we had unloaded Bryson from the car and really talked it up about sitting in a big chair for his first hair cut and the whole bit.  So we stayed and got Bryson’s hair cut at an Anywhere-In-America salon.  Oh well.  She offered to save his hair clippings..(for his baby book?) but I opted not to.  Keeping hair just seems weird to me.  I mean what am I going to do with it?  Show it to him?  I can just see the conversation now…”See Bryson, I finally agreed to take you for your first hair cut when you were nearly 2.  The only reason I gave in to cutting off your sweet little curls was because random ladies in the grocery store thought you were a girl and you were getting a mullet.”  “Gee, thanks mom. Good story!”  OK maybe I am being a bit cynical. 

I can’t believe I gave in to letting him have a “dum-dum”.  It was like he died and went to corn sugar heaven.  But he sure did sit still while she cut his hair.

We also went and climbed to the top of Stone Mountain.  Bryson initially refused to get in his back pack and proceeded to climb about 40% of the way up by himself.  As you can see, there are some pretty steep parts where they have installed beautiful handrails.  Ahhh- nature.

But that ended once it got to be too steep and he let us help him.

Its a good thing he gave in to the carrier, because apparently he was pretty tired!  He slept the entire way back down the mountain.

Here is a great “father and son” picture of my boys in honor of Father’s Day.  What a super dad!

So for Father’s Day, Dave and I drove to Aiken to visit his parents this weekend.  I am always amused by the interesting restaurants we pass on our way to the All American city of Aiken, SC.  Take for example- “Off Da Chain Seafood & Mo”.  I bet they have good surf and turf specials!  Next door to that was the equally impressive “Sho Nuff Seafood”.  Yum yum- sho sounds good to me!  While the ebonic restaurants make me laugh, I have decided that intentional misspellings on store signs is one of my biggest pet peeves.  Take for example the local “KwiK Mart” or the “Dayz & Nites Convenience Store”.  The worst is the childcare place called “Kidz Korner”.  Seriously?  And we wonder why kids can’t spell!   

There are some equally amusing signs on the way to my folks house.  Last night I was tickled by the “Donor Kabobs” sign outside of a middle eastern restaurant.  That makes me wonder, who is the donor?  And a little further down the road there is the store that’s not quite Wal-mart…its the “WooMart”.  Haha!  But the all time winner is a sign for a doctors office on Hwy 29 called the Gwinnett Medical Association.  I kid you not, the sign says “Gwinnett Medical Ass.”  I wish I was making that up!  Clearly, their proof-reader was asleep at the wheel.

Anyway.  Back to Aiken.  As always, we had a nice visit with Dave’s parents.  Although Bryson decided to throw a little curve ball at us.  After being in his grandparents house for about 3 hours, Bryson’s face turned all splotchy red and started to swell.  At first I thought I was hallucinating- but pretty quickly it became apparent that he was having an allergic reaction.  Again.  It was so pitiful- his face wasn’t even recognizable.  His eyes were the worst- they were so puffy and purple, they were basically swollen shut!  Could life get anymore complicated?  Yes.  I know it could.  But poor Bee! 

After going around the entire house to make sure Bryson didn’t discover some secret stash of peanuts, we determined that the most likely culprit was the cats.  We no longer have any felines in our house, mainly because our “spirited” corgis just can’t behave around them. But Trish has 4 cats (3 of whom live inside) and they are all going through some serious spring shedding.  Even though she keeps the worlds cleanest house, I am sure there was some cat dander lurking about. 

Thankfully, a few doses of claritin and quarantining the cats seemed to do the trick, for the most part.  Seeing Bryson all swollen in the face reminded me of a hilarious (and sad) picture of or older dog Chase when his face got swollen.  It happened a few years ago when we were visiting from DC.  Dave doesn’t know what Chase got into to get so blown up, but I am assuming he was stung by a bee.  The saddest thing of all was that Dave and my dads decided to take pictures of him in that state.  Of course, they are funny to look at now- but I was pretty mad when I got home… We didn’t take any pictures of Bee all swollen like a tomato, but if you have any imagination, you can probably guess that this is pretty much what Bryson looked like on Friday night!!

Thankfully, the swelling is completely gone now and Bryson is back to his usual self.

Its really hard for me to believe that Dave and I have been married for HALF A DECADE.  Yep, May 31st was our 5th Anniversary.  That’s a really long time!

Its funny what gets me happy these days.  For example, I love it when my services switch on a weekend and I can coordinate a “golden weekend” with 2 days off in a row!  In the real world- a weekend is standard fair.  But for me- it is a real exception.  And since it worked out on our anniversary, Dave and I jumped at the opportunity to get away.  To celebrate, we took off for a weekend in Hilton Head (our new favorite “local” vacation destination). 

On Saturday, we rented bikes and rode around the island.  They have great bike paths that are nicely shaded and pretty far away from the street.  The only problem is that everything on the island is basically along one long street. So you can go and go until you get to your spot- but then you have to back track!  So we went all the way to the end of the road to get dinner- but it got dark before we made it back to our hotel.  And there we were 6 miles from the hotel- with our bikes.  In the dark. Without any lights. Or street lights.  The trip home was pretty comical- with lots of grumbling and complaining and a few “thuds” as we fell off our bikes.  We finally found a gas station and went in to buy a flashlight.  it cost me $9 to get the world’s cheapest flashlight- but at least we made it to the hotel in one piece.  We clocked it the next day and realized that we had biked a whooping 25 miles in one day *and six of those miles were in pitch black dark!  Needless to say, my backside hurt the next day!