Lastest Artwork

Every now and again I get to work on some of my own artwork (in between things for Grey, and when Mary makes me an art machine). I have decided to start a new theme where I associate people I know, or places that have influenced me with objects or textures. The first (of hopefully many) is very obviously MI, and I have created it using tree branches or driftwood. When I was younger I would always collect items from trips that we would make in Michigan, and more often than not those would be twigs, sticks, or pieces of driftwood that washed up on shore. This idea influenced my drawing...hope you like it!

I only took 2 pictures of it...here it is partially done

Finished product. Colored Pencil for the branches, Marker for the water.

Just like Joe

 

 

Birthday email

Happy birthday, Greyson! Thank you for all your kind phone calls, cards, and presents. Why don't you send Grey a birthday email? Greysoncc@yahoo.com

Grey's New Play Table

Since before Christmas, Justin has been planning on making a play/train table for Greyman. Well the table is finally done, and in the nursery now! It's nice to have another play area in our house for Grey, instead of just the sunroom. He loves playing in there now, and loves to stand at his table and play with his new train set from Grandpa Christensen. We opted to go with oak for the table frame so we could stain it, and the top is a coated board that Justin painted (thanks for the tip Grandpa Christensen!). Below are a few in progress pics, as well as Grey playing with it! Justin is very happy with how it turned out!

When construction was completed, just needed painting and staining

Working on table top

Finishing Painting

Finished top! We decided on a map, so when Grey gets older we can tell/show him where all of his relatives and friends live!

Finished table! Rounded all the edges of the table, stained it, then put on a coat of polyurethane.

Greyson went quickly to work

I think he likes it

AHHHHHHH....TRAINS!

Busy, busy, busy...

Breckenridge Snow Sculptures!

A couple of weekends ago we decided to head up to Breck to see the famous Snow Sculpture Contest. We have always heard about it but haven't made it up there until this weekend. We didn't really know what to expect...then when we got there we were amazed! They were all set up in one area, and you were able to vote on your favorite sculpture. The winner doesn't get any money, just bragging rights. There were 15 total sculptures done by teams from 8 different countries. We had a great time taking Grey up to the mountains, especially when we found out they had a whole snow play area for kids! He loved watching all the other kids, and playing in his snowsuit!

Scenic overlook just off I-70, here's a look at The 14ers Grays and Torrey's ...the ones we climbed with the Kennedys this past summer!

First sculpture you see as you walk into the sculpture garden

It's amazing how smooth they can get the surface of the snow!

This one is Mary's favorite

Koi Fish

This one was called "Revenge of the Calamari"

You can see how big these were next to people

It was a beautiful day up in Breck....the sun was very cool shining and creating shadows on the sculptures

NASA space shuttle lift off

This dragon was on the other side of the koi fish sculpture

Look closely in the middle!

This one took 2nd place...very impressive especially since the figure was free standing and not attached to any other part of the sculpture

An almost perfect sphere...this one was very smooth!

Another one of Mary's favorites

Houston we have a problem....only 5 hours after it was completed the space shuttle snapped on half....but we got to see it before it happened!

There was also a uncarved block of snow to show what the teams had to start off with

This is Justins favorite, and happened to be the 1st place winner..this is just the back side though

There was even a kids play area which Grey LOVED! He was a little snow baby and played and played! They had a snow version of his chair at home...hehe. He knew exactly what to do with it.

Peek a boo!

Playing in a giant pile of snow

This is the rare snow raptor...native only to the Colorado mountains

We think Grey liked this one

Beautiful sky before the sun went down

At nigh they put LED lights on all the sculptures that changed color....completely changed the look of the sculptures!

Here was the front of the 1st place winner...well placed light in the window!

It was such a cool experience to see the giant sculptures...cant wait til next year!

Greyson's birth story (again)

Well, believe it or not, this birth story begins exactly one year ago from today. We hope you enjoy this revisit to the most memorable moment in our lives.

Greyson’s Birth Story

On Monday, February 7^th, I began what I thought was my first full week of pre-baby maternity leave. I spent the day cooking and baking lots of goodies for my friend Krysta, who had her baby girl the day before. I was so energized by the birth of her daughter; we had gone through our whole pregnancy together and all of a sudden it was so real that we were both going to have real babies in our arms!

With all the excitement of the birth of Raeana, I never had a chance to take an afternoon nap, or even sit and relax on the couch. When Justin came home from school, we spent the night making dinner, watching some TV, and speculating over the changing weather. We went to bed around 11pm to a complete white-out snow and wind storm. We stayed up in bed for quite some time, watching shows on the iPad, going to the window to check the weather, and checking the news websites to see if school would be cancelled the next day. Finally, around midnight, we decided to watch one final episode of Man v. Food before falling asleep.

When the episode ended, I heard Justin start to breath heavier and drift off to sleep. I was just about to grab my Nook to try to get myself to sleep when I was jolted by intense pain in my lower belly. I regularly got weird pings of pain, so I didn’t think much of it as I changed positions and tried to get myself comfortable. When the pain happened again a few minutes later, I felt the urge to rush to the bathroom. I knew immediately that my water had broken.

I yelled to Justin, who came to the bathroom to check out the situation. We both start freaking out a little and Justin starts asking, “What do we do now? Where is your phone?” As I am trying to calmly tell Justin to call the nurse’s line, I have my first contraction right there in the bathroom. The pain is so intense that I literally lift myself off the toilet to try to relieve some of the pressure. I knew I couldn’t sit there much longer, so I got up and moved to the couch in the sunroom.

Before I even get myself settled on the couch, I have another contraction; it was as this point that I knew something was different (or wrong) with how fast the contractions were coming. So, I get on the phone with the nurse but I can’t even tell her my symptoms because the contractions are coming so fast and so intense. Justin ends up taking over, getting instructions from the nurse to head to the hospital ASAP. Oh, and if we get stuck in the snow, to call an ambulance to pick us up. At this point we had both totally forgotten about the snow! We head into full-blown panic mode, with Justin running around trying to grab the items on the last-minute list while trying to console me and my rapidly increasing contractions. He even says that at one point, he was running between the front door and the sunroom in just his boxers, unsure of whether to get the car ready or come and console me.

I am not sure how long all of this lasted, but before I know it, Justin has my shoes on my feet, my coat around me, and he is leading me out the front door to the Jeep waiting steps away. The snowstorm was so bad that Justin had driven the Jeep up onto the front lawn! As he is helping me into the car, he says, “Put the seat back all the way because you will probably have a contraction in the car,” and I remember thinking No problem, I can handle one or two contractions in the car. Right as I think that, I have a contraction! It was pretty terrible not being able to position myself how I wanted to during the contraction.

Justin gets the dogs set in the kennel, locks the front door, and drives me in 4-wheel drive through the snowstorm to the hospital. He says he was going 45 to 50 mph, running two red lights on the way, making it to the hospital in record time.

When we arrive at the hospital, Justin pulls up to the labor and delivery entrance and tries to walk me in while leaving the car running with doors open in the parking lot. I tell him he can take care of the car, and I find my way into the registration area. By the time I make it there, I have another contraction and can’t even make out my name. Luckily, Justin walks up at just the right time, and gives them my basic info. They had me in an exam room, knowing only my name and social security number, telling me that I was dilated 7 cm and that I was ready to go to a labor room upstairs. By the time they got me on a hospital bed, in the elevator, and up to labor room 5, I progressed to 9.5 cm.

Then, I was in kind of a stall in my progression because the baby was sunny-side up; babies are born sunny-side up all the time, but in my case he was positioned in just a certain way that he was impeding me from dilating the final 0.5 cm. So, the nurses had me keep contracting for about 45 more minutes, all the while changing positions to try to get him in the right position. This was difficult because I had such an intense feeling that I needed to push, but they wouldn’t let me since there was a little lip that needed to move still.

At one point during the contractions, they were switching me from laying on my right side to laying on my left, which left me disoriented, and I lost which side of the bed Justin was on. Just then, I entered a really big contraction, and I went to hit Justin (which I had been doing while contracting) and I accidentally hit a nurse! She grabbed my wrist and said, “We don’t hit nurses!” Oops.

After contracting for the 45 minutes, I had a contraction that felt very very different – lots more pressure and some heat. The nurses checked me right away, and sure enough, I was at 10 cm and ready to push.

The pushing felt like it was going very quickly, and that I was moving the baby down, but really it took about 45 minutes in total. At one point, I noticed that the doctor and two nurses left, and I remember thinking, This baby will be coming out soon, where is the doctor? But really, they knew that it would take me some time to get him all the way down.

I do remember some specific moments of the pushing, but most of it was a blur. Justin tried to talk to me, and the nurses kept trying to ask me questions, but I don’t think I answered any of them. During each pushing session, I would focus on a little leaf design in the ceiling, and for some reason that helped me push correctly.

Before I knew it, the doctor was telling me to feel the head crowning, then to look down and see the head all the way out, and finally to give one final push to get the shoulders out. I was concentrating to hard that it was very difficult to see, and everything was blurring together, but I specifically remember seeing him during those times the doctor told me to look.

All of a sudden, at 2:57am, I had a brand new slippery, crying baby on my stomach. They tried to get him up to my chest, but the cord was too short. So, they gave it about a minute to stop pulsing, and then Justin cut the cord, and they moved the baby up to my chest and wrapped him in warm blankets. I can’t even remember the minutes after that- all I know is that I was in true bliss, not even able to answer or talk to Justin because I was so enthralled with the brand new life on my chest.

Justin and I spent some time touching his head, peaking at his hands and elbows, and just getting to him while the doctor stitched me up (5 stitches in total – yikes!). We seemed to be there forever, listening to his little dinosaur sounds and talking to him. After what was probably an hour, the nurses checked his breathing and noticed some fluid in his lungs, so they called a neonatal nurse to check him more thoroughly while he was on the warming table.

During this time, I had Justin text everyone (no one even knew we were at the hospital!) and go and get the bags from the car (we didn’t even have the camera with us!). When he came back, the baby was just about up to temperature, and we found out that he did swallow some mucous on the way out, but that he should be fine and wouldn’t need any additional care. Relieved, we made our way to the Mother/Baby Unit to start really getting to know our son.

After a rough first day and night, baby boy CC remained nameless. Using the white board in our room, we decided to name him Greyson Henry. Greyson was the first name of a math educator I worked with once in college, who was a skinny old guy with bright white hair who was amazing at teaching math. Henry is a family name on the Cooper side that Justin’s Grandpa Cooper traced back to the late 1700’s.

SNOW DAY!!!

Snow/blizzard day!! Everyone was talking about it all week, and it is finally here! We have just over a foot in the city. We have kept on top of the shoveling, mainly because there is not much else to do :). We enjoyed Grey's 12 hour night-time sleep, watching the news to see all the crazy conditions, a good lunch at Olive Garden (thanks Grammy!), and lots of play time with baby Grey. Enjoy the pics!

Grey sitting on the Buick to give you some perspective (poor Buick!)

"This stuff is weird, dad!"

This was right before a big face-plant.

Fun times with Grey.

A snowy day activity - painting the top of Grey's train table.

Getting closer... (more pics coming soon)