Ethan "walking"

Ethan was lucky enough to get an early Christmas present from his Grandma and Grandpa Gardner: an Exersaucer! Ever since then, he has been a lot better about locking his knees to try to stand up. So we decided to have a little fun and have him walk!

Our Reindeer

Here are some pictures of Ethan in a cute outfit that his Mimi (my mom) bought him! I think it's a reindeer

Looking at the camera

Showing off his two teeth!

The full outfit. Ready to help Santa deliver some presents

We're very excited to be heading home next week. I have two finals then we take off for California on Saturday.

Thanksgiving

For Thanksgiving, we headed up to Denver to spend time with family! The car ride was pretty decent on the way up there. Ethan slept for most of the time. When we got there, we went to Kim and Ryan's apartment to have dinner with them. We were excited to see our new niece Emma and to see Ellie again. We stayed with Kristen's aunt and uncle in Littleton so we headed over there after dinner.

We stayed for three days and we were able to spend lots of time with Kristen's family. Kim and Ryan's family came over every day. On Wednesday, we went on a walk to a park with a nice lake and a playground. We put Ethan in the baby swing for the first time! The park is right next to Columbine High School and they have the Columbine Memorial that we went to visit.

On Thanksgiving, we had a great turkey dinner. That evening, we went to Wal-Mart for some Black Friday shopping. We got Kristen a new laptop. Fortunately, it was very busy but we were able to get out of there in under an hour!

Unfortunately, Ethan got a little sick on Thursday with a cold. It was his first time and it was hard to have him sick.

Kristen went Black Friday shopping with Kim at a few stores on Friday morning, but I decided to take one for the team and stay home and sleep while Ethan slept! For lunch, Kristen, Ethan, and I headed to the Costa Vida down in Lone Tree that I went to while I was on my mission.

We left on Saturday for our drive back. It was a lot longer since Ethan was fussy and we left later than we wanted.

Ethan in a baby swing for the first time

Columbine Memorial sign

Two of the quotes that I thought were inspiring

Tired boy taking a nap while Kristen looks at the biographies of the victims

The lake at the park with some cool clouds overhead

Here are a few videos of Ethan from the past week

Party animal

Here's our late night party animal!

This video was from last night. It was taken after 1 AM! I stayed up with him while Kristen went to bed. He finally fell asleep at about 1:45 AM. Then, he apparently woke up again at 2:30 and wanted to eat! I was completely oblivious to this though since I was sound asleep.

He fell asleep after eating and didn't wake up again until 8 or so

My mom says that he's a California baby so he's sticking with California time!

Sorry about the weird aspect ratio, I took it on my phone

Rice cereal and Halloween

Here are a few pictures and videos from the past few days! I'll add more info to the comments

This is our attempt at a Halloween costume for Ethan using clothes we already had (he's a bear cub). Kristen gave him a nose with some makeup!

Close up of our little bear cub

Ethan's first time trying "solid" foods. It was really mostly milk with a little bit of baby rice cereal mixed in

Most of the cereal is on his face and bib! It looks like he's looking right out of the screen and at me

"Mom, it's so terrible!"

Video of Ethan's first meal

Prairie Dogs and Motorboats

I'm finally done with anatomy! Now I get to focus on our "Biology of Cells and Tissues" class, which is a mix of biochemistry, cell biology, molecular biology, and histology. Sounds like fun! We have a test on Friday

We had a great visit from Kristen's parents this past week.

They got here late Saturday night/early Sunday morning so they met us at church. They were very excited to see Ethan and I'm sure he was excited to see them!

On Monday, we (apparently) really needed lots more Ethan clothes so Kristen and her mom bought out all of the Kohl's stock for boys aged 0-12. Well maybe not quite that much but they definitely found lots of stuff! We also went to Prairie Dog Town at the local park, which is a "prairie dog preserve" just in case the prairie dog decides to go extinct. I know you will all make the trek to Lubbock to see the prairie dogs now that I've got some pictures of them up on the blog!

Eating prairie dog food aka weeds/plants

Hanging out

Kissing

Ethan was enthralled by the prairie dogs (sitting on grandpa's lap!)

After all the excitement of the day, we were too worn out to cook dinner so we headed to Red Lobster!

Tuesday, we went to the Lubbock Lake Landmark. It's a dried up lake. The more interesting part is the surrounding area where Native Americans used to hunt for food. They have found lots of stuff through various archeological digs. There is a museum set up with some of the artifacts and explanations of the lifestyle from 10,000-12,000 years ago. Afterwards, we ordered dinner from Domino's pizza from the store right next door to our apartment.

On Wednesday, I had class for most of the day but Kristen, Ethan, Mark, and Jan met me on campus during my lunch break for the tour of the Health Sciences Center. After their own lunch, they headed over the Texas Tech Museum where I met up with them later on. The most interesting part of the museum was some intricately carved ivory tusks they had on display. We had some steaks for dinner back at our apartment.

Kristen's parents left on Thursday for a quick stop in Denver before heading home.

Ethan has been doing well. We think he might be teething so he's drooling lots and sucking on anything he can get his hands on, including his own hands.

Eating his fingers

Wispy short red-haired faux-hawk

Ethan's new noise. Sounds like a motorboat to me!

Warning: Lots of drool in the video!

All Ready for Church!

Ready to go to church!

Visit from Grandpa and Mimi

We had a lot of fun with my parents last weekend. I'm glad we have Ethan out here to lure them to Texas! We got a few square meals out of the deal so it was worth it!

They came in on Wednesday night and we decided to go to the airport to surprise them since they weren't expecting us to show up there.

I was busy in class with long days on both Thursday and Friday so Kristen and Ethan entertained my parents. I heard that they had a lot of fun! One day they went shopping all over town and the next they came and met me on campus during my lunch break. I took them on a tour of some of the buildings and then they headed over to a ranching heritage museum across the street. I did get to see them in the evening as we enjoyed some nice dinners together (sometimes with a fussy 5-month-old who wanted to be walked around!)

On Saturday, we went on a drive around town and went to lunch together. I had to go to campus later on in the evening. Sunday was conference then heading to the undergrad campus of Texas Tech for a walk around. Quite the impressive campus that feels quite a bit bigger than BYU although they have similar attendance numbers.

It's too bad that it was a pretty busy weekend even by med school standards so I couldn't spend more time with them during their visit.

Reading with Grandpa

Reading with Mimi

Making faces!

Looking her over

Smiling at Mimi

I wanted to show Ethan's hair color

Even more talking

So in case you can't tell from the many videos we've already posted, Ethan is a very talkative and loud little guy and he is pretty much all day.  Sometimes we can't even hear each other talking.  When he learns a new sound, he will make it over and over again for days until he learns a new one.  This one in the video is his most recent favorite.

We are very excited and looking forward to a visit from Jeremy's parents this week.  Jeremy will be busy studying, but will still be able to spend some time with them.  I think Ethan is looking forward to having someone else to hang out with all day besides his mommy.

Laughing!

Last night, Ethan was laughing and laughing so we finally got a good video of him doing it!

And here are some pictures we took as well

 

Also, he rolled over for the first time last night! We were pretty excited. We knew that he was getting close but he was finally able to do it.

It has been busy here in Lubbock. Kristen took dinner to a family with a new baby. She also went to visit with some of the young moms in our ward. I had an anatomy test yesterday so my whole week was spent studying for that! Not really much else going on with us!

Reading a book and wiggling

Well it's the end of another week of class so I finally have time to post a picture and video.

It felt like this week went by super fast. I volunteered to take some of the med school interviewees on a tour today. It was kind of strange to be leading them on a tour since I just barely arrived myself! It went pretty well and we didn't get lost despite wandering all over the Health Sciences Center, Academic Classroom Building, UMC Hospital, new East Tower addition, and Medical Pavilion. Some day I'll actually get around to taking some pictures of the med school so everyone can see where I spend every waking hour!

Enough about me. Here's Ethan!

Ethan and his mommy reading a book together

Labor Day

Happy Labor Day!

I took a little break from studying this weekend. We had our first exam Friday so I felt like it was a good opportunity to relax. Friday night, we went to Five Guys for some burgers. That was Kristen's choice since we alternate picking for our Friday date night meals. On Saturday, we slept in then spent some time unpacking and organizing our apartment, including hanging some of our pictures. Kristen was sustained to her new calling as the Nursery Chorister on Sunday so she'll have lots of fun with that. We didn't even know that there was such a calling. There are so many little kids in our ward that they will be splitting up the nursery into 3 different groups! Kristen will get to go to each group to lead them in singing time. No word yet on where they want to stick me! I think that they should just call me as "Ethan's babysitter" since Kristen won't be able to watch him while she's leading children's songs!

Today, we killed the day by heading to Walmart to shop and make all sorts of valuable purchases. I'm sure Aunt Lana and Grandma Whiting would be proud of our lost wanderings through the store with the throngs of other Labor Day shoppers. They are remodeling it so everything is scattered around in no particular order.

Here are a few recent pictures of Ethan from my cell phone.

"My parents keep dressing me in pajamas that are way too little for me!"

Ethan is doing a lot better job at holding his head up!

In his carseat shopping at Walmart! I think he likes to look around while he's there. He is rarely fussy when we're at the store since he has so much to look at

We had a big thunderstorm last week here in Lubbock. It was pretty wild with torrents of rain, frequent flashes of lightning, and howling winds. I went out onto the landing to take a few pictures once it subsided. The busy 3-lane street in front of our house was reduced to 1 1/2 lanes on our side by the river of water. When I went to school the other day, at least 5 different windows in the Academic Classroom Building at the Health Sciences Center were broken out by the storm.

The river of water, making driving conditions pretty dangerous for the stretch of road with a speed limit of 45 mph. A few people were braking pretty hard once they hit it, but we didn't see any accidents

This is a flash of lightning in the distance. The lightning hit a house on the south end of Lubbock, starting a fire and killing one person.

The river of water from a different direction. The car lights are blurred because the exposure is really long.

This is just a random picture of the moon I took the other night. It was the day after the full moon but it was still pretty bright

Welcome Home Jeff!

Welcome back to the U.S. and to post-mission life, Jeff! Ethan saw the pictures on Uncle Neil and Aunt Lori's blog of everyone holding their signs. He was so excited that he wanted to take some of his own!

Hopefully Jeff is able to survive the whirlwind of activity to leave so soon for BYU

Another Video

We got another cute video of Ethan tonight so we thought we'd share!

Ethan Video

Ethan sure is growing up! He's 3 1/2 months old already! Here are a few recent pictures and a video

First Week and a Half

Is it bad that the first week and a half of medical school has felt like a month?

We start our first year with an 11-week block called Clinically Oriented Anatomy. This means that I am spending every waking minute studying anatomy! Well, almost every minute.

We go to the gross anatomy lab 4 days a week to do a dissection on our cadaver. I share a cadaver with 4 other "tank-mates" (Kristen thinks that this word is pretty funny. The cadavers are stored in a metal tank with formaldehyde and water so our assigned tank contains our cadaver. When it is closed, it looks like this
http://news.medill.northwestern.edu/uploadedImages/News/Chicago/Images/Urban/anatomylab2.jpg
Don't worry, no dead bodies are visible!) The dissection part has been really interesting, but our professors also expect us to know a TON of stuff! We also have some lectures, mostly on embryology or microscopic stuff that we can't see on our cadaver. Even though we're basically only taking one class, I can guarantee that I am studying way more than I have ever studied.

We do have another class called Early Clinical Experience 1 where we learn basic doctoring skills like how to take a history and later on how to perform a physical exam. The time commitment for that class is much lower since that class is spread out over the whole year.

In the meantime, Kristen gets to take an even larger role in taking care of Ethan. He has been a lot more curious lately. He tracks things with his eyes, he gets scared by loud or unfamiliar noises (like the organ at church!), he likes staring at his hands while he moves them, and he has actually started to play a little bit with the rattles on his bouncer. He also loves to suck on his hand, especially his thumb.

White Coat Ceremony

We had our white coat ceremony for the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine Class of 2016 this afternoon!

Drs. Cobbs and Casanova putting the white coat on me. Dr. Casanova is an OB/GYN so that was appropriate for me!

Posing for a picture for the professional photographer down at the stage

Receiving a book as a gift

Reciting our Class oath

Leaving the stage

Our family afterward

The proceedings were similar to a shortened graduation ceremony. We had an invocation then the dean of the School of Medicine gave some remarks. We then went one at a time up on stage to have our white coat placed on us. I was the third-to-last out of our class of 150 since they went in alphabetical order. We paused for a picture, shook hands with the doctors who placed the coat on us, then went to pick up a book as a gift. The book is called "The Anatomy of a Kidnapping: A Doctor's Story" and was written by the dean of our medical school. He relates his story of being kidnapped out of his house in 2005 and eventually talking the criminal out of his intentions.

After we picked up our book, we went behind the curtain and had another picture taken alone. We lined up behind the stage and they opened the curtains. Dr. Cobbs led us in reading the class oath that we wrote as a class and we ended with a benediction.

Kristen and I didn't stay long afterward as Ethan was getting hungry, but we did ask someone to take a picture of us afterward.

Here's a news story that a local news channel did about the ceremony in case you want to see a video. http://everythinglubbock.com/fulltext?nxd_id=113372