Fridays Dose of Brilliance

CakeWrecks-this site is hilarious. It’s kinda like Glitter Gone Bad, but for cakes. It features cakes, often with spelling or grammar errors, sometimes with creepy designs, and always horrible. Enjoy!

Well done Jeffrey!

I married a great gift giver. He listens when i casually mention that I lost my favorite coach sunglasses and surprises me with new ones on my birthday...

He also totally knows that I love all jewelry with owls so he also got this adorable green and brown (awesome colors) owl bracelet from etsy.

I'm a pretty lucky girl :)

Age is mind over matter. If you don't mind, it doesn't matter

It’s officially my golden birthday, the big 2-8. (thanks for the bday wishes everyone, especially katy!) I’m ok with being 28, truly. I am good with where I’m at in life and just pleased in general. I left the big job for a good company. I participate in activities, groups and boards that I enjoy and love being a part of. I enjoy spending time with our family and we are very fortunate to have so many close relatives living within just a few miles of us. I think I’ve accumulated a wonderful group of girlfriends and know that I have their unfailing support. I have the love of a great guy who often lets me sleep in on the weekends. Our son is amazing and lovable and smart and reminds me everyday how lucky I am to have him.

Today should be a great day. Jobi just brought me coffee and McD breakfast, then it’s lunch with Ashley at Miracle Mile. After work I’m getting a pedicure and then having dinner with Jeffrey while my MIL watches Connor. Good times.

PS-don't expect this same optimism when 29 rolls around this time next year! :)

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Connor graduated to Baby & Me III swim class. I can't remember if I wrote about that or not last week... whatever. what do you expect me to do? go back and look?!?! well, that's just crazy talk now. Anyway, Baby & Me III-very exciting. This is the last class where the parent gets in the pool with the child. After this, he'll move on to classes like guppie, shark, etc. The one in the lower left is super blurry, probably due to my kid being crazy fast...but I still thought it was funny.

Also, my wonderful friends Ashley, Dawn & Patricia were awesome enough to plan a get together for my bday this past friday. It was good times and thank you everyone who was there...Angela, Alyssa, Ashley, Carrie, Carly, Dawn, Deena, Erin, Kayla, Kira, Janeen, Jen, Jill, Jobina, Leah, Patricia, Shayna, Thereza! Here are a few pics from the evening.

Dawn & Janeen

Patricia, Jen, & Deena

Linds, Carly & Deena

Leah, myself and the beautiful board she got me. you can't tell but it reads 'Home Sweet Home'

Patricia & Linds

Crock Pot Tuesday

I love chili, but every recipe I've ever attempted has like 25 ingredients in it. I refuse to go to the grocery store and buy all kinds of special ingredients I'll never again use just for a meal as low-key as chili. chili, come on! So, I searched through recipes and found one that looks amazing and consisted of ingredients I already had in the house, which is key. I added a couple things and adjusted a bit, but it's still a very basic chili recipe.

by the way, this isn't my actual photo. i forgot to

download the pics last night. you get the idea...

it's chili and cornbread.

Easy Spicy Chili

2 lbs. ground beef

3, 15oz cans kidney beans, drained

2, 14.5oz cans diced tomatoes, undrained

1 envelope dry chili seasoning mix

1 8oz can diced green chilis

Dump all ingredients into slow cooker. Mix well. Cover and cook on low 8-10 hours or on HI 4-6 hours.

btw-I really hate when crock pot recipes require prep work. Isn't the point supposed to be dumping a bunch of stuff into the pot, setting the timer and coming home several hours later to a ready-made meal? well, that's the point for me. So, you can brown the meat ahead of time if you want to, but it's really not necessary. It's cooking for a long time and will cook perfectly fine in the crock pot.

Also, this makes something like 10 servings so if you, 1. don't have a super huge fam and 2. don't enjoy eating the same meal 5 straight days...chili freezes very well. consider it.

when the lights go down in the city...

So, in my office, the lights are set on a sensor. If there is no movement for 10 minutes, maybe 15, the lights go off. I’m assuming it’s for some ‘go green’ reason-not sure. Anyway, I love when the lights go off. Once they go off, I try and move as little as possible. and if i have to move, i do it really, really slow. i've pretty much perfected this. It’s so calm and serene…

Friday's Dose of Brilliance

The Big Bang Bar-Today's site is The Big Bang because my wonderful friends Ashley, Dawn and Patricia planned a little get together for my bday tonight. My actual golden birthday (has no one heard of this but me?) is next Wednesday, but we’re celebrating tonight. I really love the big bang. really do. they performed at Jeffrey's company xmas party this year and that was awesome too. i'm a fan!

ps-The Big Bang Theory is also one of my fav shows.

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

we got a new tv recently. jeffrey has been wanting one for a long, long time but we finally decided to go for it in time for our Super Bowl party. So, here's our new tv. Jeffrey and my dad figured out a way to take a few shelves out of our existing entertainment center and still keep most of the storage. That was a dealbreaker for me!

Connor loved the tv box-it's literally in his playroom now!

here is the lovely erin showing off her fancy new glasses at happy hour last week.


Connor following Zoey into the kitty gym thingy.

The little things

Day is going ok, and I'm currently on my lunch. I got my hair cut yesterday so the sheer shorten length alone cut about 10 minutes off my “get ready time” today. Gotta love that. I had this weird thing happen to my bangs when I was pregnant. Jeffrey tried to convince me that we should try and save money (with baby on the way) and I should stop going to my ‘stylist’ and start going to the place he goes. (hint: starts with G ends with Reat Clips) I succumbed and have been paying for it dearly ever since. The butcher woman parted my hair normally, and then cut too much off the smaller side of my bangs. Seriously? So they were left at a really awkward 2” length which put them at a length where they were always breaking from brushing and flat-ironing. I looked like a child who cut my own hair with safety scissors and it’s still like that…2 years later. So, my new stylist I found yesterday suggested that I start parting my hair on the other side. Genius. It’s taking some getting used to but it’ll allow my crazy bangs to grow out which sounds good to me. Well, now that I’ve spent several minutes writing about bangs I’m going to continue.

My friend Sally is working from home today so I parked in her reserved space which is lazy of me but totally awesome as it’s literally the closest spot to the building :) Doesn’t take much to thrill me friends. That means i'm on the road by 3:32 today!

It’s Dollars for Denim at work which means that if you bring in a dollar to go to that month’s charity, you get to wear jeans. Yes please, here is my dollar. Thank you very much. Plus, I’m wearing my pink shoes which always makes me happy!

This post was pretty random but I had already typed too much when I considered dumping it.

Wordless Wednesday still to come…

Crock Pot Tuesday

This week we wanted something with chicken. We have a bunch of chicken breasts from costco and connor likes chicken so it's super simple for him to just eat what we're eating. I always buy pasta sauce when it's on sale because it's an easy ingredient so we had everything on hand for this recipe.



Chicken-Pizza Dish

8 chicken breast halves
2 c. chunky pasta sauce
1 c. your choice of shredded cheese

Spray crock pot with cooking spray and place chicken in pot. Dump sauce on chicken and cook on LOW for 4 hours or HI for 6-8 hours. Spread cheese over chicken and sauce for last 15 minutes of cook time.

My review: This was great. We just served it with a simple green salad and garlic bread, but it could easily be served over pasta so maybe we'll try that next time. I cooked it on low for 4 hours because it's really easy to overcook/scorch in the crockpot. I was home all day today so I could start the crock pot at noon without a problem. I didn't add anything else to the crockpot but the three ingredients, but you can add other spices like oregano, thyme, basil, etc. as desired but we just used salt and pepper and it was enough. I think adding a cup of red wine would add something too. We'll def do this one again.

Bestest News Ever

We had Connor's Cardio appointment today and the news was very good. We found out that there is nothing wrong with his heart at all, and that it's actually quite strong. We took the pic above when we were waiting for the doctor to give us the results. I think we all look a bit exhausted! Here's a quick recap of what happened at our appointment.

We arrived at the Arizona Pediatric Cardiology Consultants office at one and filled out a ton of paperwork. The medical assistant weighed (24lbs, 4 oz) and measured (31.5") Connor and took some vitals. He freaked the heck out during the blood pressure part-and i totally don't blame him. I seriously hate having that arm cuff thing on. I swear it hurts so bad, and his arm is just so teeny. I asked how they can even guage the bp reading when the kids are always spazing out and she said they really can't usually. She tried taking his pulse in several dif places but he was thrashing around so much it was next to impossible. She eventually found it in his foot which I thought was pretty odd. He's usually so great at dr appts but i think that the bp really pissed him off!

After that, she told him she was going to put stickers on him and then proceeded to put about a dozen of those little tabs on his chest and belly. Then she clamped the EKG cables to the sticky tabs. It was pretty horrifying seeing him all "plugged in" like that. I nearly lost it at that point. Connor calmed down a bit when we watched the EKG report printing out so that was good. Then...he got crazy again when we had to take the stickers off his belly-it was like taking twelve bandaids off his tender little belly and chest.

The doctor came in next and went over our concerns, family history and the EKG report. He told us that he didn't see anything that would cause him to be concerned with Connor's heart. He said that usually when kids have heart issues, they were present at birth and even earlier. Combined with how crazy active Connor is, the EKG results and when he listened to his heart he was certain that Connor has a healthy, strong heart. It was great news. He went on to tell us a bit more that we would have seen if there had really been something wrong and we'd never noted any of the items.

That was pretty much it. I really want to thank all of our friends for their positive thoughts and prayers during all of this. It was quite a scare and now that it's passed, I feel like I can breathe a ton easier...and get some sleep. and i won't freak out if connor runs constantly for 20 minutes around the house as he often does. all good stuff:)

Weekend Wrap Up

Well, the teams going to the Super Bowl were decided today. I'm a niners fan, so I was out of the running a while ago. Jeffrey though, is an Eagles fan. He did really well today with the defeat which surprised/pleased/shocked me. He kept saying that if someone else was going to go, he'd want it to be the Cardinals. wish granted. Super Bowl always causes mixed emotions for me. One one hand, I love it. The total culmination of a great season. On the other hand, it depresses me. I love football and tolerate most other sports so when Super Bowl comes and goes it's over-for a long time. Regardless, Go Cardinals!

This year, we're having a Super Bowl party and I'm pretty stoked. As great as it is to be able to attend something at someone else's house, I decided let's do this one at our place. And let's hire a sitter to keep the kiddos entertained/occupied/trapped in the playroom. So far there are quite a few kids coming, like 7. I figure if we pay her well, give her food and pass out her number to the other parents in attendance, the sitter will happily keep the kids entertained in the playroom so that we can enjoy ourselves. Anyone with a mobile child can completely understand how exhausting and totally not fun it is to chase your child around someone's home to ensure that they don't light the couch (or themselves) on fire with that lovely candle set up on the end table. Keiko described it best to me as mommy sweat and she's right. You spend the entire time running around after your kid that you are dripping wet and it's gross. Not this time buddy! this time we planned ahead!

This weekend we finally got all of our Christmas stuff down, which is pretty embarrassing to admit but there it is. It took us for-e-ver this year and i'm honestly thankful that we're having this party or it may have remained through January. We just had a total and complete lack of drive to get it all packed up and put away. Somehow we managed which is good as i'm sure it's frowned upon that the HOA pres is still rockin' the xmas lights in mid-january. lo siento neighbors, lo siento.

Tomorrow is a holiday and Jeffrey and I both have the day off. I'm thrilled, except that the main thing on our list of to-dos is Connor's doctor's appointment. I'm glad that it's finally here and we'll almost be done with the waiting but part of me wishes we could just ignore the appointment and go to the park. He's had no issues since the few times in December and I don't think i'm in denial when I say i really think it's nothing, but we'll see. From what I've read tomorrow will consist of several, several tests and then we'll hear news immediately. so, we're going to the appointment at 1 and then maybe we'll go to the park after:)

Friday's Dose of Brilliance

All My Favs-I don’t really know how to explain it except to say that if I am seriously considering changing my homepage to this. It has all the websites you visit all day long organized by category and then a few special picks of each week. Carly recommended this site to me and I am loving it. Thanks Car.

Another New Years Photo

Andrea, Jill, Lauren, Christine, Carly, Ashley, Dawn, Alyssa and myself

Here's one final New Years Photo. I just got it from Ashley, but didn't want to mess up all the formatting that took forever in yesterday's post.

Happy 2009!

We'll take a cup of kindness yet, For auld lang syne!

I’ve been hoping to get some New Years photos posted, but am having some difficulty. You see, most of the photos I found on my camera (210 photos btw) came out looking a lot like this…

lauren and i

lauren fell :)

no idea why there was a patio photo taken-i think that may have been where lauren fell

i think that over the last 15 years or so carly, lauren and I have like 1000 pics just like this

Oh new years. What a holiday. We had a great time this year. Probably the best we’ve had in several years. There is always so much planning and build up to New Years in general that by the time it happens it’s lame and such a let down. I think that one of these years I just want to have a group of friends rent a house up north or even in mexico and just hang out there. Sounds like a plan, who’s with me?

So this year, Ashley and KC had New Years at their mansion house and it was great. There were about 15-20 of us there probably, including the BFF and Jill of course. Since Jill is pregnant she drew the short straw and was nice enough to be the DD for us. Poor thing. Looking at these pics now I especially feel bad. I won’t go into details because things typed online can last forever but I will say that several of us were recovering the next day. It was low key, the boys played poker and the girls played apples to apples and drank. Then, we didn’t realize that someone paused the tv and we missed New Years…classic. Here are a few photos that turned out a bit better than the above shots.

if i remember correctly i made alyssa hold up two fingers because she announced to us tonight (after much speculation--she didn't drink a thing) that she's pregnant with #2!!

lauren & ryan...somehow i went the entire night w/o getting a pic of jeffrey and i

lo and i

jill, carly and I

ashley and carly

alyssa and jill playing apples to apples (ps-i won somehow)

carly and I

carly and bobby-i think bobby won poker this night

ben is doing ok!

jill and jeffrey

not sure what KC is celebrating-i don't think he won poker that night

champagne-it's not pretty the next morning folks...especially the way we drink it

Nearly Wordless Wednesday

Connor is in love with his playroom. Jeff and I were in the kitchen and we heard the tv on in the playroom we looked at each other knowing that neither of us turned it on. We ran in there to find him like this. Lovely.

Then we told him to get down and he was pissed.

So being the amazing parent that I am, I laughed and took his photo. Sorry connor.

Here are some more photos from the past week.

(photo courtesy of Erin Holliday Photography!)

this next one is my fav of the week. he does this when he's hiding. he doesn't think we can see him since he can't see us. i love him.