It's the End of an Era

One of my best friend’s Dawn is getting married in a couple weeks, so the past month has been full of wedding to-dos. Shower planning, shower shopping, shower decorating, shower attending…this past weekend was the bachelorette party. Yikes. Is it sad that I’m 27 and often feel too old for things already. Yes, it’s sad. No reason to answer that…it’s called a hypothetical, thanks.

Anyway, we all went up to Prescott this past weekend to celebrate Dawn’s impending exit from singlehood. There’s a street called Whiskey Row that is lined with bars, restaurants, bars, shops, bars and a few bars. So, we drove up Saturday morning and went almost immediately to one of the bars. Then we went up to the rooms and got ready for the night ahead of us. The plan was to play Pub Golf-have you played this? It’s awesome. The point is to dress up in tacky golf clothes…plaid, argyle, knee socks, dumbass hats…you get it. So, you go out in these outfits and chaos ensues. A real round of Pub Golf includes 18 bars, but that’s just ridiculous so we will shoot for 9 bars. Each bar you go to has a different assigned drink. Each drink has an assigned par (# of sips). So, let’s say our first stop, Matt’s Pub, has Guiness as the drink and the par is 3. If I drink my Guiness in 5 drinks, I’m 2 over par and probably losing already. The other horrible part is that the drink list tends to go a little something like this…Stop 1: Guiness, Stop 2: Lemondrop Shot, Stop 3: Glass of Wine…it’s like I can hear my liver screaming in fear already!! So, this is a great game in theory. Unfortunately the stupid girl who shall remain nameless (Megan) forgot all the stuff and ruined everything. Too dramatic? Well, she did. So, we just went around all the bars in our golf clothes. Lame? Yes. She also wore a skirt too short for her and her ass hang out the whole night…Exhibit A:

You are welcome.

Anyway, since we’re just fun anyway, we had a blast just drinking and enjoying these little hole in the wall bars. Aren’t those the best bars anyway? They were all just so damn excited to have out-of-towners there-especially in the form of 15+ girls! Here are more pics of the night. The doll’s name is Rico-creepiest blow up doll ever. Absolutely.

And we don't know this lady, but she wanted her pic taken with Rico. Sure thing. Please note his socks.

A few more photos of the Pub Golfers...


And, the evening was clearly topped off by some random Prescott guy throwing his dirty underwear at Dawn. They landed on her head. I wish i had a photo, but i was busy peeing my pants laughing. Not so funny to Dawn.

All in all it was a blast. The ride home, not quite as fun as the ride there. Oh, good times.

A word to the wise ain't necessary, it's the stupid ones who need the advice

You're enjoying your day
Everything's going your way
Then along comes Debbie Downer.

Always there to tell you 'bout a new disease

A car accident or killer bees

You'll beg her to spare you, "Debbie, Please!"

But you can't stop Debbie Downer!

I promised myself that when we had kids i wouldn't become 'that mom' who gives out unsolicitied advice.

you surely know the person i'm talking about. this literally starts being thrown at you the minute you announce you are pregnant and doesn't stop until...wait, it still hasn't stopped. i loathe this. here's just a few of these lovely trinkets that spoil sports graced upon me over the last two years...

"dont spend a lot of money on clothes, they'll grow out of them so quick" or "you spent how much for those shoes? i mean they are cute, but he won't even remember them"-so what? this is my child, and if i want to buy him silly outfits that will serve no other purpose than some sick cute photos, leave me be. why do people seem to thrive off of being such downers and making people less excited about something they deserve to be excited over?!? what's wrong with these people?

"what do you mean you are not sleeping, you are supposed to sleep when they sleep". oh really captain obvious, that's a fabulous idea. i don't want to sound crazy violent here, but i was near ready to punch the next person in the face that said this to me when connor was born. grrr. just to give you a little taste of a newborns schedule, let's say that he eats at 2am. well, 40 minutes later he's done. then i try to burp him for another 15 so he doesn't throw up all over me. diaper, cleaning him after the feeding, calming him down because he is pissed that he's no longer eating...then, i try and get him to go to sleep for about 30 minutes. that leads to about a solid 20 minutes of actual sleep time. well, guess what? it's now 4am and by my records it's meal time again. tell me again captain where you expected me to sleep in there. thanks and shut up. not to mention if i wanted to somehow squeeze in a shower, laundry, a phone call, or even some quality bonding time with my son. forget sleep.

"it's ok that you don't sleep, you'll sleep when he's 18--oh no you won't cause then you'll worry about him even more"--got to say this is retarded. who are the Debbie Downers of the world who walk around making us feel lousy on purpose?? who does that??

I'm sure there are more, but this is all i can come up with right now. so, here's my own bit of unsolicited advice. if you have ever said one of the above things to someone-stop it. stop immediately. no one asked for your advice.

now, on the other side of this, i love talking about babies, pregnancy, whatever. my friend jennifer is about to have her baby any day and she directly asks for advice on a daily basis and i'm more than happy to spew all kinds of goodness to her. but...#1 she asked for it...and #2 i'll be honest with her if she wants it, but i'm not going to make her sad and kill her thunder. geez people!!

Health nuts are going to feel stupid someday, lying in hospitals dying of nothing.

Yeah, I am officially a crapy blogger. I am sorry. Sometimes, well, life happens.

For those of you who I talk to on a regular basis-wait let me stop there and address my obvious allusion that there are more than two people reading this blog-ok, as I was saying…for those of you I talk to on a regular basis you know that connor’s been sick. Crazy sick. It started January 18th when he had his first overnight babysitting experience (J) and he came home the next morning with a serious cold. Turned out to be RSV, which to be brief, is this severe respiratory virus that is pretty dangerous to babies. Their airway gets totally clogged with mucus and they can go into respiratory distress-again, scary. So, it’s super duper contagious and he was out of school for a week. His teachers told us that they had a near HazMat team come in and disinfect his classroom so none of the other babies would get it. Gross. We had to give him breathing treatments every 4 hours-round the clock for about 10 days. It’s ridiculous contagious so I was home with him the entire time. So, we think it’s passed. He’s feeling better and goes back to school for one day. Then the next morning, he’s puking constantly. Nearly a dozen times in an hour-which is dangerous enough to dehydrate a little baby. So, Jeffrey takes him to the ER and I leave the office (after finally coming back) and practically fly to the hospital to meet them. Connor gets diagnosed with some gross (and of course contagious) stomach virus. And hooray for me, just sitting in the waiting room I got Rotavirus, which is honestly the worst illness I’ve ever had. I was literally quarantined to our room for 5 days, while Jeffrey took care of Connor in another room. It’s horrible to be so sick that you can’t even take care of your baby who is also sick. Ugh, so it was a crazy long three weeks in the end. I think we’re still struggling to get back to normal. Oh, and Connor lost two pounds, which is so much when you’re still a tiny little guy!! Here’s a pic of him and his breathing mask from the RSV.

Other than that, nothing really new going on. I will try, try, try to be better I promise…especially after the incredible over-exageration from Katy that I haven’t posted in 7 months. J

Office Pet Peeves

Ok, so I am well aware that my standards are set ridiculously high. I’ve been told this for nearly 10 years-thanks I get it. I just don’t understand incompetence and don’t accept it as the norm. Call me crazy I suppose. Anyway, I work in an office. I enjoy working in an office-it’s easy, keeps me off the streets, whatever. Another great thing about working in an office is that it gives me all sorts of crazy material to laugh at. Unfortunately, it also gives me loads of stuff to find annoying. Also, note that I've been working in an office for nearly a decade, and these things are not really about my current job...just about office stuff in general! Here’s my current list:


1. Reply All. Holy crap. Is it necessary to include everyone on your conversation? Job related? Fine, let’s all stay in the loop. You feeling the need to put your own little quip in on the stupid forward some jackass sent around? Not necessary. I seriously received the following email earlier today.

M: I have to take a client out for lunch in Seattle tomorrow. Any ideas?
R: I am in Seattle now. When is your flight.
M: I don't get in until tonight. Want to grab dinner after my flight?

R: sounds good. What are you hungry for? What about seafood. I could go for houston’s too.

I’ll stop there because that’s about the time I started automatically deleting these retarded emails the minute they came in. I don’t give a crap that you're craving seabass. Looking for a great steak? Shut up.

2. ONCE, I asked if anyone wanted anything when I walked next door to everyone’s favorite coffee magnate. I swear, if you walk into the office with lunch, coffee, anything and you didn’t offer to gather food for everyone else the response is always a sarcastic, wow, thanks for asking if I wanted any coffee/burgers/tacos/insert favorite food name here.

3. I know that this one will completely make me sound like an 85 year old biddy, but use correct spelling and grammar people. I mean are we that lazy that hitting F7 must be skipped?!? I swear, if you are just completely unable to understand the difference between to/too/two and their/there/they’re I don’t want to receive emails from you. This is your official notice. Thanks for your understanding.

4. Speaker phone. We all have a lot of conference calls. Usually 5-10 per day probably. I cannot stand when someone nearby has their phone on speaker-seriously, do they think that everyone wants to be in on their call? I assure you that’s not the case at all. And I absolutely hate when I’m on a call and another person conferenced in stays on their speaker. You can not hear them at all, but you can surely hear all the background crap going on!! Stop being lazy-pick up your phone.

5. Elevators. There is so much akwardness related to elevators I don’t really know which to start with. How about that guy who rushes onto the elevator when he hasn’t even paused the acceptable amount of time to allow people off!! Or the people who get into the elevator and continue with their inappropriate conversation. Really? Your date last evening had the nerve to ask you to split the bill? Riveting. People who smell up the entire elevator. I don’t care if it’s smoke, body odor, tacky perfume, today’s lunch or what-I don’t want to smell like you. If I did, I would have rubbed up against you rather than inadvertently stepped onto the world’s worst smelling elevator. Button Blockers also. Seriously? Do you need to stand directly in front of the buttons so that I have to awkwardly ask you to select the 6th floor? Plenty of space in here buddy.

Well, now that I’ve come across as a total complainer I think that’s all! I like hearing about people’s pet peeves. Half the time, I share them. The other half, I think I am part of the problem!!

St. Nick's

So, I realize that our family is pretty much the only family of all the families i know who knows that this holiday exists. I was accused today of even making it up. Not true. I'm about to get educational on you so grab your number two pencil, your trapper keeper and take notes!

St. Nicholas was kindof the precurser to Santa Claus. It's a European tradition that came here along with all the immigrants. Mostly a Dutch holiday it's celebrated on December 5th, the day before the Feast of St. Nicholas or St. Nicholas Day, which is December 6th. Anyway, the tradition goes that St. Nicholas would travel to the homes of children on the night of December 5th and bring small gifts. Sound familiar? Well it should, the Dutch name for St. Nicholas is Sinterklaas (much like Santa Claus, right?). Sinterklaas eventually morphed into Santa Claus. Like so many other countries, in the US Santa Claus delivers presents on Christmas Eve. In Holland, among other countries in Europe, the gifts are delivered on the eve of the big feast. We are selfish in our family and celebrate both. St. Nicholas is on a much smaller scale and is kind of a "taste" of the big ol' Christmas extravaganza.

Ok, about the celebration now. The actual tradition has children placing their shoe out for St. Nick to deliver their goods into. This morphed as well, into stockings. If the child was good, they would expect fruit and nuts. If not, coal was their prize. WIth time, this grew to different types of gifts. Typically it's still a smaller, much less expensive gift. Maybe a cd or a small toy. Gifts are opened the morning of December 6th.

Anyway, we celebrated Connor's first St. Nick's this week. I hassled Jeffrey until he gave in and we opened our gifts on the night of the 5th. We'll do it right when it counts and Connor is old enough to know what is going on. So, I got Superbad the movie. Hilarity. Jeffrey got some Christmas cds he'd wanted and an Office quotes page a day calendar--this was truly a hint from me that it existed and I wanted one on christmas:) . when he didn't catch the subtlety of my hint-i told him where and how much. connor got the book The Night Before Christmas, which was originally based on St. Nick and eventually retold to include Santa stuff. He also got cute Christmas clothes.

I love holiday traditions:)

Go Elf Yourself

So, I've had this emailed to me from about a dozen different people so i broke down and made our own. by the way, i wanted to add the kitties, but there is only room for four and i just couldn't choose between mira and zoey. after considering letting them fight it out in a winner take all kinda pay per view extravaganze, i decided to just post the humans:)

Enjoy and Happy Holidays!

The Barnes Family Elves

Cake? Yes please.

well, i love television. i found a new show today. well, new to me. though i've told this to several people only to be told that it's been there favorite show for ever. nice. thanks.

anyway, it's Ace of Cakes on the Food Network. This show is hilarious. It's about this comany in Baltimore I think and they make custom cakes for weddings, birthday parties, whatever. so, today they made cakes to look like the following...

scrabble board...

bacon...
sushi...

They also had a slot machine cake, a bubble gum machine and lots of other stuff. check them out here. so, that's just a few of them. i think geof (jeff) is my favorite person on the show. he's sarcastic and super dry and i like that.

Does anyone else watch this?

Minimum Wage at work

so, i've often been told (over and over really), that my expectations on those in customer service is far too high. i am sorry, but is it truly too much to ask for the kid who rings me up at target to acknowledge me standing there in line purchasing my random goods?? aparently so. sad, sad.

here is a prime example of what i'm talking about...

my conversation with joann's fabric kid...

fabric guru: Joann's fabric, this is Karl.
me: yes, i'm calling to see if you carry scrapbook paper.
fabric guru: yeah, we've got that
me: great, do you have Christmas styles?
fabric guru: um, sure
me: ok, well i'm going to have to run over there on my lunch so you're sure?
fabric guru: i should really check first
me: great, thank you.
fabric guru: we have stickers for Hanukah
me: super. i'm actually looking for Christmas paper though.
fabric guro: the stickers are on sale though.
me: great, i'll check out the jewish stickers. but I really need Christmas paper.
fabric guro: yeah, we've got that too. I'm sure it's by the stickers
me: ok, because again i'll be using my lunch to go over there...
fabric guro: ok, i'll check

dialtone...super duper.

The End. Well, almost. turns out I just run over on lunch, buy my christmas paper and some other junk. then when i leave, he forgets to put the paper in my bag. i get all the way back to work and realize that this stellar employee gave me everything but the ever-important paper. seriously!?! so i call back and he truly says to me, yeah, i was wondering why you left them here. grr. thank you joann's fabric guy. you topped it off for me.

Paging Mr. A Knife

Oh wow. Last night was full of Hilarity with a capital H. I cannot decide if my favorite part was when Dwight broke out all of his hidden weaponry around the office, thank you Mr. A Knife or maybe it was when Jim nearly cried when Phyllis called him Michael. I have to say though, that it has to be when Michael yells "blacks do crack" to Stanley about his wrinkles. I peed a little I think:)

by the way, I just saw Melora Hardin who plays Jan on Chelsea Handler who is also hilarious. I'm sure it's on You Tube somewhere. She looked like a completely different person. She talks about her recents growth spurt on the show:) funny, funny.

Mommy brag time...

Yes, I have really been slacking on the blogging. I plead the exhausted mommy card on this one. I would say that I promise to be better, but I'd hate to promise that and space out on it again.

So, let's see...sticking with the mommy stuff Connor is amazing us with how much he's growing and developing! He now has two teeth which he uses on everything from the coffee table to the food tray on his stroller. When we took him out on Halloween he was gnawing on the stroller tray so long that he actually fell asleep on it...teeth locked in place! I tried taking a photo but was laughing too hard to get a shot!

Speaking of Halloween, we joined my sister in law, Megan, her husband Ryan and their kids Kaden (6) and Jacob (2). Yes, Connor went trick or treating. We didn't collect candy of course, but it was fun to just show him off in his adorable Tigger costume. It's got tummy padding and everyone kept calling him chubby, it was pretty funny. He was really good the whole time and just looked around at all the kids walking around in their costumes. Can't wait until next year when it will actually mean something to him!

Well, Connor has been making huge strides as far as development and that kinda stuff goes. He's full on crawling now, well for the past few weeks. He's fast enough to give the cats concern now so that's pretty darn fast. They used to just walk past him and smirk that he'd never be able to get to them before they'd be outta there...now, they keep an eye on him at all times. Not only is he fast, but he's sneaky:) "Get the kitty" is becoming a funny daily event. He's also standing and pulling himself up on anything he can now. We had to drop his crib mattress to the lowest point a few weeks ago because we walked in to find him standing up in his crib just watching us. It was amazing and scary all at the same time. As freaking cliche as it may sound, he's just grown up so quick.

One of my best friends Ashley had her daughter yesterday morning and I just can't believe that only 6 months ago Connor was that tiny. Claire was 8lbs 3 oz and that's more than 2lbs more than Connor weighed. He just looked at her like, yeah, i'm bigger than you.

We had his 6 month photos taken in October, so here are some of the results. We are in love with them. Shout out to Portrait Innovations for doing a stellar job. Helps that my kid smiles constantly and is a complete ham for the camera!

Connor with all his animal friends. That's Righty the Elephant, Chomps the Alligator, Morris the Cat and Pepper the Puppy...

Yes, we had a professional photographer take a photo of our kid drooling...

Crawling baby...

Another cute one...

I believe I mentioned that he loves having his photo taken...

Ok, just a couple more...


You can always check out his site as well: www.babysites.com/sites/barnesboy

Stupid Applejuice

So, as a parent you need to grow accostomed to messes and with messes come ruined items. The potentially ruined item provoking this entry is my cell phone. Only, the disappointing this here is that the cellphone, applejuice episode i'm referring to has zero to do with being a parent and everything to do with being a dummy.

Yesterday morning, i'm driving into work at 6 or something painfully early and i get a call on my phone. It's jeff needing to know where something or other is. when i'm done with the call, i go to put my phone back down on my console thingy in between my two front seats and i hear a slight splash. damn. this can't be good, right? correct. i look down and see my once clean phone, which is full of photos, texts i've kept, etc. seriously? damn.

so, of course i freak and while in traffic, attempt to forward my important photos and texts to jeffrey so i will have them once my phone implodes, which it inevitably will. Unfortunately, what i'm discovering is that with each passing moment another key is rendered useless in the applejuice flood of 2007. damn again. after about 10 minutes the only button that functions is the off key, so i use it.

i call verizon on my way in and the idiot laughs at me...who can truly blame him. in hindsight i suppose i could have simply told him that my phone got wet and it wasn't absolutely necessary to relate dipping my phone in juice, but who cares. i don't know this guy. he tells me to take my phone apart to let it dry for two days minimum. right. i'm going to be without my phone for over 48 hours?!? hardly. so, i give it four hours instead and put my phone back together. at this point, the bottom row of keys work...hooray, i was hoping to salvage that asterisk key-whew!! so, i turn it off again and try aboout six hours later. to my avail, all keys are working. slow and sticky but working.

so, in conclusion, my phone is restored, all photos and texts are safe and accounted for and all is right in my world again:)

My new job

so, since i'm new to this blog thing i'm doing some catch up.

i got a new job. after over 6 years of selling my soul at a job that i really think i thought i loved, i had a baby. this newfound family member forced me to take stock of my life and where i placed my priorities. i was way off. i think this truly hit me when i was sitting at my desk at 7pm the day before connor was born having full on horrible, nasty contractions and trying to train my replacement. what the hell is wrong with me??

now, this wasn't totally the fault of the job...i take responsibility as well. i tend to take on a lot. i've recently been labled a "joiner" which i fully concede to. i'm the president of our hoa (shut up, i don't care if you hate your hoa and they fined you for leaving your garbage can out-it's been two weeks, bring the sucker in!), a member of my sorority alumnae group, i'm in a book club, dinner club, card carrying member of the Republican National Committee. i'm sure there are other things, but i'm so damn overscheduled that i can't think of them now. i have a friend at the new job that relates me to Tracey Flick from the movie Election. This is an accurate comparison. Plus, it's reese witherspoon and i think that if i were a celebrity or she were a normal person, we'd be friends. Anyway, i digress, the job was quite overwhelming. 10 hour days at the office just to come home and work for a couple hours. then there is the cell phone umbilical cord that would suck me in at least once a night and several times throughout a normal weekend. i couldn't hide from this job. there was constant turnover in certain positions that i was responsible for and why this came as a shock to some people there, i'll never know. when you hire an 18 year old and pay them $10/hour to do way too much work they don't tend to stick around. it's called self preservation.

anyway, what this is leading up to is that i went on a quest to find a job that my responsibility was minimal and that when i clocked out for the day, i really went home. i left the job at the office and my time at home was spent the way it should be--with my family. now, i realize that this is not such a novel idea to some of you, but when your entire life has been overtaken by a job for several years you start to trick yourself into thinking that it's normal. it's not. my new job is great. i traded a job where i had several assistants booking my travel, getting me coffee and all that goes along with it to a new job where i am the assistant. i've got to say that at first, i struggled a bit. i was somewhat embarassed to say that i'd taken such a cut in "work status" which i know sounds horrible. but it is what it is. my focus was improving my quality of life and i truly did. this new job has vacation time that is nothing to scoff at, unlike said previous job. the benefits are amazing and you actually get holidays off. i know that getting holidays off is something many feel is obvious, well not in the previous job. you're lucky to get the big 4: xmas, easter, thanksgiving and new years day off, so you can imagine my delight at the thought of enjoying Labor day at home:)

Here I go

well, after much consideration, i've decided to go ahead and start up my own blog. Do people out there really want to know what i'm thinking, what i'm doing, how my world is, well probably not but i do think these serve as a great outlet to journal about what's going on without reverting to junior high and cracking out the pink and purple diary. so, that being said, i'll begin.

some things about me. i like to write in all small letters. this is surely out of pure laziness, i am aware, but it also allows me to type quicker and with greater ease. so, now i am not just lazy but time conscious.

i live in chandler with my handsome husband jeffrey and our son, connor who is 5 months old right now. connor has his own site www.babysites.com/sites/barnesboy if you want to check it out. i'll still use his page for All Things Connor and will use this one for me stuff, and Jeff stuff and the small, occasional Connor update. here's a photo of our little family on mother's day this year...

As you can see, the little guy is super small here...about one month old i think. he's much bigger now. sitting up, rolling over, trying solid foods...the whole thing. he'll be crawling any day now. here's a pic of him now...

well, that's all for right now. i'll post again next time i'm feeling clever or when i have something to update everyone with.