Happy Birthday Brett

Here's to at least 28 more birthdays!!  I love your fucking guts. 

All Hallows Eve

Tonight is my favorite night of the year. Tonight is Halloween. I remember when I was little trick or treating always took place on Halloween. No matter what day of the week it was there would be kids in costume running from house to house gathering candy that filled their bags to the top. The doorbells would ring until 11pm. The streets were filled with laughter and screaming, and it was obvious that good times were being had. Good memories were being made.

Now things are so different.

Trick or treating takes place on the Saturday closest to Halloween, mostly as a convenience to the adults, and the kids that come to the door are sparse. The doorbell stops ringing at 8pm. The kids just don't seem to be as enthused as I remember being when I was in their shoes.

It's sad.

Tonight there are no trick or treaters and I only saw one person making a poor attempt at a Halloween costume in Office Max. We are watching Sweeney Todd with no interruptions from the doorbell.

This isn't how it should be. The kids these days are getting gypped. It makes me sad.

Happy Halloween! A post to come soon of our Halloween party last weekend.

Today is a special day!

Today is a good day.  Today is the day that 29 years ago my best friend was born!  I am so lucky to have her.  She is truly the most amazing friend that anyone could ask for, and I would be so lost without her.  She is hilariously witty, extremely creative, gorgeous, smart, thoughtful, stylish, loving, intuitive and loyal.  

Basically the definition of what a best friend should be.   

I love you Shaymus.  You dirty little whore, you.  Happy birthday love!!

Picture Perfect

It's no secret that I have wanted Brett and I to have our pictures done professionally for a long time.  Remember this?  Yeah.  It's been a while, but the desire for a photo shoot has not left the forefront of my thoughts and I have still been looking for someone who's work I love. 

There is one photographer that I have admired for a long time, and I have wished that we could afford to have our pictures taken by her, but to be honest, for the price that she charges it just isn't going to work right now. With our budget the money will more likely be spent on a years worth of food.  I have come to the conclusion that I will most likely not be able to even think about booking a photo shoot with her for years to come. For now I will live with just admiring her beautiful images from my side of the computer.

At first I was extremely discouraged when I came to this realization, but then {then!}right after I had decided that I was going to have to give up for a while on my hopes for having our pictures done, I read something that made my heart leap. 

Enter, Mrs. Taylee Winder. 

We have been friends through blogging for a long time, and I read her blog religiously.  Come to find out, she is an amazing photographer! 

Turns out that very soon, I will finally be able to meet her because she is going to do our pictures for us!!  I can't tell you how excited I am.  Not only will we be able to have our pictures done by a very talented photographer, but one of my long time blog friends will become a real life friend.  It couldn't have worked out better. 

See her amazing talent here, and book a session of your own!

Strange addiction

I will admit that I am a big fan of T.V. and I watch plenty of shows that I am not proud of, i.e. Dog the Bounty Hunter. It's a white trash train wreck that I cannot bring myself to take my eyes off of, and I watch it every chance I get.

Brett, on the other hand, rarely watches T.V. at all. If he's watching something on T.V. it's for one of two reasons....we're either watching something that I want to watch, or it's the middle of the night and he can't sleep.

Recently Chaz and Shay have introduced us to something that has quickly become an exception to that rule.

Dexter.


 

We are both sucked into it's vortex and unable to break free. We only started watching it last weekend and we have already finished three out of the five seasons. It's bad.

The show is just so intriguing. Every single episode has something monumental happening, and the plot points are intense. I don't know what I am going to do with myself when it is over.

You knew this one would be coming....

You guys, I'm not sure if you know this or not, but its October!!  Guess what that means.....Halloween is almost here!  I cannot contain my excitement.  Shay and I are in full blown prep mode!

This years party theme is 'recognizable musicians' and let me just tell you, there will be some good costumes this year!  Here's a little preview of who will be attending:

 

Yeah, I know.  It's going to rock.  {pun intended}

My Way of Coping

August 13th was my mom's birthday. In the months approaching it, I was dreading each day that brought it closer. I am not coping well with her loss, and every time I think about her I want to cry. I just miss her so much.

I was trying to come up with a way to honor and remember her on her birthday, and I started brainstorming a few months ago. I wanted it to be something significant. Something that would make a lasting impression on my life, and help me keep her memory alive in my soul. My sister and I had been talking about getting memorial tattoos in her honor, but didn't really know what we wanted or when we wanted to do it. I picked up the phone one day and called my sister. "Let's do our tattoo's on mom's birthday!" That's all it took. She was in.

I had started looking at designs and finally decided what I wanted to do and found the artist that I wanted to go to, so Brett set the appointment. I couldn't be happier with how it turned out! My sister did the same general design, but hers is in a different location and has color instead of just black and grey. I choose to merge two Celtic symbols that I loved because their meaning was perfect for what I was trying to represent. One is the Celtic symbol for motherhood and the female power, and the other is the Celtic symbol for the transitions through life and death. I think it's perfect! What do you think?

Normally, I'd go for a hot dog.

Anytime we barbecue and the person manning the grill asks me if I want a hamburger or a hot dog, I always say hot dog.  I have always been a fan of hot dogs, and for some reason hamburgers just don't appeal to me.  I have tried them on a few occasions, from a few different places, and just haven't ever been too impressed. 

While we were visiting Brett's sister in Reno last week, one of her kids suggested that we go to In n' Out Burger for lunch.  Knowing that I am some what of a picky eater, she left it up to me to decide.  That was the moment that I proclaimed the four words that made the head of everyone in the room whip around so hard to look in my direction that I am surprised no one ended up with a neck injury. 

I've never tried it. 

They all sat there staring at me like I had a penis growing out of my forehead, but they just didn't bear to break the news to me.  Apparently if you haven't eaten at In n' Out burger you are some kind of outcast.  Who knew?

After everyone was able to lift their chins up off of the floor we decided that lunch that day could take place no where else.  I had to try In n' Out for the first time with them, and they were going to make sure of it.  On the drive over everyone just kept raving about how good the food was, and how impressed I was going to be. I continued to listen to said raving, unconvinced that I would like it as much as they believed I would. 

When we got there I was blown away by how simple the menu was.  You can choose from a hamburger, a cheeseburger, or fries.  Not even an option to pick chicken nuggets!  How good could this burger joint really be?

I will take this opportunity to put my foot directly into my mouth.  It was good.  I was impressed.  So impressed that after we got home, I found myself craving a cheeseburger, animal style with a side of fries. 

Thank god that In n' Out has recently planted it's roots in Utah.

Solving life's mysteries

Have you ever wondered exactly what it is about your best friend that makes you love them so much?  You know that you get along well, and you know that you can always count on each other, but what is the one thing that draws you to each other and makes you best friends? I can tell you. 

She will do anything you ask her to, and have a hell of a time doing it. 

I was at the mall with Shay and Ashley a few months ago, before little miss Hadley was born, and as we were walking through the food court I asked Shay if she would ride the carousel with me.  I know that it sounds ridiculous, that two grown ass women would ride a children's carousel in the middle of a crowded mall, but I was serious about it.  What's wrong with acting like a little kid sometimes?  It keeps life interesting. 

Of course, as I knew she would, Shay agreed.

Ashley and Hunter joined us for the ride, but I am almost sure that Ashley wouldn't have been so willing to join us if Hunter hadn't been there.  It may have taken a little more coaxing.  Shay however, did not hesitate. 

This is why she is my best friend.  I love her.

Another step forward

Ever since I found that letter last year I have been trying to find the courage to make contact.  With the help of a new colleague I was able to find another physical address that I could attempt, as well as a p.o. box, and with the new information in hand I decided that I should just go for it.  What the hell, right?  I figured that the worst that could happen would be to never hear anything back, and everything would remain the same.  I would continue life not knowing, but at least I could say that I tried. 

So about two weeks ago I wrote him a letter and stuck it in the mail.  After I had dropped it into the box, knowing that it was irretrievable, I felt a little bit nervous.  Nervous, but confident that I was making the right choice.  Two or three days later, that same envelope that I had sent away was back in my hands with something new written on the front...."return to sender, not at this address."  Fuck.  I had a feeling that would happen.  So I opened up the envelope and took the letter out leaving it as a hollow, worthless carcass and grabbed a fresh new envelope and scrawled the next address from my list onto its blank surface.

After about a week I had gotten to the point where I wasn't anxiously checking my email every hour, or running upstairs to see if someone had checked the mail on a daily basis.  I decided that I was just going to relax.  If I was going to hear something it would probably be a while, so there was no sense in thinking about it all the time.

You know that old saying 'a watched kettle never boils'?  I believe that statement to be true.  Almost in the exact moment that I took my eyes off of the kettle, it started boiling.

I am not joking. Almost literally, the day that I decided not to worry about it anymore I got the response that I had been waiting for.  Brett and I were sitting on the couch after we had gotten ready for bed, and I was just going to make sure that my alarm on my phone was set to wake me up the next morning.  This is something that I do every night that drives Brett completely insane. If it went off yesterday, it will go off tomorrow.  Just when I had entered the password into my phone I noticed that little red circle above my email icon, indicating that there was an email in my inbox waiting to be read. Just one. I tried to convince myself that it was nothing, that it could easily wait until morning and proceeded to make sure my alarm was, in fact, set to go off at the crack of dawn and wake me for work.  Of course it was set, just like Brett always tells me. 

I couldn't resist though, after I triple checked my alarm, I clicked on my email icon and there it was.  An email from someone, that until a year ago, I didn't even know existed.