Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow

This post title has two different meanings...
1. My hair.
2. My ex co-worker.

First, my hair. After years and years of having fairly 'long' and curly/wavy hair - see the current picture in our heading I decided it was time for something new. Actually I had decided this at my last hair appointment, in December, but didn't quite know what I wanted for a new style. My stylist, though, was delighted just for the opportunity to really cut my hair, instead of just my standard trim and color. Apparently, she had wanted to cut my hair for quite some time - well why didn't she just say so?! I'm open to suggestions! Doesn't mean I'm going to take them, but I'm open. So I chopped quite a bit off in December and requested a hair straightener for Christmas. I got two. Unfortunately, by the time I was brave enough to open it up and try it out a couple weeks later, my hair had already 'grown out' and I once again resorted to the 'never-fail' ponytail/bun 'do. Fast forward to last week. All week I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my hair. I knew that I wanted to cut it pretty short and have a new style, but I couldn't figure out what. Saturday morning, about 3 hours before my appointment, Sean and I were watching a DVR recording of the results show of American Idol when inspiration hit. Kelly Pickler! I yelled for Sean to pause the TV and said, "what about that for my hair??" He liked it. I liked it. And the rest is history. Well, not really. We re-watched the interview segment and found a good place to pause it. Then, get this, we took a picture on my cellphone of the TV and this is what I took to show my stylist. She LOVED the idea! Something completely different. So I now have an a-line cut, which means it is longer in the front and the back is slightly what they call 'stacked'. Of course, it's still blonde, but she even did bolder highlights to try to match the picture. I LOVE IT!!! I'm pretty sure I haven't had it this short since it grew to this length naturally as a child! I wear it straight now (though the curl doesn't look too bad) and have only had my hair in a ponytail once this week, during my kickboxing class. I think that's a record. I will post a pic of my fabulous new 'do (which Sean loves!) soon.

2. My co-worker. This is what NOT to do at a fairly new job - or any job, for that matter. Tuesday afternoon, our new A/R person left for lunch between 1pm and 1:30pm. Before her lunch hour was even up, my manager had received an email from her saying that her sister had been in an accident and she had to go to Idaho to be with her. Ok, fine. That's understandable, I would leave at a moment's notice if something serious happened with my family. Then she says she's not sure how long she's going to be and to consider the email her written resignation!! Are you kidding me? Am I being punk'd?!?! She also mentioned that she may even just move to Idaho because that may be better for her in the long run. Oh, and she wasn't going to call because she didn't want any negative/harsh words said - or something like that - just send her last check in the mail. So here we (my office manager and I) are. High and dry. I think I can see my family life fading into the distance as I get ready to finish my 50+ hour work week - I'm scheduled for Saturday and couldn't take my comp day because of this. Someday I'll see Sean and Ethan... :( Actually, it's not all bad. We got a temp person in right away, the next day, to answer the phones - this is a big help! Hopefully we can find someone soon. I've already got the OK to keep my day-off for the 9th - I'm spending the whole day with my li'l guy on his first birthday and I can't wait! I also intend to take the week off in the summer for Girls Camp, so they really better have things figured out by then.

And just when I finally had someone fully trained on warranties... ho-hum... at least I have great hair! :)

Surprise Snow Day!

Here ya go - another back-post. Pretend this is dated the last week of January! :)

Sunday morning we woke up to a big surprise. Ethan had us up nice-n-early (well, earlier than we wanted to be up when we don't have church until 11am). So here we were, sitting in the living room in our pj's with Ethan happily drinking his bottle, I decided to check the weather and took a peek outside. "What's this?!?! It snowed! Correction: it's snowing!!" We couldn't believe it. We already had a couple inches. It was within the hour that we received the call that church had been cancelled (most of our ward lives up in the Thurston hills). This was a BIG shock for southern-cali Sean - he'd never heard of such a thing. We felt especially guilty because we live at the bottom of the hill. None the less, our little family stayed tucked inside all day, enjoying the beauty and the peacefulness of all the snow. We did bundle up for one outing into the snow so that Ethan could have his first snow experience - Ethan and I don't have snow gear, so it had to be a relatively short experience! We mainly just held him - it was still snowing and pretty wet - but the last few minutes before we went in, we let him down so he could crawl around in it. I think he liked it quite a bit, but he was still trying to figure out what was going on, so he was pretty quiet - just in awe of his surroundings. He did enjoy crawling in it - even though he sunk into the snow with each crawl. Other than the fact that we had to miss church, it was a great day. I loved having no where to go and just being with Sean & Ethan - my boys.

My New Nephew!

I now have 1 niece and 2 nephews - all of them, though, are on Sean's side of the family (my sisters are a little young - especially Lizzy). We were super-excited to get the call from my brother-in-law, Todd, and his wife, LynMarie (aka: Muffy) a couple weeks ago to let us know that they were getting to adopt a 3-week old baby boy. He is ADORABLE!! The birth mother had named him Aaron, so they kept that as the middle name and he is now Spencer Aaron - the happy family is pictured at right. He was born February 18th and we can't wait for Ethan to meet his new little cousin. With the addition of Spencer, Sean's parents got 3 new grandbabies this past year - one from each of the boys, bringing the count up to 4. So far the boys outnumber the girls 3 to 1 - little Ella just had her 1st birthday last week. Yay for growing families! :)

Bath-time made 'new' again.

First of all, I feel like I have to 'catch-up' by posting some blogs that would have been done a while ago - that is, had I had a blog! So, you're going to see some past events as I try to bring things up to speed.

A few weeks ago we decided it was time for Ethan to move on to (wait for it)... the big tub. He outgrew the baby bath a while ago, but we'd still been doing bath-time in the kitchen sink - but no more! We made sure the tub was scrubbed down, filled it up a little, added some bath toys I had been saving for just such the occasion and let him loose. He loved it!! He was especially fascinated by the running water and repeatedly tried to grab at it. Bath-time in the big tub is one of his new favorite things - he even happily tolerates the actual scrubbing, despite the fact that it interferes with his play-time. How nice of him! Below are fun pictures we got from this 'first'.

Trying to 'grab' the water!

All Clean!

My New Addiction

So I just created this blog a few days ago and I was SUPER frustrated because I could NOT figure out how to add links to other blogs. I tried and tried and still didn't know what to do. I finally resorted to using MySpace to see if I could get any feedback... THANK YOU Rachel Eastin!!! I was SO HAPPY when I finally got my links added! :) I've been searching through everyone's lists to find more friends and I can't wait to see what people have been up to!

That's all for now...

Blah, Blog, Blah

Well, it's official. I now have a MySpace account, a Facebook account and a Blog. In that order. I originally got the MySpace account because I wanted a way to keep in contact with friends and family after Ethan was born - let them check out new pictures, etc. as they are posted. In theory, this was a good idea, unfortunately I was unaware that you must have a MySpace account to view pictures (unless they're on your main page) - even if your profile is set to public. Somehow, I don't see my parents or grandparents, etc. getting an account anytime in the near future. There went that idea. Next, I kept getting emails from Facebook to notify me that my little sister, Christine (who also has MySpace, Facebook and a blog) had 'flagged' me in a photo. Well, I could view any pictures that I was in, but nothing else she had on her page. I guess that settles that, "Sign me up for Facebook!"

So here I am. Creating yet another online account to keep in touch with people. I'm hoping that by having this blog I can accomplish what I originally set out to do - give family and friends a place to check at their own leisure for pictures and news about our happy, little family in Oregon. Maybe now I will actually be inspired to more regularly 'blog' about the little daily happenings I may not have otherwise even mentioned. Time will tell.