Recipe blog

Stay tuned...I'm starting a recipe blog. Now I am not the best cook and I have to admit I do get my recipes online and from others but I need a place to start keeping them just in case. Most of my recipes are good for 2-3 people and my husband likes them :) So check them out if you would like....

http://recipesofann.blogspot.com

Where to begin

This will most likely be a longer update, I've been MIA this week but for a good reason...work. This week has been soooo stressful at work, we have someone leaving our department kind of unexpectedly (meaning I knew she would leave but just not this soon). Plus we had a department review with senior leadership this week and guess who gets the be the lucky one to make the copies of almost 200 pages about 14 times? Bet you can never guess. Trust me there are plenty of other things I would find more enjoyable then that...like stabbing my self in the eye with a pencil. Then our whole team was in for a meeting this week so that cut two days out of both work time and home basically. We did have dinner at Bricco on Weds night with the team and that was really good. Over it was a fun time, the meeting was pointless as usual and it's finally the weekend....

But now for a recap of last weekend since I haven't been around...
Saturday - went to the bar to celebrate me and Liz's birthday. We did go out the weekend before to kind of celebrate mine but we decided to do it over again. It just started out as me, Ben, Kyle and Liz and then Melanie, Racheal, Brian, Tim, and Mandy showed. Liz's mom and her friend Ashley came also. We went to the Basement which is our normal Saturday spot anyways and just stayed there since me and Liz are the only ones who like to dance anyways. It was a VERY drunken night. I don't get drunk very often but I was SMASHED. So below are some pictures from that...we didn't get home until about 3. There was also a fight at the bar and some glass got shattered kinda scary...

Before getting drunk

Me and Mel

Me and Liz completely smashed

These are the boys....yes we love them, yes they are dorks

Sunday - After being out all night we had to go to my god daughter's 1st birthday party, she is so adorable. I can't believe it's been a year! She had a luau themed party, her mom did a great job of decorating for it. Very good food too.

Can you tell we were tired?

The birthday girl - Olivia

Eating her smash cake, she was pretty good about it...

Olivia and Mom

It's my party and I'll cry if I want to...

So Thursday was my birthday...and yes I know you must ask (because everyone does), it was 9/11 and yes it does suck and no it was not a good day when it happened. No it is not a fun birthday really because it's all we hear about on that day and it makes me truly sad that so many people lost their lives on my birthday. But trust me I didn't ask for it but everyone sure does remember my birthday (not that it's a good thing, they just do.)

Soooo...let's recap this year's wonderful birthday! Thursday I got to work and my whole group signed a card for me. Loved it! Then for lunch we went shopping (lol no one was in the office this week because of a huge tradeshow in Las Vegas) and then we went to Swensons...yum love that place. A little bit later they suprised me with a cake...so good! Cake is really a weakness of mine even though I'm on this diet I did indulge! It was a great day at work (with little work actually being done...:P)

So when I got home my friend Liz decided to come over and visit because we were both bored waiting for our boys...so then we went to the store because I wanted dog bones and we thought we might cook but soon realized that would be too much work and decided to order pizza instead. So we preceeded to order said pizza (and the new pasta from Pizza Hut...can we say delicious!?) Ben took forever to get home because his demo from work broke down after he left work...then he still had to go get my present (just like him to wait until last minute...). Finally he got home and we had just picked up the pizza...he told me to go get in the living room and then he gave me my present...this....I love it...I've wanted this blue denim baby for a looong time and i'm so excited! I'm not one to spend money on a purse AT ALL but this was such a good suprise and I had no idea (well some because my old one was falling apart and he said we should wait a bit before going to get a new one...). I'm in love :)

So we ate dinner with Kyle and Liz and then my sister wouldn't stop calling me to come out and get a drink. So I decided I would go for a bit...it's such a long drive though so that's not fun but oh well. I had 1 shot and 1 drink. Her husband has the same birthday as us so he was drinking too. My sister was pretty drunk but gotta love her. Here we are...


All in all a great 23rd birthday....:)

Lazy, lazy

So today is definitely a lazy day. I haven't even finished all my laundry from this weekend...so in that respect I guess you could say that it is a lazy weekend. Although I do have an excuse - an asthma attack and subsequent panic attack last night about just did me in. For some reason it's made me very tired today too. I'm lucky my parents took me to lunch and got me out of the house but then I came home and slept for 2 1/2 hours!!

This week should be good at work! My boss and many other people from our company are gone at the biggest tradeshow of the year...ISSA. Don't ask, I don't really know, don't really care. I am also determined I am moving to my new desk on Weds. I might still be splitting time between there and my old desk for a while but I am actually going to spend time there starting Weds. There was some talks that even though my new position should be effective Sept 10 that they might not hire any one to replace me until January - WTF? Sorry I'm not doing 2 jobs for the price of one for the next 4 months, and I would be doing 2 because there is a lot that will continue to need to be done that will not be able to stop until someone is hired. Unless they are going to pay me more then I would be glad to do it! :)

Then Thursday is my BIRTHDAY!!! The big 2-3. Haha not such a big deal though, just another year older. Friday my parents are taking me (and Ben of course) to Twin Lakes Tavern. Yuuummmm! I can't wait to go there :) They have the best chicken dinner ever! It's a seafood place which I hate seafood but these seafood places always seem to have the best chicken. So I'm excited!

Before I go, I want to send 2 congratulations out: 1 to Tiffany and Paul on the birth of their baby boy Mason last week and another to Anson and Tamara on their newly announced pregnancy! Congrats to you all!!!

Gravy Ladle Joke

I just have to post this...my mom sent me this a while back and I still laugh so hard everytime I read it so I must share with all my cyber friends :)

Michael invited his mother over for dinner. During the meal, his mother couldn't help noticing how beautiful Michael's roommate was. She had long been suspicious of a relationship between Michael and his roommate and this only made her more curious.

Over the course of the evening, while watching the two interact, she started to wonder if there was more between Michael and the roommate than met the eye. Reading his mom's thoughts, Michael volunteered, "I know what you must be thinking, but I assure you, Joanne and I are just roommates."

About a week later, Joanne came to Michael and said, "Ever since your mother came to dinner, I've been unable to find the beautiful silver gravy ladle. "You don't suppose she took it, do you?" Joanne said, "Well, I doubt it, but I'll write her a letter just to be sure."

So he sat down and wrote: "Dear Mother, I'm not saying you 'did' take a gravy ladle from my house, and I'm not saying you 'did not' take a gravy ladle. But the fact remains that one has been missing ever since you were here for dinner."

Several days later, Michael received a letter from his mother which read: "Dear Son, I'm not saying that you 'do' sleep with Joanne, and I'm not saying that you 'do not' sleep with Joanne. But the fact remains that if she was sleeping in her own bed, she would have found the gravy ladle by now. Love, Mom"

Labor Day Weekend

So lets review my recap of the weekend...much more exciting then I expected it to be...

Friday - out of work early...what could be better?! Maybe an exciting night on the town?? Haha yeah right...stayed home and watched TV. Oh how exciting my life is.

Saturday - cleaned, and cleaned, and more cleaning. I don't know what was up with me but I was cleaning anything and everything I could. Much organizing ensued. My traditional Saturday night included Liz, The Basement, Downtown Akron bars and to my surprise, my buddy Willie. There were way to many cops to count (as if I could really count them at that point anyways...) so we took the safe route and called Ben to have him and Liz's b/f Kyle come get us. They were none to pleased that we interrupted their pow wow with their friend Chris but came anyways. All in all a good and early night by our terms.




Sunday - cleaning and cleaning more. Still don't know what got into me but it produced good results and a full trashcan. Sunday afternoon when Ben got off work we went over to his grandpa's brother's grandchildren's birthday party. Now I must inform you that i had no knowledge of this birthday (and I guess Ben didn't either). We knew a cousin that we had seen in Arizona was in town for some training as mentioned before (and I was wrong, it was the one we met not the other one we didn't meet!) and that we were going to visit and have a picnic. What I had no idea about was the aforementioned birthday party with about 30 kids.

Definitely a shocker when we walked up to the house with homemade guitars strewn about, a pool blown up by the garage, a slide on the hill in the backyard and jammin' music. Needless to say we kept our butts in the basement most of the time with his cousin and the rest of the family. It really was a great time though and good food. Got bit up by some lovely mosquitoes though when they were starting the fire.

The Girls (Ava and Maria) with their homemade guitar cake

Me and Ben at the lovely affair

Monday - now really we didn't have any plans. Ben (again as previous mentioned in my last post) thought we might go to his uncle's house but we hadn't heard anything. We worked in the yard a bit but it was mighty warm outside and we were both spent after cleaning up the flower beds. Ben did go out for a little bit of mowing. I went to the grocery store thinking we would be cookin' out at home and don't you just know it that when I got home we got a call saying to come on over. It just has to work like that you know. So we went - hey free yummy food for a second day, bring it on. So we went, nothing exciting to report. No pictures either (yes, shocking I know).

So if you have gotten through this long update I applaud you. It was definitely a LABOR Day for us (too bad that's not really funny...)