Wow

I can't believe how long it's been since I wrote last! Time has just flown these last few weeks, I have had both good and bad things going on.

As far as my job,I'm still doing the old position. We should be starting to interview for my position soon...we shall see. My boss has been pretty busy and he is the one who needs to be there! I know I'm movin' come hell or high water on Nov. 15 though so tomorrow is the day I talk to him and lay the boundry lines for what I will/will not take when I move. Hopefully he will agree...maybe... :)

Everything else has been pretty mundane besides that. We did go to a Halloween Party this past Saturday and Tim and Christina's (we know them through our friend's Melanie and Brian). Unfortunately I was colder then anything and we were outside. Even though I was in a kind of warm costume I was still frozen to death. I don't know how the others with outfits with a little less on did it! I was literally in front of the warmer thing they had in the tent and I was still freezing. It was a good time and most of our friends did a great job of dressing up this year. Maybe when I lose my 30 lbs I will wear one of those cute costumes too *wink wink*. So here are some pictures from this past weekend.

Cycles

Soooo it’s been a little while since I have posted but things have just been kind of crazy in my neck of the woods. And with the seasons changing I’m tired ALL the time…I hate it! So what’s new and exciting in my world right now…

I have found out that I am officially moving positions 11/15 now. Yep that’s 2 months after my original date. We have had quite a few people leaving our department though so they are staggering them. I was told whether or not they have someone in my current role I am going to be able to move (not sure if that’s really going to happen but it’s what I’m hopin’ for!). I am excited as nothing to move though! I can’t wait to be doing my new responsibilities!!

Our dryer broke. Yep, that’s right. My dryer broke – kinda. Some thingy on the inside that keeps the clothes from bawling up came off and stripped some holes that would allow us to actually put it back on. So we got a new one. We have used the ones from Ben’s old house for the last few years and they were kind of old when we got them. So we went to HH Gregg and picked a new one out. I’m kinda excited because it’s bigger inside and I tend to wait until I have a full load to do laundry (read: I can be lazy :) ) So having a bigger capacity dryer will help with that situation because it seemed to take forever to get them dry in our old one. So Friday is the day of the dryer. We have to go pick it up cuz I’m not payin’ no 70 bucks to get it delivered!

Went out last Saturday – we didn’t stay out very late. We were going to go to the club and dance but Liz wanted to go home once she found out Kyle was home so we didn’t go. I really wanted to go dancin’ too so that kinda sucked.

This Saturday I have a wedding to go to with my friend Diana. Her hubby isn’t able to go to the wedding so I am going with her instead. I feel like a wedding crasher because I do know the bride (we worked at Target together) but it’s been years since I have seen her. I knew she was engaged and the guy she is marrying she meet at Target and I knew him also but not well. So it shall be in interesting day I’m sure I will have plenty of pictures to share as usual. I am a freak when it comes to picture takin’, especially when it comes to weddings!

I am not sure I have anything else exciting to add to this….nope I got nothin’.

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...)

This week...

Was a long one. I felt like I didn't really get anything done at work until Friday.

Monday I was preparing for a training that took place Tues afternoon and Weds morning. The Weds afternoon and Thurs morning I spent in a management meeting taking minutes (can you hear the joy in my voice!). So then I had to clean up after all that and the training that I never got to really clean up after on Thurs afternoon. And Friday was catch up day. So all in all a very busy and long week at work. I did get a nice dinner Tues night out of it though so I was happy because I wasn't going to go :)

And in job news, I officially have the job. I have been reluctant to say anything because I haven't been able to announce it at work yet. They had to notify the other internal candidates that they didn't get it as a courtesy and I was told that wouldn't really be able to be done until Friday. So I am hoping on Tuesday they make the announcement. A few people do know for sure because they knew i was interviewing and that they were making an offer. I so can't wait!! It isn't effective until Sept 10 and even then I will still be doing a cross of what I am doing now with my new position because a lot of stuff I do now just can't go by the wayside. So hopefully my boss gets his butt in gear and gets the position hired for. He did congratulate me Thurs before he left for a business trip. He then asked me what I was most excited about with the new position and of course I couldn't give him the real answer :P So I just said everything that comes with the new position - different responsibilities, working with different people. So now I'm very excited to start this new position. I do need to move a bunch of stuff though to a new desk...

This afternoon we are going to Ben's families house to see one of his cousin's from Arizona that we didn't get to meet while we were out there because she lives in CA. I am excited to meet her and see the rest of the family. I have no clue what we will be doing tomorrow - Ben mentioned something about going to his Uncle's house but I don't know if that's for sure yet.

So I guess that's enough of my rambling boring update!

A few pictures..

Just wanted to post a few pictures from recent times that I haven't gotten to post yet...

Birthday Girl, Tiffany (Ben's cousin) blowing out the candles on her cake.

The "Boyd Boys" singing karaoke (don't know who the dude in front in the white shirt is...)

Now this should be a good laugh...my co worker and I (excuse my mess lookin self) in "bunny suits" in the hospital that we were checking dispensers in Chicago. Couldn't go into surgery areas without these lovely lookin suits, very fun though hence the picture. Good times.

Me and the lovely Liz out on the town...yes, we were plastered.

Another night on the town, again...plastered.

7 things about me

Again, to enjoy being cool like my fellow online friends I will now tell you 7 things you may or may not want to know about me...

1. I love my dogs...like seriously I do. My puppy Duke (see page right) sleeps with me every night. I know this may sound weird and most people tell me once I have kids he will be just a dog to me but he seriously has a way of always making me feel better and knows when I need a pick me up. Oh..and he doesn't talk back :P

2. I have a phobia of touching things when my fingers are water logged. Strange but true. It is especially true with paper. I can't touch paper without wanting to throw up when my fingers are water logged. I sit there and wait for about 10 mins after I take a shower before I do anything, slightly annoying. Don't ask me where this came from since I used to be a swimmer...but my friend Liz also has this phobia which I recently discovered so I don't feel like a weirdo anymore.

3. From previous post, I'm a twin. Sometimes I love it, sometimes I hate it.

4. If I could afford it I would start my own photography business. I love taking pictures period. I probably have over 15,000 pictures on my computer and yes I have taken all of them mostly. I take my camera everywhere I go. Just a few thousand dollars and some practice away from my dream :)

5. I love to scrapbook - I have about 4 albums...it's just too darn expensive between printing the pictures and buying all the stuff. But I still get in my moods where I do it for a while and get all caught up, like right before the wedding.

6. I love Coldstone Creamery Ice Cream and Chipotle. I miss my days of living at my old house where the two were within walking distance of each other and it was so easy to go to both....

7. I could live in sweat pants and flip flops no matter what time of year it is.

Leavin on a jet plane...

But I'll be back Thursday :) I found out today they needed some volunteers to go to Chicago at work to help inspect some dispensers at a hospital and since most of the actual support staff will be at a training on Thursday I get to go. I leave out of Cleveland at 7:30 am Weds and don't get back until Thurs at 11:30 pm. I am hoping my boss says I can come in a little late on Fri but I doubt it :*( This will be my first time going to a facility for work and my first time flying without a friend/family. Kinda nervous because I've only flown 2 other times but it's a short trip and both of my others were longer. I'm pretty excited but at the same time nervous!

Let's see what else is there to update on....oh the job situation. I am not 100% sure what is going on there...I did hear from someone in that group that the hiring manager is working on scheduling second round interviews but is having a hard time managing schedules. So we will see when those happen but I'm not counting on it in the next two weeks because I manage my boss' schedule and he will be out of town and/or booked solid the next two weeks and he is a part of the whole thing. So again I go back to being as patient as possible...

This past weekend we attended Ben's cousin Tiffany's 18th birthday party. I guess a lot more people were expected to be there but it was still a pretty good time. There was karaoke and Ben and his cousins sang a song which was pretty neat. I left early to go out with my friend Liz as is our now normal Saturday tradition :) and I guess Ben sang a few more songs after I left.

Nothing else new to report on...except the fact that I am currently torn about wanting to have kids right now. We are not financially ready and I completely know that. I also know that there are a few things (like a few more vacations) that I want to do before we have kids, just some more "us" time. But then I do want kids now and I feel like I'm surrounded by pregnant people! I'm just torn but I know in the end now is just not the right time...it will come eventually though....

Happy Birthday Mom!

So Saturday was my mom's birthday - we worked at her job together though so we didn't get to celebrate. So Sunday we went to Luigi's for dinner - it was packed though but overall good. Her birthday present finally came in on Monday (and I can finally post it now!). I made her a book from blurb.com of our wedding pictures...she loved it of course! There are a few pics below of what it looks like - overall good quality, pages were a little purple vs. my navy blue that I was going for but only in certain lighting. But as any typically Mom she didn't care at all...:) HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM I LOVE YOU!

Nick and Lydia's Engagement Party

Just wanted to come back and post a few pictures from Nick and Lydia's engagement party on August 1. It was at a church in Cuyahoga Falls...can you guess what their color will be?? :)