Thankful...

I am thankful for the fact that I do NOT participate in the madness that is Black Friday. Instead I am sitting at work in the solitude of my quiet cubicle getting shit done.

We had a wonderful little Thanksgiving with our friends. We watched football, old videos from Hayden's second Thanksgiving and Christmas, and I cooked a traditional meal for the five of us.
The videos of Hayden were great. He looked like this back then:

And Now

This year has been a roller coaster for us. Good things, bad things, upside down turns and sudden stops. Such is life. We've survived and we're stronger for it. 

Here's some great advice from Rock N Roll Bride on Happy Marriage.

Halloween 2013

Every year Hayden's enthusiasm for Halloween just grows and grows which is great since my enthusiasm is beyond imaginable.
 Hayden dressed as Ratchet his favorite video game character. He was so excited that he saw no other kids with the same costume.

I tried my hand at some scary skeleton makeup, per a youtube tutorial. I ran out of the stuff I needed most so I tried to make the best of it.

Brian took Hayden trick or treating while I handed out candy. It was great seeing all the neighborhood kids. Our house was completely decked out and I had bought a shit-ton of candy. We had so many kids we ran out at like 8:30pm. We refilled with one more bag and had kids until 9:15.

Even Barley got dressed up as a football player.

I made mini caramel apples for our friends. They were great and super easy to make.

The night before Hayden and I carved the pumpkin and it came out not too shabby for a freehand design.

Overall our Halloween was pretty great. We finished our night with some scary movies and Hayden was so tired he passed out around 8:30.
Hope everyone else had a great Halloween.

Halloween Crafty

I found some awesome Pins on Pinterest for Halloween decor on Friday. So I headed to the dollar store and bought up some materials. Saturday morning Hayden and I made some of these awesome things.

1. A Creature Wreath. The pin I saw was a snake wreath from this site, I couldn't find enough snakes so I opted for a creepy creature wreath. I took plastic spiders, snakes, bugs, and a bat and spray painted what wasn't already black, a glossy black. I bought a large hay wreath and spray painted that black as well. After the paint dried Hayden and I glued the creatures on. The lighter snakes are glow in the dark.

2. Chalkboard sign. I found chalkboard paint for $1.24 at the craft store and a cute little wood sign for $0.79. Hayden decided we would write something new on it every day till Halloween. 

We have some more to do, but this week is full up of preparation for a special trip to Disneyland. Our first as a family and a celebration of our 10 year wedding anniversary.

Here are some more of what I found on Pinterest:

Weekend Redux: California Dreaming

This past weekend we went on a vacation to Southern California. Originally this week was supposed to be spent in Florida with my mom and stepdad. But my mom's dad, my grandpa passed away last Tuesday.
My mom had to cancel to our plans to tend to some sad details in Northern California.

With time off I figured we could switch gears and go to a Pacific beach instead. We had a few friends we could visit and the forecast was sunny.

We left early Saturday morning and drove straight to Whittier to meet up with our friend Heather and her son (Hayden's BFF Julian). We spent the day hanging out with them at the park then went to our hotel in Long Beach for a while before catching dinner. Sunday we spent the day with Brian's long time friend Damon and his girlfriend Claudia in Santa Monica. We walked down the beach to the pier. Hayden rode the carousel and we enjoyed the beautiful scenery.
When we returned to our hotel later that night I was sunburned and the hotel's wonderful heated pool was calling my name.

Monday we got to attend a going away party for Heather and Steve who are moving to VEGAS! We're beyond stoked and felt a little guilty hanging with their Cali friends who are sad to see them go.
Here are some wonderful pictures from our trip!

Christmas 2012 Redux

This Christmas has been the best yet. We had an amazing Christmas Eve dinner with our friends AJ, Chris, Dave, Rob, Claudia and her children Anthony and Vivian.
I love having a full house and doing my best at playing hostess to appease the part of me that wants to be domestic and another part of me that wishes for a bigger family. I got busy in the kitchen all day and didn't really get everything done that I had hoped to but everyone enjoyed the food and had fun for as far as I could tell.  I made a beef roast, ham, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes with cranberry sauce and Claudia brought over some amazing enchiladas. We ate, chatted, laughed and exchanged some gifts.


For the last month and a half Hayden had been counting down the days till Christmas. He would mark off the days on the calendar and remind us how many were left. This was the first year he was THAT excited. The so excited that he got super hyper around everyone and the so excited that he couldn't sleep on Christmas Eve. He's been singing all the time. Sometimes Christmas songs he's heard on movies, heard me practice in the shower and sometimes little songs he made himself.

At about 6:45am he came rushing into our room to use the bathroom. He came to cuddle with us and Brian asked if he had seen what Santa had brought yet and he said he hadn't. I was waking up slowly but hadn't opened my eyes yet when I heard his little feet run down the stairs. A few minutes later he came running back up. He whispered to Brian "DADDY, he brought me both the ninjas I asked for and a bunch of movies!"

We both got up and dressed and rushed down the stairs to revel in his excitement.

After presents and breakfast we spent the day watching new movies, building legos together, drawing on the chalkboard of Hayden's new desk, and enjoying every single minute of it.

I hope everyone had an amazing Christmas!

4 Day Hanksgiving Weekend Redux

We had an amazing weekend as usual. The four days off were great.

For Hanksgiving we had some good friends over to enjoy my domestic-ness. I made a full traditional holiday dinner. My favorite was the dessert of baked stuffed apples with ice cream (recipe below).
Hayden doesn't eat any of the foods that are included in the traditional dinner except the pumpkin pie. We did convince him to try onion dip. He's up there in the pic mixing onion dip, chips, and carrots. He savored the flavors with his eyes closed like the character from Ratatouille.
Our friend Calvin took a great family pic for us as well as the golden turkey picture.

Our tradition is to put up our Christmas decorations the day after Thanksgiving. Hayden was on it. I played video games a little too long for his taste so he recruited Brian to get the new tree out of the box and start pressuring me to do the rest. We got the new tree up and decorated within an hour.

I love that Hayden is so into decorating for the holidays and that Brian and I have done a good job creating our own little traditions.

Over the long weekend Hayden wanted to play some board games. This revelation is a first and I am totally stoked for it. He discovered Scrabble and we played twice.

On Saturday we chilled for a bit, drank some awesome coffee topped with whip cream, watched some lame movies and then headed downtown to support some small businesses. One of them is the amazing Cowtown Guitars. When I was in high school here in Las Vegas they were one of the few music gear stores in town. I worked down the street from the shop at a used cd store and would see the local bands hanging out there.
I wasn't in a band yet so I felt like it was this sacred place for cool musicians and would sometimes go in just to feel a little closer to cool.
Well, on Saturday they were giving away guitars in support of Small Business Saturday. Hayden won an awesome Ibanez Gio (SG style) electric guitar. At first Brian and I were way more excited for it than him, but once we got it home he didn't want to stop playing.
Thanks to Roxie and Jesse at Cowtown, you got a customer for life!

So yeah, our weekend was awesome.


Baked Apple Recipe
6 large apples
Instant Oatmeal (1 package) - I used cinnamon swirl
2/3 cup raisins
1/4 teaspoon nutmeg
6 tablespoons butter/margarine
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1 cup brown sugar
Lemon Juice

Core the 6 apples and place in a large casserole dish.
Sprinkle with lemon juice.

Mix Oatmeal, spices, butter, raisins and brown sugar. Stuff apples.
Bake at 420 for 25 minutes.
We topped them with Vanilla bean ice cream and whipped cream.

Thanks-

I am thankful for so much. My wonderful family, amazing friends,  great career, a fun and talented band and all the happiness my life is full of.


I sat down this morning to explain Thanksgiving to my son.  I wanted to know what he thought of it. He said it was a day to eat food and have a party. He's not wrong. We do this every year.

I tried to tell him about the Pilgrims and the real history of this celebration.
He said " I know Mom, we read a book in school called The First Thanksgiving," complete with eye rolls.
He told me the cookie cutter version.
I expounded with the history of the Native Americans and how even though the Pilgrims and the English came into their land as strangers they helped the pilgrims survive.

 This is Massasoit, read about his legacy on wikipedia.  He prevented the failure of Plymouth Colony and the almost certain starvation of the Pilgrims. He kept his people from converting to Christianity. He pushed peace between tribes and the English. He was a great man, and the main reason there is Thanksgiving.

The sad facts of American history are too much to explain to a six year old but I do want him to know as much truth as he can comprehend. He wanted to know more about the Native Americans, but after a few more sentences, he got bored and ran upstairs to play video games.

I hope everyone is having a great Thanksgiving. Be mindful of our history in this country but grateful that we've come far for human rights. We have even further to go still and I believe we are a country changing for the better.

Cleanse.

The day of New Year's Eve I drank two gigantic mugs of coffee with my favorite chocolate and caramel creamer, took a deep breath and headed into my mess of an office/storage room/black hole with a door knob. My mission was to drastically reduce the clutter. One of my goals for 2012 is to get (more) shit done and I can't do that with a pile of clothes and papers covering my home work space.
Brian and Hayden helped me the holiday decorations down and we packed them away in their totes for another year.
I shredded some old papers, organized my bookshelves, and started making piles to donate to charity. I found two boxes full of VHS tapes or as Hayden likes to call them BOX MOVIES. In them I found a tape from when Brian and I first moved into our apartment in Sacramento in February of 2000. I also found a tape from our first band in 2001 Shovelfist.



I spent a good hour and a half watching these videos and reminiscing. I made Brian join me after a while and we reveled in our past and how far we've gotten since then.
We've accomplished a lot and physically we both look and feel better than we did 11 years ago.


Later that evening we toasted to 2012 with pink champagne, wonderful kisses and a promise that 2012 will be our best year yet!

Holiday Weekend Redux

Hayden fell asleep pretty early on Christmas eve. Around 8:30 he was ready for bed and watching a movie upstairs in our room. He slept hard too. Harder than I ever remember sleeping on the night before the best present getting day ever.
He came into our room about 6:30 am and laid in bed with us watching Spongebob while we lightly slept. At 7 am both Brian and I were so excited to get downstairs and see what Santa had brought that we jumped out of bed, got dressed and brushed and headed down the stairs.

He reveled at the Star Wars Grievous Helmet Santa left him under the tree and was shocked to see Little Big Planet 2 hidden behind some ornaments. The rest of his presents were more video games, lots and lots of Legos and Star Wars toys. He was extremely happy.

After hours of playing, building and running around he cuddled with daddy at Papa's house on Christmas day.

We had an amazing Christmas full of awesome memories. It was Brian and my 13th Christmas together and the best yet.

His coworker gave him this gift; a picture he took of us at their work party a couple weeks ago.

Happy Holidays!

Last night Hayden and I went through old photo albums and scrapbooks. I wanted to show him pictures from our past holidays.
He wasn't very interested at first but when he saw some of me as a child with Santa he perked right up.

This one was taken in 1984 I believe. You can see so much of Hayden in me. 

I also found this beautiful picture of my mom from High school. I'm sure she's going to hate me posting it but its one of the best pictures I have of her. 

I also found this photo from when I was about one, so 1981 I believe.

My favorite part of the holidays is remembering the awesome times of the past and being grateful for the opportunity to make new memories. We were able to do much more than we expected this year for Christmas thanks to an awesome bonus I got from work. I'm so excited to make a big Christmas eve dinner for our good friends and spend this amazing weekend with our family.

Happy Holidays to everyone!

Sparkle

Three Days. Hayden is SO excited that Christmas is in only three days. I love the sparkle in his eyes as he looks at the Christmas tree and peeks below to wonder what is beneath the wrapping paper.
I wrapped a box the other night and when I put it under the tree he scuttled over to me and said "Mom, WHAT IS THAT?!" Like if he asked me all shocked I would tell him.
I answered "It's daddy's present."
"What IS it?" He pressed.
"I can't tell you it's a surprise!"
"Mom, come on. You can tell me ANYTHING!"
He's just like his dad.

Here are the ornaments of Christmas' past.

This was Hayden's first Christmas. Our amazing friend Shannon took the pictures when he was 4 months old. 

 This was his second Christmas. We took these photos with a photographer in a park in Sacramento.

This was his third Christmas and our first in Las Vegas.

Last year he made this ornament at daycare. He told our daycare provider Melissa that he wanted to make himself as a robot

Last Minute.

Usually I have my Christmas shopping done by now. Usually I have hundreds of cookies baked by now. Usually I'm one million times more festive than I have been this holiday season.
Yesterday I received some gift cards from my family and as grateful as I was to get them I felt a huge weight of panic fall on me. I FORGOT TO TO SEND OUR YEARLY TRADITIONAL ORNAMENTS.
So now I have like 3 days to wrap up as much festive as I can to make sure I don't fail this year. Regardless of how broke we are I have ALWAYS sent something to my family.
Each year I pick out a cute picture of Hayden and make ornaments for all of our family. He posed for some shots the other night so now I have to pick the best one.

These are some of the outtakes.

Thankful

 A thankful heart is not only the greatest virtue, but the parent of all other virtues  - Marcus Tullius Cicero

I'm thankful for so many things this year.
My husband Brian is of course number one. He's the greatest best friend and partner. I never imagined we would be celebrating our 13th Thanksgiving together.

My son Hayden is so amazing. He's the cutest kid in the world, so kind and loving he just brightens up every day.

We have an amazing couple of guys Chris and Rob who make our band .bipolar. still fun and exciting. We've played some pretty awesome shows this year and wrote some of the best songs of our career. We're working on new exciting things and ready to bust them out soon.

My friends, my job, and our sweet doggy Barley are all great too.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Traditions

Since Brian and I have been together I absolutely LOVE having our own traditions. This is the time of year when my Domestic Rockstar-ness really shines.
He kind of had no idea when we first started dating how much of a big deal I make out of the holidays, and now he loves it as much as I do.
This is our 13th Thanksgiving together and out of the 13 I've only not cooked the full T-Day meal 3 times.
I hear people complain and whine about the hectic stress of Thanksgiving and I know a lot of people who would rather just do nothing and really I'd much rather engulf myself in the fun of it than be a scrooge.

Our tradition for Turkey Day is pretty standard but special to us since neither one of our families really had "traditions."
Brian makes an awesome breakfast then I cook all day while he watches football and we usually have dinner with whichever good friends are not able to join their families. It's always a blast and I cannot wait! I am preparing my menu now and can't wait to try some new recipes for side dishes...thank you foodnetwork