Another Birthday Shoutout

Happy 30th Birthday Anne!! Her actual birthday is today but we helped her celebrate last night at the Shout House. If you go on a Tuesday of your birthday month (or week I can't remember) you get free drinks all night long. Pretty sweet deal. We had a ton of fun as always...

Me, Kris & Abbie


Abbie, Brenda, & Anne dancing.


Anne playing her famous trombone.

Winner Winner Chicken Dinner!

I'm really not a big gambler but after last night I might become one!! (The Island is calling...) The Eids invited us to join them for an overnight at TI. We wanted to have one final night just the 4 of us before Brent leaves for Oklahoma. I thought most of my time would be spent in the hot tub or watching the guys play Black Jack until I was introduced to Pai Gow... They were doing $200 drawings every hour and if you were sitting at a table you qualified for the drawing. Within 45 minutes of me sitting there my name was drawn and I won!! I couldn't believe it. I never win anything. I happily took by $200 and told Justin to pocket it and not to spend - we had shopping to do the next day. Later on the night we went back to the Pai Gow tables and I went on a winning steak. I was up $100 by the time we finally left. This may not seem like a lot to those who gamble but to me it was tons!! Who knew gambling could be so fun? :) And at such a perfect time to hit up all those after Xmas day sales!

My winnings.

In the spirit of Christmas...

Conner must've been a good boy this year! He got his first Xmas card in the mail last week from his daycare. It even included 2 pet emergency stickers to put on our window! So nice. And last night one of the neighbor boys, Eli, came over and gave him his first Xmas present. Eli has been in love/fascinated with Conner ever since he was born. Before he could walk, he would sit and watch Conner's every move. As soon as he become mobile he tried to chase and keep up with Conner or help throw his ball. So it was no surprise last night whenever we tried to ask him a question he'd only squeal out The Puppy!! or Conner!!! And what did Conner get? Tennis balls of course for Eli to throw when the weather is nice again. I'm not sure which of them was more excited. Thanks Eli!!

Follow up: This morning we get a text that said Eli woke up and wanted to go to Conner's house to play. awww come on over, Conner will be waiting!

Conner showing off this unwrapping skills.


Merry Christmas to everyone!! Hope you have a wonderful couple of days!

Wacky Friday

One of my favorite books as a Kid was Wacky Wednesday by Dr Seuss. I can't say I've thought about that book for probably 15 years but I had a moment yesterday that brought it all back. Here's the book synopsis (from Amazon) - "A baffled youngster awakens one morning to find everything's out of place, but no one seems to notice! Beginning readers will have fun discovering all the wacky things wrong on each page while sharpening their ability to observe, as well as to read." Very fun book for kids but anyways. It wasn't a Wednesday but it was still very Wacky.

I stepped off the bus and was waiting to cross the street when I noticed a blind man out of the corner of my eye. I glanced over at him and he had the longest and tallest corn cob pipe I have EVER seen. Well first of all let me say, I didn't think a corn cob pipe actually existed besides in Frosty the Snowman. And second this thing was HUGE!!! Plus it's freezing cold out, everyone else is all bundled up and here's this blind guy just standing there waiting for the bus sucking on his pipe. I don't even know if the thing was lite, but it was definitely sitting in his mouth and he wasn't moving around at all. He almost looked like a statue. I was so close to whipping out my camera phone but thought that just might be a bit overboard and rude. Here's the closest picture I could find to the pipe. It still doesn't do the image in my mind justice or show how out of place he looked...

Belated Bday Shoutout

I haven't been very good at my birthday shoutouts. Sorry if I have missed yours! A big Happy Birthday to Natalie last Monday. We fought the snow storm and celebrated it on Tuesday night by going to Pizza Luce and Sister Hazel at the Fine Line. 4 years ago we celebrated her 30th birthday going to Sister Hazel with pretty much the same group of girls. All night long people were making comments about how different this time around was - and by different I mean lamer. :) I think we were calling it being "older and wiser". Last time we started with a huge contained of Jell-o shots, many drinks and I don't remember much food being eaten. We went late into the night despite the fact we all had to work the next day. Yeah, we were rock stars. This time there was still wine and liquor flowing but plenty of food was eaten and the group I was with left by 10:30. But we still had lots of fun even if we're not as crazy as we used to be!

The group - Paula, Brenda, Nat, Kristen, Steph, Angie, Carolyn, Beth


Cran this shirt made me think of you. :)


Me & Nat

Busy Busy Busy

That about sums up my past week and the next up coming one. So many things going on and they are all so fun. Hate to do a cop out but since I forgot my camera last week Anne's blog shows all the fun we had at the Holidazzle and the hungover (for some of us) Friday that we had!

The weekend was filled with lots of holiday fun including more cookie baking! And there were no mishaps this time :) Cari and I went over to mom's on Sunday and baked the day away. I have so many cookies now and have no idea what to do with them all especially since Justin can't eat any of them! Let me know if you want a plate of cookies and I will gladly make you one!

Cari told me I was making a mess so I showed her what a real mess looks like.


Hard at work


Taking a breather

Baby Moehring Shower

So many fun events this week. I love this time of year. Last night I went to Kristen's baby shower with Cran and a bunch of current and old SWW girls. (SWW is where Justin used to work a long time ago and how I met Kristen) It was a very fun night and great to see everyone again. I'll let the pictures do the talking.

Cran and I creating our baby onesie.


Our creation - So Berry Cute!!


K cubed - Kristen, Kristen, Kristie


The current and old SWW girls

Xmas is coming!!

The tree is up and decorated. The presents are (almost) all bought, wrapped, and under the Christmas tree waiting in great anticipation of the fun to come. Does it get any better?? Of course with in 30 minutes of putting the presents under the tree Zoey was chewing on the ribbons and Conner had found the only edible present and had unwrapped it. Damn kids...

Cookie Baking

Friday night Jenny, Cran, Cari, Kate & Gail all fought the snow and came down to my house to bake cookies. Jenny is a great cook but says she can't bake for the life of her so it was our mission to teach her a few lessons and send her home with a lot of cookies. Overall I think we did a pretty good job but there were of course a few mishaps...

The first wasn't really a mishap, maybe only to me. Kate wanted to go the easy way of making cut out cookies so she brought frozen cookie dough where all you had to do was take the cookie out of the package and put it on the cookie sheet. Then we used frosting out of the can and sprinkles. For those of you who know my mom and how I was brought up you'll understand why I found the whole process appalling. :)



The second I will take complete credit for. Cran and I were trying to thin the melted chocolate chips so we could drizzle it. She though adding fat would work so we tried that and it didn't thin it enough. I insisted that milk should work...oops. Once the milk was added it curdled and formed a big lump. Jenny tasted it and said it was the worst choclate she's ever had. We had to start over...





The last incident was probably the highlight of the night for me. We were trying to make peanut butter blosoms. It was at the end of the night and we were all getting tired. Jenny was helping me and I told her to add the flour. She carefully measured it out and put it in the bowl. We mixed it up and I instructed her to start rolling the dough into balls. Here's how it went (paraphrased):
Jenny: This dough won't form into balls
Me: What do you mean it won't form into balls?
[I walk over and try it, the dough melts all over my hand]
Me: Nope it sure won't make a ball.
[I taste the dough - it's super sweet and sugary]
Me: Are you sure you added flour and not powdered sugar?
[We all look around the kitchen]
Gail: [picks up the flour] I've got the flour over here and I don't think it's moved in a long time. [and the powded sugar is sitting right next to Jenny's dough]

We all uncontrolably burst out laughing and through the dough away. We decided peanut butter bloosoms weren't going to get made and Jenny states that she's never baking again - I'm sure she'll change her mind come next year. :) At least we still had plenty of other cookies!