Finally. Party Day arrived.

I have been planning my daughter's first birthday party since August. No jokes. I am a lunatic about my kids bday parties. I always had shitty parties, I want them to have good ones, kwim??

Okay, I'm going to let the pics do the talking here. Mostly. My usual venue was my garage, so I did the best I could transforming it from a workshop/car storage center to a winter onederland. Enjoy!

I made a few of these luminaries for the tables. Yes, I AM awesome, thank you.

1 of 2 cupcake trees. (trees are martha stewart collection from macy's.)

The banner, signs & cupcake toppers are all custom made from Party Pops on Etsy. Check her out, she's awesome, and great to work with as well.

The dessert tabel, I was trying to fit it all in, but cut off some of the bottom. You can kinda see a couple hanging snowflakes from the ceiling as well. I also had pink snowflake garland draped around the front of the table, you can't see here.

And here's one of the birthday girl of course! This while we sang happy birthday, with her cupcake, trying to keep her from grabbing fire...

I would've added more, and tried to in fact, but I have a new program, and it takes forever, bc I haven't figured out how to adjust the file sizes yet.

Happy Birthday to my dear, sweet, little girl. I can't believe it's been a year already! I have fought so hard for you this year, all I want is to make you feel okay! We are still fighting for you, and will keep fighting for you, until we get it all figured out. I will never settle, I promise. You light up my life & make me so happy, I can't put it into words. I never knew how awesome it would be to have a daughter, but now I do. We all love Miss Brynn!!!

This is my official Holiday Post. Gingerbread tastes like shit.

With the holidays rapidly approaching, I figured it was time for a new post. I'm a blogging slacker anymore. Mostly because I can't think of a title. (As evidenced above.)

I've been stressing. Not about the holidays, about life in general again. Involving work and money. While I really enjoy money, I do not enjoy the act of working, nor do I enjoy working and still having no money. How the hell does that happen??

Once again the holidays have snuck up on me. I kept putting off getting my official Christmas shirts to see Santa, something I do every single year, and now it is too late and we will be sporting whatever red shirts I find in the closet. Christmas-1. Mommy-0.

So I made gingerbread men with my son the other night, just to partake in a holiday tradition. While I was stirring up the dough, I was already about to vom. It smells horrendous. Like, really, REALLY bad. But I can honestly say I've had really good gingerbread before, so I figured I'd give it a shot. I set up a section of the counter with all different icings & sprinkles so that my son could decorate until his little hearts content. What did we end up with you ask? Gingerbread men with sad faces made of red hots. Yes, he gave them sad faces. Isn't that so sad?? Whatev. They tasted liked shit anyway, so they're totally just to look at. We're re-doing the cookie thing tonight with no-fail sugar cookies. But I can get kinda crazy when it comes to baking, like, I MUST bake to perfection. I MUST decorate to perfection. It's my thing. So it takes a LOT for me to let my kid have a little fun in the kitchen around the holidays, bc I truly want my baked goods to look better & taste better than everyone else's. I'm competitive with my cookies & cakes. I made some reindeer face cookies for his preschool party last week (my favorite place to show off my skills...to 4 year olds...)and I sent a pic to my bff's phone, and when I got the response "God damn fuckin Betty Crocker", I knew I did good. "Martha Stewart" is also an acceptable comparison.

Merry Christmas to you & yours, from me & mine. :)

                                                                Merry effing Christmas.

                                             Just kidding....there ya go. Some happy faces.

No matter your age or marital status, no one wants to be seen buying a pregnancy test.

So my husband told me months ago, that pills are NOT the best form of birth control for me, bc I can't remember SHIT. I can't. But I really wanted to try. Bc I had previously used the ring, which hurt my vag pretty bad, not gonna lie, and the stupid shot made me gain a good 15 lbs. Not fair. To hurt my vag therefore ruin the "sex life", or be fat, or hope to remember pills??? I'm gonna pick hope to remember pills.

Well I did NOT remember a couple of those pills, hence going to buy a pregnancy test. I held it in my left hand so people would see my diamond as I clutched that box, and of course I stopped along the way for decoy items. Kids toothpaste & CARS body wash. I'm such a mom. And OF COURSE, I've NEVER seen a line at the self scan until I need to DISCREETLY BUY A  PREGNANCY TEST. It;s not so discreet when I'm standing in line in the middle of the people packed isle.

FYI-Test #1 was neg. Test #2 comes in the morning.

UPDATE: Saving test #2 for next month. Started. lol At exactly 4:30 am. How do I know this? Let me tell you the timeline of my night: 9:45pm- go to bed. 11:00-baby wakes up crying, hubs brings her into our bed bc it's one of THOSE nights. 12:00am-wake up & vomit bc of nasty pizza for dinner. yay. 12:30-more baby crying. 4:00-son comes into our room crying bc he wants his blanket, that we could not find anywhere before bed. 4:30-baby crys some more. 4:31-monthly visitor arrives. slight feeling of sadness. 4:34-hubs gives baby a bottle & had a great idea to chekc under ottoman for said blanket. Blanket is found. 4:45- son starts puking due to nasty pizza as well. 5:30-son still puking. 6:30- still puking. 6:45- get up to work my first saturday on a new schedule. 7:15-leave for work. come home at 12:15, let myself off early bc we had a familt thanksgiving at 1:30. son is still puking. ;( and mommy is EXHAUSTEEDDDDDDDDDD.

My love for Whitecastle

All I have to say, is my kids just had their first Whitecastle sliders...

AND THEY FUCKING LOVED 'EM.

Mind you, they were the frozen microwavable kind (a burger in 60 seconds! AMAZING!) so they haven't even had the GOOD shit yet.

And for all of you out there, that think the WC is gross, eff off. That stuff is da bomb. Seriously. I grew up on that. And the closest one in about 2 hrs away, and I seriously considered moving over it after high school. My family used to make trips into Columbus every Sunday for WC. SO GOOD. Good enough for after church food.

I nearly cried last time I was in Columbus a few months ago for a bach. party, and stopped & got Burger King (ack!) with my last few dollars, only to look up and realize there was a Whitecastle across the street. It was the liveliest I was that entire night. I may or may not have gotten teary eyed. You decide.

If you live down south, Krystal is a close substitute, but still not the same. But I'll take it. (Come to think of it, down south is where all the good food is. Quincy's, anyone?? Holla.)

And if you haven't had it, we are no longer friends. Okay we are, but only if you try it & YOU LIKE IT. I'm so serious about this.

Life is good.

Wow, it's been awhile since I've posted. I'm feeling very reflective today. I've been reading a blog, that I absolutely love. Go to http://www.kellehampton.com/ if you haven't already, and read Nella's story. And then keep reading. Kelle is a mother of 2 girls (and 2 bonus sons as well) that learned upon her youngest daughters arrival, that she had down's syndrome. It is an excrutiatingly heartfelt, painful, loving, amazing, and beautifully written birth story. It was also featured in Parent's magazine, I believe it was, just a few months ago. Many have read Nella's Story, but I encourage you to read & follow this amazing blog. She truly, truly has a way with words, and writing her feelings in a way, I only wish I could. She is awesome!

One of Kelle's posts, was about the grays of her day and the color of her day. The gray being something not so uplifting, and the color being some happiness.

So here's the grays of my day today:

My husbands grandmother is very ill, and in the hospital. Please pray for her, we love her dearly. And it occured to me last night, that we have not taken a pic of her yet with little miss Brynn. And this rips my heart out that we don't have these pictures. I pray for her, and for Brynn, that she gets well, and I swear we will take a lot of pictures!

Another shade of gray: just life in general beating us up. There's never enough money. There's always something that comes up when we get any. My hubs has been gone a lot lately, working all day, class 2 nights a week, on the off days, he's either been putting a new motor in his truck that was on it's last leg, or helping his cousin with gutting their new house, which hubs is doing the electrical work.

The colors of my day: We are all healthy. We have a warm home, we have food in the fridge. We had some family fun at the pumpkin patch last weekend. The baby is taking nap #3 already today, I'm glad for the break, and bc she is getting over this cold. My son is playing happily today, and even VOLUNTEERED to vacuum the living room. And did a pretty good job at it. I'm glad I have a good man in my life, that manages to make things work out for us. Yeah times are tough. But really, how tough are they in comparison? I'm sitting here in a cushy chair, on my laptop, my son is wearing head to toe gap athletic clothes, watching tv on a plasma hanging on the wall, and I have to go do laundry that has piled up bc we have enough to allow it to pile up. Life is good.

This is a pic from late august/early sept...but I love his smile here...(and I gotta figure out how to download pics onto this laptop...maybe I'll do that tonight!)

When it rains, it pours. So where can I get cute rain boots, size 8?

I haven't been a very active internetish person the past 2 days, the baby was in the hospital. We now believe she had a simple stomach virus, and she is feeling better ut still not up to par.

We took her to the ER Tuesday night around 9:30-10 pm, bc she started vomiting around 8 out of nowhere. The girl had  agreat day, there was not even the slightest cold-like symptom. But she just randomly started vomiting & gagging horribly, and I just could not let her go through the night like that, I didn't want her getting dehydrated. So off the ER we go. Which is EXACTLY in our budget right now, let me tell you. Hopefully we've met our out of pocket max for the year, or I'm going to be making payments for a long, long time.

Anyway, in the ER they did some bloodwork, did a chest xray, and said she had pneumonia. Ummm hello? What? Pneumonia? She hasn't even freakin SNEEZED. But I'm not a doctor, so what do I know? Then her white blood cells were elevated, so they decide they need to do a spinal tap to check for meningitis. And then tell me horrible meningitis is and all of the horrible things that cold happen. Needless to say, I stood in the hallway with the hubs, crying for awhile until they came out & said the spinal fluid was clear. Thank God, bc it was one of those moments where I was just wondering if things that you hope will never happen, were going to happen. Worst. feeling. ever.

They finally admitted her and got us a room in peds around 4am. We were exhausted. She still vomited some in the morning, so she wasn't allowed to eat for 8 hours to allow her stomach to rest. She finally started taking some pedialyte this morning, and eventually took a bottle, all of which has stayed down. Now, we have diarrhea instead. The doctor wanted to keep her another night, but honestly, it's too much for out family to do that, and we can't afford for hubs to miss more work. I think I can handle the diarrhea. I've done it numerous times with my son, and she's going to her regular doctors office early in the morning, so I'm really not worried about it. I think she'll be fine.

And on top of this, hubs is in his cousins wedding this weekend, so will be tied up Friday & Saturday nights. Hopefully, she'll be well enough we can still make it to the wedding.

So keep little miss Brynn in your prayers. She acts fine, you'd never know something was wrong with her. So hopefully her poop turns to more soft serve rather than pond water. ;)

I'm baaaaaaaacccckkkkkkk

Hello my little monsters! Yes, I AM actually Lady Gaga. No, not really, but I do enjoy a good meat dress when appropriate.

There I go getting off track already.

So my computer literally melted last week. Don't ask. So Hubs debated the options for a few days and finally decided to buy a laptop, which I am on now. Hopefully he fixes the desktop soon as well. I kinda miss my giant way too expensive super duper computer screen. It's pretty awesome as far as computer monitors go. And I was pissed when he bought it. Ha.

Huh well this would be maybe a bit more interesting but there is a baby staring at me whining, like she wants food or something. Peace out dolls.

(Dolls. What was Kourteney thinking wanting another baby with Scott????)