BFFs

Now that they are playmates, Taylor lets Cotton cuddle with her.  Not sure if you noticed, but look at his paws.  Doesn't that melt your heart?

We had another jam-packed weekend which has left me a little tired on this fine Monday morning.  One thing I have noticed about myself lately is that my mood is best when I am a little on the busy side.  Not busy like work and social committment busy.  But busy as in productive busy.  Work around the house.  Craft projects.  Studying.  Cooking.  Working out (not that I have done any of that recently).  Stuff like that.

So we will hope that I can rest up tonight for better blog posts this week.  Maybe I'll get the energy conjured up to actually talk about the week.  There's a crazy idea.

Bounce house, drag, and family... Just a normal weekend

I had one of the busiest weekends I have had in a while this last weekend.  It started by driving to Tigard to drop off some PE prep books to Gavin.  Then immediately driving to Clackamas for Tegan's dress fitting.  Back on the freeway to drive south for my brother's grandmother's 90th birthday party (did you follow that?).

My brother and his cousins (he is my 1/2 brother) organized a really nice party at his house full of wonderful food, lots of wine, and a bounce house for the kids.  While watching the boys all play in the bounce house, David looks at me and says, "Aunt Natalie... you can't get me" and then runs into the bounce house.

So I decided to run in after him...

Let me tell you... the bounce house was quite the work out.  My calves were tired after I got done.

From there, I headed back up to Portland for Tegan's Bachelorette Party.  Happy hour at Portland City Grill followed by...



Dudes.  All dudes.  Who all look better than I do in lingerie.  Sad.  :(  But I digress.  Then we went back to Brittany's AWESOME house for a sleepover.  No pictures of her wonderful house because I would have felt like a major creeper taking pictures of someone else's house.  But let me just tell you... it was gorgeous.  Perfectly decorated.  Seriously.

Anyway... after going to bed at 4 and waking up at 9, I headed back south down to Albany for the Grenz Family Reunion at Kizer Farms.

It has been at the same place for as long as I remember.  I asked how long the family reunion had been going on (it is an annual event) and turns out it started as a birthday party event for my great-great-grandmother, Eva Hirning Grenz Ammon who came to the United States from Russia.  You can all thank (or curse) her for brining this wonderful family to the U.S. 

What?  Your family reunions don't include meetings with minutes and officer elections following Robert's Rules of Order?  Huh... Weird.  Phil and I are on the books for the newest married couple 2 years in a row.

It may not be here next year.  That will be weird.  We Grenz's aren't great with change.

After a couple more hours we met up with my parents for the most amazing pizza EVER.

Padington's.  And then I went home and fell asleep at 8:30.  I am wild.  And you all quit reading 5 pictures ago.

Busy Lately

Oh man... to say that things have been hectic lately is nothing short of an understatement. Things have been less than ideal these last 2 weeks.

Without going into too many details, Phil's dad had a medical emergency (I'm not sure how much information Phil is comfortable with putting out there). Since family is pretty much one of the most important things to me and because Phil IS the most important thing to me, I sent Phil to Virginia right away to make sure he could spend time with his family. He was gone a week.

At the same time, I was trying to prepare for my best friend Joanna's baby shower. I had been looking at ideas and trying out recipes for a couple of months. I wanted it to be just right... classy and unique. Well Phil and I had planned on getting a lot of work done around the house to prepare for having people over for the shower, but he had to leave suddenly. So I had to try to figure how to do everything I had orignially planned AND get the house ready all at the same time by myself. I mean, I could have cut back on the stuff I had planned for the shower, but I really wanted to do it the best I could for Jo. I feel like amazing friends deserve amazing things.

On top of that stuff, I was dealing with trying to be supportive of the stuff Phil and his family (who I have not always gotten along with the best) were going through and trying to wrap my head around the changing circumstances of my new family. Money got thrown into the mix too but we won't talk about that.

I survived the week. Thanks to some help from my parents and LOTS of work by Phil once he got back, the shower was exactly what I had in mind for Jo and her baby on the way.

Also during last week, massive hiccup at work. All I will say is a combination of my being REALLY stressed, passive aggressive co-workers, and total lack of sensitivity caused a MAJOR breakdown for me. Even now after it has been "dealt with" I am still kind of knocked back from it. I don't bounce back from some things very well and I can tell this is definitely one of those things.

Even now I feel like I could burst into tears over everything right now. To say that I am a little depressed is an understatement. I am trying to pull myself out of it, but it is hard. Exercise has been helping. I guess it is good that my desire to lose weight trumps my bad feelings. :)

In other news, I have taken a step backwards when it comes to my coffee consumption. I had started drinking my coffee black to cut back on the calories and because sugary cofee kind of grosses me out now. But the other day I decided to get a soy misto from Starbucks (a past favorite of drink of my friend Karla). They use the Vanilla Soy Milk. It is SO GOOD. And I have had one everyday since. I stopped using soy milk a while ago (I used to put it in my tea) but stopped because of the estrogen mimicking effects of soy. I figure I will have to stop when we start having kids so I might as well enjoy it now.

The baby shower forced us to finish getting the house looking nice and I LOVE IT!! We bought an area rug for the living, mainly to cover some stains on the gross carpet. We used a belated wedding gift card to get one from Target (thank you Alan and Jen).

We got our thank you notes so now I have to start getting those done. I will be glad to have those done. I feel like a bad person for not having gotten to those yet. But it is kind of bad timing because I registered last week to sit for the PE Exam in October. And I HAVE to pass it. Well I don't have to, but I REALLY REALLY want to. So I have to start studying for that. I figure if I can do like 10 thank you cards a day, I should have them done in a little over a week.

We are leaving for the family camping trip tonight and I am so excited. Seriously. I am super excited. I am not so sure about being excited to be around my family since the last time I went I left early because they were so mean to me. I am hopeful though that this time will be better. I just really need a little break. Actually I think I could use a long break but I will have to settle for a short one. Gotta take what you can get.

Anyway, I will post some pictures from the baby shower soon. I really need to download them because I want to give them to Joanna. I will leave you with this picture of the Mommy-to-Be. She has about 4 weeks until her due date and she is pregnant OUT IN FRONT. Like she has not gotten any wider and you can't tell she is pregnant from the back. The baby is OUT IN FRONT. Totally worth all the work to have a shower for this lovely lady. :)





Love, Mrs. Janney