Happy Birthday to me!

I did so much for my Birthday this year! I never really celebrate my birthday in any crazy sort of way. This year being that I turned 30, my friend Hannah and I think some of our other friends put together a "girls night out" for me. I was super excited because our friend Hannah N. up in Yakima came down for the weekend and spent the afternoon with me. Then Hannah N and I met up with the other girls at The Montage, where I have never eaten. Once everyone got there we were seated and I think everyone ordered some version of Mac and Cheese! It was fun to get to hang out with such fun friends and they all promised to keep the husband and kid talk to a minimum! Our leftovers came out wrapped up in tin foil shaped as animals and flowers. MIne was shaped as a mouse, and as Shannon said "Mandy, it's mouse to go with the mouse in your house!". After dinner those of us who were up for partying all night headed out for Bingo! All though we got there kinda late and we were kicked out. Apparently, Bingo games are very serious, we were a little noisy and nobody cared it was my birthday. We left the Bingo hall and headed downtown to play a little Glow in the Dark Miniature Golf. The mini golf game was pirate themed and they weren't as serious as the Bingo game. Hannah, Hannah, Shannon and I were the friends that were left and we played probably one of the most fun games of mini golf I have ever played! After the game we sat in the car trying to figure out what else to do but we decided that at 12am we were tired and wanted to go to bed. Thanks guys for a fun evening!!!

A Tea and Miri's First Birthday!

In February my Mom and I hosted a tea for my sister and Miri. It was a kind of "welcome to the family" get together for Mirette. We invited some of Brooke's friends and family. I did most of the food, we had mini quiches and Bruschetta and for dessert I made 3 different kinds of cupcakes. We for some reason didn't take a whole lot of pictures that day, but we did get some of the cupcakes and one of Mirette in her party dress.




In April, Miri celebrated her 1st birthday. Brooke asked me to make her birthday cake, all she asked was that it was cute. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed it. Happy Birthday Miri!

Worst date ever!

Back in February my dear friend Sandra set me up on a date. Sandra is on an inter mural soccer team and one of her teammates (Steve) was single just like her friend Mandy. So, she ended up giving Steve my number and after several attempts to get a hold of each other we finally set up a date via text message. The first date was great! We went to Lucky Labrador in Multnomah Village and had pizza and hung out for awhile talking. When we left we were both happy with the date and thought we should get together again. Half way through the week I sent him a text asking how his week was and he asked me to go to the movies. This is where it all went down hill. Let me just start this awesome story by saying 2 things:
1. I am not a fancy person, therefor I don't expect you to be overly fancy. What I do expect is that you are put together.
2. I am totally game with paying for myself, I have done this for awhile now and realize that not everyone believes guys should pay for everything.
Okay, so he was to come to my house and pick me up for the movie after he got off work. He showed up in an over sized fleece covered in cat hair. When I say over sized I mean it hung down to probably mid thigh. His hair was all crazy and not even kinda combed. As unimpressed as I was, I thought maybe he didn't have time to properly put himself together since he just got off work. Shockingly enough not everyone is like me and takes their flat iron to work so that their hair can look nice when they go on the date. He walks me out to his car and he gets in and starts brushing off the passenger seat and says "I spilt some dry cereal this morning, let me just brush that off, you can sit on something if you like." Really? I'm sorry I didn't bring a seat cover with me, silly me I thought the seat would be clean. I honestly don't remember when the movie started but on the way to the movies he mentions how much time we have because the movie didn't start for 15 minutes. We were probably 10 mins from the theater and still had to buy tickets. I am definitely one of those people who can't stand to be late especially at the movies. When we got there he says "oh, I have a free movie ticket and I thought we could just split the cost of the other ticket." The other ticket costing $10. Like I said, I don't mind paying for myself but seriously $10! Dude, if you didn't want to pay for 1 ticket then why did you ask me to go to the movies? After I give him the $5 I owe him for the movie he walks over and says "did you want some popcorn?" I was kind of mad and said no. I figured he would make me pay half and really I wasn't about to share anything with him. He then bought $6 popcorn and then threw half of it away at the end of the movie. After the movie he took me home and I said I had to let my dog out and went inside. As soon as I went inside I turned off all the lights upstairs and went down to the basement and called Sandra.
I went to work the next day and told the guys and even they were shocked. I told my friend Leo that had he paid for the whole ticket, the entire evening would have cost him $16. Leo then pointed out it would have cost $16.75 if he had stopped at the gas station to vacuum out the car!

24 hour trip to Yakima.

February 4th was my good friend Hannah Noel's 30th birthday. To celebrate, her husband Brent asked us to come visit for the evening to surprise Hannah. So, Hannah B, baby Claire, Shannon, Tori and I drove up to Yakima for the night.
We drove straight to Brent's Mom's house where we met up with another good friend Marisa. The night before we left we joked with Hannah N. on Facebook about how fun it would be to be hanging out eating Tillamook chocolate peanut butter ice cream and drinking wine, so when we saw their car enter the drive we left Claire (who she had never met) in her car seat in front of the door with a gallon of Chocolate PB ice cream and a bottle of wine and we all hid in the back room. When Hannah walked in she said "I didn't order this" and then she looked at Claire and said "that looks like Claire", Brent's Mom said "it is Claire" and then the best line of the night was when Hannah had realized what was going on and screamed "where are they?" and came running back to the room we were hiding in. She was surprised to see us all!
The rest of the night was spent talking, eating and drinking. We sat at Brent's Mom's house for awhile and then we girls went out of the town (as much as you can in Yakima). We had a few drinks and headed home to the Chocolate PB ice cream. We stayed up till 2 am eating ice cream, drinking wine, talking and laughing. In the morning Hannah N. made breakfast and we hung out in our PJ's until it was time to leave and head home.
Happy Birthday Hannah!
Tori and I in the back seat of the car.
Talking around the table.
Out on the town.
Ice Cream and wine.
The whole gang in the morning.

Mirette Grace Bixby

Over the last year my sister Brooke and Brother in law Eric have been in the process of adopting a baby from Ethiopia. In December they were finally able to go get her. When they flew home we had a welcome home party waiting at the airport. My nephews Jack and Sully were petty excited to see their parents and new baby sister. As soon as Sully saw them he ran down the hall into Eric's arms. I am not sure anyone was as excited as Jack was to see Mirette, he just couldn't get enough of her. Here are some of the pictures from the airport.

Brooke made the boys Big Brother shirts to wear to the airport.



The Welcome Home Party



Sully running to his Mom and Dad, he was so excited to see them.


Brothers with their baby sister.


I love how excited Jack looks!


Meeting Miri for the first time.

Alive and doing well

So, I have taken a bit of a vacation from Blogging. Truth be told I have been a little busy and just haven't wanted to. All sorts of exciting things have happened since I organized my stuff back in January. So, this next week I will hopefully get all caught up on the blogs. So, if you are a regular member of my life you already know what happens and have probably seen the pictures or in some cases even taken the pictures. Be exited folks, I'm back!

Organizing!

Yesterday I decided that I needed to go through all my stuff to organize and get rid of things. I have 8 Rubbermaid's that I keep all my stuff in that I don't have room for here in Oregon. Since I share Tori's house, I don't need your normal household items because Tori already has them. Since Tori is the best landlord ever, she allows me to use her things! So, this morning I started going through everything. I thought that when I packed everything up I had done so in an organized manor, not so much. There was really no rhyme or reason to why certain items were in certain containers or how they were packed. Most of this stuff has been packed up since before I moved from Oregon. Here are some of the things I found,

3 Electrasol tabs
about 350 paperclips
a bag containing picture hangers, tacks, and 1 Lego man
5 AAA, 7 AA Batteries all different brands
30 frames at least!
Cords for something, not sure what
phone chargers for 2 different phones that I don't use
at least 3 hands free ear pieces
Probably 10-15 free advertising pens, Thanks Hannah!
My 5Th grade Diary
Jr. High Progress reports
5 half used notepads
3 unused notepads
The Letter K for company reader boards

It was pretty fun going through all this, and now that things are all organized it is much easier to find things. I called my parents to see if they still had some of my stuff at there house and my dad said he would take some paperclips off my hands but said he didn't need 350 and I said Does anyone need 350 paperclips? I am not sure why I have so many, I am thinking that I need one and went and bought some because I couldn't find any. I can't even think of a reason I would need a paperclip! The frames are crazy! If for some reason you need to buy me a gift in the next year or two please don't buy me a frame! The Elecrasol tabs make me laugh, I clearly couldn't just leave those at my last apartment of give them to my neighbor! That would be crazy, so I gave them to Hannah!