Hi! I'm One now!

Hi Friends,
This is the Barley. I am writing to tell you all some very important news. Yesterday I turned ONE years old. Now, that I am one I can do things like eat cake, sit forward in my car seat, and voice my opinions and stuff.
That's a picture of me and my cake, it was chocolate with pink coconuts on top and I think I will just eat cake from now on.

Also we had pasta with red sauce because it's my favorite food and mom cuts it up really small so I like it. Also friends came over and my Grandma and Grandpa and they watched me eat these things and put them on my face.

This is a picture of me and dad blowing out my candle, but mostly my dad is.

Then there were cards for me with nice words all over them and lots of wishing me a happy things and telling me I love you.Afterwards my boyfriend Noah (who's just a friend) came over. He brought me pink daisies and we played with everything in my room including my new books, play mat with letters I like to eat, and cash register that goes *bing!Thank you for coming to my party I had fun.
Bye!

Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree!

Saturday marked our 2nd Annual Christmas Concert!
What started out last year as a way to put some holly in the heart of a hugely pregnant (and mostly imobile) me, has now become a yearly tradition.
I LOVE the Christmas Concert!
There is something so pure and old timey about a Christmas Concert with everyone getting together to sing/play/strum/string/tap dance/eat/drink /and hullabaloo the Christmas season in!

The Feast!The Music!
The Games!

And the silliness!
Made it such a jolly night!
Merry Christmas!
*For a complete rundown of the nights festivities may I direct you to my facebook page? I haven't the heart to write everything all out again:)

Diggin' a well.

Hi!
We are digging a well, want to help?
This Christmas our community group is trying to pull money together to fund the digging of a well for a village in Kenya through World Concern.
We have a couple of friends who are offering a "corporate" matching gift and will match everyone dollar for dollar up to $1,500 -- with a group goal of raising $3,000 to dig an entire machine-drilled well for a Kenyan community.
I am so excited about this. I have been thinking a lot lately about how I can be helping other women, specifically women and their families.
Becoming a mom has revolutionized how I see basic needs. I didn't used to think twice about the quality of the water I was drinking until The Barley came into the picture.
Then when pregnancy hit all of a sudden I was online researching the last 5 years of inspection reports for our city water.
Thankfully, our water rocks and I have regular access to clean (and tasty) water for Greta everyday.
It's heartbreaking though to think that just around the world moms like me don't have that luxury and are forced to feed their sweet babies unsafe/contaminated water, knowing fully that it will make their babies sick, but are still without a choice.
Not cool.
All this to say, if you want to join us, it's going to be a lot of fun!
Well, we won't do any of the actual digging, or meeting people, or telling funny stories around their newly installed water cooler, but we will be writing checks!

A Corporate Christmas

Yesterday Kent and I went to our very first office Christmas Party.
It's probably silly that I got so excited about our First Corporate Christmas experience but I get excited about things most people don't: airplane food (it's always such a tiny surprise!), eating when people are sleeping (night cheese), toast....hmm I'm seeing a pattern here. Upon further thought I think the food was cause for most of my excitement....and if I stretch my memory a little further I do remember saying "There will be FOOD there!" as my initial response when Kent told me about the Windows Christmas Party.
Why am I not 500 lbs?
Anyway, it was a fun chance to get all gussied up and wear something I wouldn't wear in front of my friends.
We even bought Kent a whole Handsome Man outfit *including tiny tie for the occasion...raor.

And there WAS food! Since the party was for the whole Windows division they rented out the Seattle Convention Center. There were 9 different rooms with various themes and live bands. My favorite was the 20's inspired speakeasy...love that music! (also that room had beef).
There was a room with a mean 80's cover band, but the award for best theme in my opinion was the International room. They had large tents set up with couches, and settees where you could sit and play board games and eat Pho which was a welcome sight to me as my fabulous heels didn't feel so fabulous by the end of the night. It ended up that we didn't meet anyone that Kent remotely recognised (except for one!), but we spent a lovely evening anyways drinking free drinks and scavenging for food.
No awkward introductions, no laughing at the bosses jokes, or any of the things I came to expect from watching sitcoms.
Not a bad First Corporate Christmas!

Home again.

We are back from our Goodwill Virginia Tour! After much flying, driving, and general seeing everyone we have ever known, we are home and oh so done with the whole traveling thing for a while.
Don't get me wrong, it was totally worth it!
We had a great 2 weeks and got to meet up with so many good friends: Juice & co, Zack and Greta & co, Chris, Aaron, Mike, Paul...it was refreshing to spend time with them.
We spent the rest of our time with Kent's wonderful family as we crowded all the kids (9 cousins under 6!) together to mingle and mix at his parent's house in Virginia Beach. It was adults and children up to your ears and so much fun!
I don't have many pictures of us and the fam (boo.) But I do have quite a few from our Williamsburg Day! Ahhhh! History! I love it:)
I had hemmed and hawed about going for weeks before our trip out there, but Kent apparently he had enough of it as a kid, it being forced and educational at the time. So I had pretty much given up on the idea until we were driving down the highway on our way back from meeting a friend for bbq and what do you know? Greta had a dirty diaper! Where on earth were we going to stop and change her? Oh I don't know, how about that sweet looking town? What Williamsburg? How did that get there? Well, we should probably just find a restroom and... before you know it we were strolling the streets and geeking out over very old things (my favorite!)
Like Father Christmas. Greta was mezmorized by him and he was very sweet to give Greta some cheerios since candy is not yet on the menu.



*Reader Meg: There is a picture of a colonial person coming up after this picture. As they scare you and make you want to itch and wiggle. Get ready to close your eyes!....

.......

*OK! You can take your hands off of your eyes now, that was the only colonial person I am going to post. He was very friendly though and very interested in the harvest of his cabbages.


Greta stole that apple and that's how we landed here...in the stocks.

Except not really, and it was really a very perfect day. We even coined the term "Why can't everyday be like Williamsburg?"
Well, it is so so good to be back home. I always am reminded of how much I love it here when I come back after being away. I was the happiest Skirst in town today and found myself skipping a little quite unashamed of myself.

Coming to an airport near you...

All's well here at the Walters, we are back to good health and packing our bags! Greta is very excited to see her Nana and Papa along with all her aunts, uncles, and cousins. Excitement this great deserves excited arms!
In just a few hours it's going to be 3 Walters, 3 airports, 2 planes, and 2 days...it's going to be an adventure!

Everybody clear off my lawn!

I think I know why some old people can be so stereotypically outspoken and cranky...they must not feel well!
And neither do I so listen up youngsters I have some complaining to do!
This Tylenol is keeping my fever down for now, but I don't know for how long so let me speak my peace while I've got the gumption.
In my day when a girl got sick she got sick with 24 hour influenza, you threw up a little, bit a wooden spoon, ran around the block a couple of times and you were fit as a fiddle.
Now these newfangled flus are downright indecent if you ask me. Your throat (hah! throat, if you can call it that, I call it the devil's closet! Where the sins of the wicked sit and fester.) What's left of your throat is so sore you have to chew your water and forget about pills! Wont fit down your pipe, no room.
Get your rest you say? fiddle sticks! How can you when you aren't allowed to breathe the night air without waking up with a fit.
Fever! Chills! Balder all!
I'm tired, I'm going to bed, but you can tell that nice Mr President (from me) that he has a problem to fix and he better up and fix it! I don't want to catch him drinking tea with foreign dignitaries or fiddlin' with the taxes when this poor she devil can't get bodily peace enough to swallow her oats!
You tell him that. And then thank him for his time, I won't have any one saying that I have forgotten my manners.

*I have a Dr's appointment today at 2:00 and as I am not leaving there until they give me medicine (and it better be something fierce) I look forward to regaining my composure, my senses, and your friendship in time.)

I feel Grrrrrreaaaat! (or want to)

We be sick.
Either I caught what Greta had last week, or it's an amazing coincidence, but we be sick at the Walter house.
I won't go on a limb and say it's a case of the oinkers (h1n1) but I do bare a remarkable resemblance to the list of symptoms. Fever, sore throat, body aches, chills. I kind of wish it is so I can go ahead and get it over with ya know...stare down that swine and be done with it.
Since Kent's remedy for sick people is to listen to funny songs and watch funny cat videos.
I have for your amusement (and mine) a commercial I have been laughing at for a solid week! Maybe I need to get my hands on a Nutri Grain Bar?

Halloween at Home with the Walters

I love Halloween, I get excited about Nov. 1st for next Halloween.
Mostly I love a holiday where everyone dresses up and eats candy! It's tricky business though, this waiting all year, crafting and fine tuning your costume, and setting out your bowl of candy with high hopes. Because you will often find that you work on your costume more than you wear it, (and in our case this year) get two trick or treaters and a lot of left over candy.
But I will do it all over again next year.
This year we solidified nerd status with home-made Star Wars costumes. (All except little Yoda, time was running short and that ewok costume wasn't going to make itself...so we bought Yoda.)

I have always wanted to be a Princess Leia and wear those iconic buns! So I got the whole family to go along with me. I think Kent made a very convincing Han Solo.

And Greta was impossibly cute.
Since Greta has been fighting a sick, we remained absurdly decked out in our living room and watched Young Frankenstein and ate another one of Kent's chili creations. (fewer spicy peppers, Guinness instead of Dos Equis, more chocolate, and ground meat instead of cubed...overall two thumbs up!)

We got a little antsy later on and went over to our friends house to peek at the other costumes and play a little Rock Band.
And now I have a case of the 'day afters'. You know, the day after your birthday, or the day after Christmas when the tree is bare and all the hub bub is over and often you think...that was a lot of work for just a day?
So now I'm looking at my costume and weighing the idea of just keeping it on! Just keeping it on for as long as it takes for me to get my years worth of happy anticipation out of it.
Maybe just one more night?

All smiles

Just a couple of pictures of Greta and her dad:)
Greta had just woke up from her nap and had sweet bed head and lots of smiles...I couldn't resist.
Greta has been fighting off a sick the last week so we have kept her pretty close to home. Let's hope she kicks it for good soon!
We have canceled our Halloween plans for tomorrow to keep her from spreading the love to others, so stay tuned for Lame Walter Halloween at Home! We will try and make it a party... but mostly it will be just the three of us way too dressed up, eating chili, and candy leftovers. Pictures to come!

Getting our Date on!

We have a lovely arrangement with some of the people in our community group to have a sort of baby co-op! We each babysit each others kids the equivalence of about once every 4-5 weeks and then have the other 4 weeks for Friday night dates with our hunnies!
Lately due to colds, and the house taking over our free time we have been doing without the dates. But yesterday we got our date on!
I wore heels (because that makes it a date and not just an every other day.) And Kent wore what I layed out for him;)We saw a movie (the ultimate mom/dad luxury as it's 2 hours of sitting with our undivided attention not on a certain squiggly small person.) We saw Where The Wild Things Are which was so very good and not a children's movie but a movie about remembering what it was to be a child. And then scooted off to the new Purple in downtown Bellevue where we glimpsed into the lives of single people who lived rumpus lives and ate dinner at 9:30. Meg and Ryan joined us for our late dinner and it was all in all a raging success and a very fun "pretend".
I think we really would have fooled people too only we did stop to take a picture in front of the restaurant (Clue #1 that we don't go out enough) and then goofed it up with my flinging my head into Kent's elbow as part of our spontaneous "non-pose" (I always have to have a picture that isn't posed) and screaming things like Ow! and what happened?
However, I think our shenanigans came off to bystanders more as wine induced frivolity and less like 2 parents still reeling from the absence of a baby on the hip and a diaper bag on the arm.
We did snatch a picture by the elevators though. Timer on a trash can.It's posed, but I like it. It reminds me of us three years ago when every silly thing deserved a picture and every day was a date...and really, let's be honest with Kent it still is. But on Fridays I get to wear heels!

Glad Tidings!

All kinds of good news!
Yesterday Greta had another ultrasound which a lot of things depended on and to make a long story short (as all medical stories should be made) her left kidney although still distended didn't get any worse, and our Dr. even ventured to say looked a little bit better!
Which means surgery is put on a shelf for now and we will continue to get ultrasounds every 3 months for however long it takes to either a) grow out of it (3-4 years) or b) get worse and they go in to fix it.
As much as I have not been known to enjoy this waiting game I find this wonderful news! If things are going to mend themselves, well that's different and I can do that kind of waiting with a smile.
So these glad tidings bring another. Since Greta will not be going under any knives this fall we can continue in our plans to go visit Kent's family in VA!
Kent will be taking his paternity leave in November which gives him a full month off of work to play with Greta and I. (I could kiss Microsoft!)
It has been much too long since we have seen his family last and we plan to swim in the company of friends-and-relations for a good 2 weeks of it. We will kiss the heads of babies newly born of friends, and shove our faces with BBQ. If there ever was a time I pine for VA it is during the fall. There is something so nastalgic in the air there. The excitement of starting a new year of school, falling in love, getting that boy to marry me...it's all thanks to good old fashioned Virginia.

My final and long awaited good news is that of a new addition to our small family...don't get so excited....Greta's first tooth!
It's just a pearly stub of a thing now, but thank goodness! Maybe she will feel the wastefulness of having such a fine tooth and start to eat with it.
I think this picture sums up her attitude toward eating perfectly.
But seriously, we cant have it all!

Enter The Will...

"Greta is going through stuff."
I find myself saying that more and more lately to shield her from the reproach of others. It could be teeth, growing pains, or who knows, but she is exhibiting her will a whole lot more lately.
One of her latest and greatest is her decision to not wear hats. No hats, no ma'am! But what she has yet to learn I think is that she got that willfulness from somewhere and I like the hats.
*The Hall Family Willfulness or better known as"The Will" is no garden variety stubborness. It is simultaneously both a magical force and scientific fact. It travels within the family circle and when used wisely it bears discipline, steadfastness, and standing ovations as it's principle fruits. Improperly used and it results in friends, family, and spouses with grey hair and brains turned to mush.
Not only hats but food! We are throwing the tastiest of meals her way (and I mean throw quite literally as the only time she opens her mouth it to howl at the idea, giving us a small chance to toss in some food) with a hope she will start to like grown up mealtime, but so far it's no meals no ma'am! Why she would prefer bottles to exotic fruits, yogurts, and liquid thanksgiving dinner is truly beyond me.
Ladies and gentleman this IS the main event. Barley vs. The Parents. Place your bets!