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.