Drum roll please...

Ladies and gentlemen the results are in...And you guessed it!
Kent was Joe Strummer from The Clash, rockin the slicked back hair and those white arms the ladies all scream for.
I was Steven Tyler from Aerosmith which is a pretty easy recipe to whip up, just don't condition your hair, put on everything you own, and open wide! Greta was our very own Thom Yorke from Radiohead, complete with Kid A t-shirt and chocolate beard.
Thanks for playing!

Name that Rock Star!

Our little friend Noah had a rock star themed birthday party today, and (of course) we dressed up!
Can you guess who we were?
*I will give you a clue that tattoos and insignia are big hints into our identities.
I'd love to hear what you come up with!

The Holidays (after the fact)

The holidays are over and I feel oddly relieved. It is time to de-clutter, dust, and set our lives to rights for a brand new year.
We had such a good Christmas (if anyone even cares a week after the fact.) We feasted in jolly paper hats at my mom's house and enjoyed the comforts only a mom can bring to a holiday. Aren't mothers the best? Food is better cooked by them, boo-boo's (no matter how minor or made up) are better soothed and sheets are softer in the beds of their houses.
So we enjoyed these comforts and then scooted Christmas day over to my dad's. He shares a birthday with Jesus and proper respects were to be paid on both accounts.
Aren't dad's the best?
No one's driving is safer, knows more about fix-its and warranties, and is better at instilling calm where a woman wants to instill riles.
So we enjoyed these comforts then scooted over to my granny and grandpa's for what is always "The best meal I've ever eaten" and a lovely chat.
New years was equally nice as we just hunkered down at our house to play poker with friends and eat and drink the new year in, leaving the parties and reckless driving to other more brave/foolish people.
And Welcome 2010! I have been looking forward to you. Partially because it felt like 2009 was 2,000 and 9 years long (comes from having a now one year old I suspect.) and also because I think it has a classy ring to it.
I look forward to your offerings.

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!