Monday, January 12, 2009

The newest member of the Barnes Family



IT'S A BOY!


He was born: January 12, 2009


Time he was born: 9:28 a.m.


Weight: 8 pounds 14 ounces








And now.. you've all been waiting to hear the secret name of the newest member of our Wonderful family!!




His name is: True Torrence Barnes








Friday, January 2, 2009

10 days to go

so i only have 10 days till this baby is here, and i'm kinda excited if you know what i'm saying!
i had a dr. appt. this morning and they threatened to send me upstairs for monitoring if i couldn't get my blood pressure down. 150 over80. i've never had blood pressure problems so i asked that they take it again in a few min. low and behold i was right. 118/80 something if i remember right.
another funny thing is that she guessed my baby to weigh about 8 pounds! maybe even 8.5! that will be the biggest baby i ever had! especially since i've only gained 13 lbs this time! {don't worry, i had the o.k from my dr to stay in the 10-15 range}.
i'm getting my prego pictures taken sat. -done by one of my best friends, she did them for me when i was pregnant with shilo and i love them!
just a few nights ago as john and i were going to bed i sprung on him that i wanted to change our girls middle name to something shorter. so no i'm not going to tell what the name is, but if anyone has a cool girl name that is one syllable that they would like to share, feel free. that your not going to use! remember my kids names are chastin zaine, and shilo mae, so we can't use anything even close. plus we have decided that we can't use anything with a B- like blu- because 'something blu barnes' doesn't sound good:)
thanks for reading, i'll post pictures soon of our life:)

btw: does anyone else notice that that baby in the side bar is getting really cramped! i did!
hehe!

Sunday, December 28, 2008

mystery solved

On the 12th day of Christmas my secret friend gave to me...
12 ice cream drum sticks! then started to sing 'we wish you a Merry Christmas' and popped out from all over the place!
THE KNOWLES FAMILY!!!! from church.
they have a beautifully large family who all took turns making the neat tags and dropping off the gifts!
they thought for sure they were caught a few times- like when john went out to go to his parents house and the dad hid on the side of the house...
or when they thought i could see them....
i am really grateful for them and their example to my family.
i look at their family and think that those kids have no idea how lucky they are to have the parents they have! - what great examples they are, how much they are loved, and the parents are so happy. brother Knowles is Alex's seminary teacher, their daughter who is the same age as Jordan signed up to run cross country with Jordan so she would have a friend when she moved to our house and had to move schools, the mom was there for me when our baby died as such a great support having been through the same thing herself, one of their sons is in Shilo's primary class, and one of their daughters is in Chastin's primary class. i have looked to the mom many times for parenting advice in the last year, and i always walk away thinking how well thought out her answers are. as i had said before, they have inspired me to be a better person, and to do good for a family next year. they will never know how much fun it was for us, & i know it was for them.
they did admit that we are the HARDEST family ever to secret friend. and with us living on a hill and all the snow they actually WALKED to our house several days at 10-11pm!!!they too live in a very hilly neighborhood. i think i might have given up- but not the Knowles family! their teenager boys said it was no big deal! only a couple miles! IN THE SNOW mind you! i hate to say, but i don't think my teenage boy would have thought 'no big deal.'
john said he should have guessed- they are all runners- no wonder they were so fast!
THANK YOU KNOWLES FAMILY! you brought much joy to our family and i hope it brightened your holiday as well!

Monday, December 22, 2008

Caught in the act

If our secret giver is a blog reader I wanted to tell you that I DID see you! But not really! Without my glasses I saw you- and without them I can't see past the nose on the end of my FACE! You were so brave to still run it up to the door not knowing if we were watching. I screamed and giggled with delight like a little child, which made all 4 of my 'should be asleep at 11pm children' come running! I screamed at them to look the other way! Turn off the lights! No peeking out the bedroom windows! No looking what so ever!!!!!! And that's no easy task when your husband is just as bad as them! If you have ever done the 12 days of Christmas for a family you know that 1/2 the fun is not getting caught! And as much as I would really like to know and thank them, I know that that takes some joy from them, so we will just always wonder. But I do want to say THANKS! This has been fun! And we will all be sad when it's over.

On another note- on day 7 my secret friend gave to me ...
Seven swans a swimming in superb 7 -up! 7 origami swans tied to cherry 7-up.
Well once again it was late and all the kids had gone to bed, the dogs were barking and we were kinda keeping an eye out for our gift to arrive on the porch. I went upstairs to wrap presents, dogs were still barking, our neighbors were out at their car packing for a trip, so we just assumed that's what was causing them to go crazy.
I look out the window again and I see my neighbor outside walking back and forth in front of our house looking at the porch, he waves me out. I call to John who was downstairs to go with me.
We open the front door and there it was! Our day 7! I scoop it up in delight and say " it came!" and show it to John. { i think i might be even more excited than the kids!} The neighbor and his brother are asking what it is. I am so excited- reading the package and all, and talking over them, trying to explain the 12 days of Christmas to my Jehovah Witness neighbors that I barely heard him say he thought it was A GAS BOMB! What? I look up in surprise! A gas bomb I laugh! It's cherry 7 up!!!! He explains that he saw the 'guys' running away, saw something red in a bottle on our porch and thought 'well that's not right!' so he came to tell me!!!! I am still cracking up over that!!!!! A GAS BOMB!!!! hahahahahah!!!!!!
Oh that's funny!!!!!!!!
Well anyway John was asking who it was- what did they look like? The three guys start to talk and I yell over them and shake my head and tell them not to tell. WE don't want to know! Even if John thinks he wants to know.

What I do know is that they have inspired me to bring joy to another family. Although I might not be as creative as they are....

Goodnight.


P.S- I don't think our secret friend thought it would be so hard to 12 days of Christmas us.
1st of all we don't go to bed till really late
2nd my in laws live across the street and have their curtains open till the wee hours of morning
3rd there are 6 people who live here, someone is almost always in the living room
and 4th I NEVER close the curtains when it's Christmas time- all of our lights look so pretty, teenagers are less likely to mount my buck on my doe when the curtains are open, and the snow looks so pretty,
which leads me to # 5- it's freaking icy out there! I bet they never thought they would have a hard time getting to the door, let alone our street!
They are doing a great job with all of these things working against them!

Monday, December 15, 2008

the 12 days of christmas

Our family has been chosen by someone to have the 12 days of Christmas delivered right to our door step!
Someone who knows us and loves us has decided to spoil us! And we are loving every moment of it!!!

So I want to share our fun.



Now that we are on the 3rd day, we are starting to watch out for our secret giver.



It has already brought much joy to our family, and we all gather around and read the cute notes, and see who can get to the door first so we can be the one to read the note and see what it was that was left! Tonight I told the kids it was time for bed, and they all whined that the secret giver hadn't come yet and they wouldn't be awake to see what came. Well our friend must have know, because moments after that the door bell rang and all the kids sprang for the door! It was so cute to see them all so happy...and share an interest. This secret friend must truly be a friend. My bet is that they know that we have hit some rough spots in the last few months and wanted to brighten our spirits. It brings tears to my eyes even now as I write this to know that someone thought so much of my family to put so much time, effort and thought into creating a special memory for us....they have now ventured out in the cold the first night, the snow the second night, and the ice the third night. I don't know who they are but I am deeply grateful for the love they are showing us. Thank you.
And we look forward to sharing what comes tomorrow:)



I wish I had taken a picture of the first day, but I just didn't think of it.

Day 1- 2 Cans of pears from a Partridges tree



Day 2 -A turtle filled with doves {sorry the other waddled away} bag of dove candies in the turtles back! way too creative for me.



Day 3- Three hens...{well at least their legs} and a
little bit of French to go with them!!!!
a pack of chicken legs with a bottle of French's mustard
Sorry the pictures are side ways- it's just that I'm 8 months pregnant, don't have much patience, and have a huge list of other things to do besides play with my pictures:)

Tuesday, December 9, 2008

Office Party 08


Johns office party was at Bucas {again} this year. Bruce always asked me where we should go and I always said Bucas, so that's where we go. And it is so much fun! This year we were given different foam houses at each table, and who evers looked most like the picture {which we didn't have} won tickets for a drawing at the end of the night. Bruce gave away all sorts of $50 gift cards, and the grand finale was a TomTom! Wish I had won that!

We played Bingo where we had to go around the room and get funny things signed off like- likes anchovies, has 2 piercings, wearing heels { I signed a few of those squares}. It was fun to mingle with people I only see 1/2 a dozen times a year.

My husband won the BEST prize of all- Employee Of The Year!!!!! I am so proud of him! The boss read his nominations before announcing who it was, and I was clueless! I was more shocked than he was! I am so proud of him! I keep telling his family " I'm married to the Employee of the Year!"

He turned a nice bright shade of red when they said his name.

It was such a nice night out! I got to get all dressed up, have the kids {for the most part} spending the night somewhere else, and have one last evening of freedom before this little baby of ours gets here.

Each table got a metal brain puzzle to do. That wasn't as much fun for me as the foam houses, which thanks to my job, I've done many times, and we won.

Then came the food. Back when it was Bruce, John, Beth and Ed starting the company, Bruce had each woman order a dish. But now that they have 20 employees he ordered the same 4 main dishes for each of the 6 tables. It was so good, calamari, two kinds of salad, cheesy bread, lasagna, fettuccine Alfredo, chicken Parmesan, pesto salmon! Oh, and Bucas boxed up leftovers for each person to take home. I brought home a box of raspberry cheesecake and chocolate cake, which I ate for breakfast the next day!

I hope all of my friends get to go to office parties with their husbands and enjoy a night out, to enjoy each others company, the spirit of the holiday, and a good ol' time!



Here's a few pictures from ours!
Oh and my Favorite part was Bruce thanking all of us spouses for being so supportive. I turned to John and said I felt kinda bad for chewing him out for going to work on the up coming Sunday...Ooops!