Farewell!

We have a coworker that is leaving and no one likes him. So we thought we would impart a few words of wisdom to him...

1. Don’t call anyone that isn’t your wife or mother, MOM.
2. Faking coughing for over a month makes your co-workers want to kill you.
3. Whistling is never okay unless you have an office and can close your door.
4. Don’t talk LOUDLY to yourself in order to get attention, it makes you look pathetic
5. Don’t agree to deadlines (repeatedly) that you can’t meet or don’t intend to meet.
6. Don’t demean co-workers or talk down to people, it makes you look pathetic and like an ass
7. No one cares about your weird, creepy obsession “hobby” with butterflies.
8. Don’t fake an injury or self diagnose one, it makes you look pathetic.
9. Don’t fake sick within the first year of employment.
10. Ask questions (and listen) before you make assumptions.
11. Don’t ask your co-workers for a spare two minutes and then proceed to ask them a question about Microsoft that you could have found easily on the internet OR enter them into a 20 minute conversation. Doing this repeatedly makes them hate you.
12. When you thank someone don't use quotes...because that is implying that you're not actually thanking them.
13. Starting a sentence with Sincerely over and over makes you insincere. If you're genuinely sincere it will come across and you shouldn't have to even use the word.
14. You might think that saying "And to your point" over and over again makes it your catch phrase, but really it just means that you never have a point and are just wasting my time.

6 Months in review

Wow, I can't believe how much has happened and how much time has passed! I blame Larry mostly for not being able to post, you know how time consuming he is!! :)

We had a great summer and are setting up to have a really awesome Fall and winter! Already the leaves are changing and falling, we have the house all ready for Halloween and I think are FINALLY going to be able to carve pumpkins tonight! I love pumpkins.

We've had a busy October so far, every weekend I have had an event! 3 weddings and a Touched Twice Event at church (not the same ring as the movie eh?).

The Touched Twice Event went really well. We were able to help over 450 families in our area get some medical attention or help with food and clothing. It was a lot of fun, and great to meet new people!!

I promise we will have more posts in the last quarter of the year. So far our Events include:
-Craft show at work Nov 10
-Cookie Decorating Party Nov 20th - Cookies will be iced in pretty designs as well as donated to a local non profit in time for Thanksgiving!
-Thanksgiving Ava will be visiting her Dad's family which means I get to drag Larry out for some Black Friday shopping!! (Let's keep that between us for the moment eh!)
-Vegas!! Larry and I are going to Las Vegas for a week from Nov 29-Dec 3 for a conference with his work.
-December 17-January 1 we will be in Canada!!! WOOHOO!!! We haven't been home in too long, so I am more than a little excited!!

Enjoy some of our past moments!

xoxo Sarah

Larry snuggles with our new kitten!!


Ava showing off how fabulous she is :)


Wedding I did which had a love bird theme.


Pumpkin Cake for friend's of ours whose son was turning 1!!


Another Wedding Purple colours which had real lavender flowers!!


Bride and Groom Cupcakes!


Ava and myself at our first Iron Cupcake Madison Event. The secret Ingredient was Coffee! I won for best display!! Woo hoo!!

I have S'More problems...

I like s'mores.

Okay okay...I don't actually like s'mores, I love them.

Alright alright, I have a very intimate relationship with s'mores. Not only have we formed a life long bond and friendship, they are my bff.

I can seriously...oh and before I say it, this is a no judgment zone...consume upwards of 3 or more s'mores in one sitting. However I ran into a problem last week. You always either run out of chocolate or run out of graham crackers. I ran out of chocolate...an incredibly key component of s'mores.

So I tried to make do to get my "fix" if you will. I found that we had hershey kisses (not the same as the chipmunks) and started cutting them up into slices and placing them on my graham crackers. Then I heated up my marshmallow put it all together and I was good to go.

Well good to go in the sense that I would have no shame, I thought I could get away with eating it quickly so no one would see. I was in the kitchen having a private moment with my s'more and in walks Larry. He took one look at me with chocolate and marshmallow on my face, and one look at the hershey's kiss wrappers and sincerely said "You need help".

3 weeks...

I just sent the following to my Mother, Sister and Larry. I would also like to share it with you, to ensure that my wishes are carried out:

In three weeks I’ll be under the knife…

If I don’t make it please understand the following as my wishes:
1. I want to be cremated.
2. I want my ashes to be scattered over water.
3. Get rid of all my crap.
4. Someone finish my current romance novel…and then tell me what happens out loud as I will be listening.
5. Make sure Ava grows up understanding her Gnome roots.
6. Larry: You’re not to be in another relationship. I want you to live out the remainder of your life constantly thinking of me and my sweet sweet booty.
7. Melissa: You can have my shoes…also make sure your children and your childrens children know about the gnomes.
8. Mom: Please don’t steal any of my body parts or appendages before I am cremated. It’s creepy. Accept it.
9. Eat cupcakes at my wake.
10. Make sure the picture you use in place of a casket is a hot one…and has my new skinny self.

Shhh it's a secret....

I love secret rooms. I love rooms that look like rooms with no secrets but the secrets are secretly secreted away.

Larry understands this. He understands that when we buy a house we must somehow be able to make a secret room of secret secretness.

Here are some examples of acceptable secretness:

Ohh look at that nice Bookcase...but wait! SECRET ROOM OF WONDERS!!

I think I'll go workout upstairs...yeah you do that sweetie...bah blam! secret room under the stairs!

This is my favourite...there's like a whole other house...you could be living an entirely different life back there!! Ka-chow!


However the likelyhood of me driving Larry crazy one day and him locking me in my secret room is highly probable. So, a friend and I thought that I should have a secret escape from said secret room, in the event such a thing should happen. I told her I liked how her secret mind worked!

One other problem is that I might forget how to open said secret room, and then we would need a cheat sheet near the secret room, which would completely cancel out any cool secretness.

So there are challenges...but the main focal point is that one day I will have a secret room.
As I like to tell Ava "I'm not asking you a question, I'm making a statement!"

Birthday Man

Yesterday was Larry's birthday!!! Hooray!!!

I can be sneaky if I want to...it's just really hard for me to keep a secret. I get too excited about it I think.

But I managed to keep it all in this time!! I took 1/2 a day off of work and went to purchase some of his favourite things for a dinner. I even emailed Larry and told him my boss had scheduled a meeting from 5:30-6:30, which would mean I wouldn't be home until 7:30!! See? Sneaky!

I arrived home around 3pm, unpacked the groceries and started baking a chocolate chip cookie dough cake for the ice cream cake that Larry requested. Then I started making homemade candied peanuts and cashews!

Our final menu was a trio of appetizers:
Stuffed Shrimp
Lobster Bisque
Bruschetta

And the Main course:
Shrimp Scampi

So all the while I have my work email open on our desktop, because I needed to make it seem that I was still at work. 6:00 rolls around, and if Larry has left at 5 or so, he should be home soon. So I send a text saying the meeting was so boring, how close to home was he. He texts me back saying he just left. Crap.

I quickly turn off most of the things I was getting ready to make and plate so they don't burn/overcook. Around 6:30 I get everything going again. I set a blanket on the ground with lots of pillows and candles and even had soft jazz playing for background noise! At around 6:40 I hear the back door close, I walk into the living room to find Larry with a very confused and bewildered expression on his face. I yell SURPRISE! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

The first thing he says: Where's your car?


Anyways, we had a lovely meal together and evening...although ice cream cake is really hard to make fyi.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY LARRY!!!

Catch up

Okay,

No blog for a while...sorry about that! So much has happened. Larry received a job in Milwaukee (WOOHOO!!) so there was lots of running around, house hunting, packing, moving and unpacking in the last few weeks.

Some of our favourite sayings over the past few weeks, has been to ask each other:
Sarah: "Larry, I have a really important question!"
Larry: "I'm listening!"
Sarah: "When do you have to go back to Florida?"
Larry: "Never never never!!*"

Mostly we have been unpacking, adjusting to our new commutes, and coexisting wonderfully. It has been great to see how easily all three of us seem to have fallen into our own rhythms with one another without as much as a hiccup along the way.

Tuesday we went to the Melting Pot to celebrate Larry's new job and his ridiculous .03 win in Fantasy Football. I know I know, a win is a win. But we had a lot of fun!

Pictures below!


*One of Ava's favourite things to say when she is upset is Never Never Never!