Baby Reid Here We Come!

On October 28th our very first nephew, Reid, was born! Since long before his arrival, Ryan and I have been so looking forward to meeting him!  We have spent countless hours and dollars buying him anything and everything that we think he would like!  Tomorrow morning, the day has come for us to finally get the opportunity to meet him! Our first flight leaves Des Moines at 11:00am and after a lay over in Chicago we arrive in North Carolina!


We cannot explain how excited we are to meet this little guy!  I have been on facebook more in the past few weeks than I have been in my entire life, just to try to see more pictures of him! And in just a few more hours we will be able to see him in person! I am getting more jazzed every second!


Because we are heading down at Thanksgiving, and probably wont be able to make it down there again for quite a while, we will be celebrating Thanksgiving and Christmas all at the same time.  This is by far the best part of the entire trip, because we will get to celebrate two of Reid's first holidays with him!  Ryan and I have been out buying Reid several Christmas presents that we are certain he will love and look adorable in, and now may have to pay to have another bag checked at the airport! 


Tomorrow will be such an exciting day for us and we have been looking forward to this for so long! 


I am planning to take tons of pictures and attack my blog and my facebook with them!

Happy Thanksgiving!!! 

A Reason To Go To The Zoo!

If you are at a loss for a reason to visit your local zoo, here are a couple of gems that might change your mind! 


I applaud this monkey for his flexibility and for his inventiveness!  Hurrah Monkey!  You can officially fill your mouth with your own urine!  I bet his monkey-friends cannot say the same thing!

The second clip is perhaps the funniest thing that I have seen years!  Although he might not be as flexible as his pee-drinking friend, he is perhaps the most dramatic.

Please remember when watching these videos that scientists and researchers alike believe that we are related to these guys!  Yikes!

....And I'm Back!

Each year it amazes me how much the summer can accelerate your life and before you know it several months have pasted and you don't know where they went!  Although this summer I did not have any major plans I did have quite an eventful and fun-filled summer! Some of my favorite moments would be...

Baby Huber!

As each day passes we get closer and closer to the arrival of the next Mr. Huber.  It is so exciting to have a baby in the family.  One in which I can spoil rotten and send back to mom and dad!  Although my nephew is still "cooking" I love him tons and tons and cannot wait for his much anticipated appearance!  Ryan and I will be traveling down to North Carolina to meet the baby at Thanksgiving and we are both thrilled to see him!  Despite the excitement, we are saddened that we cannot be closer to see him (and of course my brother and sister-in-law)  more often.  We will survive!  Thanksgiving is going to be here before we know it!

Summertime Visits!!

This summer we had several guests at our house!  My mom came all the way from Virginia to visit over the labor day weekend and my brother and sister-in-law where here for a weekend in August!  It was great to see family that I hadn't seen since I got married and it made us realize how much we miss them when we go so long without visits!

Freeport's New Favorite Teacher!

My very best friend, Whitney, scored herself a FULL TIME job at our alma mater: Freeport High School!! I was completely jazzed at the announcement!  This excitement was for several reasons...

1. She is one of the smartest and hardest working people I know!

2. She has been talking about being a teacher for like 20 years and now she finally has landed a big girl job!

3. Probably the biggest reason I was stoked....She is now able to keep me updated on the goings-on at FHS!  

Once a pretzel, always a pretzel...apparently! 

CONGRATS WHIT!

Nearing the End of Year One!

In less than 1 month, I will have been married to my wonderful husband for an entire year!  This year has gone so fast and it is unbelievable that our wedding was last year!  Over the summer we were able to spend a lot of quality time together.  We are eagerly planning our 1 year anniversary, which we are extremely excited for!

All in all, I had a great summer.  But as always, I wish that it wouldn't go so quickly.  Now that I am about to enter my winter-induced hibernation, the blogging will become exponentially more frequent!

Little boys say the darnedest things!!!

Last night, Ryan and I babysat for my Project Managers' three little boys.  I jump at every opportunity to babysit for these kids, because I do believe they might be the cutest kids on the planet!  I also love to babysit for them because being, 9, 7 and 4 years old they say some of the funniest things I have ever heard!


Right away we went outside and played "crisbies", which is also known as "frisbee" but pronounced "crisbies" by Lewis the four year old!  After playing crisbies for a while, Lewis decided he wanted to take a break and throw the ball around.  I was standing the front yard and turned to see where Lewis had went and he was standing, facing the house, behind the retaining wall.  I could tell that he was standing there peeing and the conversation went...


"Lewis, what are you doing?" - Me
"Nothing." - Lewis
"Really?!" - Me, walking towards him to see what he was doing.
"Yeah" - Lewis said and then points to the pee puddle.  
"That's from the rain" - Lewis
"Uh, huh" - Me, sounded very unconvinced.
"Sometimes it smells like pee" - Lewis.


Yikes....I'm glad I avoided the pee rain that suddenly hit the side of their house!


Once Ryan arrived, I ran to Subway to get us some supper.  As Ryan and I started diving into our food, Lewis (who had already had supper) looks down at the table in front of him and says...


"Hey! Ryan! You can't eat all of those chips! God says we are supposed to share our food!" - Lewis
"Really?" - Ryan
"Yes! And our toys and our swords.  Not real swords.  Little boys can't play with real swords.  But we want to..." - Lewis


HILARIOUS!!!! I love it!

An Epic Success!

Just last week, Ryan, Lindsey, James and I hosted a surprise party in honor of the 30 year marriage of Mike and Paula!  The party was everything that we had hoped it would be and couldn't have turned out any better!

The planning started a couple months ago, and has taken countless hours of planning, sneaking, and hilariousness!  Trying to accomplish such an elaborate surprise was difficult to conceal.  However, we stuck through the not-so-perfect times in an effort to make sure everything went smoothly!  

Going to the party store in Ankeny to pick up decorations, was perhaps one of my most favorite trips! Not only did Lindsey and I plan this trip at the last minute, but we also both came straight from a stressful day at work!  Turns out picking out decorations for a room that we have only seen a handful of times is as hard as it sounds!  Couple that with the not-so-helpful store employees and it was a recipe for craziness!  30 minutes into the shopping trip, we had everything picked out for the decor.  Until, the "Happy 30th" decorations practically leaped off of the shelf into our baskets.  Then of course, we were forced to settle on the "ok" decorations or go for the Gold....and back to square one.  As we were carefully picking out plates and napkins to match the new decorations, the store employee ("of the month", I can only assume) strategically placed her latter directly in front of us, making it ever more difficult to maneuver around, who later corrected Lindsey on the exact shade of blue in her hand, and almost found herself in for a world of hurt. Finally, we were ready to proceed to the check out. The check-out employee was extremely energetic and was almost too much to handle, until he asked us what we were celebrating and said "Oh 30!!!!!!!!" in such a way that I literally laughed out loud.  Although, I felt bad laughing at him I couldn't stop.  As I am typing this, I am laughing again....

The rest of the party supplies came much easier.  Food was basically decided prior to the shopping excursion, however, there were a few changes that we made as we went.

Driving to Ackley was a very tight fit, with all of our items!  We went directly to the Floral shop to have the balloons blown up, and then headed to the Country Club.  The decor was excellent, the scrolling photos of Mike and Paula throughout the years was the perfect touch, and we were so excited for the party to start.

We arranged for Mary Ann, Harlan, Rick and Darla to take Mike and Paula out for dinner as we gather guests into the Country Club.  At around 8:00, Mike and Paula arrived with a loud "SURPRISE" and seemed as shocked as we hoped that they would be.  It was amazing to see them so happy and so touched that everyone was there just for them!  

Everyone ate, drank and celebrated for several hours!  Once the party started winding down and the guests started leaving, the shots started flowing.  We were actually able to get Paula to drink a lemon drop, which could have been the biggest success of all the night!  Lindsey and I took anything that the bartenders but in front of us!  By the end of the night, we were shouting "RICKYS, RICKYS, RICKYS" and pounding on the bar...at the Country Club.

Getting home was a blur, but once we arrived, the party continued.  My husband, passed out right away while Lindsey and I decided to take our show to the next level!  At one point, Lindsey and I ripped the curtains off of the wall, placed stuffed animals and picture frames in the refrigerator, shoes in the freezer, and talked constant gibberish.  Lindsey wound up in the shower, fully dressed, pretending to wash her hair.  When Paula found me in the bathroom with a bucket on my heading laughing, she turned to see Lindsey in the shower with her head cocked to the side staring at her as if she was the strange one.  HILARIOUS.  But by far, the best quote of the night came from Lindsey and her reaction to me asking if the stuffed animal in my hand smelled like chloroform, which she loudly replied "It's a LION, of course, it smells like chloroform!"  Later to realize that the "lion" was actually a dog.  Oops!

There is definitely not anything that I would change about that night!  I am so excited that they were able to be so surprised, and touched at the group of people who arrived to show their support of them!


An Epic Success....

And... I'm Back!

After almost a month without blogging, I am back!  Over the last month, so much has happened yet NOTHING has happened!  Both Ryan and I are working 50-60 hour work weeks and barely see each other.  He works until about 7:30 or 8:00 at least 3 nights a week, while I am typically at home finishing up work that could not get completed during my normal day.  Because of this crazy schedule, we rarely get to spend any time together.  Which kind of sucks!  


So some updates on my life...


New Employee!
HP rewarded my hard work and long hours with an employee!  She started work about a week ago and things are going swimmingly!  I am ecstatic to have someone be in the office to cover for me if I would like to take some time off.  
I was fairly nervous to have this new person start, because I have never really been responsible for managing another person this closely.  Most of my staff members are self sufficient and out of the office the majority of the day.  This employee is in the office, full time, and thus requires more of my managerial expertise!  My nervousness began when couple of months ago my boss gave me and the rest of the HP managers a book to read about leadership.  After taking the online test to learn about my management skills, I learned that my top skill for managing employees is my ability to "woo" them!  Since Webster's states that "woo" is another word for "courting" I was rather uncertain as to if this was a good talent to have.  Frankly, I was flooded with images of court room hearings of a sexual harassment case.  No cases pending, currently! :o)


New Baby!
Not for me, thank God! But my brother and sister-in-law are expecting their first baby!  It is due towards the end of October, and I do not think that I have been more excited about anything in a very long time!  I am completely thrilled to be an aunt, but completely devastated that they live so far away!  They are not yet sure of the sex of the baby.  I think it's a girl!!!
Ryan and I are getting very excited to make a trip to North Carolina to see the baby at Thanksgiving!  I have never been to North Carolina, either has Ryan, and we are excited to see what its like! 


Cait the Cheapskate?!
Turns out, I am a lot more of a cheapskate than I thought!  I never really noticed how tight I am with money, until recently.  Ryan and I are saving up for our first home, which I think has spun me into the final stage of insanity!  I am constantly watching our money, making sure that things are all accounted for.  We have already saved lots, which infuriates me more.....where was all of this extra money going before?!? Yikes! This new lease on money has now started to bleed into my work life.  I can hardly justify any expense, even if it is not my money that is being spent!  The other day my boss asked where my paper shredder was, and I responded by reaching for his papers and starting to tear them into pieces.  He smiled and said, "its ok, buy a shredder".  It took me several days to bring myself to actually make the purchase...


Now that things are starting to get a little less frantic, at least for me, I am hoping to return to my blog more frequently!!!


Feels good to be back! :o)

Didn't your mother teach you anything????

Apparently, not!  I must say that I whole-heartedly believe that people should have to be tested prior to having children.  I will personally administer each test and vaccinate each individual who fails, to ensure that my future children will not be intermingling with these animals!


I grew up in a household in which my brother and I, feared my parents.  And, no, not in the sense of a "Mommy Dearest" reenactment, but we knew if we misbehaved that we were going to be in trouble.  Where is that fear in the children these days?!  Children know that their parents will not do a thing if they misbehave.  "Little Suzie is just expressing herself"!  Bull.  Little Suzie knows that her parents will just smile and pop an antidepressant and move on.


I am so irritated with going out in public, to see these little gremlins running around like mental patients.  WHERE ARE THE PARENTS?!  It seems as though, parenting has become less about developing your kids into well-rounded, positive members of society and more about being best friends.  All I wish, was that parents would step up and discipline their children.  It is not the children's' fault that they misbehave.  Why wouldn't they?!  No one is ever there to tell them "no".


For example, the other day I was at work while a mother and her children where in the fitness center.  One of the kids comes barreling out of the fitness center, down the hall, and into our kitchen.  I walk into the kitchen for another cup of coffee, just to see her digging though our refrigerator and taking my food!  Then she takes the food into the clubhouse and her mom didn't even come to me to apologize for the stolen goods!


So to all the parents out there, who do not want to make me have my tubes tied, thank you!  Thank you for taking the time to teach your children right from wrong and how to be cute little kids.  For the rest of you, thank you for setting the standard low, as I now know that there is no way my kids will be worse than yours!

Fate...

I am one who is a large believer in fate.  I believe whole-heartedly that things happen to us for certain purposes.  Whether it is for us to learn and grow or to push us down to make us appreciate what we have.  With this said, I believe that certain people enter your life to help you open your eyes and grow into a better person.  I, for instance, have been blessed to have a certain person in my life for nearly 20 years.  This person and I have been through many ups and downs over our almost double decade relationship.  We have shared countless laughs and countless tears.  We shared some of our darkest secrets with one and other.  Because of this relationship, I feel as though I have a sister.


This person is one of the strongest individuals that I have seen.  I completely admire this persons ability to be positive and upbeat in situations in which many would crumble.  I have never looked up to someone more than I do to this person.  She is a wonderfully kind soul and deserves nothing but the best that life can provide.


It breaks my heart to see her go through life's challenges, but I know that if anyone can handle a tough time it is her.  I believe that I am looking forward to seeing the next chapter of her life unfold, just as much as she is.  


Many of you know who I am speaking of and that is likely because if you have met her, then you know you've seen something special.  


I am completely blessed to have her in my life and I think that she has been apart of it to keep me sane, while helping me act insane!!


I hope that everyone has a person like this in their life.  And if you don't you are missing something truly amazing!


I love you!

2011: The Year of Controlled Expenditures

Within the last few months, Ryan and I have been working very hard on assessing our spending habits and to work towards building up our savings account.  Ultimately, we are hoping to save up a hearty amount of money to put towards the down payment of our future home.  

We have purchased Quicken to help us map out where exactly our money is going.  Although we are recently married and the vast amount of our extra money over the past year has went towards our wedding and then towards our honeymoon in January, it is still shocking to us to log into our Quicken software and to see where exactly we have been spending our money.

After we picked ourselves off the floor after seeing our first Quicken pie-chart of our categorized spending, we decided that 2011 was to be the year of Controlled Expenditures.  Meaning, we were to minimize the amount of wasteful spending and try to do certain things ourselves.  We both made sacrifices, such as, I gave up tanning while Ryan has cut back on his Fantasy teams.  And by cutting back I mean, I will tan at work (where it is free) and Ryan will limit his Fantasy teams to under 10 per sport!  We are also limiting the amount of eating out that we do, as that is our biggest bad habit!  Home cooked meals might be half as good, but they are also half the price! :o)

Buying a home is something that we have both been dreaming of for many years.  We are in the ideal scenario for saving a lot of money and there is no reason why we cannot have a large down payment in a few years.  Basically, our living expenses are zero as much of our rent is paid for by my work and the only utilities we have is our gas/electric bill.  Obviously, we still have other expenses that are uncontrollable such as our car payments, student loans and cell phone bills.  But knowing those amounts each month make it easier to save!

Each Sunday we spend the morning watching the Iowa Home Show and seeing the houses that are for sale in the Des Moines Metro Area.  This gives us a little extra motivation to know that the small amount of sacrifices that we are making, are worth it!  And although, many people say that "now is the time to buy" we are confident that in three years or so we will be glad that we waited and know that it is worth it to have the home that we want for the monthly price that we want!

It does take quite a bit of self control to monitor our savings and to make sure that our money is being spent the way that we want, and in no way do we want to live like hermits just to have our home.  But with Ryan's recent promotion, we are getting very eager to see what will unfold in the upcoming years!!

Hopefully, we are able to meet our goal in the next few years and everyone can come to our housewarming party!!!!!!

Just Another Awkward Day....

I like to call what happened today the "perfect storm".  Combine my ungraceful nature with nearly 24 years of bad karma, add in a sarcastic attitude and the lack of a filter and viola the "perfect storm"!

So, I have met with the same group of people for appointments several times over the past few weeks.  They have made it very clear that they have no intention of renting for at least the next calendar year.  I explained to them that it is extremely unlikely that the exact unit that we were looking at was going to be available next year, yet they still wanted to tour almost every other day for 2 weeks.  

By today, my patience was running rather thin with this particular group.  I told them in no uncertain terms that this was to be the LAST tour until it gets within a few months of their actual move in date, as they were taking up a lot of my time touring something they were not prepared to rent.  After my stern comments about our tours coming to an end, I began to lead them up the stairs, got about 3 stairs up and fell on my face!!!!  I didn't just trip, I fell.  Nearly hit my face on the stairs and wound up screaming out in fright.  It was impossible for them to keep straight faces throughout the tour and I remain completely embarrassed! 

The Perfect Storm.....

Grammys 2011!

I must admit, as more over-the-top Lady Gaga gets the more obsessed I become!  Hatching from an egg post incubation?!  Sheer insanity meets sheer genius!  I loved it!!!  She is quite possibly the most eccentric person on the planet, and is my hero! 
Bruno Mars, will you marry me?!  I absolutely LOVED his performance!!  The throw back remix of Grenade was amazing and I truly hope he does not go to jail for that cocaine, hes too pretty for prison!
I was so excited for the Cee Lo Green performance of the "song otherwise known as 'Forget You'", but I am not sure if I was outside of the circle of people who knew why the hell he was dressed like a be-dazzled chicken, or what?!  But the hushing mupets were hysterical! And someone please, take the mic away from Gweneth Paltrow!  In my not-so-expert opinion, she ruined that song!
All in all, I thought it was amazing!  I love watching amazing performances being intertwined with not so amazing performances and acceptance speeches!  More importantly, I was thrilled that Christina Aguilera could remember all of the words and start the night with this gem....

Pranks...Gotta Love Em!

Recently, I have taken up the lost art of pranks and more excitingly PRANK WARS!  I never was a big prankster growing up.  That has a lot to do with my inability to keep a straight face in funny/awkward situations.  However, I am working on my poker face so hopefully I will improve with time (like wine!!!). 


The office prank wars started months ago, and have been getting better and better!  Here are some of my favorites. One of my co-workers put a doorbell chime in the ceiling of another co-works office and proceeded to press the doorbell button repeatability throughout the day.  Since everyone was in on the prank, they all pretended to not hear the doorbell noise when they were in her office, making her think she was having a medical emergency inside her ears!!!  She retaliated by wrapping every single item in his office with Christmas wrapping paper, down to his pens and paper clips! A different co-worker and myself have exchanged a few pranks as well!  He has switched the buttons on my mouse, which renders me retarded when I have an IT guy in my office helping me with computer items and I can even click on the start menu!  So, just this past week I changed the time on his computer to be 25 minutes behind!  He had no idea.  When 5:00 rolled around, and he is usually home by this time, he cannot understand why I am leaving the office 30 minutes early!  


Now, the ball is in my co-workers court and I am getting more and more nervous with anticipation.  I assume it will be a good one, so I need to be ready for my retaliation!  


Help with any ideas for my next attack!!!!

Things I am currently obsessed with....

Each year during the Super Bowl many HILARIOUS commercials are shown!  However, Cheetos is rocking my world by releasing some of their ads early!!!! This one is my favorite, but go to youtube and search for "Cheeto Commercials" and you will be pleasantly surprised!!!

You're Welcome!

Here I am!

This is my official start to the blogging community! I am looking forward to being able to use this blog to chronicle my life and the world - or at least the way I see it!


Being newly married and starting a new career is a very exciting time for me!  I am looking forward to the endless adventures that I will have in this new life and I am very excited to see what is in store for me down the road!


I hope to have a lot of interesting, funny, heartwarming, sad (at times), and undoubtedly uncomfortable/awkward stories to share!! It seems that I am constantly in the middle of a strange situation, and wishing that there was an audience there to share in my humility.  And since, it is extremely unlikely that I will have this constant audience, I will share my unique situations with you via my blog!


So let us begin!!!!!!