I Can Not Believe It!

Christian and I have been living in Boston for 2 years now. I can't believe how fast the time has gone. We have now been in Boston the same amount of time that we were in Louisville, and that just blows my mind. This means (for those of you who are not good with Math) that we have been away from Salt Lake City, for 4 years! Holy Smokes! We have been married for 6 1/2 years now and lived in three different states; along the way picked up some furniture, 2 Macs, a car, a few degrees, a dog, and a kid. Here are some of my thoughts as I take a stroll down memory lane.

Things I miss about living in Salt Lake City:

1. Eating dinner at my mom's house every Sunday with my family
2. Cafe Rio!!! Training Table!!!
3. The mountains
4. Dry heat
5. Potato Bugs
6. Being close to ALL of my family
7. Wide Open Spaces: wide roads, shoulders on the streets, parking in driveways, and turning lanes.
8. My job at DCFS and my co-workers there
9. All my childhood friends
10.Swimming at Neans pool and getting a nice tan (not that nice compared to my aunt Nean, but good for me). I also miss the water parks, I love swimming!
11. Cheap haircuts and colors that look amazing.

Some of my favorite memories from Louisville:

1. The Kentucky Derby Party we had at Julia's house
2. The Kentucky State Fair was one of the best fairs I have been to! They had fried everything, pig races, and great mullets!
3. Playing the card game Lunch Money on New Year's Eve with the Phineys, Brammers, and Ripperdans.
4. Our trip to Nashville with the Brammers to see Tim McGraw in concert
5. Trip to Mammoth Caves
6. Laughing with Daniel about our crazy job
7. How can I forget the day we got McDuff, just 2 days after moving to Louisville.
8. Going to Huber Farms to get pumpkins and apples in October
9. Raking 20 bags of leaves for a Young Women's service project and losing my keys in a bag. We had to go threw all the bags in the pitch black, but we finally found them around bag 14.
10.Christian leaving me for two weeks to go to Alba, Italy
11. The Thanksgiving the Kirwans came down to share the holiday with us, it was so nice to have family around
12. Watching the horse races at Churchill Downs
13. Thunder Over Louisville was always crazy, but always amazing
14. Running my first 5k with my hubby
15. All the Black gentlemen that liked to hit on me, especially in the Walmart.

Boston and I have a love/hate relationship going on

What I LOVE about Boston:
1. That I had my beautiful son here
2. My amazing friends
3. My wonderful neighbors and neighborhood. I could not have wished for anything better than a community of elderly folks that have been here for years looking out for us, bringing us dinner, coupons, presents for the baby, dog bones, etc.
4. The T (subway), I love that I can walk and take the train anywhere in the city I need to go, it is a great way to get around
5. My super duper cool co-workers; I have never worked in a place where everyone just likes everyone and there is no talking about anyone. It is a really wonderful place to work
6. The never ending amount of cool things to see and do here and close by. Because the state is so small, you can get to another state rather quickly.
7. All the eclectic and yummy restaurants
8. In the Fall this is the most beautiful place in the world!
9. The diversity in the area; I like to be surrounded by people from all walks of life because I learn so much from them that make me be a better person.
10. The great sports teams in the area, Go RED SOX! CELTICS! BRUINS! PATRIOTS! REVOLUTION!
11. Living by the beach
12. The closest Walmart is 40 minutes away.

Things I HATE about Boston:
1. Rent is SO much money! It more than doubled when we moved from KY.
2. The DRIVING, Oh don't get me started. I have to drive for my job and without my GPS I would be dead! Not to mention the HORRIBLE drivers in this area and the lack of parking spots especially if you are not a resident of that neighborhood. It takes me 45 minutes to and from work and I only work 6.2 miles away. Need I say more?
3. The weather, the LOOOOOOOOOONG cold winters. I just wish it could feel like summer for a few days in June. I can not believe how much it rains here either.
4. The centipede looking bugs that sometimes appear in my apartment and FREAK me out!
5. No wide open spaced in the city. Everything is jam packed together, roads, houses, cars, you name it, it is jammed
6. The cheapest hair cut in the area is $50, and I have yet to have a good hair cut here! I cannot afford to get my hair cut let alone colored, which I really used to love to do. Nobody ever has a good hair dresser to recommend either, it is no good.

Every time we have applied for schools I have had my heart set on going one or two places and neither time that is where we ended up. I never pictured myself leaving Utah to be honest, and I have to say that I am so happy I did. I have loved every place we have lived; it is all what you make of it. We have three more years in Boston and we plan on enjoying every minute!

Rain, Rain.......

GO AWAY!!!
Seriously, you are really starting to depress me!

Happy 1st Father's Day!

Christian has taken on the role of father so easily; it is so natural for him. BW just loves spending his days with dada, they have so much fun. C loves making up stories , songs, and games to entertain B. Happy Day babe, I hope you know how much we love and appreciate you!

Carbs, Calories, and Corn Syrup

Yesterday we celebrated the "White Trash" side in all of us. I am always telling Christian I LOVE the white trash side of me, where he has very little white trash to offer (I know and he is from Show Low). Christian is much more high brow than me, lets just be honest about that (although you couldn't tell from the picture below), he loves the arts, fancy words, talking politics, reading academic books, and couldn't think of a better place to live than Cambridge, MA. I however, really love demolition derbies, county and state fairs, watching dumb movies, walking around in sweat pants, eating mac and cheese, and all the simple things in life.
So we celebrated our inner side that often doesn't come out in the form of a small gathering in our backyard this weekend.

This may be going on our Family Christmas Card this year. What a cute family!

Yes, Berkeley does have a tattoo of a skeleton on his arm, but isn't that what most white trash mothers would do for their sons? He looked awesome in his muscle shirt and Harley doo-rag.

The weekend before the party, I had a little get together with some co-workers and I was able to bedazzle the butt of my pants for the special occasion.

Annekristen and Norbert are from Germany, so they are not quite as familiar with "American White Trash" but I think they did a great job! They looked awesome!

Michael, Danielle, and Lilly all looked great, Danielle is from Texas so she was happy to let this side of her shine as well.

Jason and Raini drove straight from KY to be with us for this special event.

Kate has always been "Queen of the Whole Universe" but at least at the party she could let everyone know!

Bonnie, you look great, but what is up with your husband's costume? Patrick, even though we all know you are white trash most of the time, you could have tried to dress differently than you do on a daily basis.

K-Fed showed up and brought his new Britney, she had dumps like a truck, truck, truck. K-Fed ended up winning the award for "Best Drest" male.

Oh Aida and Freddie, how you made my day! Let me just tell you about these two: They are not from America and did not know what a "White Trash Party" was, they thought dressed up meant a nice dress and a shirt and tie. Gloria told me she felt like a bad person trying to explain to her what exactly white trash was. When Aida told her 20 year old son about that party, he told her she must be reading the invite wrong, because he had been to white trash parties before but he was pretty sure her co-worker would not be having a party like that. Hey! Social Workers need to laugh at the world too! So funny, so her son helped these guys get dressed! For not knowing what White Trash was, they pulled it off pretty well. They were on my "HOT TAMALE TRAIN!" They even brought KFC and Budweiser.
AMAZING!

Jeremy and Jeff

The Lesbian white trash babes were hot, that is all I have to say!

One of the high lights of the party was the contest called:
"Who can stuff the most cheese puffs in their mouth?"

Julie was close with 14 cheeze balls

Gloria was the winner, with 15 cheeze balls in her mouth. I doubted her ability; I just didn't think her mouth was that big, but she proved me wrong. Way to go girl!

Here are my co-workers! What a fun group of people I get to work with, hopefully this photo doesn't make its way into the office. We look HOT!

I was pretty proud of my trophie for "Best Eats" that was awarded to Julie for her Chili Mac with Dinosaur shaped noodles. Mmmmmm.....

I thought serving chicken over cheese puffs was pretty creative as well. We also had hot dogs served on white bread, Velveeta Cheese Dip (I love Velveeta), Jerky on a platter with toothpicks, pork and beans with hot dog chunks, left over pizza from the day before, spaghetti-Ohs, and of coarse, Sam's Choice Soda.

I thoroughly enjoyed celebrating my inner White Trash; I hope all of you take time to do the same this summer.

I'm bringing sexy back.

Beach Trip

Last week I had Wednesday off for Bunker Hill Day. I loved having a day off in the middle of the week; it was a wonderful break from work and great to spend time with my boys.
Christian has wanted to do more spontaneous adventures, so that is what we did. We woke up and said, lets go to Revere Beach. It was a good beach day, as it was the one day last week it didn't rain. This was the little guys first trip to the beach, he seemed to enjoy the sand between his toes. It was so pleasant to be able to relax a bit and enjoy time with my family outdoors.

Berkeley's 6 month photo shoot

Perhaps I am a bit biased, but this kid is ADORABLE!!!

Try not to smile while you watch this

Berkeley is full of smiles and laughs these days. It is so amazing to watch how quickly he learns and changes. The video is a bit long, but you get the idea in the first 30 seconds are so.

While the Boy is Away, the Girls will Play

Christian left Berkeley and I this week to immerse himself in music. He left last Sunday to attend the June in Buffalo festival and study with great composers and learn from his peers.
My aunt Nean and Grandma Taft came all the way out to Boston to watch Berke while his daddy was away!

Berke loves his auntee and gram, he was so happy that he got a chance to hang out with them. He had fun going to the zoo, Harvard Square, shopping, walking around Jamaica Pond and eating out with his family.

Tuesday was McDuff's 4th Birthday and Auntee Nean's birthday. It was so thoughtful of Nean to come out on her birthday week. We tried to make her day extra special; the gang came to visit me at work and we all went out to lunch. Then they took a trip to the zoo while I finished my work day. Then it was dinner at the CHEESECAKE FACTORY, so yummy! We went back to the house and had these delicious cupcakes which are as good as they look!

Happy Birthday to my sweet puppy and wonderful Aunt.
Tuesday was also my sister-in-laws birthday, special shout out to Miken as well.
So many amazing people have this wonderful birthday! Happy Days to you all!

Unfortunately, Gram had to leave early as one of her dearest friends passed away and she had to leave to attend the funeral. Thank heavens Nean was still hear to watch the little man, I am not sure what I would have done!

We headed to NYC Friday! We took the bus and arrived to a very water logged and rainy city. We were prepared with our rain gear, but we still looked like drown rats. After 9 hours in the pouring rain, my pants were falling off because they were so heavy from all the water and we decided it would be best if we headed to the hotel for some respite.

Luckily we bought some rain gear for little man earlier in the week, it saved us on our trip for sure. He was able to stay warm and dry the entire day. He was such a trooper, this was Berkeley's visit to his 5th state in his short 5 1/2 month life. He loves to travel! He enjoyed the bus ride and cruizin around looking at all of the tourists and lights in the city.

People who saw Berkeley had to comment on how cute he was, they just couldn't help themselves. I had to agree with them of coarse!
Friday night we went to a nice Italian Restaurant to eat some dindin. The host acted like he had never seen a baby before. There wasn't room for the stroller, so we left it at the coat check; I told the nice man that I could hold the little guy, it was not a big deal. He was so flustered and felt like we HAD to do something with the baby, so he put these two chairs together and said, "You can lay the baby here." BRILLIANT idea! So then he could fall off in .5 seconds? It was really funny!

The next day was sunny and warm, thank goodness. We had a lovely time traveling around Central Park looking at the senery and the people.

We had lunch at "ARTIES" a much more family focused restaurant; they even had a changing table in the bathroom, a rare find in NYC. We thought it was kind of odd that they served pickles and coleslaw as an appetizer; haven't ever seen that before.

Berke loves being in his backpack; he had so much fun walking around the park that he crashed....and stayed crashed even when he was taken off my back. Before he woke up people actually thought I was caring around a doll. They were a bit startled when he woke up and was a real baby!

It was a quick NYC trip, but we had a lot of fun.
THANK YOU! THANK YOU! THANK YOU
to my aunt and Gram for coming out to watch our son! It was so fun to get to see you and hang out. I cannot express enough my gratitude for your help.

Daddy come home; We miss you!