Greg's Trip...Only Not a Fun One

Greg left Wednesday morning at 9:00 am to go on a trip with Brent. He got back from getting a new transmission for Hecktour in SLC at 4:00 am (he left Monday afternoon for that trip). The new transmission is a post in and of itself. What a cat poop sandwich that situation turned out to be.

So Brent needed Greg to go on the trip since his wife is 37+ weeks pregnant with #2 and #1 decided to come at 38 weeks. Brent would be away WAY too long if he had to do all the driving to Atlanta by himself. The plan was to take a truck and trailer, carrying a buggy of some sort, to Atlanta, sell the buggy and pick up some motorcycles. Well, a tire blew on the trailer somewhere in Texas. This held them up overnight since there was no place open to get the tire replaced and the spare was the wrong freakin' size. I'm so glad they were okay.

Then, when they finally got to Atlanta, the motorcycle thing fell through. So then they waited for 6+ hours for some pizza ovens from some guys that never showed up. I think there was another guy they waited on for another deal too, but finally they ended up just leaving Georgia and starting home, hoping they could find something to pick up on the way back. They lucked out and were able to pick up a truck on the way home, but the jerk who dropped it off to them left without using his magic to put the truck on the trailer, even though that's what he agreed to do. So they had to buy a hand pulley wintch thing and push/pull the trailer inch by inch up on the truck. In 100+ weather and horrible humidity. Talk about heat exhaustion.

Now mind you, they left Wednesday, got there Friday, and hadn't slept other than just trading off napping in the truck. No shower either.Fastforward to Saturday night (now they're in even worse condition), when they were back in Texas. Damn Texas. The SAME TIRE blew on the trailer A.G.A.I.N. Wow. Greg put it best when he said, "The tire Gods hate us." I'm writing this at 1:30 am Sunday and hoping Greg will be home at some point on Father's Day. Smelly, exhausted, and most likely pissy, but home nonetheless. Luckily he and Brent enjoy spending time together. Otherwise, I think they might have killed one another by now. Regarding this picture, Greg said, "I told Brent to stop looking at me like that ...so if he tries to give me the ooglie-eye again...I'd eat his friggin' eyeballs with my new 'Hill-Billy-Bling-Bucktooth' glasses!" Good thing they had SOME fun. :D

We've missed him like a child misses their blanket (man, I hate those lyrics) this past week. It sucks being a single mom. I seriously don't know how my mother and all those other single ladies do it. Much props. And Shauntae has been a HUGE help since she got back from HER trip from hell. Check out her blog - I'm sure she'll be posting about her adventures soon. Thanks for keeping my head above water this week...and my kids' heads too. :D

Hurry home, baby!

Fly What!?

FlyLady. Dot net, that is. I heart FlyLady and everything I've learned from her website over the past few years. I'm so glad Dy introduced her to me and I'm sure my family thanks her, too. She's helped me become more organized, keep better control of my house, and be a better mom and wife. So here's her shout out. She's got really great tools on her site too. Shauntae just used my pink hammer tonight to put blankets up on the kids' window (since she's about 10 feet taller than me) and it worked wonders. Yay for kids actually settling down at 9:00 pm, even though that's when the ice cream man decided to drive through the neighborhood. I should have chased him down and punched him in the weiner.

And my baby is really wiggly right now. Maybe it's a good thing I'm not trying to sleep, even though it is 1:00 am.

I Hate Coming Up With Titles

I feel like my posts are lame without pictures. Here goes anyway.

I got to do Young Musicians Choir Camp again this past weekend and as always, it was a blast. I enjoyed three fun-filled days with family, friends and 70 awesome kids from the area who love music. It's so fun to see the amazing talent among this group and witness the beautiful sound they are able to create as a group in just three short days. This is the first year (and certainly not the last) any of my children have been able to attend and the girls absolutely loved it. I'm sure they'll be talking about memories created there for years to come.

Just last night I was sorting through pictures for a slide show I'm preparing for my upcoming birthday party and reminiscing about my days at Idaho State University music camp in Pocatello, Idaho. As luck would have it, my friend of 27 years with whom I attended this camp for 3 or 4 years passed through St. George on her way to Las Vegas and we were able to bring back those memories together this evening. It's crazy to think how far we've come from the punk teenagers we were back then. Now we're just punks. :D

Speaking of whatever it is you were just thinking about...my birthday bash is going to be AWESOME! I'm having my golden birthday (turning 30 on the 30th) and I'm throwing a huge 80s party on July 2nd to celebrate. I picked up some sweet old-school stuff at DI today and I'm excited to start ordering party supplies. It's going to be epic. And gnarly, dude.

Alive

I'm alive. And so is everyone else. We're super busy in the Barton house, which is nothing new. I still suck at blogging, but for the two people who read this, I figured an update was long overdue.

Speaking of being due...I'm 30 weeks today so I've got another 12 until this baby is here. Did I mention yet that I want some 42-week vibes coming my way? That would make this baby's birthday 8/9/10 and Chuck's birthday is 10/9/08. How fun! We don't know the sex of this baby and I'm really enjoying the surprise.

Greg and I are both working temporary jobs for the Census Bureau, him as an enumerator and me as a crew leader. He's going out meeting with people who didn't send in their questionnaire and I'm supervising my own crew of people who are doing the same thing. So if you didn't send yours in, watch for someone knocking on your door to drag the info out of you! The work has kept me plenty busy on top of being a mom and wife. I am taking a break from teaching childbirth classes and working as a doula until the first of the year so I have time to enjoy this little one though.

The kids are out of school on Thursday and they are excited about all the end-of-year fun, but haven't said much about summer break. We're planning on swimming at the Washington City Community Center pretty much every day so I can tolerate the summer. :D Hopefully it will keep the kids busy enough too so they don't end up bored before school starts again.

Follow me on Facebook if you want to know what's going on with us on a more regular basis. Peace out.

Showing off Signs!

Let's see if this works!

Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

Favorites

I got this from Jaylyn's blog. She said I should do it so I obliged. It was fun but took FOREVER to post. Stupid perfectionism. But since I didn't provide the answers, you should post your guesses in the comments. :O) Most of them are self-explanatory but a few of them may be tricky.

To do this: enter your answer to the question in the Flickr.com search box and choose a picture from the first page as your answer.

1. What is your first name?

2. What is your favorite food?

3. What high school did you attend?

4. What is your favorite color?

5. Who is your celebrity crush?

6. Who is your favorite Disney princess?

7. What is your favorite drink?

8. What is your dream vacation?

9. What is your favorite dessert?

10. What do you want to be when you grow up?

11. What do you love most in life?

12. What is one word that describes you?

13. What do you dream about?

Prostitution???

I am an avid reader of the Washington County Sherriff's Office bookings site. For some reason I love seeing if anyone I know has been arrested and especially to see what people are getting arrested for.

Tonight I found a first for me. The charge is statute 76-10-1303 Patronizing a Prostitute. WTF!!!??? Here? In little ol' St. George!? And the best part is, not only did I find ONE person who was charged with this, there were FIVE men in Washington County who were arrested and charged with patronizing a prostitute in the past 48 hours. (I must admit my first thought was that the charge was to protect the prostitute, i.e., this definition of patronize: to behave in an offensively condescending manner toward.) :O) I guess on the plus side, all of them were at least remotely attractive.

But the real question here is: How the crap did I miss out on the opportunity to participate in these services!? Either as a prostitute to earn some extra cash or as a patron of said community-building services. I wonder, though, if there was even prostitution going on because I saw no woman (or man for that matter) arrested and charged with prostitution. Does that mean this was an undercover job? Go Washington County Sherriff's Department! Way to catch those bad guys.

New

We're finally getting a new camera.
I'm hoping this will make updating the blog easier and I'll do it more. It's easier to tell a story with pictures, you know? And this camera is supposed to be "tough." Hopefully it will hold up in our house. It says it's shockproof from 5 ft. and waterproof to 10 ft. We'll see...

And we're officially on the hunt for a beastly 12-passenger van. If you see any good deals in the $3,000-$6,500 range, let us know.

We're finally getting a new camera.

Dentists and Death

We're headed down to Las Vegas tomorrow morning for a funeral. Crappy, I know. But funerals are slightly better when they're attended by a family member who is pretty famous. I don't want to name drop or anything, but Greg's first cousin once-removed {his cousin's son} sings this song and this one too. Think I should ask for an autograph and a picture while he's grieving the passing of his mother? Yeah, me neither. {Although I'm sure some idiots will!} I just hope it doesn't turn into a publicity/press fiasco with people crawling the walls trying to get a glimpse, you know? At least I've got a good excuse; we're family. :O) I just hope there are funeral potatoes.

Brandon's mother had a brain tumor for years and was not expected to hold on this long. I only met her a handful of times, but Greg always spoke very highly of her. Funerals are sad but at least I know she's in a better place. I am so thankful for my beliefs about the after life and to know that she is doing good on the other side.

I also have dental work that needs to be done on Wednesday so we decided to just stay the night rather than make two trips. Ugh...a funeral and dental work. What a crappy couple of days.

Blah. What a crappy post. See why I don't blog more?

Showers

I'm sitting down to blog just because. I don't have anything I've been thinking about writing so this post may be especially boring and of the rambling type. For some reason lately I hate to shower. Part of it is my detest for mornings, which is most often the best time to shower. Once the kids are up it just seems I don't make time for myself throughout the day {unless it's to sleep. I've got my priorities!} Maybe it's due in part to the pregnancy. It could also be due to my constant struggle with depression. My entire family has suffered with depression at some point and my father committed suicide after struggling with bipolar disorder, among other things, for many years. The frustrating thing for me is that I KNOW what to do to control my depression, or at least alleviate it, yet I don't do it. I had a therapist last year tell me there is a prescription for depression that has no side effects and costs next to nothing. You do five things EVERY day, whether you feel like it or not:

• Exercise {boo!}
• Express your feelings 100% of the time - don't hold anything in
• Service
• Remain social
• Look forward to something every day

It seems simple, right? Wrong. Once the depression has set it, it seems impossible to do even one thing on this list sometimes. I know the two I struggle with the most and slowly I've begun to struggle with the rest. I find myself sleeping days away without actually having done anything productive, including taking a shower.

I do not post these things to cry for help. As I said, I know how to handle my depression and I have an amazing support system to help me through whatever struggles come my way, especially the best friend and support I could ever have: the love of my life. I simply want to put this out there for anyone else who struggles with mental illness and because of shame, embarrassment or fear does not talk about it. I'm talking about it. I'm not less of a person because I struggle with depression. I can be honest with myself and honest with those around me that I have faults and trials that oftentimes seem out of my ability to handle. However, I WILL overcome this specific challenge and triumphant, will offer help to anyone I know who stands in need.

Thanks for the ear...or eye, as the case may be. I told you it would be a rambly post. :O)

Stupid, stupid Blogger

I hate Blogger. Only because it hates me.

I just wrote another AMAZING post that it decided not to publish for me. I even tried to copy and paste it before publishing it and even that deleted it. Grrr. Oh - and it also decided not to simply paste my typed information from Word. WTH!?

So I was rambling about some random stuff and now I don't have the energy to rewrite it. Stupid, stupid Blogger. Anyone else have this problem?

My post I was going to make was a cool one about procrastination, the girls' baptism {minus pictures until Bryan gets them to me because we are still without a functional camera}, me trying to do the easy things in life when they seem the most difficult, and trying to make my blog more like Reagan's Blob because I love hers.

The end.

STOP THE PRESS

...it's a new blog post. {Just for you, Jaylyn!}

I don't have anything interesting to write about other than my new haircut, Greg's new job, our new baby on the way, Hailey having no front teeth, our giant "puppy," the need for a 12-passenger van, and my insomnia, but I'll share nonetheless.

Greg's working at Turning Leaf Wellness Center again after parting ways with University of Phoenix at the end of October. It's been a rough ride financially so far but we're hopeful for the future. And we've still got our eye on China - it's just a matter of finding a job, obtaining 9 passports/visas, finding a place to live, and paying $1,000+ per plane ticket. Oh yeah, and the dog.

The new baby is due in August. We're not finding out if it's a boy or a girl until we can see with our own eyes. :O) This new baby is requiring we get some new wheels. We thought briefly about getting a suburban, but we would FILL it. No sense in never having the option to take someone else with us and worrying about trunk space when we travel. So...we're going to get a beast of a van when we get our tax return. Hooray!

Our "puppy" is now 9 months old and HUGE. She's grown about as tall as she will get but will continue to put on weight and get even heavier. Not that we lift her anyway. Our chiropractor would frown on that. She's a great protector of our family and we don't feel like killing her all the time anymore...potty training has helped immensely with that.

I can't sleep and that's why you're blessed with a new blog post. I would put pictures of my new haircut and the dog up but Blogger is being stupid and telling me the link to add a picture is broken. :/ Check me out on Facebook to see the updated look.

Peace out.