I'm surrounded by the greatest people ever

So it's going to be hard for me (the stressed out hormonal woman) not to end up balling by the end of this post, but I have to do it because I have such fabulous people in my life right now who have gone above and beyond to show me their fantasticness and love and they all deserve a shout out.

It started last Sunday when my overly creative and inspiring friend Loralee featured E's birthday party on her fantastic site No Fuss Fabulous. If you haven't checked her site out yet you really really really should. As she has inspired me to get the creative juices flowing and I felt overly honored that she would consider putting my party on her site. Thank you Loralee!

Midway through the week when I was contemplating whether to eat a sandwich, bowl of cereal or heat up one of the bags of frozen broccoli (I'm in the process of trying to clear out the fridge) for dinner my friend Amy called to see if I had dinner plans. She had made a pot roast and decided to that maybe I'd like some. Boy did I ever! Not only did she bring roast but she included mashed potatoes, carrots and rolls MMMMMMMM. It was just the thing I needed for dinner (and lunch the next day). I know my baby was grateful too since it was actually nourishing in comparison with all the candy and junk I've been stress eating all week. Thank you Amy!

By Friday I was overly spoiled and the generosity of my friends was only beginning. Despite the fact that I'd concealed my secret until only about two weeks ago, my friends here immediately put together a baby shower for me. I heard Lorelei was the brains behind it all but I know that Amy and Kelly also had a lot to do with how fantastic it was. I'm going to save the detail for a later post after I get some pictures but I wanted to say something now because I was overwhelmed with how wonderful it was. For now let me just say it was awesome! Thank you for everyone who came-- you all made for wonderful company and thank you hostesses for going above and beyond (and I mean it people, just you wait for the details).

A great bonus on top of the shower was that Kelly sent over tons of leftovers from the shower that served as our dinner Saturday night.

After being gone all week Br got Friday off and came home to help me finish the projects I deemed necessary to put the house on the market. Br was amazing. He worked the whole weekend straight and I mean no stop! He finished all the projects that I'd started and never finished. He made sure before the weekend was over that he'd done everything necessary for me to feel comfortable about putting the house up for sale. Br even made me a gourmet Sunday dinner out of the things left in the freezer-- a little surf (shrimp) and turf (Omaha steaks) over a potato cake sitting on top of Kelly's artichoke spinach dips with a side of grilled corn on the cob and sparkling grape juice to drink (there is officially little left in my fridge). THANK YOU BR!!!! My belly is filled with yummy food and a great stress has been lifted off my shoulders.

Thank you to E too for being a good boy this week and keeping yourself entertained so that I could get the long "to do" list done.

This week was also filled with lots of calls from family and friends that I hadn't talked to in a long time. I just have to say that this week could have horrible for me since I'm SO stressed about moving but it ended up being really good. It was because of all of you and your kindness. I know the Lord blessed me with such fabulous people in my life to help me get through this time. Thank you to him and to all of you!

A long time coming

This week my sister got around to posting pictures of our sister and Mom trip to CA in October. I'd like to say that even if it did take her a while to post the pics, she was the only one out of all four of us on the ball enough to bring a camera to take pictures in the first place.

We met up in Sonoma to attend my Grandma's fantastic birthday celebration.

A couple years ago Br, my mom and my brother and I all took a trip to Disneyland for their 50th birthday. While we were there I said that we should all come back again to celebrate my mom's 50th there. Although it was a few months late while we were in the great state of CA we decided to have a belated 50th Disneyland birthday for my Mom. Since my bro was on a mission and Br was in Paris that weekend, it ended up being a girl's weekend (with the exception of my nephew who was only weeks old at that time).

When were were there a couple years ago my mom got some gold 50th anniversary ears with her name embroidered on the back. Her favorite story to tell is how we were sitting at breakfast and the Fairy Godmother came up behind her and said "Tori, it's so nice to have you hear". She was shocked and started tearing up with the excitement of a beloved Disney character knowing her name through the magic of Disney. It took her a second to figure out while the rest of us were cracking up because it was obvious the Fairy Godmother just read her hat. Anyway I thought it would be fitting to make her a "birthday" cake in the shape of her hat (excuse how sloppy it looks, it is hard to travel with sugar mickey ears).

Here are some highlights (there's more pics in the slide show)-- Thanks Jess for being our photographer.

Oh, and I finally got to eat at Blue Bayou -- the restaurant inside the Pirates of the Caribbean ride.

Releasing the felines beyond the confines of a satchel...

...In other words letting some cats out of the bag.

So a little over an hour ago I walked back into my house after a much needed and much enjoyed week long vacation. AHHHHHH! It was a nice way to destress. I think that in order to completely destress (at least until my new week starts and the reality of life hits me again) I need to take a load off by divulging things I haven't blogged about yet.

First is that there are some rumors going around that we might be moving. Unfortunately, right before we left town we sort of decided that we are. Br got a job offer that will give him experience he can't pass up. It's just too bad that the job is in OK. Yes this means that I get to have the pleasure of selling a house in this market after only owning it for a year. I'm really not looking forward to it but I'll survive. Although the time line is still being figured out (which is driving me crazy) it looks like he'll start working there before the end of the month. I'm not sure what the means for the rest of us since I wasn't really planning on changing my routine here until June.

Now you may ask yourself why did she say June? The other little thing that I don't know if there are rumors floating around about or not since I haven't mentioned this to really anyone yet is that we'll be having a little girl in the first half of June. I figured that since I hit my 3rd trimester today that it was probably past time to tell people. Why did it take me so long to tell anyone (except Br of course)? Well it's mostly due to my horrible body image issues and my paranoia that as soon as someone announces that they are pregnant everyone is constantly looking at her to see if she is "showing" and I just can't handle that scrutiny (whether real or imagined). In any event I'm giving in and this weekend I decided that I was going to try to pass off the billion pounds (that is the actual measurement) I gained by eating dessert at pretty much every meal while I was on vacation as me just getting pudgy because I'm having a baby in a couple months.

So with all that, things are sure being mixed up a bit in the Melton pot. There shall be more details on all mentioned topics (vacation, moving, and baby Melton) but for now I think I'm going to get some sleep in my own bed and try to stay in relaxed mode at least for a few more hours.

Still busy busy busy

When I said I'd post more pictures of E's birthday party as soon as I got through my busy week I wasn't expected the busy week to turn into busy weeks.

Days after the party I had to go to Saint Louis for a work meeting for a couple days. At that meeting we decided on what everyone needed to do before the next draft of our materials needed to be pulled together. What we pretty much decided was that it was all going to end up in my lap within days of getting home from MO. Needless to say work has kept me busy this past week since the deadline to get things to the printer is tomorrow.

I got to take a little break from work to put on a primary (the kid's Sunday school at church) activity at my house Saturday. I'm not going to lie, it was very lively in my house for that 2 hours, but it was fun. We had a little family reunion-- played some games, make family trees and then decorated cupcakes to look like a member of our family tree. I made a few right before the activity started. They aren't my finest work, but it was a nice creative release right before the excitement started.

So now that I've rambled on about why I was too busy to blog, I'll finally post some pictures of the party (sorry they are the same ones on Amy's blog, for those of you who are her fans). Thanks to Ian for being our photographer. Some more pics are on their way. At some point I'll load them all onto my computer and put a little slide show together on my side bar. Until then, this will do.

The birthday boysI was really excited about this party because it was the first time my vision honestly and fully came to life. I had so much fun dreaming it up and making it happen. The living room was outdoor Paris with a city scape, a couple bistros to sit and eat at and some trees and clouds.

The breakfast nook is where we kept all the little chefs (decked out in aprons and chefs hats) busy playing in a bunch of play kitchens I borrowed. We also had pin the hat over Remmy and had the kids count all the little rats that I had hidden around the house. The kitchen was the kitchen of Gusteau's and the dinning room was the dinning of Gusteau's.
We had a fun little "French" buffet because you can't have a Ratatouille party without fine food. By french I pretty much mean we had normal 2-year-old food and labeled everything with their names in French. We had gold fish, grapes, pears, eclairs (thanks Amy), crackers and bread, cheese for the kids, cheese for the adults (Br and I had a really fun date the night before at Central Market picking out fine cheeses and bread), french lemonade, and Perrier.

This is the adult's cake. I learned a few lessons making it. The main one was that if you just sort of wing making sugar paste you will be dealing with something much to soft to hold a shape and so your little rat friend will not look like what you want him to and then will sort of sink into himself as the day goes on. I should have kept the Remmy I made for Br's birthday. Oh well, lesson learned.

The kids got cupcakes and E and Liam got their own Eiffel tower cakes so they didn't have to fight over who got to blow out the candles.

Everyone who came submitted some really fun kid friendly recipes so that we could put together a little cook book. Thanks to Amy for making the cutest/classiest gift bags ever for us to put all the fun take home stuff in!

Thank you again Br, Amy, Ian, and Mom for helping pull this off. I had the time of my life doing it and couldn't have done it without you all!

Busy celebrating

So this post is going to be a little lame but I promise at the conclusion of this upcoming busy week I'll sit down and type up a quality post. The last week or so has been busy with celebrating so at least it was fun chaos.

Wed was our little man E's birthday. I was really excited to send some birthday treats (cupcakes decorated to look like his favorite treat crockcorn-- by the way I love the way he says "popcorn") with him to preschool. He was really excited to be bringing treats too. It made me happy that he was so happy.

E showed that he was ready to be one year older. In fact earlier this week he was cracking me up when I turned to see him sitting on the couch reading the cliff's notes for the Grapes of Wrath. The TV was on but he was honestly focusing on his "book". The kid carried it around with him and periodically stopped to read for over an hour. Granted he was only reading the cliff's notes and not the actual book, I'm still going to give him props since I'm pretty sure that I never actually read more than that either.

On to the end of the week. Grandma Tori arrived in town for our big birthday party Saturday. Br picked the theme of Ratatouille because it is one of his and E's favorite movies. I'll post more about the party later with some actual pictures but let me say it was really really fun to plan and attend. What made it more fun was that we joined forces with Amy, Ian and Liam so we could celebrate Liam's 2nd birthday as well. Thank you to them, my mom, and Brad for helping make it happen!

I'm not sure if it is a flashback or a glipse into the future

So my mom emailed a link to this video to me and my sisters. I'm pretty sure she said every single line of it to me at least once (and probably multiple times) when I was growing up. I have a feeling I am on the verge of having the realization I have become my mom (and mom I mean no offense by that). Enjoy. I did.

Okay so it turns out I don't know how to post a video if it isn't mine so just click on the word "video". Please excuse the fact that I'm not blog savvy.

Life Changing Experience

Okay, so I'll admit now that the title is a little misleading. This weekend did have a few events that made me realize that life as I know it is going to change dramatically. It's probably not a secret to anyone that having a kid changes your world and I was certainly not silly enough to think that it wouldn't change mine. With each stage of development it changes your life just a little more, crawling, walking, climbing, etc. E hit one of those big landmarks when Br jokingly told E to open our bedroom door to let the dog in. Turns out neither one of them knew that E could actually open the door. Maybe that's not that big of a deal, but with an extremely curious, mischievous, and busy little boy like E I'm pretty sure that this newly discovered skill is going to bring some pretty interesting adventures in the near future.

The next big change I'm expecting will be in the next few weeks when E turns 2. I think I've taken for granted the fact that we can just drag him along to things for free. For example, no longer can he be a lap child on a plane... not that he actually stayed on a lap.

This weekend we took advantage of the fact that we still have three weeks of FREEdom and let him tag along to a hockey game with us (do you like how I segwayed). Okay, so we mostly let him come because Br's was given two tickets late Friday afternoon and we didn't have the time or desire to search for a babysitter last minute. I'm so glad we decided to bring him along. Sure we only got to see 2 of the periods but for about half of the first period he was more into the game than any other person in the arena (and we're talking hockey fans here). He danced to every song, he clapped loudly at every good play and constantly yelled "GO" to keep the team inspired. I have to give a little thanks for the tickets being so close to the ice so we could see the action, for the wide selection of tasty snacks including E's favorite (popcorn) which bought us half a period, for the cups being filled with a lot of ice which bought us yet another half of a period, the person in front of us for not showing up so that E could hang over the chair and not really bother people, and the periodic blaring of music with a good dance beat for distracting him from the fact that he had to stay within the confines of a few seats. Overall, despite the fact that E's development is keeping me on my toes, and his aging is going to hit the wallet a little, I'm really enjoying watching him become a little boy.

Handy Man

As a gift to me, over the break Br tackled the forever long "to do" list and E decided to help.

A quick get away

So what I really wanted for Christmas was one more vacation before E turns 2 and we have to buy his a plane ticket. I imagined sitting out on a warm beach in southern CA or by a fire in a cabin in CO or some other place where I didn't have to care about anything. Then I check airplane tickets and reality hit and I decided to look into a little local get away. We stayed a night at the Great Wolf Lodge so we could play at the indoor water park there. It turned out to be good time. We all enjoyed playing games in the arcade and hitting the water park a couple times. E has always loved water but he really surprised me with his fearlessness. For example I thought we'd play in the wave pool only when the waves were off. Turns out E only likes swimming in it when the waves were going and got really mad the first time they turned off. He thought it was hilarious to get smacked in the face with huge waves of water. They had a few different levels of slides in the small child play area. I figured we'd avoid the blue winding slide with fast water moving down it. No, it turns out E lives for being thrown around on his way down and then being thrust under water as he was dumped off the slide by white water. He never ceases to surprise me. I love me little guy and his adventurous soul.

We had ourselves a merry little Christmas

Photo shoot in his Christmas church outfit...and last documentation of his curls

The house all lit up. E helped to fill the luminarias up with sand

E dancing in his Christmas PJs. Showing us the snowman was "tall, tall, tall"

He was definitely like a kid on Christmas morning

Showing off the complete new look

Merry Christmas From the Meltons

We wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

(Thanks Ian for such fantastic pics of us)

This is what I learned in 7 years of college

So I sat down tonight with one of the most fantastic cups of hot cocoa I've had in a long time and was immediately reminded of my undergraduate schooling in Biological Engineering. Among many other things we had fun little discussions on properties of different foods. For example, pizza cheese burns your tongue because a great deal of energy is given off when it changes states of matter when the hot melted cheese hits your not as hot tongue and solidifies. Both starch and ketchup are non-Newtonian fluids. While starch mixed with water with get thicker as you apply force to it, ketchup will thin which is why it is actually easier to get it out of the bottle when you shake it (or why someone finally got smart and invented the squeeze bottle). But the best food fact (if you can call it that) I ever learned is how to make a really good cup of cocoa from the little powder packets. The secret is "making a paste". I don't know about you but when I just dump the powder into a cup of hot water it takes forever to get it all mixed up and then when you think it is completely mixed you still find powder chunks as you are trying to sip. My wise professor Tim Taylor (yes that is the guys name on Home Improvement) taught me the correct steps for using the powder. They are as follows:

1. Place the desired amount of cocoa in the bottom of your selected hot liquids container (aka a mug or Styrofoam cup) -- I personally like to use at least a packet and a half of cocoa, usually two. Sometimes if I'm feeling crazy I add some ovaltine.


2. Pour just a little bit of hot water in the container, not too much, just enough to wet the powder.


3. Stir the contents into a paste. This achieves the desired goal of dissolving all the powder without the hassle of the clumps.


4. Add more liquid to desired level. At this point since all of the powder is dissolved it doesn't have to be hot. I like to add hot water to about halfway up the cup then add cold milk so that the end result is a really creamy cup of cocoa that is already the perfect drinking temperature without the scalding of the tongue or the blowing and waiting.


5. Optional- Add marshmallows, flavored syrup, whipped cream, cinnamon, sprinkles or any other cocoa accoutrement you'd like to sample.


6. Drink up!

I avoided working again

E and I braved the mall yesterday and all three of us went to Walmart today and surprisingly neither was that bad. You know what one of my favorite things about the age E is right now is he's been great at actually going with me to pick things out that he'd like for Christmas. He watches me buy them but then by the time we are home he's completely forgotten about them so he'll hopefully be surprised and excited when he opens them Christmas morning.

What I really should have posted about

So I really should be working right now, but I am just not in the mood to be editing and Installation guide for septic systems. shhhh... don't tell on me.

Thank you for humoring me through my last post. I really felt bad about it and Br was stuck out of town due to the icy roads so I have nobody to talk it out with. Sorry.

In any event, things have been super busy around here. Both Br and I have been left with little spare time (for being social or blogging) due to work responsibilities and travels. Fortunately one of our recent trips had nothing to do with work. We went to my sister's in Baltimore for Thanksgiving. My dad was out there visiting at the same time too. We had a nice visit with them all. It was a quick trip with little time to do anything but just spend time with family. We did manage to sneak away to the National Aquarium for a few hours. While we waited outside for our turn to go in, E kept himself busy pushing his cousin around in a stroller, chasing seagulls and trying to jump in the harbor (and I mean that very literally). Once inside he got a little mad when I kept him from climbing into the ray tank. I'm guessing if he could tell me what he wanted to be when he grew up it would be a scuba diver or marine biologist or member of a polar bear club. Here are a few pics from the trip. Check out the new Winter slide show if you haven't gotten you fill of Melton and Goodson pics.

Our Hosts

Our new nephew

My niece demonstrating that she loves her brother
This is pretty much how E felt about the whole Thanksgiving meal

E and his cousin played, fought and play fought
E before the aquarium
E inside the aquarium

E about 3/4 way through the aquarium. He's asleep on Pappy because he wouldn't let me or Br anywhere near him for most of the weekend.

My lack of time has also resulted in a lack of jumping into the holiday cheer. I have yet to really do any Christmas shopping. Not good. We've barely just put up or tree this week and E took no delay in undecorating it. I'm also bummed because I haven't made a single holiday treat, and I just don't know that it's going to happen this year. I guess I still have a week to try and pull something off but I guess if it doesn't happen, I have 372 more days to try again before next year. For all of you who haven't spent a Christmas with me, I really am usually more festive than this. Please give me one more year to prove it.

Does this make me a bad person?

Mind you that when I sat down to the computer to make this post I had no idea that it's been almost a month since I last posted something. Sorry this is going to be a weird one (not for the faint of heart or weak in stomach), especially after such a long hiatus. We'll see if E agrees to let me on the computer long enough to write another post.

Anyway right now I'm feeling kind of really bad. Most of you probably don't know, but I really like lizards. When I was a kid they were by far my favorite animal up until my adolescence when my favorite became frogs, but lizards were still a close second. I loved when we moved to our current house because there are tons of really cool and really big lizards in our yard. Today one of my friends met his demise due to my carelessness. I pulled out of the garage to go pick up E. My habit is to back up then stop and wait for the garage door to go all the way down before I go again so that I don't get paranoid as I'm driving away that I left my garage open. Right as the garage was almost completely closed I noticed a big lizard walking very slowly (probably because it is way too cold outside for cold blooded creatures), kind of like a dinosaur, towards the door. He was so slow and the door was coming down so fast. Turns out when a garage door and a lizard get in a fight the door wins. I thought that maybe if I opened the door fast then he could escape. Unfortunately he was a little too slow moving because I had already pushed the button to make it go back down after I decided it was a futile effort. The shock of him moving again made me open the door one more time. I waited a little bit, but by this point it was definitely too little too late. So now I'm feeling like a bad person because I've smashed one of my friends, not once, not twice, but now four times (since I did it again after returning from getting E). I'm a horrible person.