St. George With The Barlocker Fam

At the end of May, after our Vegas trip, we drove to Southern Utah to meet my side of the family.

If you've ever been to St. George you know how unbelievably hot it is there.
It got even hotter when these sexy people showed up:

Oooooooh yeah.
It was just a short little trip to get everyone together to remind us how awesome we all most of us are. All of my brothers and sisters (yep, even Fegan) came.

What is there to do in Saint George besides people-watch all the polygamists? Not much that is legal.

Which is why my Dad and Brother, Matthew, brought their Razors down for everyone to play on.

Matthew is one of the better looking members of our family:

 

We hung at at some reservoir with a red sand beach.

Ryan fell face-down in the water and couldn't get up. Matthew's wife, Stephanie ran into the water and saved his life. It was scary and I think I owe her a plate of cookies or a gift card to Taco Bell.

Ryan LOVED playing with his cousins.

Ryan also LOVED punching my favorite brother, Jake, in the crotch.

 Our party of 20 destroyed every place we went to. Outback Steakhouse looked like a zoo while we were all there. A little hipster joint downtown needed a new coat of paint by the time we were done. 

My Dad's birthday was the week before so my Mom and I decided to throw him a suprise party at a park. I decided to do the "Pretty Pink Princess Party" theme. 

I adore my Dad and just knew in my heart that he would love it.

We got to the park a little early and decorated. 

I pictured it turning out a lot cuter than it actually did. 

It took on a "White Trash Extravaganza" vibe by the time we were done.

 

Whatever.... At least we had PARTY HATS!!!!!!! 

My Mom and Dad pulled up and watched us all run behind the trees to surprise him.

We ate Kentucky Fried Chicken (which went well with the white trash theme) and played some fun Mormon games.

Ryan had a freak out after my Dad blew our the candles on his b-day cupcakes.
Ryan thought once the candles were out, the birthday was gone.
Serious stuff.

My mom is the best mom/grandma ever.
Her with Jake's kids, Brooke and Laura.

Titty Monkey Tyler was very sad when we had to leave.

It was a fun little trip, and Fegan only got into a fight with 2 out of her 5 siblings that were there. That's a 60% success rate! Win!!!!

Baby Anger Management

One of my favorite friends (out of the four that I have) came to visit last week.
Lisa is super lame because she moved to South Dakota and had a baby boy. We totally could have been boy-momming together, but apparently her husband is more important than play dates with me.

Get your priorities straight Lisa.

Let me start out by saying how proud I was of Titty Monkey Tyler's development. He is about 4 1/2 months and started rolling over. I don't really know the approximate age babies start rolling, but since he is my kid, I was pretty smug about his abilities.
Also let me just state that normally my kids are perfect and behave like happy little angels....

Anyway, Lisa brought Baby Caleb out to California for the first time. I have been wanting to see him since he was born in February.
He was born Feb. 14, so he is about 2 1/2 weeks older than Tyler.

First of all, Lisa looked all hot after having a baby a few months ago. What a ho.
I look like a tired, sweaty rat and she looked fresh and pretty. Great.

Baby Caleb slept like an angel for 1/2 an hour after she brought him in.
Then he woke up sweetly and had smiles for everyone.
During his cute smiling, Cryin' Ryan was running around desperate for Lisa's attention and Tyler was pooping his pants. Great Again.

Lisa laid Caleb down on his monogrammed blanket. The little punk rolled over and quickly got up on his hands and knees.

So much for being proud of Tyler's nervous, wobbly roll overs.

So as Baby Caleb is being happy and laughing, my kids were acting a fool.
Titty monkey cried the entire time. Ryan was showing off his 3 year old ninja moves and peeing his pants.

Then Caleb had the nerve to lay by my entitled baby and continue to be giggly and sweet.

 

I don't even want to think about the fact that he happily drank a room temperature bottle. 

If there is one thing I love, it's when other people's kids are clearly well behaved and mine act like caged animals.
I am honestly surprised Ryan didn't bite anyone. 

Lisa swore that Caleb is not a happy adorable baby all the time. I hesitate to believe her.
I think she was just trying to make me feel better. 


What would make me feel better is if there was a Baby Anger Management class offered at our community center.

P.S. Yesterday, Ryan got kicked out of his church nursery class. Twice.

Nasty House: Bathrooms

 Ready for some pretty serious before and afters?
Just a heads up, you will probably feel itchy, sad, and a little violated while looking at the "before" photos.

In 2008 we bought our house from the Catholic church, see the cross above what used to be a garage? They had actually converted the garage into a Chapel.... complete with an Alter.
A bunch of old sweet nuns were living here, but ready to go to assisted living.

Nothing gets Jared more excited than a super gross house that needs to be remodeled.
Look at the glee in his face:





My face is obviously not as joyful as Jared's. I am not a fan of living in gross houses, living through messy remodels, and spending all our savings on said remodel. 
Not to mention we had just moved from Ohio where Jared spent 1 1/2 years remodeling another nasty house he bought for us.

 Look at this elegant use of the color pink in an upstairs bathroom:

The crunchy blue tye-dyed looking carpet adds a touch of glamor. 

The master bath was even better.Who knew you could buy an avocado colored toilet???

 

When we moved in we replaced the floors but the colorful tile remained for the next 5 years while we saved up enough to remodel our house. Ugh. 

Here's the final product - main bathroom:

 

Master bathroom:

It took Jared over 1 1/2 years to redo them. Any money we saved by having Jared do all the labor was quickly spent on materials.

At least now I don't feel like I'm infected every time I get out of the shower. Win.

Sin City with Babies

 Continuing on my life's pattern of stupid ideas, Jared and I took the kids to Las Vegas.

Las Vegas with a behaviorally challenged 3 year old and a newborn-ish baby....... what could go wrong!!??!

First of all, a 4 hour car ride with a 3 year old turns into a 6 1\2 hour ride. Ugh. I had to spend the whole time entertaining him with a bag of tricks I bought at Michaels. I like to sleep on road trips, not frantically entertain Pee-Preschooler with animal magnets and play-dough.

We finally reached Vegas and checked into our room at Planet Hollywood. We had to make two trips back to the car to get all our luggage in our room. The amount of stuff needed for a two night trip is unbelievable. Kids are more high maintenance than I am. 

We booked our room online and knew that if we included the kids, we would have to pay an extra $60, so we just said there were 2 adults.

The problem is, when we checked in at the front desk we had to hide our over-packed stroller and our children.  I casually walked everything over to a nearby column and hid behind it. Ryan was confused why I was crouching down looking side to side. 

I've done much sketchier things to save $60.

We were smart enough to stay at a hotel in the middle of the strip so we didn't have to drive anywhere the whole time. That was pretty much our only good idea the entire three days. 

 

That night we walked the strip and were immediately assaulted by a dude in a sloppy DIY Transformers costume. Ryan ran up to see the crappy "robot". Jared took a picture. And immediately, Robo-crap was two inches from Jared's face trying to intimidate him for money since he took a pic.

Of course we didn't pay. I don't give out dollars bills to anyone with clothes on.

 

Breastfeeding in Vegas is especially creepy. Way too many guys tried to sneak a peak, and they didn't even offer tips. rude.

 

I looked stupid in almost every picture we took.

We went swimming and totally spoiled Ryan the whole time.

Surprisingly, it was soooo fun.

Dirty Mom

Let's talk about my blog's name for a minute.

It's dumb.

I titled my blog "Dear Person Reading This" simply because I'm lazy and it was the least offensive thing that popped into my head.

I have been thinking about changing the name to something a little less ambiguous. I wanted the title to reflect the content.

After a little brainstorming, I thought of the PERFECT name......

"Dirty Mom"

Brilliant, right?

I write a lot about being a mom. And I am dirty. I haven't showered for 2 days!!! Plus, I doubt anyone who has read my blog would classify it as clean.

I was excited. I checked to see if dirtymom.blogspot.com was available, it wasn't. Neither were any variations of the words.

I was bummed. I thought I had come up with a clever title, and someone had already claimed it.

I was a little pissed off too. I went straight to google and typed in "dirty mom", so I could see who stole my title.

Ummmmmmmmm..............

Do yourself a favor, and never, ever, ever, search the internet for "dirty mom". Never, ever, ever.

I never thought so much porn would assault my eyes when I typed anything associated with the word "mom" into a search engine.

I obviously misinterpreted the context of the word "dirty".

Truth is, I felt so dirty from all the mom porn that I had to scrub my entire house clean. I think Ryan could sense my disgust because he actually helped.
After that, I had to brush my teeth 3 times before the bad taste was out of my mouth.

 I still didn't shower though.

"Dear Person Reading This" doesn't seem so lame anymore.