Bonding Time

                        

*Sigh* It's a Monday morning and I am sitting down to organize my thoughts and enjoy the morning instead of rushing out the door to get to work by 7:00. In fact, it's not quite 7:00 and I have already changed and fed Zane and put him back to bed, gotten in a workout (not my best but it's been a while), taken a shower, brushed my teeth and am sitting down with a cup of Mother's Milk Tea and my breast pump. I'm not sure that I will ever be able to fully express how amazing this feels. Today is the first working day that I've been able to take off since going back to work 20 weeks ago. 

I knew that returning to a 40 hour work week after being gone for 8 weeks and leaving my 6 week old at home was going to be difficult but I really had no idea. Returning to work has been far more difficult than I could ever have anticipated. 

        

A few weeks prior to returning to work, my back up who I had recently trained before going on maternity leave, emailed me to inform me that she had gotten another job and would be quitting as soon as I returned. Being post partum and emotional already, I did not take this news very well. Losing my back up took away any chance that I could take an extra day off after returning. As I am the only one at my job with my position there would be no other person who could fill in for me. This meant that I would be missing out on Zane's doctor visits and photo appointments. With several deadlines at all different times throughout the week being able to have a sick day was out of the question as well. It was definitely another reason to hope that Zane didn't get sick as I wouldn't be able to stay home and take care of him. I talked my backup into working an extra day to be there on my first day back so that we could touch base and she could fill me in on what was going on over the last 8 weeks. 

Shortly after returning to work my newly promoted general manager confided in me that he was offered a position at another company that would pay nearly 50% more than he was currently making and gave him a schedule that would allow him to spend more time with his family. Obviously this was an opportunity that he could not turn down and he would be leaving in just a few short weeks. I had worked with this manager for about 8 years and he was easily my favorite. I was happy for him and his wonderful opportunity but I was also quite devastated by the news. Our work environment had seen some wonderful changes since his promotion and in addition to missing him being around I was fearful that we would be taking steps backward in the office. 

With all of this change going on and missing my family at home I felt incredibly overwhelmed for quite a while and had many tear filled shifts. On top of this I had to worry about pumping at work to make sure that Zane was still a breastfed baby. Upon my return, my general manager had set up a space for me to pump in a linen closet. This might not seem so wonderful but given that I shared an office with 10 men and the linen room was the only space with a lock and no camera, it was my best option. I certainly didn't want to be pumping in the car everyday. He was also quite sweet and ordered a mini fridge for the office so that I had somewhere to store my milk. I was incredibly touched and am still so thankful to him for this. 

The management team was very understanding of my breaks to the linen room (in the beginning I was pumping every 3 hours) however the staff was less than so. I didn't realize until then how popular the linen room was. Even with a sign posted letting everyone know that the door was locked and not to enter, I had frequent interruptions. There has still yet to be a week where I don't have someone who need to get into the room. Up until a few weeks ago when I finally changed the sign to say "nursing mommy inside" the interruptions were a daily thing. At minimum there would be a jiggle of the door handle as someone would try to enter. More often than not there would be a knock on the door. I sat in the room uncomfortably as people would bang on the door, express their irritation loudly, and make rude comments regarding their opinion about what I was doing ("That's disgusting! Can't she find a bathroom to do that in?!" "Go home and be a mother instead of being here!"). I once had to stand up, quickly scoop up my pump, and slam my body against the door to stop someone with keys who ignored the sign and started to enter. Even while pleading for them to stop coming in and pushing against the door they tried to fight past me. On more than a few occasions (including my last day of work this last Friday) my sign had been moved to the top of the door making it difficult for my 5 foot frame and short arms to reach up and retrieve it once I was done in the room. Needless to say I began to dread pumping and this left me broken hearted. I was just trying to make sure my son was fed, and I felt like I was doing something wrong. 

Not having a real break since returning to work has been a bit of a challenge. I feel like I'm constantly on the go and can't slow down to enjoy anything. I find myself having a long day at work and rushing home before Zac leaves for his job. Zac and I have opposite schedules which allow us to avoid childcare and lets Zane be with one of us at all times. These schedules work out wonderfully for childcare but don't give us much time during the week to be a married couple. As it stands we get one or two nights during the week together. Unfortunately, during the week I'm pretty tired from work and go to bed not long after Zane so we don't get much time to catch up with one another. During the week I only get a few hours with Zane before he goes to bed. Since I leave for work before he wakes, this is the only time I get with him. (I once heard him wake up and start to cry as I walked to the car in the morning and was crushed that I had to continue on my way to work.) Saturday has turned into our family day. It's the one day Zac and I both have off so we try to make it full of fun. It doesn't always work out this way since we still have a house to maintain and errands to run but we try. 

As I mentioned before, my general manager was gone a few weeks after I returned to work. Since his choice to leave happened suddenly, we were without a replacement for a while as our corporate office looked for someone in the company to relocate. This unfortunately put my plans to get a new backup trained on the back burner. A process that began in late July took until October to finalize. I was getting anxious to get a backup in training because I knew that I needed a break. I wanted to take six weeks off for "bonding time" (a state given allowance for mothers of infants under one year of age) and I wanted to take this leave over the holidays. Being home for Zane's first fall and winter holidays meant the world to me and not having someone trained to take over my job while I was away complicated this. The stress and anxiety started to get to me and I began to suffer physical consequences. It started with headaches and progressed to feeling tired and weak. For more than a week I had chest pains and my body felt as though I were being folded in half vertically. I had difficulty breathing in deeply which of course frightened me and made me more stressed and anxious (vicious cycle). Worst of all I noticed a serious decrease in milk supply. Zane was eating more and more and I was pumping less each session. I decided that regardless of whether or not I had a backup I needed to put in my notice at work for my leave of absence. It was what was best for me and my family. Thankfully I was able to begin training a backup and they were certified on my last day of work. 

This brings us to today. Today is my first official day of leave. For the next six weeks I will be focusing on my family and soaking in every moment with them. I've made a goal not to let a single day go wasted. This break has been seriously needed and much anticipated. I want to be sure that I'm accomplishing things, making memories, giving lots of love to my husband and son, visiting with friends and family that I haven't seen in months, and breathing some fresh air. I've spent the last five months working in an office with no windows, stressing over deadlines, rushing home, and just trying to make it through the day. It's time to start living! I don't want to spend my days trying to get through them. I want to live them.

On my last day my new general manager (who is one very sweet and understanding woman) got me a gift of things to help me relax over they next six weeks. It was incredibly thoughtful. One of the items was an adorable notebook. While Zane naps today I will begin filling it up with lists, plans, goals, and projects. I have so many thoughts and ideas rushing through my head about what I can accomplish during my leave. It's time to get them all on paper and work on my most important goals: make myself happy, make others happy, make beautiful things, and create wonderful memories. 

I have missed my blog dearly. The last time I posted my sweet Zane was only 8 weeks old. I'll try my best to post regularly (even when I return to work). I'm looking forward to sharing our small family adventures this holiday season. 

May you all have a WONDERFUL Monday! 

Cupcake Anyone?

Before getting our 4th of July celebration underway, Zac and I thought that the holiday would be a great opportunity for us to get familiar with our neighbors. We've lived in our house for a year and a half but unfortunately have not gotten to know our neighbors well. This is something that we would definitley like to change but not something that we have really put any effort into yet.

Zac and I decided that we would say 'Happy 4th of July' through cupcakes! Seriously, who doesn't like cupcakes?! We certainly do and we thought for sure that our neighbors would enjoy a sweet treat on a hot summer day. Our plan was to bake a bunch of cupcakes, package them, and then deliver them from door to door.

Not knowing what the neighbors' tastes would be regarding cake we decided to make a few different flavors. We settled on vanilla (you can't go wrong with a classic) and red velvet (one of our favorites). Not only were both flavors delicious but together the red and white cakes were perfect for celebrating the 4th of July.

We opted to make mini cupcakes instead of full size ones. I usually make mini cupcakes for parties and game nights and they always seem to be a big hit. Making smaller cupcakes instead of the larger ones allowed us to get more cupcakes from our cake mixes which meant that we could make more packages, go to more houses, and have enough cupcakes left over to take some to Zac's work as well as Scott and Amy's house that evening for the holiday celebration.

The yummy red velvet cupcakes were topped with cream cheese frosting....

....and the vanilla cupcakes were topped with a traditional vanilla frosting.

Zac pulled out the pastry bag and frosted all of the cupcakes. In the end they all looked as cute as this little one.

It was a little intimidating to look at our counter and see all of these beautiful cupcakes. With about a hundred cupcakes covering our kitchen countertop, it seemed as if we had our work cut out for us.

I gathered up all of our supplies that we needed to put together our cupcake treats and Zac and I started assembling our packages.

Here's what we used:

- Three sheets of patterned scrapbook paper

- Four packages of Wilton brand treat boxes

- One roll of red gift wrap curling ribbon

- Scissors

- Tape

- Pen

Since we were baking mini cupcakes and not the average size cupcakes we chose to use treat boxes instead of cupcake boxes. These Wilton boxes (measuring 1.5 X 4.5 X 4.5) perfectly accomodated 4 mini cupcakes.

After opening the treat boxes we taped each of the inside flaps to make sure that the treat boxes maintained their shape and didn't collapse in on themselves.

Next we cut the scrapbook paper into 4" squares and used the pieces to line the inside of each box. We thought the blue was a nice touch to add to the red and white cupcakes we were putting inside the boxes.

Zac and I realized that delivering our treats on 4th of July might be risky since some of our neighbors might have already left their homes to start their summer celebration. In case we rang doorbells and weren't greeted by anyone on the other side we figured that we should leave notes on our cupcake boxes so that the neighbors knew they were safe to consume. Since we hadn't yet been introduced to some of our neighbors we also thought that the note would probably be a nice touch to add onto the treat boxes even if the recipient was home to accept. In addition to holiday well wishes, Zac and I wrote our names and address on the note so that our neighbors would know who we are.

(No I didn't mess up and scribble all over our notes for our neighbors. As much as I love sharing with everyone, our address is one thing that gets to be a secret.)

After prepping the treat boxes and writing our notes, we started loading up our cupcakes and putting together our packages.

In the end, these are what each of the boxes looked like:

Zac and I were very happy with the final product. We loaded up all of the boxes onto a large tray, dressed Jim in a cute outfit and set out to deliver our treats to our unsuspecting neighbors.

We delivered one box of cupcakes to twelve different houses on our block. As we had anticipated, many of the houses were empty or at least the people inside weren't answering their doors. For these houses, we left our box of cupcakes on the doorstep and went on our way to the next house on our list. We did have success with four houses in which our neighbors answered their doors and listened to us explain to them who we were and accepted our small gift. At two of these houses the person who answered the door looked at us crazy/suspicious as I'm sure they expected us to be salespeople or something of that nature, there to disrupt their day. At both of these homes once they realized why we were there, their state of confusion turned to happy faces and big smiles. 

Zac and I had a lot of fun going from house and house and really enjoyed meeting the few neighbors that we were able to speak with. Over the last few days we have been pleasantly surprised to recieve three thank you notes from our neighbors, two of which were not home when we delivered our treats. One of the neighbors who answered the door on the 4th of July hand delivered a thank you note the next day. It was great hearing that our neighbors loved their sweet treats and even more wonderful knowing that we've made some connections with the people in our neighborhood.  

Happy 4th of July!

Happy 4th of July! Hope that everyone is enjoying this holiday!

I am lucky enough to have this holiday off again this year. The last few years I have requested the time off but this year I got the patriotic holiday off of work by sheer luck. My current availability states that I am not available to work on Monday or Friday. Thankfully 4th of July has landed on a Monday this year which means that I have the day off. Zac and I will be enjoying some celebratory fireworks this evening.

In the meantime, this afternoon I will be helping my good friend Kim redecorate her mother's room while she is on vacation! On Friday we painted the room a rich shade of gray with a twelve inch white border on top. Kim has picked out a beautiful duvet, some amazing pillows and a few other fantastic accessories. I can't wait to see the final product!

Have a great holiday!!!!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!!

I hope everyone is enjoying their Cinco de Mayo holiday! :)

Looking at all of the holiday decorations and party supplies this week I've started to get some great ideas for next year. As mentioned here, we are getting married Friday May 4 rather than Saturday May 5, but we still had some ideas for a Cinco de Mayo themed wedding event.

At this time next year, Zac and I will be hosting a Cinco de Mayo themed post wedding day brunch. Since we aren't planning on going on our honeymoon right away, we thought that having brunch at our house the day after the wedding would be a great way to wind down with close family. Zac's family will be staying at our house the night of the wedding, and a few of my out of town family members will be staying at my parents house. Before a few of them set off on their way home at the end of the weekend we thought that it would be a nice treat to share a meal and visit a little longer. We know the wedding day will go by quickly and we'll be moving from one thing to the next, so getting the chance to catch up with out of town guests will not likely be something we'll get the chance to do at the wedding.

The fun part of having the brunch on Cinco de Mayo is that we will have the a chance to use some of the holiday inspired ideas we previously considered using for the wedding. As we are serving brunch and not dinner there will not likely be a taco truck but I'm sure that margarita cupcakes might be in the mix. :) The menu will most likely consist of the usual breakfast spread of french toast, bacon, eggs, potatoes, bagels, fruit, etc. plus some lunch style ideas like finger sandwiches and a few salads. To go along with the Cinco de Mayo theme we'll proabably have items to make breakfast tacos or some flavorful and spicy omelettes. Zac is looking forward to transforming the grill outside into a french toast making machine (thank goodness one of us likes to cook) but aside from that we're looking to put together a simple to assemble menu as we're sure everyone will be worn out from the day before.

Along with food we will of course have an array of beverages. In addition to the usual breakfast beverages (orange juice and coffee) I'm sure we'll have a few alcoholic beverages for those who still want to continue the celebration (or for those who need a little help coming down from the celebration the night before). Mimosas, bloody marys, etc. will be available for our guests.

We know that we will probably be pretty tuckered out from the big day, so organizing another event might seem kind of crazy but we're sure that we can pull it off. Our plan for the day is to keep the brunch very chill, and casual but a few decorations won't be that difficult to put together. Since the brunch will be taking place at our house, we'll be able to set up most of it ourselves the day before the wedding. We've rented chairs and tables before from a company who is very flexible with their delivery and pick up times. This will definitely help us get it together in time without freaking out and feeling rushed.

I've browsed through some photos online and found a few ideas that I think we will be able to use for our brunch.

One of my favorite blogs, The Sweetest Occasion, recently had a tutorial for these wonderful tissue paper banners.

They are super easy to make and would look really cute hanging in our backyard.

I just love how light and airy they are. And wouldn't they be perfect for Cinco de Mayo?

Another one of my favorite blogs, Hostess with the Mostess, has an incredible array of inspiring posts. I love browsing the blogs pages and taking note of fun party ideas that I can use somewhere down the line. Last August, they posted party photos from a 40th birthday bash fiesta. Although the decorations were all for a birthday, they could easily be modified for a brunch. Check out some of these great party photos:

I love these colorful pom poms. I made a bunch of giant yellow and green ones back in January for Sarah's jungle themed baby shower. It would be so easy to make smaller ones and put them on sticks to add some color to the tables.

I also loved the taller versions that added some fun detail to the food table.

Having the event at our home would also allow us to get down with some pinata fun like we had originally hoped to at the wedding. What a way to let go of all the wedding planning stress by beating a pinata!

I love the yellow and white tablecloths. It adds such a bright, pretty color to the set up...plus since yellow, white, and gray are our colors for the big day, it would be nice to incorporate them during brunch as well.

Although our post wedding day brunch will not be on a Sunday, we would love to add a little "Sunday" into the mix. Before Zac and I started dating, our Sunday shifts at work were spent flirting (shamelessly) at the end of the bar. Our managers always had a Sunday paper available, so while we were slow and had no guests to take care of, Zac and I would attempt to solve the Sunday crossword puzzle. Although we never successfully solved a puzzle (or even came anywhere close), it was our Sunday tradition to work on the puzzle. So to make brunch complete we'll be putting together some homemade crossword puzzles for our guests to have fun with during the meal. Sounds fun, right?

We look forward to hosting this event, having some more time to chat with our family and thank them all for their presence, support and assistance during the weekend.  :)

Holiday, Celebrate

Okay, so yes, I am channelling some Madonna with that blog title. Maybe this clip of Adam Sandler's version from The Wedding Singer will make getting the song stuck in your head a better experience. :)

When Zac and I first intended to get married on Saturday May 5, we had mixed reactions from our friends and family. Some thought that getting married on Cinco de Mayo sounded like an awesome idea while others gave us a look that said "What are you thinking?".

Holiday or no holiday, it seemed like a great day to get married. :) After looking at our families we realized that the idea of a holiday wedding might just be in our blood. Both Zac's parents and my parents were married 30 years ago on a holiday.

February 14, 1981

Zac's parents were married on Valentine's Day in 1981.

They said I do at the chapel in Yosemite Valley.

This February, they celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary in Hawaii.

December 31, 1981

My parents eloped to Vegas! They were married New Year's Eve at the We've Only Just Begun Chapel in Las Vegas, Nevada.

This December they will be ringing in the new year by celebrating their 30th wedding anniversary.

A huge congratulations to both sets of parents on 30 years of marriage. In a world where most people have parents who are divorced or separated, we are both very lucky to have parents who are still together and happily married.

Unfortunately, we won't be able to continue this holiday wedding tradition, but we look forward to celebrating our own 30th wedding anniversary being just in love (if not more) than we will be the day we get married. (Not to mention setting a good example for our future kiddos. :D )