Confessions of Me, a Wannabe Pioneer Woman.

On our trip out west this week, Liz, Traci and I stayed at a ranch in Montana. No – we did not get to stay with the Pioneer Woman and join in the cow pregnancy testing fun, but we did stay with some very nice ranchers in Eastern Montana named Willy and Anne. That’s right! When I called and found out Mrs. Rancher’s first name was Anne with an “e” I knew we’d hit the jackpot.

We flew into Denver, picked up our lovely white rental car (laugh all you want, Brian) and headed north toward Montana. As is typical with the Anne/Liz road trip, we got caught in several torrential downpours and a couple of hail storms. But we forged our way through the road kill splattered, partially paved roads of Wyoming to cross into Montana and arrive at the ranch a little after 9pm.

I was relieved when Mrs. Rancher told us she would have breakfast ready at 7:30. That meant I could easily get 8 hours of sleep which we were all in desperate need of since we'd gotten up at 4:30 eastern time that morning to get to the airport. So it was off to bed for a great night's sleep under the big Montana sky.

Fast forward to 4:37 am the next morning. Cockadoodle-doo!! Actually it was more of a Ca-cock-a-doo! I remember thinking "Wow, it's still really dark outside! I thought the rooster crowed when the sun came up." Little did I know that the rooster comes with a snooze button. The Pioneer Woman never mentioned that one. He crowed every few minutes for the next hour and a half. What's up with that rooster???

I considered my options and thought about throwing shoes at him out the window, or looking for a baseball bat, but I decided my best option was to pray. I prayed that that rooster would be content with number of times he had already crowed to the Lord that morning, and I asked the Lord to reveal to him that we had come from a different time zone and his crows were confusing us more than helping us, and maybe he could find it in his little rooster heart to allow us to get another hour of sleep. And I kid you not – a few minutes after those prayers were lifted up to heaven I truly believed that rooster (it was later that we found out there were multiple roosters) had cockadoodle-doo’d his last. I was literally thanking Jesus like nobody's business every minute that went by without a crow. But it turns out he decided to take a 7 minute break instead of 3. And he was with us the rest of the morning until the sun finally came up.

There is one positive thing that came out of my morning hours with the rooster. This scene (which is one of my favorites from Arrested Development) kept running through my head:





Lindsay's chicken is the best!


Other than the rooster, the time at the ranch was great! Here are some of my favorite pics:

The tractor pic (taken for my Dad):


The cabin (right next to the hen house, of course):



Our cow friends:

My favorite cow pic (she doesn't come close to the Pioneer Woman's Ursula, but I still love her):

The Report from Jamaica.

"Limb fell off the ackee tree and ran out of beer." I guess that means everyone is ok. Oh and Shabba got his tooth fixed. Here's the before pic. After my trip with the girls in October, I'll post the after pic with new tooth.

Double the Reunion, Double the Fun!

This weekend I went down to NN for the Wiatt family reunion. This year was interesting because my uncle found some link 8 generations back to the Wyatt's with a "Y" and so they were invited for the first time! I kept seeing all these "Wyatt" name tags and was wondering what the heck was going on until Uncle Alex gave his 10 minute speech on the wonders of DNA and everybody's related to everybody and now we're inviting Wyatt's and blah blah blah. He likes to talk:)

The younger generation:

I did enjoy this picture very much. It's my uncle Tom as a young lad in 1971 next to a picture of Sir Thomas Wyatt as a young lad in 15??. Quite the resemblance. Actually, Sir Thomas ended up with his head hanging from the Tower of London soon after this portrait was made. Tom the uncle is still with us. And of course, I must highlight the moment that I wait for all year. The sing-a-long with Roberta on the concertina. This is when most of the cousins like to leave which is terribly unfortunate because what's a family reunion without a couple of rounds of Oh! Susanna and Home on the Range?

Anyway, that's enough of the crazy Wiatt clan. The surprise of the weekend was the mini reunion we had on my Dad's side. Turns out my cousin Jason and his lovely wife Melanie were taking a little road trip through VA to see my grandmother and visit the farm. And on Sunday they ventured down to NN. This was quite an exciting moment for me because I had not seen my cousin since 1991! 16 years! I didn't think I'd been alive for 16 years, but I can't argue with my parents or my birth certificate on that one so here we are.

This was such a fun weekend!! It was one of those rare (but becoming more frequent) moments when I actually wished I could spend more time with my family! I guess when you pray about something God is bound to change your heart eventually :)

Eyes, eyes, nostrils, silent scream.

If anyone is curious to know what I’ll be doing tonight, I’ll be at home (actually at Cecily’s – I’m dog sitting this week) watching this clip over and over until I learn the moves:



Who would have thought that one day of cake making with Rachel and Gina would change my life forever?

God Bless you both.

I'm melting.

God's greatest gift to man: J.C.

God's second greatest gift: AC.

My spiritual gift is jazz hands.

I believe that’s what the Lord revealed to me last night. And I’m being completely serious. Actually, I was in perfomer mode at CPT last night and was dancing around trying to get all the attention and it was totally fun and great, but then by the time I came home I was feeling kind of bummed out because I always try to get attention and praise for myself and not for God, and when I do that too much it just makes me feel yucky. So I was praying and journaling last night and asking God to forgive me for being so selfish and for showing myself off and not Him and I asked him (and this is a direct quote from my journal) "to knock me off my 'me' stage and put be back on God's stage with jazz hands for you Lord." I even pray Fosse style. This is why I love the freedom we have in Christ because I can pray like that and I know He totally gets what I'm trying to say. And all that jazz.

Now I need to find me a new dance class. I miss my old tap teacher Billy, the 65 year old drag queen.

The Ratios, They are a Changin’

Bob Dylan would be proud. Yesterday’s CPDC Busch Gardens trip was attended by the following:

Guys: Steve, Greg, John, Ravi, Ernest, Joel and Mike

Gals: Anne, Liz, Amber, and Aesook

I do believe this is the first event (other than a basketball tournament or Super Bowl party) that was attended by more men than women. The Lord has heard our prayers!!

A great moment in work life.

I'm sitting in Mike's office today discussing a data issue related to one of my bank's reports. The bankers name is Cher. We were going back and forth on the issue when all of the sudden it hit me that this was a bank another co-worker had spoken with when I was on vacation. So we brought the other co-worker in but she couldn't remember all of the details of the issue. At this realization, Mike starts singing "If I could turn back time..."

Oh how I love the cleverness!

My Favorite Dessert

Is fruit pizza! I know some of you are thinking "Wait a minute?? I thought your favorite dessert was brownie mix?" and you're close. Actually, my favorite snack is brownie mix :)

Isn't it lovely?? And it tastes soo good and is semi-healthy with all that fruit everywhere. Just forget the fact that the fruit is sitting on top of a sugar cookie and cream cheese mixed with sugar and cool whip :)

I've posted the recipe at Sweet Anne's.

My Favorite Armenian

One of the highlights of our New England road trip (besides locking my keys in the car) was seeing my very favorite Armenian friend Steve. Steve started working at the FDIC a year after me and our cubes were next to each other. We quickly became friends because I needed advice about guys and he needed me to write thank you notes for him. For three years he was my favorite FDIC buddy. He created the “Anne’s To Eat List” because there were so many foods I had never tried before (like the cheeseburger) and I bugged him about not loving Jesus enough and told him that God didn’t give a hoot that the Armenians were the first Christian church (according to Steve). We had so much fun, and being his friend left a special place in my heart for Armenians.

A couple of years ago he decided to ditch us and go back to Boston for grad school. So for a brief while I was living a life sans Armenians. But as the reverend mother always says “when God takes away one Armenian, He’ll bring along another.” And He did. Last summer Julie started working at the FDIC and as soon as I met her and saw the dark hair and found out she was from Boston her last name ended in “ian” I knew we would hit it off right away. And we did! She wasn’t scared off when I said “I love Armenians!!” and jumped up and down a few times. Then Jbeed (an Armenian) started coming to our church and I think I did freak her out just a bit when I began my “Why I love Armenains” speech. And then one night at dinner last fall, we were talking about our family history and Travis blurts out that he is one quarter Armenian. I took one look at him with this new information and thought "Of course!" I could totally see 1/4 Amenian features in Travis. Don't you all see it??

I decided right then and there that we were getting married. I've never expected to meet a 28 year old single 100% Armenian who is was 100% into Jesus. And here was Travis who had the 100% Jesus and 100% single criteria covered and was coming in strong with 25% Armenian. Pretty good ratios if you ask me. (BTW - for all you readers who think you've been let in on a big secret that I was running around last year with a major crush on Travis this is not the case. I just decided we'd be getting married.)

Now I'm back to a point in my life where the Armenian friends are few and far between. Travis has gone off to law school, Steve lives in Boston, I rarely see Jbeed, and next Friday is Julie's last day at work. She is moving back to Boston too! I may have to work my match making magic with her and Steve :) So here's hoping God brings along another Armenian (maybe the 100% into Jesus single guy one??) We'll wait and see!!