Welcome Mason Jeremiah Thoma!!!

Last week my brother JJ and his wife Nikki gave birth to a baby boy!


Mason Jeremiah Thoma was born October 22, 2009 5:53am 20" long 7lbs 15 oz. with lots of blond hair!

This is really so exciting for everyone and especially for JJ and Nikki! I haven't had many opportunities to talk with my brother since I left home a while ago but we got to talk for about an hour on Monday and it was so great to hear him talk about his baby and his family. He sounds so grown-up!

I can't wait to go home and finally meet Mason as well as my sister's baby Ally--hopefully we can make the trip this winter/spring. In the mean time, I'll be saving up for a present as well. If you have a kid, please tell me what you found most useful and if there is anything you just couldn't have done it without, let me know. I really want to give them a nice gift. :)

Congratulations JJ and Nikki!!

The Budding Babes of Summer

Congratulations to my brother and his wife Nikki! They are having a little boy named Mason and he's due on October 21st. I guess their baby shower was this weekend and I am so excited for them! It's too bad I wasn't able to be there. These photos were emailed to me by my Aunt Debra--thanks so much!--so that I could share in the experience.

My Mom and Nikki.

This is my brother showing off the baby jersey. I'm amazed at how much older he looks!

Yum! Look at how great that food is!

She looks so wonderful. I can't believe my little brother is grown up! Married before me and having a baby before me! He looks so mature. :)

I really am so happy for them. Nikki is really nice and I think she'll be a great mom.

Congratulations you two and we can't wait to meet you little Mason!

A Red Neck Wedding

My brother's wedding was last weekend to a beautiful girl named Nikki whom JJ has been dating for about 2 years. I'm so happy for them and really wish I could have been there because from what I understand, it was quite the event.



It seems that everyone is calling it the "Red Neck Wedding" (and with pride, might I add). My brother and all his grooms men wore camouflage vests and cowboy hats. My uncle got drunk, fell down and scraped his face.


The reception's main course was a pig that my brother and his wife-to-be shot the night before the wedding. Apparently none of the boys knew how to or wanted to gut the thing so the bride did it for them--in a white t-shirt. At the party, my dad cooked the thing on a spit (which my mom says he was rather proud of) and the entire party devoured the thing within a few hours ("picked it clean" is what my mom said. "All fifty of us.").


Apparently there wasn't much dancing but my mom said that there was a mother-son dance and that they danced to a country song called "Momma told me to be a Simple Man" (or something like that). I kinda snorted when she said that. My brother is certainly simple much like my dad.

And the whole thing just screamed Red Neck from the beginning: Nikki got pregnant and though they had planned on marrying for a while, the actual event hadn't been previously scheduled. So, it was a shot gun wedding. I am told that they announced the sex and the name of the baby at the wedding; he will be Mason Jeremiah Thoma (after my brother).

And then they rode off into the sunset on my dad's Harley. Okay, I'm not sure if there was any sunset or riding involved but who could pass a photo-op like this? I guess no Red Neck wedding could escape the underlying biker-ness in my family. :)

(By the way, all of these photos are compliments of my Aunt Debra who was so nice to send me some the day of the event since I couldn't make it.)

I share all this embarrassing family stuff with you because that's just who they are. They embarrass me, harass me, give me grief and heartache, but they also smile with me, celebrate with me, love me, and encourage me. I love them for all the quirks, faults and virtues. We are a wild bunch but at least we're an entertaining one! And no one is more entertaining than the people you grow up with. :)

Congratulations JJ and Nikki! I wish you all the best and I can't wait to see you and your baby. :)

Updates

What did you say?

I've decided that Australia is really just an America counterfeit. Example: We were in the store yesterday and I came across some Rice Krispies--except they were called "Rice Bubbles." Yep, the same three guys we love--Snap, Crackle and Pop--on the front of the box. They just changed the name. Fraud, I say!! And then, the other day I was reading the newspaper and came across an add for Cheerios--but it wasn't Cheerios! It was little sausages alla 'Lil Smokies style! Seriously. Mass confusion on my part. Oh, and another time I was having dinner with the family and poured myself a glass of juice. It tasted a little weird but I thought, "Oh well, you get to drink it now." Then Jeremy's mom said to me, "Did you just pour a whole glass of concentrate?" I was massively confused; the jug said nothing of concentrate. As it turns out, "Fruit Cordial" means "Fruit Concentrate." Cordial? Really? I thought "cordial" was a way you treated other people, as in, good manners. This is truly the Land of Oz....

Now, hold my hand...

Jeremy said to me in the car last night that in a few weeks, if we're bored and have nothing to do, maybe I could practice driving on the left side. I still need to walk on the left side!!! I was trying to practice with the shopping cart in the store and had several near collisions (I almost T-boned a lady in the cereal aisle). I'm not sure I'm ready for the road just yet. In fact, I have problems with sidewalks! I walk in the wrong direction, I run into people, I create unnecessary confusion. When I cross the street, I look the wrong way. Pretty soon I will a helpless pile of mush on the road next to a former Cane Toad.

The Joys of Being Unemployed

1. You get to sit at a computer all day (just like a real job) except no one yells at you when you spend two hours (or more) on Facebook.
2. You're never far from the refrigerator.
3. Extra long lunches!
4. TV on your "work breaks."
5. There are "sleeping rooms" upstairs if you get burnt out in front of the computer.
6. You get to brag about yourself all day in cover letters and resumes.
7. Who's the boss? You're the boss!!

Of course this is just me trying to convince myself that I don't want work. In truth, I really, really do. Jeremy does too. We want money for movies, shoes, books, trips, and savings. I would like to get a haircut and fix this mop that Singaporean hair dresser left me with! (Still seething...) I canvased a mall a couple days ago with resumes and cover letters only to find that most places won't accept resumes on site and that I would have to visit their website if I wanted to apply. (In other words: I wasted two hours walking around the mall with no money in high heels and a skirt that kept sticking to my sweaty butt.) So, yesterday I applied online. I applied to at least 8 jobs (primarily in retail). Today I'm going to apply for big-girl jobs (editing positions, magazines, publishers, pr agencies, non-profits, etc.). But truthfully, I know that as long as I'm an American in Australia during a global economic crisis with a working-holiday-only-lets-me-work-a-single-job-up-to-6-months visa, I might as well start a lemonade stand and pay cute kids peanuts to sell the stuff on the street.

Will you be my friend?

The silver lining in my rain cloud is that Jeremy's family and friends are awesome. The other day I was sitting in at the kitchen table with his grandpa, listening to his war stories about being captured by the Americans while his grandma made me lunch. I felt so at home and welcomed. It reminded me how much I miss my own grandma and grandpa and how lucky we are to have grandparents and know them too. We hung out with Jeremy's friends again last weekend and that was fun too. At one point I was really worried they wouldn't like me but that all seems like silly talk now--of course they would! I love Jeremy and of course, Jeremy's friends are just like him, therefore, I love his friends too (and vice-versa). We all had drinks, ate lots of chips and salsa, chowed down some GORGEOUS Indian fare, watched silly YouTube videos, and shared stories from the last two years. It really was a good night and even though I was the foreigner in the room, no one seemed to noticed.

Kortney Thoma, Foreign Correspondent

In other news, across the seas in the USA, my younger brother, JJ Thoma, is getting married this month. His wife-to-be, Nikki, is with child and due late October. I am seriously SO excited for them! For a long time my brother has been kinda goal-less, but since he met Nikki, he's been a different guy--surprisingly responsible! She is a wonderful girl (I guess that now she's getting married and having a baby that makes her a woman...?) from Wenatchee who's studying nursing. I'm really happy for them. It's too bad I can't make it home for the wedding though. :( NO money+NO job x's the Pacific Ocean=NO flight. But the good news is that flight prices are coming down for routes in and out of Australia. I recently saw a return ticket Sydney-Seattle-Sydney for less than $800!! If you would like to contribute to the "Kortney has no money but want to come home" fund (KHNMBWTCHFund) please let me know!