Girls' Weekend 2010

Girls' Weekend 2010 was unique in many ways. The first, and most obvious, is that we were missing Erika and Renita! Even so, we managed our way through the day in San Diego. Of course, this was no ordinary day. So Cal was experiencing quite the rain storm. The driving was a bit white knuckle for me! We met up at SAndra's to start the day (Jenny would be meeting up with us later in San Diego)

Me, Jess, Melissa, Sandra, Bonnie, and Janel ready for fun! We headed to Hotel Del Coronado first for a brunch. The rain flooded the outside patio and the birds were flying around the restaurant. What fun! (forgot the pic, sorry)

Next, we headed to Horton Plaza in Gaslamp for a bit of shopping and walking. Jenny joined us there. After a long walk to our-favorite-dessert-place-with-an-eternally-long-wait we turned around and went to Cafe Sevilla for dinner. Quite an interesting place. Once dinner was over Janel got on the phone and arranged for the whole family to meet at Killarney's in Temecula for one last visit before she left to head back to Minneapolis (or Chicago as it turned out)

Only Janel could get everyone together like that!

Little Maddie played photographer for me throughout the night at Killarney's.

Photoshop

I received Photoshop Elements 8 from David and Sandra for Christmas! I have been waiting to get this so I can have some fun with my photos. This was my first project. This is a pic of Tabby and Kel on Christmas Eve. Here is the fun I had: Tab had a scratch on her left cheek that I removed!; made the pic black and white; added a grunge border to it. I can't wait to play some more!

Blood Work

Jake went back to Children's in San Diego today for blood work. I had missed this on the original order for his MRI, which we did 2 weeks ago. They took 5 vials of blood! Now we will head back to the neurologist's office to find out the results of all the testing. On the up side, his arm twitching isn't as frequent as it was and he has grown an inch and a half since August!

Driving Test?

This is what Kel walked away with from the DMV. Not quite what we went there for. She went to take her Driving Permit Test. We made the appointment a couple of weeks ago. When we arrived the line was wrapped around the building! (happy for our appt.) The inside of the building was wall to wall people, no joke. When we checked in we were told the Sacramento computers were down for the last 2 hours and there was no word when they would be up again. This meant that they couldn't process anything. We were given a number and found a small spot of wall to stand against. After waiting for over an hour the DMV staff decided to reschedule everyone for another day (we could have waited to see if the computers came up but who has all day to waste there?). Now we're headed back tomorrow...oh, almost forgot. While we were packed into the building we had an earthquake! Just a small one (5.9 in Baja). No one seemed the least bit worried about it. Just shrugged and went on with rescheduling. That's Cali!

Christmas 2009

Christmas 09 was our first Christmas in years where we didn't have Renita or Mark's families with us. How are we to spend our 2 week break without them? We'll find a way to manage... I drove up to my mom's at the beginning of break to exchange gifts with her. Next year she'll be in Temecula!

Christmas Eve we went to church with Steve's mom and dad. After dinner, David read the story of Christ's birth from Luke.

Jenny and Matt were with us!

Tabby and Kel waiting for gifts. Let the games begin!

Tabby was shocked and thrilled to get a Kindle!

Jacob was stunned and speechless when he opened his iTouch.

Amanda was excited to get a U of M sweatshirt, Coach gift card, and dvd's of her as a baby.

Kel thought that the most fun was her new iPod. She could hardly contain herself when she opened her autographed football from Sidney Rice (thanks Janel!) and her Rice jersey.

Scandinavian Night

Steve's Uncle Bruce was in town and hosted "Scandinavian Night" with his cousin Missy.

Appetizer of herring, cheese, and flat bread.

The infamous Lutefisk was the main dish. Missy also made chicken and dumplings for us "normal" people (her words :) )

Sandra fixing her plate of white food, except for the nicely colored green peas.

For dessert we had cloud berry sauce over vanilla ice cream. The berries are from the very north of Sweden. Delicious!

Thanks so much for Miss and Bruce!

Happy Birthday Renita

My dear sister-in-law turned the big 50 this December. We made our way to Scottsdale for her surprise party last weekend.

While the guests were arriving for a well planned surprise party we headed to a local wine bar. Don't Renita and Terry look great?

Mr. Fabulous and I

Daughter and Mother

Me, Sandra, Jenny, Jessica

Back at the house the surprise was a success. Renita had an idea that something was up. Even with that she fell on her rump (literally) when everyone yelled "SURPRISE!!!"