Happy Birthday Grandma/Mom!

Dear Mom,

My #1 wish ... you know, if I could make a wish on your birthday, would be that my family could be down there with you to celebrate! We would love nothing more than to celebrate YOU in person. We'd love to take you out to a dinner (maybe Lonestar?) and then maybe some sugar-free Marie Calenders pie? Oh man, does that sound good. Well, not the sugar-free pie. I'd have to go with good 'ol regular berry pie ala mode. Great ... now I'm hungry for pie.

Anyway, I suppose sending your gift down with loads of happy birthday wishes is the next best thing to us being there. I hope you'll be able to use the goodies we sent. ;) And I also hope that the gift cards come in handy (I imagine they will).

I hope you know how much you mean to us. And if you don't ... well ... you should.
We love you so very much.

Happy Birthday!

Love,
Shawn, Kristen, Austen, Kale and Bailey

Happy Birthday Nana (Pat)!!

We want to wish Nana/Pat a very happy birthday today. Whatever you do, we hope it's special and we sure wish we could be there to celebrate with you.

Love,
Shawn, Kristen, Austen, Kale and Bailey

Some very sad news.

Joan called on Monday night to let us know that Shawn's cousin, Chris Butler, had passed away unexpectantly. We were shocked to say the least. Shawn is flying down to SoCal this morning with Joan and Tiffany (Roy is already there) for his funeral tomorrow. Our hearts go out to the entire Butler family, but especially his two children, Melanie and Cameron, his sisters and his Dad (Roy's brother).

Lazy Day.

Such a super lazy day. Love that. I bought a new book yesterday, The Lovely Bones. I really wanted to read the book before seeing the movie. I'm funny that way. I started it yesterday, and finished it today. The book was okay. Good, not great. Cool story, but a little hard (weird?) to read. I think the author's style of writing just wasn't what I'm used to. I don't know. I couldn't put my finger on it. Anyway, looking forward to seeing how they do the movie. Of course, I may have to wait until it comes to DVD, but that'll be fine, too.

Let's see ... what else? Not much. Bailey has a cold. CV had a show tonight. Austen and Kale are both there right now. We decided to stay home, since Bailey isn't feeling 100%. They are spending the night at Will's house, so thankfully, I don't have to make the drive back out to Club Retro.

Heading to bed shortly. Good night to all. :)

Miss Bailey ...

... turned 11 today. Eleven?!?!?! How the heck did that happen? I was saying to Kale, "dang, I feel old". Haha. He said, wow, you must really feel old, since Austen turned 17 yesterday.

Good one, Kale.

Anyway, for Miss Bailey's birthday ... we took her to Olive Garden for lunch. Yes, we pretty much blew our whole day's worth of points on lunch. Oh well. Whatcha gonna do?? It was just Shawn, Bailey, Kale and I. Austen was off doing some semi-necessary "band stuff", and seriously missed out. Later, Lauren came over and we went to Sunsplash/Golfland where they, along with Kale and CJ, played video games, blew through about $40 (maybe more??) and walked away with 2 lovely heart necklaces and 4 laffy taffy's with their combined 700 tickets. You gotta love that. We then headed to Straw Hat Pizza. It's new here in Roseville, and initially Shawn and I were reminiscing of the good 'ol days when we'd eat pizza in Buena Park at Straw Hat, Shakeys or Me n Ed's Pizza. You 'member! Well, let's just say ... Straw Hat Pizza is not what it used to be.

Bailey really wanted a four-layer cake, alternating layers of chocolate and white. Ask and ye shall receive. Haha. This was my first attempt at making such a tall cake, and the votes are in. It's a keeper. I may have just created a few monsters is all I'm saying.

Look at this beauty. And you gotta love the cake plate, right? Bailey and I found that at the Antique Trove here in Roseville, and I love it.

Bailey is having Lauren spend the night, and then Lauren's birthday is tomorrow. How cute is that? They'll be having dinner at Claim Jumper with Lauren's family to celebrate. Best friends with a birthday one day apart. I really love that.

It was a very special 11th birthday, I do believe.

We sure do love you, Bailey!

Crazy to think ...

that 17 years ago today ... this very special dude came into our lives. On a weird side note, I will always remember Shawn and Nathan hunting around Parkview Hospital for the morgue (yes, leave it to those two to want to see a dead body!) Thankfully, that was early on in my labor, so all was well. Haha.

Wow. I'm still trying to figure out how we got so darn lucky?? And what I'd REALLY like to know is: where, oh where, has the time gone? It makes me sad to think that so much time has flown by. I sometimes feel like I blinked and here we are. Mind boggling really. It makes me happy and proud to think about his life so far. And I'm sure Austen's next 17 years will be just as amazing as the first 17. I look forward to seeing what his future holds for him. I'm sure it will be incredible.

Happy Birthday, Austen!

We love you,

Mom, Dad, Kale and Bailey

Where's my Christmas update, you say?

Well that is a very good question. I've tried two or three (or four) times to write out my memories from December 2009 and there are just so many. And each time I tried to write them all down, and then try to figure how to insert pictures on this darn blog to correspond with a certain memory, it just felt very overwhelming. haha. Keep in mind that to add pictures to my blog posts, I have to do everything in reverse. Huh?? It just felt like too much to wrap the 'ol brain around. So, I got lazy and posted my December pictures on Picasa, left some captions there, and basically called it good. But rather than leave absolutely nothing here in regards to the holidays, I thought I'd at least write about the highlights (minus the pictures).
First and foremost ... do you see the adorable snowman above? Well, that was one of a few handmade gifts that Bailey made especially for me. Imagine my total surprise to unwrap this little beauty. And to think that she made it all by herself, without me knowing anything about it? Crazy, creative girl right there! This just might be my most prized gift ever. It means so much to me. It will be so, so hard to put it away for a whole year. I thought about just keeping it in my office for the rest of my life (haha), but forced myself to say goodbye for the year. Then next Christmas it will be like a fun little surprise for me all over again.

So, for the rest of the highlights:

1. Dad and Pat coming for a nice, long visit. Duh. This is a no brainer, and most of our highlights include them. :)
2. Shawn and I going to his Christmas party. No ... scratch that. We dread going to Christmas parties. We'd much rather just be at home in our comfy clothes. Haha.
3. Visiting Granny in Redding. We also got to see: Aunt Debbie, Uncle Melvin, Aunt Denise, little Michelle, her son Benjamin, little Denise, her two sons, Rachel and her daughter, Meghan. Whew. I think I got everyone!
4. Having dinner at Guadalajara's in Redding with most everyone from #3.
5. Listening to Aunt Debbie play Christmas music on the piano. So pretty.
6. Seeing the Sundial Bridge, also in Redding, twice.
7. Back in Roseville: having dinner at Mikuni. Yum.
8. Playing Skipbo and our new favorite: Scrabble Slam. (In a frenzy of spelling words, Austen insisting that "dark" was not a word. Haha. You had to be there!)
9. Decorating Gingerbread houses. Yes, houses. Shawn and Dad did one (Austen and Kale managed to get out of it) and then Bailey, Nana and I did one. Messy fun.
10. Walking for days, and "hunting" for deer in the freezing cold. Haha. Not really hunting, but wanting to take some pictures. We had zero luck!
11. Sour Cream Enchiladas for Christmas Eve Dinner.
12. New PJ's on Christmas Eve. And leaving milk and cookies for Santa.
13. Lots of coffee, sweetened with french vanilla creamer and sweet and low, of course. (We're still doing it! Kale and Bailey especially love it!)
14. Matching robes for Bailey and I from Dad and Pat.
15. Watching Christmas movies: Polar Express, Elf, Miracle on 34th Street, and Santa Clause 2.
16. Beautiful holiday decor at Grandma and Grandpa Butler's house.
17. An amazing Christmas dinner: prime rib, twice baked potatoes, green beans and salad, plus goodies for dessert.
18. And far too many gifts to list!

This was another incredible Christmas for us. We have always been blessed, and this year was no different.

What we missed.

Thankfully, this is a relatively short list, but I wanted to note the things we missed this holiday season.

1. Grandma Cathy. She was scheduled to come for a visit at Thanksgiving, but sadly, she had to cancel. We all wish we’d had the chance to see her during the holidays. We truly miss and love her.

2. Nathan, Jodie and Nicholas. We have really loved their after-Christmas through New Year’s visits. We have been spoiled by their annual visits, and it just didn’t feel the same without them.

3. All the rest of our SoCal family, of course. Thankfully, we were able to see most of you at some point during 2009. We still miss you all, though.

4. Caramel apples. Umm, Danielle?? I think you dropped the ball here. Apparently you don’t know/realize how much we look forward to your amazing caramel apples each and every year. I broke down and bought one at Popcornopolis at the mall, and I gotta say … no comparison. Yours win by a mile. Maybe next year??

5. Keeping with the food theme: tamales. Last year we had them from both Danielle and Jodie. But alas, this year there were none. Of course, I get why. It’s pretty hard to ship tamales. (Last year, Nate and Jodie brought them up), but still. A girl can miss them, right?? Perhaps I should learn to make them myself?