For my daughter, Hilary- wishing her a Happy Birthday month along with all the fun, hopes and dreams for a wonderful year ahead. A few memories, and lots of laughs in this collection of pictures.
I love that when I look at this collection I can remember each and every special moment. Family times are those forever times that you always want to treasure, and tuck the happiness in your pocket. Wishing everyone a wonderful week ahead!
The Family Calendar for 2015 has been polished, published and placed in the hands of all of the family members near and far. This project turned out to be way more stressful for me than I realized it would be. Setting deadlines for submissions and my Mom helping with getting the month’s assigned to each particular submitter. Then the calendar pages with all the family members birthdays had to be edited and updated. This was quite an adventure to say the least! This is one of those projects that my Mom (or my parents) just always made happen every year, and it never seemed like a big deal, but it most certainly is.
One of my goals for each picture page of the calendar was to peruse the months and check to see that there were no duplicate pictures. I looked intently at all of the picture months 10 or 50 times. In the end and after all was said and done there was only one duplicate. In my editorial opinion I consider that a great feat, and would take on the task again in a heartbeat.
This calendar brings back such great memories. When all of the kids were younger, and my Mom was doing the calendar all on her own, they would each count how many times their picture appeared in the calendar. Then they would make a contest out of who was in the calendar the most. That in turn put extra pressure on Grandma to try and get a good balance of pictures for each grandchild. Our Family Calendar is almost a 20 year family tradition, and I love traditions. You can read all about the history of our family calendar here.
Nowadays, quite a few of the kids are contributors to the calendar, and it has made the project quite an annual event. Not to mention the fact that when we are taking pictures at family gatherings during the year someone will inevitably exclaim, “That’s a calendar shot!” This is one of those timeless family traditions that I hope will be passed from one generation to the next for many years to come.
Without further ado, these are the pictures pages gracing the 12 months of 2015. Enjoy!
My birthday was a couple of days ago, and I was reminded in quite a few ways how great my family is, and how much love there is in my awesome family circle.
My Travel Man is on the road, and will not be home until next weekend. So, he was not able to be here for my birthday. But he made me feel so special. You see on the morning of my birthday I got a wake-up call at 6am. It was my sweet, adoring husband on the line singing “Happy Birthday” to me. He has such a good singing voice.
Then my day began, and here’s a list of all of the little things that made my day!
> I got a big birthday hug from my oldest son.
> I got a beautifully worded e-card from my parents.
> My baby brother called me on his way to work and sang “Happy Birthday” to me(am I a lucky sister or what!).
> I got some Happy Birthday text messages from my other kids.
>My baby sister called me to wish me a “Happy Birthday”, and we had a great chat (we call this our “coffee clatch”).
> My dear hubby called me again to see if a package had been delivered for me. (Ooh a package!! How fun). Look what he sent me. Like my Mom said, “Absolutely decadent!”
> My Mom called me to say “Happy Birthday” and we had some girl talk for a while.
> My sons arranged to make me dinner, which was absolutely lovely. They are quite a pair in the kitchen. We had grilled steaks and asparagus. Some sautéed veggies ala Zach, and some garlic bread. Aren’t they handsome?
It was great what a treat to have them cook for me. I had no idea they had it in them to put together a meal and get it all on the table at the right time! Parental Success!!
For dessert we had a cheesecake, and the kids put a candle in one of the pieces, and while we were Skyping with the grandkids they ALL sang “Happy Birthday” to me. Evan was leading the group from the computer screen. As you can see Madison was entranced by watching everyone. It was very sweet.
Oh and throughout the day I got birthday messages from friends and family across the country on Facebook. That is always such a nice treat.
I’m a lucky girl. I’m lucky to be surrounded by such a great family circle. They take the meaning of the word family to an entirely different level. People often tell us that our family is really different. We’re not so different; we’re just caring, compassionate, loving souls. We take care of each other in good times and bad. We have been through a lot together, and we survive together.
My eternal hope for each and every one of you reading this is that you are surrounded by the same sort of amazingness. Happy Weekend everyone.
Today is my daughter, Hilary’s, birthday. Just wanted to take a minute to wish her an especially Happy Birthday, just because I’m her Mom, and just because I can.
This picture is a blast from the past for my girls. Hilary’s about a year old here, and her big sister, Naomi, was always helping to take care of her. Ironically, now they work together and get along just fine.
Happy B-Day Hilly!! Wishing you wonderful things for the year ahead.
Ok New Year’s fans it’s only the second week of the New Year, and I’m tired of my family being sick. We all have had a cold and cough for the past week or so, every single one of us. Sneezing, coughing, kleenex, cough syrup, cough drops, Emergen C. I did not have a big enough stock pile for all of us to have colds at the same time. Yikes!!
Break out the Lysol, Clorox wipes, and hand sanitizer. This thing has got to go away, enough already. This is southern California for heaven’s sake. Land of sunshine, and warm weather. We should be at the beach or Disneyland, not sitting at home sniffling, and coughing. This cold has been seriously eating into my New Year’s resolutions to get fit, and healthy. What’s a girl to do.
What we’ve been doing is watching a ton of movies, and we got hooked on this PBS series called Doc Martin. My parents recommended it, and we are hooked. And of course we’ve been drinking lots of water, eating lots and lots of soup (most of it home-made too!), getting plenty of rest, and just taking care of one another.
Travel Man is scheduled out of the country next week, I’m only slightly worried because he got the cold thingy first and is a few days ahead of the rest of us, and finally feeling pretty good. I know he’ll be fine, he just has to remember to drink lots of water.
Let me know how the cold factor is fairing in your neck of the woods. Is your family flying through winter unscathed by the cold and flu? Or is your house a cold battle zone? I’m off to get some kleenex, the soft variety of course. Hope you all have a great weekend.
