Seals in La Jolla.

On the day after Christmas, my family went to La Jolla to see all of the beached seals. Gabe was working :-( so he wasn't there. It was so much fun! I have never seen it before. There are always seals on this beach. It was very cold, but very fun!

Shannon (my sister), Maxyne, Jim, R.J., Chris.

Jesse

Chris and Effie.

After our trip to La Jolla, we went back to Shannon's house in Poway to have dinner and open some presents. It turned out to be a really great night, except that we missed Gabe!

Kiki, Grammy (my Mom), and Kim.
Julia, Eric, Kiki, and Chelsea
Baby Man Steele and Kim.
Maxyne and Effie.
Grammy, Julia, Jim, Kiki, Chris, Andrew, Kim, Steele, Trisha, Shannon, Maxyne, Jesse, Effie, Jace, R.J., Chelsea

Merry Christmas!!! (Effie's first Christmas)

We decided to spend Christmas at my Mom and Dad's house. My Dad is still in Kuwait and my Sister is still in Panama...we missed them both.

First of all, for my Mom and Dad's Christmas present a few of us went in on a group gift to send them to the Westin Hotel in Pasadena for 2 nights when my Dad gets home...massages included! So I cut out really big letters on my Cricut to spell "ROMANCE !" and I had a little saying on each letter....then, on the exclamation mark, it said "Westin Hotel Pasadena" and it had the dates of their getaway. My Mom was crying and was so happy, the cool thing is that my Dad was able to be on the web cam with us all morning so he was there when my Mom opened the present.

My Dad shipped my Mom a beautiful Globe! It is so pretty! It actually has a motor and it spins around slowly and it lights up as well. It is so beautiful!

Effie really enjoyed opening all of her gifts because she LOVES paper! I don't think she cared much about what was inside, she just couldn't wait to tear the paper. It was fun that she got involved in opening the gifts. She got a lot of clothes from me and Gabe and a few toys from Santa.

Ahhh...something is wrong with this picture! Where are Mommy's stocking stuffers?
We went over to Gabe's brothers house for dinner on Christmas evening. It was fun to spend time with them and Effie got to play with Iris.

Special Delivery!

Gabe put Effie in a box...it was so funny. She really liked it in there!

Angel Face.

I love these pictures I took of Effie while we were out on our walk one day...

12-23-08

Effie's Surgery Day.

Effie had surgery on Dec 17th. In case you have not heard, she had to have a rectal biopsy (which ended up coming out normal) as she has a lot of trouble going to the bathroom. She is doing a lot better now with the new medication that she is on. We hope that as she gets older, she will get better on her own. Her surgery went well, thank you everyone for all of your thoughts and prayers!

Just getting checked in and changed into her hospital gown.

Taking Effie's blood pressure.
Effie in her crib at the hospital, I called it her cage.
Effie in her cage. She was so hungry and tired. This is about 40 minutes before surgery.
Effie in recovery; I was so happy to see her! The surgery lasted about an hour.
Her IV was in her foot.
When she woke up, I couldn't wait to pick her up!

Picking the Perfect Tree...and Decorating it too!

It sure was a fun family adventure for us to go on the hunt for the perfect Christmas tree. It was a cold night, but we had a lot of fun. We went shopping for the Christmas tree on December 13th. We wanted to have our tree up before Effie's surgery. We decorated the tree the next day. Effie had the stomach flu, so Gabe took care of Effie while I decorated the tree. It was still fun, even though Effie wasn't feeling too great.

The Duck Park.

Some cute pictures of Effie at the duck park.