Another year, another recap of our lives.
I visited my older posts to see how much information I could gather up. You can already read about our bad winter of 2007. It tells of Cody’s bad accident and of Claudio’s tragic death. You can then read of the prom and birthdays, and into the wedding. What you don’t see is that Cody was involved in a hit and run accident on graduation day. This ultimately led him to leave our house. Most of you who are close to us already know the long story.
We were happy to have this sad event followed by a happy one – Nick and Ashley’s wedding. You can view many pictures of the wonderful occasion. The wedding was followed by the news that they were moving from Atlanta to SoCal. Nick took a position as Greek Life Coordinator at CSUF, while Ash took a position at UCI as an events coordinator. They settled into Tustin and added to their family with a mini-Yorkie named Matza. We know their living out here is temporary, as eventually they’ll make their way back to the Mid-west, and Ashley’s family. We’ll have to cherish the time we have and save those frequent flyer miles as we hope to visit grandbabies someday. What a plus that we love all The Hattaway’s. When we visit, it will feel like one big family reunion. In fact, we’re looking forward to Brae’s visit out here in Jan.
If you read on further, you’ll see more happy news of Tim and Elyse’s engagement. They’ve set a date of 11/8/08. We met Elyse’s parents and hope to meet her sister and 3 brothers soon. We also hope to make them an engagement party soon so that you all can come and congratulate them as well. TJ continues to do great on his job. He’s had promotion after promotion and now has staff under him, as he’s responsible for the technology that runs the e-store for Pac Sun. We’re proud not only for his achievements and devotion to his job, but for finding the love of his life. We feel extremely blessed to have Ashley as a daughter-in-law, and feel the same way about Elyse joining our family. Just having more girls in the family brings me joy!
There hasn’t been much info on Luke and Lani, but the two 15 year olds are in the 10th grade. Lani changed over to Canyon HS, and having them both go to the same school is nice. It was quite an adjustment for her, but I can call her “Mary Sunshine” again as she’s always been ready with a smile. Luke continues to play soccer. He’s taking AP Euro History – a class that many kids bailed out of when they saw the work it entailed. We know it’s hard, but we also know he’ll make it through. Besides, with driving school starting for them in Jan, both know they need to keep their grades up! We continue to do our best with these two, eating dinner together as many times a week as we can stand each other…er…um…I mean, we love to eat together and catch up. ☺
I wrote a tad on the fact that I changed jobs, but in reality this was such a hard decision for me to make. After 6.5 years, I left some good friends at KETIV and joined up with U.S. CAD, as Customer Service Manager. The change meant getting out of sales and concentrating on what I really like to do: helping people. With offices in L.A., San Diego, Costa Mesa, and Hawaii, it’s a larger company, handling larger clients. I have to admit, the people are just as nice. It’s been a learning experience to adjust to a large sales staff, as well as a larger admin staff. Being on management team has been a joy, as this is where I came from. It’s nice to flex my thinking and managing muscles again. All in all, I feel this was a good move for me.
Danny continues to grow Arthur’s. I’m proud to say that restaurant is in it’s 28th year and going strong. Sales continue to do well and Danny enjoys what he does. He has an excellent staff, including Luke and Lani. Both of them are now working at Arthur’s on Sundays. I guess it’s hard for anyone to be in this family and not work at the restaurant at one time or another.
We just got back fro Nuevo Vallarta, where we’re proud to tell you that we’re purchasing another condo. This is a one bedroom, that is just about finished. It’s on the 9th floor, and will be all ours. Look for rental info to come.
And so another year has come and gone. We seem to go through them so quick. Each year we take stock of our lives. For us, we count our blessings, having all our family and friends around us. We look forward to going on a European cruise next July, with good friends. We can’t wait to share another wedding with you. We look will make another trip to Mexico. This time we’ll take Diane and Keith with us. We talk about retirement, but are having too much fun, doing what we’re doing…so we’ll continue to talk – as another year goes by.
