It's Been a while....

Well its been a while since you all heard anything from our small part of California, and for that we apologize. But we are back and hopefully on track to get this blog rolling again. I will start by saying that we are all doing fine, Rebecca continues to light up our life on a daily basis. We can't wait for the next addition to the Birmingham Family to come next year. But first, lets close out 2008.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a quick rundown on our first family Christmas in California. Up until 2008, we have been heading to Memphis/Mississippi to celebrate Christmas. This year we went to Tennessee for Thanksgiving because we didn't want Susana traveling during her third trimester. Luckily we were able to be joined by Granny Birmingham (out in Cali for work), Tio Ofilio (from the bay), and Capt Joe and Caroline Nason (Co-worker of Irving)

A good time was had by all as we each got to play with a few new toys, of course Rebecca made out the best (as it should be). Though the big kids got a chance to play some Guitar Hero with Drum set on the Wii as well. Rebecca even got her own guitar that she could rock out with. See the video below for some of her strumming! (Granny is on the phone in the background)

All in all it was great Christmas Holiday. Best wishes to all of you in the New Year.

Memorial Day trip

This is just an example of the planning ahead we do....

We received a call at around 10:30am, Papa, Rebecca and mommy were all outside "gardening" (ie: making wholes in the back yard) when Daddy says "Want to go out today?"



Of course Mommy says "yes!"

Daddy "We have twenty minutes to get ready. Will you make it?"


Mommy looks around, Rebecca is brown with dirt, hair has little rocks in it from digging, and then looks at herself, and looks the same as Rebecca. But she also looked around and saw that she had two choices, 1- stay home and do some "gardening" with Papa or 2- go out have fun with family and friends.

Mommy quickly replied "Yes! we can make it in 25 minutes."

An hour and 45 minutes later we were in Truckee, Ca. sitting and having lunch at our friends' pub the Half/Half with eight other friends and two, 2 yr olds. We ended up at a little beach shore, were and walked across to the Safeway and had some good Starbucks.

We were all freezing. On the way home, we encountered rain, snow, and a beautiful wintery road.

Thanks Daddy for driving us out and giving us a great day to remember.

Time for a quick recap

Since this is our first post, I figured we should start it off with a quick recap of the year so far.

Starting up with the Christmas, 2007, we have Rebecca and Granny Birmingham on the left as granny prepares to blow out her candles. And on the right we have Rebecca and her Great-Grandmother (we call her GG) Rebecca. We had a great time in Hattiesburg, Mississippi with my mom's family.

In January, we started Rebecca in her first Dance Class. She goes to a local studio every Saturday along with other 18-24 month little girls.

She has gotten much better at following along with Miss Katie, but still needs the occasional help from Mom:




On the 16th of March, we went to the California Capital Airshow with the Susana's sister, Idis, and her family. Rebecca got to see multiple helicopters and airplanes, including the Blue Angels. Despite the noise of the planes a great time was had by all.

The Saturday before Easter we went up to Beale AFB to enjoy a 0-2 year old Easter egg hunt. Rebecca got a good collection of eggs and candy, she even saw the Easter Bunny.

We followed that easter egg hunt with another one at the Schumacher's house, where Rebecca looked for eggs with her cousin Raymond and his neighbors.




Abuelita was there as well, watching Rebecca search in the garden.

A good time was had by all, and afterwards the kids inspected their loot.

All in all, we have had a great year, and we are looking forward to celebrating Rebecca's second birthday and seeing what the rest of the year brings us.