L to R -Lauren (Greg and Doreen’s youngest daughter), Doreen (Greg’s kind and funny wife!), Sylvia (John’s super sweet wife), Aunt Lou (smart and big of heart), me (looking chunky and older than I’d like), and Amy (John and Sylvia’s daughter).

Following an awesome feast and visit with my family in San Diego, Jerry, Matt, and I headed back to Mission Viejo, where Matt collected Ms Yuki who been waiting patiently for our return, and headed back to his place. Once Matt and Ms Yuki were on their way home Jerry and I headed over to our long time friends Steve and Jill. A delicious dinner was enjoyed at their house, followed by a small celebration for their youngest son Alex’s 22nd birthday!

It’s hard to believe Alex is 22 years old. Jill, Steve, Jerry and I have been celebrating our children’s birthday’s together since Alex and Patrick were wee little folk! Up next for a birthday celebration? Matt in June, who will turn 28! Yikes!

Anna King’s mother was Jill, a school teacher and mother of 2 boys, Patrick and Alex, and wife to Steve. Bringing a girl into the family fold was a welcome addition. Anna was well aware she was the only daughter too, she was a smart cookie you see!

Anna loved birthday’s, in fact she loved any occassion where food would be in abundance and the possibility of her getting a handout was a sure thing. She also loved to be in the middle of the action. Anna wasn’t shy about coming up to you while you were in the process of opening a package and start sniffing it, in hopes of figuring out what it was. She was truly interested and figured she had just as much right to be in the middle of the party as the next person! In this photo she is checking out her youngest brother, Alex’s packages.

On occassion the wild animal in Anna King became unleased, and unable to control herself Anna would attack, rip and tear the wrapping paper and work herself into a frenzy as seen here in this still footage photo of Anna King The Beast! Note the wild red eyes!

As mentioned earlier Anna was all about food, and if it was a handout that was even better. She was not too proud to stand directly beside you at the diinner table and stare you straight in the eye. Leave a piece of pie unattended as our son Matt did once and Anna would walk up to it and inhale it faster than you could say “Anna, don’t….”! Yes, this only daughter of Steve and Jill’s had an appetite like a son!

Anna could also be cute, and do cute things. One of those was in true girl fashion. She liked to lay down beside her food and eat. I’m sure if she had a chaise lounge that would have suited her just fine too. Nothing was too good for this girl!

Over the years Steve and Jill had family photos taken with Patrick, Alex and Anna. Anna wasn’t always so sure about being in these photos. Sometimes she’d be real patient, other times not so much.

It could take several tries before they would end up with a decent photo that they could send out with the Christmas cards.

At least Anna kept it fun and entertaining. In this photo our son Matt is taking the photo for Steve and Jill and I am capturing what went down. As you can see from just this one photo Anna wasn’t having anything to do with it at one point!

This is the family portrait used for this year, 2009, sent out with their Christmas cards. Anna’s last year with the family.

You will be missed dear friend. We hope you are with Grandma Bennet now, and enjoying a good visit. It was a real pleasure knowing you. We are certainly better for it, and hope you realize how much you meant to us. See you later girl. Love you.

Beth and Steve’s daughter recently bought a house in Long Beach, a darling older home with lots of vintage charm. Sara and her boyfriend Dave along with kitty Lui are in the process of making it home, tackling project after project all while both working and Dave going to school. They must be young because just watching them do all this at once wore me out in the brief time I was there!

While at Sara’s, she allowed us to interrupt her painting of the kitchen cabinets long enough to clean her charming vintage chandelier. We didnt’ think to take a before photo of this awesome multi-gemed light, but as you can from the after pictures WOW!

Sunday was the yearly Pumpkin Carving Party held by Beth and Steve’s youngest son Luke and wife Diana. 13 pumpkins in all were carved, candy and food was in abundance and a good time was had by many. My pumpkin is the lady’s face to the left of the spider with web. It won the catergory “WTF” or “What The Face”. Beth was the judge. She arrives after all the carving is done so she doesn’t know who carved what. I just have one question….how does a Master Genealogist qualify as a Pumpkin judge? (Does it sound like I disagree with winning the WTF category-you’ll never know!)

We are so thankful for our wonderful friends. For Easter again this year our dear friend Jill worked her heart out in the kitchen, creating an awesome meal we all enjoyed. A big THANK YOU goes out to her for giving this to all of us. It was so wonderful to spend time with them, our extended family, Jill my sister.

Jill and her kids colored Easter eggs too beautiful not to share a photo with. My favorite: front and to the left, the midnight purpleish blue one. Steve and Jill have a pair of baby doves in their front garden bed. So adorable!

One of the delicious dishes Jill made, a Martha Steward Asparagus Tort, set on a beautiful Easter table.

Jill’s Aunt Gin, her mom’s sister, came for the holiday with her son Walt. She had on an awesome charm bracelet, something I am a huge fan of. I loved hearing her stories about her nursing career, as well as the travels she had with her husband. Another wonderful part of our Easter celebration. Thank you Steve and Jill for another great holiday to remember.

The first few days of Beth’s recuperation were spent on the wonderful drug Codeine. Ask any arthritis sufferer and they can probably recite their favorite pain killers in alphabetical order and list their somewhat dangerous and in some cases amusing side effects. In Beth’s case while taking Codeine she became even cuter, jumbling her words and smiling while doing it. Car became couch, clock turned into TV and sentences were short. So endearing.

Mr. Wilson, sometimes known as Steve, or Hey You, is the King of All Things Cool. I always look forward to seeing what fun tools or toys he will have added to his collection. For Christmas Steve received a tower tool box, a multi-drawer stainless steel Kobalt. The glare from the steel box as I opened the garage door almost blinded me. I could have sworn I heard music from 2001 Space Odyssey playing. After I put on my shades we marveled together at all the drawer space, sub drawer space and the secret entrance way in the back to the eternal playground known as WilsonPlayland. Even cooler is how one could spend an entire day in the lower drawers building a complete computer system from all the parts stored there. Ah yes, all things are possible in Wilsonland.

Thursday in Wilsonland ended up being an “I’ll Arrive When I Darn Well Feel Like It” day with the local cable company. Turns out an Internet scheduled 8 to 10 appointment complete with a printed out confirmation sheet, followed by a phone call to confirm said appointment means squat. The King stayed home from work waiting for the cable company to arrive during the appointment time, and when they didn’t show he handled the 45 minutes on hold to find out why in true form by multi-tasking. He had lunch, engaged in a lively conversation with Patty and Beth, checked that everything was in order if and when they decided to show up and completed work on his computer. A 1:30 meeting finally pulled the King away, which was really no problem because apparently there is no such thing as any kind of a morning appointment. Right around 4:45pm the ball started rolling and like a stone on a hill going downhill it picked up speed. Right up until 7:00ish. Then nothing. 8:30 and you could hear our stomachs manically screaming “its dinner time”. Skip to 11:30pm, final score: 2 out of 4 TV’s working, not bad. Not good though. Friday plans include another visit from the cable company. Appointment time? Between 8 and 5.