Happy Birthday Ted!

Ted is Terry's 4th oldest brother.  From oldest to youngest they are Terry, Tom, Tim, Ted, Tod (and Julie).  Talk about a tough time getting to know their names when I first started dating Terry.  It was crazy!  This photo is before Julie came along.

Ted's the middle one in the front row of kids above.  I'm sure he was a busy little guy, keeping up with his 3 older brothers.  See next photo.

I've known Ted over 30 years and these are just a few bits of info I can share about him in honor of his birthday.

• He doesn't particularly like to get his picture taken.  These 2 photos above are his favorite poses.  Either he covers his face with his hand or makes an ugly face (sticks his tongue out or something).  He also gives me a really dirty look sometimes, like he's going to deck me. But since it's his birthday I didn't want to show you his "mean" face.  Anyway, I have DOZENS of photos in one of these 3 poses of him.  Sigh...maybe someday he'll come around.

• Once in a while when he's distracted by kids or others, I can sneak in a photo of him and he looks great!  
• This picture of Ted and Kristi holding Amy at their wedding when she was just a couple of months old is one of my favorites!  Don't they look too young to get married?  
• I think they were more excited about me being pregnant than I was.  They used to bring me pickles and ice cream every week and they watched Amy and later Kevin for us all the time.  They have always been a great aunt and uncle to our kids.  Well except maybe for the time that they lost Amy under their bed or let Kevin get his head stuck in their stairs, then made him sit there while they took a picture.  (Oh well, nobody's perfect.)   Who has that picture anyway?
  
• We loved having them nearby when we lived in So Cal.  It was so nice to have family around to share our holidays and special occasions with or just to hang out on a quiet weekend.  We miss seeing all of them more often.
  

• Did you know Ted loves to dance.  I'm not sure he'll admit this one, but as you can see, I have several photos to substantiate this rumor.  I'm also aware of a video that's floating around somewhere from a decade ago which can also confirm that fact.  Unfortunately, I couldn't get my hands on it or I would have posted it here for proof.  True story.

(just kidding, Ted)

I guess that's all I'll share for now.  Ted, I hope you have an extra special day.  Just wish we could be there to share it with you!

Love, Nancy and Terry too.

q

Visiting the So Cal Hanns
As mentioned before, a few weeks ago we decided on the spur of the moment to go to Southern California to see our kids. We had just found out that Kevin (who was living in Omaha) was hired for a new job in Mississippi and it was going to be just a couple of weeks before he had to start working. Since it had been over a year since we'd seen him, we asked if he'd be willing to fly to Los Angeles and spend a few days with us and Amy & Andrew before he moved to Meridian, Mississippi and he agreed. Yea!

Whenever we can work it out, one of our mandatory stops is a visit to see Terry's brother, Ted and their family. They were a big part of the reason that we originally moved to Santa Clarita and we love spending time with them when we we're there. We miss hanging out with them on holidays and for all of our kids' activities, so we always look forward to whatever time we can have with them.  So we all planned to head over there after we checked into our hotel and Andrew got off work.

They live on top of a hill on a flag lot with a gorgeous view of the Santa Clarita Valley and when we pulled up, the sun was just setting, so I jumped out of the car and ran to the back yard to snap a few pics before the color was gone.

Then we enjoyed some delicious dinner that we picked up from StoneFire Grill in Valencia.  I miss this place and had been craving a BBQ Chopped Chicken or Tri tip salad with cilantro dressing!  Unfortunately, they ran out of the dressing, so I had to settle for another kind, but the salad was still great.  We also had some excellent BBQ Chicken pizza and a new kind, "Allison's Creation" pizza which was so tasty as well.  I would love to have one of these places in Phoenix.  I tell you that we would be there all the time!  I'm sure it would be a hit here.

We had our dinner on the back patio with that amazing view of the valley.  So nice!

After dinner Terry, Kevin and Spencer decided they wanted to play guitars.  Fortunately, Spencer has 3 of them so they were all able to play together.  Lucas joined in with a little percussion as well.

All the kids are growing up so fast.  It won't be long and they'll ALL be adults and having kids of their own.  That's just crazy to think about.  Wow!