Shawn's 40th Birthday

I was dreading my 40th birthday all year, but was pleasantly surprised all day long. My day started with my mom's early morning birthday call. When I arrived to my office it was decorated to the max with balloons and streamers by my officemates. Then I received beautiful bouquets of flowers from Phil & Pat, my parents, my boss Julie, and also Jeff. My co-worker Tamara, coordinated a surprise lunch and cake and invited Jeff, the kids and Jeff's sister Michelle to the office to join us. Then when I got home from work, the kids surprised me with a large brownie cake that Jenna made (the candles melted into it, but it still tasted delicious.) The kids also made several birthday posters and posted them all over the house. We had reservations for "6" at Carrabbas for dinner, however a total of 18 relatives from Jeff's extended family were in attendance for an additional surprise. Thank you to everyone for the well wishes, e-mails, phone messages, lots of gifts, gift cards and love that was shown by all today. I felt much love. Thank you. Love, Shawn

Jenna's point of view

Jenna bought her own digital camera with her own money she received from Christmas and odd jobs. These pictures were taken by Jenna or with her new camera. Jenna wanted to type a few words of her own:

I have alot of stuffed animals and dolls that I took pictures of. I also took pictures of my family. I took several pictures of Jesse and my Dad sleeping. It wasn't easy to catch my brother sleeping.

As you know my mom got plenty of surprises today. As you can see my mother's 40th big day was today. I made a brownie cake my mom thought was delicious. The candles melted and turned into string. Me, my brother, and my auntie M, had fun waiting in the dark for my mom to come home so we could surprise her.

I am enjoying my new camera.

Dahlberg Christmas Dinner and Gift Exchange 2008

Christmas dinner at Nana & Pop's house. This was the first time in 9 years that Jeff was able to spend Christmas Day with his whole family. Jeff's sister Michelle flew in from San Diego last night to spend time with everyone. We are always happy to see her. We all contributed to the meal and the men helped with the clean up.

Christmas 2008

Merry Christmas! This was our first Christmas in 5 years where we weren't traveling on the road on Christmas Day. Jeff wasn't able to get vacation time off this year, so we missed our California Christmas. However, all of our California family still sent us gifts in time to open on Christmas Day. We were overwhelmed with the generosity and love. Thank you to Grammie & Pop, The Rowleys, The Hays, The Percivals, The Baxters, The Cutilis, The Jacobs, Grandma Jackson and Grandma Rowley.

Kids Choir

Jesse and Jenna were in Choir together for their school, Odyssey Elementary. They had two performances, one for Starbucks which was located inside an Albertson's grocery store and the other was a night performance at their school.

Holiday Spirit Song

Shanna enjoyed the holiday spirit song!

Do you know Blitzen?

Car ride home from California

Luckily, Grammie and Pop provided us with early Christmas stocking stuffers to open on our way back home. We left California at about 3:30pm on Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. What is usually an 18 hour car ride turned into 30 hours. Besides Jeff getting a speeding ticket through Arizona, we had car trouble in Richfield, UT at about 3am. We had to stop and try and find a vacancy to sleep for a few hours until we could find a place to fix our cooling line. By the time we reached Colorado we were in a snow storm with almost zero visibility. We were so blessed when we finally reached home safely at 11pm on Saturday night. The kids however thought it was the best car ride ever. Of course they did, they had new toys to play with and movies to watch as well as snacks to eat.