Rachel's Sweet Sixteen

Sunday, January 4 was Rachel's sixteenth birthday (wow, I feel so old - I remember when she was born and now she is sixteen!). We drove up to Ellerbe Friday after lunch and got there in time to go out to our favorite Ellerbe restaurant, Mi Casita. Then we played the "A Christmas Story" edition of Monopoly - that was pretty hilarious.

We celebrated Rachel's birthday on Saturday January 3. We went out for a birthday dinner at Chili's (both Rachel's and Cy's favorite restaurant). Everything was going smoothly until the waitress came to refill our water glasses and Mom said, "Rachel needs more water because today's her sixteenth birthday." (Rachel had asked us not to tell them it was her birthday.) So a few minutes later a bunch of them came out clapping and singing, and Rachel's face turned the same shade of red as her sweater. The free dessert seemed to make up for it though.

When we got back to the house, Rachel had a party with a few of her friends (think Strong Bad's Teen Girl Squad). She opened presents and Mom made her wear a Sweet Sixteen tiara and sash (as you can tell from the picture below, she wasn't terribly thrilled about that part at first). We ended the party with a few rounds of Apples to Apples - me, Cy, Mom, and 5 teenage girls. Good times. It seemed like Rachel had a really good birthday. Happy Sweet Sixteen Rachel!

No Resolutions, Just a Lot of Painting

We decided (rather spontaneously) on New Year's Eve day to paint our dining room. We have been wanting to do this for quite some time, but just keep putting it off because the shape of the room (with its multiple arched entrances) and the high ceiling make it kind of a daunting task. But we decided to go for it. We spent most of New Year's Eve day painting and got up early on New Year's Day to finish up and touch up a few spots before we had company over for dinner in the afternoon.

We were very pleased with how it turned out. We love the colors (Cy picked them out!) and think it really spruces up our dining room and makes it quite elegant! :)

Christmas 2008

This year was a Shealy Christmas year, so we stayed at home for the holidays. Cy and I somehow had tons of vacation days left, even after our mid-year trip to Jamaica, so we were able to take two full weeks off from work. We got very spoiled - staying up late and sleeping in - which made going back to work really hard.

We had a great Christmas together. On Christmas Eve day we took it easy, doing some work around the house, riding bicycles, and just hanging out having fun. We then went out for dinner at Outback Steakhouse with Frank and Andrea and then went to a Christmas Eve service at our church (two other churches were invited as well and the place was packed). It was a very nice service.

On Christmas, we opened presents at home first thing in the morning. As you can see, Cy went with a pirate theme for my presents. :)


After we opened presents, we headed to Wes and Kelly's to open some more presents all together and to eat a big breakfast. After that we went over to Frank & Andrea's for some soup and hung out for a few hours, during which we had a marathon Wii Golf tournament. (I won't divulge the scores, but I will say that surprisingly, I was the winner!) Then Wes, Kelly, & Noah came over and we had some burgers and opened yet more presents! It was a great day (a bit exhausting, because there were so many presents!) with family.