Christmas 2005
This has been a year of tremendous joy and sorrow and to be
certain, a time of change in all our lives.
We are thankful to all who shared in our high times and low times. The support of our family and friends keeps
us strong.
December of 2005 started with Alex’s (#4 for Tricia and Pat)
baptism on the same day as the ornament exchange at Mrs. Knott’s Chicken
restaurant. Jennifer turned 20 on the 9th. In the middle of all this Lisa took a trip to
Denver for a
business trip. There was lots of snow,
but no skiing this time, just the kick-off of the new West Region team under
the newly merged organization, USA Mobility.
We returned to a tented under-construction restaurant at the Newport
Dunes for WGA’s annual dinner. We’ve been collecting all year for the White
Elephant exchange at Mary’s house. We
were able to off-load some of our junk in exchange for a framed picture of
Mary. We stayed at home for Christmas Eve
dinner after church, and early Christmas morning. Then, on to the Williams family house for the
one-by-one gift exchange that gets longer each year, as our family grows larger. Damian’s brother, Joe, was able to get time
off from his job as bakery chef on a Hawaii-based cruise ship to join us for
Christmas. We had quite a scare, seeing
flames and black smoke coming up from behind the neighborhood houses. A nearby church was on fire and literally
burning to the ground. As it turns out,
the cause of the fire was arson. Traditions continue – we sang karaoke at Mike
and Sheila’s for New Year’s Eve, but we didn’t quite make it ‘til midnight this
time.
The first birthday of the year, is Georgia’s, who turned 6
in January. As Mike and Sheila’s only
child (so rare in our family), Georgia
is treated to some “over the top” parties.
This year, she had a bounce house, and visits from Cinderella and The
Bubble Guy. The rest of us kept busy
through the new year, too. Lisa continued at Cal State Fullerton during
intersession and Spring semester. Her company is continuing to downsize and
close offices. So, Lisa began working at
home full time, using Jennifer’s old room as her office. This actually gave her a more flexible
schedule while going to school and keeping up with all the kids’
activities. Damian officially moved from
Assistant Esquire (who did all the Esquire’s duties)
to Esquire and he and Lisa attended the Elk’s inaugural ball in January. Autumn and her troop-mates bridged from
Brownie to Junior Girl Scouts. Jennifer
and all the girls kept busy with wedding planning. The date is officially set for May 14.
Though Jake’s birthday is in January, he did not celebrate
his 9th until February with a piñata party at home. The next day, we hosted Super Bowl viewing
and over-eating at our house. Autumn
completed her 4th grade mission project. This is the last of four mission projects
that we’ve overseen, and we’re glad to retire from the job.
March was a comparatively slow month, with just Danny’s
birthday, Spring break and Easter to celebrate.
We bring all the extended family kids to St. Thomas More’s
Easter egg hunt. This year Kim is in
high school, so she is part of the Life Teen group that assembles and hides the
eggs. We’re pretty sure she still did
some “seeking,” too.
In April, Kim spent a weekend at retreat with her first-year
Confirmation classmates and teachers.
Lisa took business trips to Chicago, then Dallas. In Chicago,
she spent time with a co-worker who is a stand-up comic and they quoted and
sang Bill Cosby all week. Then in Dallas she and her
co-workers went to a Texas Rangers baseball game in an SUV limo. In between, Chris celebrated his 12th
birthday with a sleepover. Jake’s
birthday may have been late, but Rebecca’s (Tricia and Pat’s #2) 3rd
birthday (May 1) was celebrated in April.
Autumn and her troop participated in the Girl Scout Olympics. Godmother Jeanne hosted Jennifer’s bridal
shower.
In May, we start with Julie’s wedding shower, then Jenn & Danny’s wedding
the next week. They were married at
First Congregational Church, with reception at Angelo’s and Vinci’s
restaurant. Jennifer walked down the
aisle with both her dads, Andy and Damian.
Kim was a bride’s maid, Chris was a groomsman and Autumn
(with her “twin” Kara, Andy’s daughter) was a greeter. All went well except for a brief fight between
Lisa and the photographer. The next day,
we went to Jennifer and Danny’s house to watch them
open gifts. They took a short drive to Mexico
for their honeymoon. Autumn and her
class went on an overnight trip to see the San Juan Capistrano Mission and
stayed at the Lazy W ranch for an “early California”
experience. Damian spent a week in Fresno for the Elks. At the same time, Lisa and the kids made
cotton candy for Myford’s carnival. It’s sad when hanging out with Elks in Fresno is the lesser of
two evils. At the end of the month Lisa
finally graduated Magna Cum Laud from Cal State Fullerton with a bachelor’s
degree in Liberal Arts. According to
Lisa, it took 3 ½ years, but according to Damian, it
was 21 years in the making. We had a
little BBQ at home afterward with family and friends.
The girls went to Palm
Springs for Julie’s bachelorette
party weekend. This was Jennifer’s first
time out. As it turned out, the line was
so long for the club that Lisa, Janet and Linda decided to just hang out at the
hotel bar. The wait was just as long for
drinks, but at least we could sit down. Boy,
are we getting old. The kids finished
school. Towards the end of the year, Kim
missed quite a bit of time from school due to unexplained headaches and stomachaches. This was Lisa’s first summer off in three
years, yet Kim had to go to summer school.
Lisa used her break from school to take the kids to Sea World and
several other trips throughout the summer (less interesting, according to the
kids), like to various local museums and to see King Tut. We celebrated our 16th anniversary
at The Vineyard Room in Disney’s California Adventure with some of the
best-ever food and wine. That’s when we
discovered that our hotel’s definition of “Jacuzzi suite” is a bedroom with a
Jacuzzi in it, and not a 2-room suite with a Jacuzzi in the bathroom. Lisa’s job as Regional HR Manager,
was to officially end June 30, but they offered her a temporary assignment to
stay on for an undetermined length of time.
At one point during all the mass lay-offs, Lisa had been job searching
for two years, with no luck. Now, it was
time to start again.
Julie and Luis were married on July 2 at St. John Newman’s
church, with their reception at the Garden Grove Elk’s Lodge, complete with competing
DJ and Mariachi band. The highlight of
the night was the cake-topper of gun-toting Julie and Luis. Cousins Bobbi, Richi
and Alexandra joined us for the wedding weekend and 4th of
July. Chris opted for karate classes in
lieu of soccer this year. He took a
little break from karate for his heart procedure. Chris has had Wolfe-Parkinson-White syndrome
since before birth, which is an extra electrical path that can cause an
unusually fast heartbeat. The condition
needs to be corrected before adulthood and Chris is now 12. Since this condition and the procedure to
correct it are quite rare, there were no doctors in Orange County
who could perform the procedure and we had to go to Children’s Hospital of
San Diego. The 5-hour procedure involves inserting a
catheter from his leg to his heart (like an angioplasty), then cauterizing the
area of the heart with the irregular electrical pathway. Chris was very brave and worried less than we
did. Mostly, he was tired and
bored. Now, he’s “normal,” whatever that
means! Later in the month Autumn and Lisa went to Girl Scout Twilight Camp. Lisa was assigned to supervise a teenage girl
with Downs Syndrome. It was quite the
test of patience. Sad times began when
Jennifer’s Grandma Lamar passed away after months of suffering with a brain
tumor. Family and friends celebrated her
life with a beautiful remembrance lunch with pictures, poetry, music and
memorabilia from her life.
August brought on many of life’s surprises. First, Lisa’s sister Linda was hospitalized
for complications of her lung cancer. On
the day Lisa came to visit Linda and have lunch with Mom and sister, Barbara,
Linda was released from the hospital.
Linda arrived home and we turned on the Angel’s game. Linda decided she did not want to take her
oxygen, and she passed away just a short time later. At 56, this was a life taken much too
soon. We will all miss her, especially
Paul, Paul Jr. and Melinda, Tina and Mike, and the teenage grandchildren, Derrik and Brandon and Sara and Tesa. During this time, Lisa’s luck on the job
search started to turn around.
Amazingly, that degree really makes a difference. She received a job offer as an HR Director
for Alarm One just in time, and started the day after her last day at USA
Mobility. No time off allowed! There goes the flexible schedule, now she’s
back to dressing in business clothes and commuting on the freeway (instead of
up the stairs in her sweats). In the
process, Lisa had to negotiate time off from work to continue school because at
the end of the month she started her teaching credential program. Over the summer Kim visited some specialists
to help determine the cause of her headaches and stomachaches. As it turns out, one of her problems is that
she has been suffering from ADHD and without recognizing the problem, she was
struggling in school. To address her
stomach problems, she had to have several procedures, including an endoscopy. The first
step was the hardest – getting a needle in her to put her to sleep. This took half the morning, some heavy-duty
medication and finally some laughing gas to get her to take the needle. We ended up with some lovely photographs of
the inside of her stomach as evidence of several disgusting problems that were
causing her misery. Just two weeks
later, she had to go through the same needle process again to get her wisdom
teeth removed. All that, and she got
braces, too. If she’s lucky, she’ll have
them off by her senior prom. Lisa and Autumn went to an overnight campout and hike at the San Diego Wild Animal
Park with Autumn’s girl
scout troop. We’re not through yet . . .
we sent Danny off to boot camp. So, Jenn and Haylee moved back
in. Good thing Lisa doesn’t need that
office, anymore. Now we have 7 people
and 6 cars in our house. Having a
toddler in the house again takes some getting used to. Little Haylee had
her 2nd birthday this month.
Damian hosted the WGA Fantasy Football draft for his friends. The kids are back to school at the end of
August – Kim is a sophomore at Beckman, Chris is in 7th grade at
Pioneer and Autumn is in 5th grade, her
last year at Myford.
Chris has zero period P.E., getting to school at 7:00 four mornings a
week, then late start going to school at 9:00 on Wednesdays. Jenn drops him off
on those days. I guess having an extra
driver in the house can be convenient.
Damian’s Dad had been sick with an ear infection for months
and recently it had gotten worse.
Finally, an MRI revealed a serious problem. Dad had a tumor and needed immediate
surgery. He went through surgery well
and they removed about 70-80% of the tumor.
Soon, he moved from the hospital to a nursing home. We began spending Sunday “family days” with
Dad at the nursing home. Tom and
Priscilla’s daughter, Ari, celebrated her second
birthday on one such family Sunday. Dad
was back at home within a couple of weeks and his siblings Pook,
Rick, Priss, Joannie and
Annie came out for a visit. Autumn’s
birthday starts September’s “cake week.”
She brought her friends Shannon and Vanessa for ice skating and a sleep
over. Autumn is quite busy these
days. Besides Girl Scouts, she started
AYSO soccer this fall, and is involved with volleyball, band and PAL at school
and she says next year she wants to start softball. Even though Lisa is busy with work and
school, she just couldn’t turn down her last opportunity to teach art to Autumn’s 5th grade class. Cake week continues with Damian’s birthday –
a surprise party for his big 40th!
Kim took her friends Michelle, Breezy and Rachel to the Tustin Tiller Days
on her birthday and a week later Lisa took Kim and a couple of friends to the
Green Day concert. It was an outstanding
show and they were right up front showing their love for Billie Joe. Kim designed a Green Day t-shirt that got her
picture up on the jumbo-tron and an invitation to get
posters and other goodies after the show.
After Damian’s big bash, Lisa’s birthday was a quiet one at
home with curry chicken and cheesecake.
We have a new great-niece this month – Lisa’s niece Jessica (with her
husband Joe and son Holden) welcomed their new baby girl, Phoebe. Aunt Priss returned
for another visit from Seattle
to help take care of Dad. Tom and his
family also came out, but Priscilla and the girls had to return for
school. Tom stayed for a month. Danny graduated from boot camp and was given
10 days leave before returning to Camp
Pendleton for three weeks
on infantry training. Mary hosted her
annual Halloween party. Lisa got the
last-minute idea that she and Damian would be pirates. That seemed to be the theme of the
evening. Autumn was also a pirate, Chris
was a sumo wrestler (in a blow-up costume) and Kim threw together a cow-girl
outfit.
In November, Chris and Autumn
wanted to run in the Dino Dash, though no one else was really up for it. Afterwards, Danny and Jennifer took Chris and
Autumn to the beach for fishing while Lisa stayed home
with Haylee, and Damian visited his dad (which he had
done with every free moment of his time for the last two months). Lisa settled in for what she thought would be
six hours of free time to watch The Stand.
It was then that Damian called to say that Dad had passed. He had been sleeping since the Thursday
before and it seems he waited until Sunday, when everyone was there with him,
before his final good-bye. Lisa and Haylee picked up Kim from LifeTeen
then drove over to the house and the kids came straight over from the
beach. Everyone gathered around to pray
the rosary, light candles and to say their sentiments to Dad. The next few days were a blur – visiting
friends and relatives, food, flowers, then the rosary, mass and burial. Dad’s larger-than-life persona shone through
it all. He was honored with an Air-Force
fly-by, courtesy of his South
Carolina senator friend, as well as an article in the
Orange County Register with his Santa Claus in the Park picture. All the details of Dad’s illness, passing and
services are included on the Williams Family website. Life continues on and soon we were
celebrating Alex’s first birthday.
Nick’s 5th birthday would have to wait until
Thanksgiving. Danny and his Marine
buddies were given the day off for Thanksgiving, so he brought 12 of his
friends to dinner at his Mom’s house.
Now that sounds like a Williams! Kim
took a trip with the church’s Life Teen group to a prayer day at Magic Mountain,
which was good, since Kim had a lot to pray about. At 10:00 that night we got a call from one of
the chaperones to say that Kim was having trouble breathing, the bus had pulled
over and they were calling an ambulance.
So, we had to drive 75 miles to meet her at the hospital. Before we showed up, they had to give her a
shot (fun times for all!) They were
supposed to give it to her in the ambulance, but she wouldn’t let them. As it turns out, Kim had a bad reaction to
allergy medication, which spiraled into a panic attack. Needless to say, she’s now on a new allergy
medication.
This brings us back to December. Danny has moved on to school in Maryland for a couple of
months with just a two-week break at Christmas.
Because Lisa was so nice at the Toyota
dealer, they gave her 6 tickets to Knott’s which we used the day of the
ornament exchange. It was a pretty good
time except for “the ketchup incident” which probably should have landed Lisa
in the hospital with a shot to calm her down, right alongside Kim. We ended the visit on the water rapids ride
that drenched Lisa. Lisa is famous for
making it rain just by visiting an amusement park. It didn’t rain at all, but Lisa sure looked
like she’d been through a storm! Jennifer
had to bring Lisa dry clothes to change into before going to the chicken
restaurant for the ornament exchange.
Lisa, Jenn and Kim went on to dinner with the
ladies and Damian took Chris and Autumn home. Autumn is so sad that she’s the last to do
everything. Autumn finished up her
Invention Convention project this month.
Yet another “last” we can cross off our list of dreaded elementary
school projects that require parent “help.”
Jennifer celebrated her 21st birthday at Dave &
Buster’s. Still, she was the designated
driver. The WGA dinner was down-graded
to a tent in the parking lot of a restaurant at the Newport Dunes. We had our choice of port-a-potties, or a
chilly golf cart ride up to the restaurant.
After one dance and winning a $25 gift certificate, a few of us moved on
to Morton’s for drinks. It was warm,
servers came to our table and they had indoor restrooms. Who could ask for more? The next night Tricia and Pat went to their
company function and we babysat. Lisa
had Alex, who was teething. And each of
our three kids was assigned to one of their three kids. By the time they got home, we had the three
girls sleeping to Dora the Explorer (because the 4 of them will never all be
asleep at the same time). Can you
imagine how Pat and Trish do that every night, night after night? Autumn had her first school concert, playing
Jingle Bells and Old King Wenceslas on the flute. She’s thinking she might like to try the
drums later. Finally in December, we
have ICE, and as Autumn likes to say “ice is
nice.” We have had the Sears repairman
out to the house at least every other weekend for the last three months to
figure out why we don’t have ice. That
warranty was a good investment! We’ve
made some visits to the cemetery to share a Merry Christmas with Dad. Damian made a potato battery to light up a
Santa hat. It’s so overwhelming to see
so many gravesites individually decorated and to realize just how many families
are missing someone this Christmas. At
this point, Lisa is trying to schedule a visit with her Mom for her 80th
birthday and we are preparing for Mary’s annual White Elephant gift
exchange. But, everyone else got tired
of bringing home bags of trash each year, so they changed the rules. We have to bring a real gift – something new,
something that someone would actually use.
Now, we just don’t know what we’re going to do with the useless trinkets
we’ve been gathering all year!
Wishing you all good health, peace and joy in 2006,
Damian, Lisa, Kim,
Chris & Autumn
Jennifer, Danny & Haylee