I will miss you Grammy!
On January 6, 2009 my grandmother passed away. I have so many amazing memories of Grammy. She loved all of her grandchildren so much. Gram used to tell me that I was her favorite granddaughter, in Reading. She was always baking us things from criss cross to blueberry muffins, angel food cake, Christmas cookies. She loved to listen to classical music. Gram used to spend weeks before Christmas making gingerbread houses for the grandchildren to decorate. She would spend hours picking out just the right candy. Grammy was so proud of her Hungarian and German history. Her and Grampy used to babysit for Patrick and I when my parents would go out. They used to take us to Putnam Pantry for ice cream sundeas. Grammy loved supporting us and came to all our sporting events. I will miss her so much, but have many wonderful memories that I will always remember.

Grammy's funeral was a time to remember her. My dad read words that Grammy had written in the Bible that she used, which was Grampy's. Lisa did the eulogy and we had some great memories to cry over. Grammy had wanted a classical Hungarian song played during the funeral and I envisioned Gram baking in her kitchen. Then there was a time when we could share memories that we had of her. The grandkids all shared something and it was a special time.

During the funeral weekend it snowed a lot. I got the privelege of shoveling. It was a great workout and I enjoyed it just this once knowing that I would soon be going back to sunny California.



I also got to see Sharona, Karen, Jennifer and Morgan, who came out for Grammy's funeral. One night the girls went to a movie together. Auntie Lee Lee bought us all ice cream too. It was fun to see my cousins since I don't get to see them all that often.

New Friends!

Yeah for new

San Diego, CA
I went to San Diego for a conference in January and Matt came along. We had a ton of fun. The hotel was in the harbor with a great view of the city. During the day Matt worked from the hotel room, while I went to the conference sessions.
If you look closely you can see a rainbow coming out of the city.



Each night we went to a different part of San Diego for dinner. One night we went to Old Town for some great Mexican food, nothing like homemade chips, guacamole and a daiquiri. Matt was excited to share his home town with Jamie, another teacher who attended the conference with me. We also ate the Gas Lamp district one night at a Thai restaurant.

When the conference ended Matt and I rented a car and drove to Temecula to see Matt and Becca Ellis. Along the way we stopped off and bought a Matt a bib for the Carlsbad half marathon. Matt had always wanted to run this race and we just happened to be in town the weekend of it. In addition, Matt Ellis was also running it too.

The night before the race Becca took us to a frozen yogurt place. I was in my glory. They had so many different flavors of yogurt and you got to make your own as well as put your own topping on. I definately sampled all the flavors before choosing.


Thanks Becca for taking here!

The morning of the race Becca and I saw the guys off at the start of the race and then headed off for some coffee. We met back up with the guys at the finish. They completed the race in 1 hour and 39 minutes. Way to go Matt and Matt!

Christmas in Boston
It was so great to go home for Christmas this year. It did take us 14 hours to get there, but it was well worth it. We were busy the whole week we were there and came home needing a vacation from the vacation!

Christmas Eve was at my parent's house this year. Our family's Christmas Eve tradition is eating veal parmesan. As far as I can remember my grandmother has always cooked this meal and now we are carrying on her tradition. My mom and I spent most of the morning of Christmas Eve cooking all the food: chicken, veal and eggplant parmesan.


Thanks Mom for the earrings! I love them and they mean a lot to me.Matt and I went on some of our favorite runs while we were in Boston. This was the view of the lake in Wakefield on our first morning run. It was 9 degrees outside and a bit chilly for us Californians.
We spent time visiting relatives. We had lunch at my Grandmother's house and saw my Great Aunts Flo Flo and Elsie.

One of the highlights of our trip to Boston was catching up with good friends. We got to hang out with Bob and Lisa since they were home in NJ for Christmas. It was so great to see them. We had not seen them since our moving truck left Gainesville. While they were visiting we did some of our favorite things such as getting ice cream and going running.

We also got to catch up with Lisa and David. We had not seen them since Patrick and Katie's wedding almost 3 years ago. It was great to see them again.

The Renoni family also came over and we enjoyed some pizza and Catch Phrase. My parents have been friends with the Renoni's for over 25 years. We are very grateful for their friendship. Even though we only get to see each other a couple times a year we pick up right where we left off.

Thanksgiving in Dallas, TX
This year the Buman family spent Thanksgiving at Mark and Julie's house in Texas. It was a crazy week with everyone (23 total) in one house. There was always something going on to entertain you: football, puzzles, board games, riding bikes, hot tubbing, napping (for us with no children), running, drinking beer and of course eating. Mark and Julie created a spread sheet to help organize sleeping, cleaning, and eating arrangements. The night of Thanksgiving we took out a record 10 bags of trash.

Here are all the pictures I took from Thanksgiving. I was just playing around with the latest version of Picasa!
This is what happens after only 1 day of playing all day long.

This was the ever growing pile of shoes that continued to take over the entry way.
Valeri and I were in charge of making dinner one night. We made spaghetti and meatballs with steamed broccoli and salad. Here we are forming our 40 or so meatballs.





Paul cooked one of the 3 turkeys we ate for Thanksgiving in a Dutch Oven. It was so good. Thanks for all the work Paul!
Here Julie and Valeri are making sandwiches for 23 people.

Every day the Buman brothers went running together as part of their training for the Big Sur Marathon they will run in April.

Christian and Keegan are quite the studs with this hairdo.
Here are the 2 newest members of the Buman family - Kyla and Kaitlyn.

One of the highlights of our trip to Texas was being able to see Sean and Laura. It was great to catch up with them.