Wishing Bubba a Happy 21st Birthday!

Yes, this is another post about ANOTHER December birthday in our family, what can I say...

Anyway, on December 31st Bubba turned the BIG 2-1...WOW!! Bubba was born Darrell Hugh Causey III at San Bernardino County Hospital in San Bernardino, CA, at 11am on New Year's Eve day, as you can see by his time of birth he was no where near being in the running for the ''1st baby born in the New Year 1988''.  

 

How did Darrell get to be called Bubba? Well, when he started to talk I tried to get Darrell to call his sister Karen ''Sissy'' and brother Rex ''Bubba'' and some how it got turned around to Darrell being called Bubba and it stuck!



Bubba is a great guy...he's funny, charming, thoughtful, and ready to help when there is a job to be done. Bubba's always been a bit of a hambo, last year he co-starred with Haskel in our YouTube video ''Bubba-Gump Cheese'' . Of all my kids Bubba is the most laid back in personality and of the 4 boys he is the one who looks most like their Dad.

   

Bubba is a good cook, his favorite color is green, and he loves seafood. Bubba works out & lifts weights, he likes to read, play computer games, watch movies, play board & card games with the family, and take his Mom out to lunch.   Bubba has been a fulltime employee at the Kroger grocery store up the street from our house for over two years, working in the bakery, deli and most recently in the meat department.

Happy New Year to you ALL!

Well here we are at the beginning of another New Year! Time sure flies when you're having fun, right?   2008 was a pretty good year for the Causey's and God blessed us a lot. I hope as you look back on this past year that you are able to say the same for you and your family.

Praise the Lord whatever bug I had that plagued me on Christmas day had pretty much run it's course by the next day. The days after Christmas were uneventfully spent enjoying our Christmas gifts and watching DVDs on the new flatscreen TV! Although Darrell had his usual 2wks off from school for Christmas break Karen and Bubba continued to work full schedules. The weather never got very cold, staying in the mid 70's for the daily highs. In a sense that is nice but I feel that everything has its time and WINTER is the time for COLD temperatures.   Nonetheless, there have been plenty of warm, sunny days for the kids to be outside.

Next thing we know it's December 31st...NEW YEAR'S EVE! Usually we don't make plans to go out on NYE opting instead to spend the evening at home with the family eating party foods and watching the NYE shows on TV. This year we were invited to spend the evening with our friends the Walston's, we had a great time visiting with them and eating the BEST homemade vegetable beef soup! We got back home that night after 10pm and from then on it seemed like EVERYONE in our neighborhood was shooting off fireworks!! The celebrating went on into the wee hours of the morning finally stopping around 4am. When we went out the next morning the streets were littered with the remnants of spent fireworks, it looked like a mini war zone.   New Year's Day we watched the Rose Parade, talked about taking down the Christmas tree and ate a supper of veggie, meat, cheese, & cracker trays while we watched the Rose Bowl game. Oh, and Rex & Kristi got home safely from their trip up to North Dakota to visit her folks for the holidays.

Now it is Sunday, January 4th, we took down all of the Christmas decorations yesterday and we're making the most of this last day before everything has to go back to routine again tomorrow. So far today I have read the Sunday paper, done a couple loads of laundry and I'm thinking about making chicken fingers for supper later but we'll see. 

I know lots of people make resolutions at the New Year and I hope you are able to stick to any that you may have made for yourselves but I find it more realistic to make short term goals and regular to-do-lists than to make big goals for myself. At any rate we are off to a good start and I am looking forward to seeing how God will lead us in 2009. And I hope to hear from you all more this year too...hint, hint!!  

Merry Christmas Everyone!

I hope y'all had a wonderful Christmas! As I said in my earlier post, December 24th at Casa de Causey is celebrated as my son Duke's birthday. But after all of the kids are bedded down for the night with visions of sugar plums dancing in their heads it is time for Mom to wrap gifts and stuff stockings. While I wrap and stuff the gifts/stockings I usually watch the movies Christmas Vacation & Scrooged to keep me wake. Some years I am up late on Christmas Eve raising cinnamon rolls, making granola for Christmas morning breakfast or baking pies for Christmas dinner so bedtime for me is usually after 2am. This year I had no baking to do but I still didn't get to bed until 4am! Sadly for me, I found myself feeling sick after going to bed so I didn't sleep very well.    



Christmas morning all of the kids were up early chomping at the bit to open up their gifts and empty their stockings! Of course Santa Claus had come too, leaving Transformers for Duke, a scooter & Barbie for Darla, and clothes & a watch for Lori. When all the gifts were opened I was still feeling punky so I laid down for a couple of hours and took a nap. In the meantime the family rallied together and got Christmas dinner going...it is GOOD to have BIG kids! Our supper was ham, mashed potatoes, dressing, cranberry sauce, deviled eggs, mixed veggies, & crescent rolls and for dessert, fresh baked pumpkin pies. Mmmm! Bless God I was feeling better by then and was able to enjoy supper and Christmas night watching movies with the family.

 

So there you have it, a typical Christmas at Casa de Causey! Except that Rex & Kristi weren't with us this year as they went to spend Christmas with her family in North Dakota so we missed them. But all in all it was a good Christmas!

Happy 13th Birthday, Duke!!

Since 1995 our family has not celebrated Christmas Eve because at Casa de Causey, December 24th is know as ''Duke's Birthday''! 

Duke Michael Causey was born at home in Mission, Texas on Dec. 24, 1995, at approx. 4pm in the afternoon. At that time Darrell was pastoring at a trailer park church for winter Texans. I went into labor early on Sunday, Dec. 24th, and it soon became apparent that I would not be able to attend church that morning with the rest of the family! Since I usually have a long labor we didn’t expect to have a baby until later in the evening so we decided that Darrell should go ahead to church and do the service as planned. He took Rex, Bubba and Haskel with him and left Karen and Lori home to look after me. All of the folks at the church were anxious to know how I was doing and they insisted that Darrell and the boys hurry home right after the service instead of staying for the coffee, cookies and conversation that usually followed...I’m sure the boys were a little disappointed!



It wasn’t until four o’clock that afternoon that Duke made his debut! Daddy wrapped Duke up and took him out to meet his brothers and sisters. Darrell had done a great job delivering the baby and after everything was all cleaned up and nice again Duke and I settled down for a much needed nap! While we were sleeping Darrell & the kids went out and got us some pizza! Duke & I joined the family in the living room for dinner and we watched A Christmas Carol together. After Darrell got all of the other kids to bed I spent the rest of the night stuffing stockings while Darrell put together bicycles and little Duke snoozed on the couch. What a wonderful Christmas Eve that turned out to be!

 

Duke has grown into a very nice young man who is helpful around the house, enjoys reading and playing computer games, and has a witty sense of humor. Just a few weeks ago I started to notice Duke's voice beginning to crack and sound deeper!   

Duke's birthday theme this year was Batman, we had lasagna for his supper and a BIG cookie for his dessert. Duke did pretty well for himself as far as gifts went...he got a couple pairs of jeans, shirts, socks & underwear, a belt, PJs, an Ironman action guy, Transformers and the DVD of Dark Knight which we watched the next day. I think if you asked him Duke would say he had a pretty good birthday!

A Causey Christmas Party!

Saturday, December 13th, was our annual Causey Christmas Party! We had been planning and preparing for it for a month. First thing we did was to make our guest list which consisted of our 10 family members, Karen's boyfriend James, plus a coworker of Karen's & her daughter, are long time friends the Walstons, and another family...total number invited 22. By Thursday the RVSPed guests had dwindled to 16 and in the end we had 14 show up...mind you, 10 of those guests were our family but is was all good!  

Next we had to decide on what we would serve to our guests this year. In the past we've had a soup/salad/sandwich bars and last year we did finger foods, you know like mini eggrolls, pigs-in-a-blankets, taquitos, etc. This year we decided to try something different so we served build-your-own personal-sized pizzas! We have this great recipe for pizza dough that we found in a newspaper the day Bubba was born on New Year's Eve 1987 and we have been using it ever since! We made 3 batches of dough, split each batch into 8 parts, rolled those parts into 9-10 inch 'rounds' (really they were just all kinds of odd shapes!), brushed them all with the pizza sauce that Karen made and baked them for 10 minutes. When our guests arrived we had a table filled with chopped/sliced black olives, onions, bell peppers, mushrooms, jalepinos and pineapple, along with pepperoni and Canadian bacon slices, and plenty of cheese of course! Everybody had a great time building their own pizzas, chatting and eating salad while they waited for their pizzas to bake.

For dessert we made Christmas cookies; there were fudgies, gingersnaps, Kiss cookies, Mexican wedding cookies, and cranberry cookies served with coffee, cocoa and hot cider.

After we got everyone settled down in the living room we played ''Present Pass Along'' a game where someone chooses a gift, opens it and then decides if they will keep the gift or pass it along to the next person. Most of the gifts were cool like coffee mugs, a flashlight, a flower vase, etc. But there was one special gift waiting for a player to choose that was a surprise...it was a white feather trimmed black bra & thong which got picked right away and there was a LOT of gift trading after that! Haskel ended up with the fancy undies and for being a good sport he received a $5 gift card to Sonic.

All in all I think the party turned out well; there was good food, good fun and everyone left with a gift and a tray of cookies to boot. I wish you all could have been here!

P.S. For those interested in our pizza dough recipe here is a link to a website Darrell made with the recipe on it for you to check out.