Ella Sarah Tuan Lazar: January 2013

First I need to apologize for not updating this blog for such a long time.....Alot has happened in the past nine months so I will attempt to update you all:

April brought us birthdays (Paul turned 47 years young ha ha and Ella turned 6 years old...). We celebrated Paul's birthday with our fabulous neighbors with a bon fire at our house. Ella celebrated her birthday at World of Gymnastics with 12 of her close friends. May was a momentous month as Evan turned 18 years old and graduated high school!!! Paul's parents came down to Atlanta for Evan's graduation ceremony. It's so crazy to think that our baby boy is all grown up!!!

In June, Ella and I decided to go to Minnesota/South Dakota for a few days. We visited my sister, Lisa and her daughter Jaden! We had such a great time! Jaden is so cute and Lisa is doing a great job as a first time mom!! We also got to spend couple of days at the Morton's. We really enjoyed our visit :) Paul got a promotion with Wells Fargo! He took a job managing the insurance offices in Alabama and Tennessee. This promotion meant that we had to move to Alabama.  In July, we bought a house in Hoover, Alabama and sold our house in Woodstock rather quickly. The transition moving from Woodstock was difficult since we spent the last 15 years there. Our lovely friends put together a beautiful going away dinner for us which was amazing!! We finally got settled in Alabama the end of July.

Back in January, we planned a family vacation in August to Alaska with our dear friends "The Havas's"! We have always wanted to see the north west area of the United States and what a better way to do that with wonderful friends! We flew into Seattle, took amtrak train to Vancouver then boarded Princess cruise ship where we cruised the inner passage of Alaska for seven days. This vacation was sooooo much fun and unbelievably BEAUTIFUL!!!

A week after we got back from our Alaskan vacation, Evan and Ella had to get ready for school. Evan started college on August 20 so we moved him into the dorm on Saturday, August 18th. It was an emotional day for all of us (specifically Ella because she cried for twenty minutes after we left his dorm)!!! I was very strange to come back home and Evan was gone.....but him going to college and maturing will be good for him and it will be good for me to allow him to do things on his own :)

In mid october, everything was going along well until we got "the call"....Paul got downsized from Wells Fargo. We were shocked to say the least. Paul took the news fairly well and jumped right into finding a new job. He accepted and started a new job January 2nd!! His new job is a recruiter for Vaco Resources. Unfortunately, his new job is in Atlanta. So for now, he will be communting to Atlanta on Sunday evenings and coming back to Hoover on Friday nights. He is renting a studio apartment which is two miles from his office so not much of a commute during the week :). Vaco Resources has an office in Birmingham also.   We hope that eventually, he will be able to work out of Birmingham too. We will keep you posted.

Evan completed is first semester of college and came home first week of December. Since Paul had not started his new job yet, we decided to visit his parents in New York for the week of Christmas. We spent special Christmas Eve dinner with family hosted by Uncle Arther and Aunt Millie (thank you both for always welcoming us).   Mid week, we drove to Delaware to visit Grandma Sally in the nursing home and had dinner with Aunt Ray and Uncle Morris. We ended our visit with a trip to dad's office getting our teeth cleaned, xrays, cavaties filled etc.....fun fun!  As usual, we had alot of laughs, played games, watched our new favorite show "impractical jokers" and ate way too many bagels....yummy!!!

2012 has brought us many, many changes but we are a strong family with faith in God knowing that He will provide! Wishing you all the best of what 2013 has to offer!!

Love,
Paul, Laura, Evan and Ella