WOW....we look so different...

So I am doing a little album for my dad of memories of his life and our lives. So I was scanning some pictures in and I thought I would share with everyone what we looked like as kids...WE WERE DARN CUTE...













This is John as a baby.


















This is Tom.














And last by certainly not least...me.


















OK ONE MORE....

Long awaited...

I know...it has been awhile since I blogged last but I have been busy or pre-occupied.
Let me start with...I had a blast the other night with the ladies again from church doing the pottery painting thing. This time I felt like an old pro at the color selections and it took me no time to decide what to paint and how. I think I could really get into this. The trip down there was fun and scary all at the same time. I think the church needs to start a refresher course on proper driving. After my experience from the Point of Grace concert you would think I would drive myself everywhere...no...but in the future...yes. Now I have rode with this person before to Columbus and Delaware and never have we driven this fast...it only took 18 minutes from her house to Delaware...I think it is about a 25 mile drive. For some you will say...that is possible but we made a stop to pick someone up too. And if you knew the roads we are on...most of it consists of 35 mph zones because of all of the curves. Do you also know that you can pass 2 cars at the same time a lot faster if one of them is slowing down to make a left turn. I decided I was a lot closer to God than I thought because I prayed that we would arrive there unhurt and we did...and we made the trip home unharmed as well. I have also been known to exaggerate a wee bit so...maybe we didn't go THAT fast but we were movin'. Thanks Brenda and Jennifer for going with me and making me laugh and thanks Sarah for driving. (Oops...now you know who NOT to ride with, just kidding). It was fun and a much needed fun night for me and I had the best Mean Mocha from the Mean Bean coffee shop in Delaware. It tasted nothing like coffee which just how I prefer my coffee. Lots of other things to mask the taste of the coffee. Also I learned some very "interesting" and sometimes TMI from some of the people, for instance....JC from Farnum, Ohio has some rather strange habits in cleaning, I would share but like I said....TMI!!! And the story about the garbage disposal and how certain things that are "chunky" shouldn't go down it. Or that time that guy went bowling....OH MAN!!! you had to be there...I laughed and laughed. My cheeks hurt and my face hurt too...LOL. Well...I think I have exhausted all of my blogging abilities for the night. I hope that my friend, (lets just call her), Barbara Brown...enjoys this.


The update on my dad is that he started radiation on Thursday and they are planning on doing that for 2 weeks to shrink the tumors in his brain and then he will do a round of chemo for his liver. They are saying that with the right treatment he could have 2 years. I think the news is better than I had expected...I was expecting them to say it was just a matter of months. So, what does that mean? Well for me it means that I have to try to cram the past 15 years into 2 or less. I have been very neglectful of my responsibilities as a daughter. I haven't been supportive in his decisions or accepting him for who he is, my fault not his. It is sad to me that I have waited until something like this comes along for me to admit that I love him. It is so much easier to wash your hands of someone and say...I hate them, or I just don't get them. So I am working on a picture album for him because I made him a picture of his mom and dad from a picture that was taken at my mom and dad's wedding and he loved it...in fact he cried, something I have never seen him do. He has been crying a lot lately...I think for all that he has missed and for all that he is going to miss with his grandchildren. He struggles now to even verbalize his thoughts because his speech has been so effected by these tumors. I told him that I pray for him everyday, he cried. Strangely enough...I haven't cried. I am still trying to figure that one out.

I am also attaching the photo of my grandparents that I did for my dad...LeRoy and Mabel Jones and a posed picture of my dad...about the only one I know to exist.

How many in your INBOX?

So...I was doing a little computer cleaning, mainly the inbox on my email and realized that I had 119 in my inbox and after looking at each one I realized that there is really no place for them. I mean they don't belong in the "important" folder or the "online bill" folder or the "family history " folder. I don't feel like creating folders for every email like the "funny" folder, the "cute" folder or the "spiritual" folder and some of them wouldn't even fit in those...so I was wondering why do we keep the emails in the first place. I mean I have never went back and read something and thought...This is even funnier the second time or this really needs to be printed and framed. I also have emails in my inbox from MAY. So...how many do you have in your inbox? I would like to say that I did consolidate mine down to 98.

On other note...Tonight was the Popcorn Festival Parade better known as "See a lawn chair and pick it up". This is the only town that you can drive though 2 days before the parade and see lawn chairs along the side of the road just laying there. Now if I was in the market for a really nice chair (and I was a thief) I would scout out a really good chair and swipe it. I would like to give you this wonderful report on how great the parade was but...lets just say...2 1/2 hours, 7 kids (I was there with some friends), and a poorly ran parade. The best part of the parade is when people thought the parade was over so they would pick up their chairs and fold them and put them in their bags only to realize there was more parade so they would unpack their chairs and sit back down. This didn't just happen once but twice. There were some hold ups in the parade line because of the ELGIN band...I said they probably were doing LEFT, LEFT, RIGHT and making circles before someone shouted out the correct order. Who knows. They need someone like me to organize the parade next year. Starting with only letting the first 100 entries in the parade plus the bands. I think they had over 300 entries. There was one obvious absence from the parade, a float that represents our church so we are determined that next year we are going to build a float. At least that is what we are saying now...come next year we may decide against it because of all of the work it involves. But one nice thing came out of it, actually 2, Samuel said tonight as he was going to bed...Thanks mom for making tonight fun. It was worth sitting that whole time to hear him say that. The second thing is I got to spend time with friends. Sorry so long....

Update on my dad: I really don't have much of an update except that he is having a biopsy on Monday and he doesn't seem to realize that his speech is affected by the cancer in his brain. For instance he will be talking and in the middle he will start to slur his words and then it gets clear again. Please continue to pray for us.

Keeping you posted...

So my dad still has cancer. I was hoping that this morning I would wake up and it would be some kind of mistake. The fact is the CT scan came back and said he not only has brain cancer but he also has it in his liver. He was supposed to have a biopsy tomorrow but because of all of the aspirin and blood thinning medicine that they have given him in the hospital, they have to postpone it until next week. They did send him home yesterday because they really weren't doing anything for him in the hospital except feeding him and giving him his medicine. They said the cancer most likely started in his lungs which he already had taken care of, they removed part of his lung a couple of years ago but that it didn't show up until now for some reason. Who knows. I haven't gotten too emotional about the whole thought of this being super serious...I don't know why...maybe I am in denial...OK...I am in denial.
I am a lot like my brother, John, when it comes to my dad...we haven't spent a great bunch of time together not just his fault but mine. I just didn't get him and not sure I do yet. He is so different from all of us...the only thing we have in common is a sense of humor but his is harder than mine to decide whether he is being mean or funny. After the whole lung cancer thing he was a lot more interested in me and my kids and making sure that he was spending time with them. I think it was a bit of wake up call. He has told me in the last couple of days that he doesn't want to die because he has some unfinished business. I would like to think that it includes me. Everyone who knows me or members of my family have misinterupted my relationship with my dad, that I hate him. That is not even close to the truth. I just always felt that he wasn't there for us growing up like "I" would have liked. Maybe if I had not made it some much about the "I", "we" could have the relationship that he could give...whatever that is. I am making sure that I let him know that the problems we had in the past are just the past and that I want to be there for him now and that at the end of the day...he is still my dad and I am still his daughter.

The rest of the story...

So...my week got worse...I know hard to believe. Well not really worse but a steady bad. On Friday at 12:00, about 24 hours from taking Samuel to Urgent Care, I was back in there with Josh. That's right Josh. It seems that we have an imaginary bump in our living room that he managed to trip over. Unfortnately he didn't get his hands down in time to catch himself before his mouth bounced off the floor causing his upper lip to swell up so that the little words that we could understand are now completely muffled. The doctor didn't stitch it because she said it might be more traumtic to stitch than to just let it heal on its own and it wasn't cut on the outside of his lip. So I may be getting a visit from Children Services this week...
So that was Friday...Saturday...I woke up this morning with the hope that TODAY would be a good day...WRONG! As I said in my last post my dad is in the hospital and I figured that they were going to keep him there for awhile to see if he was going to have any more of those TIA (mini-strokes). Well they are going to keep him but not for that. I guess last night he had an MRI of his brain and this morning the neurologist came in and said that they think he has brain cancer and that the cancer is probably not only in his brain but some other places in his body. So they ordered a CT of the rest of his body but the results will probably not be read until Tuesday since this is a holiday weekend and after all no one is supposed to get sick on a holiday....
GREAT!!! So tonight while I was there they gave him his first dose of steriods and a shot of insulin for his diabetes. I guess the steriods will make your sugar go up so they put him on insulin shots starting today. They believe that the TIAs were not those at all but rather seizures from the brain cancer. So...he hasn't said too much about how he is feeling except that he has that kind of "put out" sound to his voice like most of us would...that this is not what he was planning for at all and it sucks. He said today that he isn't even scared to die but he doesn't want to become a vegatable. He is more worried about that than anything. Our family has had the unfortnate experience of watching 2 uncles die of brain cancer/tumors. I can't blame him for feeling that way. I am scared too...I don't want to see him like that either. It is bad enough that he is slurring his words now and he doesn't even hear it. The worse thing about all of this is that he isn't a Christian and I don't know how to approach him about it...I don't want to ask him to talk to the pastor because I know he will think that I think he is dying. Please say a prayer for me and for him and for all of us...we will need it.