Day by Day

Their shepherd's pie was made with vegan butter and almond milk......they will never know but they are eating healthier...... :)

Who would have thought it would feel so fulfilling to write a dissertation?  I cannot believe how into I get when I am working on it.  I don't know how it will all end, but so far, I am really excited to be doing it.  I just wish I had many more hours in the day to do things I like.

So while we were away Keera sent Bob a text saying, "I just saw Dicky from the bar at the gas station".  It made Bob laugh.  He replied, "I just saw your mom across the table from me in New Hampshire."

October 5th is 25 years of marriage, so we headed to New Hampshire for a weekend.  Thoroughly enjoyed the hiking, walking, talking, movie, eating.....so fun to spend time together again with my best friend,

Well, some bees (a lot of bees) built a nest in our fire pit under some pine.  It has been there all summer long.  Today was their last day.  Bob decided to start the fire pit up.  Poor bees - they weren't too happy.

Let's catch up..... So....new principal for me - love her. Keera is in 7th grade, playing softball and volleyball. Connor is going back to college - one class at SCSU Katie is back in Florida for sophomore year of college. Brendan, Connor and Bob are playing fall ball. Brendan is playing coed softball I am bowling and taking a Bible study course. I am also beginning my proposal for my dissertation. Connor is still at Neil's and Brendan is still at United Concrete. Bob had pinky surgery - pin in pinky because of softball. Kelly has a one year old, beautiful baby girl - Nova. Jeff and Nicki are both at SCSU - music and undecided. More to come.

It has been way too long since my last blog writing.  So much has happened.  There was 2014-the year Connor was ill with ADEM-paralyzed, hospitalized, walking again and then graduated from high school. Off to UCONN he went.  Then there was the year of 2015-house fire, rental house for a year, Katie graduated - off to FIT to become a biomedical engineer...Connor back from UCONN - semester off. 2016 - Connor home, Katie had great year, Keera in 6th/7th grade, Brendan welding full time. Fall of 2016 - Here we go.....a new year!!!!

Well, here we are.....a few weeks ago we left Katie at college in Florida.  I began school and then we just left Connor at college in CT....Keera also begins tomorrow.  And Bob has a new policy at work that they have to wear ties and button up dress shirts, so we are all on our new days.  It has been a part of our lives to start over every end of August for about 19 years.  It all started with Brendan and preschool when he was three.  Hard to believe that all that time has gone by and we are still celebrating new beginnings.  It is exciting, scary, fun, difficult.....so many things all mixed into one.  I look at Keera and can't believe that she is going into middle school.  Then again, I can't believe Brendan works full time.  Where has time gone and will it continue to move so fast?  Do we miss all the things happening because we are just in the flow of motion?  Do we enjoy every little minute good and bad just because they are our...

January 26th - fire in house - smell, see smoke, see bright orange - react - Brendan awesome help, Keera did was she was told....men from next door coming to help us..dogs in garage...back in for cat....get her....runs away.....Tammy and Pete stop (on their way home to await blizzard...work with me.....hold me as I totally fall apart....take Keera to a car to stay warm....Brendan standing alone in moccasins....watching firemen put out the flames...windows broken....Tracey, Kelly, Nicki and Dad show up....family.....civil engineer talking with me....grew up with his sister....brings us to hotel....I tell him I think I bring the eucharist to his mother homebound....he thanks me with sincerity that surprises me...offers his home to us if we need it. Firemen - work hard, do their job, bring us back in...emotional...our house-black, smells of plastic and an unbelievable awful burned odor-water dripping-ruins...through the front to the back...listening to directions from fireman while trying...

I can't get to sleep so my mind starts wandering.  Here are the things I am grateful for at this particular moment: I am grateful that God has brought me this challenge and this is why.....he loves me so much that he wants me to let go and lean on him for strength; he wants me to feel free from worry and being scared; he has brought me closer to him through challenge and pain. I am grateful that on the night before a blizzard and the morning of a blizzard I earned a new respect for the big orange asplundh trucks and the men who drive them.  They all gathered at the hotel to stay for a night, talking of coming from Canada and the Carolinas.  Then in the morning they pulled out at 6 a.m., in the middle of a snowy, freezing cold blizzard.  I would not have seen that if I were tucked away in my own bedroom. I am grateful for the six windows that I used to look out of when I woke up in the morning.  We were high enough in our house that I could not see building...

When I picked up the book about the man who decided to dedicate a year to being thankful, I enjoyed the read and decided to commit to his project.  So back in October, I began the thank you project.  I decided to write a thank you note to someone each day for a year.  At first I thought it would be impossible to find someone to write to everyday, but instead, I have found a way to do that and I find myself looking for those things to be thankful for, versus looking for things to find what is not working-way too easy to do. I started with family just because of who they are and the affect they have on my life.  Then I had to actually start looking for things that came my way.  It really is a whole new way of looking at things.  I am by far, not perfect at it and there are days when I say, "hmmm....who now".  I also am not sure I will get to 365 days, but I am just going to try.  We are so thankful for things at Thanksgiving time, but do we take t...

I was at a church dinner last night to celebrate the holidays.  Most, not all, of the people are elderly.  I am by far one of, if not the, youngest person in both women's and men's club.  I enjoy the company of the different people I have come to know. One of the men had been brought from Masonic, I believe.  He came by ambulance and he was in a wheelchair.  He could not communicate too well, but people seemed to know what he needed and help him with dinner.  Toward the end of the night he was asking for something (only with a sound, not words) and no one could figure out what he was asking for. It brought me right back (regardless of age) to when Connor could not talk last year and everyone tried to figure out what he needed.  It felt so familiar......probably because we spent a few weeks doing that for Connor. I just think that it is funny how the human mind works.  Everything is going along fine and then you get a flashback or reminder of...

I don't know if it is midlife or life changing events but it seems as though I bounce back and forth from a state of feeling so content with all that life offers to feeling so afraid that I will lose everything in a minute.  I think of being in the second half of my life which is so empowering and yet scary and so final.  I keep telling myself the important statements when I am in that place...."live today as if it is the only day you have; enjoy everything and everyone".....or "look at all the wonderful things to come with the base that is in place"....or "feel relieved that things may be more "settled" in the years to come." It is a weird feeling....one that probably comes in fall more so than other seasons...the changing of trees and temperatures and so shedding of what is known and comfortable to await the new in the Spring.

We had to set up a follow up neurology appointment for Connor.  It was originally back in May, but was postponed twice by us because of how busy those months were with school (for everyone), proms, work, other more necessary appointments, etc. We ended up making it today, July 17th.  At first I could not understand why they set it up with no one that Connor had been treated by.  It was some resident in a the neurology clinic.  I thought going into it that this person would know nothing about what happened, other than the notes in the computer.  We would go in; he would ask how he was doing, check vitals and we would leave. I was wrong and I did not expect the feel the feelings that I felt when I went in.  As we sat in the waiting room, a young boy, about Connor's age, was wheeled in by his sibling, it looked like.  This boy ended up sitting in front of me and I couldn't help but feel, wow, this could still be Connor.  The boy obviously had ner...

I am starting to believe more and more that when positive thoughts come into our minds, we are meant to act on them.  Nothing bad can come of good.  Why would a thought just pop into our heads, unless it was meant to do something for someone?  Call someone or text someone you haven't seen in awhile.  Drop a coffee off or bake something for someone.  Send some fruit or flowers to someone who has done something nice for you or just to someone because of who they are.  Write a nice note and leave it on a windshield or I have heard some people pay for the coffee for the car behind them in a drive through.  I will have to try that one.  You never know what you can do for someone else (that you know or don't know).

This will be the first year in twenty years without an official Easter Bunny....that's a pretty long run actually.  And yet they still want their baskets hidden (Bob's job-he hides them) and they still want candy, for the most part.  We will still go to.....yes.....the China Buffet...it has become a tradition that our kids will not let go away.  We always split Thanksgiving and Christmas as far as houses go, but Easter was our "get out and do a buffet" holiday.  We started classy and expensive....then one year we decided to do the all you can eat China Buffet.  Well, the kids liked it so much, it lives on.  It is a good variety of foods. I don't think they celebrate Easter in China.

I have skipped blogging from time to time, but this time I just can't get myself writing.  I have only blogged about three times this year.  There is so much I would like to write down so I can read it years from now and yet it is so fresh and new that I cannot get myself to write it down. So I think I will go to superficial stuff for now...good memories in the making.  Here are some of the things we did during Spring vacation this year:  It started with Keera having a list of what she wanted to do during the week.  We added some and pretty much accomplished almost all of them.  We drew and colored a mural of Yalesville (including the VEt down the road, Subway and the Laundry shop); we went to the beach; we went to Barnes and Noble (and bought cheesecake there too).  Fun stuff.  The two books I am currently reading are also on here...shout out to Aunt K. for the one book about Enough and the I picked up the other one today...very similar in natu...

I wish I had blogged every day for the last two and a half months because a lot of things have happened that are not coincidences.  I am going to at least start catching the ones I can. The situation is that for the last three weeks we have known we needed to have a ramp for Connor on March 15th.  Two weeks ago Bob started a conversation with a builder in town, who we know through Bob's coaching in the little league, and the town youth service department to help direct us.  It took two weeks for the process of having the guy out here; having him measure and getting us an estimate.  In the meantime, I kept kind of nudging Bob, which I felt bad about because he was trying, but I was nervous about it getting done.  He decided to contact someone from the facebook page that said they have a ramp they used when his wife passed away.  He is here in town and he would let us have it.  It has been in his garage.  So Bob started to pursue that by measuring...

My goal this year was to try to blog a little bit each day.  That was kind of shot to he** by Jan. 2nd when everything went down.  Tonight for the first time since Jan. 2nd, I wanted to blog.  I think I need to start processing things in my mind and someday I want this to be something Connor can look back on....maybe read to see things from a different perspective-his mothers.  I think I will just throw things down to help me process everything. The boy/young man who has been unable to move for two weeks trying so hard to talk around the breathing tube.....saying sentences at a time while I try to catch up to every syllable he is pronouncing.  He goes on and on as if I can see as clearly as he is thinking in his mind.  He has started spelling words out now, which is much easier.  Today he spelled out trash.  What on earth would he be thinking about trash for....he wanted to throw his breathing tube in the trash.  Yes, Connor, when you are d...

Brendan - told a story about how he decided to teach 4 dementia patients how to play go fish.  He said one of them would ask for a five and go all the way around and then forgot they already asked for a five and ask again.  Then there was Ethel who kept asking for spades and he would have to remind her to ask for a number not the suit. Brendan said he had to know all the cards each of them had so he could help them, but it was really hard not to cheat that way. Keera - Katie got her off of the bus today (well kind of-she was there, but Keera had to ring the doorbell two times before Katie came to the door). I called her from the hospital to tell her that Grandpas was coming over at 4:30 so Katie could go somewhere.  I said, "do as much homework as you can before Grandpa gets there."  Her response, "Well, that wasn't my plan.  My plan was to watch tv."  It made me laugh out loud. Just some levity among everything else going on.