I've Lived a Good Life...

My husband and his twin brother were turning 40 and I wanted them to spend this monumental moment together. Being that they live all the way across the country from each other, I thought this would be a great opportunity to meet somewhere fun, and get as many of the family members together for the occasion. We just returned from a 10 day vacation to Florida where we stayed with an Aunt & Uncle and had an amazing time. It was a wonderful trip. There were four generations of family in one place and we had the opportunity to experience several new things.  The kids ate alligator, frog legs, mahi mahi, crab, conch, and grouper. They held an alligator, touched a turtle, went frog hunting, road a motor cycle, and shot a BB gun for the first time. My husband even had a chance to swim with sharks. I'll tell ya, if this trip would've been a year earlier I would have spent most of the time quietly being sad that I can no longer take trips like this with my family. But instead I am i

This weekend I went to a concert by the Fab Four, a Beatles tribute band. One of my parents best friends turned 65 and his children all wanted to take him to this concert. He is a huge fan of the Beatles just like my Mom. When one of his children couldn't make it to the concert he graciously asked me. I was honored to go. Experiences like this one, really help me feel closer to my folks. Well, the group did not disappoint. The band opened up the concert with "I Wanna Hold Your Hand". It seemed so appropriate because I was overwhelmed with emotions walking into the theater. My Mom would've loved to go to that concert. This may sound odd, but in three or four experiences I have felt my parents presence and felt their hand in mine. When it happens it does make me tear up because I don't want it to ever end. I also only tell my husband about it, because I don't want people to think I'm strange. That night, I felt her hand in mine. It was awesome! As the co

I don't know about anyone else, but every single time I fly I get a chance to reset with God. It's not because I am stuck in a seat with nothing to do but think. Let's be honest, I typically use that time to sleep. That's something I always seem to have a lack of. 😴 It's the moment the plane starts to descend. I'm not fancy and I don't fly first class, but I do like a window seat for this specific moment. For quite a long period of time, I was guilty of thinking that I had personally done something cosmically wrong to the universe and God was just punishing me with hit after hit of loss. In my defense though, we had a huge family that had experienced almost no tragedies. After we got married, we lost grandma, my younger aunt, our first baby, my dad, and then my mom. It's pretty natural for people to pull in during hard times, hide from people that love them, and play the "Woe is Me" game. I did that. But then I would hop on a plane for work

I don't think I recollect a time when my mom wasn't surrounded by flowers. She loved them. There was a stint in the 80's where she wouldn't leave the house without a flower in her hair. Daisies were her favorite, and yellow roses. We were stuck in the hospital for her last birthday and people seemed perplexed about what to get her. It was becoming apparent that we may never leave the hospital, so buying her knickknacks didn't make much since. Her friends and family opted for the one item that reminded them of her, flowers. Now it is a little known fact that after a chemo treatment your white blood cell count almost zero's out to nothing and that is called Neutropenia. In common terms, your body has no way of fighting anything that you are exposed to, so hospitals don't allow flowers in the room when you are neutropenic. I am not exaggerating when I say she had at least 25  bouquets of flowers delivered to her in the hospital. The entire nurses station o