In memory of Kim

Kim was a member of an on-line support group I moderate. She has been my good friend since 2003, when we shared the sorrow, the joy, the pain of loss, and the celebration of living and life during our cancer journeys.

This morning we lost Kim to cancer. She was respected and loved by so many of us.

I made this image from a picture she shared with us.

I hope she is galloping across the clouds on her beloved horse, free of care and pain forever.

End of summer update

We have had a quiet and hot summer. We chose to hunker down and just spend the time relaxing as a family.

We have some very exciting upcoming events, in no particular order:

We are expecting our first grand baby this November, Terry and Anna are going to be parents!! We are thrilled. (oh, and the baby is a girl)

Eric and his fiance Melissa have set a date for their wedding and they will become man and wife in September. They are just perfect for each other! We will also have a new granddaughter; Melissa's daughter Megan. Which is also so exciting to us. She is a wonderful young woman.

Julia got a puppy, she named her Sheba and we are all having fun playing with her (and housebreaking her, oh joy!) Julia is taking exams to get ready for community college!

Fred, our oldest, is saving to buy his first home, a very exciting prospect, but daunting. So much to think about!

Brian is in two plays this summer-fall, Sweeney Todd and Chicago. He is so busy I am not sure how he does it all. Sweeney opens next week, if you live in Tucson, you have to see it, it is going to be amazing TICKETS FOR SWEENEY

Amanda is now a 100% self-feeding girl. We announced to a few friends, and they looked at us like we were making a huge deal out of something all kids do, but they just do not understand the struggle we have had getting her to hold a spoon. She is so awesome sitting at the dinner table spooning the food into her little mouth. She spills a lot, but this is such a huge step for her!

Kara is growing so much, she grows out of sizes in 4 months, I have never had a child grow like she. She is going through a stage where she hits herself in the head when she gets frustrated. We spend the day telling her to be nice to herself. I wish we knew what was wrong, it hurts us when she does that to herself, but she cannot communicate well enough to tell us why she is so upset.

Miss Meghan is growing up on us, her shape is changing into a young woman's and we just are not ready for that to happen, I have to be honest and say, I find it kind of unfair that she is delayed in everything but that. She is so much like a 6 year old, of course she is also a 10 year old girl and has the life experience of a 10 year old. I just wish puberty would go away for a few years and let her catch up to it, you know?

I have been mentally gearing up for another year of home school for the youngest girls, they go to on-line charter AZVA, so I do not have to buy curriculum, but we need to get the work area cleared off. School starts Wednesday. Kara and Amanda are in 1st grade and Meghan is in 5th. They are not doing the work from those grades, they do the work their IEP specifies, I am hopeful that Kara and Amanda will be better able to complete some tasks this year, last year they were still so behind developmentally, but both have had some good progress this summer in self help skills, so fingers crossed.

Tom will be back at his regular job in a couple of weeks, the school year for him starts a little later than AZVA. As always, we will miss him being home with us.

I will not be sorry to have the heat of summer behind us, the monsoons that used to drench our city daily barely produce any rain now, we had three nice storms and nothing, all it does is raise humidity and make us miserable with our evaporative cooling, Fall, please hurry!!