On a personal note, Mary has grown so much. She grew 3 inches over the summer and is now 4'11". She is in 4th grade and is doing well. It has taken her a couple of months to figure out how to focus and get her work done during class and now, for the most part she doesn't have much homework. This is her first year of having a man teacher. She was a little leary at first but she loves Mr. Downs. He is an older teacher. My sister who is 2 years younger than me had him for 5th grade his second year of teaching. At Back To School Night he addressed the first man teacher issue becuase he has had that problem every year. He told the kids not to worry, "it is a bit like spending the day with Dad." He has a dry sense of humor that Mary loves. He told me at her last SEP conference that she is one of the few that really gets his jokes. I had to explain that her dad had the same dry sense of humor that she has so she totally understands.
In July, I had a mile marker birthday and turned 50. I was a little down about it for a bit. The last hard birthday I had was 30. Mary was born just weeks after I turned 40 so I was completely immersed in becoming a mother and so 40 went by without much hooplah. Now I've had a few months of being 50, I'm okay with it. My body is old and I'm not getting around very well. My knees and hips have decided they are tired. I am having a hard time losing weight because I can't exercise enough to get my heart rate really moving. So I do what I can and let it go with that. I walk with 2 canes and Mary is a big help. I told her that we needed to get a screw driver and the "T" to turn off the sprinklers. Well, by the time I got myself out the door she had turned off the sprinklers all by herself. She was so excited.
My father passed away in August. He only felt poorly for a couple of weeks before. He didn't have the patience to be sick for very long. I had a good 2 hour visit with him the morning that he died. We didn't know that it was going to be that day. He was up and around. His hometeacher was over to mow the lawn and dad was out supervising the job. He came in the house about 4:00, told Mom he couldn't breathe and then passed out and was gone. He has had a bad heart for years so I was okay with his passing. I know that he is doing what he needs to do. He had been a temple officiator for 12 years. In that time he did 11,000 names. That was the thing that was most proud of. Being able to complete the work for so many people. Many if not all of them were family names.
Mom started feeling poorly about 3 weeks after Dad died. At first we thought that her blood pressure medicine wasn't doing the job completely. Turns out she has lymphoma. She has now had her first round of chemo. She will have two more treatments, three weeks apart, then they will run the tests again to see if the tumor has shrunk.
Well, there you have it.
