What’s in a Picture

I love this picture. And it isn’t because, having just left Colorado where humidity is non-existent, my hair was on point. There is another reason. Or rather, reasons. We were driving from Denver and heading to the Grand Tetons in the northwest of Wyoming. We had just gotten into Wyoming and I realized that I hadn’t put the actual campground’s location into in my GPS. I had just plugged in Grand Tetons. Um…the Grand Tetons are kinda, well, grand. I probably should have been more specific. I realized my mistake and cleared out my directions only to then realize I had made a bigger mistake. My data wasn’t working (I realized later I had hit a button that had turned it off) and there was no cell service. I could not pull up ANY directions. So there we were… in Wyoming, headed in the right direction, but completely without directions.…

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13th

Dates. People observe them as markers to life events. Birthdays, first meetings, first dates, job changes, house buying, sobriety, weddings, deaths, national and global tragedies. There is something about the marking of time with those life events that remind us of joy or pain or even a shift that occurs within us. For me, that day is the 13th. It was Friday, the 13th , that I sat at a picnic table trying to get a hold of Jeremy knowing he was in the hospital and they had just done a CT scan. I knew it was bad. I had known since Labor Day that something was wrong. I had a field trip to Williamsburg planned for the kids and I was not sure if I should still go. He ended up going to the doctor before I left because I felt so uneasy about going. He went in and she did…

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Day 1: 2020 Trip

Day 1: I am thinking what was I thinking!!??😂 Today was the longest stretch for the first three days of our travel and it was looooong. Georgia and Alabama was pretty uneventful other than getting ten minutes down the road and a guy telling me the door to my electric was flapping in the wind. Shortly after crossing the Mississippi border another gentleman flagged me over to tell me my spare tire cover decided to fly away. Aaaaaand. Even though I thought I was going slow (well below speed limit) I had a tire blow right after crossing into Louisiana. Thank God for the sway bars I had put on my truck. I had been staying in the right lane so it was easy to pull over and limp along to the exit. I had been warned by numerous people that a blowout was not a matter of if but…

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Happy Father’s Day, Jeremy

Today is the first Father's Day my kids spend without their dad. I am not sure if they even realize it is Father's Day. I will probably be sure to bring it up because maybe with our day of travel and it being a distraction, it won't feel as awful?  Maybe it will help getting this first out of the way When we knew Jeremy was going home on hospice, I was sitting there talking to him about the things that had impacted me about him, the things I loved about him. I shared with him how I was proud of him and the father he had been. That our kids would never doubt for an instant of his love. A little while later when I asked him what he would want to me to share at his memorial service, he said with a smile, "That." So below is the…

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A Mountain Called Grief

A week or so after Jeremy’s memorial service, I decided I needed to take the kids to the mountains for a hike. It was something that Jeremy and I loved to do. He loved the mountains. When it came to vacation time, he would have opted for the mountains rather than the beach every time. I tried to make our big vacations at the beach, but weekend getaways were in the mountains for him.  Hiking didn’t happen too much over the last 14 years, just because the littles were, well, little.  Our hikes or rather walks were usually easy when we ventured out as a whole family. We were just starting to come to the age with all the kids that we could do little more adventurous hikes because they could keep up. No more having to carry anyone halfway through our excursions or listening to an excessive amount of…

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