I'm still around.
I really haven’t fallen off the face of the earth, it just may seem like it. I haven’t written in a month, and I have kept fairly quiet. Not totally on purpose, but mostly because I am not at my computer as much. Everything I do reminds me of the events that have occured over the past 6 weeks, so ultimately I am trying to avoid confronting things. When I open my freezer at home I have a block of cheese my dad gave me for Christmas, when I open my email I have his last emails sitting there, when I look at my Google photo albums, i’m reminded that I created them mostly for my dad to see, when I watch t.v. I’m reminded on how he used to brag about his over-the-air HD signals, when I go to my grandma’s I see the telephone my dad used to call me on, every single day my children play with the toys their grandpa got them for this Christmas, every day my dog suckles on a stuffed animal that my dad got Chris for his first Christmas, my brother drives his car, I stare at his end tables every day, I have the little trinkets he kept around on his tables as we grew up, and now I have his ashes in a bio-degradable urn. There is just a constant stream of reminders that drive me nuts.
I just got back from Las Vegas hoping that would help me out, but really it didn’t. I was reminded that I was supposed to go visit my grandma, and possibly my dad in New Mexico while I was there. I planned all this just 6 weeks before we left. It was good and we had fun, it just didn’t release any of the stress that I thought it would. We were gone for 4 days and we stayed at Treasure Island again. This time we went “hiking” in Death Valley… yeah crazy isn’t it. Thankfully it was only like 80 degrees the day we went, but we had fun. We rented a Ford Mustang and drove it through the desert along with a shove, bucket, and a metal detector. A week before then Matt had been to Phoenix so he got me all excited to go to the desert. Our luck was good until our last day there. The gondolier at the Venetian promised us that if we kissed under the bridge as he sung to us, it would bring us good luck. Well, it didn’t happen to say the least!! Ha ha. The last day I was quite ill, and our flight was originally schedueld to go out at 10:30p.m. and arrive home at 5:30a.m. the following morning. We begged the airline to squeeze us on a 2:30p.m. flight, and thankfully we were able to get on it, and get home by bed time. God that was horrible… nothing worse than being sick and sitting in an airport.
Not much else going on right now. Chris is getting ready to celebrate his 6th birthday. Yeah it’s wonderful, but what sucks is he shares the birthday with guess who, my dad. So it makes it even harder. Why oh why is a reminder around every corner? Father’s day is coming up so that doesn’t help. I plan on going up north sometime in June and we will spread his ashes up at his favorite camping location. Paul wants to go to Portage Lake and spread them there, which was also another favorite destination.
I plan on travelling a lot this year to take the stress off. I think we’ll go to England in August, but i’m not 100% certain on that. I want to go to Normandy, France and tour the D-Day beaches with Chris. He would love that.
Andrew is a monster and he refuses to get potty trained. He turned 3 in Februrary and I have been very patient but my patience is running severely thin these days. The boy just will not go potty. He does not listen to us, and he gets in trouble a lot. I get told, “he’s your typical boy”… yeah well tell me that when you babysit him!! Ah well, I just hope he’s trained by time pre-school starts in the fall. I don’t want to lose my deposit. Chris starts t-ball tomorrow, and I’m eager to see how that goes. Chris is very excited of course. The coach called today and said they are hopping right into games. I have no idea how they can do that with pre-schoolers who have probably never caught a ball in a mitt before. At least Chris hasn’t.
My sister graduated from high school today. It brought back lots of memories because it was almost an identical ceremony to the one we had 10 years ago. The diplomas are identical and everything, and even the same jerkoff principal spoke this time, except back then he was the superintendant. How does someone go from being a principal to a superintendant to a principal again… who knows. It was nice to see my sister accomplish this, for a while there I thought it would never happen (attendance issues!). Though, I am surprised her one friend managed to graduate, it actually made me happy to see this friend accomplish something this important.
Ok, well I’m very tired because I just got home and I’m going to bed. Maybe i’ll write again soon, if I have something other to say than something depressing!! 
