Saturday, October 27, 2012

We carved pumpkins tonight. Mike always has the best one, the showoff used power tools. The kids are getting older so its much easier since they can do a lot of the work themselves.
Here are our finished results:

Thursday, October 18, 2012

It's been a really hectic, emotional, and sad 3 weeks.  My Dad passed away on October 2nd from lung cancer.  It all happened so quickly, I'm still stumbling over the fact that he's gone.  He was officially diagnosed with lung cancer in July but I don't think anyone had any idea that he would die so fast.  I think it's a blessing though, having gone through it with my Grandma.  A blessing for the person, definitely not the family.  They don't have a long, drawn out illness that has them in horrible pain for weeks or months on end.  As with my Grandma, I feel it was a privilege to be with my Dad in those last moments.  Oh, it was hard to see such a strong man be so ill, but I know that everyone there did the very best to carry out his wishes, to take good care of him and to say goodbye to him with absolute love.
 
He is technically my step-Dad, although I never referred to him as that.  He came along when I was just 7 years old, and has been the only Dad I know.  Like family relationships go, we struggled when I was a teenager and I don't think we could have had more opposite personalities.  But he loved me, showed me his love of raising animals, helped me buy my first car, bought me my first horse, drove me off to college, walked me down the aisle at my wedding and loved fishing with his grandkids.

I will really, really miss him.