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Saturday, May 28, 2011

What an accomplishment....

Adam completed his first 10 mile race today. I'm SO proud of him and how committed he was to sticking to the 10 mile race versus the 4 mile race that was the other option. He has been pretty nervous about it, but during our conversation last night we talked about finishing the the race without a concern of the time. He was extremely happy to know that he was NOT the last person to complete the race, as I new he wouldn't be.

GREAT JOB!! GO DADDY GO!!




Reese talking with all her friend and family on her blackberry telling them how proud she is of her Daddy!!;-)

Thursday, May 26, 2011

Sobering Television....

It's no secret that we use this blog as a platform sometimes...To prove a point, to ask a question, and sometimes to urge action. What am I saying this time?  Well, I travel for a living but not like a typical road warrior. I've got a tremendous balance of home life and road life. When I'm traveling I enjoy HBO because I'm too cheap to buy it from Directv. After dinner tonight I caught about 90% of a show called "How To Die In Oregon". I recommend watching if you can make it through the whole thing.

It's an incredibly sad story about several individuals but mainly focused on a 54 year old woman named Cody Curtis. She shows grace under strenuous and painful circumstances while dealing with a rare form of what I assume is liver cancer. She gets to a point where she is of sound mind but failing body and decides that assisted suicide is her answer. She's doomed by this disease as it is....to cut short the pain of her last days seems only a blessing. I can't explain how touching it was to watch her family deal with this decision...what almost seemed like a necessary decision. The weeks leading up to her decision found her feeling oddly - ok. She had little pain, very little suffering...but the doctors knew her plight and suffering was only days around the corner. Her husband, realizing that he had to say good-bye to his wife of 36 years on a Monday evening, was supportive and loving the whole time. Knowing that once she drank a cocktail of some powerful pill that had been crushed and turned into a slurry, she would be gone in mere minutes. From outside her bedroom window, the camera caught her last minutes on earth.

How do you hug someone enough, kiss them enough, tell them how you feel enough to make sure that when that time comes...they do it with the full understanding of unconditional love and support. Could I do the same for Kim...could she do the same for me? God forbid we ever have to cross such a horrible path but I'm certain that the Curtis family would have said the same thing had they watched another family on TV do what they did. When does the pain of life give way to the pain of separation....and when does the latter seem easier to deal with?

Its very moving to see love like that. Very moving to witness that decision and the way it was portrayed. Say what you will about assisted suicide...this was an incredibly interesting documentary and it was not done in poor taste. I love my wife so very much. I've run her through the ringer over our years together. I've pushed her to her limits and all she's ever done is love me back.

I've got a keeper. She's my partner. She's the one I'm meant to be with no matter what happens in this life. I want to hug her bigger everyday, kiss her more every day, appreciate her more everyday, and support her with love and encouragement...because like it or not, our days are truly numbered. It's not that I realize that today and plan to "change" my life by watching this show, but it certainly brings into perspective what is important in this world. My wife and my little girl are my everything and I want to be the best husband and daddy that I can be....you only get one shot.

Monday, May 23, 2011

The Zoo....

In the search to not only build memories but create experiences for Reese that are fun and at the same time educational....boy do we sound like the "perfect parents" COMPLETELY KIDDING.....we decided that a trip to the Zoo might be fun for Reese. The operative word is might.

I'll say this...when I write in the blog, sometimes the level of detail is such that it seems as though Reese reacted differently than she really did. Like the Luigi story. I can't possibly type words that would take you to our car that day so you could see her eyes literally grow to the size of saucers. At the same time, while thinking of descriptions for the Zoo outing...everything that I'd say would make it seem like Reese had a horrible time when in fact it seems NOW that this was quite the opposite. You remember the days of riding a ride or doing something that you were petrified of doing but after having done said petrifying thing, that was all in the world you could talk about? This was Reese at the Zoo. Everything was just a little larger than life for her and there was a level of uneasiness about the whole trip. At the same time there was also a level of tolerance that was just open enough to the idea of checking things out, but on her terms.


For instance...the Kangaroo.










She was interested for sure but you can see the clinging little girl in the bottom picture. She was a little stressed by the whole experience. Kim would pick her up to show her something and Reese would protest by saying that she wanted to get down. I'm not certain if her perspective was more comfortable or the clearer view sometimes made it a little too close for her.

In reflection of the day, Reese now proclaims that she saw GORIRRAS. And we did.













What humors me about these pics is that they resemble the Patterson-Gimlin film hoax of Bigfoot - reminder pic included...Pretty similar if you ask me but only my warped mind would link these two images. But I mean seriously, I'm not crazy am I?


Anyway....we saw Pandas.




These jokers were behind glass and Reese was still a little skeptical of the whole thing. I think stress of the day caused Reese to constantly pull up her dress...or she's turning into an exhibitionist.

This is a PG rated pic. She was putting on quite a show for some of the toddler boys in the park on Saturday morning.


Finally we took a break, ate a snack and finished off the day with tons of parakeets, some more crazy swooping birds, lemurs, zebras, giraffes, and ostriches. By the end of the visit, Reese was sort of hitting the wall. She walked the entire park and was pretty much overwhelmed from the minute we walked in and saw the flamingos. Even still, she was a little trooper with the whole thing and proves to be very tolerant of just about anything. We had her so far out of her comfort zone Saturday that she was literally stuttering most of the day...something that continued even into Sunday (when Google'd it turns out that stuttering is pretty normal for her age as her brain is outworking her mouth but she was overwhelmed as well so it should pass - we hope.)

So today, when we were playing after dinner....guess what she was talking about? The place that pretty much scared the hell out of her....the Zoo. My little scaredy-cat.