Memories pressed between the pages in my mind...

Tonight I am watching home videos, crying and laughing as I again realize how lucky I am to have such a wonderful family, and facing the reality of how much was lost when my mom passed away.

Everyday I hear about children being mistreated, abused, called names, resented for intruding on their "parents" lives. Our parents never took Lindsay and I for granted, everything they did was for us. I have known this for a long time, but everytime I pop in a home video, I am reminded of how lucky Lindsay and I are. When we were very young Dad worked and went to school, and still found time to be with us and love us deeply, and my mom went without so that her children could have everything we needed, spent hours videotaping us do everyday mundane things, but I get it, they didn't want to forget the little things. We were never hurt in any way by our parents, physically, emotionally or mentally. And each day, our parents taught us a little more about being good people, caring for others and living life.

My poor sister really seemed to get thr brunt of it as a child (wink wink) I have heard at least 4 times on this tape, "Lindsay PLEASE get your sister" as I was trying to thwart my dad's attempts to study, but Lindsay was busy doing a "commercial" for the camera...very advanced that one was. It becomes obvious that my sister was my idol, she had a pretty amazing fashion sense (second only with Napoleon Dynomite's love interest), and was alltogether very advanced, writing books (which she describes as "happy, then sad, but then happy"), her dancing and singing skills were way beyond her years, and really just being an all around trend setter.

Watching these video's are however bittersweet. I see my mom and sometimes I can close my eyes and when I hear her voice, it is as if she was sitting right here next to me (power of surround sound I suppose). I miss her everyday...every minute. I do however think I have begun how to truly understand the meaning of "tis better to have loved and lost...", because while losing my mom has been the most painful thing of my life, we are all better because of her. My mom and dad together gave my sister and I a childhood that could not have been better (minus the sundae incident linds), we are both so very lucky and still so loved. I can only pray that Dave and I give our children the lives that we have been blessed with by our parents.

Fear, Happiness and a disappearing act...

Where did I go?! Well I have spent the last few weeks praying, crying, laughing...and thinking. So here is the short (and a little long) of it....

On the Tuesday after surgery Dave and I met with Dr. D and he went through the diagnosis and treatment plan. Dave had a Pure Seminoma (which is the better kind) that was in Stage one with no metastasis anywhere else in his body, and his tumor markers (which are seen through blood work) were quite low. All of the above are incredible blessings and we could not be more thankful. The plan, as Dr. D saw it was to do 18-24 treatments of radiation, which would leave Dave with a 97% chance of the cancer never reoccurring. He sounded so sure of himself that it made us feel as though that was the only option, and that was what we needed to do. While Dr. D has been a major blessing in this ride...I was beginning to feel that maybe we needed to go one step further. Dr. D is a Urologist, although a very very good one, we were dealing with Cancer and we decided we needed to speak with an Oncologist. So we decided to see the best, we made and appointment with Dr. E....the very doctor who treated Lance Armstrong for testicular cancer.

Fast forward to this past Tuesday (what is with us and Tuesday's?!) We headed down to Indianapolis to meet with Dr. E and get his take on this whole mess. As we walked towards the "Cancer Pavillion" I could feel those fears welling up inside. I could feel things that I have never really dealt with about my mom coming to the surface...but this was not the moment for that to come out, so I smiled and took my husbands hand and we headed inside. Meeting with Dr. E was by far the best experience through this whole beautiful mess. He was easy to talk to and explained our options very clearly and spoke gently to a young couple faced with a big decision. And after much discussion and consideration we decided to take Dr. E's personal recommendation and opt out of radiation and go with a maintenance plan instead. This decision has brought me quite a bit of peace as I am NOT a fan of preventative radiation. So we left the hospital that day feeling a sense of relief and calm.

After leaving the hospital we headed to our hotel in downtown Indy and decided to treat the rest of the day and night as a vacation...and we had a blast! Just spending time with my husband away from all of the everyday stresses of life was exactly what I needed...and I know this trip is what he needed also. My only regret is that we didn't have the chance to stay a couple more nights!

Here are a few pictures from our trip...

The views from the hotel roof...

A couple of the fountain area at night...

And a pretty perfect end to a great night....