WE INTERRUPT VACATION POSTS TO BRING YOU..

 A VERY IMPORTANT LIFE EVENT!!!

My youngest son, who is now 18 years old, decided to be baptized Sunday!  It was exciting, tearful, thrilling and just an answer to all those years of prayer for him to choose to follow Jesus.  He had been to church camp earlier in July and came home saying he was ready to be baptized.  Then when we said, "How about tonight?" he said he wanted to study some more.  So we had several small conversations about it throughout the week and he told his Dad Saturday night he wanted to do it the next day at church.

 I just want to say for all the parents who were like me, worried that your child would never get serious about it or think they are too far gone or their heart is hardened, hang in there!  We tried really hard not to harp on it or mention it much once we did a formal Bible study with each of our children at age 12.  You just hope and pray and live it out in your everyday life.  Hopefully they enjoy youth group and have good friends.  I'm just so thankful for good friends and other adults in my son's life who have influenced him to follow Jesus!  So thankful for forgiveness and God's incredible love and Jesus's sacrifice for us and Heaven!

WELCOME TO GOD'S FAMILY, SON!

BIKING IN THE BITTERROOTS...

While planning our trip, I found this awesome bike trail, Route of the Hiawatha.  You get to ride a bike 1.7 miles - yes that's right - almost 2 miles - through an old train tunnel!  Actually there were 6 tunnels along the 15 mile trail.  It was as cool as it sounds!   We had bike lamps so that helped.  There were a few puddles and dripping inside, but it was really fun!  Actually it was thrilling and creepy all rolled up into one awesome ride.  You also cross 6-7 trestle bridges too.

It's gorgeous too!

That's me near the end of the bridge...Don't look down!

Don't try this at home!  :)

We absolutely loved it - even though it was a 5 hour drive to get here - it's right on the border of Montana/Idaho.  When you pass through the first long tunnel on the trail you are officially in Idaho.  The wonderful thing about it was it is a slow grade (since it was originally for trains) and you don't have to pedal all the time!  Great activity for families with kids and even older folks.  It's also been named one of the most scenic bike trails in the U.S.  

Yes, I know I sound like a commercial again...

THIS IS NOT A PAID ADVERTISMENT...

We fell in love with Many Glacier Hotel...a 98 year old chalet in Glacier National Park.  I had no idea when we planned this trip at the beginning of the year that people book this place 1-2 years in advance!  So we didn't get to stay here, but we were about 30 minutes away.  We spent two of our three days in this area, hanging around this hotel.

It's on the National Register of Historic places as the builder of the railroad built it to encourage wealthy people from the East Coast to come and visit "America's Alps"way back when.  So the whole place has a swiss chalet feel and has been restored back to original.

We hung out on the deck twice in the afternoons after hiking...

cool breezes and awesome views.

Mountain goats came by to visit!

During a thunderstorm, everyone went into the lobby and they started a fire in the fireplace.  They also have musical entertainment and a great gift shop.  This place has it all!  Old black & white photos line the halls.  Every day they have a hotel tour and they tell you and show all the history of the place.

We dressed up and ate in the Ptarmigan Dining Room and attended the 

entertainment the last night we were at Glacier.

David Walburn did the show - he played guitar and harmonica, all original songs, 

while telling us the story of Lewis & Clark.  

And finally, another reason to love Many Glacier Hotel:  Bellboys in lederhosen!

Unfortunately, one of the college kids who was working here this summer fell 1,000 ft. while hiking with other hotel employees and died the day we were there.  It happened near Appekunny Falls where we had hiked and eaten our lunch.  We couldn't figure out why a helicopter kept going over there, then heard from one of the hotel workers.  They couldn't find him for a long time and finally recovered his body 6 hours later - around the time when we had come back for dinner - so sad!  I'm still praying for Mike's family.  He was from Florida. Our hearts were heavy with the staff as the mood changed in the hotel that evening.  Mike was 21 years old, just like one of our sons.

I hope we get to come back here some day - as hotel guests!  I heard if you are persistent and call every day you might get in on a cancellation.  This place just oozes with charm!

MOUNTAINS ARE KINDA LIKE PEOPLE...

Being from Oklahoma - the land of few mountains - I've never really studied mountains.  But what I realized on this trip is every group of mountains is UNIQUE.  Some are very rocky (the Rockies in CO), some are lush green hills (the Smokies) and what I learned from this trip is that the Rocky Mountains of Glacier National Park were carved from glaciers (duh).  Which means the peaks are very sharp - they were literally carved by other chunks of ice moving slowly through the years.  You may have heard the glaciers are disappearing, which is true.  There are about 25 left and they expect them to be gone by 2030.  Anyway, like other mountains, they are BEAUTIFUL!  So hard for me to choose just a few pictures.  We spent 3 days here just hiking, taking a boat tour, driving the narrow "Going to the Sun" road, seeing wildlife, and enjoying God's wonderful world.

Mirror images on the lake

Hiking to waterfalls

The Going to the Sun road is scary but wonderful!

Look closely and you can see how they cut the road into the mountains

Grizzly bear!  

Mountain goats by the hotel

Maybe my favorite picture of the bunch!

I am officially a fan of Montana and GLACIER NATIONAL PARK, 

which was really unknown to me before this trip.

THE ALMOST-PERFECT VACATION...

We (the hubs and me) just got back from the almost-perfect vacation.  By that I mean a vacation without fusses (kids), with two like-minded people who enjoy spending time together.  Don't get me wrong - we love and miss our kids but, well, having only the two of us to decide when to get up or what to eat or do is much easier (we did have fun with the Group Messages, sending silly pics to our kids when we had service, and getting their comments).  It was a road trip which we love, seeing America, experiencing nature; eating well. Which I guess is one reason why we've made it 30 years together.  Yes, the Anniversary theme goes on...but we rarely had done something together in honor of our anniversary so this seemed the year to do it. With our baby at camp for a week, we planned... not the trip of a lifetime, but went to some places we had never ever been before and had always wanted to go to - and you know, even though it wasn't Europe or Hawaii or some other dreamy destination, being together doing whatever we wanted to do for 9 days was pretty wonderful.

So I won't apologize but the next few posts from me will be about America's National Parks and all the beauty therein...

Devils Tower, Wyoming - early morning - postcard worthy

We just hiked around the base 1.3 miles but it was still a marvel.  

Just us and the deer at 6:00 a.m.

Teddy Roosevelt  made Devils Tower the first National Monument - and we loved this presentation put on by the National Parks Service!  Free of course-loved that!

After we got back on the road, we stopped in Sheridan, Wyoming at Starbucks to see two sweet sisters we know...the first Starbucks where we've gotten to write on the wall!  They had had an accident to their building and this was some new sheetrock that will soon be covered.

Pretty sweet start to our trip.  We are BLESSED.

THANKFULNESS TINGED WITH SURVIVOR'S GUILT...

Cancer thoughts. To be honest, I am doing this post out of obligation.  This little blog is an important part of my life right now... and although none of this is profound, it is what it is and I want to remember.  Some of my blog posts are scrapbook-like, a history of my family during this time in our lives.  Some of my posts are inspirational (I hope), thoughts that go through my heart as I go on this spiritual journey.  Then there's the "Soup of the week" posts.  LOL, my attempt at gourmet cooking and sharing with you my redneck opinion of it.

But since a month ago when my son was diagnosed with a Seminoma, I just have really been NOT THINKING about it (cancer) much.  Can you say DENIAL?  Usually I'm the first one to get on the internet and educate myself about medical matters.  I only looked this stuff up once, folks.  Maybe because it moved so quickly from diagnosis to surgery.  5 days!  5 days - no time to waste.  I'm really thankful for my son not waiting any longer to get it checked out, for his doctor for acting quickly and sending him to ultrasound.  I'm grateful for urologists who come in early to talk to us and make room on their schedule for surgeries.  Praising skilled hands that do delicate surgery like tumor removal.  Thankful that New Reign was adaptable when he had to miss 6 performances with them.  I LOVE that my son is still his crazy expressive self in a potentially embarassing situation.  I'm grateful to our friends and family for support through cards, calls, and prayer.  It really was holding me up.  Because I was in a state of numbness, however conscious I may have looked to others.  We waited a month for the CT scan, because of New Reign.  And now the scan has revealed what we were hoping for...NO MORE CANCER.  Praise God!  No treatment necessary. No banking sperm, which is a whole other issue.   He will continue regular doctor visits and scans over the next 5 years, but it's a small price to pay for what it could have been.

Maybe I would have seemed more worried about it, but my attention was divided - I also was helping my mother recuperate from knee replacement surgery which was the day after my son's surgery.  To me it was really BAD TIMING, an unscheduled (basically emergency) surgery the day before a scheduled one.  But now as I reflect I'm thinking it was really GOOD TIMING on God's part.  Something to fill  my days, thoughts, hands with...and no hours spent poring over the internet about Seminomas...

Truthfully, I was in a fog.  Days ran together with no slowing down of activity, then all of a sudden July was here.  I wish I could tell you I spent hours in prayer over this.  But I didn't.  I prayed but it was really hard to focus.  Yes, even with both my Dad and my husband's Dad succumbing to cancer, this was new and different.  Even with a good prognosis, you never expect that your child will get cancer before you do.

So we get to move forward.  This was not too traumatic - well I'm sure it was to my son - but for me, not too traumatic in the scheme of things.  We have more reasons to praise our heavenly Father - our son has been saved (again)!  We get to move forward, he returns to college life, and has every reason to expect good chances of fathering children, after he marries that special one, some day.   But I have a new perspective.  The perspective of the parent whose child has cancer.  Survivor's guilt for those who have lost their children and continue to battle...

THANKFULNESS TINGED WITH SURVIVOR'S GUILT.
Those are my thoughts.

CRAZY BUT TRUE...

My baby is now 18 years old!  That is crazy to me.  But true.  Another crazy but true fact,and the real reason for my title:  As part of his 18th birthday father/son trip, he went on a date in Indianapolis, IN with a girl he met on a train when he was 13 years old.  CRAZY BUT TRUE!!!

When we were on a family vacation in 2008, part of it was an all day train ride from Buffalo, NY to Boston, MA.  There was a group of  4 girl scouts close to his age on the train also with a couple of mothers.  Like most groups of kids, they got brave and said something to him as he passed by to go to the restroom at the back of the car.  Then onc of them came to his seat and dropped a note.  So the note passing began...and the 16 & 18 year old siblings were of course egging him on...eventually he went back to the girls and started chatting.  We even took a picture.  Anyway, the main conversationalist exchanged info with our son and they became facebook friends and have kept up with each other the last 5 years.  

So when they were in Indianapolis, IN, they met Makenna for lunch at Dick's Last Resort - looks like a pretty funny place!  Then they ran around a little together and saw downtown Indy while Dad took in a movie...what a brave girl!  Kinda scary, actually...