A Birthday & A Grandson

This is the beautiful bouquet sent to me for my 85th birthday by my two terrific Dallas nieces.

My birthday turned out to be a very special day indeed. Even though I was (and am) still sick, I got so many wonderful telephone calls from all of my children, and even some of my grandchildren. I talked so much that I ended up coughing lots more yesterday, but it was oh so worth it. I didn't feel very hungry last night but Dick really wanted to bring me a special birthday dinner, so I let him. He went to the Outback and brought the most delicious prime rib dinner I have had in many years. It was so thick and it just melted in my mouth. Honestly, I hardly had to chew at all. Of course it had all the "fixings" plus a bloomin' onion. We have enough for another dinner just like it tonight. He even bought me a birthday cake. All in all, I couldn't have asked for much more. I do want to thank all of you for sending so many wonderful, e-mails, cards and good wishes. But enough about my birthday. Tonights post is to be all about one of my grandchildren. You do have to know that I am doing these grandchildren posts in no particular order. Eventually, I will get through them all. Tonight's post therefore, is about Sean Noyes, my only son's youngest child. (This, of course, doesn't take into consideration that last July he added three extra ones of Stacy's, his wonderful new bride.) I'll do them all together at the end, because I want you all to know about them too. (I just figured out in my mind that will take 12 more posts so about this time next year you should know about all of my grandchildren.)

Sean Noyes was born May 17, 1997. He is the youngest of my natural grandchildren. Unfortunately, I didn't get to see as much of Sean as I would have liked when he was a small child because his mother didn't like me very much. As it turned out, she didn't like my son too much either, because after they had been married for seven years, she told Rich that he didn't make her feel pretty anymore so she wanted a divorce. He had adopted her four year old, Cameron, when they got married and they had another child, Blaine, who is four years older than Sean. I really loved these three kids so much, so it wasn't only tough for Rich but it was hard for me too, when they spent most of their time with their mother, even though they had joint custody. Rich had them every other weekend, so I did try to see them once in a while. The amazing thing though, is that all three of them left their mom and step father and came to live with their dad. Sean was only 14 when he went to live with his dad in Lake Tahoe. Blaine had left to be with Rich a couple of years earlier. Cameron left as soon as he graduated High School and lived with his dad off and on until just a couple of years ago. I can tell you though, that Rich was the happiest person ever, when he had both Blaine and Sean with him in Lake Tahoe, after all those years of paying child support for three children.

It is so neat now that they are all together and Sean is so very helpful with the three young ones. It is a joy to us to see how very happy the whole family is.

But more about Sean. He is such a bright intelligent boy who has managed to get straight A's. He and I have such a great relationship and he is about the only one of my grandchildren that phones me on a regular basis, somtimes two or three times a week. He is also a great Scrabble player. Whenever we are together, you can find three of us, his dad, Sean and me hunched over a Scrabble board. I am sad though, that he doesn't get to spend much time with us. I only see them about twice a year, when we visit them in Tahoe, or they spend a night or two with their dad when he comes to see us, which isn't very often. As I said before though, we do talk on the phone, so in that way I can keep up with all of his happenings.

Sean is getting to be quite a good golfer. That is one of the main things he likes to do when the weather is right. He also loves to ski and does a lot of that when the snow is good.(It wasn't so great this year, which hurt the economy up there quite a bit.) The beach there is also a great attraction. That lake is probably the most beautiful lake I have ever seen.

We are planning to go up there around the end of September so we are really looking forward to that! I wish I had pictures of him when he was a little boy because he was such a darling little kid, but I don't seem to be able to find any. Surely we took pictures then, but for some reason I just can't find them so these will have to do.

I have no idea how old he is here, but he is pretty young.

As you can see, he is a great USC fan, as we all are in this family.

I can't imagine what I was writing, but evidently he thought it was interesting.

This is one of my favorite pictures of him. He was letting his bangs grow. They later got so long I couldn't figure out how he could see through them.

This is the family at home , including the three younger ones. He has a nice haircut and you can actually see his forehead.

I really need Dick to help me with the pictures and he is almost ready to go to his meetings, so think I will bring this to a close. Until next Tuesday, my good wishes go out to you all.

The Worst of Times

Thanks, so many of you for e-mailing me to see if I were sick or something because I didn't blog last week. I'm afraid you were so right. It was a pretty hectic time, I must say. We had to go to Villa Park for a funeral on Saturday the 7th. Two weeks earlier we heard that my daughter's father in law had stage 4 cancer and it was too late to do anything. This is a man who was a very vigorous 81 years old. Van had never smoked in his whole life and was always healthy and hard working. He hadn't been feeling quite right for a few days so decided to go to the doctor. You can about imagine how we all felt when he got this diagnosis and in two weeks he was dead. Our granddaughter, Kristin and her family had planned to come and see him on the weekend so that they could see him before he died and they barely got there for the funeral. He was a pilot for United Airlines and my thinking is that he must had gotten it from second hand smoke in the cockpit before they had the no smoking laws.

Anyway, that was a crazy weekend. We went to Nikki's on Tuesday morning to see Kristin and family as they were leaving that night and we wanted to see them one more time before they left. We didn't get home until it was almost time to go to bed, so just didn't have time to post that night. The next morning I woke up with a horrible sore throat. I figured it might last a couple of days, so didn't go to the doctor until Friday, when I found out it was a bad bacterial bronchitis. He put me on Cipro and I still have to take it for five more days. I hope I get to feeling better pretty soon because I am so weak I can't even walk across the room without getting exhausted and really short of breath. I have a terrible cough and my ribs and stomach are so sore from it. Oh well, I am sure I will live and I just don't want to talk anymore about my being sick, except to say that I was just beginning to feel pretty well too when that hit. I hope it doesn't take me as long to get better as it has my friend who is still coughing and weak after six weeks!!

Easter was really a lonely day. I hated to miss church as I always look forward to our Easter Sunday services. Of course, I heard they were lovely, and I missed hearing Dick's group sing, which didn't thrill me either. Plus, I was alone until late in the afternoon as there were so many things for Dick to take care of after our meetings. We go from 11:00a.m. until 2:00p.m. and he had to leave around 8:00a.m. He did come home between Sacrament and Priesthood Meeting to see how I was, which helped, but still, it didn't seem like Easter to me.

I also went to see my orthopedist yesterday. I wasn't about to cancel an appointment that I had made four weeks ago, because he has been so very busy, it was the soonest he could see me. I could have gone to his PA, but I really wanted to see HIM. He confirmed my own diagnosis about my left shoulder problem. It WAS my rotater cuff. He gave me a shot of cortisone right into the middle of it and it was pretty unpleasant, I must say. It was really bad yesterday and I had to put ice packs on it for 20 minutes out of every two hours all during the rest of the day.

When I went to the doctor with my bronchitis, he told me that if I weren't feeling much better by Monday, that he wanted me to get a chest Xray and had given me the lab orders. So we also went to another building to get that. We left our house at 9:00 in the morning and didn't get home until a little after noon, so it was a very long morning for me. My shoulder really does feel quite a bit better today though and I just hope that shot lasts for a long time.

In just six days, on April 23, I will be 85 years old!! I should be feeling somewhat better by then, I hope, but don't think we will do anything special to celebrate. I had such a wonderful birthday on my 80th. All my kids came for the big party that Sue planned for me. It would have been fun to have had them come again, but everyone is way too busy this year. It's okay, I am going to do my best to ignore it. At least by the next day, I will be able to have something more interesting to post about. I think it might even be the day I usually post about one of my grandkids. That would be a fun thing to do. I can't remember whether I do that every third or fourth week of the month, but since I haven't done that yet, I'd better do it for sure because had it been today, I certainly would not have been prepared. That takes Dick to help me with the pictures. Even Dick can't figure out why the spacing goes crazy when we post the pictures. It looks perfect on the blog as we are doing it, but when it posts, the spacing between the pictures is way too much. I used to have Sue go into my blog and fix it, but I'm getting so I don't like asking her to do it, so Dick still tries to work it and sometimes he can get it pretty well, but it is never perfect. Go figure. Dick is pretty darned good on the computer but he has never posted a blog before and certainly has no intention of ever doing it, but he does read Sue's every day and so many times he will make a copy of it and take it into his Bishopric Meetings with him to share and everyone loves to read them. What's not to love about her blogs. They are all so interesting and different too. She can be funny, serious or whatever and they are all good. I wish I had half her talent.

Well, to tell you the truth, I'm about worn out, so it's back to my chair for me. Next week will be better, I promise. Love you all,

Darlene

Special note to Rune from Norway and Linda from Scotland: You really should read my daughter Sue's blog, just once and I think you will be hooked. Go to grannysuesnews.blogspot.com and look at some of her older entries too!

A Bit of This and That

I have had a terrible time trying to get my pictures in the right place, so I'll tell you right off that my pictures of the great grandchildren got posted before I even got them labeled or before I even wrote my blog, so you will just have to look at the post before this one to see the pictures of the kids having fun in the pool last Saturday when Matt and the kids came over to pick the last of our tangerines to take home and sqeeze them for juice. He was able to take home four big bags, so their trip in that respect was very sucessful. The funny part is that between the time the pictures were accidentally posted and the time I started this, my actual blog, I got one comment. I wonder what Kathy thought when she saw only pictures for my blog this week. Needless to say, I am horrible upset because I want so much to learn how to post pictures successfully and I am afraid I won't be posting any more until Sue comes the last of May when her family all come for their golf adventure this year. Hopefully she can showt me what the heck I am doing wrong.

Our last week has been a very busy one and I must say a very successful one. Of course our Saturday was fun because of Matt and family coming. Heather had planned to come too and she had even re-scheduled a photo shoot so that she could come, but would you believe that before Saturday she had already booked another photo shoot and of course I was happy for her because she loves her work so much and doesn't want to turn down good photo shoots. I don't really blame her. We fixed a huge 7 1/2 pound beef roast and I made creamy mashed potatoes, gravy, salad and Dick fixed sweet white corn. We decided to have a picnic outside and by the time Matt got three children's plates fixed, we adults discovered our meal had really cooled off. I tried to get the guys to put the dishes in the microwave to heat up a bit, but neither could be bothered, so we ate a pretty cold roast beef meal, but they neither one complained. I also made a cheesecake which everyone enjoyed. Matt said they needed to leave at 6:00 p.m. and they actually headed out the door right on time. As usual, I hated to see them go and had to have a little cry, but they will also come back for a good part of the golf experience so will at least get to see them next month.

We did enjoy watching conference Sunday (both sesssions) but we have Saturday's taped to watch tomorrow. We just haven't had time yesterday or today. I forgot to mention why we were so busy last week. Before Matt came, we did spring housecleaning. Dick and I were both pretty exhaused Friday because we had to do a lot of it ourselves. I hired a woman to come every month because it is getting harder for the two of us to deep clean, especially the floors and mirrors. I have been trying to find someone for months. This woman is a very hard worker, but quite slow. I had hoped she would be able to do the whole house in six hours, but because she was so particular and fussy, she hadn't even had time to touch the kitchen or the living/dining room. She offered to come the next morning and finish. She said she wouldn't charge us anything, but we didn't feel quite right about that so we told her we could afford two more hours and then we decided to help her. It's a good thing we did, because after working two hours, and stopping for lunch, we still weren't done and after lunch she insisted on working on her own time for an extra hour, along with us, until we got it all done. It is REALLY clean now and I am grateful for that. She is pretty sure it won't take nearly as long to do it next month, and I think she is right. I met her at our R.S. birthday dinner. She is an investigator and has been coming to all of our meetings for about a month. Her brother is a Mormon of four years and he and his wife were married in the Temple. Robyn (my new friends name) is learning disabled and her brother and his wife pretty much take care of her. She doesn't really need to earn the money, but they felt that she should be kept busy as she is also a recovering alchoholic. I think that she is going to work out just fine.

I just had to mention before I close that I have been exercising on a regular basis now. This morning I walked ten minutes on my treadmill, rode my stationary bike for fifteen minutes and did pool aerobics for 30 minutes. That is a total of fifty five minutes today!! I am planning to do this five days a week, and we will be adding to our pool exercises a bit at a time. We just did 15 rotations of each exercise instead of 30, so we started out slowly. When we get to 30 rotations, it takes us about 40 minutes because by that time we are also able to do them more quickly. Summer is really so much better for me because of the exercise I am able to do. In winter, I can't do pool exercises as it is just too cold and I don't even like to be out in my special gym in the garage, but I do try to do those indoor ones anyway. If only my left shoulder and arm could get better, it would be so much easier for me. My appointment with my orthopedist is still two weeks away. All the Docs are so busy during the season because a lot of people wait until they come here for the season to do all their surgeries etc. We do have an excellent hospital and they have all the latest techniques and equipment. It is quite well known too, the Eisenhower Medical Center. I can get an appointment any time I want in the summer but unfortunately my shoulder won't wait. I think I have a rotor cuff problem. Will find out soon. I don't think I will even edit this, so excuse any spelling errors.

A Bit of This and That