Today I went shopping for the first time for a homecoming dress with my 14 year old daughter, Mary Mac. Yes, my baby has a date to a homecoming dance. What a day! Mary Mac loves to shop. She could spend hours in a mall just trying on clothes. It takes her a long time to make up her mind. I, on the other hand, don’t shop for more than an hour at a time, usually...

When I was growing up people used to stop by the house just to visit. They might stop by in the evening and end up staying for a hour or they might stop on a weekend afternoon and stay for several hours. They might bring something from their garden or just themselves to say hello. In our hustle and bustle world today this really doesn’t happen much. Impromptu...

We woke up before the wake up “call” came to knock at our door. We were tired but anxious to get to the balloon ride. It didn’t take us long to repack. After two weeks of packing up your stuff every morning you get to be an expert at getting it done quickly. As we start for the lobby one of the porters shows up to carry our bags. We are the first...

We have dinner at 5:30 with the final instructions on tonight’s climb. Eric says there will be three groups. We are surprised that he doesn’t assign people to groups rather letting them select for themselves. This leaves us with only Sarah in our group as everyone else selects group B or C. At first we are a little sad at our small group -there are people...

Last night we had a big dinner and I ate way too much for someone who is starting to have stomach trouble. I will need to watch it today. It was beautiful this morning with the sun coming up as we headed over to Barranco Wall. Yesterday August told us that it is nicknamed the Breakfast Wall because a lot of people “lose their breakfast” climbing the wall....

We were up early – 5am – ready to get going so we went ahead and dressed and packed up. John climbed out the the temp to use the bathroom and saw Jeff outside getting photos. It was almost a full moon and the sky was full of stars. Jeff was taking advantage of the beautiful night to get some good photos of the mountain and the camp. He took one looking up...

I woke up after 6 hours of sleep thinking it was 6 in the morning but it was really 4 am. Note to self – do not put on Dr Watson’s salve and got to bed in a -20 degree sleeping bag unless you want to be the next nights stew! My legs and back were on fire from the heat of the bag and the muscle salve. It was kind of like being in a crock pot. I got up and...

Most of the day Saturday Daddy seemed to be doing a lot better than I would have expected. He got up and ate a poached egg and toast in the morning. Two friends came by and visted for an hour or so – Byrl and Kurt. They were just torn up when they left but really glad they had come to see him and visit for a while. Father Chuck came by before leaving town to...

This past week we confirmed that my Dad’s disease has changed in to Acute Leukemia. There are treatments for this, however, they only provide quantity of life not quality of life. My Dad has always been an active person and really isn’t interested in prolonging his life if it just means laying in bed in pain for feeling sick from the treatments. I...