Counting Down!

A week from now I will be headed to Florida to leave for my cruise to the Bahamas!!!!!

SO ready and excited to relax in the beautiful sun with an amazing friend from Purdue and just be. :)

Done and....Exhausted!

Well we are finally done moving Grandma--she has a lot of work to do to situate her stuff but everything is at the lakehouse. It was by far a more emotionally exhausting weekend than I had prepared for--maybe because I was there for so long, maybe because I've been emotionally involved over the whole course of this, who knows... I just have to keep resolving myself to the fact that Grandma is probably never going to be the same woman that she was 6 months ago and that's ok. Memory loss is just such a hard thing to deal with as a family because it's one of those things that you can't just 'fix'. There were lots of fortunate parts about this weekend but the most unfortunate is that starting Thursday morning I noticed that I had the worst cough ever--a bunch of my kiddos had it last week and I would joke that they had the plague because I had lots of kids out and for a long time now I understand. The cough kept getting worse and worse and I gradually would lose my voice esp. at the most inopportune times like trying to talk on the phone to the cellphone company for Grandma. I didn't feel too hot but didn't really care........now I have no voice--zero. nada. And feel like a Mac truck hit me--I'm sucking down nutrition hoping that the morning will be better or I guess I could use sign language at work tomorrow. :)

A post a few weeks ago indicated that I might be interested in still doing the Winona Lake triathlon.....well I'm doing it! But as a team--yay no swimming! One of my sisters track team members wants to do the swimming, my sister wants to run, and I'm going to bike. So as soon as I finish up training for the mini then I'll have that to train for. But that's a LOT easier for me to train for.

Only 2 weeks till the Bahamas--yay!!!

Day One Down!

Oh my---I have been working on moving Grandma back to her lakehouse since Thursday evening. I'm already exhausted physically and emotionally and the real moving day is technically tomorrow. Fortunately, I have everything moved back to the lake except for the furniture--that was a huge JOB!!! And have all those lovely things of moving down--the rest of the accounts terminated, got her a new driver's lisc., etc. etc. The most unfortunate part of today is that we discovered that her days of driving are probably over....that will be a huge transition for all of us. Her because it's taking away more of her freedom and us because we will have to go get her all the time. Fortunately my parents live like 25 minutes from her.....I live an hour away but we'll figure it out. I took her to the doctor today and he had a fit when he found out that she had been driving. Since she has the signs of dementia it's now on her health records and if she would get in an accident she would get sued..... That was a hard conversation for her to hear but I was glad to be there with her when she heard it otherwise she might not follow through. Fortunately, at the lakehouse there are a lot of places that she can walk and do things with that community of people and fortunately she can still walk well. As soon as the doctor told her that the rest of the day was not very good because she shut down on me and didn't want to do anything for herself--that's my biggest fear that she will fall back into a place of dependency using her memory problems as a crutch instead of fighting for it. I had to remind myself all day today though how blessed we are to still have her here and that we are back to this point--she will never be the woman that I used to know and I have to work through that and accept that for the rest of her life that we will always be taking care of her instead of her taking care of us. :) I kept reminding myself today that this experience undoubtedly will make me a better mother one day because it has taught me so much about caring for someone selflessly even when an 83 year old acts like a 6 year old in the grocery store........

Suggestions

Does anyone have a really good devotional that they love?? I'm in a pit with good devotionals.......I can't seem to find one right now that I totally love.

What a fun weekend!

This weekend was so sporadic but turned out to be so fun! Friday night I did have a school function till 9:00 but then got to spend some good time with some girlfriends and really catch up on some things going on in our lives. They are the type of friends that you can tell exactly what is going on in your life and they are totally there for you 100%....I love that! Saturday morning I ran 10 miles at running club--it was as good as running 10 miles can be and then came back home to find my dad here ready to help me with some household projects that needed to be done. So after putting a quilt rack up, installing a new bath towel bar, and toliet paper reel, some new mini blinds, and fixing a clock that somehow got broke (I think the painters dropped it) I had those things done. For me to do that it would have been an all day ordeal but my dad is so handy that it took an hour. That evening I went out to dinner with some friends who are from here originally but don't reside here anymore. They were both here to visit their parents and it was SO good to see them and catch up on what's going on in their lives as we are all going through definite seasons of change! After that I took one of my friends and met up with some others to go karaoke....it was so much fun! Loved it! :) I've been before but never with these friends and it was great! This morning was normal church activities but afterwards I made a trip down to my parents. Yesterday when I was running I knew that I was to call my mom immediately after and so I went down to have lunch with my parents and then talked with my mom the rest of the afternoon/early evening. It was sooo good. With all of our focus, attention, and energy on Grandma that's all we ever talk about and coordinating schedules and plans to make sure everything gets done. Usually once that all gets hashed out we're out of time to talk about other things. We both have a lot going on in our lives right now and it was so neat because there were some things that I didn't tell her about till today and vice versa but we both already knew about it and we're prepared for it because the Lord had been laying those things on each of our hearts for a while. That happens a lot to the two of us, which I love. I love that I have a friendship with my mom and that we can confide in each other on situations even when they are situations that we don't have figured out.

I definitely have that feeling that 'a season of change is coming'. I've had it for a long time now but it's getting more and more intense. I know what some of the change is, have an idea of what some of the other change could be, and then after talking with my mom realized that there could be more change yet that I'm not really ready for but God's will is perfect and I love that. One thing that is changing is the Lord is kind of in the process of reshuffling my commitments. I am someone who serves in a lot of different respects because I was raised like that but in the past few months I have known that the door is closing on some of those things because their sesason is over. Today I realized that perhaps one big reason that the door is closing on those things is that He wants me to serve my family more. That I am going to need to free up some time here soon obviously because grad school is starting but also for the needs of Grandma and for my parents. I think right now one of the biggest ways I can serve my parents is by going down once a week with work shoes on and helping to take care of their property. They have a LOT of property--way too much and they can't keep up with it because of their jobs and they are getting older (I don't like that one!) :). I had my dad make a list today of things that need done once we take care of getting Grandma moved and they are all huge projects. It's funny how we feel like we need to be doing certain serving opportunities to make a big difference but sometimes I wonder if just normal things aren't just as helpful. I also think God is going to do something with the fact that I know and am burdened right now for a lot of people who are sick with cancer. I have several friends and family friends who are very ill right now and I wonder what God is going to do with that. It's just a big process of opening and shutting doors!

This is the week that we move Grandma back home! So it's totally going to be a chaotic week.....I leave to go down right after work on Thursday and stay through Sunday. Hopefully though the transition is smooth and good. I'm looking forward to spending some good time with her alone on Friday before family gets there........she's been through so much in the past few months and has a lot to process through.

Close to home....

My heart has gone out to everyone affected by the intense flooding this week--check out this article and you will have a better idea of what some people are going through. This road that collapsed is two roads behind my parents home and is the road where the kids died in the flooding last year. I went to high school with everyone that was involved in this accident and can't imagine what they are going through as a result. I have not been down to see the results of the flooding yet because most of the state roads are still impassable if you only have a car but my dad said that it's so much worse than last year and nearly every county road in the southern end of the county is closed and washed away. My parents lost most of their road and their driveway is gone as a result. My dad had so many scary stories the day that it happened...as he was driving to work the morning of the flooding a state road was so flooded that the fire dept. couldn't get through and a semi was stuck in it.....it took my dad several hours to get to work because there was no way out because all the roads were so flooded. I have been getting emails and phone calls all day to help sandbag here and in multiple other towns--my heart so goes out to everyone that has been affected.