Has it really been a whole year?

Well, I'm not going to catch up on a whole year in one post, but here are the highlights. Good summer 2010, sent Jeff off to college and handled that reasonably well (his father flew out with him - whew!) and Jason started his freshman year at high school. Jessica enjoyed being a sophomore (AKA: NOT being a freshman anymore) and kids kept very busy with homework, sports, and outside activities. In December we helped move Dan's parents to a retirement facility from the home they had lived in for the past 15 year. Dan and I took a vacation at the end of February with Dan's brother and his wife in Puerto Rico, which was lovely and relaxing. End of the easy part.

Once we got home from Puerto Rico (my parents flew out and stayed with the kids so that we could go away - yay!), we picked up our Japanese exchange student, who stayed with us for 2 weeks. She was very nice and we enjoyed having her here. A few days after she arrived, Dan's father went into the emergency room with terrible back and hip pain and ended up with a diagnosis of metastatic melanoma (after many days, tests, biopsies, and heartache). This began the odyssey of Dan's visits to PA to help his father and the stress of the situation.

Dan spent almost as much time staying with his brother (who lived within an hour's drive of their parents) as he did at home this past spring. Their siblings also took turns staying in PA to help out. Eventually they moved Dan's parents to a nursing home (Dan's mother suffers from dementia and cannot live by herself) so that both parents could be taken care of. Dan's father passed away in May and we drove down for the funeral. Dan's mother is still in the dementia unit at her nursing home and is doing very well.

In the meantime, we have been helping Jessica to prepare for a trip to Japan as an exchange student this summer. She started her application back in November. Unfortunately, our school year had 5 days added onto the end of the year due to all the snow days we had this winter, and she had to leave for her program before school officially ended. She took 2 of her final exams a week early, and was able to get off in time, even after missing several days of school to attend her grandfather's funeral. Whew!

School is finally out, Jessica is safely in Japan, and should be flying out to meet her host family sometime today (tomorrow in Japan). Jeff is home from college for the summer and working 2 part-time jobs. I am still trying to catch up. Oh yeah, I started a new part-time job as an accountant. I have no training as an accountant (I worked in publishing - proofreading and editing) and am learning as I go. I started in March. It is now June and I am finally feeling like I know a little bit of what I am doing.

I was going to make this a very short post but I suppose I am still feeling a mite stressed and needed to get some of this out. I have great hopes that I will get some projects around the house accomplished this summer, and maybe manage to visit my folks in Oregon. Wish me luck. I will keep making my lists of things to accomplish and projects to do. Happy summer!

OK. Now it is time to schedule a massage!

Shelley in CT