Favorite Picture!

   Brian is a musician, in addition to the many other hats he wears. This is one of my favorite pictures of him. We are in our upstate NY villa apartment and he is singing and playing love songs to me in bed. Sigh...it was our last day together before I had to come back to TN after reuniting again. We already knew we would spend the rest of our lives together. We just had to figure out the details.

Scrapping Again!

    Sooooo...I have been absent from my ScrapRoom for some time except for brief spurts of activity. Lately, I have been really working and spending time in there! I am finally getting some pages done and the muse is working on me! These are pictures I took with my phone so they are not very good! You'll get the idea, though.

One of our first hikes!
 

Part of our NYC trip!



Apple orchard hike!

Happy New Year!!

     It has been a very good start to the new year! We traveled to NY to see family on Christmas Day - after hosting Christmas Eve festivities AND Christmas morning festivities for TN family. We spent 5 busy days visiting family and friends there. We ate "real" pizza, Charlie's Hot Dogs, Ted's Fish Fry, and stopped at Uncle Sam's candy store in Schenectady! We arrived back in TN just in time to repack and head to Nashville for New Year's Eve! We joined 130,000 of our closest friends to watch the music note drop and see a great outdoor concert headlining Lady Antebellum and Gavin DeGraw. They even had fireworks and confetti canons! It was a great time and we will do it again!

 

One Year Later...So Much Has Happened

     I have been absent from Blogger for soooo long! You may remember that last October I met my very first love and we rekindled our love story. We married in November, traveled back and forth from TN to NY, he retired from his lengthy state career, he moved to TN and we started our happily ever after. We were settling into our new normal when I noticed a funny mark on his back. We went to the doctor, had it checked out, diagnosis - stage 3 melanoma! Needless to say we spent endless days in shock and terror! I can't begin to describe all the things we were thinking and feeling. The doctors were very aggressive with treatment and Brian had three surgeries in a very short timespan. We would get terrible news and then better news. Our emotions were shot to pieces and we didn't know what to expect next. Biopsies, blood work, PET scans, CT scans, a whole new vocabulary of scary words!! Tumor removal, sentinel node dissection, bilateral axial node dissection...oh my!! Finally, the best news of all -- Cancer has been removed completely!!!!!!!!! Now we go every three months for checkups with the dermatologist and the oncologist for the next two years. We can handle that. We feel very blessed and have come to believe we were meant to meet again so that I could find that cancer and we could fight it together!

    We are busy filling every day with so much living and happiness! We have been to Cape Cod and to Florida and to the Smoky Mountains. We had NY and Texas family here to visit. So much has happened since that very first meeting last October----!

This little spot in the middle of his back

Led to this



And to this at the same time



Which took us here

For this...Bilateral Axillary Nodal Lymphectomy




















Cape Cod - still recovering but having fun - 3 weeks post op

On the ferry to Martha's Vineyard

On the beach in Florida!

My Birthday!

So...because I am completely spoiled, Brian insisted that we keep our plans to spend my birthday in Cape Cod! He still had drain tubes and his doctor was less than thrilled with the idea, but we went anyway. I am so glad he insisted! It was so good for him! We had more fun than we should have! Pam and Wayne met us there and spent several days with us before they had to head back to Troy. We did and saw and ate soooo much! We even had a campfire on the beach...check that off the bucket list!

Strawberry Time!

 We both seem to have an illness about picking crops! Can't seem to stop! There are always a few more that will fit in the basket! LOL! Now to make the shortcake!

Annual Easter Egg Hunt and Coloring!!

    Hubby and I spent last night filling almost 300 plastic eggs for the grandkids egg hunt this Saturday! First, of course, we had to go and buy LOTS of candy! We only sampled a few...really! We also bought eight dozen eggs for the grandkids to color. Luckily for us, it is going to be beautiful and warm and sunny on Saturday so we can make that mess outside. Other Easters have been yucky outside so coloring happened inside...and all over the floor...and the walls...and the table...and the kids!! LOL!! It's always a blast and the kids are so proud of their eggs. After the coloring, we go outside to find the candy-filled eggs. Our adult children hide the eggs and then it's a free-for-all!! We have eight "special" eggs...one for each grandchild...with a "special" surprise inside. Once they are all sugared up we hug them and kiss them and pat them on the fannies and send them home!!!
   This year one daughter's birthday is on Monday...so we will also have cake and ice cream to celebrate! Fun, fun!!
   We have invited my mom and dad over for dinner on Sunday. Just the four of us...should be nice and relaxing. Of course, mom will also come Saturday to take pictures of the bedlam...I mean egg coloring and hunting! Check back for pictures!!

Lee concentrating!

James, Clark, Taylor, Lee, Criss, William

The mayhem!

Easter fun!