A Year of Change

Well today of course is bittersweet. It’s a day to celebrate the great Moms like Lori and Dixie, Annette and Ali’s Mom, Robi and Shelly and Tasha (hope I didn’t forget anyone) but it’s obviously a day of some sadness as my Mom (and yours, you know who you are) is not with us today. This is for some reason probably the most difficult day for me since Mom’s been gone. Not so much this morning or hopefully even the actual day but the two weeks or so leading up to it. It seemed like every time I turned on the tv or radio or walked through a store there was something about Mothers Day. I remember many Mother’s Days days specifically with Mom. I remember Tommy always getting her a bunch of roses, I think one for each year old he was. It was a day when we’d usually buy Mom flowers for her garden and have some sort of bbq. We miss her very much and knowing what we or I know now, I would encourage everyone to spend as much time as possible with your Mom and tell her you love her every chance you get.

Speaking of spending time with you Moms, Lori is in Sacramento as she surprised her Mom(s) and flew in yesterday to spend the day with both Dixie and Annette. She planned this about a month ago and managed to keep it a secret from Dixie until she showed up at her door. I guess she was really surprised and said this is the first Mother’s Day Lori has been there since high school! We couldn’t put it in the blog as that would have given away the surprise! We hope they have fun as there’s a lot of festivities planned. I know Annette is coming up too and then they’re all going to a party, whoo hoo! Happy Mother’s Day to both of you, you’re both lucky to have Lori as a daughter as our boys are to have her as a Mom.

Yesterday Ty and I were in Denver at the tournament by 11 am after dropping Lori at the airport. He played 3 games and although they lost all 3 (the teams from the “hood” are much better) but they played well. No one had any expectations of winning but wanted to put up a good fight which they did. We finished around 5 and headed up the hill for home after stopping at Dino’s Italian Restaurant, (where I worked when I was 14 years old!) for some homemade pasta and a pizza and of course, homemade spumoni ice cream. Ty then slept for the whole ride home until we arrived around 6:45.

Jag had been studying all day so Ty and Jag walked into town to shoot some hoops for a break while I fed the dogs and took care of them. Soon it was sundown and they were back and proceeded to watch a movie while I headed up stairs. It’s now 6:45 am and both dogs have had breakfast and been out and I’m going to try to get to the gym.

Hope all you Mom’s have a great day, you deserve it! Happy Mother’s Day!

We’re up early this morning as Lori, Ty and I are off to Denver. Ty’s first game is at noon and then he has one at 2 and one at 4. Jag will stay home with Harley and be studying all day long. He has like 10 days left in school and that’s it. Last night I made a duck that was pretty good but we also made pasta for the boys. Mojo just crawled in bed with Harley and is laying there letting her chew on his leg. What a good big brother. I just took a rubber band out of her mouth, ugh.

We hope to be home by 7 tonight and then tomorrow need to clean as I can see a layer of dust on the furniture. What fun, here are some ics of the dogs, enjoy the day and GB.

This morning I’m returning the rental car in Denver and picking up Lori’s Suburban from getting fixed when we were hit from behind. Then I have a 9:45 am sales meeting and then it’ll be back up the hill. Ty is back on track at school and Jag is doing well amidst all the tests and finals. He has two hard weeks in front of him while today Ty rehearses for the Civil War Reenactment which is an annual event at his school. They dress up and go all out. Some older veterans around the valley come and help every year so it’s a lot of fun and a learning experience at the same time. I’m not sure when the actual event is but we’ll get pictures.

Lori has a crazy pants patient in today for surgery. Yesterday during pre-op yesterday the PA asked when does her arm hurt and she crossed her arms, grabbed the bottom of her t-shirt on each side and pulled it up over her head as if she was taking it off and exposed her breasts and said “when I do this”! Obviously Eric the PA was in shock. Too funny.

It’s 5:26 now and I need to get moving. I can also hear Harley downstairs in Jag’s room in her crate so time to go. Have a great day, we have a big weekend ahead so more to come tomorrow. God Bless.

Well to be fair, it’s going to be 88 in Denver but it’ll probably hit 80 up here which is warm! I hope we don’t have too hot of a summer. Ty stayed home from school with a fever but somehow made it to basketball as it was their last practice before the tournament this weekend. Jag texted his coach that he just can’t make it to practice or the weekend tournament until finals are over which we totally understand. He has such a heavy load, by his own choice, that we sometimes think it’s too much. He’s a driven kid but I’m lobbying for him to scale it back a bit next year.

Lori has to be at work by 8 am for an attorney call. I was heading to Walden today but am now going on Monday. Harley is Harley, all puppy. She’s a great dog and again, Mojo is thrilled to have her here.

I’m thrilled with my new way of eating as I’ve finally found (I think) they key to no inflammation. It was tough at first but we pretty much eat most of the things we can eat and avoid the things we can’t eat anyhow. I’m down to 203 pounds today which is a new low for me and where I probably haven’t been since high school days. I’ll stop now as no one wants to hear about this I’m sure but hopefully we’ve cracked the code to better health. By the way, breakfast was muffins that took 3 minutes to make with almond and coconut flour, an egg and that’s about it. 90 seconds in the microwave and it reminds me of the popovers Mom used to make us.

Robi posted yesterday that it was 8 months since Mom left us. I agree it doesn’t seem that long as I still think of her everyday. I have a large drawing Dad must have had done of her and I swear she’s looking right at me everytime I’m in my office. I tell her hi and from time to time talk to her. She said to tell everyone hi and that she’s doing fine! Oh well, to each their own.

Have a great day and God Bless.

Yesterday Ty went to school and then had the All League Track Meet after school, however he should not have run as he was still sick! The coach said he needed to run or they couldn’t compete as they would be short one guy to qualify for the meet. I obviously was not happy about that! It continues today but I’m sending an email saying he cannot run today. We’re not even sure he’s going to school but we hope so.

Jag had a lot of work as they’re piling it on with only a few weeks left. Lori had crazy patients as usual and my day was full of puppy and phone calls. Today I have an appointment at our friends art gallery in Denver as she finally has a liquor license and I’m hooking her up with our distributor so she can buy our wine and beer at a good price. She needs a couple of cases of high end wine for high end clients so I’ll probably come home with a new painting too as we trade a lot.

Lori has a half day today which is good. She needs the break. It was warm like in the mid 70’s yesterday and is supposed to be warm again today. I’ll stop by Mom’s on the way out of town to meet James to get some more trash out of the house.

Harley’s been out 5 times already this morning! Lori’s cooking bacon which smells so good but I’m on my third day of my cleanse. I’m down to 205 pounds and feel really good but bacon sure smells good! I think it was Kristin that said “nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”. Sometimes I don’t know about that! Time to run, hope everyone’s well, take care, GB.

Lori and I woke up about 5:45 which is about normal. She makes coffee and I go get the atomic ball of energy, which is putting it lightly. Once we get Harley out of her crate and feed her, she then is like a Category 4 Hurricane for at least the next 30 minutes. Jumping, barking and flying across the room is all part of her morning routine. She’s all puppy.

Jag was up before we were and had taken her out and is now studying while Ty is still sleeping. With his bad cold and swollen eye, he stayed home yesterday on the advice of the doctor. He will be going to school today though.

Ty and I did make a run to the storage unit to take down about 20 boxes. I must have $3000 invested in the $20 Ziploc containers as I have stacks of them filling up one unit.

Time to get Ty up, he’s more difficult than Jag these days. Man can that kid sleep. Lori has clinic as it’s Tuesday. We have one sort of friend or acquaintance from Aspen that needs surgery and we think is going in this Friday but she’s so high maintenance Lori was joking she should send her to Denver, ha. Lori must have had 6 calls with her and countless emails. She keeps asking for guarantees that this and that won’t happen which no one can guarantee with any surgery. Oh well, another day in the life of Lori.

Time to go, hope all’s well, it’s getting warm up here, have a great day and God Bless.

Ty is pretty sick and on top of that, has a swollen eye from some sort of bug bite. He wrote a note complete with artwork and put it on his door saying “please don’t wake me as I’m sick” with a picture of him sleeping and a checkmark and then “no school” with a picture of pencil and paper and a big X. I need to get him a doctor appointment today somehow.

Jag has been studying a lot and has his first final a week from Thursday. The following week he has a bunch and then is done. I need to be in Denver Wednesday and Friday and up at the ranch on Thursday. Lori has work as usual.

On a sad note, which I’m sure Tom and Robin are also experiencing, every time I turn around there’s a Mother’s Day ad or promo. This of course is the first Mother’s Day without Mom. I hope she’s getting ready to have a big party up there with Dad and all her friends. It seems every time I’m packing up some stuff, some of it is Mom’s so that too brings back some memories.

I need to make a run to the storage unit today with about 20-25 more boxes and then reclean the garage. It’s a long process. It’s hard to measure any progress around here but as I tell Lor, every box that leaves the house is one more small step forward, whether she sees it or not. We have a long way to go but as Mom always said, one step at a time.

Have a great day, God Bless and do something special for your Mom this week!

Yesterday Lori and I headed down to Denver after dropping Jag off for volleyball. We had a great do-over birthday for her as we exchanged a few things we needed to, had some lunch and then browsed some furniture stores which Lori likes to do. Meanwhile down in Colorado Springs Jag’s team lost their first game to the 101st ranked team in the Country and then the second by 3 points. They would have won the second and been in the State Finals except one of their players made 10 separate mistakes when setting the ball which gave the other team 10 points! Oh well, they ended up like 7th in the State which is pretty good since we never had a team before.

Ty stayed home with Harley and had Sonny come over. He spent the night and they’re still both still sleeping. Who knows how late they stayed up! Mojo and/or Harley woke is up at 7 this morning, not sure who started the morning. Last night they went to see Grease, the school play at VMS.

I think Jag has some studying to do as he only has like one week of school and then two weeks of finals. His AP Finals are down at the college.

Lori and I need to get to the gym so time to go. Hope all’s well. Harley is in her crate right now as she’ll move barricades of any kind with her front feet to get down to Jagger in the basement. We are reorganizing his room and closet today which will be a major project! Have a great day, God Bless.

Alright, here it is, yesterday was sort of a bust birthday wise. It was just one of those days where everything sort of was a bit off, like some sort of sitcom. Lori did manage to get home a little after 1 and I had just returned from dropping off the car in Denver. On the way I stopped to get some plastic shelving and containers to make a makeshift closet for Jag as we need to figure out a better system for his clothes for the next 5 or 6 months. We did go meet with Tom, our architect, to work more on the house. It’s coming together well and we have preliminary title commitment on our land where we want to build. More on that later.

Jag had volleyball until about 5:45 and Ty then had basketball at 6. Lori and I both forgot this so that threw a wrench in our dinner plans which we were loose with no real plans anyhow. I also bought a gluten free cake from a bakery in Silverthorne which is a great bakery but in this case, it was inedible. Apparently Lori had told me to just get a Whole Foods cake but I thought I was doing something special and better. When everyone took the first bite, the faces of Lori and the boys, like on some sort of cue, were like off of a funny tv show. The cake, for some reason, tasted like sandpaper. We all spit it out and that was it for cake. Sometimes you should just do what your wife says, ha. Anyhow today is another day so we’ll try for a do over.

Jag has to be at school to leave for Colorado Springs at 8:30. Lori and I will drop him and then head to Denver. We’re going to get by Mom’s house today and see what all we need to do to get the rest cleaned out. I think it’s supposed to be warm there today, and up here. Ty will stay and be on Harley duty, taking care of her and continuing to clean his room. We’re making progress around here. It’s almost as if we should just throw everything out and start over, ha. As I said before, we need to purge our storage unit to fill it back up!

One more thing, two days ago, to top everything off, Harley jumped up on Lori, which she likes to do, and knocked her over! She’s probably somewhere between 35 and 40 pounds now and is almost 4 months old but she’s all muscle and tends to launch herself at you. Lori must have been a bit off balance and not expecting it as all of a sudden all three of us boys turned around to see Lori on the floor, too funny.

That’s it, mid-70’s in Denver today, that’s warm! have a great day and God Bless and the Kentucky Derby is also on.

Hard to believe it’s Lori’s birthday again. She doesn’t look like she aged any over the last year but here we are again. She’s only working a half day so that’s good but the rest of the day will probably be spent purging around here. First up, I’m taking the car to Denver to drop it off to get it fixed. I hope to be home before Lori around noon and continue purging.

Jag had volleyball last night and again tonight as Regionals are tomorrow. If they win one game, they go to State next weekend! Pretty amazing. He also received 95% on his in class essay about Frankenstein and Paradise Lost, two books they’ve been studying, way to go!

Ty has three A’s, a B, a C+ and and C. He think he can get the C’s up to B’s which would be great. He has basketball tonight. He was hard at work cleaning his room last night.

Time to run, Jag, Lori and I and of course Harley and Mojo are up with Ty still sleeping. Have a great day and God Bless.