Sometimes you get to the point where you hate to answer the phone. Someone raising money, and another to sell you something. But the call Suzanne is really tired of is from a friend or family member who says they have cancer. That call came in again this week from Suzanne’s oldest and dearest Cissna Park friend. This friend accepted her into her life when Suzanne was new to the community; shared her family with ours; traveled to quilting events…
To all our friends & family, Happy Thanksgiving. It’s hard to put into words how grateful we are to still be together for Thanksgiving this year. It seems so long ago that Suzanne was diagnosed, and now we think we have figured out how we will share this life from here on. Since we got married, Thanksgiving has usually been a day we celebrate with Suzanne’s side of the family. Big dinner at Suzanne’s dad’s; both of her brothers &…
A weekend ago, actually a couple of days after the great fall, we traveled to Louisville. KY for the North American International Livestock Exposition. This is the trifecta of events for Suzanne as it includes Rodeo, Daft Horses, and western shopping. We arrived on Thursday as we had tickets for that evening’s performance of the Professional Rodeo Association Great Lakes Regional Finals. This is the last big rodeo event in the area before the big show in Las Vegas, the…
Well, it’s that time, time to travel to Chicago and have Suzanne’s quarterly checkup. As you remember, a part of her clinical trial is to have scans and meet with her oncologist every three months for two years. This time, our appointments were a little later than usual, 9:00 am. It used to be that getting to Rush that early in the morning meant that the majority of Chicago rush hour would be over. During the last six to eight…
We had a wonderful fall season, traveling east to New York, harvesting the garden’s bounty, and meeting a great-grandson for the first time. Yep, our fall was going pretty smoothly until the other night. In a dead sleep at about 1:00 am I was awakened by the words “John, help”, followed by the distinctive sound of full body weight falling lifeless to the ground. Rushing to the bathroom I turned on the light to see Suzanne laying on the floor….
Back when Suzanne changed her eating habits, I had no idea what bisque was. I thought maybe it was what you used when you played frisbee, or an abbreviated name for a breakfast bread item, maybe even what a farmer with a speech impediment calls one of his implements. Now I know and if you’re not sure, Bisque is a style of soup. From what I can read, it is of French origin although modern bisque is far different than…
You wouldn’t think that traveling in Mid October is a wise thing for a farmer to do with harvest in full production, but who ever said I was wise? We have never traveled in mid-October so decided that this was the year. Our first stop was at the Van Wert, Ohio, County Fairgrounds for their 3rd Annual Harvest Happenings. Buildings are full of seasonal crafts, clothing, jewelry, and Apples, every imaginable variety of Apple. The most impressive booth for us…
The number 2000 is probably best know as a year. It’s hard to believe that it was twenty-two years ago when we moved into the year 2000. Getting there was a challenge as the whole world was in a computer tizzy. The fear that all the computers in the world would crash as we moved from 1999 to 2000 made everyone crazy. Banks wouldn’t be able to complete transactions, phone systems would be disabled, and electric grids would collapse. As…
Finally getting caught up with our adventures. With our big trip in mid-June to Florida, we didn’t travel anywhere in July which was especially noteworthy. Early in the month was our annual 4th of July visit with parents in Champaign (now just Suzanne’s dad) for the parade and fireworks. Our son Justin was home for two weeks at the end of the month for his annual youth golf clinic at Shwamii Golf Club. I got to play three rounds of…
Suzanne’s 2nd follow-up visit at Rush after completing the PATHway clinical trial.