Glenlaurel

This week we start school! I'm looking forward to this year. I know many people have said 7th grade is the most difficult year but I think Jenna can handle it. She is a top notch student. Sarah found out her teacher this year is Mrs. Sheehan for 4th grade and Matthew has Mrs. Shaw for first grade. He is NOT excited about going to school every day. It will be good for him though. He is VERY close to riding his bike. He just needs to work a little more on stopping with the brakes and not his feet.  I'd like to start riding to school instead of walking - that takes a long time!

The other day we had a cupcake wars challenge! 

It was so fun! The flavors were:

• Erik made chocolate caramel coconut (with toasted coconut!) cupcakes
• I made smores cupcakes
• Jenna made lemon mint (and she used fresh mint leaves) cupcakes
• Sarah made strawberry cupcakes
• Matthew made orange cupcakes

Prior to our cupcake challenge I asked for a list so I could go grocery shopping and buy them whatever ingredients they wanted to make their cupcakes. It was fun and we ate a lot of cupcakes. Yum!!

We just had our Glow in the Dark VBS last weekend. I was on the committee and was the teacher. Other people on the committee were in charge of snacks, crafts, etc.  I loved that it was glow in the dark. The verse we were using was: "For you were once darkness, but now you are light in the Lord. Live as children of light" ~Ephesians 5:8

I had to snicker since at first the committee wanted to name the VBS "Children of Light". It all worked out well - we even did glow in the dark yoga. Jenna was a helper and Sarah and Matthew were participants.

Glow!

 This past weekend Erik and I went to Glenlaurel for our 20th anniversary. My parents took the kids for the weekend and it was glorious! Glenlaurel is very pricey but it was romantic (no one under 21 allowed) and beautiful. We stayed in the Douglas suite which had a whirlpool tub and even had robes for us to wear. The dinner is 6 courses: appetizer, soup, salad, sorbet, dinner, dessert. I loved it! Erik even got a scotch to drink so we really felt like we were in Scotland. Even though we ate so much we did several hikes to burn off all that yummy food! I was stung 3 times on Saturday. Two wasp stings and one bee sting. One of the wasp stings was bleeding too. Bummer. We still hiked though. I'm tough like that....

Erik drinking scotch

rocks

Glenlaurel

 For the past 3 weeks several legendary birds have been out in pokemon. I've gone around to try and catch these birds by doing raids with random strangers. Sometimes I take 4 phones with me (mine, Erik's, Jenna's and Sarah's - Matthew is not into pokemon). Anyway - someone caught a picture of me with my 4 phones and I made it on the Facebook site for PoGo. Then today when I went to do a raid someone recognized me and told me I was famous. I am famous among pokemon go players I guess. Regardless, I have all of the legendaries and am up to level 32. The max is level 40.

My pokemon facebook post

 Since our trip was for our 20th anniversary I thought I would post a picture of us on our wedding day and yesterday. We haven't aged a bit lol!

20 years

Another friend gone

We lost another friend from cancer. Our friend David DiSilvestro passed away from complications of immunotherapy. He had surgery and radiation. The cancer was gone. He was perfectly fine and healthy. They were just doing this last immunotherapy to check for any other cancer that might be there. It killed him.

He has a 2 year old son and another baby on the way. She is 37 weeks pregnant. I can't even believe this happened.  He was the bass player in our worship band and came to poker at our house. We were just starting to get to know them and then this tragedy. Why? He was such a great guy and now the kids will never know their father. He was 32 years old when he passed away. I've been sick to my stomach about this. Lots of tears shed.

My opinion is not popular but I believe chemotherapy and radiation kills more people than cancer. I think in 50 years we will look back and say "how could they do chemotherapy? didn't they realize it was killing everyone". It will be the same as we view bloodletting now. Of course it is all the doctors have and everyone is too afraid of medical malpractice to try something different.

RIP David.