"Halloween is the one night a year when girls can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it."

~Lindsay Lohan, Mean Girls

That's how it seems these days, doesn't it!

Recap

Wow…what a summer this has been. I don’t know how it went by so fast, but it’s already over. So before I move on to the next season I must take a few minutes to reflect on the last.
For our family we started our summer a little earlier then usual, with a trip to California at the end of April. No, we didn’t make it to Disneyland, but we did lots of other fun stuff. We took the kids to Legoland, Seaworld, and spent a few days at the beach. With Ronnie working in California it was the perfect time to take the kids there, and they thought Dad having his own apartment was the coolest thing ever (I’m not so sure about that). I enjoyed my time with Ronnie and the kids’ and hope they will remember this vacation fondly.
It seemed to rain all of June, so planting of gardens and flowerbeds didn’t happen until way to late in the season, but I still enjoyed the digging and pruning while I could. If anyone has suggestions on raspberry bushes, let me know. I planted ours a few years ago, and still nothing.
Again, with Ronnie out of town, Ethan racing was a bit difficult. It was hard for Ronnie to not be there with him, hard for him to not have his Dad there, and hard for me to know what the heck I was suppose to be doing. I think I finally got into the groove, even pulled the bike on the trailer out to the last couple races. Ethan said “You’re the greatest mom ever! Not many moms would leave work early and pull a trailer with a bike on it just so their son could race.” It makes me so happy to know he gets it and really appreciates me. He’s becoming such a great little man.
And of course there was the great vacation my husband took me on in August…still can’t get over how much I loved it there in Maui, but who wouldn’t right.
We didn’t do as much boating this year as last, mostly because of Ronnie being out of town so much, but when he was in town; we tried to get to the lake as often as we could. The kids started jumping in the water on their own instead of being pushed in or coerced, they are truly becoming fish. We did manage to get a good boating trip in during Labor Day weekend. We went south and visited two lakes we hadn’t been to yet, Sand Hollow, which was beautiful, but far too small and too packed to really enjoy “boating”, it was more like “floating” and Quail Creek, wow, what a hidden gem. Quail Creek seemed about the same size as Sand Hollow, but was far less packed, I kid you not, probably at the most 10 boats on the lake at the same time the whole day. It was so warm and peaceful and we even managed to get my much beloved Uncle Pete to go with us. It was a great time.
And now summer is ending, we’ve already winterized the boat, I’ve pulled the flowers out of the gardens and tilled the dirt, I’ve hung autumn decorations in the house and have begun planning for what’s to come.

What a difference a Year makes!

I don't even know where to start...that's how I felt a year ago and it took me weeks to actually sit down and type out the story and my feelings. I won't do that today, I'll take the time to write, I'll make the words come.

Last year, at this time, I was sitting in the hospital with so many family members, waiting, for some spark of hope, for one of the nurses to actually smile or wink or give us some sign that everything would be ok. But it wasn't happening. Last year at this time no one gave any of us much hope that my cousin Curtis would still be with us today. Everything changed that day, life changed, the world changed, our family changed, and nothing is the same. The hospital staff just knew from that first day, there was no controlling this family, the ICU rules just could not apply to us. Two visitors at a time, no...we piled em in 4 deep 6 wide, visiting hours...what hours, no touching the patient..ARE YOU KIDDING! That was the most ridiculous, I understand the overstimulating the patient, but when you have someone in a coma, who is so used to a loving touchy feely family...like ours, he needs to feel us, to know we're all there, he needs to hear us, he needs to know how much we need him and want him back. That night, they gave up.

You see, for those of you that don't know..Curtis was in a horrible accident. They had given up on him before he was even in the hospital. They didn't call in a plastic surgeon to even look at him for two hours, they were just waiting for him to pretty much...die. When my brother called me, he told me I should come see him before they took him to surgery "just in case".

Over the next few weeks we all got to know that ICU better then anyone should. I would work all day, sometimes visit at lunch, and then either go straight there and then get home right before the kids went to sleep, or hurry home from work, spend a few hours with the kids, and then go to the hospital and drag myself out of there sometime before midnight.

Every movement, every twitch, every sound gave us some hope, and finally he slowly started to wake up!

He's still with us, life if different for him. He doesn't see himself when he looks in the mirror, it's a different face, and most of the time he's very positive about it, of course there are those moments when I'm sure it sucks pretty bad for him.

But for us, we're thrilled he's with us. We still want to beat him for putting us through that, but it actually has brought us all much closer, even after a year, we still make sure to say "I love you" before we end a call, we try to get together even for the little things, and yes, I do try to take more time off work for no reason at all.

I've always been waiting, working towards something, but now I realize...my life is happening NOW, it's not what happens some day in the future, its all these small moments woven together.

Appreciate every minute you have with each other, don't worry about the dishes in the sink (yes, I'm still working on that one) or the weeds growing in the garden, read a book to your kids, snuggle with your significant other, take time to appreciate what you accomplished today don't worry about what you didn't..it'll still be there tomorrow. But you never know WHO won't, love them while you can.