Kansas Bound!

I think I have mentioned that it has been a little busy…in fact, when I was at the Mayo Clinic yesterday morning (goodness, was it just yesterday?) the intake nurse asked me on a scale of 1-10 how stressed I had felt the prior week. Rich and I just busted out laughing. I told him it was about an 8 but he needed to put an asterisk by it because it wasn’t very much cancer related.

When Rich and I returned from Rochester around 3:30 p.m. on Thursday, I immediately started laundry and baking cookies. In between changing loads and swapping out cookie dough in the oven, I was packing up the living room. I have a lot of the packing done…I just couldn’t pack EVERYTHING because , well, we had a graduation party to throw.

This morning, Friday….I left with Lily and her best gal pal, Sam, to head to Overland Park, Kansas for the Naka-Kon Anime convention. They brought different costumes to wear each of the three days to include a few sets of wings and multiple Styrofoam heads and several wigs. I got us settled in our hotel before they headed over to the convention center with all the other dressed up people. There are THOUSANDS of them. They are having a blast though.

After they headed off, I drove to meet up with Joe’s Olathe firefighting shift he used to work with. Joe’s Olathe FF badge number was 446. Today is 446 days since he died. I happened to be thinking about that one day last week….when would 446 days be after his death? Well, it is today, and I happen to be 15 minutes from Olathe. I asked them ahead of time if I could bring cookies for them. They said I could if I stayed at the firehouse to have a meal with them. So I had lunch with them. It was so wonderful to eat with them and chat with them for nearly 2 hours. I brought them cookies with red, white and blue m&m’s. I also brought memorial cards I had made and sent out with Christmas cards this past year. I brought several of those for his firefighter brothers. They thought it was great. I had a really wonderful time with these guys. I can see why Joe was so impressed with them. As two of them were walking me out to my car, one asked if he could pray over me. The three of us stood in a tight circle in the parking lot with our arms around each other as he asked for blessings on me and my family. It was really very moving and such a perfect end to a wonderful visit with these awesome people. Joe was certainly with us.

We are here for the weekend, and go back home on Sunday evening. I am obviously playing catch up on all the things that make me sit down and be still. I am meeting up with Michelle to go to the Botanical Gardens in Overland Park tomorrow afternoon. I will continue to take photos of the girls in their costumes. They really are quite elaborate. Lily even has on tabi socks with her flip flops! (tabi socks are socks with a split between the great toe and the rest of the toes.) Please don’t ask me what characters they are….I have no idea!