It is November 13th in Central Time Zone…where my Joe was born 29 years ago at Scott AFB, Illinois. I am really having a rough time this year. Last year we were able to see Michelle and their dogs….see his best friend, Zac, and go visit all the Olathe Fire Department stations with Kansas City Chiefs cupcakes for all his brothers and sisters with OFD. It was something little, but for us, it felt right. Today, one of the wonderful OFD firefighters Joe graduated with from the academy with went to the crash site and gussied up his roadside memorial. Michelle’s aunt had been by last month and put a fall wreath around the cross. James cleaned up the area and added more white rocks and also added black rocks in the shape of a cross. Joe would have loved it all. The accident happened in rural Colorado off of I-70, so it is not close to much of anything. These wonderful people drove hours to get there and then hours back home. They did this for my son, and I can’t thank them enough for their kindness.

I can’t tell you how hard it is to show these photos on my son’s 29th birthday. So I want to tell you a bit about when Joe was born…because like all of my children’s arrivals into my life, they are emblazoned in my heart and mind. When I was pregnant with Joe, I was on active duty as a nurse in the Air Force. Yep, Joe’s momma wore combat boots while she was pregnant. (I highly recommend it actually, as it has great ankle support). I worked up until the day he was born. I had been working nights most of my pregnancy, but was put on day shift on weekdays once I hit 38 weeks (a pregnancy is normally 40 weeks). We had found out early on that Joe would be a boy. Rich and I wanted to name him Joseph but Rich had a notion that if he was born with red hair (which we thought he probably would be) that we should name him something completely different. His name was going to be Dakota….Coty for short. I never really bought into that “plan B” option. So he became Joseph….red hair and all. In Italian families they seem to just choose a couple of boys names and reuse them over and over again. There are SO MANY Josephs in Rich’s family, namely his brother, his grandfather, and his uncle (and now several cousins’ kids). Matthew, Joe’s middle name came from my brother. His name is Craig Matthew. It was going to be Joseph Craig but we didn’t want him to ever be called JC….the name of a person we both knew in college who I was not too fond of. I liked Joseph Matthew because it was Biblical and it was a strong name. It fit him. We realized he would never be a Joey (that is what Rich’s brother went by….he kind of broke the mold), so we called him Joseph. Little did we know he would be dyslexic and writing Joseph on the top of all of his papers would be a lot for him. In 1st grade, we were living in Colorado Springs and he was taking Spanish classes. That year he went by Jose….it was shorter, after all. By the end of 2nd grade, he had moved schools and was going by Joe. That was so much easier and fitting.

I pray for Joe every night, just as I do my other kids. As I mention them each by name, I envision them as young children. I can feel their little bodies in a hug and the smooth skin of their faces against my cheeks. With my boys, I can also close my eyes and feel their adult faces with their scratchy facial hair and callused hands. We are huggers in our family, so I can still feel them if I close my eyes think hard enough. This is my mother’s heart….and I can still feel all my kids, even if they are not with me. I have had moments of panic over the last 20 months since Joe died that I would forget how he felt…but I haven’t. I can look at a picture of him and feel him immediately at that age…the smoothness of his skin, the feel of his hair…his tight squeeze. I so miss his voice….his smile….and his laugh. There are many days I can smile when I say his name and remember all his wild antics (and he had many); others, like today, it is just a heavy weight on my heart- on that is already broken. I have been a mom for 29 years now…but do not have a 29 year old to celebrate with. However, I celebrate the 27+ years we had with our Joe. He was larger than life while living and continues to be today. We will be honoring our Joe by making a donation to our volunteer fire department this week. I think I can probably speak for Rich when I say we feel very close to Joe when we are there….whether in training or on calls. We plan on honoring Joe by doing this volunteer firefighting. And like Joe, it has been such a gift to us. We have learned so much of the life he led professionally, and we have met so many good people at the station. So here are a few photos of my Joe. Please offer up a prayer for him today….for his brother, Tim, and sister, Lily, who are also missing him, and for his wife, Michelle. His friends are also honoring him today, and I so appreciate them keeping his memory alive. No one is truly dead until people stop talking about them. Happy birthday, Joe. I love you and I sure do miss you!

Wow, it has been a hot minute since I have posted. It is all due to travel and being busy – all good things. Rich went to Florida for 12 days, met me in Houston for a long weekend of family fun and the baptism of our youngest niece, Emily Jo, where we were very honored and humbled to become her Godparents. Rich came home after that weekend and I stayed another week to spend time with my mom and dad and my brother and his family. My dad’s siblings were all visiting Houston and my dad, so that was nice to see them all together. When I finally flew home on October 30th, I brought my mom with me. We introduced her to our new home and our life in Montana. It was nice to show her some snow and some beautiful scenery as well. My mom was able to go to an afternoon at the oncology center with me for the first time. She got to meet my doctor and nurse and to see the infusion center where I go for treatment and blood draws every 4th week. My mom flew home on Sunday, Nov 5th and life just kept going here. We are active with the volunteer fire department here and try to go on most of the calls. Just got back from one, in fact. It is indeed a brotherhood/sisterhood of people who are just willing to go the extra mile to help their neighbors….even if it is in the middle of the night. I hope to be able to take the EMT classes in January- May at the local community college (30 minutes away). We shall see. I did have scans this past week. The local radiologist and the Mayo radiologist came to the same conclusion….still stable. I was a bit nervous about this set of scans. It had been 6 months since my last set of scans and a lot had gone on since the last set. I will be zooming with my sarcoma specialist at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN on Dec 1st, but I have read the reports and it all should be good news. Shrinkage would be nice, but stability is a close second.

Rich and I have taken on a new franchise….but we JUST started….it is a company called Cruise Planners and we won’t just manage cruise vacations but any kind of vacations. More to come on that. We have a big business trip in January, so we will learn more at that point. We are still getting the website and business stuff going. So if you want to travel…think of us! We should know what we are doing soon!

So Veteran’s Day…..I spent my day mostly at the community college taking a bread making class. It was pretty fast and furious….we made all sorts of breads in a short period of time. I got home in time to head out to a volunteer fire department call. But the veterans in my life have been heavy on my heart today. My family is a military one…as is Rich’s. His brother is still active duty Army. Today is the day that I would have sent out Veteran’s Day cards (I usually send out about 24 of them each year – I just lost track of time this year). I am sorry I didn’t get to tell each of those veterans how much their service means to me. This is the day that I would have called my Joe and told him Happy Veteran’s Day and told him how proud I was of his service to our country….what it meant to me to have him continue that chain of military service to the next generation in our family. It died with him…that legacy of service, so today is kind of another one of those hard days missing Joe. Monday is his 29th birthday. That will be hard as well. There are so many wonderful people who God put on our life path over the years. People from my parent’s generation…to include my dad and my uncles. Then there was my Grandpa and Grandma Neitzke, who both served in WWII. They are gone but never forgotten. All the people who Rich and I served with…..so, so many people….men and women. Now we see so many photos and messages from our military friends that their children are also signing up for military service. We are not the only ones amongst our friends who has a father swearing in or getting saluted to by a son or daughter. My heart swells with pride as I see these photos now popping up on Facebook. You tend to surround yourself with like people. I have always just grown up with those in military service. It is a part of me and I am so very proud of that. So I salute all of you veterans….those who paved the way for us and are now gone, those who are retired, those who currently serve, and those who are preparing for military service. Thank you for the tireless service you have given to our country. Thank you for being willing to miss holidays and birthdays and anniversaries. Thanks for standing up for freedom and what is right. I salute you all. These photos are of my family who have served whom I have photos of. Love you all!

Catch up post! What have we been up to? This week has a lot of appointments. For two people with relatively free calendars, we have had appointments this week!

I joined a book club that is offered through the cancer support center in the area. It is such a nice group of people. The social worker who helps organize the meetings each month is able to get hard copies of the books for everyone for free. We discussed the book entitled, “The Magnificent Lives of Majorie Post” by Alison Pataki. It was really good! It was not something that I would have read on my own, so I was pleasantly surprised at how much I enjoyed it. It is a biographical fiction about the life of the Post cereal foods heiress, Majorie Post. It talks about Kellogg’s…it was really very interesting. I have the next two months’ books in hand and they are each different and interesting-looking. I am happy to be a part of this group. I am an avid reader and have an audio book going during the day and a different book on my kindle at night. I love a good story, so getting me out of my normal wheelhouse, is a welcome change as well as being able to discuss them with!

Yesterday I had a doctor’s appointment with a new set of medical folks, called my palliative medical team. I met a fabulous nurse and also an awesome doctor. Unfortunately, that doctor is leaving in November to move out of the area. However, I have my foot in the door for this palliative care team. For those of you who don’t know much about palliative care, let me fill you in. A palliative care team includes a physician certified or experienced in hospice or palliative care, nurse practitioner, clinical social worker, spiritual support specialist, and a registered nurse. Most insurance companies will cover palliative care. This team helps me with relief from symptoms, pain, and the stress of serious illness. The goal is to improve my quality of life that are patient and family centered. To be eligible, you must have a serious illness or life-limiting illness. They don’t step in last minute as you are dying…but they can. I wish I would have had something like this during the first stages of my cancer diagnosis. However, I wanted to get my foot in the door here and get to know them and allow them to help me with side effect management. I am currently doing fairly well, but I do live with a lot of pain in my feet and one of my medical side effects is incredibly vivid dreams, which I have every night, all night. Even though I have slept all night, I do not wake up feeling rested. I was able to talk to her about these symptoms and I will be trying to add a bit of magnesium glycinate at night to help alleviate the issue of the dreams and the cramping in my arches at night. It is such a little thing…but I have been dealing with it for over 2.5 years now. They will keep meeting with me, to get to know me and get to know what I would like for end of life care, whenever that happens. As I told a good friend on the phone today, it was a gut-check to have this meeting take place….but it was also long overdue and I am glad to be in the hands of some wonderfully caring people. I have my next treatment tomorrow, on Thursday. It consists of 3 appointments. I go in and get my lab work drawn. I then go and see my oncologist. He has been great…he wants to see me every time I come in for a shot and do blood work to keep an eye on me. He listens to my heart and lungs…makes sure I don’t have weird swelling going on…you know…doctor stuff that I never got from my local oncologist in Omaha….who I hadn’t seen in over 2 years in person. I am pretty sure this is what my care is supposed to look like. Then after seeing him, I head over to the infusion clinic and get a shot in the hip. Then I am free for the month. However…it is getting to be time for a scan again. My specialist at the Mayo clinic said 4-6 months and the last scan was mid May….so we are getting to be in that time frame now. I will talk to him about it tomorrow. Rich and I are traveling a lot in October…and not actually much of it will be together, so we’ll see what they come up with. This will be my first set of scans here in Montana.

Rich is at the small VA clinic in Kalispell today getting his initial patient appointment done as well. We’ll have to see how much can be done at this clinic. The nearest VA hospital is hours away. I heard a rumor they were thinking of putting a VA hospital in Kalispell, but I don’t know when that would happen or if it was just a rumor.

Friday around noon I will be leaving for Anaconda, Montana (which is near Butte). It is a four hour drive to get there. I will be going on a retreat for women in Montana with cancer. It is called Mending in the Mountains and there will be 60 women attending. I am really looking forward to the retreat and the drive. The colors are changing now and the bright yellows and reds are beautiful in the mountains. I will get home late Sunday afternoon. I had to laugh as I read an email this morning from the organizers saying they are having a Hawaiian themed party on Saturday night and we could feel free to dress up if we wanted to. It is going to be on the porch of the retreat center…which seems like it would be outside….the highs are going to be in the 50’s and lows in the high 30’s. It is more flannel weather, I think! We shall see!

Rich and I have been busy enjoying the beautiful fall weather here. We went to East Glacier (about a 2 hour drive) and hiked all day around there. We went bicycling in Whitefish for an hour and a half or so on Monday. We have taken the dog for a walk on around the riverside city park in Columbia Falls (our nearest town – about 10 minutes away). We are always looking for bears as they are eating 20 hours a day right now trying to fatten up for their winter hibernation. It didn’t take long for us to become more like the locals and be looking at all the scat on the ground….trying to determine which animal it belongs to and how fresh it is. Yep…didn’t do that in Omaha!

Today is a rainy, cooler day, so I am getting things done inside. Catching up on blogging…doing the laundry….making phone calls…procrastinating on vacuuming…which I will do when I am done with this post. I did go out and dusted off my 16 oz boxing gloves this morning. I wrapped up my hands for the first time in 3 years (I stopped bag training when I was put on blood thinners….almost 3 years ago to the day today). It felt good to hit a heavy bag, jump rope and do some speed bag work. It made me realize how out of boxing shape I am, but wow, it felt good. I am thinking Rich may have to use the Thera gun on my upper back tonight or tomorrow, but that’s okay. It was glorious to go cool off in 50 degree weather on the front porch afterwards. That is Tallinn’s favorite spot to be…on the front porch watching everything….like a whole flock of turkeys just making their way across our yard. He doesn’t like turkeys and gives them a wide berth. Here’s a fighting shot of my first day back!

According to many different grief experts, there are five stages of grief…which are not in any order or in any way linear. Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance are those typical 5 emotions. However, many therapists and grief experts have added a 6th stage of grief: finding meaning. Grief will always be something you carry with you. Some people say it is like carrying a rock in your pocket. Others say it is like always holding hands with a ghost. Although you can’t move on from grief, you learn to live with it, and that takes time. Rich and I love our kids so much. It is hard to know what to do with that love for a kid that is no longer here to absorb it. Rich and I are always looking for ways to honor Joe in a way that Joe would be proud….and maybe even get a kick out of what his parents are doing out of a feeling of love for him.

One of the things that Rich and I have decided to do to honor Joe is to become volunteer firemen. We originally thought just Rich would do this, but they accepted me as well and with the biggest portion of their calls being medical, it just seemed right that I try to help out as well. The volunteer fire department is just shy of a mile from our house. We went to their annual open house when we were here in June. We told them when we got settled we wanted to join. I think they thought they would never see us again. Once we were done with our travels for the summer, we started attending the Thursday night trainings. Once you have come to three trainings, you can be put on probationary status. Last night was our third night and therefore we were fitted for bunker gear and given pagers and radios as well as getting us set up on their 911 app. Here are pictures of us trying on our gear. We went on our first call this morning…less than 12 hours later.

And here is my favorite sign….

When we got home this morning after that call, we had Joe on our minds. My high school friends from Hayfield High School in Alexandria, VA, had sent us a tree to plant in our yard in Omaha in honor of Joe. Well, that tree is in Omaha and we are here. We had been talking for months about getting a tree to plant in honor of Joe here at our house in Montana. We have a LOT of trees in our yard and most of them are 50 foot pine trees. We wanted something different. We had decided on a quaking aspen tree. They are so vibrant and well-known in Colorado, where Joe loved and eventually died. We went to a nearby nursery today and walked around with Jose, the owner (how fitting as Joe went by Jose in the first grade because it was shorter to write than Joseph…lol). We decided on a tree with a 3.5 inch diameter trunk. It was a larger tree but was on sale because there was a large scar on the trunk, which the tree received when it was a sapling. It is about 20 feet tall….so pretty well established. Jose said with the root ball it weighed anywhere from 1100 to 1400 pounds. It was loaded by forklift into our truck. The hole had to be dug 5 feet across and nearly 3 feet deep. Rich said it was the easier hole he ever dug. (thank you Joe) It was a several hour event….Rich digging and me hauling off the wagonloads of dirt to fill in the sides of our newly poured driveway, about 35 yards away. Rich and a muscled the tree from the front of Rich’s long bed truck to the end. We put his truck’s front wheels up on car ramps to tilt the bed in our favor. We had a tarp under the tree as well thinking we could slide it. Yeah…over half a ton. Right. Slide it. We hooked up a tow strap to the riding lawn mower and wrapped it around the root ball of the tree. The cub had its back tires spinning. Plan C….we had some ramps reinforced with 2×8 boards. We weren’t sure they would hold the weight. Our final plan (D) was to put a pile of dirt underneath the tailgate of the truck and then top that off with two bags of compost and just literally roll that tree off the end of the tailgate and let it fall into the pile of compost and dirt that would be going into the hole with it. We had a neighbor driving by and he backed up and helped Rich push off the tree onto the ground and then roll it to its new home in the ground. It was a labor of love, for sure. It was drizzling most of the day so we were both pretty muddy at the end of the day. We, of course, forgot to cut the binding that was around the top of the tree. It is much harder to do that once it is standing upright and 20 feet tall. Yes, if you would have recorded this whole fiasco and run it at double speed or faster, it would have been hysterical. In fact, it reminded me of the crazy things Joe and Zac used to do together to try and get things done. Anyhow….tree is in the ground…we are both sore and tired….but so pleased with the results.

I think I would like to have a bench there. We’ll see. It was a day of honoring Joe though, and he wore me out! :o)

When I was pregnant with Tim, I had a lot of change going on in my life. Rich was at pilot training in Mississippi, I was in the Air Force as well – as a nurse – stationed at Scott AFB, IL. We had Joe, who was a toddler….under the age of two. I finally separated from the Air Force and moved down to Mississippi to be with Rich. That was the summer of 1996. I was hugely pregnant with Tim at the time and chasing after Joe, who was rather adventurous. Rich was in class all day and studying quite a bit. I changed doctors when I was about 32 weeks pregnant. So not ideal…but definitely better than being separated by several states when Tim was born. So Tim is my Mississippi baby. He was born on the first nice day after a sweltering summer. In fact, my doctor was golfing the day he was born. He had a LOT of hair when he was born. The nurses couldn’t believe he had so much hair! It was down his neck and over his ears. They say if you have horrible heartburn when you are pregnant, your child will be born with a lot of hair. That was definitely the case with Tim! I used to chew trays of ice cubes a day trying to get rid of the heartburn….to no avail. Rich thought he was a strawberry blonde….but it quickly changed to a firecracker red that he still has today.

Tim has always been quiet and intense. Even as a baby, people would comment that he was an old soul….just taking everything in around him. When he was younger, he wanted to be a zoologist. However, by junior high and high school, it was evident he wanted to do something with sports. He played basketball through most of high school and also played rugby. He started studying people’s training habits to see if they would make him better. He was the kid during conditioning who never cheated himself and took the easy way out. He went to the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and studied how to help athletes learn to eat better, move faster, and strengthen themselves so they were the best athlete they could be and avoid common injuries. He became a kickboxing coach…and even started up a new gym in Colorado as a manager during the height of the pandemic. (Not easy – but he made it a success) While in Colorado, he worked hard online to earn his masters degree in strength and conditioning coaching. He accepted an UNPAID internship at West Virginia University in Morgantown, WV. He was there, working hard, until he was called to interview for a temporary spot at Stanford University. He did the interview via zoom over his Christmas break and got the job. So we moved him across the country to Palo Alto, CA. He was supposed to be at Stanford for 5-7 months. Tim ended up staying for 18! He recently moved down to San Diego, CA to be the head athletic performance coach for the University of California-San Diego women’s basketball team. Two weeks after starting the job, he got the wonderful opportunity to travel with the team and coaching staff to Italy for 10 days, where they not only played 3 international games, but did some awesome sightseeing as well. This week they just started practices and lifts on their regular schedule. Tim also helps out with the men’s basketball team when he can. As of yesterday, he’ll be working 12+ hour days until March. He is spending his 27th birthday today doing what he loves most…working with athletes and the game of basketball. To say I am proud of Tim would be an understatement. He is the most driven and dedicated person I know. Every athlete that I have met that has worked with Tim gives him nothing but praise. He is a diehard mixed martial arts fan. It is always fun to watch the fights with Tim because he knows so much about the fighters. In his down time (driving to and from work) he is listening to podcasts to better himself as a person, a coach, and an athlete. He is a student of life, and it shows. He is also a fierce competitor. He is a cutthroat Monopoly player and that red hair goes into overdrive when he is losing. Tim is also a dog whisperer. Joe’s dogs and mine are madly in love with him. His lifestyle doesn’t allow him to have a dog, but wow, he is great with them and loves them to pieces. Honestly, I couldn’t be more proud of Tim. (and just when I say that, he usually proves me wrong and does something awesome.) Happy 27th birthday, Tim! I love you so very much! Can’t wait to show you Montana when you life slows down!

Here are 27 of some of my favorite photos of Tim:

Today marks 18 months since our Joe died. I can’t lie. It has been a very hard day. I have spilled a lot of tears and my body has been tied up in knots for the last couple of days because my momma’s heart just knew….knew there was a big day coming. In one breath it seems like it has been forever since Joe died….in the next, there is total denial that it ever happened.

Moving to Montana has been bittersweet. I think the only kid excited about us moving here was Joe and he never got to come here…never set foot in Montana. We have moved to a beautiful spot which we both enjoy the quiet and the natural beauty which is all around us. But we don’t know anyone here yet. It isn’t for lack of trying. Rich is playing hockey now and I am volunteering at the church. We both volunteered at a raptor rehab center for three hours on Monday. It is kind of a no-go for me, and maybe not even for Rich, who loves these birds. These things take time. I always have said in all my moves it takes a good year to really start to feel like you belong. Without kids at home to pull us into sports and school stuff, that makes it a bit harder. Living 10 minutes outside of a town of 5,000 people is also not helpful…but we are trying. Grief really isolates you in general, then to add to just general isolation, well, it made today just a bit harder.

Joe used to call me about every other day or two. He was definitely the most talkative of our three kids. He wanted to stay connected, and I never took that for granted. I loved every one of those phone calls…most of them videocalls because he just liked to interact face to face. He was calling me more before he died because he loved cooking for his crew at the fire department. I think he wanted to be known as the good cook on duty. At first it was kind of a hazing thing for the new guy…but he loved it. I even sent him a fireman’s cookbook at one point for him to use. He would call me and ask for a recipe of something I made. I have so many texts of recipes being swapped back and forth between us. I miss those calls. I guess I miss feeling needed in some way by one of my kids. I always felt like I had a purpose with him, and that is a blessing. I write letters to Joe a lot. Not always every day, but more often than not. I finished my first journal of letters to him yesterday. Today I started my second journal. When I originally started writing to Joe, I picked a pink journal (there weren’t a lot of choices). He was so often in a pink tie or a pink shirt in high school. He would always tell me that “real men wear pink” and that he could really “rock pink.” I thought about going back to read some of the first few pages of this pink journal but the feelings on the pages were so raw….I just couldn’t. I have come a long way in 18 months. My grief will never leave but I am growing around it…trying to live a life for the both of us. So I am tucking away my pink journal filled with letters to Joe in the last 18 months and starting a new journal with a tree on the front of it. We are in the process of finding a tree to plant in our yard for Joe. I had some awesome friends who sent us a tree when Joe died, but it is in the backyard of our house in Omaha, which is now for sale. We are looking to probably get an aspen. Joe loved them….loved Colorado, who makes them famous. To all of you out there with kids…young and old….hug them tight. Tell them you are proud of them and that you love them. Text them if they live far away. You never know the last time you will see them. I certainly didn’t.

Today is the day…17 years ago, that Ling Guang Su became Lily Su Grace Messina. She officially became a Messina today and our family became a family of five. While we always celebrate Lily coming into our family today, I also always pause and think about her parents. Does she have siblings? Probably has at least one..that she will never know. I think of her mom and dad…giving her up so she could hopefully have a better life. I think of her foster mom, who took her in and raised her for over 18 months of her early life. So today I want to share some photos of Lily before we met her….some during her early life in China…and some only hours before we held her for the first time. We love you, Lily Su!

We met Lily 17 years ago today! Her name was Ling Guang Su at the time. She was 20 months old and wore 9 month old clothing. We were required to have her with us for 24 hours prior to finalizing her adoption…which we have always celebrated tomorrow on August 31st….the day she became Lily Su Grace Messina. Today I was looking at one of the many photobooks we have of our trip to the People’s Republic of China to get Lily. We took both of our sons with us to get Lily. They were 10 and 12 at the time and we were there for 19 days. I wrote out her story in the first page of this particular book and I thought I would share those words with you now:

This is the story of a trip to the Far East to bring a daughter to the Messina family. The Messina family was blessed with two wonderful sons, Joe and Tim, but felt there might be a little girl out there in the world who could use our family’s abundance of love. We had friends who had adopted internationally and thought maybe that should be our path as well. Our family and friends were supportive in our endeavors. once we arrived in Okinawa, Japan, we were closer to China than we would ever be and felt the time was right to go searching for the little girl who would be our daughter.

We contacted Harrah’s Adoption International Mission and quickly hired them as our adoption agency. On December 12th, 2005, their fourth Waiting Child list was released to families wishing to adopt. The list contained the names of 40 children: 20 girls and 20 boys from various provinces in the People’s Republic of China. All of the children on the list had special needs of some kind. We poured over the list of children, looking at the little faces and reading their brief stories written by their orphanage directors and their nannies. Joe and Tim looked at the list with us and listened as we read the narratives with the photographs. After some research and talking as a family, we petitioned for a little girl who was called “SuSu.’

SuSu was one of the youngest children on the list. Upon seeing her baby picture the very first time, we all commented on how she had such big cheeks. She had thoughtful little eyes and very little hair as she was very young in the pictures the orphanage provided. SuSu had two strikes against her in China: she was born a girl and she was born without a left hand. Together those two circumstances meant a life that would be unimaginable to Americans. She would not even be allowed to attend school because of her missing hand.

SuSu had been abandoned at the Guangfeng County Government building outside of Shangrao City in Jiangxi Province. She was found in the early morning by two women who were coming to work. She was in a cardboard box and had a blanket and a bag of powdered milk with her. She had been placed where she would be readily found. She was obviously deeply loved by a family who just couldn’t keep her and wanted her to have a better life. Their sacrifice became our joy.

SuSu was found on January 18th, 2005. She was placed in the Shangrao City Social Welfare Institute after being looked over by physicians. They guessed her age to be approximately two week and gave her an official birthdate of January 4th, 2005. This is important in Chinese culture. She was born before the Chinese New Year in 2005 and therefore is considered a Monkey. The director of the SWI gave the baby girl a name: Ling Guang Su. Ling is the last name of every child in the orphanage and relates to the beautiful mountains nearby. Guang is a shortened version of the location in which she was found. Su means plain; white. It was not a traditionally beautiful name of a flower or precious jewel like most girls received. They did not have much hope for her future either, it would seem.

On December 17th, 2005, we receive a call at 0330 in the morning saying that we were chosen to be SuSu’s adoptive family. For months we worked on the required paperwork and in August 2006, we were approved to travel to China to pick up our daughter. We had decided her name would be Lily Su Grace Messina. Even though we weren’t going around the planet to pick her up, just a couple of quick plane rides away, the anticipation of visiting China and adopting our daughter was incredibly high. This is our journey to China to get Lily in pictures and our own words. This trip changed all of our lives forever…for the better.

Lily was terrified when we first met her. She had been taken away from her foster mother that morning….and Director Ye (the orphanage director) had her on a hot bus ride for 3 hours to get to the capitol city of Nanchang. We were waiting for her on the 26th floor of the Civil Affairs Office. There was one other family waiting for their daughter along with us….another American family whom we had actually met trekking the Great Wall of China outside of Bejing the day prior. What where the chances? We still keep in touch…17 years later. Their daughter came in first. Then there was Lily. She was so afraid. She was trying to be so brave…she tried to hold her tears until she just broke down. It was heartbreaking. I knew we could give her a life she would never have in China…and yet, this huge change in her life was really traumatic and very hard to be a part of. The boys were great. They were so excited to have a baby sister that they were doing all sorts of tricks to try and endear themselves to her. They brought bubbles to entertain her with…toys….balls…snacks…and stuffed animals. Unfortunately, she had never seen a stuffed animal before and it petrified her. By the evening in our hotel room that first night, she started playing with Joe and Tim, and snuggling with her Baba (dad). She started pushing me away almost immediately as I was trying to replace her foster mom. I spoke enough Chinese to try and explain to her that I was her new mom and I loved her…but it was a few days of me doing all her daily care activities for her to start to warm up to me.

Now Lily is away in college learning how to make the world a more beautiful place with her artistic talent. She is funny and smart and inquisitive, and I really enjoy spending time with her. She always makes me laugh and I love the way her mind works. I miss her a lot….today especially. We are trying not to be helicopter parents but I will most likely try to talk to her tonight or tomorrow night. Here are some photos from the time we spent in China together….our bonding time alone with our new family of five. It was a really magical time. We had to set a timer for the boys to take turns pushing her in the stroller because they fought over her. She was literally starving….she ate us all under the table for the first six months we had her. We were told that she would be formula fed mostly until at least age two to keep her petite. We quashed that right away. Enjoy the photos…which are photos of photos in a book…so they are a little grainy looking. It was easier for me to find these photos this way though. Happy Gotcha Day, Lily Su! We can’t imagine how boring life would have been without you!

On our drive down to Omaha and then to Kansas City, we drove through Badlands National Park in South Dakota. I have always thought it looked like you were on another planet. It is just so different than other places. Even though there are very few plants/trees that grow there, it is oddly beautiful in its own right. Here are a couple of photos. Yes…it was hot. I think every time we have been there it has been in the triple digits.

I am still playing catch up on all my photos from my camera. These were taken in June when Rich and I first moved up here. We took an afternoon off of packing and went for a little drive in the park. The day prior there were blizzard-like conditions on Logan’s Pass, near the top of the Going-to-the-Sun Road. We encountered some critters. They were shedding their winter coats in favor for their lighter weight summer ones. I seriously just wanted to take a brush to all of them….I am sure they would have felt better! Anyhow, here is why we live here. This “trip to the park” is only 20-25 minutes drive from our house. Totally breathtaking! Can’t wait to see it in the fall! The last photo is of the canola field near our house. The brightness of the yellow when they are in full bloom is amazing!