Well, today is the final day of the convention. Did I mention the last two days started midmorning and went until 2 a.m.? Lily was looking a little haggard this morning. I have a feeling that I will be driving two sleeping girls the three hours home this evening. I overheard some other convention goers saying they were going to sleep for 2 days when they got home. Here are the costumes for today….

I have to say that it is hysterical to see all these costumes. I would say 80% of the large hotel we are staying at are with the anime convention. The other 20% are high school girls soccer teams in the area for a tournament. The difference between these two groups are vast and it makes me giggle. Literally. The looks between the two groups…it is a riot. Here are some photos of Lily and Sam for today’s characters. They broke out the wigs AND the wings today. Never did I think I would say that sentence….but they are both having a blast, and their joy and doing something creative that they both love warms my heart. You are still more likely to find me on a rugby pitch. Just saying. They had to walk into my hotel room sideways due to their wing spans. Another sentence I never thought I would say!

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!

While we were getting ready for Lily’s graduation, a lot of my hospital stuff come due. I had my four month CT scans of my chest, abdomen, and pelvis a couple of days before graduation. For the first time EVER…they couldn’t get an IV started on me. I was poked 3 times, which is really rare for me. I think I had the beginner crew that day. I had not been feeling well and I wasn’t sure if it was grief, stress, or possibly the cancer starting to grow that was causing this icky feeling. I had a zoom call the next day with my local oncologist (Dr. I-can’t-wait-until-you-are-in-my-rearview-mirror). He was prattling on about all sorts of things and I finally interrupted him and asked him about my results. He had forgotten why we were having this zoom call, evidently. He said all was stable. Good news. I wanted to hear what my sarcoma specialist at the Mayo clinic had to say though. So we went through the graduation weekend. A few days after graduation, I had my big treatment. I had bloodwork done, a lupron shot (which I get every month) and then a zometa infusion via IV. The whole process takes a couple of hours even though on paper it looks like it would only take about an hour tops. You have to wait for labs…wait for the oncology pharmacist to mix your drugs…the zometa has to be infused over 35 minutes….you get the picture. The oncologist’s receptionist gave me a big hug. (I had been around longer than she had!) While I was in the infusion center, another worker from the clinic who handles scheduling and insurance for me…someone I really like, came up and found me to give me a hug goodbye. I have had two fabulous nurses who have cared for me the majority of my visits to the infusion center at Bergan Mercy. They have laughed with me, commiserated COVID restrictions with me, talked about raising kids with me….cried with me when Joe died, and rejoiced with me when I found a place in Montana to move to and live. Becky and Nora….they are the best. I would like to think that I am special, but they treat all their patients with that kind of love and attention and for that, I am forever grateful. I remember when I was starting a new chemo drug and it was during COVID and Rich could not be there with me. I had no idea what was going to happen as they pumped that poison into my port…which went right to my heart to pump it out systemically quickly. If I had an allergic reaction, it would get real bad, real quick. As a former nurse, I knew that. I was scared to death about it and they understood that. I have not made it a real secret that I was not fond of my local oncologist, who has the bedside manner of a hemorrhoid. However, what kept me leaving from leaving this hospital system was these 4 women…especially Becky and Nora. Anyhow, there were tears, numbers were exchanged…and I am sure the other patients were trying to figure out what in the world was going on with me. Typically you are ringing the bell because you are done and beat your cancer or you are going to hospice. I wasn’t doing either. I put a photo of me during my last treatment at Bergan Mercy. Many of you know I always take the same photo during each treatment….whether they are weekly or monthly, or every 3 months. I used to tell you all about the fact that the cancer infusion center overlooks the two largest civilian cemeteries in Omaha. Kind of depressing. They recently replaced alternating windows with stained glass windows. It is a big improvement!

After I got home from my morning soiree with the oncology infusion center, Rich and I got on the road to drive 5.5 hours to Rochester, MN to the Mayo Clinic. This was a nice time to reconnect with Rich and talk about the move and logistics of our calendars up until we leave June 13th. I think we got a lot accomplished on the drive there and back. We arrived in Rochester around 6 p.m. and met my best friend, Judi and her husband for dinner. Judi is a friend going back to when the boys were very little and we lived in East Grand Forks, MN. We had 5 kids between us at that time all under the age of 5 and our husbands were gone a lot for work. We became fast friends and she is Lily’s Godmother, and I am her youngest daughter’s Godmother as well. While Lily was graduating from high school, my Goddaughter was graduating with her master’s degree. So we are both very proud mommas! The years just melt away when I talk with Judi. It is such a wonderful gift, her friendship.

The next morning first thing, we had an appointment with my sarcoma specialist. I just love that man. He couldn’t be any more different than my local oncologist and they were classmates! Anyhow, he greeted me with a huge smile and said, “I don’t have to play where’s Cyndi today! (like Where’s Waldo?) I know exactly where she is! She is here with me in Minnesota!” I have not seen him in person since March 2020, when I first started under his care. COVID had just shut down all of Rochester two days prior back then. We met via zoom every three months for the last 3+ years. I have been in hotel rooms while traveling, at my mom’s house….all over. He gets a kick out of trying to figure out where I am when we meet. He went over my last three sets of scans and likes what he sees. I had a couple of questions and he answered them just fine. He was very happy with how everything is going for me on the current treatment. Long story short, we are going to keep doing what we are doing. He has agreed to continue to oversee my care when I move to Montana. Now I just need to manage all of that and fine an oncologist. That is next week’s problem. For now, I am happy that I am still doing relatively well despite my advanced cancer. He even said I could drop to having scans every 4-6 months now rather than every 4. That is a big deal. I, along with most people with this kind of cancer, live scan to scan. Giving me a whole half a year to plan? What a gift!

I feel like every time I get online to this blog, I am playing catch up. I have been so incredibly busy and I am even out of town right now, but I have some time to sit down and post some photos and stories to go along with them. I have a bunch of photos on my good camera waiting for me to process. Most of the photos I will put on here for now are shots with my phone. The good photos will just have to come later.

Lily graduated from Westside High School this past Sunday, May 21st. She had a lot of events running up to graduation. Before I get to that, I want to share some early photos of Lily and some of her very early artwork. Lily was dragged to all of her brothers’ sporting events and she was fine as long as she brought her art bag with her. She rarely saw a minute of their games or matches, she was coloring and drawing the whole time. Most of the photos of Lily are from kindergarten, but there is one of her and Joe when she was four and lived in Norway. She kept calling him “Joey” and he hated that. He would grab ahold of her overalls and press her up and against the wall telling her forcefully, “Don’t call me Joey!” as she laughed hysterically and kept saying “Joey!”.

She has come a long way from her early days with us. She is going to do great things, I have a feeling….she just needs to find her path in life. Aren’t we all like that? She started out her senior graduation event schedule by having her senior art show at the Regency Mall in Omaha (think boujee). We were so very proud of her. Here are a few photos of the night they honored the seniors at the senior art show.

The large painting of the girl in the mask is her best friend, Sam. They are both going to Kansas City Art Institute this fall and will be roommates. Lily took that large painting and gave it to Sam’s mom on their graduation day.

We then moved on to the scholarship and honors night. Lily was invited to attend because she has a scholarship to KCAI. She was also on the honor roll for the fall of her senior year. She was NOT however, in National Honor Society. She was pretty impressed that someone at the school thought she was smart enough to give her that honor on her slide show on stage!

They have a wonderful tradition here in Nebraska where all the graduates go back to their elementary schools and march through the school and getting cheered on by the elementary school kids. The boys never got to do this because they did not go to elementary school in this area. Lily made up for them and went to two elementary schools. She went to Fairview Elementary School in Bellevue, Nebraska from Kindergarten through fourth grade. She called the school and asked if she could come down for the graduation parade. They said, “Of course!” We had to hightail it down there (about 25 minute drive) from her high school (where she had just picked up her cap and gown) to Fairview Elementary. She hadn’t seen her classmates in 8 years. They were all so very happy to see her! So many smiles and hugs…it was so nice to see her so happy. There were lots of photos and selfies and the principal and teachers just let the graduates who lingered walk around the school and visit teachers. I used to volunteer at Fairview in the library. The librarian, Mrs. Gibson, is a student favorite, so they all came in to show her their love, which made her tear up a bit. She is a pretty special teacher and I have kept in contact with her over the years as well. A group of them decided to make a snapchat group so they could talk and keep in touch. In fact, Lily drove down to Bellevue the next morning to have brunch with a few of her former classmates. They are such a great group of kids…and I know their parents….so I was happy they reconnected. Here are some photos from the Fairview graduation celebration:

The next elementary school graduation visit was in our current neighborhood at Oakdale Elementary School. Lily went to 5th grade in that building (which was very old). For her 6th grade year, she attended Oakdale Elementary School but it was displaced to a different building a mile or two away while they demolished the old building and rebuilt it. So she went to school with those same kids for two years, but was only in the building for one of those years. It was funny watching all her graduating classmates come to their “old” school to find a new building that they couldn’t even find the front door! Evidently in years past, there have only been three or four graduating seniors that come to do this elementary school walk through. This year, almost all of them came. The principal and teachers were so surprised! They did things a little differently here. They met with the 6th grade class for 45 minutes and got asked questions about middle school and high school. I found it very interesting to hear their answers. Most were really well thought out and oddly mature. They recommended that these 6th graders put down their phones and actually talk to people. They recommended that you do your homework and do it early. They told them to ask for help from their teachers when they didn’t understand a concept. It was oddly refreshing. Anyhow, I think they were only missing about 5 graduating students from their group. After the meeting with the 6th graders, they paraded around the school, getting and giving high fives to all the students. It was funny to watch because the principal had to lead the graduates around because they had never been in the new building before and had no idea where anything was. This man became their principal the year they were in the swing school and the new building was being built.

Meanwhile, we had family coming in from all over the country to help Lily celebrate. Her Auntie Tammie, Nana, and Nano came from Florida. Her Uncle Craig, Aunt Mayra, cousins Alex and Emily Jo, and Grandma came from Texas. Her Aunt Pam, Uncle Brian, and cousins Kara, Alyssa, and Micah came from Indiana. Her sister-in-law, Michelle, drove up from Missouri. Her brother, Tim, flew in from California. It was so nice to have so many family members come together to celebrate Lily. She had a rough go of her high school career. In the first semester of her freshman year, I was diagnosed with terminal cancer. I didn’t know that I would be around to even see her graduate. The second semester of her freshman year dealt with me being incredibly sick on chemo and then COVID creating a global pandemic. That affected her sophomore year as well. Her junior year, her oldest brother, Joe, died suddenly in a car accident. Honestly, I prayed very hard for a boring senior year for her. High school just wasn’t the best experience for her and I am so happy she has put that in her rear view mirror and will be moving on to bigger and better things. We probably had around 45 people at her graduation party at our house after the ceremony. The ceremony took place at the Baxter arena on Sunday afternoon and considering she graduated with the largest student body of all of our kids, they kept it moving and we were out of there in 90 minutes. I took most of the graduation ceremony photos and family photos with my good camera, so those will be forthcoming. We had all the cousins from my side of the family together, which doesn’t happen often, as we all live in different states and as our kids are growing up, they, too, are moving away and busy “adulting”. There weren’t any Messina cousins here, but we hope to connect with them in July. We were so thankful to friends and family who came together to help us honor Lily on her special day.

Rich and I flew to Montana this past Sunday and then came back on Wednesday late. It was a short trip but we got a LOT done. It was originally supposed to be a house hunting trip but we are already under contract, so it was a “getting to see your house in person” trip. We spent a lot of time at the house getting a feel for where we want to put our furniture….colors, etc. We also did a lot of driving around the area to see what is close by and what we will have to drive to Kalispell for. The house we hope will be ours is 10 minutes’ drive outside of Columbia Falls, MT (population 5500). It is a small community of houses in a wooded area with each house having just under 2 acres each. There is a lot of wildlife. Each time we were there we saw mule deer. We have white tailed deer here in Nebraska…those mule deer are BIG! Our neighbors have been there for 13 years and have seen deer, black bear, cougar, moose, turkey, and a herd of elk. There is 18 acres of woods behind our house. The nearest bigger city is Kalispell, Montana, which has a brand new Kohls (opened while we were there), a Costco, the hospital, and Montana’s ONLY Chic-fil-A. I have never seen so many coffee places…they are everywhere. Evidently the Treasure State likes their coffee! We did some furniture shopping and ordered a washer and dryer. We had enough time to spend some time hiking in Glacier National Park and in three other state parks in the Flathead River Valley. The weather was in the 80’s everyday and then the 40’s at night. The locals were melting, saying they had a foot of snow just a week ago – they felt they never got a chance for spring, that summer had come straight after winter. We got all the good weather, I guess, because it was supposed to cool down to “normal” early May temps this weekend. The mountains were covered in snow but it was quickly vanishing by the time we left. Everyone is so friendly. I am so looking forward to moving there! We thought we would go into a local live sport drought moving there, but they have a semi pro farm baseball team called the Glacier Range Riders! How cool is that? Live baseball in the summer! Whoop whoo! Don’t be shocked, but I did not take my camera with me. I was traveling light. All of these are just shots with my phone. The ones from the plane are of Salt Lake City, which is so pretty from the air as you are coming in. We are anxious to get a closing date for the house so we can get moved up there and settled in so we can have visitors!

This past weekend was prom at Lily’s high school. Lily is not a dancer….she is not into crowds…she is not into dating….or all the drama that goes along with it. I had given up hope that she would ever go to any of the dances. However, she and her best friend, Sam (female), decided they should go to Prom this last year of high school. She told me less than 2 weeks before the dance. The dance was being held at Lauritzen Gardens in Omaha, a beautiful place filled with gardens. I immediately started thinking of long, beautiful dresses. Lily is such a petite girl, she would look lovely in so many dresses. My only daughter….I was kinda looking forward to all that fuss. We had planned to be house hunting during that time in Montana, so Rich quickly changed our travel plans so we would be in town for her prom. Alas, she informed us that she was dressing up as an anime character and so was her friend, Sam. They have gone to two ComiCon events in the last couple of years and plan on going to Naka Kon over Memorial Day weekend in Overland Park. At any rate, here she is dressed up in character for the Prom. She was probably the most comfortably dressed person there. They went to the after prom party at a bowling alley and had a great time. She even had a random stranger from her school come up and say he knew who she was dressed up as…which made her feel good. Her is the character and then Lily dressed up as him. I am glad she went and glad she had a good time. She got in at 2:30 in the morning and we got up an hour later to leave for Montana.

I subscribe to an email program called “Only in Your State”. I started receiving emails from them regarding the state of Nebraska during the COVID lockdown. I learned about a lot of interesting things to see and do in Nebraska. One of them was the Sunken Garden in Lincoln, Nebraska. Every year volunteers pick a theme and create a colorful carpet of flowers for visitors to walk through. In the late spring they have thousands of tulips. In the summer, they have cleared out the tulips and plants a variety of colorful flowers and plants. I love all of them. I will only make it for the tulips this year, as we will move prior to the summer flowers growing in. In the spring they have lots of flowering trees in Lincoln as well. Last year, I happened upon a historical church called First Plymouth Congregational Church. It has a tall bell tower and a courtyard with lots of flowering trees and benches to sit in the silence. Last year, I was still so raw with Joe’s death. I was taking photos of the flowering trees dropping their petals as the wind blew through them. The scent was intoxicating. There was this chattering noise and I realized there was a squirrel in a tree right in front of me. I took several photos of him and to this day, they are some of my favorites. Well, the squirrel was still there…playing in the same tree. The tree wasn’t in full bloom yet, but he let me take some good photos of him. I didn’t bring my telephoto lens, so you can see how close I was. A robin also posed for me. I thought I would share my last photos of the Sunken Garden in Lincoln with you. Luckily, I was able to switch my account over to Montana two weeks ago, so I am already making a list of places I want to go to when we move there!

After a long day at KCAI with Lily, we started our drive home. It is a little over 3 hours of driving. Michelle clued us in on a tulip festival that was taking place at Fun Farm Pumpkin Patch in Kearney, Missouri. The farmer said that they had had snow flurries that morning. Rich had texted me while we were in KC and said it had been snowing in Omaha. It was late afternoon and even though this place is geared towards families with younger children, Lily and I had a blast walking around the farm. They have over 40 varieties of tulips over 22 acres. They claim to have 1.6 million tulip bulbs and I believe them! It wasn’t too far out of the way back to Omaha and we traveled through some beautiful countryside. I was pretty chilly….40 degrees and a pretty brisk wind that brought the temps even lower. But it was Earth Day and Lily and I walked around the whole place, taking in the farm animals, the collection of antique tractors, the windmill and the acres of tulips, and their country store in a beautiful red barn. They will have strawberries in mid-May, so if you are close, I highly recommend looking them up! If you have little kiddos….they are in for a treat. Lots of playing areas for them. Of course, the fall is their sweet spot with pumpkins and apples. If they do even half of what they do for the tulips, I would mark my calendar to stop by! Here are a few photos of our couple of hours spent freezing our patooties off in the tulip fields. I also included the clouds with sunrays that I had to pull over and photograph as we were traveling the countryside to get back to the highway to head to Omaha.

Our last few days in California with Tim we were in Lake Tahoe. They also had had record snow levels. Driving around town near Heavenly Ski Resort, there entire buildings we couldn’t even see due to the huge snowdrifts. Driving down the roads were eerie with high, high banks of snow on either side. There was a Denny’s restaurant that had part of the roof caved in due to the heavy snow. It was one of several buildings with damage from heavy snow. We were there for 2 full days and Tim and Rich skied both days. I took photos around the Lake, when able. A big storm blew in during the afternoon of the first day and we got maybe 7-9 inches in town with double that on the mountains. I got a photo of the thunderhead moving in over the lake. It was crazy how fast it moved! The wind was blowing so hard that they closed the lifts and they had to come down early. They were fine with that because they couldn’t really see anything with all the blowing snow. The next day was better skiing and they had a good time. We drove back to Palo Alto the morning we were flying home and Tim gave us a tour of his workplace: Stanford University’s training centers. It was really interesting and to say we were impressed with what he does is an understatement. We are incredibly proud of him! We can’t wait to see what his next chapter will be!