Most of the states I had to travel through to get to Tim and back home I call the vowel states. You know….Iowa, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio….gotta throw in Pennsylvania and West Virginia, but I was barely in those states! Anyhow, Tim had some errands to run during the day and a half I was there, so I went out and about searching for something interesting to photograph. Other photos are from the vowels states I drove through and random cool things I saw on the drive….which was really long! I had to stop due to white out conditions on the way out there…but we drove the whole way back in one day to beat a snow storm in Nebraska. He only spent 6 months in Morgantown, West Virginia, but he worked very hard, came out with a master’s degree and a job offer at Stanford, CA!

One of my goals this year was to try my hand at astrophotography…taking photos of the dark sky and try to capture stars and the milky way. I figured a balmy night out in a Nebraska field somewhere would be where it would happen. However, while we were in Moab on our trip back to Nebraska from California, I read that Arches National Park is one of the designated Dark Sky photography places in the world. We were there for 2 nights. We went the first night….thankfully, as the next evening had clouds (great for sunset photography….not for astrophotography!) It was cold and so so so quiet as we were the only ones in the park taking night photos. It takes about 30 seconds for each photo….then you have to tweak things, so it is a long process. You are also doing everything in the dark….you are only supposed to use red lights if you need to illuminate anything. I took a lot of photos and Rich was really patient and helpful. Only a few turned out decent as I wasn’t really prepared for doing this, but wanted to jump on the opportunity to try. There were so many stars out! It felt I was a first grade art project and someone was sprinkling glitter over me. It was like nothing I have ever seen. I am so glad I got to share that with Rich. It was just so amazing. Most of what you are seeing here was visible to the naked eye. Here’s my starter astrophotography shots! I will try it again!

Today is my 51st birthday! If you have followed me long enough, you know that making it to 50 was one of my life goals. I managed to do that and now each birthday is just gravy….something special. I am thankful for not just each birthday, but each day that I am allowed to live.

My oldest son, Joe, came up from Kansas City last night to surprise me with a 24 hour Valentine and birthday visit. The weather is supposed to be stellar today – 63 degrees (compared to last year’s -15). I think we’ll head out for a nice walk around a lake this afternoon before he has to head back.

I need to make another short-term goal. Rich managed to get tickets to the opening Husker game against Northwestern at the end of August. That will be it. Why is this so special? Well, if you aren’t a Nebraskan, you might not know. First off, Husker football is a religion here. Even if they haven’t had a winning season in several years. Second off…and most importantly….this game is being played in Dublin, Ireland! Rich and I have never been to Ireland and I can’t wait! My camera is itching to take it all in! We may even make a quick stop in Norway to see some old stomping grounds and some friends!

I do have a long term goal….to be able to see Lily graduate from high school in May of 2023 and to move to our home in Montana shortly thereafter. We are in the process of buying CAD drawings now and meeting with architects to tweak a few things before getting bids from local builders. Can’t wait to have a plan and a timeline! It won’t be a palace, but all my kids can visit at the same time and each have a room…so that is the plan! It will have gorgeous views of mountains and be a 25 minute drive to the west entrance of Glacier National Park….so there will be room for visitors to come and enjoy the beauty of it all.

Very short term goal for me is to get my photographs uploaded from my trip to and fro last month and my field excursions to photograph eagles in our region. I am finally caught up processing them and will start sharing shortly!

Thanks to everyone who made this birthday wonderful already! I started getting messages from friends from Singapore last night….from England and Germany and Norway during the night….and so many texts and messages from all over the U.S. already this morning. I am feeling the love and really appreciate all the heartfelt messages. I am truly blessed to have lived such a wonderful life and been surrounded by such wonderful people. My cup overflows!

Happy Chinese New Year! It is the year of the Tiger starting today! Chinese New Year lasts for 15 days and ends on my birthday, which happens to fall on the Lantern Festival this year. Every year I have tortured Lily into taking a photo for Chinese New Year. I told her I would stop next year…her senior year in high school would be the last time I had her do these photos. But until then…enjoy the year of the Tiger!

After leaving Park City, we drove about 10 hours to Folsom, CA, near Sacramento. We had an invitation to dinner and to stay over at a friend’s house. These friends, Karen and Dave Hawkins, are friends from quite awhile ago. Dave and Rich went to college together at the University of New Mexico and were in AFROTC together. Dave graduated the summer before I started classes at UNM, so I had heard stories about him when Rich and I were dating. When Rich and I were married waaaaay back in 1991, he had his brother, brother-in-law, and a friend stand up with him. Dave was that friend. Five months later, Rich returned the favor and was in Dave’s wedding in Sacramento in January of 1992. We had not seen Dave or Karen since their wedding. They have three grown children, as do we. They got to meet our two youngest kiddos and we got to meet their two youngest kiddos when we stayed with them. It had been 30 years almost to the day since we had seen one another and it was like so many others of our friends, we just picked up where we left off. They were terrific hosts and gave Tim some of the low down about life in the Bay area, as their oldest son lives one town over from Tim, and is about the same age. It was great getting together!

Our first stop was in Park City, Utah….a 13 hour drive from Omaha. It was a long day, but we took the next day off to allow Tim and Rich to ski for the day in Park City. Neither had skied there before and Rich had always wanted to. Lily decided not to ski, but to spend the day with me. I had a few things I wanted to photograph in the local area, but then we made an appointment to go to see an ice castle. Evidently there are five ice castles in the U.S. – they are located in Minnesota, New York, New Hampshire, Wisconsin, and Utah. They are built with hundreds of thousands of icicles that are hand placed by ice artists. This one had only been open for 3 days, and it was super crowded as we were leaving, even though you had to sign up for certain time slots. There were ice slides, fountains, and LED lit up areas of caves. It was spectacular, and I am so glad we got to experience it together. When we entered, we had to sign a release form saying that we wouldn’t sue them if we were impaled by a falling icicle and that we wouldn’t break or lick any of the ice.

I have been out-of-pocket for the last two weeks or so…but for a really good reason. On Monday, January 10th, I drove from Omaha to Morgantown, West Virginia to pack up Tim. Didn’t we just move him there, you ask? Yes! In early August! But Tim got an offer he couldn’t turn down…a PAID spot in the strength and conditioning coaching staff at Stanford University. So we packed up his stuff and loaded my car and his and then started back to Omaha. I had a zoom meeting with my sarcoma specialist at the Mayo Clinic early in the morning we left. I did the meeting from my hotel room and invited Tim to join me and meet my doctor. He showed Tim the CT scans from September and compared them to the scans at the end of Dec. None of my children have met my doctors since I was diagnosed, so I was happy to have him meet my Mayo Clinic doctor and get a rundown of my health. After that zoom meeting was done (in which he told me to just continue with what I was doing), I closed up my laptop and we hit the road towards Omaha. There was a big snowstorm hanging over our heads….Lily’s school had already been cancelled for the next day, so we pressed on and drove the whole way in one day. It was a long day, as we were caravanning versus traveling in the same car. We were home for two days and then left with Lily and Rich joining us and headed to California. We did make some stops along the way to and from California. However, I can say that I went through 13 states (most of them twice), was in the car about 80 hours, drove about 6000 miles, and spent time in 4 different time zones in the last 15 days. I have tons of photos, but for now I will enter separate blog posts along our family trip with the photos I took with my phone. I am still catching up with my life and have a few projects I am working on, so I don’t know when I will get through processing all my good camera photos. I will post some of those later. For now, here is a photo of Tim as we left West Virginia (I am still upset I am going to have to change his ringtone on my phone from “Country Roads” by John Denver to some California song) and then a photo of him on the Stanford University Campus. He has 3 full days under his belt and is getting a lot of good work experience already. It was hard to leave him in a state that he knew no one….but I have done that three times now in the last 18 months. Let’s hope he is here for awhile and enjoys his work and makes some good friends. It is wicked expensive to live there….gas was over $5 a gallon and Tim is renting a bedroom in a large house for $1000/month….and that is a 15 minute drive from work. Good thing he has mastered the “living like a poor student” act!

Here is the photo I chose from the first week’s photos of 2022….the birthday girl and her long noodles get the nod for the first photo of the year! By the way, I also have a word that I am going by for the most part that all my photos should tie into…that is the word JOY. In a world that could really get you down and out with a pandemic, subzero temps, stage IV cancer….I choose JOY. I want to experience the joy in things whether they be the everyday mundane or something wonderful and special. I choose JOY. It helps that the Holy Spirit just beat me over the head with this word over the last week. It has filled my facebook feed, messages from friends, and ads that I have been seeing. JOY. It’s my word for 2022.

What is JOY in this photo? Lily, of course! She just loves her ramen noodles, piping hot, and always eats them out of these awesome Polish pottery soup mugs we got whilst living in Norway. This is her happy place…and therefore it brings ME the JOY I am talking about!

It is COLD here in Nebraska today. Like lucky to hit 5 above zero Fahrenheit cold. The windchill is unmentionably cold. I did step out on the back deck after dropping Lily off at school this morning (who felt she really didn’t need a coat….and neither did most of the other high schoolers I saw trudging towards the high school from the parking lot) and took a couple of photos of a beautiful, frozen sunrise over I-80 and the Kellogg’s plant this morning, where the steam is coming from. Yes, I dislike living on the highway, but I have a warm house that does the job, and I am thankful for it. I can tell what cereal flavor is being made each day….not always, but when I can smell it, it is delicious….chocolate or cinnamon usually. Much better than the whiff of the meat processing plant we would catch on the wind down in Bellevue every now and again!

And before I forget…although my Church celebrated it this past Sunday, this is the Holy Feast of the Epiphany! Wise men seek Him still….

Today we are celebrating Lily’s 17th birthday! It seems like just yesterday she was a toddler, jabbering at the dogs to put them in their place when she came home with us from China. Fast forward from China to Okinawa to Norway to Nebraska…she has grown into such a beautiful young lady, inside and out. We are different. She and I have had our moments. High school online for half a year was a VERY LONG MOMENT. However, she still makes me laugh everyday and amazes me weekly with either her quick wit, her knowledge on a random topic, or just her unique insight into something. One of my favorite things to do? Go grocery shopping with her. I laugh the whole time. We have only gone shopping together a handful of times in the last couple of years because of COVID, but I treasure the times we have.

Lily has been pretty tolerant with me trying out photography stuff with her. I have been blessed to get some great photos of her over the last six months on our travels. Today I bugged her again. Lily has a huge glass jar that has 4800 origami stars she has made over the COVID times…that is a LOT of origami stars! So I took a photo of her with some of her paper stars. For the curious out there, they are made with 3/8’s stips of paper 9 inches long. These are the kinds of things she asks for when Christmas comes around….thin paper strips for making origami stars. Then I thought I would do something to represent her birthday. Since blowing out candles are a big no-no now that we have a pandemic, I found a faux tealight for her. Then onto her Chinese heritage. Long noodles = long life. Of course, Lily eats ramen almost every day. She loves the stuff. Anyhow, today I took photos of her eating and slurping her noodles. She is an expert noodle slurper.

Happy 17th birthday, daughter of my heart. I love you so much! Thank you for all the joy you have brought into my life!