I told you I had been busy! less than 36 hours after my sister left from Omaha, I got on a plane in Omaha and my son, Joe, got on a plane in Kansas City, and we both flew to Houston to surprise my mom for her 75th birthday, which was Tuesday, April 13th. We arrived pretty early in the morning on Monday. My brother, Craig, picked us up and we went over to his house for a little while before he dropped us off at my parents’ house. My mom volunteers at the church on Monday mornings, so Joe and I were able to spend some time with my dad. My dad’s mind has been failing him over the last decade and it was hard to know he would have never known who we were if my brother hadn’t yelled out the truck window that he had “Joe, his grandson, and Cyndi, his daughter” in the truck with him. His eyesight is really going (although for some reason he always gets a clean bill of health from his eye doctor). He is typically pretty quiet, willing to just sit and listen to conversations. However, when he is out walking the loop of his neighborhood, which he does 3-4 times a day, he is pretty chatty….although he has a hard time finding his words now. I know how that is…chemo has done a number on my brain and some days are harder than others. He now wears an ID bracelet with his name and my mom’s name and phone number on it so if he finds himself lost, he can show it to someone. It was very hard to watch him be so lost…even in his own home surroundings this time. I was thankful that Joe was there to also spend some time with him. We definitely surprised my mom and had a great couple of days with her. We flew in on Monday morning and left Wednesday afternoon. It was quick but fun. I always enjoy spending time with Craig and his wife and son as well. I had not flown in over 2 years. The planes I was on were completely full. I double masked for the planes and tried not to touch much…just read my kindle for the 90 minute or so flights. It was a great trip and I am so glad we went!

I have a younger sister named Pam, and she and her three kids and husband live in Goshen, Indiana. It had been 8 years since she had come to Nebraska to visit, so she took a few days off and came to visit a few days after we got back from our Montana/Wyoming trip. She brought 2 of her 5 dogs with her, so Tallinn was busy during those few days she visited as well. Unfortunately it rained quite a bit whilst she was here, but we managed to get a tour of the store in, a good walk with all three dogs (went way better than I expected), and we also went out so I could show her the Holy Family Shrine. It was pretty windy, even though the sun was out and we both got a bit disoriented when looking up at the big crucifix with the clouds moving fast behind it. It gave the illusion that Christ was coming down off the cross. I saw it first and was wondering if my chemo brain fog was doing me in, but was relieved when she looked up, she almost fell over backwards as well. It was great to have Pam visit!

We drove our last leg home on Easter Sunday. We were able to catch a few photos of the sandhills cranes whilst driving through North Platte. We were able to have dinner in Cheyenne, Wyoming the night before and our youngest son, Tim (who lives in Fort Collins, CO), was able to make the 45 minute drive to meet us. That ended our wonderful trip on a very good note. When we got home to Omaha in the late afternoon, it was 88 degrees here! We were still in hiking boots, jeans and long sleeved shirts. Summer had come while we were gone!

Our next stop on the way back towards home was Grand Tetons National Park in Jackson, Wyoming. It is just another gorgeous mountain place. Can you tell I am a mountain girl? I just love them. We were there for a day and a half and were able to see a couple of fox, over a dozen moose, a coyote, some elk, and some big horn sheep. One of the afternoons we went on a wagon ride out onto an Elk Refuge. The elk were just about to start heading out of the valley and into the mountains to have their young and live in their own areas until winter next year, when they come back to graze in this big valley again. Our guide was a girl from Idaho, who was also a vet tech. We were her last wagon ride crowd ever, as she would be moving on to work as a vet tech next winter. She was so knowledgeable. I was really impressed by her. Although there was still FEET of snow, it was warm (high 50’s and low 60’s) so we walked without jackets and even got a little sun on our faces as the sun was pretty bright reflecting off the snow. If you have never been to the Grand Tetons….put it on your bucket list!

I know I have been playing catch up and blogging from things that happened three weeks ago. However, I wanted to end this night (as I need to get to bed and plus I swear I am getting mouse clicker’s forearm) with something that happened TODAY. I spent all morning at the Cancer Center at Bergan Mercy seeing the oncology nurse practitioner (love her!), getting labs drawn, my port flushed, a zometa infusion via the port, and then a shot of Lupron. So I have a bandaid on my left buttock (really hip) and right boob (really chest) from the needle sticks today (I am on blood thinners so they don’t take a chance and always bandage me up). All went well. I have never taken zometa without chemo and all the drugs that go with it, like the massive amounts of steroids, so we’ll see how I feel in the morning. So far so good. Even had 3 zoom meetings today and two of them were Tai Chi classes for cancer patients. So below is a selfie from treatment today and then the other two are where Tallinn plants himself when I am doing Zoom Tai Chi. (right in front of me or right under my feet). Good thing we move slow, because I was stepping around him the whole time. :o)

On our last full day in Montana, the day was clear and so Rich and I went out early to get some pictures from Lake MacDonald in Glacier National Park. Once again, it was deserted, so we spent a couple of hours just taking in the view….which was phenomenal.

We took lots of long walks to keep the dog tired each night. There were lots of bodies of water nearby, including Whitefish Lake. The stillness of the water made for awesome views. We found some areas on a beach with frozen waves. Very cool! Of course there were also the ski slopes, where Rich hopes to live his retired life as a ski bump in the winter.

Not many horse places are open during the winter….but this one in rural Kalispell was! The three of us spent 2 hours on the trails in the mountains on horseback. It was a lot of fun and we all enjoyed it. My horse, Caramel, was in the back and decided to do a lot of plodding…..so kept falling behind. So we had to do a fair bit of trotting to keep up. It was a blast. The other family was from Chicago and when one of the little kids asked why the young man riding in the rear was wearing a gun in his holster, he said, “Just in case of mountain lions.” I think the dad of the kids, wearing square-toed leather dress shoes (sigh) blanched a bit. There were a lot of deer and turkey in the barnyard waiting for us to leave on the trail ride so they could eat the leftover feed dropped on the ground by the horses. Lily said it was her favorite part of the trip. (bonus!) It is hard to please a 16 year old year on a vacation with her parents and her dog that was breathing on her in the car the whole trip. :o)

Our land is in Flathead Valley which includes Bigfork, Kalispell, Columbia Falls, Polson, and Whitefish. We stayed in Whitefish (where the ski resort is). They are all relatively close to each other…maybe 10-15 minutes’ drive between each. We ate at local restaurants and all in all, just had a great time running around getting to know the area better. It is not a bustling metropolis, but that is what we wanted: Peace. However, we were told that Californians are moving there in droves….20,000 people had moved to the Flathead Valley in 2020 alone. In fact, our closest neighbors on our property are from California. They are from the Lake Tahoe area and have 4 kids, 3 Nigerian goats and two horses. They are really nice people and I look forward to being their neighbor. We went to our property first thing when we arrived….just as the sun was setting. The winds were crazy (kinda like Nebraska) and a cold front was blowing in. In the morning there was snow on the ground and it snowed off and on all day. We took the morning to travel to Glacier and go hiking. Most of the park is closed during the winter because there is something like 80 feet of snow on many of the inside roads. (not exaggerating…) So only 11 miles were open, but you can hike any of the trails on foot or snowshoe. No one was there but us, so it was so peaceful being able to walk through the forest in the snow. I even found a tree with a girl’s face on it! Lake MacDonald had the beautiful clear water with the colorful Montana river rocks, but the snow made us not able to see the mountains on this day, which was a bummer, because we knew they were huge and right there….just behind the snow and clouds.

Two years ago we went on a tour of Glacier National Park. We fell in love with the area and ended up buying 10 acres of land about 25 minutes from the west entrance to Glacier National Park in rural Columbia Falls, MT. We bought the land site unseen because it was a great deal we just couldn’t pass up. The land is surrounded by mountains and all the houses in the area are also 10 acre parcels that cannot be split up. This assures us we’ll have lots of space. Almost all the “ranchettes” as they call them, have houses on them. We are one of two that are sold but not built on yet. You never really know how big 10 acres is until you walk it. We made the right choice, as it is just phenomenal. We went out there everyday…sometimes more than once a day to look at the views from different parts of the land…trying to figure out where the house should sit and the driveway should go. We also have a few trees on the edge of our property and we took some of the young saplings and replanted them in the middle of our acreage so we might have a few trees once we start building in two years or so. The whole area used to be a potato farm. On the edge of our property was a root cellar and a tiny shack/house used to be there. Rich wanted to tear it down and fill it in, but once we talked to some neighbors who had lived there many decades, we decided we want to restore it. We’ll make it sound then use reclaimed barn wood to side the small building that we can keep stuff we may need close to the road. One of the days we were there, a plane was circling around above us and we realized it was a KC-135 stratotanker….the plane Rich flew more than any other aircraft when on active duty. We took that as a good sign that we were meant to be there. Tallinn loved everything about it. There are so many wild animals around. Herds of deer (you never just saw 5…it was more like 30 at a time) and turkey…they travelled in large groups as well. Tallinn loved roaming around smelling the smells and fetching sticks Lily was throwing for him. Many of our neighbors have horses, cows, goats, etc. Being here makes me truly want to fight hard for time…because I really want to make to sit on my front porch and look out over those beautiful mountains.