Before I start off talking about our trip to the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust in Nairobi on our first full day in Kenya, I want to talk to you a bit about Kenya itself.

We didn’t fly with the rest of the group from Omaha (since we were coming from Montana). We flew into Amsterdam a day early and then tried to acclimatize to the new time zone. As with most flights to Europe, you flight through the night. I don’t sleep well upright. I am a side or tummy sleeper, so sitting upright is not conducive to good sleep for me. I think we managed to stay up until 7:30 p.m. and then crashed. We flew out around noon the next day to Nairobi. So the flight to Amsterdam was about 9 hours and the flight to Nairobi was the same, (and that was not including the initial flight to get to Minneapolis from Montana). It is A LOT of flight time, so we broke it up a bit. We arrived in Nairobi around 10 p.m. and was picked up in the airport by one of the Collette employees (that was the company we did our tour with).

Nairobi has about 5.5 million people and is the largest city in Kenya. Mombasa is a little less than 500 km away and is the 2nd largest city in Kenya. There are 44 tribes in Kenya and they all speak a different language. They learn Swahili when they head to school and then later English is added in. We actually learned a lot of phrases in Swahili while we were in Africa. It is the national language of many of the countries in southeastern Africa. Jambo Jambo! (Hello! – A greeting we heard all the time.) Karibu (welcome!). I will sprinkle a few more phrases as I blog through our trip. Our guide, Afred, often spoke in what he called SwaEnglish – a combo of Swahili and English. The Kenyan money is the shilling and a U.S. dollar = 130 Kenyan shillings. They do drive on the other side of the road and the vehicle, as they were a British protectorate for a long time. They gained their independence from the UK in 1963. The population of Kenya is about 56 million and covers 587,000 square km. Kenya doesn’t use states but counties, of which they have 47. We were in Kenya and Tanzania in mid to late June, which is their wintertime. We had cooler nights in the mid 50’s and it was mostly in the 70’s or low 80’s at most while we were there. It was dry, as the rainy season had ended about a month prior. We had a few dusty days in the Serengeti, but for the most part, things were still green from all the rain. It was the perfect time to be there. In the city of Nairobi, there was the Nairobi National Park, where they have all sorts of wild animals, including black rhino. Right in the middle of the city! Christianity makes up 64% of Kenyan’s religion. Muslims make up 42%. The remainder are mostly Hindu or other Indian religions. Nairobi has a slum area called the Kibera slums, where 100’s of thousands of Kenyans live. It is the largest slum in Africa. Other random facts about Kenya….the drinking age is 18 years old, which is also when they can vote. Plastic bags are illegal. This includes plastic grocery bags and ziploc baggies. All illegal. We couldn’t bring them into the country unless we took them out with us.

Okay…our first full day in Africa was spent in Nairobi and it was a FULL day. I think it was somewhat planned that way so we could stay up all day and crash hard that night. I think we started with breakfast at 7 a.m. and our welcome dinner started at 7 p.m. Our first stop of the day in Nairobi was the David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust – otherwise known as the Nairobi nursery. They are open to the public five days a week but for only one hour a day. People are allowed to buy tickets to hear about the program from the caretakers and watch the baby elephants be fed their bottles. They have two black rhinos there as well….one which is blind and 15 years old who lives there permanently, and one year old rhino who had been attacked by lions they think, and had several awful wounds that they have done several surgeries to correct. She is now on the mend and starting to grow and flourish. They have 22 baby elephants righ now who were rescued from certain death all over the Kenyan countryside. They all have varying back stories and if you go on their website, http://www.sheldrickwildlifetrust.org , you can read about their stories. Rich gifted me with adopting one of the baby elephants, Mzinga, who is a female that is 2.5 years old. She was found in Tsavo East National Park all alone. She is now thriving at the Nairobi nursery. The goal for the elephants is to be raised and released back into the wild to be adopted by family groups of wild elephants. This program has been around for 45 years and they have raised 12.067 orphans and have 29 anti-poaching teams. I am enamored with African elephants so this was so very special for me. As an adoptive mom, I get emailed the caretakers’ notes on Mzinga each month and pictures of her and how she is doing. She is full of spit and vinegar…just like me! The baby elephants came right up to the people around the feeding pen and I got to touch them…and even got a smudge of mud on my shoe from the trunk of a curious baby elephant trying to untie my orange shoelaces. My heart almost burst. So here are some photos from that hour at the Nairobi Nursery:

I have mentioned several times that when Rich and I moved to NW Montana, we decided to join the local volunteer fire department. The North Hall is a little less than a mile from our house and we went to their annual summer open house to meet them and check it out. We showed up and one young 20-something firefighter jokingly asked if we wanted an application. Honestly, as people with no firefighting experience and in our mid 50’s, we thought we would cook them meals on meeting nights and wash the trucks and file paperwork for them. Oh no. Within three weeks of starting to attend meetings, we were assigned bunker gear, lockers, and given pagers and radios and expected to answer calls. That was the beginning. We have been with Bad Rock Volunteer Fire Department and QRU (that is the EMS side) for almost a year and we love it. Are there hard calls? Yes. Actually, we have had several tough calls in the last week, and we’ll be meeting with county trained officials for a critical stress debriefing tonight. It is a great service we have in our county to help with the mental health of our first responders. In our year so far, Rich and I have been very active in responding for calls and volunteering for extra duties. I went through EMR and then EMT training. I now understand how our Joe talked about his firefighter brothers….as just that, a brotherhood. I would do just about anything for these guys (and gals). Rich describes our lives as 1/3 work, 1/3 play, and 1/3 fire department. We did this to honor our Joe, and when we found out our volunteer fire department was number 13 (his birthday), we knew it was meant to be. It gives me purpose and I didn’t realize how important that was to me…how much I had missed patient care and doing something that really matters. Rich and I do wildfire calls…although most of them have been unattended burn piles or hay fires…not the out-of-control wildfires that plague our state and our neighbors to the north in Canada. We answer calls for motor vehicle accidents, especially during the height of tourist season (which is now). We have had several gas odor calls. Some are false alarms, others we are faced with hissing exposed lines that make me a bit nervous. The gas company always responds to these calls as well, but they typically come from 30 minutes away, so we are first on scene to scope out the situation. Rich and I have learned to drive engines and wildland fire trucks and tenders (the tanker trucks that carry thousands of gallons of water). This was not in my comfort zone in the beginning. It is still not my favorite, but I can do it. To be quite honest, I have a hard time getting in and out of these trucks in my bunker gear. My knees don’t bend in all that extra material as well and being 5′ 2″, the first step is mid-thigh to waist level or higher, depending on the truck. Exiting, I just jump and hope for a soft landing. Being rural, we don’t really have fire hydrants…. or streetlights. When we have to fight a fire, we have to bring the water with us and then dump it in a soft pool we carry around and then go back and get more. Our engines draft water out of these pools, which if it is a hot fire, we can go through pretty quickly. We had a fire recently that was 130 of those huge 1200 lb round bales of hay. It was a 24-hour process and I think we had 5 fire departments helping us throughout that time. We weren’t there the entire 24 hours, but it was 24 hours before it was safely torn down, cooled down, and sprayed over. It is a lot of work! It is not just spraying water on hot spots; it is getting in there and walking in the mud and soot and digging and raking through the hay and dirt to make sure we expose any hot spots. Then there are the medical calls. A lot of people thought that EMT school would come so easy to me with my history of being a military nurse. Some of it did… but it is vastly different working in a hospital with doctors looking over your shoulder versus showing up at someone’s house on their worse day of their lives and trying to play 20 questions and figure out what is going on with them so we can treat them. Then 95% of the time, you never know how the outcome. Did the patient live? Did the patient get the correct treatment? That is a hard thing to deal with…. the not knowing how things turned out for the patient/family. However, I am learning slowly to let that go and not lay awake at night wondering about it. I do pray for them every night and know that God’s will will be done with those I work with. When I lose a patient, I light a candle for them at church that next Sunday and honor their lives in that small way. I am getting used to having a pager and a radio with me all the time. I have adjusted what I wear, thinking of whether or not I will get a call. When I go to bed at night, I always have clothes laid out for those middle-of-the-night calls, so I hopefully cut down my enroute time. I have given myself permission to wear my glasses to calls in the middle of the night rather than put in my contacts and that has sped up my call time as well. As I sit here and type this, I realize I am still in my glasses as we had a call at 06 – something this morning and when I got home, I just went to work around the house getting things done. Anyhow, as I listen to the Olympic judo competition while I type this, I wanted to share some photos we have taken recently. If you have a volunteer fire department near you, please consider contacting them and helping out in some capacity. These departments are on a shoestring budget, and you’ll be amazed at all they do with the equipment they have.

Shane and I attacking a burn pile that was started in March. The owner just piled dirt on it at the time and it reignited in late July. There were a couple of these piles and they had to be all torn down and flooded with water to make them safe in our hot and dry conditions right now. Normally, I would not be wearing bunker pants, but I was coming from a medical water rescue, and we always take our structure gear with us just in case. We came direct to this call. I was glad to have it because I was filthy by the time I left. Even my chief made a few comments.

That is Rich on the hose above at the hay bale fire mop up and then at training learning the engineer aspect of pumping water off of our structure fire engine.

These are the pools of water we have to keep full so we can draft water through our engines. Notice the engine to the left….yep, it got stuck. We tried to push it out (we have done that before) but this time we needed help from a big rig tow truck .

Rich and I try to attend as many trainings as possible. Sometimes there are opportunities to learn about different aspects of firefighting. Last weekend, we went out to the city airport and got some training on wildfire firefighting with mutual aid from the air and the air bosses. It was really informative, and I learned a lot.

Most of you all who know me, know that Rich and I have been traveling a LOT this summer. We were gone just shy of 5 weeks and it was all overseas. The first 16 days were Kenya and Tanzania on a wildlife safari. It was AMAZING! A definite trip of a lifetime. (Although I am already looking at ways to get back there and see more countries and wildlife in southeastern Africa.) I can let you know that I took not hundreds of photos there, but thousands. That post will take a while to get through. When we finished our tour in Africa, we flew up to Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Instead of flying home right away, we got on the Viking Vidar and went on the Grand European Tour River Cruise. We were already on about the same time zone, we figured we’d go ahead and do the river cruise then. It was two weeks long, so we were missing home by the end, but it was also a neat experience. Here were the places we stopped: Amsterdam and Kinderdiijk (the Netherlands) – think cheese, wooden shoes, and windmills – Cologne, Koblenz, Freudenburg, Würzburg, Nuremberg, Regensberg, and Passau (Germany) – think beer, cobblestones, churches and castles, schnitzel, and pretzels – Melk and Vienna (Austria) – think cobblestones, gingerbread, Lipizann horses, castles, Mozart and Strauss, and cathedrals – Bratislava (Slovakia) – think of the summer home of Maria Theresa Habsburg, cathedrals, castles, and a pretty young country (1993) with a deep, long history – and finally, Budapest (Hungary) – think cobblestones, thermal baths, the parliament building lit up at night, and the moving tribute called “the shoes” dedicated to the Jews asked to step out of their shoes before they were shot and then their bodies pushed into the Danube River by the Nazis. This river boat cruise was relaxing and slow-paced after the go-go-go pace of Africa. There were only 183 passengers on board, and we got to know probably about 50 of them by name and fairly well. We tried to eat with different people at each meal but towards the end of the cruise, we sat with the folks we really enjoyed spending time with. The Viking service was amazing and we learned a lot about the local history, cuisine, and customs. If you want to learn about an area, Viking really does it well.

Here are some photos from The Netherlands:

We then moved on to Germany. If we were beer drinkers, perhaps we would have had an even better time, but we enjoyed our stay in Germany. We had the awesome opportunity to meet up with a good friend of Rich’s who is in the German Air Force. We were stationed with them in Norway and our kids went to school together. He and his wife took us to lunch while we were moored in Cologne. It was so great to see them and catch up. So many churches and cathedrals….so many cobblestones. During WWII, the Nazis made the train tunnel entrances look like churches or castles, knowing the Allies wouldn’t bomb those buildings. They still stand like that today. We saw a lot of vineyards on very steep hills as we cruised through Germany. We lit candles for our Joe in almost every city we stopped in…in all the countries in Europe we traveled to.

Then there was Austria….we stopped in Melk and in Vienna. Rich fell in love with Vienna and would like to go back. It was extravagant…so much beauty in the city. We went to a concert that night to listen to the music of Strauss and Mozart. We even had lessons onboard the ship on the Viennese waltz, which all Austrians know how to do. We spent a few hours touring the Spanish Riding Stables where the world famous Lipizzan stallions reside and are trained. They are born dark gray and 95% of them turn a brilliant white. They are bred from 6 lines and are beautiful! Our cruise started out cold and dreary but by the time we hit Austria, it was hot and steamy. We even saw a sunflower field!

We only had a short time in Bratislava, Slovakia, but would like to go back and spend more time there. It was a new country for both of us, so we enjoyed meandering the cobblestone streets. Remember back in the day when the had the country Czechoslovakia? Well, in 1993, after the fall of the Wall and the downfall of the Communist eastern block countries, the country separated into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. You can still see where the wall used to be between Austria and Slovakia because there were trees lining each side. So this very young country is still learning its place in this new Europe and yet it has such a rich history. It was about 100 degrees this day and I mostly took phone photos…but here are a few.

Finally, we ended up in Budapest, Hungary. This is the city I fell in love with. We are already talking loosely about going back and then finishing a river cruise through the lower Danube and hitting Prague and Romania. I adored Budapest! I already mentioned the “Shoes” art exhibit. It was along the area where our ship docked and there were people out there looking at the metal shoes day and night. It was incredibly moving. The Nazis made the Jews take off their shoes before they were shot and their bodies dumped into the Danube because their shoes were the only thing of worth they had and could be resold. The city of Budapest sits on several geothermal sites and therefore have a lot of hot springs. We spent the afternoon at one of the larger ones. They had indoor and outdoor pools….and of varying temperatures. At night, Budapest comes alive with their buildings all lit up as well as their bridges. It was magical!

When we first decided to move to Montana, Joe was so very excited for us! He couldn’t wait to get up here and spend time with us in the beautiful area. He never got the chance to see our place. It was hard to move someplace where no one knew our Joe and we didn’t have any memories of him. We have tried to honor our Joe in lots of ways since we have moved here. We have donated money in his name to worthy organizations. We planted a tree in our yard for him with a memorial plaque and a glider next to it. We joined the local volunteer fire department and are carrying on Joe’s tradition of service as firefighters and an EMT. We have lit candles for Joe all over the world and said prayers for him daily. Today we were able to go to the Columbia Falls Riverside Park and place a memorial plaque on a city bench we purchased and had placed overlooking the fishing pond…. right where Joe would have loved to be. Lily, Rich, and I placed his plaque on his bench today. We wore his memorial t-shirts and watched a family made up of 3 generations teach the youngest family member (about 4 years old) how to fish. It was very fitting. Joe is never forgotten, and he lives on in our hearts and memories. Now, people from around here, locals or tourists, can pop a squat on his bench and read about his life and know how special he was, is, and continues to be.

Oy. It has been a busy week. There is one week a month where I am at the fire hall for three continuous nights. Tonight was the last of those three nights. Lily came with us and got the pleasure of meeting lots of folks who are closer to her age than they are to ours. She also got to help wash all the fire trucks. We came home and she beat us both soundly at Settler’s of Catan. Sigh. She went to bed happy. She is working at a local plant nursery and seems to be enjoying her job working with the plants. She works in production and so doesn’t really interact with customers, but helps plant, prune and arrange flowers and plants. She has an awful itchy rash on both of her arms which we are trying to figure out what she is allergic to, but other than that, she is fitting into life here in Montana just fine.

I have a new oncologist! I have been without a local doctor for over 4 months now. I am seeing an ad locum oncologist. He lives in Florida and travels up here for part of the week to see patients here. He is originally from the Ukraine but has lived in the U.S. for quite a while. He is such a nice guy and has been doing a lot of reading to learn about my rare kind of cancer. He can’t believe my treatment regimen is actually working…and has been for over 3 years. He mentioned today that he can’t seem reconcile what he sees on my scans and then when he looks at me. He says my scans show so much tumor load and yet he sees me and would never guess I have cancer. It was an interesting conversation. He also likes photography, so we had something else to talk about today other than cancer, which is always nice. He is going to let me skip bloodwork and seeing him next month. I will still have to come in for my shot, but I won’t have the extra stick for a blood draw, waiting for my labs to clear, and then waiting to see the doctor. It doesn’t sound like a lot, but it just takes up a lot of time. If all goes well in August when I see him again, I will go to seeing him every 3 months. That would be nice. I have been doing the whole shebang every month along with my shots for a year now, and now I will only have to get a shot. I have to drive 30 minutes one way to get to the oncology clinic, so this will cut down time at the clinic by about 2 hours. I also had a dentist visit today. All good. Lily is getting her wisdom teeth out in about 5 weeks….just about 3 weeks prior to her leaving to go back to school. She is not looking forward to it, but they are coming in now and bothering her, so her choice was to have them removed.

In other news….many of you know that I have been studying a lot lately. I spent the month of February hot and heavy into getting registered as an Emergency Medical Responder. I took a month off and for the last 10 weeks, have been in EMT school. It has been arduous. I am so thankful I took my EMR first….and that I have a nursing background (even if it was so long ago). There is a HUGE difference between being a labor and delivery nurse in a hospital and taking care of a medical patient where you have to figure out what is wrong with them in their home or trauma patients in motor vehicle accidents. Whole different ball of wax. Anyhow, I finished my class last weekend. I had a 4-hour final exam and then a day and a half of practical testing (running simulated scenarios on live people and on mannequins. The mannequins my school has are pretty high tech…they talk, show signs of cyanosis, weigh about 200 lbs., have lung and heart sounds, pulses where they should, and pupils that can change. They can even cry and sweat. It is kinda freaky, but great practice. Passed the class. Got rewarded with a very cool tour of the rescue helicopter program here in the Flathead valley. That was pretty awesome. On Tuesday, I drove 30 minutes to the local community college and sat for my EMT National Registry exam. It is an exam that starts hard and as you miss questions; it gets easier and works its way up to being hard again. Every person’s test is different. The multiple-choice questions have one wrong answer and usually 3 correct answers. You have to pick the BEST of the three correct answers. Some questions had 7 answers and you had to pick the best 3 answers. Some questions were mix and match and put things in order. It was absolutely awful. You can have anywhere from 70-130 questions, depending on how well you are doing. I am guessing I answered about 75-80 questions. You only see one question at a time, and you can’t go back to any questions. In the upper right-hand corner is a timer, counting down your time from 135 minutes. It also has the number of questions you have answered. When the test decides you have either shown enough proficiency to pass the test, or shown that you cannot pass the test, it shuts off. The screen just goes blank and goes to a screen saying the test is over for you. It is akin to having a door slammed in your face. Anyhow, that happened pretty early for me. The proctor even said, “Well, that was quick!” I took about an hour, I guess. Anyhow, the test is designed to make you feel like you have failed. Which, in my case, definitely worked. I just wanted to throw up after I left. However, I found out about 12 hours later that I had passed. I was so incredibly relieved….I can’t even begin to tell you! I want to keep learning, but at this level. I am happy at this level. I kept thinking about Joe. He was dyslexic and this test was not easy. How hard this must have been for him to learn and pass this….yet he did! I was proud of him then, but so much more proud of him now that I know the stress he was under. I wore his memorial shirt for my class final and for my national registry exam for the EMR and EMT tests. He was with me the whole time. Now I just have to go out there and make him proud. I have to say, I feel like the weight of the world has been lifted from my shoulders. I don’t think I realized how stressed I was about all of this. I didn’t want to disappoint anyone! Going back to school at age 53 isn’t easy. My brain is just not as pliable as the rest of the class (who could have all been my kids, I might add.)

Now for a bit of a teaser….Rich and I have had a trip of a lifetime planned for about a year now. We leave tomorrow afternoon. We will be gone for almost 5 weeks and we are going to be hitting at least 3 new countries for both of us, along with some old standbys. I am taking my good camera, but I will not be processing while I am gone since we have to travel lighter. I will put some phone photos on this blog if I get the chance. Let’s just say it will look like I am at a zoo, but the animals will all be in the wild….I am SOOOOO excited! That is the first half of the trip. The second half involves a boat….

Last weekend Rich, Lily, and I took a quick trip to the East side of Glacier National Park and stayed the night at Many Glacier Lodge, built in 1910. We live about 20 minutes from the West entrance to Glacier National Park. There are several entrances on the east side though, near Browning, a Blackfeet reservation – Two Medicine, St. Mary’s, and Many Glacier. We visited all three in the 36 hours or so we were there. The weather did not cooperate with us. It was cool…in the mid 40’s and raining a majority of the time we were there. Thankfully, we lived in Norway for three years and learned there is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing. So we hiked for over 6 hours the first day….dried out our clothes, and then went back for a hike to Apikuni Falls the second day, after a quick jaunt to Fishercap Lake, looking for moose. We saw a moose hind end on the drive in, but never got to see the whole thing. We did, however, see several bears. Rich was armed and I had bear spray for all of our walks. There was a main hiking thoroughfare that was blocked off due to a bear feeding on a moose carcass. We went along the other side of the lake and stumbled upon a mama black bear and her two little cubs. The cubs were very curious and kept coming our direction on the path. We took a few photos and then moved on as they got on the path. We also saw a brown bear eating dandelions along the side of the road at St. Mary’s. He was pretty close, but it was also 9:30 at night and the light wasn’t so great. The lodge at Many Glaciers is very Swiss-looking. As I said before, it was built in 1910. The bell hop greets you in lederhosen. He is tasked with bringing in your suitcases and keeping the great standalone fireplace in the center of the lobby (which is 4 stories high, lined with huge tree trunks as posts). So the guy is wearing lederhosen and has soot on his knees. It is the little things you notice that make you smile. The winds were howling the whole night we were there. That made for some pretty cool lenticular cloud formations, which is Lily’s favorite. I think she took 20 photos of the clouds. Of course the mountains were gorgeous, even with the obscured views.

It has been raining for over a week now. No one is really complaining. We didn’t get enough snow pack this past winter and we are afraid there will be a very bad wildfire season. So we all put on our mucking boots and a raincoat and just deal with it. Today I went to a farm near here to take photos of the farm animals. They had lots of goats, chickens, alpacas, and miniature highland cattle. It was a wet day but got some good spots. Even the chickens posed today!

I have to admit that I have been hot and heavy into my EMT studies. I have finished all my practical and written assignments for the class. I have two and a half more weeks of classes on Tuesdays and Thursdays and a 3 day, all day weekend that includes some fun stuff on helicopters and extrication work, and my practical and written final exams. I am just trying to put an hour or two of study time each day so I am prepared for my finals and then for the National Registry exam soon afterwards.

I have been working out with my new jump rope from Tim. It is Husker red and it is the only one that I have found that I like as much as the 25 year old rope I keep breaking back from my karate days.

At any given time, I am blessed with wildlife in my yard. The deer and this lone turkey likes to eat the bird seed from the bird feeder.

I was able to talk to my sarcoma specialist at the Mayo Clinic today via zoom. It was good to hear that the Mayo Clinic oncology radiologist agreed with the local radiologist and I am still stable. The oncology department held grand rounds for cases today and mine was brought up. They couldn’t believe I had been on my treatment for over three years already. They wanted to know when my doctor would try something different. I am pleasantly a “boring” cancer patient and I am happy to stay that way. My doctor doesn’t want to change anything until I can’t stand the side effects anymore or until there is 20% growth. So I will have scans again in November and see him again then. We covered that in about 3 minutes. He asked about my fascination with elephants, talked about the differences between nursing and being an EMT, and about my Joe. I can’t tell you how blessed I am that God put this doctor in my life back in March of 2020. He has been a wonderful man to get to know and he treats me like a person rather than a disease, and I really appreciate that.

Here is a photo dump of the last few months on my good camera. It varies from elk near our house to bluebonnets in Texas, to the northern lights up here, to Tim’s visit, to winter and spring photos in Glacier National Park.

Mother’s Day has been hard on me the last three years. I miss hearing from Joe on the phone….getting his funny card in the mail. Rich left Thursday night for Kansas City to move Lily out of the dorms. They then flew to Florida to spend Mother’s Day with Rich’s mom. His siblings were there as well as a niece and nephew, so there was a mini family reunion going on. Unfortunately, Rich’s mom has moderate to severe Alzheimer’s and doesn’t really know who anyone is. However, I am sure she enjoyed having a full house of people to entertain her. I am still in the throes of my EMT class…so I couldn’t go anywhere. When Rich realized that I would be alone for Mother’s Day, he made plans to have Tim fly in from San Diego for the weekend. He came in around 1 a.m. on Saturday morning and left around 6 p.m. Sunday evening, so it was a quick trip, but it was so nice to have him here!

I stayed up late to go pick him up from the airport. Luckily, that gave me no excuse whatsoever to not go out and photograph the northern lights Friday night. I chose to go to the city beach in Whitefish. Here are some of my photographs from my phone from that night:

The next day we went to Glacier National Park to walk around. Things are starting to open up in the park already. There was a line to get into the park and lots of people were there as well. It didn’t hurt that it was sunny, clear and 80 degrees outside. Here are a few photos from that:

We spent the later part of the day watching UFC fights together (we normally have to text each other each weekend during the fights, so it was fun to just watch them together), and we watched the Celtics beat the Cavs. So a great night! Tallinn got lots of extra attention and we were able to step outside the backdoor and take a few northern lights photos again Saturday night.

Sunday we went to Mass, then spent some time working out in the garage together. It was a very special treat to do pad drills with Tim. He is a very good instructor and it was nice to not just have to hit a heavy bag or a speed bag, but take instruction from someone holding focus mitts. Not quite the typical Mother’s Day that most moms would love, but it was perfect for me. He even got me a candle (which is hysterical) and a new jump rope! He swears by this jump rope and I have been having no luck finding one I like. They are NOT ALL THE SAME. Anyhow, used it this morning and he was right, I love it!

I got to talk to both Lily and Michelle on the phone and that made my day even better. Tim is safe back at his place now and Tallinn and I are enjoying some quiet time together. He is loving the warmer weather and I am loving the visits I am getting from the hummingbirds (who are not going to my feeder, but hanging out around my hanging plants.

I did want to mention that I had my 6 month scans done on Friday. The preliminary results were stability again and possibly some shrinkage. Either way, good news. I meet with my Mayo Clinic doctor via zoom next week for the results they see. They always re-read the scans as they know what they are looking for.

I am plugging away at my EMT class. I had a shift last week with the local ambulance service (and we received absolutely no calls – they called me a “white cloud”) and I have my second shift tomorrow. I will be doing on scene classroom work all weekend. So we are on our final big push, graduating in about 4 weeks. I am learning lots, but I am ready to be done with all the classwork and studying. They mentioned the first night of class that they hoped we had cleared our social calendar for the next 10 weeks because we would be eating, breathing, and sleeping EMT stuff. They were not wrong.

Facebook is not always a blessing in my life, but at times, it is. Before moving to the promised land of Montana last summer, we lived for 13 years in the Omaha area in Nebraska. I have lived there more than any other place. I love the people there. They are just so kind and look out for each other. On Friday, several large tornadoes hit the Omaha area. People in Elkhorn, Bennington Lake, Waverly, and Eppley Airport were all hit HARD. The F-2 and F-3 tornadoes then marched across the river and hit Iowa. I have to say, blessings. How could this be a blessing? Several neighborhoods were completely flattened. The tornadoes, which typically happen in the darkness of night, happened in the middle of the day. People were at work…kids were at school. People just weren’t really home. No one was killed or seriously injured. What a blessing! The community is coming together to help one another in ways you just can’t even imagine. There are so many angels working in the faces of the citizens of the Midwest right now. I am in awe of the stories coming from friends there. Blessings. It reminds me of the quote from today. (I get a quote of the day via email, which is one of the best things I ever opted into!) The quote is from Albert Einstein. “Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.” Love it!

Another Facebook thank you….those memories it sends you each day. Today it sent me photos from 10 years ago…which happened to be Easter weekend when we lived in Bellevue, Nebraska. Tim was finishing up his last month of his senior year and had a fresh set of stitches on his cheek bone from the opening rugby weekend match. He was the lector that Sunday, with his stitches and shiner. Lily was in the 3rd grade and adorable. Joe was a freshman at the University of Central Missouri, and he brought home his girlfriend of 2 months to meet his parents. Her name was Michelle Schneidler and she would later become Michelle Messina. I remember Joe and Tim throwing the rugby ball around in the front yard while Michelle and I sat and talked on the front steps for hours. Joe knew this was the test. I was pretty honest with him when there were people he associated with that I didn’t respect or like. He never made friend choices because of what I said, but he always asked my opinion. I loved her immediately. I love her still. Joe gave me so many wonderful gifts, but he gave me this beautiful daughter-in-law to love. It was one of the most wonderful things. I feel like she has been a part of our family for more than a decade. I know that perhaps life will bless her with another love, and I hope she knows she will always be loved by our family and be considered a Messina. I miss her, being so far away now. Thankfully, her little sister-in-law lives in the same town! Here are some photos from that Easter Sunday, 10 years ago:

Today, after Mass, I presented my priest with the Maltese cross I wear everyday. It is a fireman’s badge with Joe’s FF number on it. He had commented on it a couple of months ago…what a lovely cross it was. I never really thought of it as a cross, but as a badge. But it is a Maltese cross, and so I asked one of my favorite priests, our Fr. Sean Raftis, to bless it today. I told him the story of my Joe. He said some of the nicest, kindest words about Joe…even though he had never met him. He didn’t simply just bless the cross I am never without, but talked about the thanksgiving for a man who led a life of service to others. It was such a blessing to me. Here are photos of the cross I always wear: