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!

I was taking some photos of Lily today and my little man wanted in on the fun. I had wanted to do a lot of this prior to Christmas, but as I said, my advent and Christmas just didn’t go as planned timewise. So here are a few photos of my side-kick and partner in crime….okay, maybe Lily is more my partner in crime as she has an opposable thumb, but I spend more time with this little guy day in and day out that just about anyone. He deserved his own photo shoot today!

I had a zoom meeting with my local oncologist from Bergan Mercy this morning. My CT results came in 15 minutes before the zoom meeting occurred. Stability….with a tiny bit of shrinkage! I will take it! Did you hear me praying, “Thank you, Jesus!” over and over? I really had a bad feeling about these scans, so I was so utterly relieved. I still have a meeting with my sarcoma specialist via zoom on January 13th, but I am pretty sure it will be the same thing….continue on with what I am doing. Now I feel comfortable to make a few plans in 2022. I don’t know what they will be yet, but I feel a weight lifted off my shoulders for the next 3 months.

Thank you to all of you who have been covering me in a mantel of prayer. I feel it and it is working. Thank you!

I don’t know what the weather is like where you are, but I was thrilled to get the opportunity to stay home today! It has been hovering between 1-5 degrees F here with windchills 20 degrees lower than that. We were supposed to have a snow event here but thanks to the Omadome (it’s what the people in Omaha call the bubble over our city when weather goes right around us), it was just an inch or two of blowing snow. I spent the day doing laundry, writing out my goes in my 2022 planner and catching up on my blogging!

I have to admit that I am going to wait to see what the doctor tells me on Monday before I start really focusing on 2022 goals. However, I have decided to continue on at the YMCA, taking 5-6 classes a week as long as I am able. I am toying seriously with the idea of doing a P52 challenge…where you make a concerted effort to take at least one awesome photo a week. That would give me 52 great photos to put into a book at the end of the year.

I finished the Bible in a Year program I was doing with Father Mike Schmitz. I am proud of myself for making this a priority in my life this past year. It meant taking 30 minutes of my time each day and bringing my Bible along with me when I travelled. It blessed me in so many ways. I was literally ugly crying listening to the last podcast…even Father Mike was deeply moved. I belong to several FB groups of people who were participating in the program throughout the year and it was a common comment yesterday….the tears at the end. So….I am doing it again! I already have myself trained to do it and repetition can only help! I gave my parents a tabbed Great Adventure Bible along with the daily readings and some Bible pens and highlighters so they could do it this year as well. I would recommend this to anyone….I just enjoyed it so much.

Well, I don’t know what 2022 will bring for me. I hope that I will have continued stability in my disease and good health otherwise. If that is not what I get, I hope to have the ability to fight my battle with grace and dignity. I sure hope that 2022 brings us all some relief from the COVID pandemic and lets us return to normal…even if it may be a “new” normal. I miss hugging my friends. So many friends and family have had a tough 2021. I pray that they will find some peace and joy in 2022. There are a lot of people who come up and tell me that they have been praying for me daily. I can’t thank you all enough for keeping me covered in prayer. It humbles me to know so many people care. Many times it is hard to remember that when you are stuck alone at home all the time….or at least for the better part of the last 2+ years.

As this first day of this new year comes to a close, I hear my valiant husband out snowblowing our driveway so we can attend Mass in the Nebraskan deep freeze tomorrow. Tallinn is sitting at my feet looking at me with those expressive brown eyes (it’s past his dinner time), my Joe and his wife are spending an evening with their best friends down where they live in Lee’s Summitt, Tim is with his best friend in Phoenix relaxing and enjoying the day, Lily is in her room doing origami stars (she has over 4000 of them in a huge glass jar in her room), and the crockpot is cooking the roast beef, cooked carrots, and baby potatoes that is making the house smell delicious. What more could I ask for? I am so blessed. Let’s walk into 2022 together with happy, thankful hearts that are full of faith and love for our God, who will guide us to where we need to be this year. We just need to open our eyes, ears, and hearts to hear what He is telling us. Happy New Year, everyone. Love you!