It's been a few years.....

 

Things have changed a lot since my last post in June of 2022. 

Kids Update 

Steven and April fostered April's niece Nova from May 2022 and formally adopted her last June 2024. She is a sweetie. Now they have a blended family of 5. 

Michael is good. Nothing much changes with him. 

Becca and her Michael are doing well. Claire is in Preschool 2 days a week, dance class, and doing soccer. She is 3.5 and pretty smart. She's already reading sentences and words. She's about a year ahead of where her mom was. 

Jessie has been busy, She got her masters, has been working as an assistant archivist, and a second job as an administrative assistant. She also got married last October, to her girlfriend Kristal. They went to Greece for over 2 weeks for their honeymoon. 

Pets 
As for our pets, since my last post we have lost our Zooey to pancreatic cancer, Sophie to old age  (she was a 17 year old little kitty, ) and then a few months ago, Daryl lost his Fuzzball, to his liver disease he'd been fighting for several years. 

Jake, Bella and Twinkletoes are still with us, for now. 

Jake is 16.5, very arthritic, mostly blind and deaf. 

Bella has a cancerous tumor in her ear canal, which has grown a lot, causes her discomfort, and vestibular issues. We are just making her comfortable, and waiting it out. She is still doing ok, we give her a steroid daily and gabapentin for her pain. 

Twinkletoes is good, she loves being outside. 

Daryl and I had a lot going on the last few years...   

September of 2022 Daryl and I flew to Hawaii, and spent a week at the Royal Kona Resort on the Big Island. That deserves a post of it's own to come soon! 

Daryl and I went to Yellowstone in May of 2023, I am going to make a single blog post about that trip too, that was so much fun!!! 

December of 2023, we sold our house in Fort Worth, and moved to Hillsboro Texas. We have a lovely home here, bigger than our old one, but only 3 bedrooms, instead of 4. However we do have a full 2 car garage, extra large. We have a formal dining room, a breakfast area, large master bedroom and bath, and decent size secondary bedrooms, one of which is my office.  We have a lovely fireplace, and an amazing front and back yard. ALSO a huge driveway, we can get 6 cars in the driveway! 

We didn't celebrate Christmas at our home that year, we were packing and our home was super unorganized. We closed on the new house December 29. and moved in on Jan 2.  We went to Steven's house for Christmas for 2023.

2024 was a rough year. 

First big change for me - on January 29th, - 653 Customer agents were told we were getting laid off at American Airlines; we had 60 days until the layoff . March 30 was our last day on payroll. 

Given we were getting laid off, I decided to go ahead and get my mammogram. I went the day after my 62nd birthday. They found an abnormality, so had to get an ultrasound and second diagnostic mammogram. Did that on Feb 19, and I got a call later that day I needed a biopsy.

Second and huge change  - Feb 29th I had the biopsy, and it was cancer.  Surgery on May 6, had a partial mastectomy, and the surgeon got all the margins. It turns out that I didn't need chemo, but did do radiation. 

Radiation burns after it was complete were awful. But I am still here, on medication for 7 to 10 years to try to make sure it does not come back anywhere else. 

The layoff was a blessing in disguise. I had time to recover and completely get my body back to normal, or as normal as possible. 

During all this cancer "fun" I still did a lot of things with our family. Zoo trips, babysitting Claire, and Daryl took me to see New Kids on the Block in July!!!!!   

After I was all healed from Radiation, Rebecca, Michael, Claire, Daryl and myself, all went on a cruise. It was mine, Daryl's and Claires first cruise!!   We went to Cozumel and Progresso. I loved it, and would truly love to go on another one soon! 

 

Also in November, I started looking for a new job. Applied in November for several positions. Accepted the first one I was offered, and started on February 3, 2025. Still in training until early June. It doesn't pay nearly as well as I was making, but I was at my old job almost 11 years. I think this will be good. They have wonderful opportunities to move up, so I wont be doing this forever. 

Nothing much else going on. I work, take care of the house, laundry, groceries, etc. Daryl works, and takes care of all the stuff outside and fixing things up that need done. 

We spent last year getting the inside the way we wanted, but now are working on outside. We did already redo the roof of the gazebo out back, as that's where Jessie and Kristal got married. And we removed 4 trees that were on the powerlines, and about a dozen of the over 100 shrubs from out back. 

I love our new home, I love the town, and love that I have made some very good friends. 3 ladies and myself have gotten quite close, and I am so happy about that. We see each other often, and even started a small bible study group. 

So much more has gone on in the almost 3 years since my last blog post..  But it would make this one a lot longer than it is!!! 

Next posts Hawaii and then Yellowstone!