Thankful Thursday

Well, it finally hit me.  I have been around sickey people the past couple weeks and I kept popping my esberetox to ward off the germs.  But they got me this week.  Wednesday I was in bed all day…OK, on the couch.  Wally said, "I guess I can go to work and still be your nurse”.  It’s true, one of the perks of the job I guess, when you live where you work.  Anyway, he did handle the day so I could just sleep, which I did.  Then he brought me chicken noodle soup in a bread bowl from Panera.  He was very sympathetic to me and it got me thinking.  He’s a pretty good husband.  So I am going to brag on my hubby a bit in this post.

Wally is a smart, hands on guy.  He has had a lot of experiences and really just does know a lot.  I think God has been preparing him for this job most of his life.  Tuesday night was our monthly board meeting here at the Polo Club.  They always make me nervous and I never know what they are thinking about us.  But Tuesday night, Wally just shined.  He has researched lighting costs.  There are a lot of lights around the grounds at Polo Club.  It’s a very big deal.  Whenever one of them goes out, we usually get notified.  So Wally found out about a rebate, found light fixtures on eBay and somehow saved thousands of dollars in the budget!  He’s good with numbers like that.  He also was challenged on another issue and was able to spew out numbers and plans which I think impressed the board’s president.  I was kind of proud of him. 

One thing I wanted to do when we took this job was just be a help to people.  We have a resident who is rather difficult and has dementia.  She has called us with all kinds of problems that really don’t exist.  And a couple of big ones that do.  I think Wally has learned to be quite patient with her.  Yesterday she was at the guard house giving the guard a hard time because she was sure something was wrong with her phone.  Neither her caretaker nor the guard could get her back into the car.  But Wally did! 

Another resident had a plumbing issue…on Saturday…our day off.  But Wally went and helped her.  It made me feel good because she is all alone.  Tuesday she asked Wally if he could help her put her computer back.  He said the wires and cords were a huge jumbled ball.  So he sorted them out and bundled them up in cable ties for her.  Not a huge thing, but I think it was to her. 

Not every day is perfect or without problems…today Wally dropped a gallon of paint on someone’s driveway!  But overall I think Wally is doing a great job.  I know I am thankful for his help and support and I think the Polo Club is also blessed to have him as their manager!

When Things Come to an End

This morning as I was reading God’s Word, God did what He has so many times…He brought perspective and encouragement to me.  Have you ever been involved in God’s work, ministering in some way for a length of time?  And then, unexpectedly, not what you had ever planned on, that work is removed.  For me I did know it was coming to an end,  but then rather abruptly, it was at an end.  It is hard! 

Yesterday and this morning I think my emotions were still reeling inside and kind of taking over my thoughts.  Wally hugged me and I cried a bit.  Then I opened up to my Bible reading in Psalm 92:1-2. 

It is good to give thanks to the Lord,
And to sing praises to Your name, O Most High;
To declare Your lovingkindness in the morning,
And Your faithfulness every night,

My perspective began to change from my circumstances to my Lord.  I have so much to praise Him for…it would indeed take all of my day and into the night to express my thanks to Him.  He has been so very faithful to me!  Verse four I took as a personal encouragement from the Lord.  I have enjoyed the work I have done the past twelve years.  He gave me an opportunity to serve Him, it was His work.  And in it He gave me a lot of joy and gladness.  Still it was His work and the only triumph in that is as He brings about the results.

For You Lord, have made me glad through Your work;
I will triumph in the works of Your hands.

So, my focus has changed from my fretting to enjoying the sweet fellowship of my Lord as I go through the rest of this day, and in the days ahead.

Thankful Thursday

My Thursday is quickly coming to an end and I haven’t found the time to write down my thankful thoughts.  I am grateful that, really, there is always something for which to be thankful. But sometimes those things just jump out to you in a way that makes you realize, I am so blessed by this.   Here are three of those events given to me in the past week. 

Time with my Mom and Sister is always a blessing.  Saturday was the Ladies Luncheon at my church and its kind of a tradition that we always go together.  With our busy schedules we just don’t get to sit and talk much.  So while we had a nice time at the Luncheon, we then hit a Starbucks on the way home and enjoyed uninterrupted talk and coffee!  I’m not sure we had dessert at the Luncheon, but that time of sharing was sure sweet!

These purple flowers are part of a long row of lilacs that line the end of the tennis courts.  Every morning I take a minute or two and look at them from our balcony.  There are many lilacs around the grounds and they smell so heavenly!  I even cut me a nice bunch for my table…

One of the things that I knew I was going to miss when we moved was my flowerbeds, and garden…especially in the spring when everything is blooming.  But this week I got to do some digging.  I have a patch of dirt I get to plant!  So here are some columbines, daisies, pansies, and lupines I bought just to get things going!

What makes me so thankful for these three things this week is not that they are great events to marvel at.  They are simple, but they are things that I love and have been missing.  The Lord knows this and just reminded me of His love and goodness to me personally when He presented them to me!  And for that I am truly blessed and say “thank you”.

Bike Ride

Last night Wally and I took a bike ride.  We started near the Cherry Creek Mall and rode the trail through downtown to the REI Flagship store---8.01 miles and back 8.01 miles! I believe that adds up to 16.02 miles!

Here’s some stats from the evening:

• Most unusual sight, (not counting all the people) ~ a woman pushing her Chihuahua in a doggy stroller
• Saddest sight~the homeless people under the bridges.  One man was already asleep under a blanket at 6:30
• Most enjoyable sight, or smell rather~ the lilacs along the path
• Most enjoyable sights~the bike detour took us through the historical district…lovely old homes

This is the home of an ambassador. A friend of ours used to work for her.  Wally has actually been inside this house and he said it was beautiful!  He did an estimate on the roof for his old company.  They did not get the job and Wally did not think the roof was very well done…

Just some pretty homes.

This house is just outside the historic district. Its another house Wally measured and his company did do the work on this roof. Kind of a scary roof, huh? Makes me (and Wally) thankful he is not doing that work anymore.

• Not so fun sight~ I crashed my bike, went down, sprawled right there on a busy  Denver corner!  Not a pretty picture…I cried, bled, big scrape on my knee, even my toes felt bruised! 
• Most tragic sight~I stepped on the scale when I got home and there was not one ounce of a change!  Sixteen miles, and not one little drop!

When our kids were younger we took quite a few bike rides and we liked to ride the Cherry Creek trail. It meant an all day ride if we went by bike from Aurora.  Or a drive to Denver if we just wanted to grab the trail along the way.  But now it is my back yard! 

Easter Sunday

It has always been one of our family traditions to take a family picture on Easter in front of our church.  I think last year our family picture had dwindled down to just Wally and I with Wesley.  This year it was just the two of us.

(Here’s a little confession.  We asked someone to take our picture at church and when I looked at the camera to see the picture there was this little message…”No Memory Card”.  Rats!  I had left it in my computer.  so this picture was actually taken at the Black Eye Pea.)

I had asked our kids to take a picture of them at church and email to me.  So maybe that will be our new tradition.

Here’s Kenny and Becky…don’t they co-ordinate nicely…and Wesley.  Wes was at Kenny’s house this year.

Andrea started out our morning when she texted us this picture~~

Now isn’t that precious?  We weren’t even out of bed yet and we just lay there saying how blessed we were!  Here is their family picture~~

Elaine~Andrea~Nolan~Ben

So many miles apart and involved in different churches, yet celebrating the same thing, the Resurrection of Jesus Christ!  That is truly our biggest blessing!

Easter Crafts

The card bloggers I follow always have great projects they put out long before the special day.  It is meant to inspire creativity.  So I’ve been looking at Easter ideas for quite awhile now.  And I have been inspired, but I guess my biggest motivator is the pressure of “I need to get this mailed”!  Here is what I mailed out last week for Easter.

These next two projects are treat holders.  You can find a video for the carrot here at Stampin Stuff.  (And I just love to listen to her British accent.)

I filled my carrots with jelly beans.

The tutorial for these little boxes is from Stampin Pretty.  I sent these to Elaine and Nolan with two little kisses in each box!

I think they’re so cute!  That’s all for the Easter crafts this year!

Thankful Thursday

Can I just share two words that I am so thankful for this week?   Spring Break!   Whoo Hoo!  That about expresses my grateful heart this week!  I know I’m not in school but Bible Study, though I love it, does take a lot of work. (And I have been tired lately).  So it has been great to be a bit free with my time this week.  I haven’t done anything super exciting but I have done a good bit of paper crafting and that has been fun. 

It has also been nice to have undistracted time to just focus on Easter. I am really looking forward to celebrating the resurrection this weekend! 

 

 

The Lord is Risen…He is Risen Indeed!

The War on Cancer

{The following essay was written by Travis Gowler.  His Mom, Margie has been a good friend of ours for several years.  Although Travis is only 22 years old, he is already a cancer survivor.  Travis wrote this essay in hopes of gaining a scholarship for school.  Part of the requirement was to post it to a blog.  I was glad to help Travis and post his essay here.}

The War on Cancer – is it working?

James “Rhio” O’Connor was diagnosed with mesothelioma at age 61 and the doctors gave him less than one year to live. He decided to come up with his own plan of treatment instead of giving up or taking the usual doctor prescribed treatment. His plan included lots of vitamins and minerals and an overall healthy diet to try to combat the cancer and keep it from spreading. His diet, along with his research and desire to never give up or be negative, and taking over 100 supplements a day, enabled him outlive his prognosis by more than six years! He wrote a book called “They Said Months, I Chose Years A Mesothelioma Survivor’s Story.” His book cited many articles about using nutrition to manage chronic diseases like cancer.

Mesothelioma is a rare type of cancer that primarily affects the lining of the lungs and potentially the heart and abdomen. Mesothelioma comprises of around 0.3% of cancer diagnoses per year. The average age at diagnosis is 62 and is much more common in men then women. The prognosis depends on the stage of the cancer but is usually close to one year. The leading cause of mesothelioma is exposure to asbestos.

Statistics show that we have made huge strides in curing cancer since 1971. President Nixon signed the National Cancer Act of 1971 which put focus on the effort to find a cure for cancer. Since that time, research and technology have improved significantly, which has decreased the number of deaths related to cancer. This Act has increased the amount of money that is spent on research resulting in accuracy of the tests to detect cancer in the early stages. The amount of research and development of drugs that has been done for treatment of cancer is incredible. As a country we are putting so much money into finding and developing drugs to cure a wide variety of cancers. There may never be a cure for every cancer but to come up with several cures and have knowledge on how to treat all the other types of cancer, is our goal. Every day we strive to get closer to winning the war against cancer.

If detected early, many cancers can be cured but many cancers, like mesothelioma, do not present symptoms until the disease has progressed. The CDC, Center for Disease Control, collected data that shows that 3 million people were living with cancer in 1971 and 9.8 million in 2001, showing that the war on cancer is working.

Also, in most cases, we are able to offer several different approaches of treatment for cancer - there is not just one way to treat the disease, which helps be able to cure many cases of cancer. The mainstream treatments for cancer are radiology, chemotherapy and surgery. In most cases more than one of those treatments are used to give the maximum chance of survival. There are also other options such as a more natural way to combat the cancer by using vitamins and having a healthy diet, which can keep the cancer from spreading and also kill some of the cancer cells.

Using nutrition to effectively manage cancer is becoming more prevalent now. These alternative therapies are designed to aggressively eliminate the cancer cells while also detoxifying the body. These therapies usually have less negative side effects than the traditional therapies.

In August of 2010, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer. Luckily for me, testicular cancer is now one of the cancers to have the highest cure rate mainly because the treatment plan that has been developed is incredible and extremely successful. If I had been diagnosed in 1971, my chances of survival would have been extremely slim. When I was diagnosed, my doctors said I needed to have surgery to have the tumor removed to eliminate the source of the cancer in my body. I then had several scans to determine if there were any remaining cancer cells and if so, had they spread. My cancer had spread to the lymph nodes in my back so the doctors put me through the rigorous chemotherapy treatment plan that is designed specifically for testicular cancer. Dr. Einhorn from Indiana University developed this treatment plan which is extremely successful and has a survival rate of about 95%. I completed the chemotherapy treatment and had another scan to determine if the cancer was completely gone, but the results revealed a few lymph nodes that still remained questionable. My oncologist consulted with Dr. Einhorn, who strongly recommended that I have the retroperitoneal surgery to remove the lymph nodes in my back that are located near the kidney, between the aorta and vena cava. The pathology results from my surgery came back clean and I was determined to be cancer free!

If testicular cancer can have a treatment plan that describes which drugs, at what dosage, for a specified amount of time and actually cure the person of the cancer, then there is hope that the same can be done for other cancers. As I mentioned, patients who were diagnosed with this cancer in 1971 did not survive yet this treatment plan formulated by Dr. Einhorn started seeing survival rates climb in the early 1990’s.

Cancer is an ugly disease and while we do not know all of its sources, we should continue to research its causes and then do what is necessary to get rid of very harmful chemical and work environments such as asbestos.

Asbestos is a terrible chemical that has cost many people their lives. It was a material used in insulation of buildings because no one knew of the harm it could be. With the technology available today, I believe we are able to assess whether or not a material is safe for consumers. Also, with the screening technology we have, we are able to identify and diagnosis many cases of cancer in the early stages which significantly increases the survival rate. The worst part of cancer is once it has spread to other parts of the body because once it starts spreading it is much harder to beat so if tests can be done fairly regularly the chance of catching any cancer cells and being able to treat them right away will make a huge difference is winning the war on cancer.

Travis Gowler

March, 2012

A Few Cards

Here’s some cards made and almost sent…that’s the hardest part for me, actually getting the card into the envelope and into the mail!

Wally needed a thank you card to send to his cousin.  I often (probably daily) check out Mary Fish’s blog, StampinPretty  for ideas and I found this idea there.

I also got this idea for Marty’s Birthday card from Mary’s blog.

Here’s a Get well card for one of our leaders at Bible Study.  Just so you know, this idea is not mine either.  I had seen it awhile back and have been using it to make Easter cards.  I also thought it would make a nice Get Well card, but I cannot find where the idea came from.  I really like it though.

I really like the butterfly

I have a few more Easter projects to finish…and mail…so I better get to it!