Wow, a week

When my mom was diagnosed with cancer, the minutes and hours seemed to tick by so slowly.  It was painful--I would watch the clock and would think an hour had passed only to find out it had been 2 or 3 minutes.  There is something to be said about waiting and wanting and watching.  Following surgery time seemed to speed up again--too fast, as usual but at least it wasn't a painful wait. 

I caught some flak about not posting a mom updated at the beginning of the last post instead of at the bottom (I did change the font color to red though!)...hehe, sorry about that.  She is really doing awesome.  I keep telling her "your crazy, but you are doing awesome".  In less than a week from surgery she had begun walking her usual 5 miles a day.  She's not as fast as she was, but she can go to the distance.  She's amazing, quite an inspiration.  She makes it look like recovering from a cold, not a major surgery to remove cancer!  She's healthy, she's happy and the doctor cleared her to go to Vietnam.  Yay!  She still has another 4 weeks off from work and she is BORED.  I told her I was making her responsible for planning our itinerary.  So, for those of you that have been before, what recommendations do you have?  Which places are must-see and where should we shop and eat? 

I spent the last two days at my parent's small rental house.  Five adults and one almost 3 year-old girl.  Wow, talk about a lot of noise!  My niece is in the stage where everything is "no".  You can say, "you are a very pretty little girl" and her response: "I not pretty".  It's opposite world!  We did have some fun together.  I was on the blow-up mattress in one of the bedrooms and my niece came in while I was getting ready.  She threw herself down on the blow-up and then I belly flopped to watch her bounce.  She loved it!  Before long her mom joined us and the 3 of us belly flopped and watched each other bounce.  My poor dad was listening to all the abuse his blow up mattress was receiving downstairs.  Yikes. 

My parents rental house borders a park which is where they let off the fireworks.  We had a front row seat to the action by sitting in their driveway.  Here are a couple of prettier pictures:

I think I will be getting some of those photos enlarged and hanging them in my kids' bedrooms.  My mom took some photos that looked like jellyfish.  Cameras can capture some pretty cool images these days.

I hope you all had a restful and happy Fourth of July!