Missing Mike

Yesterday was Mother's Day and we enjoyed the company of my in-laws for several hours after church. Since it was so beautiful, we decided to cook out. It has been a long time since we've done this.....maybe since before my BIL passed away last year. I'm not really sure why we stopped. Personally, things are not as much fun without him. He was always the life of the party. He had such a great attitude and was such a likeable man. Anyway, while we were eating yesterday, we all talked a lot about him. We were sitting out on the deck....the deck that he built for us almost two summers ago.....the deck he never got to enjoy much....and his last building project before he died. In a way, it made me sad to be out there enjoying ourselves without him. It seems that every time we go out there for any length of time, our conversation always ends up being about him. The last year of his life, he was here so much helping us with so many household projects. It's nice to be able to look around and remember that "hey, Mike helped us do that."

Yesterday was hard for me though. We used to all get together for Mother's Day and cook out and I really missed him not being here. I started thinking about all of the things I missed about him......they are too many to number but here are a few things I loved most about him:

• He was the easiest person in the world to get along with. He loved people.
• He would volunteer to do anything...no matter how dirty the job, you could always count on him.
• He was very funny. He was so much fun.
• He loved classic rock and we used to spend Friday nights at our house playing board games and listening to WQUT.
• He loved his kids....to a fault sometimes. He hardly ever told them no and was always, always with them.
• He was an excellent carpenter. He worked with his hands and was very good at it.
• He didn't have an enemy. Seriously, we've tried to sit down and think of one person he didn't like or vice versa and have never been able to come up with one.
• He loved the Lord.
• He loved children. He worked with many different local groups to help troubled teens. He was always great with our girls and they adored him.

There are so many other great things about him and if I tried to name them all, I would be sitting here the rest of my life. Oh, I have to add that he was THE BIGGEST UT fan ever! I am fully convinced of that! He was a very strong man and we miss him very much.

As I was looking through old photos this week, I found one that I fell in love with. Mike loved all things Harley Davidson. It was his dream to own one. About a year before he died, he bought one. He loved it and was so proud of it. Shortly after getting it, he went on dialysis and became very weak. He still rode the bike but it was hard for him to hold it up. Then he had his kidney/pancreas transplant and died five weeks later. We are so thankful for his life and for the time we had with him. He was only 47 when he passed away and I'm happy that for 11 of those years, I was able to call him my brother-in-law. In many ways, I was closer to him than I am to my own brother. I miss him. I can't wait to see him again one day.

Note to Self

So, things have been going well for me the past few months. I've been busy, but things have been good. So good in fact, that I've managed to gain back ten pounds of the weight I had lost. Did you hear me? TEN pounds! When I think of how hard I worked to get that off of me and how easy it was to put back on, it makes me ill. Now it's time to start all over. Every time I think of starting over, I immediately think I'll take the easy way out and buy some diet pills and I'm good to go. That thought lasts all of about five minutes before I realize that it's not that easy. It was a lot of work to drop the twenty total pounds I dropped. It took several months and lots of hard work. Grrrrrr......

I find myself two days away from summer intersession at school. I've chose to pack four classes into the summer (and my advisor is horrified by my decision to do so) and they are all fast track classes except one. That one is my most important class (Anatomy & Physiology I) and it's an online class. The other three classes will zip by. I'll start with Psych on Wednesday and that class runs every day for three weeks and then it's over. I hope I've not duped myself into thinking it'll be too easy. I think it'll be easy enough but I realize that three weeks is FAST and there'll be a lot of reading and memorizing. I think I'm up for it. Once this class is over, my online Anatomy class begins, along with my Prob&Stats class. The math class is a five week class and it's over. The Anatomy will be ongoing from June 3 to August 12. Anyway, when math class ends, my computer class begins. It's also a five week class and I think it'll be fairly easy. I mean, I spend my life on a computer so if I can't do well with it, then I have real issues. All of this is just to say that I'll be really busy.

Add to this, the fact that we homeschool year round. The girls will be working through the summer while I am in class. When I get home, we'll work on the studies that require my help. If that isn't enough, pile on this whole ten extra pounds thing. How does one diet when on a fast paced time scale? Thank goodness WW recipes are fairly simple to prepare! And since Logan (at least right now) wants to go to culinary school when she graduates, she will be getting most of the supper duties. It's a new season in our lives.....one that I pray I can handle.

So, this portion of the post is mainly for msyelf.....

Goals 4 Summer: Do not neglect family, do well in all four classes (strive to make A's), see to it that supper is always on the table by 7:30, eat healthy (even in the midst of stress), work hard with the girls and their summer studies, and remember that you can't do it all (know when to say no!). After all, look how long it took Solomon to build the Temple!

Books and Calculators and Finals, Oh My!

It's finals week and my final is first thing tomorrow morning. I've studied until my brain can't take in any more information. So in preparation for tomorrow, I'm going to........

 

I hope I have time for much more blogging in the very near future. I miss you guys!