I hope he forgives me for this post!

First of all, I just want to report that if you look really close, I have tiny eyebrow and eyelash hairs coming in!  I'm not saying I wouldn't be happy with falsies because I'm ready to look "normal" again (whatever that is!).  My hair seems to be filling in and growing, albeit at a snails pace.  Progress is good!

One of the projects I want to work on is digitizing ALL of our scrapbooks.  Over the years (when we didn't have all the kids yet), I made about 20 of those 12x12 Creative Memories books.  They are heavy, thick, bulky, and a pain in the neck to store and move!  I'm going through them to pull out only what's the most important.  McKinley has no idea what a baby book is, and Brooklyn is "bitter" because I started but never finished hers!  She's 13.  😜  Don't take it personally, girls!  You'll understand when you are Moms!  I'm going to go to the Family History center and use their high speed scanners to digitize the stuff I have before 2004.  That's 10 years of marriage and two kids~yikes!  I need to get on it.

Tonight I looked through our wedding album and first year.  It's SO SAPPY!  But so fun to go back and see.  We loved each other so much!  We still do, by the way.  It's just a little different after almost 24 years of marriage!  My heart aches for Mat right now.  He's so busy at school, spending about 12 hours a day away from home everyday.  That's when there are no events or activities he has to be a part of in the evening.  He feels overwhelmed and discouraged by how much he feels he isn't accomplishing, at home and at school.  I worry about him a lot.  He doesn't have the energy to put into dealing with my cancer.  I try to get him to talk to me about it, I encourage him to go see Annie (social worker at Huntsman), to journal or start a private blog.  Just so he can articulate his worries.  It's much easier for me to do than Mat, with the hours he spends away from home.  When he gets home, he's got nothing left to give.

This is one of my favorite pictures from our
photo session in the fall.

I call myself a realistic optimist.  I have hope for the future, but I also need to prepare (i.e. digitizing scrapbooks) for what could happen.  I have to make the very best of every day I have.  I don't want to be in denial and procrastinate things that are important to me, and then have it be too late.  I'll do just about anything to prove my preparation wrong!  And it will feel great when I can cross those things off my list.  Mat doesn't seem ready to talk about what could happen.  And I can't blame him!  I bring it up sometimes because what I do is talk through hard things, and he's always been a generous sounding board for me.  I just want to be the same for him.

The kids seem to be doing OK.  When I'm OK, they are OK.  And I try to be OK regularly!  Friends, Mat desperately needs an army of supporters.  He needs prayers and love like never before. My illness and treatments are a heavy burden on him.  Will you join my prayers with yours for him?