AWOL

Yep….that’s me.  I hope you all are doing fine and things going as well as possible for you.  We have had a busy year so far.   A lot has happened…..some good, some not so good.

I have not been blogging since Christmas.  We had a wonderful Christmas and hope that you did.  As usual we got some great gifts and had quality time with our family.  That is, by far, the greatest gift I could have.

My youngest daughter (Robin) and son-in-law (Brett) are artists.  Brett painted my husband a picture for Christmas.  They are both avid Green Bay Packer fans, so the picture reflects this.

Robin and Brett have a page on Facebook with some of their artwork on it.  I hope you will take a moment to look at it.  https://www.facebook.com/pages/The-Art-of-Brett-and-Robin-Byerly/443273445740423?fref=ts .  Yes, I am proud of them!

After Christmas, I began to have a small relapse.  Nothing too bad, but enough to put my brain in more of a fog than usual and make writing impossible.  The girls took me out for my birthday in January, but my swallowing and walking was getting rather iffy and it was hard to enjoy being out and about.  Being with them is always special, but I sometimes feel like I am stealing part of their joy by having to help look after me.  I took some pictures of our little group that day, but they obviously went on vacation with my brain.  I cannot find them.  They could at least send a postcard and let me know they are Ok don’t you think?!

By the end of January, my husband and I had come to the conclusion that we had to move.  I have mentioned before how hard the stairs were becoming to maneuver, but it was getting to the impossible stage.  My mother was developing a pretty bad case of shingles and things were getting rather hectic.  Howard and I decided that his having to take care of me, mother, the house, the yard and himself was just too much.  We began hunting for a new place to live.

It was fun looking for a new home.  There are so many options to choose from.  We narrowed it down to a condo, since we wanted to downsize and not have a yard to take care of.  We looked at a couple and found one we liked.  We took mother to see it and all of us agreed that this was the way to go.  Unfortunately, things are never as easy as we hope they will be.

We bought the condo.  That was no problem.  The problems started when we all had to decide what to take and what to give away, sell or toss in the garbage.  Mother had lived in that house since 1974, so there was a lot of stuff (junk?) that just had to be gotten rid of.  Even though most of the time she was bedridden with the shingles, she could not understand why all her things were not going to the new home with us.  It eventually became a very big problem.  All of us had to give up things that we would have liked to have kept, but moving from a 10-room house to a 6-room condo took a lot of sacrifices from each of us.  We had quite a few squabbles over this and she still tries to have a fit sometimes.  We have put our foot down several times with her and tried to keep peace.

Peace…….what a wonderful sounding word…….

I have some things on my mind and hope to get back in the groove of writing and sharing with all of you.  I have missed you……you are a big part of my family!