Jess' Ocean Painting

Jess' Ocean Painting that she just finished today:

more drawings by Jess

These are the latest set of drawings by my daughter from her 9th grade Art class.

Salt Lake City

I had a business trip to Salt Lake City and since I will probably never return there I explored around the city in my extra time. It was surprised at the snow capped mountains visible around the city in the month of May. I took my life in my hands and ventured around Mormon Temple square. Kind of odd to see tons of 20 year old girls proselytizing every one who signed up for a personal "free" tour. Also odd to see tons of people getting married. I stopped to ask a camera man, who also tried to convert me, about why so many women were dressed in wedding gowns. He said one wedding every 15 minutes starting in the month of May. I must say that the Mormons do build impressive buildings. You must be a Mormon to go into the Salt Lake Temple but all other buildings were open to the public. The last few photos I took from the airplane as I had a great view of the mountains surrounding Salt Lake City from the air as it was the only day without any clouds.

San Francisco trip

It has been a while since I posted anything to my blog. At the end of April we all went out to see my son graduate from Ex'pression College with a B.Sc. in Audio Engineering. These are the best photos we took of the trip:

http://50yearadventure.com/SanFrancisco/

These are my favorite family shots:

Jess' pencil drawings

Somehow all of the sudden our daughter got the drawing bug out of nowhere. Pretty amazing stuff for going from little miss crafts to a young budding artist.

Jess' school project art work

For Earth Science homework this week, my daughter had to make bumper stickers for the four major Geologic Eras. The following is the results:

Duke Sarcoma walk/run

This year I attended a Walk/Run for Sarcoma at Duke. I went with my friend David Ostiguy. In the same event last year, David was the special speaker and this is what he said as he gave me his speech afterwards:



Six years ago, I was diagnosed with alveolar rhabdomyosarcoma in my right hand.  My wife and I were 26 years old and we had only been married for 11 months.  We were cancer virgins.  From the instant we were told I had cancer, I remember feeling absolutely numb.  It was not until my first chemotherapy treatment that I started to feel again.  While walking the halls of Duke University Hospital during that treatment, I remember feeling pretty good and thinking to myself maybe 10 months of chemo would not be so bad and we would soon be able to put this cancer thing behind us in no time.  Boy, was I wrong! Soon afterwards, I was back in my hospital room throwing up in front of my wife for the first time, and it would not be the last.

Fast forward six years to today, through appointments, scans, recurrences, second opinions, surgeries, amputations, chemo, radiation, nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, infections, fevers, hair loss, transfusions, medications, joy, laughter, sadness, anger, frustration, tears, prayers, birthdays, anniversaries, births, deaths, and the love and support from family, friends, co-workers, doctors and nurses, I would do it all over again if given the choice.  

I have learned that I have the strength, resolve, and patience to survive one of the more serious and adverse situations one can face in life.  Secondly, I have learned compassion and that being able to help others through their own adversities is so worthwhile.  Finally, I have learned that sarcoma and I share a common trait: we both know no limits.