Mother's Day Weekend

May 8-9, 2010

On Friday afternoon, we picked up Elani at the school bus and headed south-west to Venice, Florida for the weekend. We haven't been over there since Easter weekend when my step-father, Don was diagnosed with terminal lung cancer, so we were anxious to see him for ourselves and catch up on how he is doing. We arrived around 6 p.m. and after unloading the car, we had sandwiches for a light supper.

Don is very weak and doesn't have a lot of energy and looks like he is losing weight. I was surprised at the difference in him since we last saw him 4 weeks ago.

Knowing that we were heading to the Beach in the morning we all went to bed early for a good night's rest.

After breakfast (Rudy cooked), we packed up the cars and headed to Manasota Beach to soak up the sun-rays and collect some shark's teeth. Don and Mom left after about an hour, but we stayed until around 1:30 p.m. The water temperature was perfect, Elani played almost the whole time in the water diving for shells and shark's teeth below the surface and through the rolling waves. We found quite a few teeth, too and as usual, Elani came home with her bag of treasures from under the Sea.

When we got home Rudy fixed lunch for us all and we enjoyed the rest of the day visiting and resting.

Sunday, Mother's Day, May 9, 2010

Elani was so excited to give everyone (Mom and Me) our Mother's Day gifts. So we barely got out of the bedrooms and she was asked if we could open our gifts. Of course, she had to help us!

After enjoying another breakfast cooked by Rudy and getting dressed, Mom, Elani and I went to do a little shopping and talking. Rudy and Don stayed home. Rudy was the chief Chef for the weekend so he worked on preparing his chicken and dumplings for dinner while we were gone.

We had a very successful shopping trip. Before dinner we took some pictures in the back yard to document this Mother's Day celebration.

Elani loves to take pictures, too, so she went around the room taking pictures of the adults (posing us in the appropriate positions, of course) . She is getting pretty good at capturing us in our very candid states!

After a delicious dinner (and mom's homemade lemon pie), we packed up the car and headed home. It was a good weekend, but a sad weekend, too, for me anyway. It is hard to see Don failing so fast. Mom is a great care-taker. I am very proud of her.

See ya on the road!