I am very thankful

I have been a blog slacker lately, but for good reason. Dad has been in the hospital with aspiration pneumonia, which is fairly common in patients with Parkinson's disease. It was touch and go for awhile, but he is doing much better now and will most likely be returning to the nursing home tomorrow.


The staff at the hospital has been wonderful to him and are going to miss him, but the folks at the nursing home are excited that he is returning.

In other news, Wolf DID make a it home for Thanksgiving and a wonderful time was had by all. We had a huge family gathering in Billings and then went to see dad. He ate a monstrous meal of pureed turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potatoes and pumpkin pie and whipped cream.

I forgot my camera, but Wolf took quite a few with his cell phone and will send them to me when he gets back to Denver. He is on the way as I write this post. The roads are nasty, so please say a little prayer for his safety if you would.

I hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving, and I will try to post more frequently in the future.

Giving Thanks for Thanksgiving

Here is another photo of my brother Mike on Thanksgiving Day 2006. For some reason he is able to sleep anywhere, in any position, even with a flash going off.

Dad was pretty happy, as you can see. He really enjoyed the turkey and fixin's, which didn't turn out too badly this year. I'll never forget the first Thanksgiving after my mom passed away. I slaved in the kitchen for hours, all the while wishing I'd paid more attention when my mom was doing her holiday cooking. I made everything from scratch, including the rolls and the pies. The rolls were huge and funny looking, but tasted alright. The pie, however was a different story. I followed mom's recipe, but it left out a few important details...like the fact that you need to cook it at 425 for 15 minutes, then turn it down to 325 for the last 30 minutes. Needless to say, we determined it was done when the smoke detectors went off. After dinner dad looked at me kindly and said "Do you want to buy pies for Christmas and give the fire department the day off?" I laughed so hard I snorted. Even though mom wasn't there, it was a pretty good day.

Despite his nicname (He Who Doesn't Do Dishes), Ron is very helpful during family functions. He is pictured here *gasp* doing dishes.