Thursday, September 27, 2012


Look at this precious family.  This grown woman is my first baby love.  She is Maya, my fabulous niece.  She married this wonderful man, Eder, two months before my dad passed away in 2003.  I'll take some credit.  When Dad found out he had cancer and told me what was going on and that he wasn't going to do any conventional treatment, friends who are doctors and nurses told me he probably had a year at the most.  Maya and Eder had been together for several years and, although they were very young (20 & 21) for marriage these days, they were seriously discussing getting married.  I told Maya that if they were sure they'd be getting married, not to push them, but that they needed to do it sooner than later if they wanted "Gramps" to walk her down the isle.  As I said, they did it just two months before his passing.  In fact, my dad found out the cancer had spread to his brain when he fell while in Carmel for their wedding several days prior to the ceremony. His health change drastically that day; he had been pretty much without physical change up until that point except for loosing weight.  After that day, the doctors in Monterey pumped him full of radiation so that, with help, he could walk to the beautiful setting to be at the wedding.  He didn't get to walk Maya down the isle as we had all planned forever; my oldest son, Lucas, stepped into those huge shoes and took  his like-sister-cousin to gazebo where she and Eder were married.  Fast forward to today.  Maya and Eder moved from their hometowns on the Monterey Peninsula to Corvallis, Oregon soon after being married and now have an amazingly full-of-life, six year old son, Ben and a sweet, three month old baby girl, Amelia.  She made some tiny comments about starting a blog and I jumped on her band wagon, waxing poetic about how I and so many of my friends sooooo wished we'd been able to have blogs when our kids were born and little.  That was a couple of weeks ago and I didn't think she would do it; she said she couldn't write.  Write, who's writing?  It's talking.  She talks.  She's funny, too.  And now she has a blog and, though she's only made two posts (puleeese, she just went back to work! on top of everything else), dang, she's really good.  Her great, funny personality comes right through.  I highly recommend it (she'll probably be better than I've been in the last year even with all she has on her plate): http://myblissfulmadness.blogspot.com/.  Enjoy.  She's made me a happy Kissy once again as she always has the last 30+ years.  Phew, how old am I?  Oh yeah, soon to be a speed limit-a highway speed limit (no, not the Texas ones yet!).