Updates on me

It seems like I haven't been updating like I should. I've been in a weird funk so either I forget to update or I don't feel like I have anything good to say.
This past week has been extremely emotional for me. A year ago at this time, I was thinking constantly about my upcoming surgery. Every moment of everyday was consumed by it. My thoughts, my dreams, everything I touched, or felt, or heard was all SURGERY, or YOUR BREAST IS BEING CUT OFF, or YOU HAVE CANCER. So trying to make this year better than last year was hard and I don't know if I was trying to escape my memories of last year or improve on them. I kept telling my dh that I wanted to have a really good birthday because last year sucked so bad. But I didn't know how to make it better. I don't know still what I was looking for. So I was trying to make new happy memories on my birthday while still remembering what happened last year. The same with April 13th when I had my mastectomy. I don't want to forget, but I don't want that date to always bring me bad memories either. So my emotions have been on one giant roller coaster lately.

We have discovered a new hobby called geo caching. You get a GPS handheld system and using the longitude and latitude, you search out little caches that people have left all over the world. We did one at the beach with friends while staying in a beach house that a member of the stake presidency helped build.

Clues are left behind along with the coordinates and you search for it in different areas. We went to www.geocaching.com and searched in our zip code for different easy caches and found a ton of them. So far we are up to 18 caches found. At the beach this past week, I think we found at least 10 of them. It was great! The picture to the right shows what one of them looks like. You can use almost any type of container, but this person used an old ammo can painted with camoflauge colors and hidden in the base of a tree covered with foliage. We had dh, dd, my fil, and nephew together so it wasn't too terribly difficult to find it. Still, it was great fun and filled the time while we were there.

We decided while dh was on vacation that we would go to the beach and go yurt camping. For some unknown reason, we thought it would be fun to invite Jason's parents. An update, I haven't been to my inlaws house for anything since the day I got back from my trip to DC to pick up Lindsey. So it was a big deal for me to want to do anything with them. We stayed away from their home for about a month because I was so sick and tired of how they treated me or didn't treat me. We stopped hanging around so much and let them be the ones to call and want to talk to the girls. They finally did after a month so things have improved. No apologies, but then, I'd fall over dead of shock if that happened. But I digress.

Generally, we enjoy their company when we camp, we've done it together before. We used to play cards together every week until I started chemo and had fun. So why not mend some fences and invite them along. It would make the girls happy and it's always nice to have company. Since Anthony(dh's nephew) is living there, he came along too. My girls adore their cousin Anthony. We finally nailed down that we were staying at Fort Stevens after having our Beverly Beach reservations changed. Too much construction at the park so we were given the option to change. I'm glad we did. Unfortunately, we had the yurts the furthest away from the bathrooms. Thank heavens for Home Depot selling cheap bright orange 5 gallon buckets. That became my bathroom at night. Those dang diuretics I have to take make me have to pee at least twice a night no matter what I drink or don't drink.


The weather cooperated for the most part with piddly rain off an on, mostly off. Our first adventure was going to the Astoria Column. That was a virtual geo cache and all we had to do was enjoy the view to count it as a cache. It also meant that we had to climb the dang thing too. I'm really out of shape and I was wheezing by the first landing. There were 161 steps and that was only step #25. I thought I would die by the time I got to the top. But Chloe did great! She got tired, but she did better than myself and Anthony. Harlo took it slow, Jason did okay, and Chloe was right up there at the top of the pack. It was hard pelting rain with all the wind but I had to take a picture of my brave strong girl up there. Isn't she beautiful?