RIP Beautiful Girl

I got two phone calls today.  A short one from my Aunt Sally and a longer one with my Dad.  They were calling to let me know that my Aunt Brenda passed away this morning.  She was 60 years old, 33 years past the 27 year life expectancy the doctors had given her.  She had Down's Syndrome and lived with my grandparents for as long as they lived.  When my Grandma passed away, Brenda moved into a nursing home and was under great care.  Her diabetes stabilized and she was doing really well.  In the past year, however, she started to decline.  She was put on Hospice care in September of 2012 and even though she was doing pretty normally physically, we knew she wouldn't be with us much longer.

Her passing comes as a shock for me, mostly because I try keeping my head in the sand about how bad people really are.

I loved her and will miss her greatly.  She had a beautiful spirit.

Brenda Kay Smith 

Busy times

Summer is going to start full-force here in a couple of weeks and I am not ready!

Swim team starts with after school practices on the 13th.

The last day of school is the 22nd.

Morning practices begin on the 23rd.  I'm grateful that my kids aren't in the early group.  The earliest one is 9.  I can handle that.  Evan won't start his practices until the 28th.  I'm super excited that he will get to learn to swim this year.  He was doing really well last year, just being at the pool for 4-5 days out of the week.  And I'm hopeful for the others that they will learn to swim better and not plug their noses and be afraid of getting their face wet and going under (Ty was last year).

Our Thursdays will be consumed with swimming all of June.  Practice in the morning until 11 and then meets at night starting at 6:30, but having to be there around 5.  There are a lot of members of our ward on this team, so I'm excited for a chance to get to know some of them better.

After swim is over, we will be headed to Ohio.  Probably the 5th or 6th of July and coming back here the 22nd or so.  I'm sure I'll be twitchy once I get back here.

But then my lovely friend, Mary, and her kids will be visiting before they move back to NC!!!!  I guess it's not set in stone yet, but it's leaning pretty heavy that way.  They will be close to Raleigh though, which is more like 5.5 hours from here.  Or if your Dad, it's about 4.  ;)

Then school starts the 7th of August or something crazy like that.

Ah, I guess I don't mind the summer.  Especially when we can hang out at the pool and come back to our nice, cool home.  :)