(In no particular order)

Blessing One: The Diana Price-Fish Cancer Foundation This organization “helps young adult cancer patients enjoy life” one activity at a time. I’ve been on their waiting list since November and yesterday I got a call saying my number’s up! Horray! What they do is for people currently undergoing cancer treatment, they pay for one fun activity for me to participate in per month. All I do is call them up and tell them what I want to do and when and they make all the arrangements and send me on my way. They cover the cost, reservations, etc for things like dinner for two, a movie with my spouse, pampering at a spa, bowling, gift cards to my favorite bookstore, all sorts of fun things! When I first signed up to be on their waiting list, I had no idea what a toll cancer treatments can take on relationships, especially the most important one of all: my marriage. The past month in particular hasn’t been easy between Honey and me but we’ve work a lot of issues out already and are doing much better as a unit. We finally made time for US by having “Date Night” last week the night before CAKE. It was special and it really reminded us that we need to take time to nurture our marriage, despite the obstacles life has thrown at us (isn’t that true in EVERY marriage, cancer or not?!). This Diana Price-Fish Foundation is really going to help us make an effort to continue and cherish more date nights!

Blessing Two: Guitar Hero III for the Wii Good gravy, this is a hard game to find! Honey has wanted it for about three months now and try as I may, I could not for the life of me find it for sale anywhere locally or online for Christmas! It’s just one of those hard-to-find gifts of the year I guess. Walk into any Best Buy and you will probably find three large displays scattered throughout the store, overflowing with this game. But take a closer look at the packaging and you will see that those are for the XBox360 and PS3 only…not for the Wii. Maybe you know or care nothing about video games but believe me, there is a difference. Those other ones just won’t work on the Wii system we have. It would be like trying to run a Ford Mustang on Diesel gasoline! Anyway, I had all but given up hope when I went to Target yesterday for some odds n’ ends and what did I stumble across in the electronics department?! That’s right! GHIII for the Wii. There were two left on the shelf so I snatched one up immediately and almost threw my body on top of it for fear of other young gamers passing by trying to steal it from my cart. I brought it home and lay it on the table - kept looking it over every half hour or so, just to make sure it really was for the Wii. I really found it! Horray! (Sorry, maggie! I know we talked about looking out for this game for each other but I didn’t have my cell phone with me or I would’ve called to see if you wanted me to get the other one for you! I can still go back tomorrow if you want me to grab it! Let me know!). Needless to say, Honey is a happy fake-guitar-playing hero now. He’s playing “Slow Ride” along with the animated dudes on the screen as I type this. He is a total ROCK STAR and I am his groupie!

Blessing Three: All the sweet cards so many of you keep sending me! I ADORE THEM!!!!! Every day it seems there is at least one more card from some of you, just to say hi, sometimes with little notes of encouragement or love, sometimes not. It gives me something to look forward to when Honey brings the mail in every day! I keep them all and look them over frequently. It is so thoughtful of you to send these cards to me! Something I don’t think you knew is that my mom and I used to always send cards to each other - for no particular reason. It started when she was in and out of the hospitals when I was younger. Then it evolved to when I’d be halfway across the country visiting grandparents in the summers, or when I moved to Greeley for college or to Fort Collins to live with Honey. Sure, we’d talk frequently on the phone but about once a week or so, I’d find a fat envelope with a long, chatty letter or a friendly card with a smiley face in the mail. I guess it’s become ingrained in my brain to do a quick scan of the mail at the mailbox to see if there are any card-shaped envelopes in the pile. Within a week or so after she passed away, I confessed to Honey that it was going to take a lot for me to stop doing that, to stop expecting a card or letter from mom, and to accept that it’s just not going to come. In the meantime, I started receiving these cards from many of you! Sure, it will never replace the gesture from mom, but it definitely takes the sting out of checking the mail every day! Like I said, it gives me something to look forward to. So thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for the cards and well wishes. They warm my heart just a bit more every day.