Happy Birthday, Hailey!

Hailey Christine Smith celebrated her 6 year birthday on September 19. We called that night to talk to her and got a good listing of the presents she received. They have a tradition in their house that the birthday person gets to pick the food for the birthday meal. Hailey chose wisely and ordered pork chops, corn on the cob and cheese biscuits. Yum! Happy birthday, Hailey!

The Roadrunner is Dead--Long Live Kelly R. Smith!

We have been in Rowlett now for well over 5 years. Hard for us to believe that we've now lived in this house longer than any other house in our marriage except for 1706 Laurel in Odessa (13 years.) Ever since we've lived here, we've had internet service through Comcast first and then along came TimeWarnerCable and the beep-beep Roadrunner---or maybe I should call it the "bleep-bleep Roadrunner." David has had access to the internet straight through the line from the wall. I, on the other side of the room, have had varying brief episodes of spasmodic access through a wireless router.

I have a notebook full of calls I've made to India to get my wireless internet back up and running. They've sent guys out here multiple times to FIX the problem. They've changed out the router, so I was on our 3rd one. And still I've had intermittent access. I hate it. There's nothing I like better than working on the computer all day at work and then coming home to relax and catch up on my computer at home.


The last time I had internet access recently was on 9-17-08. I called the bleep-bleep that weekend, got no-where and hung up. I called Kelly R. Smith and vented at him a while and asked what they had in their house. He told me I needed to get rid of the bleep-bleep router/modem/switch that they provide and get a regular modem from them and then buy our own Linksys router. Today we did just that. Got a Linksys router at Bestbuy, I came home and hooked it up to David's PC, then got it going on my PC with my USB stick and wah-lah!!! I have internet again. And it seems faster than ever before using the bleep-bleep piece of stuff.


So thank you, Kelly, for once again curing my computer ills. It is soooooooo good to be online again!!!

Happy Birthday, Kelly!

Thirty-five years ago today we lived in Fayetteville, North Carolina, where David was serving as a proud member of the 82nd Airborne at Ft. Bragg. We chose to have Kelly "off base" in a real hospital, so we had to pay $25 and went through Champus and he was born at Cape Fear Valley Hospital. That $25 was mostly to pay for my food. To be honest the labor part of it was less than a memorable experience. It took about 36 hours for Kelly to decide to be born. He was about 3 weeks early, so I guess he was compensating.

Some of the things I remember from that night: 1. Being one of the first mothers in that night and one of the last ones out of delivery. I was all by myself all this time, David couldn't be there with me---a fact that didn't happen going through cancer treatment except during the 2 surgeries. 2. They gave me this stupid button to push that was supposed to give me some relief from the contractions. I'd never heard of such a thing and I thought they were joking me. PLEASE! Talk about placebos! It must have been an early version of Tylenol. I didn't realize until years later what that was. 3. David had to finish watching Mary Tyler Moore before we could leave for the hospital. Looking back, given how long it took to get Kelly out, we should have stayed home lots longer. 4. Part of that long night I was in a semi-private labor room with a Spanish-speaking woman. She was REALLY hurting. She was cussing in Spanish. She was moaning. She was scaring me to death. I remember praying for God to make her baby come quick so she'd be gone! 5. The next day after delivering Kelly, I hadn't gone to the bathroom yet. The nurse was worried about me. She made me get up to go, but I didn't need to. Then she did something that just amazed me. She reached over and turned on the sink faucet. I looked at her kind of dumb (OK, a lot dumb) and she told me that it would help me go to the bathroom. Now that took the cake. And it worked about as well as that push button Tylenol. 6. I did have good food though, that I didn't have to cook. 7. David was in the room with me and Kelly so we were having some nice special time together. In tromps Grizelda and huffs at David that he wasn't supposed to be in there. Ahhhh, to be young and ignorant. Grizelda wouldn't have gotten away with that today. . . . 8. My mom flew out to help us figure out what a baby is and how to take care of him. It was her first airplane flight. They lost her luggage. 9. Kelly didn't want to eat well at first. He was a scrawny little thing, but he sure outgrew that in no time at all. He was always a happy baby, laughing, smiling and playing all the time. I've attached 3 favorite photos, not baby ones, but they're cute.
Happy 35th birthday, Kelly Ray Smith! We love you!



This photo was taken outside of Floydada, where we lived in a farmhouse. Kelly loved to climb on the windmill, but wasn't supposed to. I missed him this day and caught him up on the windmill. Being the photographer that I am, I told him to stay right there, went in the house and got my camera, took his picture, made him get down and I proceeded to warm up his bottom. This was late summer of 1976.








This one was taken not long after the one above at C&M Farms, my parents' place outside of Dickens, Texas. He was so cute with the hardhat on, almost 3 years old. That's our collie, Frisco, with Kelly. Wish he would have been more in the picture. . . . he was a mighty dog. We spent some time at my parent's house after Tony was born in June of 1976.






Kelly started kindergarten at Kress, Texas. This is his first day of school photo beside his dad's pickup in August 1979. He was a great student, although prone to finishing his work quickly and then pestering the other kids. The smart teachers put him to work helping other kids learn to read, to add and to use up all that energy, which suited Kelly just fine!

The Next Procedure---Back to the Doctor

Today we went to see Dr. Hodges, my plastic surgeon to get a tattoo on the right breast and give the nipple construction another try. It was all done in his office with local anesthesia on the breast. He talked about the act of doing both procedures at the same time and by the end, decided to wait on the tattoo for 2-3 months until the incisions on the nipple have healed. Sounded good to us. Anyway, I felt nothing when he gave me the injection of deadner on the breast itself, but when he got to the little bubble I've had between the 2 breasts since surgery that he corrected, now that I felt! He left for about 15 minutes and came back when I was good and numb and went to work. It took him about 15-20 minutes maybe. He bandaged me up. Told me to come back Friday for Amy, his assistant, to rebandage me. So I haven't seen what I look like under there yet.

I told Dr. Hodges that there were times now when I would actually forget that I had breast cancer and forget all we've been through. What a difference in 2 years! If he had known I was sick as a dog during the night throwing up, he probably would have told me to come back later. But it was something I ate I think, so we went anyway and I did fine.

We went to eat at a favorite old-fashioned hamburger place afterward, called JG's and got home around 12 noon. We had been gone a little over 3 hours. When we rounded the corner of our fence, there stood the side gate standing wide open. Both of our hearts went to our throats. Where was Sandy? Not in the yard. We got in the Durango and started driving, down our alley the other direction out to the main street in front of the house. We were both just sick. We were looking everywhere between houses with the windows down. We got to our house, just one block down, and who should be standing in the little porch at our front door? Mr. Sandman VIII. We were so proud of him! He knew exactly where he lived and came home when he got out. He was as happy to see us as we were to see him. This calls for U-bolts in the gates.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Happy Trails to YOU, Daddy!

I love this picture of my dad.

Too cute and all boy.

Love you!

Sandy at 8 Months Old

Sandy is about the same weight as he was last month, but he just get smarter and smarter. Smarter than us, we're afraid. Every day when we go walking, he has to run upstairs to get David's socks & shoes. At first he was carrying down the socks, but now he's decided it's more fun to carry one of the shoes. Then he traipses downstairs with it--you don't want to be in front of him---he'll run over you. He takes it over to David. Then you can tell him to get the other shoe and he'll retrieve it from wherever you have it and take it to David to put on. We walk a mile almost every night. We took him to a "forest" park here in Rowlett to walk last over the weekend. He got to be lose and he was in hog heaven with all the new smells and trees.