I have been meaning to blog forever, just seems I haven't have the motivation and time at the SAME time-lol. So here goes...

APRIL- "Tax day" was actually spent doing something fun. My mom and I were in Dallas so she could participate in the Pillsbury Bake-Off. I flew out of Denver and she out of Moline, Illinois and we met up in the Dallas airport for our 2 1/2 day trip. The bake-off paid for her trip but we had to pay for mine, so this was awesome that she chose to take me with her instead of my step-dad.

This was her third and final chance to win the $1,000,000 grand prize for the Pillsbury Bake-off, after that you and your immediate family are eliminated from entering the contest. She took me since she eliminated me from ever being eligible to enter. The hotel was very nice and the semi-formal dinner was really good. The whole thing was allot of fun but we were exhausted. There was not allot of time to even catch your breath, especially for the 100 contestants. Pillsbury had them going from check-ins to orientations, to question/answer sessions, to Grand March practice to dinner. Then you have to be to breakfast at 6:15 am to start again. It was crazy, but fun. Mom didn't win but seemed to be satisfied those who did. Anyway, we crammed in a week-long trip into 2 days. It was cool.

MAY- The first week of May proved to have another whirlwind trip in store for me. My dad (who lives in Louisiana) retired officially in May and his company offered to fly me, my husband, son and also my brother out for his retirement party. Unfortunately due to work circumstances, I was unable to take any extra time off for work so I had to fly down and back over my normal two days off. We ended up having to get up at 3:30am in order to make our 6am flight. The party was that night and it was allot of fun. It was great to hear the stories about my dad. He apparently played the "bad cop" role perfectly. (He was, by the way, NOT in law enforcement!) There is a legendary meeting between my dad's company and another extremely prominent steel company that is now referred to as "The mother F-er" meeting. Apparently when the president of the other company stated they were going to raise prices, the president of my dad's company said, "John, what do you think?". My father said, "Well I think we ought to shoot the mother f______er." He got up and left the meeting. They didn't raise the prices. (BTW, the other president has actually become a friend of my dad-lol.) I guess whatever works!!!

During my father's speech, he spoke of Patrick and his struggle with the stroke. My dad actually started to cry when he spoke of almost losing him. It was very emotional which is rare for my stoic father.

We enjoyed the next day just spending it all together, going for a boat ride and ending it with dinner. The next morning we were up again at 3:30 to catch our 6 am flight home. We arrived in Denver later that morning. I unfortunately had no time to rest as I had to be at work at 3pm that day. It was again a very quick trip, but very enjoyable.

YESTERDAY: Patrick had his last driving lesson. All he has to do now is take the written and driving test and he has a Colorado license! His therapist has recommended Patrick drive 3 or 4 more hours with me before he drives alone and a few other restrictions (no night driving, 40 MPH or less, no radio or chatting). She will re-evaluate him again after he has 60 hours of driving in to see what restrictions she will lift. These restrictions are short-term at this point so luckily we won't have to go to the DMV again to "remove" them.

He just drove this morning to drop off our son at school and to get coffee. He was so excited and the girl at the coffee drive-in gave him big congratulations on him being in the driver's seat. We go to this place all the time and she "knows" us. When we went through yesterday she asked him how driving was coming along. Today she got to see for herself!

I see jaunts to the store (in the passenger seat) in my future!

Kristen