Never A Dull Moment

Well, a friend showed me how to easily change around my blog. This is the layout that will be around for at least 24 hours! You, too, can easily make your blog fancy at The Cutest Blog on the Block!

You might be wondering where the Mare and El morph went? Maybe not, but I was forced to take it down when Reid saw it and said, "That is sick." This is technically his blog, too. El, I guess it is best that we are our own individuals. For all of those people who say we look just alike the morph proved them wrong. Our features combined were much too uniquely ours to morph together! Ellie B, you are much too beautiful just the way you are!

While I did have strong feelings that Hilary should not be President, I must admit I have not done a great job at researching Obama and McCain. My gut feeling is that Obama shouldn't be President either, but that is not really a "research based" conclusion. There is still time...Right? My cousin had this pic on her Facebook profile and I thought it was interesting the measure that was taken to express such a strong feeling!

So, as many of you know, Reid has been on an international case for the past three and a half months. This has greatly limited the amount of "together time" we have spent together. The last time he was in Dallas was one night at the end of May and I have seen him an average of two weekends a month. Most of these weekends have been for out of town weddings as many of our friends have tied the knot this summer. Unfortunately, even on these weekends he has spent the time we weren't at the actual wedding festivities working on his case.  Our time in Austria over the 4th of July was the only time in the last three months that he did not open his laptop for work. Bummer! With that said, I have exciting news! We have planned a much needed vacation to The Westin in Los Cabos, Mexico. We are so excited to lay on the beach together for hours at a time. We will have no obligations with the exception of a possible in-room massage, of course! We are so excited to finally reconnect!

I must tell you of my first memories since they are connected to Mary Allan. When I was three my mother had a Bible study in our home. It was what became Bible Study Fellowship. The children would play on our screened-in porch and mimic our mothers by praying. This became a big part of my life as I wanted a baby sister more than anything. There were several little girls who lived close to me and their mothers were good friends of my mother and visited our home often. I would hold prayer meetings and we all began to pray for baby sisters. When I was four,   I was not at all surprised when my parents told me we were going to have a baby. I had known we would and that it would be a baby sister. Her name would be Sunshine. My Sunshine.   From the time I was told she was coming, I told everyone I saw that I was going to have a baby sister named Sunshine.  On June 1, 1951 my mother’s water broke and she went to the doctor. He told her to go home and wait for contractions because she had...

The first of my "Something New" is posted below. It is an excerpt from our book and attempt to answer the question "When did we know?" I still need to add my Auntie Joy's POV. Sorry if I got your hopes up with the "Something New" post from a few weeks ago. I also thought a good way for me to know what to include would be to answer questions that you all may have. You can leave it as an anonymous comment if you don't want me to know who you are...But knowing me, I am pretty hard to offend! So, anything you want to know or think would be helpful for other Alzheimer patient families to read, please post as a comment or email me at mvgrandle@gmail.com. Thanks for reading, Mare

People always ask me what signs led to us finding out my mom had Alzheimer's. As time goes on, my thinking about this becomes clearer. It was my freshman year of college. My mom had made the trip to Fayetteville several times over that year. On this particular spring day my mom made the trip by herself. My brother had a baseball game in Fort Smith and we would meet there before driving another hour to my college town.  I got a frantic call from my mom. She was "lost" on Interstate 30. What you must realize is that 30 takes you directly from Little Rock to Fort Smith. There is no "getting lost." I laughed and told her she was headed in the right direction. She was still twenty minutes away from the exit. I told her I would see her soon, and we hung up. Five minutes later she called again. She couldn't remember if I had told her she was going to right way. It was one of the first times I heard fear in my mom's voice. She was alone, and her mind was beginn...