Evening update...

Hi everyone...

Today is Nathan's (Alicia's son) 14th birthday!!! Nathan told his parents that all he wanted for his birthday was for Grandpa Gary to come to his party. Well, of course that's all it took and Dad made the trip down to Highland for Nathan's special day. Nathan got a chameleon, yes a flippen chameleon for his birthday. WOW! In the picture, I can't tell if Dad is shocked, scared or if he was hungry when Nathan showed him his gift...

The top left picture is Nathan blowing out his candles and you can see Cory in the back ground. The top right picture has Braydan (my son) holding Brena (Cory's daughter) and Grandma Rene Chidester to their left. We were sad that most of Teague's family and half of my family couldn't come due to colds and soar throats. Dad starts his chemo next week again so we are really worried about bringing any sickness around him.

We had a wonderful dinner that Rick, Alicia and Britani made, in fact I had THREE plates. However, Teague had FOUR plates I think, so I don't feel so bad. Dad hung in there pretty good for a while but you could tell it was taking a lot out of him. After dinner and birthday cake we spent some time discussing the details of the trip to see Dad's parents. Dad said he was so happy to go on his drive with Mom up to Park City yesterday and then to go down to the Finlayson's tonight. He went on to describe how it was just the other day that he was living a very active life and overnight he is almost home bound and only enjoys going outside on rare occasions... It crushed all of us. What a difference a month has made in all of our lives.

HOWEVER!!!!! we didn't let that spoil our party. We jumped right back into laughs and hugs. We wound the raging party down at a VERY late 7:30 (ha ha... 7:30), we rolled our fat belly's out the door and off to our homes we went.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NATHAN! And what a fabulous grandpa you have that doesn't let anything stop him from coming to your party.

Get some rest Father, thanks for being you!