The Superfantastic Beeders: That wasn't supposed to happen

On November 19th, I got a phone call at work, from my sister saying that I needed to hurry home because my mother was dying and they weren't sure that she would make it through the night. Mom had been diagnosed with COVID-19 and placed in an ICU unit on my birthday (November 7th). It had been quite the roller coaster, and mom would try to call at least one of us (of the siblings) every day and struggle through a 2 minute conversation to reassure us that she was doing okay. She was doing such a great job of reassuring us, that just one hour before I got the phone call from my sister, I told my co-workers that I thought my mom was going to make it after all, and just be one of those amazing recovery stories. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. On November 20th, I was able to make it home in time to call the doctor, reinforce my dad and mom's wishes for mom to spend the rest of her life at home surrounded by her family, bully those wishes with the nurse case manager (who just kept telling us that mom probably wouldn't make it through the ambulance ride home) and social worker, get hospital equipment and hospice care set up and argue with the case manager some more about finding an ambulance to bring my mother (a COVID positive patient) home. Mom came home to spend the last few hours of her life with some of her favorite kids and grandkids by her side.....

To say it's been hard, is the understatement of the year. I know it will get better (at least I hope it will), but my mom was my sounding board for basically every decision of my life. I haven't had the heart to change my parents house phone number in my phone from saying "Yo momma" to something more masculine for my father. I took a 2 month leave of absence from work to stay and help my dad cope with the loss of the love of his life and I'm not sure I will recover from that either....and I'm pretty certain my siblings should pick me as "Favorite Sibling of the Year" in the next running. I tried to fill our time with new happy memories...

I took the boys on the Heber Creeper to ride the Polar Express......

They were huge fans of the trains, but not fans of my sing-a-long voice while I tried to bring Christmas cheer!!!!

I took them to a magical festival of lights....

Again, they were not impressed.....although for not being impressed or thinking that it was cool, Buddy sure did take an awful lot of pictures....Buddy assured me that the photos were just so he could make fun of it with his friends later.....sure Buddy!!!

I took Buddy to live out his dream to become a blacksmith....

Apparently, that dream was very short lived because he told me he was okay if he never did that again!!!! At least, now we know and can strike blacksmith off of his future to do list!

To liven things up, my sister's niece was amazing enough to take Christmas photo pictures for us to have some semblance of normalcy...

Seriously, this is just the top of the picture barrel!!! The pictures are amazing, and brought me so much joy....if you are in the Salt Lake area look up Pink Ivy Photography...she is amazing!

While we are with my dad we tried to overdose on Christmas.......

I even dressed the boys like twins...

Santa, apparently, did not approve.....

Santa did bring a puppy since my dad was a good boy all year...

Sadly, my dad didn't like the special presents she would leave around the house sometimes, so he gave her away as soon as we left.....at least we arrived back home to the cats that we have been cat sitting to be twice the size of when we left them....so it was almost like coming home to 4 cats, instead of the 2....

I also returned home to my school year book photo ready to go....

On Buddy's wall that is....

because every 16 year old boy really wants a picture of his mom above his bed looking down on him....surprisingly that picture actually lasted 2 weeks before he moved it!!!

I also decided that I needed some changes in my life, so I painted all of our ugly 1980 cabinets white and then had Buddy help me put handles on them.....

Yes, we did do an awesome job.

With changes, I also quit my job (well, I actually have until Friday to tell them if I want to stay part-time). My co-workers are amazing and threw me an awesome bash (tiara and shirts with my face on them included)!!!

I pulled Buddy out of school and now he is doing an online program so that we can spend every second of the day together....just like every 16 year old boy wants to do...