RIP Pop

Alan Quill

April 30,1929-August 29, 2011

I met Nic’s Pop in July of 2006 on my first trip to Tassie. I was immediately accepted into the family and Pop and Grandma welcomed me with open arms. From the very beginning they treated me as if I had always been one of their grandchildren and they quickly became Grandma and Pop to me. Every time we went home we spent time at their house eating chicken sandwiches and catching up or they would take us out for fish and chips. We always loved our time with them. One of the many things I really admire about Pop is his marriage. Pop and Grandma have been married for 58 years and are the best role models Nic and I could ask for. They are so respectful of each other, generous, and caring. One particular story that I love about Pop is the elevator story. Pop and Grandma got separated once walking into an elevator. Pop ran up the stairs to meet Grandma knowing she would be scared and she immediately rode the elevator back down in search of him. She even started crying over the separation. They have this remarkable love for each other that is inspiring. Another thing I love about Pop is his sense of humor. He and Nic had this fabulous banter that I loved observing. He also would flatter me, always calling me darling. He always made me feel special. Even though I only knew Pop for 5 years, he made a huge impact on me and his departure has left a void in my heart.

RIP Kelli

Kelli Myers

March 2, 1962-June 22, 2011

I’ve known Kelli since I was a baby. She is my mom’s best friend from childhood. I like to think of her as a “fun aunt” figure in my life. She moved to Hawaii when I was a kid, so we didn’t see her a ton, but every memory I have with her is a happy one. Some of my best childhood memories were spending my birthday in Lahaina. They shut down the street and everyone dresses up, it has a real Mardi Gras feel. One year, for my birthday Kelli found me the most beautiful shell while snorkeling and it became the prized shell of my collection. She always did special things like that for Sabrina and I; I know she loved us so much. My favorite thing about Kelli is the sparkle in her eyes and the way she would light up a room. She had the best laugh and was truly one of the sweetest people I’ve met. We were very blessed to have spent a lot more time with Kelli the last few years and  Hawaii trips aren’t going to be the same without her, she will truly be missed.

August Roller Coaster

If there is anyone out there who actually follows my blog, you may have noticed that I am WAY behind! I’m hoping that at some point I will have time to catch up, but in the meantime here is a re-cap of the month of August.

Nic and I went to Australia at the beginning of the month and I had planned on spending the day we returned catching up with my brother and sister, doing laundry, uploading pictures, and blogging. Well, instead we came home to a completely flooded house! So, as you can imagine, the day was instead spent crying, cleaning, calling insurance companies, calling cleaning companies, watching said cleaning company tear apart our house, and filling it with 30 or so dryers and a few gigantic de-humidifiers for good measure. We spent most of that first week, feeling completely chaotic and unsettled since most of our house was off-limits. It was about 105° from the heat of all the dryers and we couldn’t use any of our appliances because they were using all our electricity. Needless to say, it wasn’t the best welcome home I’ve ever had.

We did have a really nice weekend in Mammoth the weekend of August 19^th-21^st to celebrate Nic’s birthday. We went to a wine festival and got to see Parachute, Michelle Branch and the Goo Goo Dolls perform. We did discover upon return, when we had absolutely no clothes left (we were going on 3 weeks of living out of a suitcase, and neither of us own tons of clothes), that the Drying Company broke our dryer vent during the drying process, so we added that to our rapidly growing list of repairs.

On Tuesday, July 23^rd, I went to the Taylor Swift concert, which was a nice break from our construction zone house.

On the 27^th, our house turned on us again! Amidst AT&T men attempting to repair our tv and internet (both suddenly stopped working the day before) we noticed a rather large crack in our ceiling. When I stepped in a large puddle on the stairs below it and moments later watched large drops of water fall, I knew our arch nemesis, water, was back! Our air conditioner was leaking! My dad and Nic spent the entire “hottest day of the summer” in our boiling hot attic attempting to patch the leak to no avail, so that meant a few more days of no air conditioner, and another repair to be added to the list.

That night, we had a fabulous time at the Teno’s house celebrating the marriage of Jocelyn and Chris. I got to see tons of Acton friends I don’t see very often, sport cowboy boots, drink margaritas, dance the night away, and Nic got to drive a bunch of wet drunks home. ;) Hopefully I get some pictures from the mystery camera we used all night before I write a more detailed post about that fabulously funny evening.

On Sunday, I went with my mom, sister, Judy, and her mom Dorothy to see The Help. It was a wonderful movie that I highly recommend. After the movie, we met up with Sabrina’s friend Kelly and her mom Laura for lunch at Gourmet 88.

On Monday morning, as I was stepping out of the shower, I heard Nic’s phone ring and my heart sank. Anytime someone calls early in the morning, I pretty much assume its bad news, especially since Nic had skyped his mom the day before and we knew Nic’s Pop, who has been in the hospital for weeks, wasn’t doing well. When Nic told me Pop was gone, I burst into tears. As you can imagine, the last few days have been very difficult for both of us. In addition to dealing with Pop passing away, his death has finally forced me to deal with the passing of my mom’s best friend Kelli. My first instinct today was to dedicate a post to Pop, but then I realized I still hadn’t written the one I’ve been telling myself to write for Kelli for a while now. I think, since Kelli’s death was very unexpected, by not writing about it on facebook or in my blog, I could pretend like it didn’t happen and denial has been a great place for me to hang out. Now with Pop passing, I suddenly feel very guilty for not recognizing Kelli in the way she deserves. I hope people will realize that not only do people grieve differently, but I grieve different deaths differently. So in honor of two of the three wonderful people I have lost this year (Mark Wood is remembered here) I will be writing a post for each of them.

As this month comes to an end I look back amazed at how much happiness, excitement, stress and sadness can occur in 31 days. This month has been a roller coaster for sure, but it has reminded me that each day is a gift, that houses can be re-built, that the most important things in life aren’t things at all; it’s all the wonderful family and friends that bless my life in so many ways. I know it is cliché, but make sure you tell your loved ones how much they mean to you because you never know how much time you have with them.

Skydive and Helicopter Ride

I have always wanted to skydive. It has been on my bucket list for as long as I can remember. It's one of those things that I always talk about doing, but I never made any effort to actually do it. I think it is the one thing on my list that sounds so exciting and incredible, but that truly terrifies me, so much so, that I think deep down I sort of thought I would never actually do it.

Well, when we were researching things to do in Cairns, skydiving kept coming up as a top thing to do, so we decided to take the jump. I spent weeks, researching statistics and convincing myself that I wasn't going to die. My heart would beat so fast everytime I thought about it, especially the night before as I struggled to sleep instead of praying over and over again, "Please God, don't let me die skydiving."

On Monday morning, we got picked up at 6:30am, and drove to the skydive shop. We filled out the paper work, which included statements like, "There is an element of luck involved with skydiving" Once we turned our paperwork in we found out they didn't have enough photo/video guys for us to go on the first jump, so they told us to chill for an hour and we would be going on the second jump. We went for a walk around Cairns, came back, watched the instructional video, got in the bus, and as we were driving to the jump site, a call came in that the winds had picked up and the jump was being postponed. We hung out for another hour, before they told us that the we wouldn't get to go. So instead of our adrenaline packed morning, we did this instead:

I couldn't believe it! After all the stress and anxiety, we didn't even get to do it. After that HUGE disappointment, we moved on to the second part of the day... a helicopter ride out to the Great Barrier Reef. It was Nic's first time in a helicopter and he loved it! It was so incredible to view the reef from the sky and see how many different individual reefs make up the GBR. The colors were just gorgeous and we all agreed that we could have easily spent another hour flying around.

Once we landed, we were ferried over to the boat to spend the afternoon on ______ Reef. They did a fish feeding and we got to see a giant Maori Wrasse, which I had been hoping to see. Then we went out snorkeling and saw some beautiful coral, tons of colorful fish, giant clams and a turtle. After snorkeling we enjoyed a traditional Australian lunch, before the rough ride back to Cairns and a relaxing Italian dinner in Palm Cove.

Journey to the Land Down Under

On Friday, July 29th, Nic and I left on our 15 hour flight to Melbourne. Although we were on a completely full airbus, the flight wasn't too bad, thanks in large part to the entertainment system. Nic and I each watched 3 or 4 movies, ate two meals, and had a decent sleep. Once we arrived in Melbourne though, it was time to hustle.

   By the time we exited the plane, we had about an hour to catch our next flight. Qantas gave us express passes, so we were able to skip the line through customs. Then Nic went to collect our bags while I got in line for the agriculture inspection. I made it through the line long before he got our bags, so I had to let everyone ahead of me. This was no big deal, until an airport security lady caught on and said I had to exit the line immediately. I of course explained my situation (we had 40 minutes until our departure time at this point) and begged, but she wasn't having it. At the moment that I was slowly stepping out of line Nic showed up and I begged again. The lady rolled her eyes, muttered something under her breath, then said we'd have to take it up with the people in line. Of course, everyone had been so nice about the situation, except the lady we asked to get back in line in front of, she threw a fit. We got in line anyways, and just kept our heads down. Once we got through that obstacle, we took off running for the Domestic Qantas counter.

   Of course by the time we got there, the flight was closed, and the machines wouldn't let us drop off our bags. We found someone at the counter who called and got the ok to put our bags on, since they were thankfully alreayd tagged through to Cairns. We rushed off to get in line to go through security, at this point we probably only had about 15 minutes to catch our flight and we could see from the back of the huge security line that the tv was flashing BOARDING. I told Nic, our only chance was to ask someone at the front of the line if we could cut. Nic walked up to some guy and before he finished asking the guy smiled and told him of course. Once Nic looked back at him he realized he was ________ (Nic will have to tell me his name), some famous footy player. He was really nice and even offered to help me collect my stuff (as I was picking up back-packs, purses, jackets, shoes, etc. at lightning speed). Nic meanwhile had been asked to be screened for explosives....apparently they only ask as a courtesy and the response, "Do I have to? I'm about to miss my flight" doens't help.

After the check, and finding our flight on the board we began running/speed walking to our gate (the furthest one away of course). When we finally arrived and saw people still lined up at the gate, we breathed a sigh of relief, we had made it. Then we started searching the crowd for Nic's parents. Susan came running over and gave me a big hug and we both started crying. I still can't believe it had been over a year since we'd seen each other. All of a sudden Nic pointed across the way and to my surprise: Lauren, Craig and Oliver were standing there! (I can't remeber exactly how spotting them happened because it is all a big blur now). I ran over to them and was fully crying at this point. I hugged them all, still in shock, then looked down to say a big HI to my nephew and he was smiling and waving at me! It was the best feeling ever!! My heart just melted. Nic came over too, and grabbed Ollie off Lauren. He just stared at Nic for a while, then I held him and he stared at me for a while too. Everytime we would say "Hi Oliver" he would smile and wave. It was amazing! We of course only had a few moments to catch up before we had to board the plane, and just like that the 7 of us were off to a week long vacation in Northern Queensland!

*I apologize for my appearance in these photos. After 15 hours of flying, an hour of running through the airport, and tons of tears...I'm not super glamorous. ;)