Happy Anniversary Nancy and Aaron !

Happy Anniversary and remembering Mom and Dad's Anniversary today, June 29th .

Today is a big Day !

Happy Birthday to my sister Andrea ! Enjoy your special day !

We Did It!

Here are some photos from last night's of Relay for Life.

Nancy's handprint on the Survivor banner...

Thanks to Kit, "Tufts Teal Warriors" roughed it in an RV...

the Survivor lap begins...

Nancy walks the Survivor lap with Aaron ...and Ruby, the therapy dog, who wore a teal scarf for the occasion.

Erin and Andi sell tickets for the 50/50 raffle sponsored by our team.

Leslie Colburn Brooks & Kit

Sandy Colburn, Dave and Andi

Luminaria bags along the track...

Nancy tells her "survivor story" at the closing ceremony.

This year's Relay of the Sebago Lakes Region raised over $22,000 for the American Cancer Society. Nancy was the top individual fundraiser and our team was third out of 29 teams in amount raised this year.

Thanks to everyone who came out and/or donated...we'll try to top our total next year!

Until then, we're all pretty tired so it will be to bed early tonight for the Tufts Teal Warriors!

Relay for Life: Do It for Nancy!

Nancy won't tell you this because she's too modest, and too sick, so I will. She has quietly worked her butt off for this year's Relay for Life of the Sebago Lakes Region, which goes from 6:00 p.m. Saturday night (6/26) until 6:00 a.m. Sunday morning (6/27) at the Windham High School track in Windham, ME. Nancy has organized our team, "Tufts Teal Warriors", dragged herself to dozens of planning meetings, decorated at least 50 luminaria bags, and gotten the Falmouth Lion's Club involved...all while undergoing her chemo (last one was Thursday 6/17) and dealing with the nausea and side effects. She doesn't complain. She just keeps getting up and getting out there.
If Nancy can do it, so can we!
Here are some things you can do:
1. Send a donation to the "American Cancer Society" in Nancy's name through the link below.
2. Purchase a luminaria for a friend with cancer ("In Honor of...") or who we have lost from cancer ("In Memory of...".) The luminaria are $10.00 each...a donation to ACS.
3. Join our Relay team and walk with us Saturday evening.
4. Come out to the Windham H.S. track and cheer Nancy on as she walks in the Survivor lap at 6:15 p.m.
5. Come (with lots of tissues) to the Luminaria Ceremony at 9:00 p.m. and join us in remembering people with cancer.

One of the most moving parts of the event is the Luminaria Ceremony at 9:00 p.m., which is a celebration of hope. As the light dims over our campsites and team members complete laps, the night is brightened by the glow of lighted bags called luminaria, each of which has a special meaning.
Some luminaria celebrate the survivorship of people who have battled cancer and lived to tell the tale. Many commemorate the lives of those who have been lost to this disease. All represent a person who has been profoundly affected by cancer and the family and friends who continue to be touched by that experience.

You can click this link to go to Nancy's Relay page to donate or purchase a luminaria. Please, if you can, donate now. http://main.acsevents.org/site/TR/RelayForLife/RFLFY10NE?px=3818519&pg=personal&fr_id=23404

If you prefer to mail your donation, please make your check out to "American Cancer Society" and mail to Nancy at 69 Summer Place, Portland, ME 04101. She will see that all donations get turned in.

And yes, we WILL walk all night- rain or shine- because, as Nancy says, "I have cancer at night and in the rain."

p.s. Nancy's side effects really kicked in yesterday and she is not feeling well. We know that she is fighting to feel better in time for Relay on Saturday. Hang in there, Nancy!

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Wendy's Baby Shower

Hank and I have a new grandchild on the way; our daughter-in-law, Wendy, is due in mid-July with a baby girl.
Yesterday her Mom, Joanne, her sister, Rhonda, and I gave her a surprise baby shower. It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, so we had the shower on my screened porch.
Wendy's sister is amazingly clever. She made these roses out of baby socks...with real rose leaves they looked like they had just been picked. She arrived with five large bouquets of them for the tables. Rhonda also made the "diaper cake" in the photo below...lots of work! Both Rhonda and Joanne are amazing cooks and the hors d'oeuvres were delicious. There was antipasto-on-a-stick (with pink pearls on the ends!), crab and shrimp stuffed phillo shells, cherry tomatos and mozarella, stuffed muchrooms, meatballs and so much more.
Everything was delicious.

For dessert, we had tiny pink-frosted cupcakes, mini-eclairs and creme puffs, and fresh fruit.

I was in charge of finding a recipe for pink punch and it was quite the event. You mix raspberry or cranberry flavored ginger ale with raspberry sherbet and just stand back while it explodes into something resembling a fizzy pink smoothy...a little scary to watch but really yummy.

Another one of Rhonda's ideas was hanging a clothesline on the porch with pastel "onesies" clipped to it...here she is getting it ready.

These are the last of our peonies for this year...at least they're pink!
Wendy opening gifts...

Nancy and Wendy...


Great-grandmother, Eleanor Lawson, Hanks' son, Rob (Dad-to-be) and Wendy.

Now we all just need to sit back and wait for baby girl Lawson to make her appearance!

School's Out!

Yesterday: Today:

No more pencils

No more books

No more teacher's dirty looks

Out for summer

Out till fall

We might not go back at all!

Great family camping trip !!!

The BAD CASE of Browntail Moth Catipiller reaction was the worse part of the camp out !!! Other than that we all had a great time !!!

An Update...Finally!!

Hi All-
First I want to take a moment to thank everyone for their support, kind words, e-mails, phone messages, visits etc. etc. during my recent setbacks and hospitalization! I am feeling much better now and am glad to being back in the "land of the living". The chemo is tough, but it is just something I have to deal with and hope for it to work. I have my next infusion on June 17th. It hopefully will get a little easier each time. The side effects are nausea and mostly fatigue. It takes about two weeks to feel fully human after each treatment, so now that I'm feeling good again it must be time for the next treatment!
We did have a fun filled camping Memorial Day weekend recently at Recompence Shores Campground in Freeport. Aaron and I have never been campers-I have gone on a few road trip camp outs with Cheryl in the T@b, but that's the extent of my experience. So Aaron decided we needed to try this while I was in the hospital, planned it with Kit, and we did it! Of course, we weren't exactly "roughing it!" Kit came to the rescue with his business Destinations RV Rentals. He went to the campground and set up a 37 foot and 32 foot RV on three beautiful sites right on the ocean. Oh yeah....camping with queen sized beds, full kitchen, microwave etc.-the only thing missing were the flat screen TVs! He even made the campfire and stacked the wood for us! Good thing, too! The first to arrive were the 3 "least likely to succeed" campers, Aaron, Andi and I--we struggled just to get the fire to start-we ended up burning junk mail from our car! This campground is gorgeous--a beautiful farm in the middle of the woods right next to the ocean--who could ask for more! And just 20 minutes from home--if we couldn't handle it!
We invited the whole family--Joey and Mark took the third site and brought up their T@b so we were all together in a line. Cheryl and Hank weren't able to come, because they had both been attacked by some kind of "bug" and were home throwing up-we missed them, but none of us needed that! The rest of us were able to go-in our RV it was Aaron and I and Andi and her husband Dave. In the next camper it was Kit and Erin and their sister-in-law, Cara Shaw and for one day Eddie Bolz, who works for Kit. We arrived Friday and left Monday. The weather was beautiful each day-a little windy, but no rain!
On Sunday we were joined by Erin's parents, Dale and Carolyn Shaw and Toughy , the poodle, with Erin's Nana and Gram (Dale and Carolyn's Moms). These two tough ladies came down from Aroostock County by bus to the Shaw's house in Corinth (near Bangor). Then they all drove down to Freeport for the day. Erin's Nana shares the same birthday with Mom, right down to the same year! One was born in Bradford, England, the other in Aroostock County, Maine, and they are now also connected through Kit and Erin's marriage! (By the way, Happy Birthday to both Mom and Nana today as I write this!) We had hoped to get Mom up so they could all have a visit, but Mom wasn't up to it. We had a great BBQ together although due to the wind we had to keep playing musical chairs around the campfire, to get away from the smoke.


There was only one problem...brown moth caterpillars! They exist in May and early June in the area of Casco Bay, and their fine hairs blow in the wind (remember I said how windy it was?) and can cause a rash like poison ivy! All the campers except the visitors from Northern Maine, came home with varying degrees of

rash--the worst were Joanne and Kit who both needed to get medication for theirs, and are scratching still!! But in spite of it-we agreed we had a great time! Here's hoping next week's chemo won't be so rough and the updates will return more frequently!
Take care everyone! Nancy