Will be one year old on Friday.

I can’t believe it. She probably can’t believe she’s getting a brother for a present.

Poor girl.

through July and August then we can safely (well, maybe – you never want to tempt fate) say the corn looks good.

But yeah – I just have to say that it’s lookin’ good so far.

July and August are tough months though – lots of years those crucial rains elude us here in Virginia and what starts out as a beautiful, lush corn crop ends up drier than hair that’s been bleached for 20 years.

Just this weekend, my mom got 2 inches of rain for her stinkin’ lawn and we got… nuthin’.

So far, there’s no rain in the forecast this week.

Buuuut…. there’s a B-A-B-Y in the forecast this week! If I don’t post anything else before Thursday, I will update as soon as I get home. But as I told my sister-in-law this morning, I won’t have to cook in the hospital, my sheets will be changed, there will be nurses to care for the baby so I can sleep and I get to sit in bed and watch TV all day long. I may never come home.

Thank you to you all for the cards, messages and love shown to me during my father’s illness and in the aftermath of losing him to cancer.

While having my own children certainly makes me realize how grateful I am for a wonderful, carefree childhood I never realized just how much my Dad sacrificed for my brother and me.

Dad worked as a chemical salesman and some of those guys moved … a lot and for a lot of money. Not us. Dad didn’t want to leave his mama, his friends or his community that he’d lived in since birth. And he wanted to instill that same sense of community and place in us – he succeeded quite well.

We didn’t spend vacations simply chilling out on the beach. Mom and Dad took us to educational, fun spots with lots of activities for children. He always cared about what we were learning and wanted to expose us to as much as possible.

Dad showed us that a family isn’t made up of who lives in your house. He coached teeball and baseball for years and years. Dad took just as much time and effort to teach those young men how to have respect for themselves, self-discipline and how to behave like gentlemen… on and off the field. Their memories of my father are priceless to me.

I will miss him more than I can describe. Yesterday I pretty much had a Hope Floats moment… you know that movie where Sandra Bullock loses her mom and goes into her closet, smells her mom’s clothes and breaks down? I did that. I picked up my Dad’s shirt and only had tears in my eyes until my middle daughter cried, “Mama, these smell like Grandad!”… then I lost it. I can’t believe he is gone and I can’t believe that the cancer took over his body so quickly. We only had four months with him after his cancer was discovered. It’s a vicious, horrible disease that rips apart too many families.

My mother, my girls, my husband and I are just beginning the healing process but we have the very best role model on how to overcome obstacles and how to hold on to each other and cherish the time we all have together.

I love my Dad.