Thanksgiving 2014

 For several years now, our family has collected fall leaves to make a tree of gratitude on Thanksgiving.  We didn't have quite as many trees to choose from, but luckily the park next door had one that was plentiful.  It was nice to have Sarah to participate with us for the first time.

Found these on Pinterest and had fun making them.

Dinner was at Chuck's house.  Grandpa got some good snuggles. 

Follow up CT Scan

The good news is, my dad's tumor has no noticeable change.

The bad news is, I am wondering if I made the right choice to stay in CA.  Will have to wait for the weather to warm up before considering it.  Still taking it a day at a time.

Rearranging

Now that we know we are going to be here through the Winter and Spring, I thought it was time to make some changes and make this space more liveable for our family.  My dad doesn't really use his office anymore, so I asked if we could turn it into another bedroom.  He was OK with it, so I go to work.  I was able to put my mom's dresser in the garage and make that wall into the same setup he had with his rolltop desk in the office.  I put his chair and end table in the corner by the window, similar to how it was.  We moved the desk in the back bedroom into the office, and now Akasha has her own computer set up and dresser!

This setup is going to free up more space in the back bedroom as well.  Great all around! 

A New Milestone :(

Last night my dad didn't know who I was for the first time.  Or who HE was.  And I was strangely not that bothered by it.  Now I am questioning if I am somehow out of touch or not processing it. That isn't my intuition, but I do tend to overthink things.  Yes, it is very sad, but I think there are a few reasons it didn't hit me that hard.  One is that I knew that day would come as a natural progression of Alzheimer's.  Not sure how big that one is though, as I have heard so many people say they knew the death of a loved one was coming, but nothing prepares you for the actual event.  I think another part of it is being here with him full time, meaning there is nothing more I could have done to share this last part of his life.  Another big part is that I know these states come and go.  He is often more confused at night, which is common with Alzheimer's.  Which also ties back to living with him, because I see the ebbs and flows.  I would probably be more likely to feel a mental state as more "permanent" if I was encountering it on a short visit to a nursing home, and indeed, it is more likely that *would* be the case if I only saw  him on visits!  Still, it felt like a very huge and sad milestone, so I wanted to record it as part of this journey.

Playa del Carmen Vacation

I can't tell you how many times I agonized back and forth about whether or not we should stick with our vacations plans (which were booked before we realized the extent of my dad's health problems).  The whole thing hinged on Sarah being able to stay with him, though, so once we  had confirmation from her, we decided to go for it. So glad we did.  Lots of amazing experiences were  had by all, and I could not have picked a better hotel than the Sandos Carocal, since it is an ecoresort, with animals both roaming freely on the property and living in cool habitats AND its own swimable cenote and series of waterways and trails and Mayan ruins AND a waterpark and club for the kids!  I could go on.  And oh yeah, best part - all inclusive.  I also didn't know it tends to attract pretty much everybody but people from the US.  That is maybe 10% of their clientele.  We met people from all over the world.  It was pretty awesome.  It was also so cool to see the kids playing with other kids who spoke a different language, and how it just didn't matter.  The language of play is universal!

It was really hard to narrow down which pictures to share.  We were there for a week after all!  Pretty sure I still overdid it, but I love to have a record of this kind of thing in blog form.  :)  Here is the Youtube version, which includes video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDr-_YAhEE0

On our way!  Waiting in the airport....

First walk out to see the beach area.  Not bad!  

Cenote you can snorkel in - wow! 

First coati sighting.  Turns out you can see them pretty much all day every day lol, and night. 

This was right on our balcony!  Sadly had no desire to use it as a cuz because it was so bloody hot, even at night!  But it made a nice mini pool for the kids.

Good times at the waterpark.  It didn't have any huge slides, but it was just the right speed for our kids!

Daddy shark

Parrot food stealing, naughty coati - hey that rhymes!  Bet somebody  has marketed that! 

Mayan site Muyil - right off the road yet only recently found due to the dense jungle!

Another beautifully preserved structure at Muyil.

We sat lots of these big, beautiful tarantulas at Muyil.

Taking a rest at Muyil

Later that day at the Grand Cenote.  Actually two cenotes connected by a cavernous passage you can swim through.  Filled with bats!  Magickal! 

At the big pool, Akasha jumping in to Daddy. 

Lots of iguanas around the property! 

One of the monkeys that live on the property.  Hard to get close ups of them. 

What the snorkeling was like in front of the hotel.  Not the best I have ever seen, but it was free and easily accessible.   

One of the Mayan ruins at Sandol Caracol.

Lots of cool statuary all over - this Ganesh was in front of the Asian restaurant. 

Proof we got in the water together once lol.  

Never knew where you were going to spot a coati!

Probably my favorite photo of the whole trip, especially because it took alot of overcoming fears to get Akasha out in the sea.  She has a life jacket AND her floaty.  :)  And the underwater viewer I made her because she has never been able to tolerate the feeling of goggles. 

But it was all worth it because she was sure she saw Mavis.  See the letter I sent to Clearwater Aquarium below for explanation. 

Awesome little restaurant right next door to the Akumal Ecological Center.  I had just asked, "Who saw a sea turtle?!"

Orion participated in the Animal Keeper program - one of the highlights of the trip for sure!  He was the only English speaker in the group, and the guides had limited English, but they did everything they could to help him feel welcomed and included. 

Orion's job was feeding the peacocks. 

Getting ready to feed the donkeys. 

Orion's favorite - taking the hairless Mayan dogs for a walk!  Their names were Peck and Bosh (sp?) which meant "dog" and "black" in Mayan.   The staff seemed very amused by this lol. 

Somebody wanted to head to the beach! 

My favorite eco tourguide, Noemi, here talking about the sacred Ceiba tree. 

A lovely moment of sibling love. 

Romantic Boat Ride (hotel's name for it) with Jesus, the Mayan Warrior.  Irony much?  Who actually turned out to be from Oregon!

Saying farewell to the peacocks.

Saying farewell to the burro brothers. 

We left early enough for the airport to make a stop at Crococun Zoo.  So glad we did as it was definite highlight of the trip!  Anybody for crocodile petting?  

Snakey boy!

Biggest snake I have ever seen in person! 

Walking through the big croc area.  Akasha mostly rode on Daddy's back but agreed to get down for this photo.  Doesn't look to happy about it though does she? 

The monkeys are free roaming and hang around because they feed them.

Feeding the deer. 

One last shot that we bought at the photo store on the way out of the hotel.  Couldn't resist this one! 

Winging it home! Strange but pretty cloud formation at sunset.

Letter sent to Clearwater Aquarium after we got home:

I wanted to write and share a couple stories from our recent family vacation in Playa del Carmen, so you would know of yet more real world examples of how your work is making a difference in the world.  My daughter is 6 and just adores both of your movies.  She asks to go see Winter pretty much every day.  She can be rather fearful of things in real life, so we weren't sure how parts of our vacation would play out, but thanks to the movies she was inspired to get into the ocean at Akumal Bay and visit with the sea turtles.  She has sensory issues and doesn't tolerate wearing a mask, but I made her a viewer out of a coffee can, Saran wrap, rubber bands and duct tape!  She declared one of the turtles the "Real Mavis", and I had no way to prove her wrong.  :)

But something much more amazing happened.  We considered taking her to one of the places where she could encounter dolphins, but I was pretty sure there were no rescue places in the area.  You never really know how much a young child picks up from a movie, so I asked her, "Do you remember in the movie about how they had to release Mandy even though it meant they might lose Winter?  Do you remember why they did that?"  She immediately answered in a very emphatic way, "Because she was perfectly healthy!!!"  My husband and I just looked at each other and blinked.  OK then, I guess the message got through.  I said, "That's exactly right, and the people around here keep dolphins in captivity that *are* perfectly healthy, and I don't feel good about giving our money to places like that.  What do you think?"  She agreed with me and said she did not want to go see dolphins if it meant we would be supporting people who didn't release healthy animals.

Just... wow.  What good work you are doing!  Even my husband, who was sortof ambivalent on the subject at first, ended up understanding the issue better, after helping to research dolphin companies in the area.  When he read about how they capture the dolphins and split up the families, he realized what an awful practice it is.   So in closing, I would like to say THANK YOU for doing what you do.  If the movies had this impact on my 6 year old, I can only imagine how many other people they have touched.  One tiny drop, an infinity of ripples.

Hoping to see you in 2015,
Lisa Prague and Family

Lost Memories

Today I am wishing I had done more to get my dad talking about the past but also thankful for as much as I did.  I have several video and audio clips, and some nights I would bring the computer to the table and transcribe things.  I am hoping to make a little book for his grandkids of the stories I do have.  Lately I am finding more and more of his memories just seem to be gone.  When I ask him about specific stories, he doesn't seem to remember them at all.  Other times, it might come back to him in a few minutes or later that day.  He does a couple interesting things...

Sometimes it is just a matter of "finding a longer path".  That is how I think of it anyway.  We know our thoughts are basically made up of electronic pathways in the brain, and I think what happens in dementia is that one starts losing those paths.  But if I can find a different association, sometimes my dad will remember the thing he said he couldn't at first.  For example, we have a long time family friend named Mary.  She is the main person my dad remembered and talked about from his old friends, probably because he has seen her many times over the years since my mom died.  Most of the time now, though, he says he doesn't know who she is, but if I get him thinking about the time they went on a road trip to visit state capitals with friends, including Mary, he is often able to recall her.

It is particularly amusing when he comes back to me about half an hour later, saying, "Hey do you remember Mary?"  I think this is related and an example of a reeeally long pathway.  Or maybe some other type of percolation is happening, and it just takes him that long to sort out all the pieces.

I have been joking with Ron I should include a Big Fish section in the Life Story book.  If you  have never seen that movie, I highly recommend it.  Like with many old people, my dad's stories have become more and more outlandish and exaggerated.  Some of the ways he tells the stories now I am pretty sure are inaccurate.  It doesn't really matter of course, but I would like the book to be at least as true to life as I can get it.  But I think there is also validity in the mistellings, and there are possibly even "messages" as to how his mind works.

Life, it's a work in progress...

Even More Not Great Update

Well, it's official.  Non small cell carcinoma.  I already knew because I had picked up the results, but this was the official doctor appointment day, and finding out about prognosis.  He thinks 6-12 months.  He says all lung cancer is aggressive.  Writing this up to have a chronicle of the right dates.  Too much to process right now though.  Doesn't make sense to go to OR in this scenario.