So Wow! There's over a week I need to catch ya'll up on. Ok well ... Let's see ... so much so fast ...

One thing I failed to mention about Tuesday ... my family landed in Seattle and the temps shot into the 100's in Portland ... and ... they stayed there all week.

Wednesday ... mmm ... well ... I'm sure it happened. We are well past it. Oh, Tuesday all night Stephen, my first son-in-law, climbed Mt. Hood. He didn't get to the top because the snow and ice on the particular route he chose was too much. If he'd gone a different route, he might have made it up higher but he also admitted it was just a lot to take on with so little prep and rest time prior to the climb. All the same, he got some great pictures of "probably the most beautiful sunrise I've ever seen."

I called the Ritz camera store and had them put a Fujifilm DS2500 on hold + all the goodies. It looked fairly certain that my dad and my oldest brother and the entourage wouldn't get in until late. My best hope was that we could make a charge into the camera store before the trip to the coast.

Turns out that I have a very good brother. When he realized they would make it in before Ritz closed, he called and they got all the info and drug my dad to the camera store.

On Thursday morning when we met for the beach trip, I also found out that my brother had also "drug them on a FOUR mile hike!" Now, when my dad told me this, I knew we were all getting old. My dad was complaining about a four mile hike and my brother had only selected a four mile hike! But then I was informed that, no, my brother was not getting old he was just moving a little less quickly because he and his son and my cousin had gone up Long's Peak about four or five days before.

The trip to the beach was great! Just a perfect Oregon beach day. It was also the only time we'd be cool sans air conditioning for the rest of the week. I spent the evening visiting with my youngest brother and his wife.

Friday morning I woke happy, happy. Billy was going to be coming into town and he'd be able to help me move the last of the boxes I was packing and then we'd get a good night's sleep ... and then he called from the NY airport. And ... I basically came unglued. There were severe thunderstorms in the area. The best they could do to get him to Portland was 1pm on Saturday!

So, yeah, I was sobbing. The wedding would start at 1:30 over an hour away from the Portland airport.

Billy talked to United, Billy called Travelocity, I called United. It did indeed look very bleak. What I found out from United, that they weren't telling the people in NY was that there was actually a series of thunderstorms. They really didn't know when they'd be able to get people out of NY. I almost just let go of it but Billy had asked me to also look online.

I calmed down enough to call down and get the hotel management to let me use an adjacent room that did have working Internet. (I had been going down to the lobby to use the Internet because the connection in my room didn't work.) It was a very easy. He quickly agreed. I think they were trying to figure out how to check on me, anyway. When I opened my door to get the key from the manager, there was a very very worried looking housekeeping lady standing off to the side.

I looked at Travelocity and discovered that there were three airlines offering flights at about 6am out of Billy's connecting city (Denver). Up to this point, the best anyone would suggest was a standby on an 8:30am flight. So, my deduction was that they didn't really expect to get Billy to Denver before 6 AM! I called him with the news and told him he'd better just find a corner and try to get a little sleep. This is very difficult for someone with sleep apnea ... all the same ... a little sleep is better than none.

So the show goes on, right? At the rehearsal dinner, everyone was asking about when Billy's plane landed that night and I would just smile and say, "It won't be coming tonight. It's a matter of prayer. Pray for a flight that lands him in Denver before 6am."

Just as dinner was ending I got a text message from Billy that he was boarding a plane.

I had to get into the rehearsal phase so I updated my youngest brother re the Denver possibilities and asked him to see what he could do through United.

United worked with my brother and got Billy on a 6am flight to Portland via Herizon Airlines.

At 2am Billy sent me a text message to be sure and thank my brother for his work because United proceeded to overbook that flight. Since Billy was one of the very first people to book, he had no problems getting onto the flight.

Hmmm and writing this I just realized that Billy's text message to me was an odd thing! I shouldn't have even received it. Several of us tried unsuccessfully to send Billy a reply from the dinner. We were on an analog signal!

Since newest daughter-in-law (technically she's my only possible daughter-in-law) was also sans husband, she and Emma went with me to my hotel to stay the night. I so needed and appreciated Sam's help!

Then wa-la! My son's plans changed. Seems the groom ran out of room for all of his groomsmen to stay the night with him. So ... he also came and stayed the night with me (well ok and with Sam & Emma.)

Emma tried hard to stay awake but she collapsed. They put her in bed with me. Do you know that the older I get the more therapeutic my granddaughter's snuggles get? She found me in the middle of the night ... in the middle of the king size bed ... and just about snuggled me out of bed by the time the sun came up. I didn't care.

So ... I'm outta time ... library's closing ... I'll tell you all the rest another day.