Praises...

Watching Dax walk around the house in my fuzzy pink crocs, if only I'd gotten a picture I could have used it later!

Getting to take Finn to the doctor today sans Dax (thanks, Traci)

7th grade girls who make the dance team. Woo hoo for you ladies! (you can see their picture on Traci's blog, I'd link you there, but I'm not sure how, so you'll have to scroll down and look for the link!)

American Idol (yeah, I know, hush already)

Thursday Night!! Yeah!! I haven't had one in weeks, and it sure felt good to get out!

I'm doing this in alphabetical order...
Amy, Donna, Elaine, Kim, Lisa, Megan, Nicole, Sarah, & Traci
A very special praise and thank you to these women who took over my children, my laundry, cooking, and even my dog so that I could worry about other things over the past weeks. I don't know how to even begin to say thank you!! I couldn't have done it without you guys!

Prayers, and words of love that just keep coming in. Thank you!

Friends who let me babble on or not talk at all depending on my mood. I love you guys!

Praises...

Being home

Amazing love from great friends

Walking into a room full of people who care

Maintaining composure

7th grade girls who meet you at the door with hugs and the best smiles

Normalcy, almost

3 days of big boy pants

A dog who licks yogurt off of carpet, tables, & one year olds

2 year olds who volunteer to take a nap, early... ok, so he really just wanted a binky fix and fell asleep, but I'll take it!

Great notes from old friends who send love from many miles

Sitting at a table with great friends

Returning to praises

Although American Idol was not the usual tonight, just to make up for last week, I'm gonna show you a couple of my favorite songs from tonight's episode...

A normal post...

This comes at the request of my husband who tonight asked, "Are you ever going to go back to regular blogging?" Seems his lunch time blog fest has been slow lately. He says other than Nicole's pretty regular updates, the rest of us are failing him. So tonight, I decided it's time to get back into the swing of it. It's time again to praise, he reminded me of that with this evening conversation....

let me preface this a bit by telling you that we both had a rough day and after sending Lily to her room again, he walked into the living room with me and began....

Mike ~
"I'm thankful I have a boss who is willing to loan me a truck to drive home.

I'm thankful I have a job I need to drive back and forth to.

I'm thankful when my brakes went out I was close to a place that could fix it at as fair a price as anywhere.

I'm thankful I have the ability to work 20 hours of overtime to pay that fair price.

I'm thankful this is a three pay check month.

I'm thankful I have a family to come home to."

I responded with a smile and said,

I'm thankful I have children with minds and voices that can express their true thoughts.

I'm thankful that I have a washing machine that works to do 10 loads of laundry.

I'm thankful that I have towels to clean up pee pee on the floor.

I'm thankful for my dog who cleans up crushed pretzels.

I'm thankful for a baby healthy enough to make enough poop to fill his diaper and his entire outfit.

I'm thankful to not have one of those annoying husband's who comes home and complains that the house is not clean and wants to know where his dinner is."

Mike responded with "Where is my dinner, dammit?"

We both laughed, I am thankful for laughter, and the ability to see any situation from a different perspective and I'm thankful to have a husband who is right there with me.

And just for Mike, to make it more normal, here are my American Idol favs....




This one reminded me of my mom. (she has a little thing for Tapestry)

Is this the Funeral?

Does it look like a funeral?

225 people came not to a funeral, but to a Celebration of Life. My dad was a man who loved to be the ring leader, he only appreciated noise if he was in charge of it. He would have loved this party. I was amazed by the love and the memories. Hearing the memories of so many helped me to see the bigger picture of my dad. I, as his daughter, saw him from one angle, one view. He touched so many people that I will never know and no matter how many ups and downs we had I know his heart was good and loving. I'm proud to have had him as my father.

This day was long and short, hard and easy, sad and joyous all rolled into one. It was what it was in many ways because not only of the man at the center but because of the cast of characters that made his private life what it was. I have an amazing, graceful, strong, beautiful mom and two amazing, funny, kind hearted brothers. When I figure out how, I'll get the slide show that my brother, Ryan, put together up and running for all to see. The Page clan is also blessed to have some pretty incredible add ons to the family as well. You all know I'm one pretty lucky person to have Mike around, but he seems to be the standard for this family, Carly and Jessy have been there through all of this with so much love and compassion, always willing to do anything. We are truly blessed!

Distant cousins

We hadn't seen this little girl in 8 years, we have pictures of she and Lily side by side from that anniversary party, because no one could tell them apart. This time the cousin had a major height advantage, but the similarities in appearance were still rather eerie! These girls are the 1st great grandchildren of identical twins. (My Dad's mom & aunt)

The After Party...

After the services, we headed back to my parents house to enjoy the beautiful April day, some inappropriate music. & great memories of my Dad. The laughter would have made my Dad smile.
Lily danced with the cousins.
Dax kept the beat.
Mike & Dosh did something weird with a bag of puppets left unattended. Dax tried to hit on a cousin.
A cousin hit on Finn...I'm gonna have to explain to my boys that no matter how cute or how distant the cousin, probably not the best source for dates!

Praises and My Dad

Praises...

The house is quiet, people have scattered here or there and for a few moments the house is calm, and I can think.

Dax has stopped throwing up! He threw up for hours this morning, but then he chose to eat pizza for dinner and well, I figured it's worth a shot. He's now peacefully sleeping.

Everyone else is feeling better...after a week of the stomach bug hitting every single person in this house, many with a repeat visits, we all seem to be holding our own tonight...pray that continues and no one else starts..we might have to post a contamination warning on the door!

There are flowers throughout the house and they are the happy flowers, not the sad ones. ( yeah, that might not make sense, but it's ok)

Finn has learned to climb up and down Nana's staircase like a pro, at least a semi pro.

Dosh, my medic, was here when Finn took a tumble down the stairs under his big sister's supervision. (I can say much, if it was under my supervision I probably would have fallen too)

Finn, after careful evaluation seems to have walked away with a small bump and a bit of rug burn.

Cards, Cards, & more cards. Notes from people via the Internet. I am amazed at the love pouring out. The notes that are coming from people none of us know, only Dad knew..I'm seeing more of my Dad then I realized was out there.

The planning is over. the CD's are made, the music is chosen, the programs are run, the words are written. Now we can only hope that we have been half the party planners my dad always was and that he would be pleased with our efforts to make tomorrow a day he would have loved. I sure hope we live up to his expectations!
A family that I love with my whole heart.

Having a great husband, having him back with me.

Having my whole little clan back together after too long apart.

34 years and 20 hours with a dad who I didn't always understand, but I always loved and who did his best at being a good dad. If he was not my dad, I would not be me, and I am so blessed that God gave me this family.

Laughter.

The ability to see joy in all of these moments.

A song for my dad...

There are a million, but this is one of the fun ones that was placed on the "at home after the service when it's just the close friends and family CD", with all the other inappropriate for church songs.

My Big Bitty Boy!

Finn turned one today! It's hard to believe it's been a year since this little guy debuted in our family. We can't remember life without him! I wish I could say these were his real birthday pictures, but alas, they are from our staged 1st birthday party we had on the Saturday before Easter. Probably better that we did it then, today was slightly chaotic and the little guy was a grumpy gus for his birthday, but he did get some cool presents, till Dax took them over...poor guy, maybe by next birthday he'll know how to take his presents back!

PS Traci, happy birthday tomorrow! I want to see pictures of you with blue icing on your blog soon!

The Gift of Music...

Today we spent many hours discussing music. Not just any music, but the right music. For dad, music meant so much that choosing the wrong things for his day seems like some sort of mortal sin. We've talked about music, we've sung songs to each other(thank God we're family, and not on American Idol), we've YouTubed for hours, we've visited stores, and we've hunted down lyrics. We still are not sure we know what we are doing, but there were moments in the songs today, moments where he was so close, and moments where we know he was talking to us. The sweetest moment for me today was hearing my dad send my mom a love song via Dosh and YouTube.

Tonight, while hunting for songs Dosh says, "What about Smokey Robinson, Dad was always having me look up Smokey Robinson stuff" We played some Smokey, we discussed we reminisced but Dosh was not satisfied that we'd found the right song, good ones, yes but not the one stuck in hi memory. "There was one, one he said was for mom, that mom loved. He made me find it for him even after he couldn't really talk well. This one was for mom." We searched, we found, we played, Dosh left the room. Mom knew, without a shadow of a doubt that he left this for her and she smiled, and cried. I too smiled and cried (I snuck out of the room for that part). We should have known he'd give us musical notes...

Here is his song for Mom...



I stumbled over to my Aunt Lynda's blog tonight and it seemed he had a little musical note for her today too, we might just need to use his message to her too, maybe she had the answer to our issue all along! www.xanga.com/GoodGuyTheBoss She also has some great old pictures of Dad posted today.

I've had several people ask, so here is the link to Dad's obituary, today in the local paper...

http://www.wnewsj.com/main.asp?SectionID=4&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=164744