Summer 2024

I see I haven't updated in quite awhile!

I am still retired and fairly healthy. Poor Tom has many many health issues and the latest is kidney cancer. (His right kidney was removed in January).

Most recently he was in the hospital for effects of what turned out to be a UTI. He was falling and delerious. :-(

Recently he lost 70 pounds and is back to a good weight for him. He was taking ozempic for his diabetes so that's mostly why.

We went to the CMA Music Fest again this year, but I didn't renew for the first time. We'll see about 2025 when the time comes.

I am not doing any Rec Committee or anything for the township and I stopped volunteering at CONTACT during the pandemic and never went back.

I still do SHIP counseling and I am the secretary for/member of the Friends of the Burlington County Library Board. Also I am still active with the Association, adding BCREA membership chair to my previous roles of e-blaster and photographer. I still coordinate the DEAR Friends group lunches and have a blog for that.

Tom just ordered a $1700 65 inch tv from Costco online and I am very worried it will not fit properly or safely atop the entertainment center. 

I am off to breakfast with Marian Feurhammer. :-) Time to get back in the lunch groove with Gee Gee and Judi Ruff,  too.

Winter 2021-2022

 It's December 22 of 2021 at the moment and we are still in the pandemic and should be limiting gatherings, but I think people are not. Two years of not seeing their families on Christmas is too much for some. (make that many, not just some).

We played 5000 with the Mays last night and found out Cody (who was newly in from the covid-besieged  Brooklyn) had just tested positive when he got to CA. Now he has to isolate from the family during his stay. :-(

Tom and I both were feeling a bit sniffly and he was concerned since a Prospectors server got covid, so he went out and bought instant covid tests from CVS. Negative. (So we went out dancing!)

Recent family events include Cody having a great girlfriend (living with, I believe, Sarah), Caitlin marrying Eric Lees, and Zoe still living the life of the rich and famous (she works for). Jennifer sees Anayah when she can. Jassy is still in the picture. Sue and Patrick and Jenn visit Jodie (Chris passed away) in the place she lives now and take her out for treats.

Lots of new babies in the extended Goff family. Little Joshua even got married (not so little now, actually. He and Claudia live in KY. Most of the others live in the Goff complex of homes in AR. I think Isaac lives in CO?

Bradley and Samantha both got divorced. :-(

Nathan lives with his "boys" in Rotterdam. Jackson squats in NYC with a girlfriend (illegal alien?) and used to have Bradley's old job but I don't know about now.

Jessica Steele moved to the woods. I think she still teaches, but went back to classroom after being a school librarian.

It was Miriam's birthday on the 19th but we didn't call and we haven't heard from Linda Sallee in a long time and I am worried if she is okay.

Dina had surgery up in MA and hopes to be back to NJ to live but not until maybe Spring.

We haven't seen Jill and Mike in forever and I bumped into Tony Casale who mentioned Mike's dementia being not that bad.... (?!!!)

Tom and I are fine. (well he sees doctors all the time and is in pain. His copay drug cost for the year is 5 or 6 hundred. Mine is $1.84.) All I can say is thank God for NJEA and our paid health insurance (and reimbursed Medicare Part B premiums!)

I have to write Christmas cards, stat. Bye.

Summer of 2019

Funny how I keep coming back to these old blogsites years later!

We are returning from yet another curtailed but fun CMA Music Fest. Tom's current health issues are still massive. BCG treatments for a recurrence of bladder cancer, shots for the back pain, hip, neck...on and on it goes. Poor Tom :-(  He even has a handicapped hangtag for the car and medical marijuana access.

I am still doing a lot of volunteer stuff, HR Block, and lunches with retirees and PTHS alumni, and other friends and relatives.  Oh, additionally now I am approaching the end of a full year of Max Challenge membership. (45 minutes of daily exercise every  week day...what???!)

Jennifer's granddaughter Anayah is cute as a button and 3 years old now. Jassy is still with her. She is talking about retiring in the near future. We had so much fun when she and Sue came to NYC for her 60th birthday in Oct. We stayed at a b&b in Brooklyn (thank you, Zoe for that and also the fabulous boat trip around the statue of liberty area), saw Hamilton, visited mommy and Jeff's graves, and Bradley and family.

Sue and family are going strong. Their most recent family vacation was to Norway. Zoe and Cody are both in Brooklyn now (as is Jackson). Caitlin is still in San Francisco and has another boyfriend.

Samantha and Ross are still in GA with 3 (growing) kids.

Bradley and Karey have another baby...a cute boy.

Roxanne is still in GA too and also has another baby.

On Tom's side....Sarah is on her 3rd, Jonathan and Krissy got married, Isaac and Bethany have two now,  Hannah and Seth's baby, Samuel,  has had a lot of issues in his young life, but is hanging in there and having a lot of firsts and making everyone so happy, Mary Grace and Nathan (Harris) got married and have a baby. Joshua is in college, Daniel is getting old too. Most of them live in a complex in AR. Jonathan is still in Israel, Isaac is in the south and Joshua is at school somewhere.

Jackson is in NY, having graduated from Reed College and is looking to visit us and go to Seaside.
Our Nathan is finishing up in Rotterdam. Alex is in England, not with a newspaper anymore.

Oh. We have a newly found relative- Greg Cohen. It turns out Howie had a baby no one knew about. Greg was adopted and recently went on Ancestry,com and also did the DNA thing and so did Nathan and they found each other! I met up with him for lunch one day and he had dinner with Sue and Jenn in CA last week. Cool!

We are talking about a new roof and also Tom would like a new car. I'll try and keep you posted! LOL

Summer of 2016

Maybe I should have waited until the 2016 NJEA Convention in November to catch up on this old blog.
It is fascinating to see what I wrote in November of 2012.

What's going on now:
Tom is looking forward to therapy following his torn meniscus surgery. The last few years have been a constant series of medical issues for poor Tom...from bladder cancer to knee replacement and lots more in between. Thank goodness for health insurance and Tom's good sense of humor and acceptance of the daily trials and tribulations of aging.

He just had his first golf outing in months yesterday and was so very happy to be back!

We had a slightly curtailed (as far as movement around Nashville goes) CMA Music Fest trip and are looking forward to our 18th Jamboree in the Hills in a couple of weeks. (Happy 17th anniversary to us on July 10th!)

Jennifer is most likely coming East to visit with Alex, the boys, and us before Alex moves back to England at the end of the month. (Since Jeff's death Alex stayed in Bethesda for awhile, then moved to NYC for a year after Nathan graduated.). Nathan took off to London after graduating, most recently has been working in Madagascar and will be going to the University of Rotterdam in the fall, I hear.
Jackson has finished his second year at Reed College in Portland, OR. I don't know what is happening with him for next semester, but he is currently in VT with a friend, taking a class.

Jennifer is a grandmother (Jassy had a baby, Anayah).
Zoe moved back to San Francisco (after two families' worth of nannying in NYC) to work at another nanny job there.
Caitlin has a new job outside of the animal world.
Cody graduated from college and is in Scottsdale now for his work at a start-up company dealing with a computer related service.

Samantha and Ross moved to Marietta, GA (from Austin, TX) and have three children, the two boys and the newest girl.
Roxanne and Craig are having a baby any second and live in Atlanta, GA. (I tried to get the two families together, but I don't think they ever made contact). There was a zika virus concern since the Forests had been in Brazil, but testing seemed ok.

Brad and Karey have Juni and we were happy to be able to visit with them for two parties, a year apart.

The Goffs: Jonathan still in Israel, working with lots of travel and postings. Sarah has a baby and is with husband Franklin far away, missioning. Isaac and Bethany have a baby and are in TX. Hannah is married to Seth and in AR. (teaching?) Mary Grace is missioning somewhere far away. The other kids are growing up fast, like Joshua with a license....Amy and Matthew (retired) are in AR living with his mother.

Jessica and Matt have Harper.

I am doing ok. :-)

And then it was two years later...!

Wow, I just came across this site again after all this time!

This year there is no NJEA Convention because of the terrribly destructive Hurricane Sandy.

We are in Myrtle Beach, having come down for Doug Brewin's wedding to the lovely Jo-Anne Rooney and hanging out in the cold weather here until week's end.

Much has happened in the last two years! Most recently, President Obama was re-elected after a seemingly endless campaign period. (I have to say how disappointed I was in some of my Facebook friends' handling of their opinions during the campaign....aside from the fact that I was floored that so many of them did not share my convictions.)

My brother Jeff, who had recently moved to the Washington, D. C. area with his English family (via Pellham, NY), died suddenly and unexpectedly in February. In April, as we were preparing to leave for CA for a second memorial service for Jeff, we learned that Tom's mother had passed away.
They held up her funeral until after we returned from CA and drove out to AR for her burial, and then on to TX for her memorial service with the Goffs. When we got home, Tom had a follow-up appointment with a urologist who informed us that Tom had bladder cancer. We decided to forego our two weeks vacation in Myrtle Beach to deal with the diagnosis as soon as possible. Tom had the prescribed treatments for the cancer, and by the summer was decared free of any signs of malignancy. He is continuing follow-up/preventive treatments for the next year.

Meanwhile, just when we were considering whether or not Tom could handle the driving and walking for our planned CMA Fest trip in June, I got a phone call telling me that we had won a sweepstakes and would be flown there and bussed to and from the hotel! Perfect!

We have a trip to Florida planned before tax season starts (although my hiring for HR Block is currently in limbo due to the drastic hourly pay rate they offered me. I hope things work out because I studied for months to take (and I passed!) the new IRS required test for professional tax preparers...and I passed two certification level tests, too!)

Zoe graduated from college and moved to NYC with a job as a nanny, although we haven't had an opportunity to visit with her on the E. coast yet. Sue is coming in on the 16th so we are hoping we can head to NYC after her visit with us en route from Washington and the Kayes to Zoe in the city on her whirlwind trip.

Thanks to Sue I am learning to actually understand wordpress website creation and maintenance. I made a practice site in her honor!

And then it was a year later......

So here I am again, and the Convention is coming up next week. I had a good time last year and intend to go down again by train on Thursday.
This is going to be a busy couple of weeks, actually (so what else is new? When did I ever have time to go to work all those years? LOL).
The biggest fun activity is going to be when we head for Nashville and the CMA Awards show. I won this trip when they picked my name out of thousands of entries from the Greased Lightning booth entered during the June CMA Fest. We are so excited!!!
I'm still doing HR Block ....now third year and a gazillion classes later (Love HR Block and their continuing education!) and CONTACT, and dancing. Now I'm on the Eastampton Recreation Committee, too. I still do the BCEA Website and started a side one for DEA for fun, as well as keeping up with my old colleagues and family with websites. Facebook is huge for keeping in touch as well. I have my own website too.
My other blogs on blogger are: http://teamsallee.blogspot.com  and http://www.rosallees.blogspot.com and another, too.

Ending the first decade of the second millenium

So now it is fall of 2009....I went to the NJEA Convention last week--day trip via train--- and had big big fun. My main daily activities these days include tax classes with H&R Block (second year) and phone room volunteering with CONTACT of Burlington County ...oh and let's not forget Facebook....what a trip getting back in touch with fifth graders of yesteryear, now fully grown!

Tom and I love to dance and go to Prospectors frequently. We have a couple of vacations coming up, but not to interfere with tax season (last year Florida, a Carribbean cruise, and three weeks in Hawaii took the foreground, pre-planned, took the bite out of my tax season. We'll see what happens this year)

Jeff and the other London Kayes live in New York now. :-)

Jessica is getting married in March.