The Prefect Fall Break....

The kids have Fall Break coming up and while we tried to rack our brains for something "fun" to do with them, we had no great ideas. It was probably a good thing that we had made no plans because, as it turns out, we will be going back to NY over that break from school. That is were I am from and my parents still live there, as well as my sister and brother. It has been a year this month since we have seen them. We made a trip there last year after our oldest son, Tim, returned from his mission to Canada. We visited NY, had Annah's baptism in the same ward that I was baptized in when I was 16 (although it was a branch when I was baptized!) and then we took a trip into Canada to see Tim's mission area. It was there that young Tim and his now wife, Lisa, first met each other in person! It hardly seems like a year could have passed by already! But, it has and with that passage of time the health of my parents, especially my dad, has declined significantly. My mother has MS and my dad has lived 5 years with a pacemaker/defibrillator because of congestive heart failure. Over the last months he's been hospitalized a number of times but each time he improves a little but doesn't make a full recovery. I feel in my heart he is slowly failing. I can't bear to think of him passing away as that brings up a lot of issues that he and my mother have not wanted to deal with (and who does?) concerning who will care for her once he is no longer here. So Fall Break seems like the perfect time to go back and see my parents and visit with them again before something unavoidable comes our way. The kids are excited to see them again and my parents are thrilled at the prospect of seeing them too. I think this is the perfect Fall Break for all of us.