A promise for the near future

Well, the trip to Sweden was wonderful and I'm so glad I finally decided to go. Drew was doing fine and Doug had everything under control. He was so good about urging me to go and making me feel like everything would be alright. I haven't got my pictures downloaded yet since I just got home Monday night and now I'm here at the Huntsman Center with Drew again for the third in his series. When I get home again I'll try to figure out how to send pictures on this blog. You've all done so well---I loved seeing the video of the wedding, and Terri, your gorgeous daughter looks just like you in those pictures! Mandy, I love that James just took the bull by the horns and went after that fence. You truly are blessed to have such a hard worker and one who knows how to do things. The baby pictures made me laugh, too.
The trip was beautiful, Sweden was beautiful, and the weather was perfect for us. A little on the chilly side but clear blue skies, lots of leaves turning color, apple trees everywhere in the countryside. They'd had rain a whole week just before we came so we really lucked out. We made contact with two of our Swedish cousins---one from Grandma Lindblooms side of the family up in Gavle, and one from grandpa Rosine's side down south in Kristianstad. I got some new data from both of them and am excited to get it entered into my stuff. We just all felt such a bond with these cousins and with the people and the land. We stayed in youth hostels and guest houses in the cities and on B & B farms in the country. Every place was a new adventure. Everything went very smoothly except for one little scare. We got up one morning and went out to load up the car to start our trek down south but it was missing! We thought it must have been stolen but then realized it probably had been towed. It was really hard to figure out just where you can park and where you can't and we figured this one about 6 inches wrong. Anyway, what do you do in a foreign country where you don't speak the language and your rented car is towed? The rental company found it for us, and of coarse it was way, way out of the city and cost us a good bit of kroner to take a taxi out to get it, plus pay the towing fee, plus the ticket we found on the window. A costly mistake. But it all worked out and that's really the only problem we had. Shauna was brave and did all the driving and it was a stick shift. Happily they drive on the right side of the road so we didn't have that to adjust to.
Watch for pictures. Love Mom

Update on Drew: It is 4:00 pm and we've been here since 9:00 this morning waiting for a free bed. It's getting late so he may not even get started on chemo tonight. The CT scans he had done yesterday didn't show any sign of shrinking like we hoped but the doctor was optimistic. She said,"well, at least they aren't growing." She said we ought to go for at least two more rounds, then take more scans again. If nothing is happening we'll talk about an operation for at least the one in the vein. Not really great news, but not all bad, either.