Update for 12-5-06

Hi Friends,
We came to Palm Dessert on Monday and are staying with our dear friends the Presleys until Thursday. The weather here is gorgeous with lots of sunshine -- just what the doctor ordered. Those of you who know Joe well, know he has seasonal affective disorder so sun is very important to him. He had some nausea on Saturday and Sunday but it is gone. I try to get him to look at it as big chunks of cancer coming off and that he just needs to flush it out. It is hard for him not to think of it as the beginning of a downward spiral. Today we went walking in the mall and came across a Jamba Juice which has fresh carrot juice. I was thrilled! Joe was not so crazy about it, but we found pure carrot juice in the store and he is drinking that.
We also discovered that our friends, Marc and Joan Adler, who we met in Bonaire diving and who live in CO. are here in their motor home. We are meeting up with them tomorrow for lunch. It is 75 during the day here and gets cooler at night. The airlines ruined our luggage by cutting off the approved TSA lock and also cutting off the tabs of the zipper totally so we had to get that repaired yesterday. They didn't pay any attnetion to the approved locks so for those of you traveling, we suggest to skip the locks, at least with American. This is the second time this has happened with our new (cheap) luggage. It cost us more to have new pulls put on than it did for the luggage.
I for one am glad I am away from the hustle and bustle of Christmas and just spending time with good friends and family this next two weeks. I'm sure that Jake our dog staying with Cassie and Kirk, our kids, has added to their stress and we thank them so much for doing this for us. As I think I said, I have my thyroid surgery on the 19th, two days after we return home , so Christmas will be fairly quiet I think. We will not have our traditional Beef wellington that Joe usually makes but we will have something vegetarian. We have a church service on Christmas Eve night and Joe will sing O Holy Night accompanied by Karen and Cassie. Kevin will play the guitar. We will try and videotape it so we have it as a memory. On that night children are welcome in our clubhouse so the little ones will get to see it. That is about it for now. We continue to feel blessed and hope you are all continuing to pray. Since Joe is still doing so well, sometimes it is easy to forget that he has this diagnosis and we have had 4 great months. We just pray that God will let us continue our journey here to help people find their way back to God and this can be your prayer for us. God bless Mary Anne