Erin continues to amaze and inspire us with her attitude, staying positive and keeping active. Lots of confidence and maturity in that 11 year old body. Thank goodness.
Today we will finish up with volleyball camp and prepare for our first road trip of the summer. Sunny, Erin, and I will head to the little Wisconsin town of Barnes to spend the weekend with Grandma and Papa Harkins at their cabin in the north woods. Hoping for some good weather and some solitude amongst the trees.
Dan will join us there on Saturday. He's on a 9 day road trip adventure. This week, we could play a game of "Where in the World is Dan O": Tuesday - Rochester to Sioux Falls, SD; Wednesday - Sioux Falls to Brookings, SD to Moorhead, MN; Thursday Moorhead to Fargo, ND to Brainerd, MN. Somehow, by Saturday, he will make his way to Wisconsin to join us at the lake ...
I find that we can get going with life and get busy and you can almost forget for a moment where we have been. Almost. But, little reminders can bring us back in a hurry:
- I got notification that the scholarship fund hit $15,000 this week. People continue to be kind and generous.
- One of Shannon's friends texted me this week asking if she had a headstone or a memorial somewhere because they wanted to go and sit with Shannon.
- Last night, I picked Erin up from volleyball open gym and there were a couple of Shannon t-shirts being worn out there.
While it's hard on one level to have these reminders, we are still so grateful for those of you who are helping us remember and honor her.
On some basic level, in our minds we still wish this wasn't our life, we wish things were different. But, in our souls we know that we are healing, coping, finding strength for the life that's still ahead of us. You can't always control what happens to you in life, but you can control how you react to it.
"Everything can be taken from a man or a woman but one thing: the last of human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."
Victor Frankl said it. We are attempting to live it.
