Gentlemen, Start Your Engines!!!

And we're OFF! Jim & I leave tomorrow morning for our shortened vacation. We're going to Tennessee & North Carolina to go to the Biltmore Estate & then to the AWESOME Bristol At Night Nascar race :) Wooo-hooo! This is our first time going to Bristol & we're both so excited! The above layout I did over a year ago & when I look at it now, I know I could have done a better job. But I won't change it.....I like looking back at my older layouts & seeing how much I've learned & progressed over the years. The pictures were taken at a Nascar race at MIS. Yep, that's me with my arm around one of Rusty's pit crew guys ;) In the second picture, I'm holding up a lug nut that he gave me. Jim decided that since Rusty is retiring after this year :( that we should go to a race track where he stands a good chance of winning, so that's why we picked Bristol. The tickets weren't cheap because we had to purchase them off ebay, but I just know that it'll be worth it! I'm a HUGE Rusty fan :) I just love everything about him.....his sincerity, his classiness, his talent & of course, his good looks ;) I'm so disappointed that he decided to retire after this year, but he knows he's doing the right thing for himself & his family. As of right now, he's 4th in the Nextel point standings.....it would be really cool if he could win the championship his last year! GO RUSTY!!! :)

After the race Saturday night, we're spending a night in Roanoke, VA & then driving up to PA on Sunday. Then on Monday, my sisters, Dad & I will be driving up to Montrose to visit my sister & brother-in-law's gravesite. It will be the 1 year anniversary of the date of the accident, so it's definitely not going to be an easy day at all :*( It's just so hard to believe that it's been a year already since they were taken from us! God, I miss them!

I talked to Mom's doctor today & was telling him about how she keeps saying & thinking weird things & he said that she seemed fine to him. He said he could do another CAT scan if we wanted, but he didn't think anything was wrong with her. But then when Linda went to visit Mom tonight, she said she was even worse, kept talking about being down in her basement & how she wanted to go upstairs. Then she told Linda that I was there today to see her & she asked her if I made it home okay. A nurse told Linda tonight that they did do another CAT scan today, but that the results weren't back yet. We thought things were starting to look up, but now it seems like it's gotten worse again :( Then Linda threw the guilt-trip on me! She said that if she had a vacation planned & Mom was laying in the hospital, she would cancel her vacation! I already told her that we changed a lot of our plans around so that we can come to PA & spend some time there with Mom, but I guess that's not good enough for her. Sometimes I just wanna scream! I'm trying so hard to not let any of this ruin our vacation.....I mean, Jim & I have had this vacation planned for over 8 months now. And this is the first vacation we've ever taken with just the 2 of us. Heck, we never even had a honeymoon! We SO need this right now! Please tell me that I shouldn't feel guilty?!? I almost hung up on Linda tonight when she said that! But I didn't.....and I bit my tongue to keep myself from saying anything, although it wasn't easy.

I'm not sure when I'll be able to blog again. I will be taking my laptop & my battery charger this time, but I promised Jim I wouldn't spend much time on it ;)

Hope you have a great week,
Benita