THE LOWE FAMILY NEWSLETTER

VOLUME: 123

OCTOBER 2018

Dear Readers,

Once again cancer is an unwelcome guest in our family, this time choosing Ming-Lee's brain as his host. Once his presence was detected he was quickly evicted by a neurosurgeon: all traces of this uninvited guest will be eradicated by chemotherapy and radiation treatments along with physical rehabilitation to repair the damage to Ming-Lee's left leg. Ming-Lee will kick him to the curb and send him packing, never to return again. I know my son, he can do anything he sets his mind too! Even as a young child his strong will and determination were evident. I shall never forget the time he begged to be allowed outside to play in the snow when he was about five years old so I stuffed him into his snowsuit, boots and gloves and let him out to play with Gypsy(the family dog). I was just getting ready to see what he was up too, thinking it strange that he hadn't came back within minutes wanting me to build a snowman or have a snowball fight with him when he returned and asked me to come and see what he had done. I grabbed my coat and headed out with him fully expecting to see a snow barrier built across the road or the neighbor's trash can buried under a mound of snow. Dreading the view I was to be met with I took his little hand in mine and trudged past the garage and was amazed to see that he had cleared a path about thirteen feet long from the garage to the road with a snow shovel as big as himself so that I could get my car out. I was thrilled, I just picked him up and gave him a great big hug. That took great effort and determination which he has demonstrated time and time again! Thankfully I have been a letter writer since I was a child so I still have the letters I wrote to my mother detailing my early days with the Mings. Every newsletter will feature a story about his exploits until he is declared cancer free!

Ava Claire and Owen playing in the rain at Grandma's

This summer the Logue family moved in with me for a few weeks after selling their home quickly with a short closing date leaving them homeless until they could find another house to buy – a challenge in our very competitive market. Homes in my neighborhood were selling within three days for amazingly high prices.

Sheba was most unhappy about Ollie invading her domain. Initially she refused to even come into the house, then she hid in the basement and only appeared late at night when every-one was in bed except Jeremy who frequently did not get home from work until eleven. He would eat a very late dinner and head downstairs to watch television for awhile. Sheba took to jumping up on his lap - which is amazing considering how skittish she is around people – and Jeremy is not a cat lover but he was very tolerant of her affections!

Ava Claire and Owen thoroughly enjoyed the idea of spending weeks at Grandma's house until it was explained that Mummy and Daddy's rules would be in place instead of Grandma's – which are pretty much non-existent apart from no fighting and screaming! Whenever Ava Claire was told it was bedtime she would tell me that she couldn't wait to move into her new house so that she could stay up as late as she wanted again when she visited me. For the first few weeks the kids slept with me as usual but then Coryn decided that they needed to get back into a schedule more suited to the upcoming start of school, so they had to sleep upstairs with their parents. This did not make them happy campers and they eventually crawled back into my room.

If I complained about the mess all over my house Ava Claire would inform me that I shouldn't have invited them to move in as I already knew they were messy kids! Then I would get a lecture about how you were suppose to treat guests in your home and how if you couldn't say something nice you should say nothing at all!

One Sunday, Coryn, Kay and I got together for lunch and toured a couple of homes in a multi million dollar neighborhood for a charity event – of course I still think my location is much better- and then we swung by an open house in an area closer to mine to see a house that Coryn and Jeremy had just put a bid on the day before .Unfortunately they lost the house but soon found another back in Lee's Summit but much closer to the state line than their previous home much to the delight of the rest of us who reside in Johnson County, Kansas! It has significantly shortened our drive to visit the Logues. Once they had an accepted bid on this house they scheduled a home inspection and invited me to come and check it out at that time.

Their new house has an interesting layout and very nice finishing details, the kitchen is very upgraded and there are lots of custom built- ins throughout. However the master suite is much smaller so Coryn had to significantly downsize her wardrobe! Once I had checked out the house I headed home on the interstate .The sky looked ominous and soon torrential rain fell, with thunder and lightening and forceful winds. Along with all the other vehicles I slowed to a crawl, put on my hazard lights and fervently hoped that I would not be rear ended or sideswiped .Eventually traffic came to a standstill as it was impossible to see anything and there was so much water rushing over the road that hydroplaning was a real possibility. Eventually it let up and I made it safely home. I looked out onto my backyard and saw that the straight line winds had lifted my outdoor metal dinning table over the deck rail and tossed it to the ground, snapping the umbrella (which was closed thankfully or who knows to where it may have flown ) into many pieces. An entire section of fencing was down and a big tree branch had snapped off. The fence was my main concern: there was no barrier between Owen and Ollie and eight lanes of traffic. I grabbed some bungee cords and summoned the chi to lift the downed five foot tall section of fence back in place and temporarily secured it with numerous cords. Jeremy spent hours the following weekend re-stabilizing the fence panels on either side of the collapsed one. I thought it was going to be a quick fix but Jeremy is meticulous when it comes to construction work. I think he found his brothers fence building to be an unusual design! The next weekend he was on my deck and noticed that one of the the boards across the top rail was bowing so he drove to the store for a new board and had it installed in no time, even having me help drill it in – I asked Coryn if she had ever been invited to help out on a home improvement project. She rolled her eyes. But she did surprise me with a new outdoor umbrella that was a great match with my seat cushions!

In late July Claudia flew from Indianapolis to Kansas City by herself on Southwest - her first time flying alone and of course she did fine as she has probably flown more miles than I have with her adventurous family. I picked her up at the airport with Ava Claire in tow as Coryn had a speech pathology appointment for Owen at that time. Once we were back at my house Coryn immediately suggested that she and Claudia check out the amazing buys on teenage clothing available at Plato's Closet, oh so conveniently situated a few blocks up the road from me. Ava Claire and Owen were not happy about being left behind with Grandma, they wanted to be with Claudia. Once they were back from a successful shopping trip we had a quick supper as we four girls were planning on attending a live musical performance of 'The Adams Family' at the Shawnee Mission Amphitheater. Jeremy was planning on being home by the time we left so that we did not have to bring Owen with us- he would have doubtless staged a very embarrassing side show.

As always the production was very well done and Ava Claire held up well – especially when I decided to splurge on a gigantic bucket of popcorn which Coryn declared excessive for three people since I rarely eat it.We were home by eleven that night and ready for another hectic day! I felt that we had kept up with the break neck pace of life that a visit to Claudia's home entails!

It just so happened that Claudia's visit coincided with Coryn and Jeremy's house closing and move into their new home. So on Friday morning - whilst their parents were signing all their documents at the house closing - Claudia helped entertain her little cousins by playing haunted house - which meant shutting herself up with them in my small walk in closet with the door closed and the lights off.

Kay rescued her by taking her to lunch at some middle eastern cafe and to a gaming cafe afterwards which has an enormous selection of board games which all Lowes love to play!

That evening everybody came over to my house for supper , pizza delivered to my door, Claudia said she had never seen so much pizza! I said Jeremy alone could eat an entire one and a few more pieces besides! Claudia asked me at one point if the kids ever ate anything healthy as she had accompanied us on an early morning grocery store run for breakfast donuts, washed down with chocolate milk. I think I sliced up some fruit later that day which took a dollop of peanut butter to dip it in to entice my picky grandchildren!

After everyone was full of various pizza toppings and breadsticks they decided to go on an evening stroll together so Claudia found herself on the nearby wooded trail with Sarah, Sean, Kay, Richard, Coryn, Jeremy, Ava Claire, Owen and the dogs Ollie and Theo. Bet the neighbor's thought they were organizing a protest or something as they took over the sidewalks! I took this opportunity to water my parched yard as I had been too busy all day to get out there. The kids only enjoy being outside when the heat and humidity are not too high , the bugs are not biting and they can find lots of Japanese beetles on my plants to pick off and drown in soapy water. Ava Claire enjoys this so much that she volunteered to help my neighbor who is terrified of the things and is only willing to shake the stems over a bucket to rid her plants of them.

Claudia and Kay 

On Saturday Coryn headed over to the house to meet a couple of guys they had hired to help unpack their two pods which had been stored for a few weeks. All the stuff that should have been stored in a third pod was packed into Sean and Sarah's basement, and the overflow was in mine and Richards! For a house their size contents I would have ordered four pods but Coryn insisted the pod company said two large ones would suffice! Jeremy, Sean and Richard loaded a trailer Jeremy had a few times to move everything over to the new house – a few round trips and then we all met up that afternoon with our cars loaded down with their stuff to help them get settled in. Jeremy even summoned the energy to fire up the barbecue grill for supper! Claudia did a great job of entertaining the kids as Kay, Coryn and I pulled weeds while the exhausted guys talked football over a few beers. At least the move in went much better than the move out where not only did they have too little help, too few moving pods but they were also working around a roofing crew as the home inspection revealed storm damage to their roof and the new owners wanted it replaced by the time they moved in, a day or so later. Good thing Jeremy is in the roofing business!

Luckily the Logues were able to move into their new house before school started. Ava Claire was already anxious about kindergarten and having to attend a different school to the one she was signed up for in their old neighborhood made her worry even more. Fortunately she has moved into a cul-de-sac with many children and one of them is in her class at school! Her new friend, Josie, is thrilled to have a playmate and the girls have quickly become friends. This helped Ava Claire get over her fear of riding the school bus – at first she wanted her parents to take and pick her up. Coryn said they would do that for the first week or so. Amazingly after the first day, she announced she was going to ride the bus with her friend from then on and she also decided that she would order school lunch rather than taking a lunch box. She loves socializing with all the kids on the bus and in the cafeteria. She has adjusted very well to being in school five full days a week after only attending for three partial days in preschool before.

Mother has also had some changes in her life. On a routine doctors visit my blood pressure was so alarmingly high that even I knew I needed medication and have been taking it and my blood pressure daily ever-since. That's what six weeks of living with Owen has done to me!

I have been debating the advisability of buying a new car for sometime and after my harrowing driving experience in my Ford Focus (as detailed above) I was convinced a new vehicle with today's bells and whistles was a necessity. Driving on I435 is daunting under normal circumstances but this last year has been especially challenging. Lanes are either closed down or narrowed to allow for resurfacing or the building of new lanes, and every week traffic patterns are changed to accommodate this work confusing drivers. Accidents seem to be a daily event and since there are few optional routes which don't involve adding a few hours to one's commute it has to be endured. I decided that lane assist, blind spot monitoring, and a back up camera were essential to my safety and others. All these features were lacking in my 2005 fully loaded Ford Focus with just under 60,000 miles on it's odometer. Thus I decided to go with Leslee-Ann's advice and buy a 2018 Mazda CX5 which is also fully loaded and one of the safest vehicles you can drive. She had bought one the previous year after doing a lot of car research and having been a passenger in hers I knew it was comfortable too. Jeremy volunteered to take me car shopping shortly after they had moved out of my house and so my driveway finally had room to accommodate a new car. I chose to go to the closest dealership as it would be the handiest for service visits. We ventured out on a hot and humid Saturday to the Mazda car lot and after looking at the sedan, crossover and touring models I decided to go with the crossover. Its amazing how quickly one can come to a decision when the sun is beating down on you and every car you sit in feels like an oven. Jeremy wondered if we shouldn't go to another dealership to check out their selection but I was ready to do business right then and there so we headed inside and cooled down while our salesman found a model for me to test drive. Once he deemed the air conditioner had done it's work in the car we set off. Within a few blocks I knew the crossover was going to be my car.

As we returned to the showroom Jeremy said we we were not paying sticker price and he let the salesman know this right away. Frankly I thought the sticker price was very reasonable and was definitely not keen to have to walk away and endure another hour of cooking in a car lot. Jeremy low balled a price, the dealer came back with another number which was still less than the lowest offer I would have dared make and so Jeremy saved me a couple of thousand dollars. If I was willing to wait a few days I could have my choice of color or I could pick from the existing selection. I went with the dark mica blue with black leather interior that I had test driven as I could take it home that day and be done with it!

Unfortunately I am still trying to figure out all it's new systems and spend more time than I would like with the drivers manual in my lap trying to use the navigation system, blue tooth options and Bosz ten speaker surround system. Of course I do this parked in my driveway children, not when I am driving – unless it's a real emergency!

I am tickled pink to announce that I am now sewing woodland creatures in girly colors for Sarah and Sean's baby girl who is due in early January. The three of us spent hours picking out lots of coordinating prints in bright colors with some gray to compliment the very comfortable reclining gray rocking chair which already sits in one corner of the nursery along with a beautiful white crib from Sarah's parents.

Sean and Sarah were in Europe for about two and a half weeks in late summer and surprised us all by becoming engaged in London! Who knows where and when they will eventually marry! Of course I am thrilled that they chose my birth country for this momentous event. They met up with Josh in Bulgaria where they filmed a video to support their brother in his cancer battle : his siblings, their partners and offspring are making videos of themselves, forwarding them to Leslee-Ann who turns them into one supportive movie. They came home via Iceland as KCI offers direct flights there three times a week during certain times at a very reasonable price.

Josh recently returned to the US for a brief visit with the Remsbergs before heading off to Bolivia to volunteer with the big cats again at the animal refuge. Apparently he will be returning here in December which means he will be missing our big family get together which extends from the weekend before Thanksgiving to the weekend after. Leslee-Ann is organizing a baby shower for Sarah and Sean the first weekend, and then we will have Ming-Jon, Ming-Lee and his family, (health depending of course), Marc Andrew, Bryn and all the Kansas City family. Plus Sarah's parents and her sister Candace and Eric. Lots of trips to the airport coming up!Fortunately we have more space since Kay has moved into Richards house just about ten minuets away from me in Overland Park.

This move has kept me busy too as I have been helping Kay turn Richard's home into a couples place rather than a bachelor pad. We have been shopping for bedding, pillows, drapes,a TV cabinet, shower curtain, towels and decorator accents for the living room. Coryn donated a lot of wall art that she no longer has space for to them so it is all looking much more pulled together.

Leslee-Ann was recently in Los Angeles on a work trip so she elected to stay with Marc, a decision I think she regretted when she realized how filthy his place is! I bet he swore he had cleaned the whole place before she came just like he told me!I shall never forget the hours I spent with a bottle of bleach and a toothbrush scrubbing mold off his bathroom grout! Too bad Bryn is now living in Long Beach rather than downtown LA as I am sure his place is much better! At least Leslee-Ann got to spend some time with her brothers! Of course she had just seen Bryn when he was on a work trip to Orlando a few weeks ago.

I have adjusted to my new routine: Coryn drops Owen off at seven in the morning on Monday. We stay at my house until about two in the afternoon then we drive to Lees Summit to meet Ava Claire off the school bus. Coryn arrives an hour or so later as she has to deal with rush hour traffic. I stay there until after six to avoid the same traffic situation and usually drive back to my home with Owen who elects to spend the night at Grandma's. He has school the next day just up the street from my house so it saves Coryn having to wake him up at the crack of down to drop him off with me. So Tuesdays and Thursdays I get Owen ready for school, take him and Coryn picks him up at 2:30 and heads home to be there for Ava Claire.

Well I can guarantee that when you arrive next month children you will have your pick of family vehicles to borrow. Sarah and Sean currently have four cars to offer you: my donated Ford Focus with so few miles that it made sense to keep it as a back up vehicle for us all as it's monetary value is so low, an F150 truck, their Mazda and Joshua's car which is currently stuck in their third garage and only fit to be hauled off for scrap at this point. The car will not even turn over, the trunk does not close properly, and if after charging the battery, cleaning the spark plugs etc you do manage to get it going you will discover that the lights do not turn off thus running down the battery, the windshield wipers are useless and if the car gets overheated it stalls, not a great thing to have happen on the interstate! The car is a death trap but Josh seems to think that all these issues are minor and easily fixable upon his return! You definitely don't want to pick this vehicle!

Well it is time for mother to rev her engine up, still ticking along nicely despite my age children ! Coryn told me on Monday evening as we were leaving a restaurant that by” letting me” babysit her children she was keeping me from developing Alzheimer's ! I was running after Owen at the time who was about to play chicken with the cars so I huffed and puffed back that I was much more worried about having a heart attack!

My heart is full of love for you all and my thoughts are very much with Ming-lee, Lori, Blake and Claudia. Ming will conquer the mountain! Mother is always right as your dad used to say!