Midwest Christmas Marathon and Wedding Planning

Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, and crazy January!

Raymond and I were lucky to get out of Wichita for a few days over Christmas and surprise his family in St. Louis. His mom had no idea we were coming until we walked through the door. It was wonderful to relax and explore for a couple days before we drove on to Branson and Silver Dollar City.

Raymond had to work on his birthday but we had a nice dinner and cake! New Year's Eve was relaxed with a few friends. It was exactly what we needed. I went back to work expecting to ease into January and was blown away by such a busy schedule. Immediately I jumped into a banquet space renovation project, worked the bridal expo, finished rental pricing changes, and much more.

I'm thrilled to see the space renovations coming along both professionally and personally. Our wedding reception is planned at the Museum! Here's a sneak peek at the new paint color:

Stepping backwards (for an important reason), in December my dad was given an Honorary Degree from Newman University. It was a big day for my mom and family. My dad always wondered if someday he would have given enough time and love to Newman to be considered for such an honor. Unfortunately he was not here to see it happen. We missed him terribly, but my mom gave a fantastic acceptance speech; I'm so proud of her! If only things were different, and he had been here to celebrate and be his usual humble self.

Wedding plans are coming along. Do you have a reasonably priced DJ you would recommend? Please leave me a comment if so! Choosing a caterer led to some tasty research. I was thrilled to pick and order my dress a couple weeks ago at The White Dress.

Thanksmas or Christgiving?

Raymond and I hung Christmas lights on my duplex last weekend, and last night I turned them on. No shame! Unlike some people, I have no problem mixing Thanksgiving and Christmas. What's the difference between last night and next weekend, anyway?

Every year at Christmas my family visits Silver Dollar City in Branson, MO. These are just a few of the thousands of trees covered in twinkling lights. We used to go over the Thanksgiving holiday, so it's possible my parents felt the same as me about combining the winter holiday love. I'm thankful we were able to go last December, as it was the last trip we made with my Dad and gave us all some wonderful memories (including snow!).

It's not that I don't love Thanksgiving -- I do -- but I don't see what's wrong with extending the Christmas season and making Thanksgiving part of it. I love Christmas so much that I want to enjoy the lights, tree, and warm candlelight longer than four short weeks. Besides, it takes at least one of those weeks just to get all the decorations out of the box.

Last year my parents and little sister spent Thanksgiving with me in Dublin, Ireland. The pub we stopped in for dinner had this "Thanksgiving" special! None of my family ordered it, but I had been in Europe for three months already and wanted a taste of home. It was delicious, as was the red lemonade in the picture, something you can only order in Ireland.

Last November only confirmed my opinion about merging the two major holidays when I was in Europe and the German Christmas Markets went up the first or second week of November. England obviously does not celebrate Thanksgiving, which allows them to enjoy the German beer, hand-crafted sweets, and carnival Christmas festival for at least two or three weeks longer than it would culturally be allowed in the USA. Tell me, what's wrong with celebrating Christmas for as long as possible?

The German Christmas Markets in Europe can go on for miles! Raymond and I had the chance to visit three or four different markets while in Europe. Birmingham had the largest outside of Germany! Oh, what I would give for some of those Christmas sweets or German beer here in Kansas...

Tomorrow I will take more glittery Christmas goodies out of their boxes and joyfully place them around my small duplex. In a couple weeks I will enjoy a delicious spread of food for Thanksgiving, including all my favorites (my mom's turkey, cream corn, Raymond's mashed potatoes, and LOTS of pie). And all the while, my phone will play Christmas songs that not only make me happy, but also very, very thankful.

New Blog and It's My Birthday!

First, Happy Birthday to me! Second, welcome to my new blog. The good news is that I have an all-new design that incorporates something I love: travel. The bad news is that you're here because the web template for Sunflower Skyscraper became corrupted and broken, meaning I have to delete it. Don't worry, it's not the kind of broken that will hurt your computer, only that the design became corrupt and I could not fix several problems with the layout and background images.

Raymond recently started his own blog (you can find it here) but he might have some guest posts as soon as I convince him to write them. Here you can find our life "postcards" and things we want to share with family and friends. 

Last year on my birthday Raymond and I rode a 45 minute bus to the city center to find the most American food around in Birmingham, England -- Chinese take-out! Then he found me a piece of red velvet cake in one of the bakeries. It was nothing like my mom's but the best we could find. I just looked at pictures and realized apparently we also saw the new 007 movie, weeks before anyone at home. The same day I talked to my parents and they told me they were coming to visit for Thanksgiving. That was the best birthday present I've ever received!  

My parents and little sister came to visit over Thanksgiving 2012.

I'm so thankful my parents did come to visit for Thanksgiving. We made some wonderful memories, and they are especially powerful as we lost my dad in April. It has been such an interesting year, full of adventure, joy, but also sadness. I'm thankful to be home and celebrating with friends and family in Kansas this year. Also, I think my mom may have made me one of her famously delicious cakes for tonight.

Make sure you subscribe for email updates in the box on the right side of the page. Thanks for stopping by on my birthday, please let me know what you think of the new design in the comments section below!

xoxo

Rachel

Eleven Rainy Months

Losing my Dad, Part 1
by Rachel

I guess I'm ready to break the silence. Hello, world. If you would like to know what I've been posting to the internet in my absence here, please check out my work blog for the Museum of World Treasures.



My parents, photo taken June 2012 (two months after the first diagnosis).



There are many reasons why I haven't written a personal blog in so many months, and there are also reasons why the posts stopped so suddenly. 

My dad died. 

It is difficult to find sufficient words to describe the last year of my life, or even just the last six months since I came home from England. It's hard to make the words in this post even feel as if they are flowing together to form sentences, but at the same time I feel as if I could write an entire book about the most traumatic thing that has ever happened to me (my dad would tell me to stop being dramatic if I had said that out loud). As long as this post is, it is only a summary of the months leading up to the day the doctors told us it was time for hospice care. 

When we found out that my dad had cancer in April of 2012, there were so many questions and so few answers. Not only did he have cancer, but it was a rare and therefore less-researched kind (bile-duct cancer). What treatments could we do? How long would we have? Why was this happening to my dad, the most health-conscious and fitness-concerned man I know? 

The summer brought few answers, but some treatment options. He went to chemo at least twice a month but continued to work full time, or as much as he could, even with his laptop in bed in the hospital. He continued to work as he was able until the week we were told that the only option was hospice care. That was also the first week he took pain killers throughout the entire ordeal. 



My mom, dad, little sister, and myself in London November 2012.

 I struggled over the decision to go abroad, but at the time he seemed to be doing so well. We had hope that we could have as much as several years, although they would be filled with chemo and treatments. It was hard to leave, but I had faith things would be the same when I returned at Christmas, and my dad encouraged me to take the opportunity.

I will forever be grateful that my parents were able to come and visit me over Thanksgiving in England. For that week, I was able to show my dad a world of new and exciting things that he had only read about and seen pictures of. Together with my mom and little sister, we toured the Tower of London, drank Guinness in Ireland, and explored London by the Underground. My dad was struggling as the cancer and treatments took their tole, but hiding it from the world and doing his best to continue on as he always had. Over and over again he repeated throughout the last year that sometimes we cannot control what happens to us; what we can control is how we react and whether we allow things to devastate us or whether we continue to move forward and grow as human beings.



My dad and I when he came to visit me in London.


I came home on December 20 and had a wonderful Christmas with my family. We took our annual trip to Branson, MO, although we worried it was too cold for my dad. It was the last time we would all be together in Branson, the place where my parents cultivated years of precious family vacation memories. 



My parents celebrated Christmas in Branson with the entire family.

 Everything began to change quickly in January. I started my new job at the Museum of World Treasures, moved into a new house, and started classes in Kansas again. Unfortunately this time of change also marked the first time in 2013 that my dad went into the hospital. He was re-admitted time and time again throughout the weeks of January, February, and March as they fought various infections and problems associated with the cancer. 

It was chaotic and stressful for me to try and balance a new job, school, and needing to be with my family as much as possible. Sometimes I felt like I wasn't doing a very good job at any of those roles, but I did just as both my parents had always taught me to do: I fought on, sometimes blindly, and kept going.

Things got worse over the weeks. The days at the hospital began to outnumber the days at home, but we still had faith and my dad was ready to keep fighting to do whatever possible to beat the cancer, or at least live with the cancer. And up until the end I truly believed, with everything in me, that he was going to and that cancer was not going to take my dad from us at only 57 years old. 

The first weekend of spring break Raymond and I were scheduled to visit his family in St. Louis. My mom called the morning we were supposed to leave and asked me to cancel the trip. We found out that day that the unthinkable had happened: the doctors said there were no viable treatments left, and that they were recommending hospice care.

My family had already weathered many months, but that day the storm got worse.

A new beginning, a new blog!

Welcome to Sunflowers and Skyscrapers, Raymond and Rachel's new blog!

Five months ago, we took a chance and bought two plane tickets to London. It was the best risk we've ever taken! We had no idea what we were doing (buying tickets four weeks before we left), but we had faith that we could figure it out, and have the adventure of a lifetime. We were right.

Our semester abroad is four months of our life we will never regret. Not only did we visit some amazing cities and places, but we made some awesome international friends and spent hours in conversation about the differences in culture around the world.

We love to go home, but we hate to leave.

Our blog, "Rachel-Ray Across the Pond" was a fantastic avenue to showcase these differences and everything we learned in the UK. It served as a way for us to keep in touch with friends and family back home, and gave many of our English readers a new perspective on things they see and do every day.

Now that we are headed home, it's time to put "Across the Pond" to rest. Although we hope to take another visit to Europe soon, we're realistic to know we will probably never again live abroad for an extended amount of time. We're both ready to graduate and start building careers, and bills are calling to be paid.

However, just because "Across the Pond" is ending does not mean that we are done! Hence, "Sunflowers and Skyscrapers" was born.

We've learned so much about ourselves and the world while living in England. We know that it might be difficult to adjust back to life in Wichita, but we're ready to bring our new habits and mix them with the old ones. There are so many ways to mix "big-city life" with "small-town USA," and I'm excited to get home and start. It will also be a great way to keep in touch with our English base, and demonstrate what "normal" is for us back home!

So, what does the name "Sunflowers and Skyscrapers" mean? Raymond and I love to travel. We love big cities, urban areas, and new experiences. I love the metro, because of how easy it is to get from one side of London to the other. The local markets, high-rise buildings, constant movement--they all add to our love of cities and millions of people all in one place. The culture is rich with diversity and fresh ideas.

However, while living in England we realized how much we miss the mid-west, full of sunshine, fields, and beautiful sunsets. We've missed our family, and all the kind-hearted individuals who live in the heartland and have time to smile at strangers.

We're made up of both places, the Sunflowers and the Skyscrapers. Six lane highways and dirt roads. High-rise apartments and the Flint Hills.

We'll never be done traveling and exploring, and we'll never stop thinking about the city.
But the midwest is where we call home.