Steadman Family

My dad passed quietly last night just a few days short of his 65th birthday. I’ve always been proud of my Dad and cherish his artwork even more now that he’s gone. He was a great dad and a wonderful grandfather.

We’re planning a memorial service on Saturday at Johnson where Dad has been getting rehad since his stroke eight years ago. I’ll have more details up here shortly.

*Updated*

Dad’s service will be at The Johnson Center at 3444 S. Emerson at 11 AM on Saturday (Dad’s birthday :).

*And another update*

My great aunt Dorothy passed away last night as well at the fine old age of 93. She just recently gave up driving herself and her girlfriends out the casino’s in Omaha.

We interrupt our normally scheduled Steadman family blog for a moment of political awareness.

The Conquer Childhood Cancer Act of 2007 was introduced a few months back, but has been slowing down despite having fairly wide bipartisan support. The bill sets aside $150M for research and education to fight pediatric cancer. It may seem like a huge chunk of money, but it’s less than half of what we spend every week in Iraq.

Most importantly (from my skewed view point focusing on pontine glioma), the bill creates a national database of childhood cancer incidents. I see this as a critical first step for understanding the causes of pediatric cancer. It’s frustrating that many of the regulations that protect our privacy put in place by HIPAA regulations also limit the information available to doctors and researchers. There’s been very little progress made in the fight to prevent or treat several forms of pediatric cancer despite the efforts of oncologists and the pharmaceutical industry. It seems like it’s time to take a step back from trying different combinations of drug that don’t work to gather some data about the children.

Cure Search has a great article on the bill if you’d like additional information.

Please take a moment to let your congress critter know that you support this effort and view health care as a priority for our country.

   Yesterday became quite a day of milestones for us. We took the girls down to visit with Mike, Margaret, and her sister Avis. Mike is doing much better now that he’s home and felt up to some company. Lily has been threatening to crawl for a few weeks now, and she finally pulled it off while we were there. Once we found the right motivation (the wipes baggie) she put all her effort into it and found her way. It was awesome! Of course, she began to get frustrated cause we continued to make her do it again and again, so we finally had to let her play with it for a short time. Man is life going to change around the house now, I guess I’d better get that baby proofing done.

   We’d no sooner got in the car to head home and Madie continued to complain the her lower front tooth was hurting. It had been bothering her all that day, so I told her I’d take a look at it when we got home. She played with it some more and suddenly it became loose, just like that she has her first loose tooth. She has wanted this for a long time since all of her friends are loosing teeth. Needless to say the rest of the trip home was filled with endless questions like “How long will it take to fall out?” and “How much is a loose tooth worth these days?” etc. I haven’t told her that I have absolutely no idea what the going rate is on a tooth, especially the first one.  Anyone know the Tooth Fairy’s cell phone number?

   The Secret Garden is in full swing, we finally got the sprinkler system installed (Dean’s now a pro!), and this past weekend Dean got seven trees planted: 3 Clump Aspen, 3 Spearmint Junipers, and a Linden tree.  They look great. Next comes stone to make the flowerbeds (we’re thinking of trying to match the same stone that Ben’s plaque is mounted on) and then the dirt to fill them. After that should be edging, than bushes and rock. Finally the sod and the plants to go in the flowerbeds. Our plan is to make everything as kid friendly as possible, I want this to be a place for them (everyone) to hang out and think of Ben. 

   We finished our parent’s bereavement class last week. It was a bitter sweet goodbye since it seemed like we were finally really getting to know each other and open up to one another and then it’s over.  We met great people who are all wonderful parents walking the same agonizing path. We can only hope that we brought each other some measure of comfort in the knowledge that no one has to walk this path alone.

   I’ll get some new pictures on here hopefully in the next day or two. I got a new camera for my birthday so I have no excuses not to be taking a ton of photos.

Take care everyone,

 Melinda