SISTERS.  (On Flickr.)  (Skipping over Q and R for the moment.)  These three are mine.  This is one of the scanned images that (still) refuses to display in Dad's frame.  It's June 1979 at Mount Rushmore (obviously), on the return leg of our first-ever trip together -- just us -- from Wisconsin to Dallas, Oregon, over to and down the Oregon coast (with Dad, his future wife, her kids) all the way to Crescent City, California, and back to Wisconsin.  We'd exchanged my brand new Toyota Corolla for our future stepdad's brand new Ford Fairmont wagon to make the trip.

Memorable Moments:

Staying overnight at a Holiday Inn in Ogden, Utah, and awakening to a snowy mountain June morning.

We helped Dad move their belongings into storage, as they were closing the door on one chapter and opening the next.  Sharon played "The Snake Charmer," the only song that stuck in her brain after all those piano lessons, as the piano was moved through the streets of Dallas in the back of a pickup truck.

Sand dunes.  Sea lions.  Caves.

Playing on the beach at Cape Kiwanda near Pacific City.  Unbeknownst to me, my future husband had just purchased a lot across the road and was preparing to build a house there.  Six years later, I married him in that house.  Six years after that, we were visiting the coast, listening as Katie skipped to a song she made up about "Kate, Kate, Kate Kiwanda!"

Pitching a tent in a mosquito-infested Yellowstone Park on the way back, Annie and I cloaked in whatever we could find to keep from being eaten alive or carried off.  It was awful, and is very likely one of the reasons why I'm not a big fan of camping.

We took a wrong turn (or missed a turn) leaving Yellowstone and ended up spending much of a day in the free-range area of the Montana Rockies.  Karen and I were the only licensed drivers, and I did most of the driving, but somehow she ended up at the wheel during that mountainous, white-knuckle (oh, that was me in the back seat!) drive -- hairpin turns, rock slides, cattle in the road, a long long long way down...  I'm feeling vertigo just remembering it.

Wall Drug.  A serious thing for McD's Egg McMuffins (as often as we could) (OMG, back when they actually made it when you ordered it? Yum).  Scrounging our pockets, the seats and the floor for McMuffin and/or gas money on the way home (we made it!).

At some point in the mid-80s, we began to get together regularly for what we dubbed "Sister Weekends."  The first ones were in Milwaukee, but we also went to Ohio (Longaberger land) and Kansas.  It had been quite a few years since our last when we got together last month in Mineral Point to celebrate my birthday.  And each other.  Reconnecting.

Today, one of these sisters meets for the first time with her oncologist.  That she has cancer is already known.  The details will be disclosed today.

S is for this is SHITTY news and cancer TOTALLY SUCKS.

S is for SADNESS.
S is for STRENGTH.
S is for SUPER SISTER SIZED SUPPORT.
S is for please SEND all your good vibes, karma, wishes, prayers, and healing thoughts for my SISTER.

XO, honey, I love you.