Dear Grace,
Wow! So many adventures on the 4th to tell you about! Okay, so first of all, we got up at four to go to the balloons, right? And we when we got there, they had a giant Coke bottle balloon, which was MAGNIFICENT, I have to say. Then, I realized something that made me laugh. All these years I never thought pigs could fly, but I was proven wrong when I realized that I’ve watched one fly every year. The giant piggy-bank balloon. Yeah, so pretty much my facebook status read: Today, I saw a pig fly…haha, yeah, that was cool. Then they did the pledge of allegiance with the flag hanging from the basket of one of the balloons, and, can you believe it? They had Ronald McDonald in that basket. I had to laugh because I suddenly realized that with the increasing statistics of obesity in our country, he’s become the perfect mascot for America.
Then we went to the parade, where I painted my nails with red, white, and blue nail polish before the parade started (that’s right, I have nails now. I finally stopped chewing them and grew them out). Then, when Grandma had seen what I had done, she wanted me to paint her nails, too. Then, when I was done with hers, Aunt Susan wanted me to paint hers. THEN, when I was done with HERS, Josh’s girlfriend Jessica wanted me to do hers too. So basically, I spent the entire parade painting everyone’s nails.
I’ve never mentioned Jessica, have I? Well, she and Josh have been kind of dating these last few months, and it’s been amazing to watch how good they have been for each other. She used to have a really rough past, too, but they don’t drag each other down. Their friendship seems to give Josh a reason to stay sober and be a better person.
She has an inspiring story, and I want to tell you about it. She was messing with some pretty hard core drugs for a while, but eventually she started straightening her life out and was trying to get off of the drugs. She got clean for a while, but the drugs she had been on had caused a lot of damage, and eventually she had to go to the emergency room, because she was having heart problems. I can’t remember exactly what condition she had, but she had to have her bicuspid valve replaced, so she had an open-heart surgery. The doctors didn’t expect her to make it through the surgery, however, so they brought her parents in to say goodbye to her before they took her in for surgery.
She told us that she had always been a very anti-God kind of person, and that she didn’t really want to have anything to do with religion of any kind. Well, during that surgery, the anesthesia wore off and she woke up. She was paralyzed for the surgery, so she had no way to tell the doctors she was awake, and as you can imagine, the pain was unbearable. She said that while she was lying there, virtually helpless, unable to do anything, she started doing the only thing she could do: she prayed. She said she had never prayed before, but that she started asking for help, and when she did, she felt this reassuring warmth and comfort come over her, and she said that she knew everything would be okay. Then, after a while, she said she fell back asleep.
The surgery was a success, and she was on her feet again within three days. She said that she was off of her pain meds within that time as well, and she wasn’t taking anything more than a few Tylenol for the pain.
She is such an amazing woman, Grace, and she has the most incredible spirit. She is so strong. She has been close to God, and she has been touched by his spirit in a way that I have seen very rarely in my lifetime. She was saying that she didn’t know why she had lived through that surgery, because her chances of survival had been so slim. She was saying how all of her friends would tell her that she must have a very important reason to have lived through that surgery, and how it used to make her angry to hear that, because she couldn’t imagine what reason would be so important. When she told us that, a single thought occurred to me: she lived so she could be sent to Josh. Oh, Grace, I just wish so much you could see how he has changed since they met. I’ve never seen him sober this long before, and I know that her love and friendship have been so good for him. Grandpa is especially impressed with her. He doesn’t comment on peoples spirits that often, but he has made it a point to tell us that he is awed by the good spirit she has. I hope you get to meet her someday, Grace, she’s a remarkable woman.
I’m still not quite sure where their relationship stands, because as far as I know, she likes him, but he doesn’t really have romantic feelings for her. However, Grandma told me recently that he said he thinks he’s starting to really love her, but that he’s afraid to because one day he’ll lose her to her heart condition. We all know that, and Grandpa predicts that she wouldn’t make it past fifty because you can only replace a heart valve with a pig valve so many times. But you never know. We’re making good strides in medicine today, and we may come up with something new within the next twenty years or so that could help her.
In any case, I really hope that Josh is falling for her, because we all love her so much, and she is just so perfect for him! I think things might be changing between them though, because I’m pretty sure I saw Josh kiss her at the parade out of the corner of my eye. I wish I had been looking so I could tell! Who knows? Maybe they’ll end up getting married, and maybe you’ll get to meet her someday. I really hope so!
Okay, so let me finish my 4th stories. So after the parade, we went to Uncle Randy and Aunt Susan’s for waffles. We got there and ate and visited for a while, and then Josh and Jessica showed up. Jessica sat next to me on the couch, and Josh sat next to her. She texted me and said: we should tease Josh. Play a joke on him or something...
So I said: Let’s dress a pancake up as a spider and throw it in his face. (Josh had been trying to drop a baby spider on her earlier)
She said: Or we could just go outside and when he comes looking for us we could ambush him with the super soakers!
(Randy had pulled out marshmallow guns and super soakers in the front yard for the little kids that were visiting.) I enthusiastically agreed, and when Josh got up to go get waffles, Jessica and me slipped outside and went to get the super soakers. We couldn’t find them, so I was about to run around the house to look for them, when I stepped right in a puddle of muddy water and slipped and fell flat on my back. Yes, I was covered with mud. So I was pretty embarrassed, but I laughed at myself and scrubbed the mud off of me the best I could with my shirt and then hung it up to dry (don’t worry, I was wearing a tank-top). Then we found the guns and stayed hidden behind the side of the house, waiting for Josh. We heard him come out looking for us, and when he came over to where we were hiding, we jumped out and attacked him.
However, when I jumped out, I got one good shot in before I stepped in the same stupid puddle and slipped AGAIN! Yeah, I pretty much felt like a complete dididi.
So after that little adventure, we went home and I got to change out of my muddy clothes. Then we went up to Grandma and Grandpa Dayton’s barbeque for a while. Then we came home and watched Zoolander with Josh and Jessica.
This next adventure was fun, haha, so after the movie, we all went outside to light off some fireworks. So Josh and I were lighting the flowers and the smokebombs and throwing them out into the street, right? Well, Grandpa wanted to do some of the big fireworks while we were doing that, so right as I’m throwing a flower out into the road, Grandpa walks right in front of me. So the flower bounced off of Grandpa’s back and came back at us. It rolled under Grandma’s chair, and we were all freaking out, trying to kick it back out into the street. Jessica had been sitting next to Grandma, but she jumped up and was out of the way in a blink. Grandma couldn’t jump up fast enough, so the stupid thing went off right under her chair. So then she was sitting there with her feet up on tip-toe, freaking out and laughing at the same time. When it finally died down, we were all laughing so hard we were practically peeing our pants. Yeah, so that was a great adventure, haha.
Well, that’s all I can think about to tell you of my adventures, thus far, so I’ll just end by saying that I love you, and I hope you had a wonderful Fourth of July J.
I love you!
Love always,
Katie Jo
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