A dear family that we have loved for the 9 years we have known them has lost their son to lukemia this week. He died after an intense week long battle with cranial bleeding. One minute he was fine. The next his loving parents rushed him to the ER, discovered he had lukemia, then discovered he had bleeding in the brain…and one short week later he was gone. He never woke up and never knew he had a disease.

Because the ICU’s now have internet connections. Kandice and Ryan had the ability to take a cathartic and therapuetic approach and create a blog to tell friends and family about his progress during intense chemo. This led to hundreds of postings, a shrine at Ezra’s school, 1000 paper cranes, candles left on door steps and the proper kind of shared greiving that must have been common when we all lived in villages but is denied us usually in the modern age.

Everyone should have such love and it is interesting and strange how sick and hurt I feel about Ezra’s passing, leaving behind his twin brother and older sister but even stranger how comforting it is to see so many people sharing their love for this amazing family on the internet.

Read more on Ezra’s Blog

It was a river/creek that flowed through an amazing ranch.campground where they’ve been hosting the “Old Settler’s Bluegrass Festival” for a couple of centuries now. We saw Ralph Stanley of the Stanley brothers and Marty Stuart, two great performers with amazing bands. Cella had a blast. We jumped in the creek-river together, which was cold. Maybe if I were younger I might have just jumped in naked and gotten arrested. But you know some times with age we learn a few things, like wet jeans are better than over-nights in the county jail. We had so much fund. She didn’t want to jump, so I had to jump in first and then let her jump onto me.

Renee got to sit from the comfort of the granite (I think that’s what it was) sidelines and take pictures with her battery-hog Sony Digicam.

We rushed out to Target just before we went to pick up folding Captain’s chairs (13$ each, nice) and Cella grabbed some playmobile and coloring books and off we went.

We had tiny argument over whether we should just decide to camp, but in the end I think we were all glad to come home (like I said it was only 15 minutes) with the full moon over our heads and crawl into bed after a fantastic Saturday at the campgrounds festival scene.