Happy Mother's Day

Vlad is doing well, except for the anemia. Last week his white cells were normal for a healthy person, at 7.1 and the platelets were sky-high, which is a good sign.

He was way out of neutropenia so we were safe to go to Fort Worth to visit Mom & Suz & the girls for Mother's Day. My cousin Stevie received her master's degree from Dallas Theological Seminary on Saturday and we went by the reception to celebrate and to visit with her family, who Vlad and I don't get to see often. Her daughter Mary is with the State Department and will be going to Baghdad for visa duty. Her family is pretty much scared to death, but she says it's great for her career and is looking forward to the adventure.

Before that we stopped in Richardson to see my Dad's and grandparents' graves and leave flowers. Then we went to check out a new supermarket in my old Richardson neighborhood, Zituna World Market, that was advertised in the Russian newspaper, Our Texas. It turned out to be a smaller Phoenicia and though it was a nice place, it's not anything we need to drive out of our way for. In the same shopping center is the Euro Deli, a tiny store run by a Ukrainian guy. Reminds of of Grisha's place, Moscow, which closed a couple of weeks ago.

We had a nice time. On the way there we stopped at a roadside fruit stand in Fairfield. Run by Cooper Farms. We got some of their first peaches of the season, little clings, not overly wonderful, but they are fresh peaches. They also had red onions pulled from the ground that morning and killer strawberries. Much more. It was heaven. We stopped at Cole's there for a barbecue sandwich. It's some of the best barbecue I've ever had.

As it happened we stopped there on the way back as well. And Cooper's stand was still open at 5:30 on a Sunday, so we replenished what we dropped off in DFW. We hit 3 traffic backups on the way home and didn't get to our house until 9:30.

Anyway, we found out today Vlad will go back for Chemo #2 on Thursday morning. So we'll have more numbers to report then.

Thanks to all of you for your notes and calls and prayers!

Here are a couple of videos we shot of my sister's kids while we were there. Fun times.