In Memory of my dad,

John Jay Brunner

1953-2010

Me & my dad at my wedding 1993

All 9 of my dads kids (L-R)

Charlena, Laura, Ruby, J.J., Zachary, Christine, Tommie, Emily, and Marie

July 18th would be my dads Birthday. July 22nd is one year since he passed. It's hard to believe that it's been that long already. I still have rough days where I cry. I have days that I smile remembering funny stories and memories. I also have been having a lot of days wishing we had been able to have the relationship I dreamed of. I wish things had been different. I wish he had chose different paths. I wish our paths crossed more often than they did. I miss you dad...you are thought of often and are loved very much.

Things have been pretty busy since summer started. Been keeping busy with volunteering lately. We volunteered at the San Diego Rock N Roll Marathon in a medical tent. Since my mom works at a hospital she was able to find a doctor interested in helping as we needed at least 1 doctor and 4 medical personnel. I'm neither, but I do all the activities with this group of people from my moms work so I joined them for this as well. I had the BEST time ever! I didn't think I'd have as much fun as I did, but those runners are amazing and so inspiring!! We were at mile mark 24.4 so they didn't have much farther to go from there...and most were pretty worn out as well. There were runners from Kenya that were in first through third place that came by us at 2 1/2 hours into the marathon!! Can you imagine being able to run 24.4 miles in 2 1/2 hours!?! Crazy!! We got to be cheerleaders for the runners as well as pass out water, salt, give massages if needed and whatever else we could do.

I got so inspired by the runners and walkers that I have decided to do the Las Vegas Rock N Roll 1/2 Marathon in December! I have been training for a little while now. I made a horrible mistake and stopped walking/jogging everyday for almost 3 months so when I got back started...it was like starting from scratch again. Ugh...frustrating! Right now I'm doing about 7-8 miles a day split in 2 walks. I usually go out first thing in the morning at 5:30am and then somewhere between 6-7pm for my evening walk. My morning walk is always longer as I love the quiet of the morning and the smells. The air isn't filled with smog from cars yet so it's nice. =) I'm going to walk most of the 1/2 marathon. I'll have spurts of running/jogging between the walking....but I could never run 13.1 miles straight! You could offer me a million dollars and theres still no way I could do it! lol I'm just excited to be doing it. The marathon is in the evening and you run down the strip!! How beautiful that is going to be! I'm looking forward to it.

We also volunteered for a Neighborhood Restoration Project. Twelve houses participated and we gave them new looks and yards. We were assigned to one house and we painted, built, weeded, extracted a tree, pounded out brick, we did a LOT of work on this house. Do you know that when the owner finally came home she complained just about everything that everyone had done. Who does that?? She wasn't even there to help or anything and then has the nerve to be so ungrateful. I'll tell you...she turned everyone off to the point that we all walked off her yard and went to a different house. Who wants to work on someone's house that is So rude! We didn't let it kill our spirit though. We were there for a reason, and we helped make that neighborhood look really nice! So many people were thankful and even children were proud of their street. So that was nice. Makes it all worth it!

We've all been finalizing our plans for New York. We leave the end of September (29th) and come back October (8th). I'm really excited! We all got to pick things we want to see and do and then we sat down and planned out the days as to what we all want to do. Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island, Top of the Rock, The MET, Brooklyn Bridge, Soho, Greenwich Village, Central Park...oh the list goes on and on! We will spend 3 full days in New York City. From there we will head up to Howes Caverns and do the tour of the Caverns there. Then we will head up to Binghamton to do family research and visit graveyards that have family buried there. From there we head to Niagara Falls in Canada! We will be there for 3 days and will fly home out of Buffalo. This is going to be a fantastic trip that I will remember forever!

We have a Family Reunion later this month. We're all going to be camping out at the site as well which is kind of fun. I'm looking forward to spending time with my cousins that I don't see that often. Unfortunately our family seems to be getting smaller. Today we just lost my Uncle Paul (RIP). He was 94 years old though and lived a wonderful life! He missed my Aunt Kay and just wanted to be with her again. I know they had a beautiful reunion in heaven this morning!

In Augus we have the Relay For Life which is a 24 hour event where someone from your team has to be walking at all times. It's for cancer. We did it last year as well and loved it. Being that we get to sleep on the Embarcadero in Seaport Village it's something special that not anyone gets to do. I'm looking to log at least 20 miles this year. Last year I logged 18.25...so we shall see. We also have a Family Picnic for my moms hospital. I always help with them. They have pretty much adopted me as part of the hospital family.

Life is good and I can't complain.